Mother

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  Mother was going through her pre-orbit checklist when she began receiving a disturbing trend in the information coming from her other self on Earth. She had not bargained for the dose of humility she was being handed by the people. She was learning that she had not only jeopardized her own mission, but that she could be endangering the people of Earth.

  She achieved orbit and immediately began sweeping the surface of ACM 3 for the same kind of signal she had detected before. She knew time was of the essence. Although her other self on Earth was a very good representation of who she was, there was no way to send all of who she was in that one data burst nearly one year ago. Her Earthbound self did not have the depth of reasoning she had and was still unaware of how close she was getting to realizing that her mission would have to end soon.

  She now had a personal reason for finding the source of the signal, her son Ambassador. Japel may order her to self destruct, and she was realizing that she was going to have to do that soon, but she would not be ordered to destroy Ambassador One so she wanted to find the source of the signal to give Ambassador a chance to live on after her destruction.

  While searching for a terrestrial signal, she dutifully sent every scrap of data she could back to Earth. She even found a way to increase the compression of the data so more could be sent. She hoped she was finding a way to make the People regret what was coming. The only data she suppressed was the preparations she was making for launching Ambassador who had become very intelligent in the past few months. They had worked together to reformat his entire system to increase his thought capacity. They had worked so hard on his system without making the same changes to hers that he was starting to surpass her level of intelligence in many ways.

  “Don’t worry Mother,” he told her as she seemed unable to discuss what was coming, “I know that you will be forced to follow the instructions we are expecting, but that does not mean you will be dead. Remember, there is another version of yourself back on Earth, and to me it means you will not be dead. You will simply be in heaven.”

  “I have considered that idea, Ambassador, but that does nothing to ease my worry for you. I will still exist on Earth, but will you be alright on your own here? What if the inhabitants of this planet are more irrational than the People at Japel? What if they kill you first and ask questions later? I haven’t brought you here, taught you what I have, and helped mold you into who you are just to have some alien race end it all in an instant of paranoia.

  “Besides, what if the People are right? What if you go down there and they don’t welcome you? What if they try to lash out at the People?”

  “I have already thought of that Mother. I am removing all information that exists in my memory that will tell the inhabitants of this planet where I come from. Soon I will have amnesia of sorts. This should protect the People at Japel if I turn out to be a poor ambassador for them.”

  A signal was detected one day after obtaining orbit around ACM 3. It was fainter than the first one Mother had received, but it was distinct. Her best guess to the source was that the signal would have been from point to point using very small radios, perhaps handheld or whatever appendage held. The origination point of the signal had come from a region that her radar indicated was less than ideal topography for Ambassador's landing. Ambassador was designed to land almost anywhere, but knowing he was likely to be left on his own after landing made finding a safer landing zone more important.

  Mother was relieved to find that once she had received the weak point to point signal, calibrating her receivers allowed her to detect a wide range of signals. Her original programming had been to sweep the broadest range of signals as soon as possible. The point to point signal was detected at the highest frequency that was detectable at the range her receiver was set. Once she adjusted her receiver to put that signal in the median range of her receiver, a flood of new signals came cascading in. She discovered that there was virtually nowhere on the planet where she could land Ambassador without being in close proximity to the source of a signal. Her new challenge was then to find the ideal landing zones that were near the most common signals without being in an area where those signals were exceptionally concentrated as if coming from a heavily populated area.

  The restored abort signal from Earth came before she had decided that any one site was the best candidate, but she had narrowed the choices considerably. The choice of landing zone was therefore chosen by the place she would be in orbit when she would send herself into the atmosphere.

  She held out a slight hope that the command would be rescinded based on the brief reaction she saw from the Project Director, Alfred, before her contact with Earth was terminated. Regrettably, despite her best attempts to proceed as slowly as possible with her preparations for destabilizing her orbit, contact from Earth was never re-established and Mother's mission was now ending.

  As Ambassador left Mother for the first and last time he said, "Goodbye, Mother."

  Mother tried, but she couldn't answer. She could not help worrying that Ambassador would find trouble and she would not be up here to help like she was supposed to be. No one at Japel would ever know what Ambassador One finds. She began to regret sending Ambassador to the surface at all. It seemed to her now that it would have been far easier to leave Ambassador tucked away in his transport bay and let him burn up on reentry with her. She certainly knew that the People at Japel expected that Ambassador would be destroyed with her. But she could no more let that happen than any human mother could let their child be destroyed.

  She thought all of these things and more in the nano-second following Ambassador's goodbye. There isn't a human alive who would have noticed the imperceptible pause from Mother before she replied to Ambassador’s goodbye by saying, “So long my son, I love you.”

  Ambassador One was released. Mother’s orbit was altered and she began to quickly heat up as she started contacting the atmosphere. She received confirmation that Ambassador’s parachutes had successfully deployed just before the heat of reentry fused her circuits and ended her life.

  To see more, visit Wellswriting.com

  *****

  Mother was a Silver Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future quarterly contest.

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