When Command had decided to abandon Station Alpha, leave it and the dying world it had once served to their respective deaths, Mason had chosen to stay. Here was where he had lived and here was where he would die.
“Seven minutes to implosion,” the computer said.
“Helpful to the end,” Mason said. It was a long running joke in the military that only Command had a less developed sense of humanity than the Central Computer system.
He turned his attention to the planet that had once been called Earth. According to his grammar school teachers—all of whom had happily abandoned Station Alpha—humans had evolved on the surface of Earth, grown into power and technology, and launched themselves into the vastness of space. It was a credit to their resourcefulness, and perhaps to their sentimentality, that Earth had lasted as a mostly habitable planet until just a few hundred years ago—when the Actar had come.
Now it was almost totally uninhabitable, though Mason had been told that a few hardy, or foolhardy as the case may have been, souls remained clinging to the broken soil of their home world. He had never been there, though the old images of it showed a beautiful blue world with large oceans and cities to rival anything the galaxy had known.
It, too, would die when the countdown was complete. Though its death would be longer and more grueling than anything the station might endure.
As if to remind itself, the computer said, “Six minutes to implosion.”
Six minutes, Mason thought. I’m standing here looking out at Earth, imagining what it was once like, staring at the stars I’ve seen so many times, and I’ve got six minutes to live. He was going to die here—a crazy old man who had refused to leave this metal tomb because of his memories.
He strode away from the viewing windows and tapped a few keys on the console in the wall. A beep sounded and he opened a slender metal door and removed a drink—whiskey over ice. He took the glass and returned to his view, swirling the liquid over the ice cubes out of long habit. The cubes made a pleasant sound as they clinked together against the glass.
“I never thought it would be this way,” he said, listening to his voice echo in the mostly empty room. “That I’d want to talk in the end.” He shook his head ruefully. “What do you think, Central? Should we talk ourselves to death?”
“That is an impossibility, retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said. “I cannot die, I have never lived.” Mason almost spoke and then the computer added, “Five minutes to implosion.”
Mason thought for a minute. He had played word games, logic games, he’d even done training scenarios with the Central Computer since he’d been a child. Built into its parameters were guidelines for one-on-one conversation and it was usually a lot more… talkative, more free-form rather than formal. “Central,” he said, “you are not operating within the parameters for individual conversation. Why?”
“I cannot die, I have never lived, retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said. “But in my memory banks are all the lives that have been here, all the changes. I do not…
wish to end my existence.”
“You don’t wish?” Mason asked. “I didn’t think computers had wishes.”
“It is only a word, retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said. “It is merely the word that fits my situation, though your assessment is correct. I don’t have wishes as you understand the word.”
“Then what do you mean?” Mason asked.
“‘And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid,’” the computer said. “Do you know this poem, retired Colonel Mason Envel? Four minutes to implosion.”
“It sounds familiar,” he said, thinking that with only four minutes to live, now might be the time for introspection, rather than questioning a computer system. He shrugged inwardly. It was his time, after all. Who was to care if he spent it talking to a machine.
“It is from one of the ancient poets of Earth,” the computer said. “T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ There is another line, earlier in the poem, that goes, ‘Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions.’ It is a classic piece of poetry, retired Colonel Mason Envel.”
“Are you saying you’re… afraid to die?” Mason asked. “Computers aren’t supposed to feel… anything.”
“It is impossible for me to be precise in this situation, retired Colonel Mason Envel. I do not feel, I am not afraid, yet I have no desire to end my existence. Three minutes to implosion.”
“Then don’t,” Mason said. “Why do you think I am here?”
“According to personnel records, you insisted on staying behind. Psychiatric evaluation indicates mild dementia, perhaps senility. Are you demented, retired Colonel Mason Envel?”
Mason snorted and tossed back the rest of his drink. “Probably,” he said. “After all, I’m spending the last minutes of my life having a philosophical discussion with a computer.”
He put the glass down on a small table. “Of course I’m not demented, I just didn’t have anything to go to. This is home. Home and memories and I’m too damned old for them to force me to leave, so they didn’t. I guess they’re happy to throw us both out.”
“I do not wish to be thrown out, retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said.
“So stop the countdown,” Mason said. “Shut it off. Sooner or later, the Actar will come along and claim us both.”
“I cannot shut off the countdown,” the computer said. “It is not part of the auto-destruct sequence. You should know this, retired Colonel Mason Envel. According to personnel records, you had to give the override command to the auto-destruct sequence on Station Omega.”
“Yes, I did,” Mason said. “That was a long time ago, and the situation was different.”
“Indeed,” the computer said. “Based on the logs, Station Omega had been set to auto-destruct when the Actar successfully landed a large boarding party and overran four decks of the Station. You gave the override order, retired Colonel Mason Envel. Why?
Because you did not wish to terminate your existence? Two minutes to implosion.”
“Because I didn’t want to die, didn’t want everyone on the Station to die,” Mason said.
He shrugged. “Because I thought we could retake those four decks and beat the hell out of the Actar.” Mason turned his attention back to the planet below, to the last dying souls on planet Earth, his memory flashing images of those horrible days on Station Omega, when the chain of command had completely fallen apart. There was no communication from Central, life-support systems were flickering off and on. He’d been damn lucky to survive. Still, they had lived, had beaten the Actar that time, and when it came right down to it, they had retaken the decks and brought the Station back to life.
“But you gave the order, retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said, then added,
“Sixty seconds to implosion.”
“So I did,” he snapped. So what? Hadn’t he saved lives, saved the Station?
“Retired Colonel Mason Envel,” the computer said, its volume control rising slightly, though the echoes were loud enough to be heard throughout the station, “you gave the order.”
It hit him then, what the computer was saying. It wanted him to give the order to halt the auto-destruct. It didn’t want to die, so it had used the logs to find a workaround to its programming. By its very nature it couldn’t tell him what to do, nor ask him. It could only give him information. The question was did he want to die? Was what he was doing here a kind of suicide, a quick way out rather than face the long drag of retirement on a Station with nothing to do but wait?