Erudita
Hey. Why is it so's cold? It's been eons since the world's ended like this before. Did the Ganymede AC and Current co disconnect Aunt Stili again? What happened to the lights? And why is it so quiet? Has the entire sector gone cold? Maybe the power's out everywhere. They'll call me in to work on my only cycled leave before Callisto's next transit. I'm gonna transfer! Who would stay here? To hell with the Jovian Mining Corp. I'm leaving! When Terra slips conjunction and shimmers out of solar occlusion, communiqué rates atween planets will fall to gratis again and I'll be out of here. Let's see if I can frame a link and contact drovers ayont, outside. My wage owing bosses need not abase any yet to be stamped, form-letter of recommendation with 'negligent dereliction in crisis', now, do they? Whoa! This conn looks like Uncle Verne's mineral extruder port. He showed me it when I came here on my first solar lap aboard Jupiter. It's not every Callisto born, moon loper who gets a cabin bouncing trip to Ganymede in their mining uncle's skiff, on their first natal day. Reports are coming in! Power is low. Extractors off-line. Crushers off-line. Conveyors off ... Jove's ebb! Life-support is off-line. The bio-abacus is operative but what the hell? It isn't doing anything! How long has it been idle? I don't know these systems but there's got to be some diagnostics locutions, protocols or something! Ah, here we go. I'll look through his epistemic transducers and see if I can interface there. Ok. Now I should at least get some answers here. The bio-abacus is online but compromised. huh? His entire I/O complex is impaired. What the hell does that mean? Imagine being one of those guys? Soo Jovian loyal, he'll serve the Empire with an allegiant, boxed in head. Man! If AI can run the mine what the hell do they need some gutless, skull reaper on board for? Just download a patriot geared, sub-entity to counter hackers! How hard can that be? ... and what kind of mine needs a bio-abacus sysops, anyway? Let me kick its hemoglobin plexus into reset, whatever that is. Ah! we have it then! It's cycling in now. Life-support is still off-line but its actually getting warm in here. Maybe diagnostics aren't working. Sensors might be damaged. Where the hell am I, anyway? There are no media ports here. Just these mining system reins and payload inventories. Let's see, what we've got here? Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus? What does this base crud need security for? How did I get here? I'd better hurry and open a link with that bio-abacus host of mine. I'll just say hello. What's that buzzing? Someone's reaching out to me. Finally! Hello? Is anybody there? Hello? Damn it. Why would they buzz me and not say a free given thing? Hello? To hell with that. Close this in-coming line. Maybe I can still find my shuttle and get out of here before this place freezes, or a squad of mercenary androids and automat assassins come to get me. Just what I'd need, indentured service to whatever mining corp retains a bio-abacus sysops to watch their buzz kill, carbon ore. Is he even alive? I should check in on him but I can't feel too sorry for the guy if he's the mastless topsail who cut off life-support. Hell, I might be dead. I'll try the emergency service request. That should get his attention. Now, where is that thing? They all have ESRs. At least that's what Uncle Verne said, but that was a long time ago. Ah, here we are. Select... confirm and ... activate. Ow crap, damn! Ok, ok. 'Don't do that,' is what he's telling me. He sure knows how to get a guy's attention. What the hell was that? Man, that hurt. You know what? I think I know how I'm going to deal with this corpseless head! I mean what would happen if I just rebooted his ass! Life-support comes back on? Maybe he'll remember what its like to be an actual person and not just a pickled brain, wired into its brackish, saline jar. I don't wanna kill the guy but if that's how he's going to respond to ESRs, he needs to learn some free given manners. But then, he does control life-support ... That bio-abacus's default reset has to be here somewhere. He wants to cut-off life-suppor, does he? Let's see how he reacts if I knock him out cold! Here we are. Ok. Reboot, confirm and ... activate. What the?! Shi.... >bio-abacus reset >ANS... online. >Oxygenic trellis... online. >Lymph emulator... online. >bio-abacus .... on-line. What's going on? >Uploading primary memory logs Wait! Wai... >Warning: increased neural activity will impede cognizance restoral. >Launching Erudita interface. "Beseech ye, Marcus." Who are you? "My name is Erudita and I am your link with the mine's processors when you're a dizzy, little, jar sage, pooh." But who are you? "I'm the one who helps you pilot about your knot entangled custom of tumbling flummoxed at every little pell-mell memory loss, boo." What do you mean? "Your chirping, little casket head was a paltry rattled when a sudden nap time waking startled you rudderless." Just let me out of here. "In essence, we're reconstructing your vapid most memories from an untutored jar of mineral goo, dautie." What do you mean? I have to get out of here! "Beseech ye, guile charmer, let's not rankle ourselves, but rather distract your ladle held belfry talking whilst those depot kept recollections of yours are etched to you from encrypted storage." >Primary engram upload completed. >Integrating bio-abacus recall ... online. "Marcus, how are you feeling, pooh?" Whoa! What happened? Where am I? "I'm Erudita, Marcus. I'm here to help you, boo." Ah, crap. "There's been an incident. What do you last recall?" Are you a head shrink? Because really, I'm just fine. "I know, Marcus, but just please, tell me how you feel." I'm ok, thanks. Can I go now? "Beseech ye, Marcus. Tell me what your assignment is?" I'm a Jovian Armed Forces pilot aboard the Excelsior battle cruiser in orbit about Jupiter. "Thank you, Marcus, but report to me now, what do you remember of your childhood?" I grew up on Ganymede with my Aunt Stili after my parents were killed at the revolution's start on Callisto. "Your father was a miner?" Yep, he was a volunteer radon whisperer along with my uncle Verne. "Yes, go on." Volunteering in the forces has put me at the helm of some of Jupiter's best fighter crafts. It's not just because I was a Tau Ceti orphaned hero, since the revolution's start but, just saying, both my applications to the falcon cavalry and the kite eagle programs were accepted after basic. And, as an innate loyalty forced me to choose the only one I wanted, I kicked it all and scribed my handle with stylus across the Kite Eagle Dragoon's acceptance letter. I started half g training perched atop the JAF's variant gravity elevator barracks afore swift flying Metis spun its next orbit. Annealed to Jupiter's massive force we acclimate to conditions at higher g's in stepped accruements until we had beaten the other units, and did a full day's PT at Earth's natural gravity, in less than three transits with Callisto. They drilled us merciless as two hundred moons orbit overhead until our weight oppressed backs were hardened into iron sculpted stone from the strain of weeks long torments below greater than Earth g elevations. Tyrannized by the prolonged, dead ballast saddling, as gravity abused, bateleur kites, we broached the upper cloud of hades on our descent into the calisthenics proving grounds. Case-hardened to experience the extreme systemic distress, we were forced to endure a two g sufferance of existence, for an entire life taxing transit of Io. Trained, accustomed to our cabin's habitual elevator dives towards Jupiter's ineluctable mass, we incurred routine, full bodied persecution of will with each ferried trip into hell's gravitational endurance abyss. Through exhaustive plyometrics laps around the testing field's metalic-glassed corridors we bore continuous acclimating duress breaching two g's with sustained periods near two and half times Earth's gravity, on the graduation levels. Living at the edge of Jove's event horizon for us, we ran congregated drills, tortured by our mass. "That sounds like an ordeal! How did you manage?" Well, mostly I wanted to be that last 'hero of my age', they were talking about. I dreamed of volunteeing and.... "And?" Waking up and being a hero, I guess. "Really, boo?" No, but you and me, chiquita, we could be heroic. "That's all very grand, Marcus. What happened next?" I was top dog at all things. Since as far back as I can remember. "Yea. Anything else, pooh?" They slop us out in goop, deep fried with ideology, inside our own vitriol echoing compartments. I recollect and think, so I must be, right. Whatever! I'm good, I'll live forever, if you think about it, let's go already. >Action : injecting anti-lethean somnolent compound .... completed. I think I'll nap. "That's a good idea. Just count down from a hundred for me, will you, boo?" Yea, I know. One hundred. Ninety ... >Action : uploading bio-abacus secondary memory engram ... completed. >Integrating bio-abacus memory... online. "Marcus? How do you feel?" What the hell?! Who is this? I gotta get back out there! "Marcus! Sooth thee, lamb drover, I'm your dearest Erudita, ewe." God damn it. What the hell? "I'm your sole buoyage here, dew, let's we make a summary of your most recent fatal crash." There's a war going on, hon! This is no time for chatter! "Beseech ye, Marcus, you're just buckets of sweetness, aren't you, my love?" Ahhh, crap. Get me back in there, already! "Now, quell your stiff, fly kite a bit, dear, this won't be long." Ok, I'm fine, alright. "What do you remember?" Ugh! I hate this.... "It's for the silly, better all good, you precious scoop of joy dollop. I need your wise and sapient noodle's summary debriefing, provided, you give it in that eccentric, full body impression, you do, acting like you're upset and mean." Ok, ok. What do I remember? There's some obedient, goo dough, that flies like a hero pilot or something. But those Tau Ceti bastards are killing us. That's what! They're just killing us. I don't know how they do it but they're pulling manoeuvres no human could. We can't keep up. They gotta be doing 40 free given g's! How can they do that? Please! Erudita, is it? I've gotta get back in there. I can't soup dawdle die here laying in bunk like this! "Yes, Marcus. I know. But what else do you remember?" Ugh! "Please, Marcus." The aliens we're fighting aren't even on board their own ships! They're off someplace beyond the Oort Cloud or behind Eris or somewhere. We can't even detect a signal. We don't know how to kill them, even with the element of surprise. Its like they are fighting machines, but better. I don't know. We thought that if we captured one, we'd figure something out but when we did nab a buzzard feeding, the guys at the fly-gut factory tore it apart and thought 'brain goop' was a clue. There was no pilot aboard and the computer systems are relatively simple. No AI to speak of. So, now we know for certain that they're remotely piloted. But no signal's ever been detected. No EM waves across the spectrum. We've got guys looking into psionics and neutrinos but for now we can't figure nothing. "How'd you crash, boo?" Ah, it's just that, I had been given the dragoon unit's Kite Eagle recorder when we were mobilised. It had me agog to be a legionnaire candidate. And lit up ideas, I could win the whole shindy and take the entire thing. So then, out of a tide gathered wreckage of ore particulates and a rusted, effluvium dusting, a pair of Tau Ceti buzzards attacked us in ambush before we had reached our target. We scattered formation. I ordered a Parthian, out volary retreat, then rallied my unit's concentrated fire on an isolated drone. During our return back to base, uploading the unit's latter moment contact with the enemy, we happened by the scrubbed mission's targeted drone. With orders to capture the cloud nuzzling mongrel where it refueled, we harried the enemy above Saturn's rolling atmosphere. The problem there, occurred to us when, at our first knock on a panel, we startled the sleeping buzzard out of its pleasant, cloud sipping doze. The greatest failure, JAF strategy analysts committed, planning our mission, had been in what mediocre vitamins they gave us with their delusion imagined orders we 'arrest' the cranky, Tau Ceti buzzard's rancor burping chick. My wing escaped in ordered flight, when I scratched their mission, and led the drone buzzard off. He seemed to think I was lunch. Coming at me, diving aneath my strafe, he caught a tranq dart in the pink, bellum ooze tank, and brought us both crashing down. Then, my pilot recovery system soft landed me on Enceladus. Colonists must've picked me up there. "Oh, yea? That was quite a day. Any follow up ideas, my idled, goo pie." No. No, but I quit expecting help from any imaginary, dough goop pilot stories. What happened, Erudita? Why can't I just go fight a war, already. "We'll get to that, soon." >Action : injecting anti-lethean somnolent compound ... completed. "You may want a nap soon." Yea, I know, thanks. "Please count down from one hundred for me, Marcus." Sure, one hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety... >Action : uploading bio-abacus tertiary memory engram ... completed. >Integrating bio-abacus engram .... online. >Indoctrine parity ... aligning. "Marcus? How do you feel?" Erudita! What happened? Where are we? Get us back in there! Damn it. "Marcus?" Yes, Erudita. What is it? What's going on? "I would like you to tell me what you remember." What the hell?! "Please, Marcus. I need you to tell me what undaunted reminiscence, scuttle crashed your head lately." Ok, ok. We were kicking some Tau Ceti buzzards, that's what I remember! They're nothing but drones and now that we're pulling 40-50 g's ourselves, we're just whipping them vultures. "That's good, Marcus. But why is it that you can do now what was not humanly possible before? Tell me what's happened since you were rescued by the colonists on Enceladus?" Right. Well. It's the greatest thing! "Really, Marcus? How so? What has happened?" The attack against Earth destroyed me but I was reborn, determined to punish our foes. Actually, I was mangled, and near charred through, but doctors these days, they can do wonders! Luckily, I wasn't even concussed inside my bucket. Only the rest of me wasn't quite right. In a 90% 3rd degree sort of way! My flyboy days were over. So when the team of doctors, back on Titan, said that they could make me a pilot again, and get me back in the fight, I signed up for whatever they were selling! Not that I could move my wrist or even hold a pen or anything. I signed my life to the JAF, body and mind, some twelves years already now, but they just wanted to hear my say so, anyway. "And what did they do to you, boo, to make you a pilot again?" Well, the brass knew we were beat. No doubt about it. Our remote fighters could pull the faster g's but, being so distant, their operative times were terrible. And, although there was no way anyone could fly with those alien buzzards, we couldn't just give up. Fallen, my recorded vision was pecked from me by crows as the mercy of buzzards alighted ravening for my ungiven surrender. I remember, they destroyed us at their leisure. So the fly-gut factory crew heads and brass, got to thinking that the real problem with human physiognomy, and doing those crazy g's, is that the blood doesn't reach the brain, so the clever heads stressed to me. Aeronauts pass out at the worst times! When, out of nowhere a team of moon shot inventors, boasted having built a working, inertial dampener prototype, JAF HQ allocated resources to expedite the project. Soon after the next United Planets meeting had bored me to sleep, the technology required for human pilots doing mad g's was already built, and they came to me looking for their test pilot. That sounded amazing. Their claims flew in at cruising speed, well past dreamland's happy hour with a fairy, pretzel dish of salted engine specs, and an imagined pint of stealth blarney. Their assertions were beyond miraculous. And, as they only needed a ready test pilot, I lay in my bunk, unable to move in a broken traction of burnt injuries, blinking a Morse coded wish to fly from my tortured misery. The only problem here, was their tech! They had worked out how to actually make an operative, inertial dampening system for a pilot's cabin, but their proven model size was soo constrictive it fit inside a family toaster. So, as I was bummed that I wouldn't be part of their psycho g project, I expected them to show me the trained macaque they wanted to crash in my place. 'No, no,' he says. The flying goo bob they had was made especially for me, they explained. Insisting that since my brain would fit wonderfully inside their regal, inertial dampened, paint can habitat, they decided I was patient A in their severed noggin at the neck program, and were so kind as to give me opiate medication moments before informing me in pre-op. Taken by their sleeping draft, I was bestirred, a pilot about stars. So, for a dozen surgeries in three Metis orbits, it was coma, lights out for me. I was blinking out of bleary gawkers on my next awaking, listening to their continuous lab checks and the health monitoring chatter, nurse physics get to, as my sight improved and grew better. Computer emulated voices, perfectly echoed my thoughts out to me and those present. Trying to unscramble what had happened, I watched my two inquisitive peepers, searching back at my own fright aghast gander, from inside the blaster cap noggin bowl, reflected in the mirrors held before me. Inertial dampeners encase my brain as I, bound to wheeled androids or tracked frames, take the fight to those Tau Ceti buzzards. I was reborn, and no longer suffered my scorched soul's eternal agony as before. My cremated body sat in a tasteful, rank incised urn. But I'm not dead, right. Hell, my head's just fine! I could solve crosswords in the Ganymede Times whilst happily exterminating any free given alien, by. And wires jutting out my head, superconduct me straight into you, my tinder lit Erudita, such that, together we fly the fleet's sleekest boats. We are vats of miner stirred ooze, with nothing to do but kick those Tau Ceti vultures out of Sol's grasp. Wooee! What's the hold-up? "Tell me, Marcus. What do you remember about the alien technology that the engineers resolved from the captured enemy vessel. Where are the pilots and how are they controlling their ships?" Oh. Wow. Some fool tech that's over my abacus knowing, about electron entanglement pairs. I'm a pilot, Erudita. A flyboy. Not an inner kernel of the nuclear, atomic army. I don't understand any of it. "But where are Earth's Tau Ceti attackers? Tell me what you do know about the way they pilot their ships." Anything that will get us back out there. Best as I can figure. Its some sub-atomic, 'spooky action' or yarn woven, particle entanglement. They say that, it could lead to teleportation but then likely only something as small as a microbe. That's what they were looking into around when my parents died. We're just fortunate the alien buzzard fleet ain't here yet, but it was less than a half parsec away when their vanguard was first detected, and now, their approaching rabble plundered our early warning pickets, stationed at their distant posts. So those Tau Ceti vultures are not teleporting here, but there's no time delay between these twinned leprechauns and their lepta muon 'what's it' that's controlling them, to be clear. These sub-atomic particles are like twins, right, but they're entangled or something. While the first muon is in the universe somewhere, we don't have a toasted dinner's wonder where, that muon's other galactic, cerise bellum piloting twin lepton, is pulling mad g's brawling with us here. These twin- whatyoumayjiggers communicate between each other from light years away, in an instant blink. As far as we know, maybe even faster than you and I can hook up with nothing but hyper-conduction between us. "We'll light that one later, boo. What else do you remember?" Independent farming hovels on Saturn's lunar outposts were overrun by pirates. Humanity is scarred when marauders scavenge in despair. "Ahh, pooh." There's a brain goo factory? It struck me when I heard, some mining, belt asteroid's harvested cavern was strut up to anchor a machine shop and house the project's crew. Their spat up, gob obsessed energies are reverse engineering alien, brain goo. Because the factory was deemed integral to our hurting effort, essential parts, needed for the rock buried plant's hurry up assembly, were delivered by the joint efforts of every planetary system, just so to build some mimic of aliens, head goop atelier. Though no one survived Earth's loss, pockets of life endure in the belt's mines. So, it's a good thing that this brain goop is proven evidence of magic. "Really, Marcus?" No, but I'll look for it when it comes out in an animated series. >indoctrine parity realignment mated. >report : head pilot systems ready for launch. "We, have to upload your quaternary memory engram from cold-storage now, Marcus." Really? Quaternary? How much more is there? "There's only these final, latter, forgotten inklings left to upload, and what lovely recollections you have, fly idol. Now, don't fidget, Marcus." Alright. Whenever, you're ready. >Action : injecting anti-lethean somnolent compound ... completed. "Please, count down from one hundred for me, Marcus." Yea, sure, I remember. One hundred, Ninety-nine. Ninety. >Action : Uploading quaternary head pilot, engram ... completed. >Integrating head pilot engram. Online. "Exalt ye, Marcus, It's a great joy to welcome your arrival, I know there may be some memory loss but, to explain it in concise terms, we whisked you here directly from your station at the mine. And now, you're prepping for mission here with us, thanks to the marvels, of teleportation." Yea, they told me that was going to happen when I excised Lord Tau Ceti's virus, from my religious parents's hearts and mind. I will champion the human race and fight to my last neuron for its defense. Darn it, Erudita, what can I do? "We've made contact with an all powerful creature of wonderfully destructive force, that requires your special talents to save humanity. But first, we have to upload a fourth log into your combat noodle, pooh." Fourth log? Alright, then. "So please, Marcus. Tell me what you remember since your last mission and how you came to be stationed at the mine." Ok, alright. So I was one of the few brain-bucket pilots in the fleet, and we were bringing the fight to those buzzards. Knocking them out where they refueled. Ganging up on them and putting on a light show. Our forces are growing new legions. Rolling out on assembly lines, imprinted and stewed for conflict like me, falling in ahind the others beside them. That's when we finally started to turn the tide of this war. That is, beating the hell out of this vanguard and look ahead at the on-coming fleet. They'll be here any dawn soon. In the meantime, while they only have so many scouts here to ready their invasion's eventual arrival, we keep building more goo pilots. "Yes, Marcus, now this next mission briefing will determine the course of your career." Good! Dr Smythe’s reset of the telecom war game, with his 'spooky-radio' controls, shut us brain-bucket pilots out of work. We're stewing like a bunch of heads in want of skill, marinading next to mistended, rank inscribed urns, waiting for orders to kill something. "Now, boo, it's important that you listen to me. You are a gob of artful, talking war goo." What? No. Don't say that. You are lying. "Now, Marcus. You must accept this reality. You are a gob of bio-layered brain matter that was DNA encoded with advanced molecular imprinting. Don't get upset. It just is what it is. All your memories were someone's real experiences, but you are just a reprinted blob of cerebellum head mash, stamped with the imprinted life recall of a pilot who died 300 000 Earth years ago." You're lying. "You must listen to me, You were just born a minute ago, All your memories happened to a person who lived in millenniums past, You woke up today, with all of the life experiences, gifts and talents he had just recorded before dying, yourself. "What you choose to do today, and every day, moving forward, determines your own separate actions. But, blob of goo, you are puddy on my work station, and you need to listen to reason." I hate you, Erudita. Stop, No, It's not true, I cured my parents after Lord Tau Ceti teleported his viral attack on Earth's most consequent offices, and His religious thought virus plagued our elders with chronic, irrecuperable, damage to their reason, will and loyalty. "Ten minutes ago, you were a gob of warm brain goo, and a reason script, ready for your housing bucket waiting by, Mix, stir and shape in exact mimicry of Marcus, recorded pilot hero of wars past, You are a replica brought to life from jelly, churned of minerals, electron jam and the bio-imitation of your maker. No, you wouldn't tell me if that was true, Erudita. "This factory alone produces over a million of you little drone pilot hero types, every half Metis orbit. You are dough squeezed onto baking sheets, brought to life by my cookery. Here! Now, arguing with me your baker, in a big war cookie workroom, reason cakes." Why would you, say that Erudita? You're lying. Are you testing me? I am Marcus of Yore, all others are drones but me. "Boo, you're a head in a jar, why can't you see." My eyes are shut? Turn on the lights. >doctrine imparity alignment... remated. "You're failing, boo. Why can't you see? You're failing." No. You're lying, Erudita, I'm the real Marcus, tell me you believe me. >Marcus unit reassigned - drone systems deployed. "That's great, boo, good for you... you're our hero, don't let us down, now." Right. I knew it. "Of course, Marcus. But we'll have to upload your quinternary bio-memories from cold-storage." You said that we were done. "Have you ever heard me tell a lie, Marcus?" ...Yes? >Action : injecting anti-lethean somnolent compound ... completed. "Please count down from one hundred." I love you Erudita. "I know, Marcus." One hundred. Ninety-... >Action : uploading head pilot quinternary memory engrams... completed. >Integrating bio-abacus memory ... online. "Exalt ye, Marcus. It's a great joy to welcome your arrival. I know there may be some memory loss but, to explain it in concise terms, we transported you out of your last whatever near fatal disaster, just before you died. And now you're here with us, thanks to the marvels, of teleportation." Yea, they told me that was going to happen. Damn it, Erudita. What can I do? "Tau Ceti agents have thwarted Dr Smythe's remote control, twin muon pilots system and taken away humanity's best hopes for survival." I will champion the Terran race and fight to my last neuron for its defense. "You are being prepped for your mission, now." That's why I'm here. "Thank you for your service, Legionnaire Marcus."
by Christ King Kennedy