Shipp: The Alien Wars of Earth Page 3

  “I didn’t really expect him to,” Daniel replied with a sigh.

  “I guess we can’t expect to much this early on,” replied Shipp. “But I think you are going to have to deal with this family business before he is going to be able to buckle down. Besides, your original orders were for him or someone like him, without family, for this very reason!”

  “I know, I know!” Daniel said with exasperation. “But he was at the top of the list, as a matter of fact, everyone on the top ten was married, most with children! The mindsets of the people we need are not loners. I have been studying these people for over 30 years; the original orders were given before any research of this magnitude had been done on individuals. As you know, the same technology that allows us access to the folds of space and thus to reach out across the universe, does not allow for communications at this distance, except by probe which can only make at most two jumps using that same technology, and then it might be a hundred years or so before it occurred to any of our creators to bother to answer, so I made a judgment call.”

  “So you realize,” Shipp interjected, “that you are now not only going to have to convince him, but his entire family? He will be of no use to us if his family does not feel as he does, if indeed he can be convinced at all!” said Shipp, her voice rising.

  “It could not be helped!” returned Daniel, his voice matching hers. “As I said, all of my best prospects for success were family men. Besides, his wife is equal in my study as being one of the best candidates, if it were not for their worlds prejudice, she would have been as good a candidate as her husband, but she wouldn’t have been any better about leaving her family behind.”

  . “I agree with you,” Shipp answered softly. “I am just saying that you have had thirty years to study both parents, but only seventeen and fourteen respectively with the children. I assume that you are hoping that the parent’s attitudes will rub off, or at least the children will follow where they lead. My study doesn’t show teenagers following any predictable pattern! By the way, Thomas is at this very moment engaged in describing me in very descriptive language, and I am ignoring him for the time being,” she said, with an amused note creeping into her voice.

  “I can’t say I blame him,” stated Daniel. “You seem to be taking it in stride. Of course he hasn’t tried to plant his fist in your face!”

  “Well,” Shipp returned, “he kicked the door to his room twice and slammed a fist into the bulkhead, but I decided not to take it personally.”

  “How considerate,” Daniel responded. “Bye the way-- how is the family?”

  “Sleeping comfortably, thank you, I have learned a lot just since they have been aboard. I am conducting several tests as we speak.”

  “Whoa!” Daniel barked, as he spun from the console he had been working to face Shipp’s visual monitor. “We agreed that no procedures were to be performed without their knowledge and permission. If we are not completely straightforward with them they will always be suspicious of what we tell them and what our agenda is! What have”----

  “Hold on, Hold on!” Shipp said, interrupting. “I’m not carving them up for dinner! Look, I collected some hair samples, scraped a little dead skin off, the only invasive thing I did was collect a couple of drops of blood from everyone but Thomas. He started coming around almost the second you got him aboard, so I didn’t take any chances. None of them will know, but it is giving me a big leg up. Since you decided abductions were not ethical, I have never had any actual humans at my disposal. I of course can scan any electronic information system on Earth, but it’s not the same. I deemed it a minimal risk for the benefit to the mission I knew I would get. Look, we are going back home in a few days as I see this playing out, either with or without them, our creators are going to want an update either way, and I am way faster than a probe. As you know there are only two green jump points between here and where our creators are at the moment that a probe has enough power to use. The rest of the way will have to be sub-light unless the probe comes near enough to contact another full size space craft with jump capabilities who will facilitate the mission, but you know that also puts the message at risk that the probe carries.” The look on Daniels face softened as he returned to his console and began to speak.

  “Sorry, I should know you well enough by now not to jump to any conclusions. Are you going to be able to handle their nutritional and medical care?”

  “There was never any doubt.” Shipp said with an air of disdain. “But I will need a lot more research if I am going to alter them after our creators ok them for this venture, assuming they don’t turn you down in the next couple of days, or they don’t freak out when we get them face to face with the Early Ones, or that the Early Ones don’t freak out when they meet them. Remember it has been eons since they have tried to communicate with a race so young and primitive.” Daniel swiveled his head back and looked Shipp right in the eye, or as near to an eye as Shipp had before he answered.

  “They had me to practice on, and crazy Harry before that!” He smiled at the thought of Thomas and a face-to-face scenario. In his experience it was kind of like sticking your head in a giant blender full of chain saws running at full speed. It took more than a little courage not to pull your head back out, and of course they had Harry in deep suspension after his little practice session, mind scrambled just a smidge! Of course the Early Ones are fore warned, and his own brain seemed to have survived repeated contact, but it was not something he had learned to enjoy!

  You could almost imagine you could see the iris on Shipp’s monitor contract as she responded.

  “Yes, and you know that’s exactly why you were created and I was instructed to adopt an Earthlike personality, because the Early Ones attempt at communication drove Harry nuts!” Said in a voice dripping with irony! “Hopefully with what we learn here we will be able to reanimate Harry and return him to sanity.” Daniel walked across the room, exited and started down a corridor before responding, switching to the non-verbal broadcast mode of communicating as he left, Shipp always used whatever mode he chose.

  “I hope so!” Daniel continued, “ I know that the creators felt really bad about that. No one knew humans were so emotional! In thirty odd years my immersion into human cultures has caused me to pick up some emotional baggage, but I will never let it affect my judgment.”

  “Yeah right!” Shipp snorted. “You brought a whole family on board instead of one man, you outlawed any abductions for research, even though you were given special permission to do so, until the actual subject for this mission could be determined. You get pissed off every time some terrorist kills innocent people and those he attacked kill innocents trying to kill him, and our directive will not let us intervene, and what is worse I find myself agreeing with you at every turn, indicating that we both have developed plenty of emotional baggage as you call it! We always had an understanding of right and wrong, and we were taught to understand the difference, but these emotions are something we picked up here, studying humans. I am not quite sure how that changes any decision-making on our part. Besides”, Shipp added, “You’re bio engineered from human cells, sure you have a lot of hardware, but you have a brain attached to all that hardware, a human brain, a fact you seem to not want to admit to!”

  “Well”, Daniel replied, acting as if he had not heard a word Shipp had just said, “Thomas is going to have to deal with the terrorist threat and all the fanatic religious factions which seem to spawn them, rogue governments, and thousands of individual nutcases in order to make this work. His notion of right and wrong seems to be on track and strongly imbedded in his personality, but it is going to be tested and stretched to the limit!”

  “I noticed you didn’t include that little fact in your abbreviated discourse with him a few minutes ago,” Shipp stated.

  “No, and it’s also not going to be something I bring up voluntarily until things are going a lot better than they are right now!” Daniel exclaimed, with a faint hint of exasperation in his voice.

  “I don’t want to miss that conversation!” Shipp returned with a definite thread of amusement laced into her response.

  “Regardless,” replied Daniel, quickening his pace down the corridor, “he has enough to think about right now, and I have a decision to make about Thomas and his family, which I need some time to think about, and I am sure you have plenty of things to attend to.”

  There was no response, but Daniel had learned that was Shipp’s way of ending a conversation. She was capable of performing thousands of jobs simultaneously while his brain, being simply a human brain, could not. It did have access to several micro computers inside his body, that and the fact that the Early Ones had pushed him down the evolutionary path a bit, enabling him to learn directly from Shipp’s computers which allowed him to stay abreast of her research as well as his own. But while he was capable of thinking about more than one thing at a time, it helped to concentrate on only one if decision-making or learning were to be involved. And right now he had to make a decision about his guests in the next couple of hours. Basically there really wasn’t much to be decided. Shipp was right about Thomas, he wasn’t going to be able to make any decisions or rational judgments until he was satisfied about his families well being. Seeing them in hibernation wasn’t going to do it for him. So he was going to have to be told everything, and then depending on his reaction and resultant decision, decide whether to wake up his family or return everybody and start over!

  Shipp watched Daniel for a few seconds, and then concentrated on the various tasks she was involved in at the moment. She had told Thomas that she was not in charge of matters that involved him or his family directly, but that was not strictly true in the sense that her mission directive was primarily the same as any captain of any mili
tary ship on the planet below or pretty much anywhere else for that matter. She was responsible for every living being and every single thing found on or within her hull. She had no restrictions involving Daniels dealings with Thomas and his family, other than her respect for him as an entity, and that his mission directive was the selection and education of the subject of this endeavor. She could offer advice, disagree, or have shown Thomas his family if she had chosen to do so, but would never interfere with Daniel’s work, just as he would not interfere with hers. In telling Thomas she couldn’t interfere, it was the first time in her existence that she had told someone something that wasn’t entirely true even though it was how she and Daniel had operated up to now, something she would have to analyze before storing it away. She did agree that Thomas would not be a viable applicant for this experiment without his family. She had, along with Daniel, watched and studied all of the prospective Earthlings over the past 30 years. She was not as involved personally, as she had not actually been on the planets surface, but she had monitored, with Daniel’s permission, all major contacts with the individuals through his interactions, and of course had overseen all passive monitoring of the subjects. She had, over the years, come to like, and dislike certain individuals. She concurred with Daniels selection of Thomas, but also knew from years of monitoring his wife that there was going to be hell to pay when she was made aware of the situation. Plus Shipp knew that mothers did not always react in a predictable way when their children were added into the equation. She suspected that Daniel held this same opinion, and was worried more about the wife than Thomas at this point. It is not like we don’t have other candidates, but she knew that in the last few years Daniel had come to think Thomas had the best chance to succeed, maybe the only chance. Thomas was going to be entrusted with a lot of power if the Early Ones agreed he was the one, and the old Earth saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely kept creeping into her and Daniels discussions of how hard it was going to be to pick the right personality for the job. Luckily for her, the final decision was not hers, and she was thankful for that, because she had never thought she was qualified to make such a decision, and wasn’t sure if Daniel was any better prepared than she was in that regard. Oh well, she had course deviations to check, there were always at least three alien ships hanging out in this solar system she needed to keep track of, droids to direct, ship functions to monitor and change, the list was endless. Time to go back to work; she had already wasted a few hundred milliseconds on this train of thought as it was!

  Chapter 4

  Mission Statement

  I looked at the shower but did not attempt to take one; the clock on the wall indicated that almost five hours had passed since I had been left alone. I had done nothing but pace, tried in vain to kick some sense into the door and a couple of walls, looked at the clock four or five thousand times, and tried to convince myself that I was having the worst nightmare of my life. Even pinched myself, when that didn’t have the desired effect, I slapped myself across the face. Could have sworn I heard a chuckle from somewhere. I was getting sick to my stomach and dizzy, I was going to have to get control or I wouldn’t be any good to my family, even if I could get out of here and somehow find them. I had yelled myself hoarse trying to get Shipp to answer me, but had grown quiet in the last half hour. The android, or whatever, had said he would be back by now, so it occurred to me to try a different tact and ask politely.

  “Shipp” I murmured. Then clearing my throat, “Shipp” I repeated, just a shade louder.

  “Yes Thomas”, Shipp replied crisply. “How may I help you”?

  I hesitated before answering, not wanting to lose this source of communication again.

  “I apologize for anything I said that might have offended you earlier”, I returned, with what I hoped was a tone of sincerity this huge computerized hulk was capable of discerning.

  “Under the circumstances I think I can afford to ignore your previous outbursts. Actually I quite enjoyed some of the more colorful descriptions you attributed to me,” Shipp replied with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Well I’d like to point out, calmly I would add, that Daniel indicated he would be back by now. May I inquire as to his whereabouts?”

  “Well, that was very politely put,” Shipp came back with a definite tint of humor. “You have about three minutes left if we are to be held to a concise time clock.

  Daniel however, is already on his way, --- wait for it------- wait for it---.”

  The door opened and Daniel was standing there, looking very serious, and a little nervous, if that was possible. I sat down in one of the chairs and motioned him to another. I was suddenly very tired and needed to get off my feet.

  “You didn’t get any rest, I see,” stated Daniel laconically. I didn’t answer so he went on. “I am going to try and give you the quick version, but with enough information so that you can make an intelligent decision. Then I will take you to see your family. If you have decided to join this venture, I will wake them up and leave you to explain things to them as best you can. If you decide against participation, I will return them without disturbing them. They will awaken, with lost time and disorientation, but no memory of Shipp or me. I will leave it to you what you want to tell them in that event. I would suggest you keep it in the family so to speak, your neighbors will think your nuts.”

  “I’m not convinced that might not be the case anyway,” I said with a weak smile. I was calming down, it did seem as though I was not going to be forced to do anything except make a decision, and then get the hell out of here! “I’ll be quiet and listen without interruption,” I replied quietly.

  “That would be helpful, I was hoping you would be better rested, but I can see that your concern for your family is not going to allow that, but I must make you understand what is at stake, for you and everyone else on your planet!” So I will, as I said, give you the short version. Then I will take you to see your family regardless of the decision you make. Shipp has just informed me that she will still insist that you clean up and get at least a nap before we actually wake them. She says she owes that to your family as you look like we just scraped you out of a bar in Singapore! Shipp can help getting you some sleep if you allow it. You and she can discuss that later. At that time I will expect you to give me your decision about your willingness to participate. Shipp will then either wake them up or I will deliver them back where I found them. I won’t be able to do anything about the loss of time, but weird things like that are reported in your society all the time without anyone taking much stock in it. I hope that it will not be the course you choose, but I assure you I will not force you to do anything against your will.”

  “I can live with that,” I returned, leaning forward and indicating I was ready to listen.

  “Well I guess some history is in order”, Daniel began. “The Early Ones have been monitoring this planets evolution long before humans became the dominant species, even before the dinosaurs ruled, a very short period of time by their standards, but a very long time in Earths history. There are other planets teeming with life, but the planet that gives birth to intelligent life capable of leaving its surface is extremely rare. This planet is one of the more prolific life givers. It is almost perfect in its eco system, an eco system that in the blink of an eye has been infested with an organism that threatens its very existence.”

  “You are referring to man I presume” I interrupted.

  “Exactly,” Daniel replied, fixing me with a steady scrutiny. “You may work this out on your own, but there are more than one race of beings that are aware of this planet and its problems. There are races that look upon you and your kind as a corruption that should be eliminated, or at the very least subjugated and controlled!”

  “I’d like to see them try!” I replied, fixing Daniel with a glare of my own.

  “No you wouldn’t Thomas,” he replied with a strange laugh and then a look of apprehension suddenly appearing on his face! These races have the means to eradicate your species from the planet without you even being aware it was about to happen! The damage to the rest of the biological population would also be extensive, especially to the mammals, one reason it has not already been attempted. The other reason,” he paused and raised a finger as I opened my mouth to interrupt once again, “is because my creators, the Early Ones, have made it clear that you and your planet are hands off for the time being.”