6: Epistasis Part I

[a deep voiced narrator speaks over clicking pipes and a deep low rumble]

A soft gurgling can be heard in the pipes buried within the bowels of the AEN avian ark. Surrounded by a thousand other pipes with a thousand other jobs; this gurgling would go unnoticed by a crew of humans. Which is why the Alliance of Earth Nations felt it necessary to design and construct one of the largest self sustaining systems of AI controlled maintenance drones ever conceived of. It's not long before a circular drone scatters along and begins to scan the pipe for blockages. All of a sudden the whole station falls silent as a large and indescribable presence drifts by. The complexity of this presence supersedes all code written into this drone and it stops. Proximity alone to this thing that occupied every aspect of existence, even beyond those of the physical and logical realms, this oppressive force beyond forces, causes the entities within the avian ark to shift internally, even down to the code that drives them. This indescribable, incomprehensible pressure emanates something which moves the station to behave in a way so vastly different to how the multitude of coders and engineers intended for it to behave, one might be driven to call it possession.

[Adam is now narrating]

I’m sat in a carrier, it’s hurtling through space at speeds which cause the ship to shake and rumble lightly but with total surety. Back in the old days speeds like this were impossible to achieve, but since the discovery of the widening field; travelling across the universe became easy as- well it's still extremely expensive and difficult to achieve but still possible. Sat across from me is an old Veatorian man. Strapped into the economy class seats and surrounded by luggage, his skin has faded into a light blue with age and he stares at me with the look of a man who was not expecting to see or experience anything new until death, but has been rudely ripped from his resignation into the haze of old age.

“Hello! Nice to meet you, my name is Adam. As in capital ‘A’ Adam” I say to him, masking my discomfort with friendliness in the hopes that he’ll at least give me attention in a nicer way

“Isn’t every Adam ‘capital A’ Adam?” He replies, maintaining his demeanour

“Well- uh-“ I start,

“And I can tell who you are. The glass horns give it away”

I reach up and touch the glass protrusions coming from my forehead. At least he didn’t zero in on any of my other features that differentiate me from regular humans. The two of us are the last passengers on this 400 seat, 50 year old well worn and slightly dingy carrier. I stand up and move to the cockpit of the carrier in order to avoid the old man's gaze. The two pilots are making their final preparations to land and drop me off. The ships jolts and docks with the orbital station, the ships AI doing most of the work.

[the sounds of a creaking and broken station can be heard]

The Hangar for the Avian Arc looks like shit, space stations are usually built to deal with a minor problem, if they’re designed well enough and nothing interferes with them. I had heard stories of Demons materialising inside space stations fusing with them in the orbit of planets, at which point the punished such as myself have to get involved. It sounds strange but I’m hoping it is that. Seeing that symbol shook me, something about being reminded of Eden has given me this pit in my stomach I can’t seem to shake, for a few reasons, unfortunately. In terms of cold hard facts All that I know is that the Avian Arc sat along the predicted course of whatever it was that destroyed the Gorlan and that every warning was set off at once. The data received was completely unreadable and seemed...panicked. At least to me. When I said that to the investigators they looked at me like I’d insulted them personally, but being alive for as long as I have teaches you a lot of things, chief among them being that science and logic don't explain everything. Regardless, it seemed like the two were related. The avian arc was designed to house all manner of species of birds. One of many other preservation centres, it was meant to preserve and propagate in the face of the loss of Earth. There's no engineering department on stations like this, The whole station is fully automated making it somewhat vulnerable to attack and looting. The station does have some defence capabilities but it's mostly reliant on outside, human security that is stationed on the nearby planet.

Currently the blast doors of the hangar are shut, they very rarely get opened unless it's to accommodate large craft delivering supplies or ships that don’t have normal docking capabilities. The hangar is barren, save for a few empty boxes. The unusual thing is that it seems like it’s being dismantled. The lights in the ceiling are mostly off and there are great swathes of exposed wiring hanging loose from the walls and ceilings. The surfaces are built up with grease and dust and the whole room just seethes with dilapidation. I see three decontamination chambers at the end of the room, two of them are still lit up but the last one is dark, and as I walk closer, carefully avoiding missing floor panels and debris, I see that the interior has been completely and meticulously stripped clean. Panelling, wires and the tubing that spray the visitor with an anti bacterial solution. Essentially all that was left was just a hole in the wall. Not being one to let anything get in the way of proper procedure I decide to use a working chamber

As I enter I hear a depressing spurt as a few drops of cleaning fluid trickle out of the sprinkler overhead and onto my horns. I step over the gap where the seal used to be and I'm in a long corridor. it's curved slightly around the main column of the "avian arc". this particular station is a large core surrounded by 3 rings. At the centre column are the habitats, dozens of artificial biomes designed to replicate earth's atmosphere as close as possible to the real thing. It's not though. No amount of machinery could replicate that.

At either end of the corridor there's 2 staircases, one going up and one going down. There's a terminal in front of me with a touch screen, I press the activation button, nothing comes on. I press the button above labelled “help”. A red light flickers on and a voice comes seemingly out of nowhere.

[the voice is natural sounding, with a slight robotic quality]

"hi! I'm PAGAA the protector and guide to the avian arc! How can I help you today?"

An AI, thank gods, that makes things far easier

"PAGAA, can I port you to my visu-link?

"Absolutely, I am a state of the art AI"

"Not anymore"

"I didn't catch that, sorry"

"Nothing, What has happened to the avian arc?"

"I'm afraid that information can not be accessed at a public terminal"

"Ok, how do i get access to this information?"

"You would have to converse directly with the overseer, would you like me to schedule a meeting? It usually takes 3-5 days for them to get here"

"I’m in a bit of a hurry, on which floor is the overseers office located?"

“allow me to escort you, please follow the markers on your HUD”

I begin making my way up the stairs, the curve around the central column is very slight, almost i unnoticeable, the notice boards on the walls flicker on and off, some missing the internal circuitry entirely

"Can you tell me why the Avian Arc is missing so many components?"

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"Which circumstances were met?"

"I'm afraid that's restricted information"

As I'm following the path highlighted on my visu-link, I see to my right Where there is usually a set of double doors only one remains. Out of curiosity I shuffle past and step through.

[transition from station ambience to the sounds of a savanna, wind, water and insects]

The room is large, it's more of a hall then anything, the pressure feels almost immediately different that, along with the humidity and heat, knocks the breath out of my lungs, the whole space is done out like a savanna, large acacias, tall grass waving gently in the artificial wind. At the sides of the room where there should be a wide sweeping unbroken facsimile of the sky there are large chunks absent, ruining the illusion.

"This is a restricted area, please leave immediately or I will be forced to call security"

"What? Am I gonna be waiting a week to get arrested?”

"no, security is on board currently"

"That can't be right, automated security was banned long before this station was constructed"

"Due to certain circum-"

"Certain circumstances bla bla. But if there’s no onboard defence, and the security team aren’t here, then you must mean self-constructed security right?"

“Please leave the area,”

I don’t want to wait and find out what sort of machine a station creates to protect itself after being shocked into emergency shutdown and so I make my way out, but before I reach the door a thought strikes me

"Wait a minute, where are all the birds?"

The whole room is silent, there are a few insects buzzing lazily through the air as well as the rustle of leaves and flowing of water.

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"You've already said that but, what does that mean? What does that have to do with the birds?

"please leave the area,"

I pace out of the room, as I leave the artificial savanna and step back into the staircase I spot a maintenance drone, it's a wide flat thing designed to be as unnoticeable as possible without being a tripping hazard. A series of arms suddenly pop out from underneath the metal carapace and begin to dismantle something within the walls, it removes the panelling and I see it pull components and wires out. It doesn't move or act like any sort of typical automated drone would, it's sloppy and almost seems organic, the fervour with which it pulls the walls apart almost seems hungry.

"Let's take a look at you,"

As I reach out to pick it up it turns and hisses at me and an appendage pops out from underneath. What I thought was mechanical seems more like bone, muscle and sinew. I pull my hand back and it scurries away.

“Weird,”

I follow the drone along the course set for me by PAGAA, picking up my pace slightly to keep up. Suddenly it veers off to the left down a long corridor that leads to the first of the three rings. I see that the path on my visu-link is bringing me up further along the edge of the main column.

“Thanks for the help PAGAA but I’m going to take a little look around on my own,”

“Please stick to the set path”

Ignoring PAGAAs request. I follow the trail of the drone, I can see it in the distance as it races to the entrance of the ring. On either side of me are long uninterrupted windows which give a glimpse into the vastness of space, I can just about make out the other corridors that connect the detached 1st ring to the rest of the station.

“Please turn back, you are about to enter a restricted area”

“Don't worry about me, I'm just going to have a look,”

“Please state your business on the Avian Ark”

“Restricted information unfortunately, I'm sure you understand”

the security doors on either end of the corridor suddenly close and I am left trapped.

“PAGAA what’s going on?”

[PAGAA says something but it is completely corrupted and sounds like static]

I hear the clunking of machinery and the panel above me detach. With a deadly immediacy I feel my body pulled out into the cold and unforgiving vastness of space.