I Fell From The Dark

26

Mia blinked awake.

'How are you doing?' asked Jean, as he pulled out her tongue protector.

'Honestly? I've had enough of waking up tied into these damn chairs.'

He smiled one of his sad smiles, and freed her hands. 'I hope it wasn't too bad. Well, we got what we need. Let me show you.'

She unclipped herself and he swivelled a screen round to face her.

'Here's what we got from your memories.'

There were three folders, labelled probe one, two and three. I was in probe three, Mia thought. And when Albert... interrogated Pilgrim, he said that someone else was in probe two. What did Pilgrim call him? Marcus.

I remember the way that the probe seemed to focus its attention on the anomaly. That doesn't seem like a thing which a robot would do, I guess. Instead, it feels like a person who suddenly woke up or realised they were in a probe.

She shivered.

'You okay?' asked Jean.

'Yeah. You know what, can I sit on one of those stools? I'm not a big fan of these torture chairs.'

'Sure.' He dragged two metal stools up, and they both perched on them, side by side.

'Let's look at probe one first,' said Jean. 'I think we're going to find what I'm looking for.' He stopped and looked at her. 'Now, look, you don't have to do this. You can go back to my lab if you like.'

'It's fine. Let's get this done.'

'Sure.'

He tapped his tablet, and the first probe's memories jumped up, a set of files laid out neatly in front of her.

'This one didn't have a worker in, if it helps,' he said.

'How did you get all that from me? I didn't see all of this.'

'The ship's AI uploaded all of this into you at some point. Did you find yourself in one of those chairs before you went into the probe?'

'Too many times. Although there was a point when Pilgrim said that she... sorry, it... had to kickstart my memories. I certainly knew a lot more about probes afterwards.'

Jean nodded. 'We have two parts to our minds. We have a part which is running a simulation of a biological brain. Then we have a much simpler store of information, which is sort of bolted on to the main simulation. The store holds a recording of what you experienced; and it's used to upload knowledge into the brain simulation, although that's only accessed when you need it. You had these dumped into your store. Well, the ones from probe one and probe two, anyway. The folder from probe three is what you saw. I think that's less useful, so we can probably skip that...'

'Stop trying to shield me. Do what you have to do.'

'Okay.'

He tapped on his tablet, and there it was on the screen: the accretion disk, the star, its planets.

I'm on one of those, she thought. The sun which is rising outside is that red angry point on the screen.

The blue smudge appeared. He paused the video.

'That's a ship, right?' she asked.

'Goodness me. Yes, it is. It's using a fusion engine very similar to ours. I was expecting to see something like this, but it's still a surprise.'

'So, what? It's aliens?'

He smiled. 'No. We've never found any evidence of alien life beyond single-celled creatures. It's... something else.'