Quest for the Conestoga (Colony Ship Conestoga Book 1) Page 4

  Jerome began walking down the corridor heading for the cafetorium. He debated whether he should wait for Cammarry to awaken before he requisitioned his food and water ration for the morning, but rejected doing that. He wanted to return to his secluded spot in the upper levels where he could work to reestablish the monitoring system and watch for the approach of the missing adventurer team. He knew not every team returned, but he hoped this one would.

  There were only a few people in the cafetorium, none of them his fellow adventurers. He nodded to Henry, who was a sanitation specialist and one of the gamma shift team leaders, but did not join him at that table. He did not know personally anyone else there. The gamma shift people were better known among their own community. Jerome did not even know all the alpha shift people by name, even though he was among the alpha shift.

  The cafetorium was one of the largest rooms within Dome 17. The tables were arranged in such a way as to allow people to sit individually or in groups. Only about one-tenth of the seating potential was utilized. Most chairs still faced the side walls where a person could actually see out of Dome 17. The strongest material ever invented, permalloy, had been made transparent while it was still liquefied, and then spun into windows. Only a few places had transparent permalloy installed in the exterior walls. The transparent permalloy was every bit as rugged and tough as was the solid looking version, however, few places in Dome 17 had installed those type of windows. The cafetorium was the primary exception to that design guideline.

  Outside the dome, the dull tan dust blew and blew. It looked no different from here that it did from Jerome’s illicit monitoring spot. Seen directly, or by viewing technology, the tan and dusty world was just an endless reminder of the lost ecosystems and biosphere that had once been humanity’s cradle of incubation.

  It was tan and lifeless. Except for the transgressions into that toxic mess by the adventurers, nothing much ever changed in that tan swirling wasteland outside. Around the windows, the opaque walls of the cafetorium were the same color as most everything else that was vertical, a dull white that had tan shading.

  Jerome was able to get his ration bar and water allowance without waiting in line. He sat at an empty table and contemplatively consumed the nearly tasteless ration bar and drank the water. He was mulling over the bit of disappointment he felt in that there were few new books found by the previous team. His hopes had climbed a bit and now were sliding back to their typical place.

  He finished the ration bar and water, then departed. He began his usual morning walk which would cover about 5 kilometers. Faraday interrupted him. “There has been an energy spike in the decontamination chambers. I surmise the team has returned.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jerome walked on. The route he took was almost always identical, as he liked the routine as it cleared his mine as he walked.

  After about an hour of walking, while he was passing part of the engineering section, another adventurer came rushing up to him.

  “Can you believe that Karen is dead!” Ian asked.

  Jerome was shocked.

  “You did not know?” Ian’s brown colored face was deeply saddened and his eyes were brimming with tears. His usual happy grin was gone. His thin lips trembled a bit as he continued to report. “Paul and Jamie just finished decontamination. Someone broke protocol and broadcast openly that Karen died.”

  “Do we know any details? Has the mission briefing been filed?” Jerome asked.

  “I did not hear any other details just the fact that Karen died. I thought you already heard because of the fact that Cammarry usually is one of the first to hear these kind of things. I’m sure the details will get out soon enough,” Ian said with a resolve. “At least with this mission we may know why one of us was killed. It is always much worse when no one comes back at all.”

  “On that you are absolutely correct.” Jerome squeezed the shoulder of his fellow adventurer Ian. They then parted ways as Jerome continued on his ambulation schedule. He knew Cammarry would find out about Karen right away. He did not trouble himself by wondering why he had not heard before Ian. By the time he finished his exercise regimen and got back to the apartment Cammarry would know all the details. Cammarry’s network of associates may have brought the news to her already.

  Some time passed and Jerome pondered what had happened. He briskly walked around the well-lit, sterile, and tan tinted corridors of Dome 17. He knew every corner, turn, slant, and doorway and their familiarity allowed him to move into less frequented, yet still approved areas. The accustomed sights allowed him to ponder what had happened with Karen. She was not the first adventurer to die on a mission, and he doubted she would be the last. He knew no details, yet he felt angst about her death. The hallways were quiet and still as he walked. The other residents of Dome 17 were otherwise occupied.

  Breaking that quiet Cammarry burst into sight. The look on her face told him that she already knew about Karen’s death. In fact, she had far more information now than Ian had had. They met in the once quiet hallway.

  “I figured your AI might guide you to me,” Jerome said as they met.

  “Yes, my Winchell led me here. I am just shocked about Karen,” Cammarry said as she reached out and held Jerome. “How many adventurers have we lost now?”

  “Far too many.” Jerome wrapped his arms about her. “It seems like…”

  Jerome was interrupted by a disembodied mechanical voice. “I can give you a detailed accounting of all the adventurers who are officially listed as killed or missing, starting with Karen as the most recent.” Winchell’s mechanical voice was unique and different in many ways from the AI Faraday. “Shall I list them chronologically or alphabetically?”

  “Neither Winchell. Store the information for now. Analyze it for patterns, similarities, or other commonalities which might help us know what happened,” Cammarry instructed. “Share it with any other adventurer who requests it.”

  “That will be done,” Winchell stated.

  “Jerome, with those data stick recordings… well… we need to be alone to talk,” Cammarry said in a hushed tone.

  “What? You have heard more?” He recognized an undercurrent in her voice.

  Cammarry was shaken, but nodded. She placed her fingers over Jerome’s lips. “Do not speak of it. Take me to your special place.”

  Jerome, wondered what she had learned, so he led Cammarry back to the place where they could enter the maintenance shaft. Climbing back to the upper level, Jerome felt uncomfortable, but knew from Cammarry’s expressions that they needed to get to somewhere which was out of the public’s eye.

  “Cammarry I must inform you that you are entering a restricted area. Trespassing is not permitted here,” Winchell her AI stated.

  “I know, but we need to be here. I accept full responsibility,” Cammarry said.

  They stopped near the illegal monitoring equipment he had installed previously. “So what have you heard?”

  “Not what I have heard, what we have seen,” Cammarry said.

  “Please do not make me dig the answers out of you. Usually you are very free in telling your stories, this must be very serious.”

  “Those data stick records. That recording we all got!”

  Jerome’s face told her he had no idea what she meant.

  “Jerome, you have not seen it?” Cammarry’s small eyes grew wide in surprise. “I thought you knew. I can hardly speak about it. Winchell? Please rerun the visual recording about Dome 3 that I recently received.” Cammarry’s voice quivered a bit as she issued the command.

  The mechanical voice of Winchell replied, “Here is the information requested.”

  A three-dimensional presentation appeared in the maintenance shaft. Cammarry and Jerome watched. They saw Jamie, Karen, and Paul as they arrived to investigate Dome 3. Then there were three separate channels, each from the point of view of the different adventurers.

  Jerome’s eyes widened as he observed what happened. “This is an official reco
rding? Sorry. Forgive me for doubting. Of course this is genuine. Cammarry, you would not show it to me, if it were not true. This is horrific. I am appalled.”

  “It appears that all the adventurers received this recording. Faraday should have told you about it.” Cammarry wiped her eyes. “Poor Karen.”

  “Faraday? Did you receive this recording?” Jerome was puzzled.

  The artificial intelligence system Faraday was slower to respond than Jerome expected. When it finally did reply it stated, “I did not receive that recording. There are newly placed blockages in part of my processing system. I am inhibited from receiving any information which does not come through the artificial intelligence system named Artificial Intelligence.”

  “Committee member Jubal’s AI?” Cammarry asked.

  “That is correct. I am under chastisement,” the AI Faraday replied. “The unauthorized and illicit monitoring system you established at this location was discovered. I am being held partially responsible for that.”

  “My personal AI is hobbled and handcuffed, and the Committee does not even tell me about it. I assume none in the monitoring equipment here will function.”

  Cammarry placed a hand on Jerome’s shoulder. “You do not know that it was the entire committee. It could just be Jubal. Since your AI Faraday was not deactivated, decommissioned, or reassigned, I believe the action is from only one of the Committee members. Winchell? Run a conjecture on the blockages and restrictions which were placed on Faraday.”

  “Unable to comply. Sorry. There is a security boundary established around Faraday. I am unable to assess anything beyond the security boundary.”

  Cammarry hugged Jerome. “We should return to authorize areas. We also need to discuss that recording from Dome 3, gruesome as it is, and find out how much trouble you are in.”

  “Agreed. Something strange has happened. It looks like Jubal is exercising his power, and hindering my activities by restricting Faraday, however, that visual recording from Dome 3 should only have been shared at an official meeting. Especially in light of the death of Karen. Distributing it covertly to the AIs is bizarre. Why do that? It does not seem to have been authorized by the Committee for distribution. So something is amiss.”

  “Why indeed? I also need to speak to Jamie and Paul. After what they went through, they need our friendship.” Cammarry took Jerome by the hand and together they went back to the maintenance shaft and down to the authorized areas of Dome 17.

  They stepped from the small closet where the concealed entrance was located. No one was in the hallway. Jerome turned to Cammarry and said, “My AI has been compromised. I know it was due to my going into restricted areas, but it galls me that my personal AI would be altered without my notification. I am going to bring this up with Committee member Jubal. It is his artificial intelligence system which is now screening everything going to Faraday.”

  “Jerome? With Karen’s death I believe there are more important things to be discussing with the Committee rather than your excursions into unauthorized parts of the dome. Perhaps you can just wait until the more important matters are settled?”

  “You might be right, but I am angry. Cammarry, I was cut out of receiving those recordings. It is almost as if I have been excised from being an adventurer. Jubal is compromising my AI, and that compromises my ability to be an adventurer. I cannot change Karen’s death, but I can confront Jubal about my AI, and his behavior.”

  “Jerome? When we go on missions our personal AIs do not come along,” Cammarry replied. “I understand you are upset; I am upset too. However, even if the Committee took Winchell away from me I would not be as upset as you are now about Faraday. Honestly, your anger seems misplaced. I am far more troubled that Karen died. And consider the horrors of what was happening in Dome 3. Those things bother me greatly.”

  Jerome did not reply. He and Cammarry seldom argued and so he pondered what she had said while he looked into her beautiful eyes.

  “Jerome I can see this is very important to you. I could be wrong, but I am going to look for Paul and Jamie to see if there is anything I can do to help them. If you need to go see Jubal, I accept that, even if it is not the choice I would make. I do agree something unusual is happening. What with Jubal restricting your AI Faraday, and that ghastly recording coming out in the manner it did. I would have expected a major briefing with all the adventurers gathered where we all saw that information together at the same time. Instead we all, except for you apparently, got it individually. That is sneaky and strange and not at all within the established protocol. What has the Committee been doing?”

  “Two selected, one elected,” Jerome replied quoting an idiom about the leadership on the Committee. “I think I know where Jubal stands, but was it Lorna or Murial who distributed the information about the Dome 3 mission and the manner in which it came out?”

  “I want to ask Jamie and Paul about that as well. It looks like the recording was distributed while they were both still in the decontamination process. So neither of them did it. Unless somehow they were able to do it from the decontamination chambers?” Cammarry rubbed her nose a bit and pursed her lips. “Both of them were traumatized severely. Jamie is headstrong, and Paul is moody, but…… Winchell? Is it possible for someone going through decontamination to send information from a data stick and distribute it to all the adventurers?”

  Cammarry’s AI replied. “No. That is not possible. Under the current configuration the decontamination chambers only allow for one access point for the information from a data stick to be transferred into the Dome 17 systems and that is via nonphysical contacts. The data stick itself is incinerated after the information is transferred, and that data stick never actually enters Dome 17 areas, as the transfer point is on the rim of the decontamination system. Therefore, no person within the decontamination chambers can alter that procedure. The information from the data stick is directly rendered into the filtering and analysis system which is overseen by the Committee. There is no other known way to transmit a message during decontamination.”

  “What about before? Could a signal of some kind have come from outside and carried that recording?” Cammarry pressed.

  “Not by any known system,” Winchell replied. “What you suggest is theoretically possible, but I have no indications any system like that is operational at this time.”

  “Thank you Winchell. That is what I thought.” Cammarry kissed Jerome on the cheek. “I am going to find Jamie and Paul. If you need my help with Jubal or any other Committee member I will be there for you, but first I seek them out to help. What a thing to experience!”

  Jerome nodded as Cammarry walked away. He was angered, frustrated, confused, and somewhat annoyed by the whole situation. He cared deeply about what happened to Karen, and her death troubled him. He also had concerns about how Jamie and Paul would respond to that death. However, the alteration of his personal artificial intelligence system, Faraday, was even more of a concern. It was a personal affront he could not ignore. He set his mind on confronting Jubal immediately.

  Marching through the hallways Jerome made his way to the living quarters of Jubal. The Committee members had apartments which were basically no different from anyone else in Dome 17. Approaching the door to that apartment, Jerome anticipated being questioned by Jubal’s artificial intelligence system. Before it could initiate conversation Jerome stated, “I wish to speak did Jubal immediately.”

  A light by the side of the door lit up and the mechanical voice responded. “This is Artificial Intelligence; I will relay your request.”

  On any other occasion Jerome may have chuckled at the fact that Jubal’s personal AI had given itself the formal name Artificial Intelligence, however Jerome was in no mood for any type of mirth. “Tell Jubal I know what he has done about my personal AI.”

  The door opened and Jubal stepped into the hallway. Jubal’s dark face was severe and his nearly black eyes glared at Jerome. “Yes, I chastised your AI Faraday. Now is not the time t
o discuss this. There are much more important issues of real substance. The adventurer team that went to Dome 3 has returned, as you are aware.”

  Jerome interrupted him. The words carrying his lie sprang forth before he consciously thought of them. “Dome 3? I have no idea what you are talking about. You shut down my monitors, and made me technologically blind. Faraday has been shackled by you and I want to know why.”

  The lines on Jubal’s face softened as he heard the words. “Artificial Intelligence? Did Faraday receive the recent unauthorized transmission about Dome 3?”

  “No. I did not allow that message to proceed to Faraday. The restrictions you desired be placed on the AI Faraday restrict all messages.”