Cora stood completely still, waiting for Garson to finish.
“That, Cora Harper, is the price of our journey to Andromeda.”
Cora’s head was reeling. What had she gotten herself into?
“But we can’t just—”
The holo raised a hand to cut her off. “It’s already done. These ships will leave. They’ll travel to Andromeda. You will either join them, or you won’t. But they will go, and with them, Ryder and his invention.” Cora couldn’t believe how nonchalant Garson could be about something so potentially catastrophic.
“Why would I ever agree to be a part of something like that?”
Garson shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know, however”—she locked eyes with Cora—“is that if you hope to change the future, Cora Harper, you’ll need to do it in Andromeda.”
Cora’s omni-tool lit up, signaling an alert. She lifted it to see a standby message. A rescue ship was two minutes away.
“And here’s the cavalry,” the Garson holo said. “That’s my cue.”
“Wait!” Cora’s biotics flared despite the fact they wouldn’t help her stop the holo from leaving.
Garson paused, briefly. “I hope we meet face-to-face one day, Cora Harper. If it’s in Andromeda, then the first small step of our journey will be a success. Goodbye.”
The holo flickered like a candle flame, dissolved briefly into a cascading scroll of rapidly transmitted data, and then vanished.
Goddammit. In the new-fallen silence, Cora was left utterly alone, with more questions than answers, and no one to talk to. Or yell at. A sudden pang of emptiness washed over her, and she realized just how much she missed having SAM-E’s constant companionship.
She quietly slumped into the room’s lone chair to await rescue, to watch Ryder recover, and to contemplate a far more complicated future than the one she thought she’d signed on for.
FEBRUARY 15TH, 2185
Nightside News in a Minute
…in the wake of the accident, which fortunately saw no casualties, renewed calls for a cleanup of Earth’s lower-orbital atmosphere were heard in chambers at Arcturus Station today. “We’re living in a junk-pile,” said representative Ferreira. “As a Council member species, we should do better.” The Alliance Parliament votes tomorrow on the new measures.
In other news, a strange series of reports from Omega, where a number of witnesses insist they saw the infamous Commander Shepard—reported Killed In Action almost two years ago—alive. Could this be fallout from the new drug hallex, which is reportedly at epidemic levels of usage on Omega and is known to cause hallucinations?
On a side note, two members of the grassroots movement “Homeward Sol,” which is opposed to the expansion of humanity beyond the Sol system, were arrested for planting a bomb on a shuttle. No deaths were reported, but INTERPOL is opening an investigation into a possible link between the group and a UNIN delegate.
This has been your news from the night side, in a minute!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Harper came back into the infirmary of the Hyperion, Alec was laboriously trying to pull on his pants. His burned skin had healed over the intervening day, the damaged layer sloughed off and quickly replaced thanks to SAM’s efforts, but the buildup of waste products in Alec’s body from the accelerated healing had left him with sore muscles and achy joints.
SAM was working on the problem and had given Alec an ETA of six hours before the pain faded. Alec felt he had missed enough in the last two days, however, so he’d decided to gut it out.
Harper wordlessly came over to help when she saw Alec struggling, supporting his arm when he wobbled a little, and the neutrality of her expression made him feel better about being—however briefly—pantsless in front of her. “Not really the kind of impression I wanted to make,” he muttered as she stepped back, letting him handle fastening the belt himself.
“Ship kid, remember?” she replied, shrugging. “Never understood Earthborns’ modesty. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen.”
“That’s good, I guess,” he said, straightening carefully. His back ached. His knees hurt. It made him cranky to feel old; he wasn’t even sixty, for God’s sake. But there was a shuttered look on Harper’s face, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. He amended, “Because I think I need to apologize to you, and it’s going to be a lot harder to do that if I don’t have any pants on.”
Her expression went hooded. Yeah, he’d guessed right.
“Nothing to apologize for,” she lied.
“That isn’t true.” Alec took a deep breath. “I should have told you that SAM-E was a partition of SAM, and more importantly, I should have explained what that meant. You might have been more prepared, then, for the necessity of reintegrating him. You might not have gotten… attached.”
Oh, that wasn’t a pleasant look.
“People are going to get attached,” she said, slowly and with very precise punctuation, “to a bodily integrated AI.” She smiled and continued. “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”
He supposed that was true. And he wished he could tell her the whole truth: that he’d actually meant for Harper and her AI to get attached to each other. That he’d hoped their integration would prove SAM’s adaptability… and transferability. If things had worked as they should have, then SAM would have been the one to integrate into SAM-E when Ryder died, not the other way around. Harper would then have been the new Pathfinder.
But the degradation curve had been too steep, and too inevitable. SAM-E hadn’t been adapting properly to Harper, and the maladaption rate had been increasing. His stuttering and constant errors had actually been warning signs of an impending systemic breakdown. If Ryder hadn’t had to reintegrate him with SAM because of the emergency, he would’ve had to do it eventually anyway, lest SAM-E inadvertently harm Harper on a biological level.
But that was real hurt in Harper’s expression, and Alec couldn’t bring himself to compound her grief by telling her that SAM-E had been doomed from the beginning.
At least SAM-E hadn’t died for nothing. Now Alec knew that no one would be able to inherit Alec Ryder’s personal SAM—the most advanced of them all, and the one he hoped would unlock humanity’s ultimate potential—except someone who shared his genetic makeup. Harper could not become the new Pathfinder, but forewarned was forearmed. Now Alec just needed to decide which of his two children would end up burdened with the future of their entire species.
Well, that was a problem to ponder later. Alec rubbed both hands over his hair, trying to wake up fully. His head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.
“I did mention that an additional three hours of rest would be optimal, didn’t I?” SAM said. “Ah, yes, I did. Well, carry on.”
Harper turned to pace away, going over to the room’s small viewport and staring out at the slowly roiling dust-cloud and occasional stars. Watching her, Alec felt compelled to say, “SAM-E isn’t dead, technically. All of his observations of you, his interactions, any data that he collected from your experiences… those have all been incorporated into SAM.” Only the separate personality matrix was gone.
She sighed, and didn’t answer for a moment. Then, hesitantly, she said, “That… helps. Thanks.” He groped for something to say, and fortunately found nothing, because then she added, “He did say goodbye. Just before communications were cut.”
Alec had seen the look on her face, though he’d been preoccupied with his own SAM’s horrifying farewell. And if after that there had been no more SAM… “Yeah,” he said, heavily. Sometimes that was all you could say.
Harper shook her head, then turned to face him. “Let’s just make sure all of it’s worth it. For the survivors.”
He thought, fleetingly, of Ellen.
“That’s an idea I can get behind, Lieutenant Harper,” he said around the unexpected tightness in his throat.
“Got anything on the menu for today?” Harper eyed him pointedly. “Since you clearly aren’t going to stay in
bed and recover.”
“Don’t you start, too. I’m getting enough of an earful from SAM. And I need to get back to work,” he said. “Have any of the shuttles been cleared for transport instead of rescue and repair, yet? I left some projects in progress on Theia that—”
“I meant anything on the menu for me,” Harper interrupted, but she smiled as she said it. “If you don’t have anything pressing, I’ve got something to do. Do we know if SAM-Node is cleared for entry yet?”
“Life support has been restored to the whole ring,” SAM informed Alec. “There’s substantial structural damage, and I’ve had to route several of my more routine functions through alternative processors, but the room is safe.”
Alec conveyed this to Cora, wondering why she was asking. He was even more puzzled when she straightened and headed for the door.
Alec tried to make his next question sound non-accusatory, but he suspected that he failed. “What business do you have in SAM-Node?”
“A promise to keep.” She threw him a wry look before she left the infirmary, and—too curious to resist—Alec moved to follow.
* * *
Much of SAM-Node had been roped off with holo-tape, the words ACTIVE INVESTIGATION marching in glowing yellow letters around the area where the destroyed shuttle had been. Alec couldn’t see what there was to investigate. What remained was a gaping, still half-melted hole, where some components that he was pretty sure were shuttle parts had partially fused to the floor. But the gravity in the room was fine, so they’d obviously managed to route past the damaged area in the floor’s undergrid.
Harper wound around this, pausing for a moment at the site of the two hardcases—which were still where Alec had left them, though he’d unspooled SAM’s kernel back into its firmware as soon as he’d been conscious again. The cases were too heavy for humans to shift without mechanical assistance—or AI assistance, Alec wryly mused. The repair crew would bring a construction mech to handle the matter, eventually.
Harper glanced back at Alec, and it occurred to him that this had become a meaningful spot for her, in a way. It was where SAM-E had died. It was also where she’d accepted him, finally—not just as her boss, but as her Pathfinder. As the vanguard of a cause that she had finally, personally, committed herself to.
All it had taken was being spaced, temporarily augmented into a human wrecking ball, and nearly blown up by terrorists. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Oh. And thanks for saving my life,” Alec said, off-handedly.
Harper lifted an eyebrow. “That’s what you hired me for, isn’t it? Among other things.”
“Thanks for being good at those things, then.”
She looked amused. “I’ll be sure to add ‘Saving stubborn Pathfinders and stealing back their stolen illegal tech’ to my resume.”
“I’d be happy to provide a recommendation, if you need it. For your future employers. In another galaxy.”
Harper laughed. Going over to one of the AI processor stacks, she laid a hand against it. “This ‘you,’ SAM?”
“To the degree that I am a material entity, yes,” SAM said via the room’s PA. “I am also, to the degree possible, SAM-E.”
“So I hear.” Harper glanced around at the ceiling, then nodded as she spied a camera array in one corner. “Do you remember what I promised SAM-E, then? After one of the times he saved my life?”
“Yes, those memories are part of me, Lieutenant.” And—Alec blinked. Did SAM actually sound… shy? Embarrassed, maybe.
“Good.” Harper faced one of the undamaged processor-walls, picked a middling-level node, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss its paneling. “There.”
“Uh,” Alec said, flummoxed. “Am I going to have to get a chaperone for you and my AI, Harper?”
She smiled. “No. We’re family. We’re good.”
He put his hands on his hips. “I’m getting the impression there’s a story here.”
“Yes. There is.” Harper gave the processor one last pat, then turned to head for the door, waving carelessly to Alec as she walked away. “Ask me about it in six hundred years.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
N. K. Jemisin is a Hugo- and Locus-Award-winning Brooklyn author. Her short fiction and novels have also been multiply nominated for the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award, and shortlisted for the Crawford and the Tiptree. Her speculative works range from fantasy to science fiction to the undefinable; her themes include resistance to oppression, the inseverability of the liminal, and the coolness of Stuff Blowing Up. She is a member of the Altered Fluid writing group, and she has been an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West workshops. In her spare time she is a biker, an adventurer, and a gamer; by profession she is a counselor; and she is also single-handedly responsible for saving the world from King Ozzymandias, her ginger cat. The final novel of her Broken Earth trilogy, The Stone Sky, was released in August 2017. Her essays and fiction excerpts are available at nkjemisin.com.
* * *
Mac Walters is the New York Times bestselling author of Mass Effect: Redemption graphic novel. His work on the Mass Effect video game series was nominated for a BAFTA. When he’s not envisioning and directing the creation of unbelievably complex worlds for video games, he enjoys the more solitary pursuits of writing comics and novels. Regardless of the medium, he relishes every opportunity to invent entire universes for his characters to discover their own adventure. Find him on twitter @macwalterslives.
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N. K. Jemisin, Mass Effect: Initiation
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