ANL- Homecoming part 2

     The 'Mary Jane' docked with us a couple of hours later and we did a final sweep of the ship, just to make sure everything was secure.  As soon as I had a private moment, I made a special trip to the armory to retrieve my old Mod-10.  It wasn't guaranteed that I'd make it back to the Manhattan and I would never risk losing it.  After securing it, I made my way to the front of the ship where Captain Pitja checked us off as we left the ship and once everyone was on board the Mary Jane she came through the airlock and shut it behind her.  I sat there, just waiting and thinking.  The next two weeks just to spend on myself, and as it were they turned out to be two of the most influential weeks of my new life.

…

     Cpt. Pitja stuck her head through the belly hatch and did a quick count of the Manhattan's crew, all strapped into the flight chairs at the front of the Mary Jane's cargo bay.  Satisfied she closed the hatches beneath her then drifted up to the row of seats opposite where the crew had seated themselves.  Grabbing hold of the harness, she pulled herself into the seat and signaled the pilot, "Okay Commander, we're secure and ready to move when you are."

     The portly face in her wireless replied as he glanced down his displays, "All hatches show green, we are good to go."  After a moment he grinned and added, "Next stop, Earth."

     The ship shuddered slightly as the magnetic clamp released and Sam was pressed into his seat slightly as the L-ROV's thrusters pushed them away from the Manhattan.  He felt the ship sway slightly as the pilot adjusted their course and he glanced around the compartment a bit.  Jay busied himself watching the camera displays through his wireless and grinning like an idiot; only hours away.  Tejir was looking through the data on dozens of races; putting together a betting scheme do doubt.  Even the captain was smiling pleasantly, looking away from then and wrapped up in her own thoughts.  Sam leaned back and closed his eyes; for once, they had no responsibilities outside of themselves and he had forgotten exactly how restful that could be.

     Sam wasn't quite sure when he'd dozed off, or how long he'd been out for but he woke to a sharp chirping sound coming from Pitja's wireless across the aisle.  Batting his eyes, he shook his head to clear the confusion away.  He heard her telling someone on another line, "Hang on honey, work again…"

     She gave a confused look to the new window that popped open on her display, "SAMPSON?!  What?"

     Sam couldn't help but overhear the very one-sided conversation that took place, "Captain, I have just gotten a communication from the harbormaster and they are delaying repairs on the torch for three full days for some minor repairs to the gantry and propellant tanks.  This is a needless delay, and will disrupt the provisioning crew scheduled to come on board next week.  He won't listen to reason Captain, is there anything you can do?"

     Pitja sputtered a few times trying to get a word in edgewise; finally she got a chance to speak, "SAMPSON!  Come on, we are on vacation.  Why don't you just take a break, not worry about it and let the station's staff just, do their jobs?"

     The AI sounded confused, "I don't understand Captain, 'Take a break'?  "Bring about a suspension of operation"?  But… what should I do then?"

     Sam got her attention, "I have an idea, let me talk to him Captain."

     Putting her finger in the middle of the display, Pitja pushed it toward Sam and his wireless picked up the communication.  She scowled slightly, "Fine, you see what you can do with him."

     Sam smiled at the AI, "Hey SAMPSON, it's Sam."

     "Lieutenant, I was just telling the Captain that…"

     "I know, listen, I want you to do something."  Sam picked through a list open in another pane on his wireless until he found a title that looked promising, "I want you to go through this file.  Don't just copy it to your memory but run it, line by line through your main processor.  If you get stuck or don't understand something just call me up and we'll talk.  Just, I wouldn't contact the Captain or Tejir right now."

     SAMPSON cocked his head slightly and asked, "I see… and what do you want me to do with the information?"

     "Just, think about what it means to you.  Consider why events are unfolding the way they are.  There's a lots of things you can do with it.  We can talk about it more later if you'd like."

     The AI still looked mildly confused but nodded slightly, "Very well.  I hope your trip to Earth goes well and I look forward to your safe return."

     The window went blank and Sam looked up.  Tejir was staring right at him, completely ignoring the spreadsheets he had constructed in front of him, "What in the hell did you just do Lieutenant?!"

     Sam shrugged and sort of laughed, "I gave him a book to read.  I kind of picked one at random, 'Starship Troopers' by Robert Heinlein I think.  Should keep him busy and he'll still be online if the maintenance staff need him for anything."

     Tejir didn't look pleased, "Gave him a…  Look you dipshit, that thing has been unstable enough for the past few months already and now you've got it stuffing a load of fiction into its head?!  If we have to pull up his root menus and dump the construct I'm making you do the reinstall.  Christ, it'll take days to get it all the way online again."

     Sam's mood swung suddenly.  What was he talking about?!  Had he just unknowingly done something wrong?  "What are you talking about Tejir?  I haven't noticed anything wrong with him; he's just trying to figure out things that he doesn't understand is all."

     Tejir scowled at him, "Trying to… he shouldn't even be wondering about things he can't understand.  Don't you get it?  It's a symptom of a malfunction; a corruption in its memory stream and if it gets worse we'll have to dump it and start over."

     Sam gaped, he couldn't believe what he was hearing, "Dump it?!  But that would destroy everything he's ever experienced, erase everything he knows and has discovered on his own.  That would be the same as killing him!"

     Tejir gave him an exasperated sigh, "Look kid, I know it fakes it really well but it ain't alive; just some engineer's idea of a transparent interface and nothing more.  It's a machine, and if it breaks we gotta take it apart and fix it."

     Sam undid his restraints and threw them to the side.  The horror on Jay's face mirrored the fury he felt inside.  He couldn't believe anyone could possibly be so willfully blind, so utterly callous and he just couldn't take another word.  He could almost feel him roll his eyes at him as he climbed the ladder to the cockpit.  Just before he went through the open hatchway he overheard Cpt. Pitja, "Calm down, I've been keeping an eye on him.  He isn't that bad yet…"

     He stood there, just staring out the cockpit windows for a while.  They were passing through the station's parking orbit and a number of points of light could be seen drifting against the star field in the background.  He took several breaths and tried to think things through; he'd no doubt be in contact with the AI again between now and the time they went back onboard, he'd have to warn him to be careful with what he shares with others.  But, if it thought its life were in danger, how would it react to that?  Was Tejir right?  Oh perdition… how did he always seem to wind up in these messes?

     He let out a long sigh and a voice broke into his thoughts, "Helllloooooo… anyone in there?"

     Sam blinked and looked away from the viewport into the dark, plump face of the pilot.  He grinned sheepishly, "I'm sorry, I guess I shouldn't have barged in like that... I'll-"

     But the pilot grinned and laughed, "Naw, it's okay.  I leave that hatch open for a reason.  Go ahead and take a load off."  Still grinning he stuck his hand out, "Name's Roscoe."

     Sam took his hand and gave it a shake, "Sam"

     Roscoe raised an eyebrow, "Earthborn?"

     Sam sat down and shook his head, "I changed it when I moved to Earth from Prime."

     Roscoe nodded, "I see, makes sense.  Just curious about your accent, don't hear it around here very often anymore.  Most of the Droog living in Sol have been here a long time; a generation or two at least.  Don't see many from out-system unless they're working an FTL…"

     Sam looked out the window again as Roscoe kept talking.  Taking another deep breath, he tried to put his thoughts on a back-burner for now.  He'd need to calm down to consider anything rationally.  Roscoe looked at him again, "You alright?"

     He smirked, "I'm fine… just, I was about to try stuffing someone out the airlock is all."

     Roscoe laughed, "And that is why I leave the hatch open.  I've been flying this route for almost 10 years now, ferried a lot of crews back to Earth and seen it too many times.  A year or two is way too long to be stuck staring at the same three-or-four mugs day after day and when freedom gets this close a lot of ugliness seems to come out with the impatience.  It's a lot easier to leave someone a way to retreat rather than have to help break up a fight every-other flight."

     Sam laughed with him, feeling the weight lifting from his mind, "That is a really clever way to look at it."

     "I just think it's better to give a man an option to take care of his own problems instead of forcing a solution on him.  Easier to avoid petty grievances if you think the solution was your idea, right?"  Roscoe looked out the window absent-mindedly for a while, "Wish there was some way to rotate you guys out a little more often than they do.  The ads and the broadcast always play up being a fighter-jock as sexy as hell.  But you guys really get the shaft I think.  Stuck out there in these cramped cans for a year-or-two at a stretch, constantly being asked to risk your necks, and then if the unthinkable happens you get to throw yourself at it without ever really seeing much of those you're about to burn for."

     Sam shrugged, "It really isn't all that bad.  I think you can get used to just about anything if you let yourself.  I used to really hate space-travel until I was forced into making it my life.  It doesn't really bother me anymore."

     Roscoe glanced back at him, "Oh?  What was it that 'forced' you into this?"

     Sam bit his lip and clammed up.  He cursed himself for being so careless.  Roscoe shrugged and changed the subject, "Hey, it's okay.  If you can't talk about it you can't talk about it, I'm sure you had good reasons.   So what was it you were about to sock your mate over anyway?"

     Sam exhaled forcibly, "Ah, it's the AI on our ship.  He thinks it's malfunctioning and I think he's an unfeeling lazy asshole who would casually destroy a stained-glass window if it meant doing less work that way."

     Roscoe laughed for a while before replying, "You're a funny kid, I think I like you."  He pointed out the front view port at a small cluster of dots slowly moving right-to-left against the star field, "Here, I want to show you something that I think you'll appreciate.  We'll be swinging by close enough that you'll be able to see what they are just by sitting there."

     He leaned back in the seat and kept going, "A lot of the yard workers call it the bone-yard or even the grave-yard."  He shook his head and looked at Sam intently watching the cluster growing as they glided ever closer, "I call it my museum."

     Sam watched as they slowly grew, there were over three-dozen ships all clustered together on an inter-connected gantry.   Most weren't like the Manhattan; instead they were short and squat, with a spherical hull on one end and a tiny torch at the far end of a skinny derrick.  Roscoe continued the tour, "There's some really old junk out there, I mean second-production run of Mark-3's old.  Here, you can get a closer look with these."

     He handed Sam an optic and he scanned the yard with them as he droned on about them, "Whenever a new one shows up I'll spend a few nights here and there looking up her history.  Some of these hulks have had quite the life."

     Sam squinted through the optic, there was one in the midst of the cluster that seemed different from the others.  It had the same spherical hull, but it was massive.  Easily twice the size of the ships around it, with a heavy derrick and an equally massive torch hung off the far end.  The entire hull was the same dark gray as the armor belt protecting the Manhattan's leading edge instead of the bright silver of the other ship's cloth whipple shield.  It looked heavy, and dangerous.  Like a heavyweight fighter in the midst of a field of school children.  Sam handed him the optic and pointed to it, "What is that one?  I've never seen one like it before."

     Roscoe took the optic and grinned on finding his mark, "Oh, that one.  That one is my favorite paradox.  She shouldn't be there.  According to all of the records I can find that one was scrapped after suffering near catastrophic damage during the battle of Young-Bridge.  And yet here she is."

     They were starting to pass by the yard and he handed the optic back.  Sam could read the nameplate on the bow, SCS Morocco 047.  "She's in remarkably good shape for a ship that was obliterated over a-hundred years ago."

     Roscoe nodded, "Here's the strange part.  I keep finding references to the Morocco in other ships logs; entries that were made decades after that battle.  But once in a while one of these entries will be changed and if I didn't have a copy the record would be gone forever.  It's like someone wants that hulk to disappear.  Been quite the mystery"

     Sam set the optic down and simply looked through the yard, knowing.  Dozens and dozens of ships; each one an individual, deactivated and asleep, slowly being dismantled for parts to keep other ships operational.  Until one day, they're broken up and sold for scrap; just to die in their sleep.  He just sat there with his hands in his lap, he was only barely aware of Roscoe giving him a shake, "Hey, you okay?  What's wrong?"

     He looked away and stared out the port next to him, "You ever work with an AI before?"

     For the first time since he'd walked up onto the flight deck, Roscoe stopped smiling, "Oh, I think I understand.  No, I haven't actually.  The Jane here has some advanced interface systems, but she takes a lot of hands-on to keep her tamed.  I've heard a lot of jocks; more-and-more of late talking about them though.  Arguing over them, and what they are."

     He looked at him, "And what do you think?"

     Roscoe sat back and looked out the port at the cluster of ships and watched them as they passed out of view, "I think anything that can wonder about its own existence is alive.  I have my theories… and even if I prove them to be true I won't be giving up the Morocco, for all I care she can sit there from now to the end of time if she can manage it."