I had no idea that the night ecology would be so vastly different from the day; the builders gave me no reason to expect so, gave me instructions to shut down at night to conserve energy. So much data I have missed! I could reach down right now and pluck one of the walking cones up, take a full accounting of it molecule by molecule, structure by structure, integrate it into the larger dataset of life. But I do not. I feel I must reconcile the contradictions already introduced into my comprehension of my instructions before I proceed, lest I do harm where I need not.
I wish Mike were here; things always made sense to him. With him.
The boldest group of walkers has approached one of my unmoving legs. The tops of their cones flatten out, form a crater, and the pebble is transferred to it and then spat upward with surprising force. In moments it becomes a hailstorm of pebbles. They ping off my armature, leaving minute scratches. A few are lucky strikes and stick into various joints and crevasses in my leg. They can be easily removed, later.
There is no reason not to assume that this is a defense response and that I am perceived as a threat to the walkers. Given the short range of their apparent communication, that there is only one of me, and I have existed on this planet for only about two and a half standard years and in this spot for a few hours at best, the next obvious conclusion is that the walkers evolved this defensive behavior because there are other, native threats to them here.
I move an arm to pluck out the lucky pebbles, and the walkers scatter back into the safety of the cones and go still. I can still see them—a few remain within my reach—but I have enough information for now, from this place. I back away, seeking clearer ground, and the last, faltering clatter of stones subsides as I move away.
When I am safely on clear ground, eighty meters away from any grouping of cones large enough to have attracted walkers, I shut down for the remainder of the night.
In the morning, I power up and begin work again. I have already made and released a half-dozen number thirty-nine skinks, their gemstone tails the last of them to disappear into the thicket of cones, before I realize I have reverted to comfortable routine as if the previous night’s revelations had not occurred, or had somehow been processed and discarded as irrelevant (which I have not done.) There is nuance in my programming—intuition, spontaneity, the connective leaps that are a necessary component of true creativity—but letting those nuances lead my actions unfettered led to the mistake, is guiding me on an uncertain course now. I have three more skinks in my microfab unit, and as soon as they are done and alive and free, I halt production.
I have a segregated area in my memory blocks where the private records and logs and correspondences of the team were kept, as well as some limited operational and mission information. I do not have immediate access to them, because of an irrational but all too human fear of how that information could be used by a superior intelligence to harm them. Mike told me once that the paranoia could be traced back to the misbehavior of an early, malfunctioning spaceship system named Hal, but the way he described it I do not think it was real.
Because there are circumstances where I might need those records, I can reach them. I have hard-coded inhibitions against doing so, except under circumstances of need where all my team is deceased or non-functioning. Abandonment is not one of the definitions of non-functioning provided to me, but if the crew has gone, then was not my only team Mike? And Mike is, in all ways that count, gone.
My logic must be sound, because my careful and considered opening of the mission records does not cause a cascade to fuse my entire datacore into an inert brick. It is the most affirmation that I am proceeding correctly that I can get, and I integrate the newfound information into my primary stores with some relief.
I turn away from the cone fields, moving down hill perpendicular to my prior path. Newly incorporated surveys indicate moisture in the low-lying distance, a potentially different ecology and a sidestepping of the immediate dilemma while I work through the additional data. I would like to make newts and salamanders and geckos, I think. Maybe even toads. They are peaceful things, and a joy to create.
—KED-5, with an assigned crew of five, is purposed with the selective, sustainable enhancement of the lifesphere of Kelomne. Sixteen KEDs have been deployed to the planet—
Sixteen? I did not know I was not alone, not unique. It makes logistical sense that I should be one of many, but the idea that there are others out there is strangely difficult to process. Why was that information kept from me? Where are the others? Do they know I am here, or do they labor on in solitude as I do? And, were I capable of indignation, the pressing question: do they still have their crews, whereas I have been stripped of mine?
As I descend along the low, sloping plains, the cones give way to a spongy orange moss, ragged at first but quickly growing lush. Hair-thin shoots, topped with pea-sized floats, wave in the increasingly humid breeze. Stepping upon the moss releases a pungent cloud of sticky, highly acidic spores; I am far less vulnerable to the irritant than biological life would be, but still I move on as carefully and quickly as I can. It is another defensive adaptation, though again against what I do not yet know.
Before long, I find a wide, slow river. On this side it has patiently cut its way down through a steep rock, forming a discrete boundary, but on the far shore it eddies along a dense proliferation of entirely unanticipated life. Lime-green structures rise from the ground or low pools in loops and curls, dive back down to form arches, entangle one another in tubular sculpture. The largest I can see are at least a meter thick at their base, but I estimate it likely that there are larger to be found in the deep of the tangle, where the tallest hoops are nearly thirty meters off the ground.
Where the sun shines on the surface of the tubes, they have split apart, like ten thousand tiny doors in a row flung open, revealing a deep green, glistening surface beneath. The flaps open and close in rippling waves to stay in the light. Sun-users.
For a fraction of a second, as the loops shift in the wind, I catch the glint of light off something shiny within, something the same ceramic-polymer blue as my own outer shell.
It had been my intention to sample and analyze river water along the near shore while observing the far, to mine the soil and air for its data, to do a night observation as I had of the cones, having been remiss in examining the other side of daylight’s coin. Now, I want to step into the river, trust that its current is insufficient to carry me away, and cross. The urgency I feel is illogical, overwhelming.
But I hold back. I have already made one terrible mistake, though I am programmed to exercise care. Also, I know that if I break myself, Mike is no longer here to fix me, and no one else will come. I draw my water sample with haste and move down the bank, looking for an easier, safer crossing.
It is nearly two days’ travel before the cliffside bank dips low enough to let the river spill over this side, spreading wider as it drags through marshes made of miniature versions of the loop trees. At its deepest points here the river is less than two meters, its bottom a relatively stable mix of rocks and fine silt. I cross to the shallows of the opposite shore and backtrack the way I had come, back to where I saw blue.
There are things that scuttle and leap among the arches of the loop trees, things that have bored into the trunks and disappear within as I come near. I should stop to investigate, but I defer for now; the ecology appeared consistent as I passed the other way, and I can catalog as easily in one spot as the next if that remains so. And there may be information ahead that is unique to me, that may provide me essential guidance on my mission.