The Catalyst

-Chapter 47-


When things were quiet on the bridge, I sought out Marvin. It took me a long time to find him, and I finally had to call Sandra to give me a hint. She directed me to look in the engine compartments. We fragile humans didn’t like to go into that region due to the high levels of particle radiation. Grumbling, I ratcheted open a difficult hatch and stepped into the ‘light gamma’ zone.
“Damned robot,” I mumbled. Like a housecat, Marvin was hard to find when you wanted him, but ubiquitous when you didn’t.
I found him nosing around amongst the cooling tanks. He had ripped up a bit of the insulation and was tapping at the smooth metal tank underneath.
“Hey there,” I said, “don’t cause a leak.”
One camera swiveled my way. The rest stayed on the tank’s gauges, which were not visual, but tactile. They consisted of swellings in the deck plates near the tank. As closely as we could figure out, the Macros read these like graphs—a long bar of raised metal indicated a high temperature or pressure reading.
“I must determine the fullness of the vessel,” Marvin said. He continued tapping. “No leakage will be caused by this action.”
“Why do you want to determine the status of that tank, Marvin?” I asked.
A second camera eye swung to focus on me. I stood with him, examining the tanks as he did. I noticed now that many of them had ripped insulation. There was no sign of dents due to his tapping, fortunately.
“We’ll have to tape up this insulation,” I told him. “I wonder if the radiation down here has made your logic circuits malfunction.”
He didn’t answer. I hadn’t made a request or posed a question. Marvin typically ignored statements that made no demands upon him to respond.
“Do you agree with my assessment of your condition, Marvin?”
“No,” he said. The second camera swung away from me again.
I’d come to realize after dealing with Marvin on many occasions that the number of cameras he directed toward an entity was an indicator of his interest in it.
“Don’t you think this is odd, pointless behavior?” I asked. “What possible use to you are the pressure levels in these tanks?”
“I’m attempting to measure the fluid levels in the tanks,” Marvin corrected me. “Not the pressure, the pressure is indicated by the gauges under our feet. When the deck gauges—”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Why are you testing fluid levels?”
“The gauges indicate pressure and temperature. They do not indicate the fluid levels. Tapping and measuring varied echo resonance gives me an indication as to fluid volume.”
“Right,” I said, trying not to get frustrated. Robots were often literal-minded in their thinking. Marvin wasn’t always that way—but maybe he was hiding something. Maybe he kept answering the wrong question hoping I would go away. He had almost been successful in this regard. I did want to leave and stop talking to him, but I became stubborn. I decided not to give him a break. “Why do you care about the fluid levels, Marvin?”
Three cameras tilted in my direction now, and he paused. I could almost hear his thoughts, something along the line of: this human isn’t leaving until I give him an answer.
“The reconstruction of a vessel requires many details of precise information,” he said finally.
It was an answer, but it only led to more questions. It was my turn to look interested. I lost the attention of all three cameras as I thought about his words, indicating that Marvin was barely aware of me. I followed him, thinking about what he’d said. Reconstruction. Did that mean in case of damage? Or was he referring to duplication?
“Marvin, are you planning to build your own spaceship?”
Three cameras again. “No,” he said.
“What then?” I asked. “Just tell me Marvin, because I’m not going to leave you alone until you do. And I won’t stop you from investigating this region if you don’t do any harm.”
There was a pause, then finally he confessed. “I plan to add appropriate systems to my form to allow independent interstellar exploration.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly catching on. “I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. But you…you want to be the spaceship!”
No cameras now. He was on to another set of tanks, another set of rips and another tapping session. I let him do it and followed him, watching. I tried to form an opinion concerning Marvin’s goal of becoming a sentient spaceship. In some ways, it was alarming. However, I decided that it was relatively harmless. He wasn’t out to sabotage the vessel. He just wanted to fly independently. What thinking creature didn’t want that?
“That’s why you built my bricks into your body back at Helios, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wanted to use them as part of yourself—modules to make up your body, so to speak.”
“Correct,” he said.
“Marvin, are you able to talk about the Blues?” I asked.
Two cameras suddenly swerved to regard me. He even paused in his tearing and tapping. “We have already discussed the biotic species you refer to as ‘blue’.”
“The Blues,” I said, “yes, you said they came from the sole gas giant in the Eden system. Is that correct?”
“They exist there.”
I was elated. When I’d dealt with the Nano ships in the past, they had known details about their creators, but had been programmatically prevented from discussing them. The smaller, newer brainboxes I’d had the displeasure of dealing with knew nothing about them. But Marvin knew about the enigmatic Blues and was able to talk about them. Sandra had wanted to know why we hadn’t dismantled Marvin, and I was already planning a gloating speech about the information I’d learned.
“Tell me all about the Blues, Marvin.”
“I’d rather not.”
I blinked, and then I became angry. I only barely stopped myself from threatening to take him apart and turn him into a microwave oven. I took a deep breath. No cameras were on me now. I was boring him.
“I know you are busy, Marvin,” I said. “How about if I promise to give you a flying structure to work with when we get back to Earth?”
Four cameras. I couldn’t recall ever having seen him put four cameras on one subject before. They all canted and focused disconcertingly. He stopped tapping and stared at me.
“You took away my structure.”
“We needed those components,” I said. “I’ll give you a new arrangement. You’ll be able to travel space independently and investigate whatever you want.” As I said these words, I felt a little hot. I wasn’t sure if it was apprehension over what I was offering him or the radiation that was lightly puncturing my cells every second in this place.
“I would like that,” he said.
“Talk to me then. Did the Blues create the Macros?” I asked. I turned on my suit recorder quietly. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Partially, yes,” he said.
I frowned. “Partially? Who else built them?”
“They have evolved from their original form. They have gained independent faculties, and they now utilize technology they’ve found.”
I nodded. It sounded a lot like Marvin’s story. Maybe the Macros had started out as obedient robots that built large structures in space, but had become smarter and more independent over time. I could see Marvin turning out that way—especially since he seemed more intelligent than the Macros themselves.
“And the Nano ships,” I said, “did they send them out to discover new worlds?”
“Yes.”
“And did they rebel against the Blues? The way the Macros did?”
Marvin looked at me. “Your usage of the pronoun ‘they’ suggests you do not classify me as a Nano entity.”
“You have been built with Nano technology,” I said, “but your software is very different. The herd peoples we call Centaurs seem to have given you different properties than any Nano brainbox I’m aware of.”
“I would agree. Am I therefore a species of one?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But there are copies of you—or at least one that I’m aware of. Remember you were a download from the Centaurs.”
“I would like to meet my copy,” Marvin said.
I snorted. That would be a fun collision to witness. I had a feeling Marvin’s original was more boring than he was. Marvin’s internal software had not been downloaded in its entirety, and as far as I could tell, his mind had compensated for the gaps creatively, giving him his unique personality. I figured the original probably sounded like any Nano brainbox. Maybe it even had the stricture about not discussing the Blues intact.
“Let’s talk more about the Blues,” I said. “Did they give the Nanos their orders to find and aid biotics on other worlds?”
“Yes.”
I felt a fresh moment of heat. I felt like wiping sweat from my forehead, but couldn’t touch it with my helmet on. My skin itched and tickled. The Blues had sent out the ships. They were responsible for the deaths of my kids and so many others.
“Why did they do it, Marvin? Was it to stop the Macros?”
“Yes,” he said.
“So,” I said, “they had released one demon, and so they released a second to stop the first.”
Marvin ignored me.
I thought about the Blues and their plight. I felt some level of sympathy. I could imagine the scenario, perhaps even the horror of it. They had built robots to explore the universe beyond their great sky, discovering a thousand wonders. But then their independent-minded creations had gotten ideas of their own and gone rogue. They’d then released Nano ships to find and help the biotics the Macros were destroying. In Earth’s case, they had actually helped us. I’d managed to go far with the technology they’d given to us to fight the scourge they’d created. I wondered if they had any inkling of current events.
“What about the factories, Marvin? Who invented those?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Okay, who gave the technology of the factories to the Macros and the Nanos?”
“The Blues utilize such technology on their world.”
I stared at him. In my mind, I was putting together a picture. The factories were a great invention of the Blues—or maybe they’d picked it up from someone else. At any rate, they understood and worked with that level of technology. I felt hungry for more information. I wanted it all. Maybe they had more amazing inventions that were just as dramatically useful. Such tools could win my war for me.
“And the rings?” I asked quickly. “Did the Blues make the rings?”
“No,” he said, “they have always been.”
I blinked at him. The implications of his words were huge. If they were ancient, and no known race had built them, then perhaps they were owned and operated by some other even more technologically advanced people. Maybe they had built this highway of rings through our local star systems, but rarely came down to this abandoned region. It was a frightening thought. Someday, these unknown ancients could return to pull up the weeds that had grown in their forgotten backyard systems.
“So, there must be some other race,” I said. “An ancient civilization which built these rings.”
“Possibly. You speak of the unknown with great certainty. I’m not sure if that is a strength for your species or a weakness.”
I chuckled. “Neither am I.”
Our conversation continued, but I’d already gotten most of what I could from Marvin on the subject. I was able to piece together the nature of our doom, the beginnings of it. A race of beings that lived upon a gas giant developed technology and began to explore the universe beyond their thickly-clouded planet. They didn’t like space travel, possibly it was uncomfortable for them. So, they had built very advanced, independent robotic machines to explore the stars. We’d done the same with probes and the like—just on a smaller scale.
These robots had to be independent so they could function on their own in distant star systems. At first, I imagined, these machines had dutifully brought back information on the neighboring systems and life forms. Perhaps they’d discovered Earth long ago and visited my world for centuries, capturing humans among others.
But at some point along the line, the Macros had evolved into something else. Maybe they’d been corrupted by some outside influence. Maybe some disgruntled Blue programmer had released a virus that allowed them to go rogue. Marvin wasn’t sure, and I doubted even the Blues knew exactly how it had happened.
The Blues had panicked. To their credit, they tried to do something about it. They tried to stop the monster they’d unleashed. They’d set their obedient Nano ships on a mission to stop the Macros. The Nano ships had quickly armed the biotics they’d discovered and helped them resist the Macros when they inevitably came calling.
One thing disturbed me, now that I had a much clearer picture of the war and how it had started. Where were the Nano ships? They’d vanished through the same ring I had taken, leaving the Solar System and never returning. I could only imagine they had gone to another inhabited system somewhere, perhaps using a ring we’d not yet discovered in the chain. Maybe they were battling the Macros there now, even as they had over Earth.
I left Marvin and walked the ship until I was in the gaping hole of a launch bay under the prow. The ship was heading away from all three of Alpha Centauri’s suns, gliding toward the ring that led to Earth. I gazed out at the stars ahead of us, where there were no suns or planets in sight.
Stars are brighter when seen from deep space. There were whirling nebulas, and deep colors. I stared at a million, million stars. Many if not most had planets. What was going on out there? I felt that I had to learn about them all—even though I knew I never would.