Chapter 5: Entreaties

“Ohmu, I’d like to speak to John in private. Do you mind waiting here with Misty while I take him to my lower bunker for a short discussion?” she asked.

Ohmu glanced at me first but answered on her own that this would be fine. Hannah rose from her seat, extending her hand out to me as she did.

“Come. Let’s take a little walk so I can tell you why I’ve asked you here.”

I let her pull me upright and then followed her back into the tunnel leading into the base of the spire. Once in the hewed-rock cavern, she led me to a side door. Inside was a compact stairwell that switch-backed around repeatedly, extending deep into the darkness below. Lights turned on and off at each landing as we descended.

I was about to ask how deep we were going when we finally reached the bottom of the stairwell. It was probably the bunker she had mentioned before, as we were now a good thirty meters below the chamber above. At the side of the stairwell was a metal door which reminded me of the bunker doors used in the field bases. I’d used similar doors in my own bunker below my house on Heels in the Sand but mine was not as thick as this one.

I helped her turn a large wheel which opened the door. It was unpowered, which surprised me. Lights came on in the next chamber. I saw that it was a bunker about half the size of the cavern above. Hannah sealed the stairwell door behind us and mentioned that we would ride the lift tube back up when we were finished. I spotted the lift tube access door nearby and wondered for a moment why we had taken the stairs.

More lights came on deeper in the bunker as we walked away from the access area. I saw pallets of supplies along one wall and a pair of industrial-looking medical crèche units along the other. The boxy units were connected to redundant DET power receivers and ESU-type storage units. One of the crèches was open and empty while the other was closed and still in operation.

“The open crèche is where I normally store this shell, John. My child-bearing mid-womb shell is currently stored in the active unit. I like to wear this shell for a month or two every few years just to keep familiar with moving around in it.”

Before I could ask why she led the way deeper into the bunker. We came to a small chamber constructed completely of metal. She pulled a chemical light from her pocket, snapped it on, and opened the hatch leading inside the chamber.

I saw that the door was ringed with copper or gold contacts and the walls, floor, and ceiling of the small room were fully metal lined. It was clearly a Faraday cage of some sort. She pointed and I entered. Before I could worry about being trapped she followed me in and closed the door behind us.

With the door closed the small chamber became as silent as a tomb. The air was also stuffy and I realized that there was no air circulation. We were sealed inside. Hanna tossed the chemical light onto the floor and took a seat on the floor near the hatch. Apparently, we were going to have our talk here in this isolated cell.

“Try and use your implant to reach your AIs,” she instructed.

“Ohmu?” I subvocalized. No answer. “Naomi?” Still nothing.

“I can’t reach anyone and I’m completely out of contact with any AIs. Why the extreme privacy measures?” I asked.

She looked up at me. I could see the emotion in her eyes.

“John! The global forum! Some of those stupid bastards are actually considering helping the Assemblage! Even more are unsure about what to do and want to study the issue. Study! What’s there to study?! We need to attack the enemy ark and we need to do it as soon as possible! What the hell are we going to do?”

I just stood there looking at her. This Hannah clearly still carried a great deal of hatred for the Assemblage. I knew that she had gone through hell when they had first attacked. I also knew that only this clone had had the full memories of that trauma restored after they had been removed from the original Hannah during her bio-suspension.

But that had happened nearly two centuries ago. She should have gotten over it somewhat by now. The woman in front of me was almost in a panic. I slid to the floor and sat beside her. I put one arm around her and pulled her close while my other hand found hers and gave it a squeeze.

“Hannah, before I tell you that everything will be alright, why are you so upset? I know you suffered greatly but the attack happened over eleven hundred years ago. I don’t mean to belittle what you went through but you’ve been awake for nearly two centuries. That’s a lot of time to learn to live with the trauma. Did something happen more recently?”

She shook her head. “I know it’s been a long, long time since the attack. There were side effects from having the memories of the trauma restored. They are now forever near the forefront of my thoughts. I can’t forget about them or let them fade away.”

She paused for a moment as if gathering her thoughts, “Understand, I don’t want to forget them completely, I want to remember. I need to remember so I can act when the time comes. But sometimes I would like to not have the memories consume me as much as they do.”

She leaned against me and took a deep breath, bowing her head, “Did you know that I have to use my augment almost every night just to not have nightmares? To this day I still need to do that simply to get a good night’s sleep. The AIs have offered to try new memory adjustments but I won’t let them.”

I had not been aware of that. The poor girl. No wonder she had always been twitchy at times. She went on, “That’s part of why I chose the profession of a mid-womb. Bringing new life into the world helps. It gives me something positive to focus on. It reminds me that we are fighting back and growing stronger and more numerous every day. It gave me purpose and hope.”

I felt the wetness of her tears on my shoulder. I reached up in the dim glow and brushed the hair from her face. I caressed her chin and guided her still-bowed face up and towards me.

“Hannah. I promise that humanity will never cooperate or join with the Assemblage. I will never allow it. You have my word.”

She stared into my soul trying to discern the truth of my statement. Finally, she relaxed.

“So, it’s true. You have full control over all the AIs in the system. I’d suspected it back when we lived together. More recently, I’ve heard new rumblings and discussions.”

I decided I owed Hannah the full truth. “Yes, I have full control over Naomi and that AI still is the overall authority over all the other AIs in the system, even any newly created intelligences,” I explained.

“And you promise to keep resisting the Assemblage?” she asked again.

“Yes. I’d already decided. I intend to see the Assemblage ark destroyed well before it reaches our solar system. I will ensure that this happens regardless of how humanity votes in the next global forum. Also, I won’t allow them to keep delaying a decision until it’s too late to act.”

“You would go against the will of the forum if they voted to not attack?” she asked.

“If it came to that, yes I would. I hope to ensure they vote the way I want though. Naomi will help me use the AIs to sway public opinion if we need to. Hell! Your surprise testimony at the global forum has already laid the groundwork for convincing everyone to vote the way we want already.”

I felt her relax. After a long moment of silence, she continued, “I knew I could count on you. Thank you, John. I’m so relieved.”

“Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if I wasn’t able to stop humanity from allying with the Assemblage?”

“Well, my first plan would have been to beg, borrow or steal my way into a spot on the crew of the Gambado before it leaves on its interstellar mission. I’d leave this system behind and help protect the new one we’d eventually colonize. Fuck these idiots left behind who chose to vote so stupidly!”

I chuckled.

She wasn’t finished. “If the plan to flee to Groombridge 1618 aboard Gambado had not happened, then I planned to use this bunker to fight back against the Assemblage when they eventually arrived. I’d wait out the enemy ark’s passage and then fight to restore human control to this world once the ark was too far away to do anything about it.”

I nodded as I could see her just doing that. I was impressed by her determination and resolve.

“Is that all you wanted to discuss?” I asked.

“That was the main reason. The second part is that I want to ask you a favor.”

She paused until I gestured for her to go ahead and ask.

“You wondered about my current shell. Well, this is my survival and combat shell. Over a century ago, as soon as I had saved enough Scut to be able to afford it, I had had it custom grown. I’ve kept it here in suspension ever since except for my periodic practice sessions. My plan was that when the Assemblage finally arrived, I’d need it to fight.

“I also have a few hundred frozen embryos stored down here. I planned to use my mid-womb shell to regrow humanity if it came about that I was the sole human survivor. There are enough supplies down here to hold out for decades if need be. It was sort of my plan of last resort.”

She paused again. I waited her out.

“I guess my favor is this. I won’t need that plan if we attack and destroy the ark first. What I want, if you can arrange it, is to use this shell to go along when we attack and destroy the Assemblage ark.”

I sat there stunned. This was no small request. I had no idea how or when we would be attacking the enemy ark or even if there would be a direct attack. Now this woman wanted me to promise that she could join in on it if it happened. I had to respect her determination.

“I’m not sure if I can arrange that Hannah.” I held up my hands to forestall her as she looked about to argue. “Look, I don’t have any idea yet how the attacks will happen. I don’t even know if the planning has even been started.”

She did not answer as she thought about what I said. “Why are you so determined to go along?” I finally asked.

“I want to see the Assemblage ark dead and destroyed with my own eyes, John! I want to know, beyond all doubt, that they are no longer a threat. And I want to know that no other worlds will be sterilized like the Earth nearly was.”

Her raw determination made me reconsider my own plans for the Assemblage. Sure, I hated what they had done to our world and I wanted to see their threat gone just like Hannah did. But I did not quite have the same visceral hatred to see the deed done for myself as she did. I hated them, but certainly not enough to plan direct vengeance.

I’d been too passive on that front. Hell, even my own son Alek had gone much further than I had so far. He’d stepped up to ‘man the post’, so to speak, with his work building, equipping, and launching the Vexatis. Although that mission was less of a direct attack and more of one of vengeance, (he’d sent modified versions of himself off towards Alpha Centauri to establish a military redoubt.) it was still far more proactive than anything I’d done.

I wondered for a moment if I came face-to-face with our enemy, would I still be willing to pull the trigger? It then dawned on me that my intended plan to proceed with the attack to destroy the Assemblage ark preemptively, regardless of what the rest of humanity decided, was just as cold-blooded as pulling the trigger.

I thought about it for a long time. Finally, I spoke. “I promise you that I will do my best to allow you to go.”

She didn’t thank me verbally but she did tighten our hug for a moment. Then, she stood and helped pull me to my feet. As we waited for the hatch’s dogs to unlatch, I noticed that there was a secondary metallic mesh lining the interior of the chamber. Hannah had taken no chances that our talk would be overheard by anything electronic.

—John, I have been unable to contact your implant for the past nine minutes. Are you ok?—

Speak of the devil. “I’m fine Ohmu.” I subvocalized back. “We are on our way back to the surface now.”

“Hannah, why did you not want our talk overheard by Ohmu or any other AI?” I asked as we walked towards the lift tube.

She looked at me with a bit of embarrassment. “I ... I don’t completely trust them, John. Even after all these years, I remember how the field base AI had messed with me when I had stumbled upon its base. When I had had my memories restored, I learned details about everything which it had done to me. Did you know I’d been pregnant when I had been placed in bio-suspension?”

She took my sudden surprised expression as a negative and went on.

“I had been carrying a two-month-old fetus. Its father had been the man who had killed my family and kept me as his rape slave in a hole in the ground for months after the first attack. After I had found shelter in the enemy base, the Agent AI had destroyed the fetus when it erased most of my memories. Its reasoning had been that the baby would have been born with defects and that it had wanted to spare me the additional burden and trauma.”

She stopped walking and turned to face me, taking my hands in hers.

“John, understand that I am not completely unhappy with what the machine did to me back then and I understand its logic. But it made those decisions based upon logic alone. My beliefs and wishes had nothing to do with it. Shit, it could have fixed any defects in the baby in my womb!”

She took a deep breath, trying to regain control. “They are machines and we are flawed humans ... I know this. They have now been programmed to obey and protect ... but ... but they are not human.” She stopped at that point and just shrugged, struggling to find the words to describe her feelings.

Eventually, she shook her head and we returned to walking to the lift. All I could think of was what had happened to me ten years ago in that cave in China. The day that Naomi had ignored my instructions to save the lives of two dying children instead of my own. I knew exactly what Hannah was feeling. She had learned the same lesson I had. In that way, we were kindred spirits.

That night we prepared and ate supper using Hannah’s outdoor kitchen and patio. The main course was baked freshly-caught trout. Hannah had instructed me to use the fishing gear stored in her garden shed to go catch something for supper. She had smiled when I had expressed my doubts that I could do so in the limited daylight remaining. I soon learned why. The slightly silty waters were absolutely teaming with hungry trout.

I was using a vibrating spinner because of the lack of water clarity and soon had caught two forty-centimeter fish: a Rainbow and a Brown trout. Their abundant numbers combined with the cloudy water made catching them easy, as I didn’t even have to hide from their view. After catching the second I immediately gutted them at the river’s edge and was soon back at the patio.

Hannah gave me the task of baking the fish, as she was busy preparing a late-season garden salad of diced onions with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. I was an old hand at cooking over an open fire and prepared the trout with butter, onions, lemon, and pepper. They were sealed in foil packets and tossed onto the spread-out coals to bake.

For dessert, I prepared campfire muffins. This was simply muffin batter placed into empty orange peels (I made a drizzle glaze with the orange juice). Ten minutes before dessert time all I had to do was place the foil-covered oranges onto the coals to bake. Once they were done I’d carefully open the peels and drizzle the glaze on top.

The meal was delicious and the setting of the outdoor patio lit by lanterns and a ring of torches was magical. We finished cleaning up the mess just as full darkness set in. I stoked up the cook pit fire with an armload’s worth of dry, split hardwood and soon had a roaring bonfire going which allowed us to turn off the electric lanterns. The firelight reflecting off the massive stone slabs all around us was an amazing scene.

Hannah dug out a jug of her homemade wine from the garden shed, where it had been aging, and we passed it back and forth. The sweet ambrosia packed a punch, and soon both of us were flushed and tipsy. She started to sing campfire songs and soon had me accompanying her. Soon we were dancing around and laughing as we sang. Our hundred-meter-tall shadows formed a moving backdrop, while the sounds echoing off the stone walls made a choir of our duet.

We tried to get Ohmu to join us but she refused. Later, after we had sung and danced ourselves nearly sober, the android did entertain us by reading ancient, pre-reset poetry. I quickly realized that her selections were all related to camping and the outdoors. The final verse was a simple four-line poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Teach me your mood, O patient stars indeed.

An hour before midnight we rode the lift back up to her spire-top lodge. Ohmu agreed to stay behind and douse the embers of the bonfire. Misty stayed with the android to oversee the work. We’d discussed camping in a tent down by the river but I’d chosen Hannah’s high loft after she had described the sunrises we could expect to see from that lofty perch. After we showered in her tiny bathroom (individually) we made our way up to her loft bed.

Ohmu and Misty had made it back up to the lodge by then and the dog was now lying at the foot of Hannah’s bed. I had to laugh when five minutes after commencing our foreplay, we were interrupted by the dog loudly humping his stuffed toy and growling.

“Is he jealous of me being here?” I whispered to Hannah.

“Probably. I’ll take care of it.” She then said more loudly, “Misty! Hump!”

I looked down to see the dog suddenly stiffen up and freeze. After a few seconds, it relaxed and slumped down, falling to sleep almost instantly.

“What did you do?” I asked Hannah.

Giggling at my worried look she said, “He lives here alone and never gets any relief for his male doggy urges, so I downloaded a compressed virtual routine into his augment. It runs at an accelerated twenty-to-one time ratio and is basically a simulated canine mating program. He’s just tuckered himself out after having simulated doggie sex with a hot virtual bitch.”

Huh. Imagine that. I wondered if I could find something like that to download into Ticklefin’s augment back at Heels. A half-hour later Hannah had tired me out and I joined the dog in satisfied slumber. The real thing was better than simulated any day.

I stayed with Hannah for a few more days. We hiked the old trail routes of the national park and saw some impressive natural wonders. Some of the narrow ravines were only a few meters wide yet had rock walls extending up each side over a hundred meters above our heads.

We also got wet a lot in the cold streams and creeks running through the bottoms of the formations as the footing was often slippery. Luckily, even though summer was almost gone, the days were still hot and the occasional dunking was a welcome relief.

One day we even took her hopper on a three-hour picnic, flying south the one hundred and forty kilometers to the Grand Canyon. I’d seen that natural wonder once before the reset and once after and it had been spectacular both times. Aside from a few new craters and rock falls, it looked much the same as before the attack.

In fact, the only real difference between the Grand Canyon of eleven hundred years ago and that of today was that there were now over two hundred isolation lodges visible, scattered along the canyon’s length. Being able to build a fully self-sufficient, modern dwelling practically anywhere, without the need for roads or utilities, had made it trivial for modern humans to construct their isolation lodges there.

I suspected the main reason why it was such a popular place now was that it had always been so famous and well photographed. After all, it was still one of the grandest canyon’s on the planet and it wasn’t like the lodges were built on top of each other.

The area was large enough that none of the isolation lodges had been constructed any closer than a dozen kilometers from each other. But, with the wide and grand vistas, one could almost always spot the glint of a man-made structure no matter where you viewed the canyon from. To each their own. I’ll stick with my solitary island.

The final day of my visit arrived. It was a Wednesday and I planned to have Hannah drop me off at the field base landing pad just after suppertime. I’d then take the electro-jet back to my island in the Indian Ocean and arrive at ten the next morning local time. As before, I planned to sleep during the flight with the aid of my implant and arrive fully rested.

It was mid-morning and we were down at the bottom of her spire enjoying the outdoors. Hannah was pulling up the finished tomato plants and amending the soil with manufactured compost. I was wading up and down the river fishing. I was using barbless hooks as I was just hassling the trout for the fun of it. We’d eaten trout twice while I was here and it would be a while before I craved them again.

Ohmu and Misty were playing on the banks while keeping near me in case I caught something interesting or slipped in the water. It wasn’t to save me (well Ohmu probably would have). No, it was that the dog thought it was hilarious whenever I slipped on a mossy rock and drenched myself.

I’d turned Misty’s translator back on earlier in the morning. After the first time I slipped and fell, I heard the translated dog speak, —Man fall!— “Bark, bark” —Hahahaha funny!—”Bark, bark, bark” —Clumsy man!—

I’d ended up laughing along with the dog as I sat there in the cold water. Ohmu had eventually wandered over to see if I had hurt myself. Misty was a riot! I’d have to consider getting myself a dog again. I wonder if Ohmu would be jealous.

I’d had another strike and was reeling in a decent-sized fish when my implant buzzed. It was an incoming message request from Uxe. I didn’t want to deal with a three-second-delayed communication while I was fishing so I sent a voice message back saying that I was busy and would call her back in five minutes. After releasing the trout, I hiked back to Hannah’s patio with Misty and Ohmu following me.

The dog went to check on his master working in the garden while Ohmu and I took a seat on the stone bench in the patio. I sent a message back to my former partner saying I was now available to talk. I predicted she was calling to say goodbye because she was finally relocating to Mars.

Instead of a full virtual call, Uxe answered via voice channel only. “John! I tried to reach you at your island. Are you traveling?”

“Yes, I’m visiting Hannah Vinnytsia at her isolation lodge in old Utah. I’ll be back on my island tomorrow. I take it that you are still at the Lunar L2 space station?”

The nearly ten second delay before her response confirmed it before her actual answer. “Yes. I’m going to be leaving for Mars soon and wanted to touch base with you before I left. Your trace shows you’re outside right now. If you are, send me your exact full-precision global coordinates.”

I found the section of my implant’s menu which tracked my physical location and forwarded my geographic coordinates to Uxe. What was she up to? Was she going to order me an airdrop of flowers or something?

After a quarter minute delay she responded, “Okay, I have the area in view on live satellite. Wow! That’s one deep ravine! The surrounding cliffs are blocking a direct view of your exact location. I see that Ohmu’s transponder shows near you but I can’t quite see her either. I will have the android send me a full three-dimensional scan of your immediate surroundings.”

A few moments later Ohmu stood up and slowly rotated in a circle, imaging our full surroundings. When she finished there was another short delay as the scans were transmitted up to the far side of the moon.

“Okay! That works. Both of you stay where you are and don’t move. I’ll contact you shortly,” she said before cutting the voice communication.

“What the hell!” I said out loud.

“What is it, John?” Hannah said from her garden. She had stopped pulling dying tomato plants and was watching me with concern.