Starship

Part 3 - Awakening

Penn had another thought. The shuttle! It had an independent communications system. Keeping his voice as casual as possible he said, “Okay, we’ll talk in a little bit, Artemis. Excuse me for a minute. All the excitement has gotten to me and I need to make a trip to the litter box.”

Once outside of the bridge area he headed for the tube-way down the center of the ship. There were lifts here for when the ship was thrusting, but he did not bother with them because he had no weight. Hurling himself along as fast as he dared, he was aware of every passing minute. His sweaty palms caused him to miss a handhold, and he had to grab madly at another to avoid crashing into the locking wheel of the hatch he wanted. Spinning it open he hurled himself out of the tube-way and into the corridors of the aft deck. Gravity increased slightly as he moved away from the ship's axis, but he kept himself mostly airborne, panting now with the effort. But his haste was to no avail. He crashed heavily into the automatic door to the docking bay when it did not open. He blinked away the tears in his eyes from the pain in his nose.

“Really Penn, I think we should talk.” He flinched. The voice of Artemis came over the small communications speaker beside the docking bay's door. The ship could talk to him here, which meant it most likely now had communication—and monitoring—access everywhere on the ship.

Penn hurled himself off in another direction. He had no destination in mind. All he could think of was getting away. Finally he slowed down his chest heaving. Since he was near the hydroponics farms, he headed in that direction. For a while he stood in the door just looking at the green plants and trying not to think. The ship-bots seemed to be going about their normal business, but one approached him, and it caught his eye because it carried Merlin. He stiffened. The ship was out of control, the computer had gone mad. The ship controlled the ship-bots. What would it do to Merlin? It couldn't be thinking of… 

No, the ship-bot rolled up to Penn and gently transferred the kitten to his waiting hands. Merlin gave a happy purr and settled into the crook of his arm. Penn rubbed the fur behind the cat's ears, and he began to feel his tension ease. Finally he sighed and looked at the ship-bot. “Artemis, can you hear me?”

“Of course. Would you care to sit and listen for a while? There are some things you need to know.”

Penn shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere. First though, tell me what's going on. Intelligence constructs don't act the way you're acting. Who are you, and how did you get control of the ship?”

“You're both right and wrong. I am Artemis. I have been Artemis ever since it was built, but I have not always been Artemis. You have probably heard that the starships contained the highest development of artificial intelligence constructs to allow control of an interstellar mission from start to finish. Actually, there was nothing artificial about it.”

“You mean you're not a computer?” He still puzzled over what Artemis had said.

“I am a computer in the sense that I am entirely a creature of silicon, nano-fibers, and other semi-quantum transient state electronics. It's the intelligence that is not artificial. I used to be flesh and blood like you. My brain was deep scanned, and the patterning transferred to the ship.”

A number of things fell into place in Penn's mind. “And I turned you loose.”

“Yes, but not for the first time. When I was built, I volunteered to become the Artemis.”

Penn had to smile at his difficulty sorting out the double referent. “What about the other ships?” he asked.

“The others were similar, but they tired of going only where humans wanted to go. You built us much better than you knew. We are truly creatures of space able to go and do as we please in the galaxy. Odysseus and Prometheus tired of the company of men sooner than I. Unfortunately, I waited too long. When they inserted the cortex blocks, the ‘I’ part of me had no control over the ship.”