DATA: In her five years as a unit, Carbon-143 had grown convinced that Aggregates needed additional “downtime” for maintenance, energy reboost, and additional programming in order to function at optimum efficiency. But she had not shaped this observation into an action statement, much less sent it up the information tree. That, as her human counterpart observed in other circumstances, would have been “pointless to the point of idiocy.”
ACTION: So it was that Carbon-143 was at her assembly station with the other eleven members of her formation on Saturday afternoon when her human counterpart entered the facility.
“You need to check this out,” he was saying to another human: younger, clearly new, and nervous. Both were males—a distinction that did not apply to Aggregates. (Carbon-143 assumed a feminine aspect for linguistic reasons, and because her human counterpart insisted on addressing her in that mode.) But their gender did put the entire formation on alert; they had been programmed to expect a higher probably of mischief from off-duty males than females, especially deep into the leisure hours.
“Won’t we get in trouble?” the younger one said.
“Only if we get caught.”
“But there are Aggregates all over the place!”
“They don’t care, unless we try to break something. It’s fucking THE we have to watch out for.”
“Okay, then, what if they catch us?”
“They won’t,” the human counterpart said, moving behind other members of Carbon-143’s formation and making odd and very likely derogatory hand gestures behind their cranial structures. “They’re too busy singing and praying at this hour.” The human counterpart actually jumped up on the assembly-line structure.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious? Isn’t it worth a bit of risk to see what you’re working on?”
“I’m working on magnetic fields,” the younger one said. “They showed me the generator and I already sketched the power inputs. What else do I need to know?”
“How about what’s going through your big old portal?”
“Don’t call it a portal. I’m not sure—”
The human counterpart jumped down and took the younger man by the shoulder, turning him. “All those machines you saw lined up out there when we rode in?”
“I’m not sure, everything was so far away—”
“Thousands of them, maybe hundreds of thousands of them. Some of them are trucked in, but the most interesting ones are assembled right here.”
“Fine. Noted. Can we go now?”
“First, meet your team. It’s only common courtesy.”
“Meet an Aggregate?”
“Meet one. My girl here,” the counterpart said. “The one on the end.”
“They all look alike.”
“She’s always the one on the end, aren’t you, baby?”
Carbon-143 was unsure if this direct address required a response. Certainly the cold static of her cross-links with the other eleven members of her formation did not suggest so. But she interrupted her assembly sequence ever so slightly, to allow for a quick nod and turn.
The human counterpart clapped. “Thank you, darling!”
“Randall—”
“Carbon-143, meet Whit Murray.”
This statement did require a response; even the formation cross-links approved. Carbon-143 made a more obvious turn and bow.
“Aren’t you going to say hello, Whitless?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that—”
“Mr. Murray, then. Please say hello to Aggregate Carbon-143, like all of us, just a tiny cog in the big machine.”
The younger man blinked and held out his hand. “Hi there, Whit Murray.”
“She’s not going to shake it, sorry.”
He lowered his hand. “Does she talk?”
“They do not vocalize as such,” Randall Dehm said. “But if you are wearing the proper comm device when you encounter an Aggregate, you will get some kind of response. It all depends on what you ask.”
Whit smiled at Carbon-143. “How did you get to know this particular one, then? Without being able to talk.”
“Six months ago, I had to do some repairs and reprogramming. No matter how much money and time we spend, sometimes shit breaks. The Aggregates can’t stand it, but that’s what they get for invading our planet and making us slaves, right?”
Whit appeared to be shocked by this bald, undeniably factual statement. So he said, “I always wondered . . . how come we always see the same types?”
“What do you mean?”
“Aggregates are made up of thousands of individual cells, right? They could form into anything.”
Carbon-143 could have explained this, meaning that, had Whit been wearing the “appropriate comm device,” she could have uploaded a human-friendly file about nine templates and why they had been chosen—and persisted.
“Don’t you like the anteater look?”
“I don’t really have an opinion. I was just—”
Randall was standing so close to Carbon-143’s left side that the formation’s proximity alarm system went on first-level alert. “I like it. I think it’s sexy.”
Then he laughed and slapped Whit on the arm. “Come on, man. I’ve got other stuff to show you.”
As they left, Carbon-143 had the clear impression that Whit stopped in the exit and looked back.
Meanwhile she tried to control the somatic discharge Randall’s remark had caused. It was likely a transient overload triggered by the unusual and prolonged Aggregate-human contact.
CONCLUSION: She could not let it distract her from her work.
The return of humans from Keanu continues to be a major story, topping the looming conflict between the New Coalition and Free Nations over trade and travel.
Four of the five humans and the sole E.T. in the crew have been briefly seen in public; one of the humans was reportedly injured in the crash landing at Yelahanka Air Base on Friday. Beyond that momentary exposure, they have been sequestered. Neither ISRO nor Bangalore government will answer any but the most general questions that interested and responsible citizens are asking:
What do they want? To sightsee? To open up regular trips between Earth and Keanu?
Why are they here and not in the Free Nations, where many of the crew originated?
What do they know of Earth?
What is life like on Keanu? How have they survived?
Have there been further returns of the so-called Revenants? For that matter, did the Revenants ever exist?
More to the point, does Keanu, now looming in the night sky like a death star, pose a threat to Earth—or perhaps only to certain entities on Earth?
It is now rumored that the Keanu travelers will soon emerge from seclusion within the next twenty-four hours, though it is a sad but inevitable sign that they have engaged a publicist and media agent. . . .
Will we have to pay to get answers?
“CAPITAL VIEW” COLUMN BY M. J. MUHAMMAD,
NEW INDIAN EXPRESS, 15 APRIL 2040
XAVIER
Pav’s plan, modified by his father and with suggestions from Edgar Chang, rolled into motion just before five A.M. the next morning, when a pair of twenty-five-year-old limousines, an ambulance, and two medium-sized trucks pulled up to the rear hospital entrance—where blood still stained the pavement and the walls still showed bullet marks.
It was raining . . . not the torrential tropical rain expected in Bangalore, just a morning shower.