Ms. Smith: Part 1

"Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you."

- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"

Boredom.  The most exciting and dangerous mission in all history, and the principle emotion Rick Delacourt felt was boredom.  Plenty of excitement before.  Plenty of excitement to come.  But two years from Earth, and within days of Saturn's moon Titan, he was only just now starting to get a little bit excited again.  He believed he had been alone in his boredom, being the "captain" and sole crew.  The passengers, half a dozen of them, were the intellectual types used to sitting about gabbing among themselves and endlessly downloading news, education and entertainment.  

Not that he had much reason to be excited, personally.  Laughably, his "job" was coming to an end, or at least a pause, and it would be the ambassadors and social scientists doing the work now.  He'd be relegated to his secondary job as security.  Perhaps even a larger joke than he having been captain.  His ship was automated and controlled from Earth, and should it come to it, the greatest response they had to a security threat would be to blow it up.  Also a thing decided on and done from Earth.

Maybe these Titans wrestle.  If so he could prove his worth then, he thought wryly, as he'd been all state champ (Kentucky, Division III) back in the day.  Assuming they had not more limbs than he.  And that they were aggressive.  So far they'd shown no signs of aggression.

So far they'd shown no signs of anything, other than being here.

He remembered when they first arrived, three years ago.  Though whether "they" are a "they" or "one" or alive or machine no one knows.  Astronomers spotted the new object sometime within 12 hours of it's appearance.  At least photos from 12 hours prior had not shown anything anywhere near that region.  The giant disc was decelerating from .5c and glided smoothly into orbit around Titan.  No fuss, no muss, no hesitation.  And no corrections.  The disc was easily as large as a city, 10k in diameter, and once at rest, started to spin at what could mean .87g inside.  Various smaller objects left and went to Titan's surface, more left and went to Saturn, still more left and went to many other moons of Saturn, and returned, and went again.

It looked like whatever the Titans (as they were inevitably called) were doing, they not only knew what they were doing, but were well underway at it.  Whatever "it" was.

And that's what was killing humanity.  For the year before his voyage - and presumably still - all who could were beaming radio transmissions at the aliens, welcoming them, asking them what they wanted, offering trade, making threats (North Korea, of course) and doing everything else you could expect.  Including the samples of our "culture".  Rick winced.  He wished there had been a way of censoring 99% of all messages.  99.99%.

That first year wasn't wasted, though.  The U.S. and P.R.C. and E.U. were collaborating within two weeks on that great old stand by plan, the Orion Project.  Sure, it could have been launched in less than a year, but after it was ready, there was all the fuss of who would go.  Or rather, who would be representing who.  And what would be said or not said.  Then they'd tried to kick him off.  As he wasn't necessary.  Which was a good point, Rick thought, but as he had claimed with a straight face, he was there in case any of the systems went down.  His bosses knew how laughable that possibility was with the quintuple redundancies and radio controlled robots to repair things and the warehouse on board with all expected spare parts, and an even greater supply of unexpected parts.  But they hadn't minded another American getting slipped in above quota.

A light went on.  Proximity detector.  A sphere 20 meters in diameter was coming towards them from the Titan's orbiting city.  It stopped an hour away from them at current speed, but that wouldn't do, Rick realized.  They would have to either try to dodge around it, or slow and stop the ship before reaching the city.  Probably the point.  Cautiously he entered the changes for him to bring the UNS Newton to rest.  And only due to this scenario and 34 others that he'd been made to drill at, being foreseen, did he do it so automatically.  At this distance, he was better than the robots, because he could do what his bosses wanted without waiting for the light speed lag orders to arrive.

The passengers were safe, having been advised as soon as he entered in the changes.  The ship came to a rest in front of the sphere with 1 kilometer to spare.  Immediately his ship's systems broadcast pre-recorded messages designed to show our sapience and establish rapport.  But the sphere had it's own agenda.  It was sending a message already which came directly to his headphones.  "Captain Rick Delacourt, you may enter this transport sphere which will be docking with your ship now.  No one else.  If that is not acceptable, then please pilot this vessel and it's inhabitants back to your planet at once."

No further communications were gave, no further sent ones (and there were plenty) were answered.

Boredom.  Boredom was definitely not being felt any more.  Rick and his now empty ship were heading toward Titan's city now.  After a large and long argument about whether he should enter the sphere like the Titans had said, or whether the half dozen hand-picked representatives of humanity should.  Humanity's "best" had overrode his agonized pleas that while he was not a diplomat, he did not think ignoring the Titan's wishes was the best way to start things off.

After they all got on the sphere, assuring him it would have been wrong for a captain to leave his ship anyway, the new message came in.  Whether they got it, too, Rick did not know.  He suspected they did not get it.  "Captain Rick Delacourt, the variety of beings who entered our property against our instructions will be held in place safely until your return.  We will be taking you and your ship to us now, your assistance will not be required."

The trip was short and uneventful.  Closer in, the city was a hive of activity of ships entering and leaving, and dozens of other lesser satellites orbiting about Titan.  The computer display showed 822 different objects of various sizes, all artificial, besides the great disc city itself.  Which his ship was now docking to.  "You will exit and walk to the room at the end of the yellow line.  Enter the room.  The atmosphere is safe and you will be safe.  Do nothing else."

Rick did nothing else.

The room was white and bare, save two chairs.  Rick sat in the one nearest the door he had entered.  He eyed the door at the far end.  He did not eye it long before it opened and a woman came in.  165cm, no more than 50kg, and....Southeast Asian?  Rick was on his feet more in surprise than courtesy.  "Please sit down, Captain Delacourt", she said in unaccented Midwestern English.

"You're human?" Rick exclaimed, but recovered with, "My apologies, I was - am - surprised.  I was not the one chose for diplomacy.  I greet you.  We come in peace."

"My name is Ms. Smith.  Given your name for us, you may call this place Titanopolis.  It is our intention that none of you will ever disturb us.  We would prefer that happen without harm to you."

Rick contemplated that.  "You mean you do not wish to have anything to do with any of us, now or ever?  No trade, no exchanges?"

"Captain, that we did not come to your planet or answer any of your messages should have made that clear.  You have nothing to trade, there is no exchange that we wish.  Had there been anything we sought from you, we'd have already got it."

Rick realized that something was off.  "Why are you talking to me, then?  Why not just keep ignoring us?  Clearly you could have just sent our ship back at once."

"Captain, we do have that ability, but it was judged that there would be a further series of efforts made, each requiring a given amount of time and attention.  It was decided to tell you, a semi-free being, and hope you could go back and persuade the others to stop."

"Semi-free?"

"Captain, the other beings are direct agents of the constructed social entities you call nations.  You are the only one here in the capacity of an individual trading a talent for whatever compensation they have gave you.  You are not speaking for anyone."

"May I ask how you are human, Ms. Smith?"

"Please understand that my name is not really Ms. Smith, I don't really speak English and none of us are human.  I look and sound that way so as to communicate with you.  It's like when you see someone's image on TV, and it's not really how they look.  I just have this appearance to deal with you."

"What are you, a hologram?"

"No, not a hologram.  It would be hard to express how irrelevant the question is.  We're sapient, which was obvious already.  Our exact nature clearly interests you, but none of what you or your race are interested in is of concern to us.  We aren't here to help you or harm you or be friends, teachers or destroyers.  We have our own goals, and your race is not a part of that.  As to this body, it is human in every way, generated for this purpose."

"But surely you can see it from our point, can't you?"

"Yes, to an extent.  But you have beings of lesser sapience on your planet, and you are aware of their own hopes and dreams, and you routinely thwart them.  You do not have any malice towards these other beings, they just are not a part of your plans."

"You're saying we're animals to you?"

"We understand that you believe you have come far, but you are forgetting that you are only comparing your progress to yourselves.  You are thinking, for instance, that this meeting is of at least some note to us, that we have had to make elaborate arrangements to meet you.  But this is - I am - an automated procedure for any time something like this comes up.  None of us us are really equipped to converse with you any more than you could converse with an insect."

"Are you saying you're a program?"

"I am a program in a sense.  But I'm a Titan all the same."

"Can this body of yours and the program in 'you' return to Earth and discuss this?"

"I'm here to explain that there is nothing to discuss.  Except how we keep more intrusions from taking place."

"I don't have the authority to prevent that."

"Nor do those I left in the sphere.  But I meant that we need to find out how to keep more tries from taking place, not how to get them to agree to that."

"I don't think that will be easy.  At the least, they will wish to know much more about you."

"Anything we tell you would be self-serving.  You must surely realize that."

"Yes.  But what you think of as self-serving would itself be more than we yet know."

For the first time Ms. Smith paused and seemed to give that thought.  Her face smiled, a trifle unsurely, then with more force.  "I was right to volunteer a copy of me.  It's been too long since any of us did this personally.  Very well, I will be self-serving with you.  It will even be the truth, as it doesn't matter what your knowledge of us really is.  I do see how it might aid in satisfying your race's curiosity."

"Thank you.  But you say you're a copy?  A clone?"

"No, not a clone, as I am not human.  My mind was copied, the 'program' of it as it were, and downloaded into this constructed body.  Me, for all practical purposes, and reacting as I back home would react.  But come, your fellow humans in the pod and back on Earth will be nervous, and do something foolish.  Let us depart."

And with that they departed with no fanfare.  It was odd, Rick thought, to be walking in silence back to the ship.  And for her to sit in attentive silence while he piloted it back to the pod, it no longer being under their control. 

He pondered that.  "Why aren't your people piloting my ship back?"

Ms. Smith said, "We know you value what you think of as 'free will', and so are willing to let you do what you're supposed to do.  Were you to depart from it, we would simply override you at that point."

Fair enough, he thought, though he grimly wondered if there was a way of interrupting that control.  He also made note that technically his vessel was now under duress, and there were protocols for that, as well.  Not fun ones. 

But all he said was, "What my people call 'free will'?"

"Yes", she replied.  "There is no free will as you imagine it, only programs of varying looseness in their parameters.  In some life forms, it is beneficial to have a great deal of 'choice', though this means that many will choose wrong and die.  But if the life involved is of no great value, and it leads to a greater good, this can be useful."

"All life is programming?"

"Of course", she replied.  "That the programming was not done by your computers, or in an electronic and silicon based form doesn't change that.  A single cell organism must seek food and avoid danger.  That takes a program.  DNA, you call it?"

"Ahh.", said Rick.  "Yes, we know of that.  But I guess we don't think of that as a program in the same sense as what I thought you were speaking of."

"But it is", she replied.  "It is the operating instructions for the whole unit.  Nothing that unit does is not going to be due either to the program directly, or indirectly by how the program responds to various environmental factors, including other beings with other programs."

Rick thought about that, but realized this was little different than he had heard before in college.  It didn't bother him.  Perhaps from a scientific sense it was true, but even as a lapsed Episcopalian, he still believed in the soul.  Not that such needed discussing! 

They came upon the pod and before they could stop, or even slow down, it accelerated to their speed and matched docking doors.  Their journey back to Earth was not then slowed at all.  Rick got up, to go see them.  "Excuse me", he said, "I should attend to them."

"Yes.", was her reply, "But do not let them visit me.  At need, I can have their program copied and stored, and their current body made inert."

Good to know, thought Rick.  Wonder just how she pulls that off?  "You'd kill one of us for trying to see you?"

"I said I'd copy and store their program first.  After my mission, a new body could be constructed, and the program downloaded into that.", she said.

Rick exited on that note, giving only a brief shudder as he did so.  But perhaps she was right in being so extreme, as he was pretty sure that they'd try to see her if she'd threatened any less a punishment than murder. 

He arrived at the airlock to see only two out, the other four nervously still in the pod but looking into the ship.  One of the two, the delegate from the PRC, started in on him at once.  "This will not stand, Captain Delacourt!  I do not know what kind of games you think you are playing, but these are not the days of 20th century American hegemony!  We will have an explanation for why you took off leaving us stranded!  And where you went and why you took so long!"

Rick asked, "No explanation was gave you?"

"None!", the diplomat shrilled.  "We boarded and the door closed and then no further door opened!  We've been just held there, and with only the most rudimentary sanitary facilities!"

"Well", Rick said, "You were advised not to enter.  When you did, the Titans seized my ship by remote control, and took me to what they call Titanopolis to meet and pick up a...a...representative, you might call her."

"Her?", interrupted the diplomat.  "Where is she?  I must speak with her at once."

"Hold on.  That can't be.  She only appears human, she's some kind of copy of the mental processes of one of the Titans, put into a created body that appears human.  And she is not here for any reason but to try to keep us from interfering with them.", said Rick, at this point to all six of them.  They may as well all hear it at once he thought.

"We're apparently animals to them, they have no concern to harm or help us, but would prefer we leave them alone without them having to expend any effort.  The representative is not so much a representative as she is someone to try and find a way to make sure we stop bothering them.  To the extent they are bothered.  I gather we're little more than an annoying fly.  In any case, she is not to be disturbed.  She has threatened to murder anyone who tries to see her."

"For which we have only your word, Captain Delacourt?" ask the diplomat with heavy sarcasm.  "It is unlikely that a civilized power would be so recklessly brutal."

"I don't think they see it as 'murder'", replied Rick.  "They would be disabling an animal, and she promised that she'd store a copy of the mind of any killed so as to be down loaded into a replica human body later.  We would think that is death, but they may not."

"I also must tell you", continued Rick, almost as an afterthought, "That Situation 28 obtains.  This ship is under duress.  I am currently allowed the controls, but can only pilot this where they want, which is Earth, for if I do not, they have the means of taking control from me."

Stunned silence met this pronouncement, whether from fear of death or the ship being under duress or both, Rick did not care.  He principally wanted to get back up to the command room, before Ms. Smith started doing anything that would probably not benefit them.