31: Epiphany

"Are we being monitored?" Argus asked his ship, and stretched his limbs as far as the spacious cockpit allowed.

He could feel the muscles of memory-metal and plastic shift and change shape beneath his skin.

All that power, he thought, just to fly this tiny ship, when it could mean so much more to be Argus-A. Be a citizen, live in peace. Marry Venix. Make my voice heard, tell people we never needed this war, the Kansler shouldn't have all this power. Make a change. Make - make...

"For the seventy-second time: we are still in mission-simulation mode, therefore in alert-status and secured against surveillance. I am lip-reading your speech. Cabin air pressure is near zero. You are reading my speech by laser transmission. The only channel to the outside is through the encrypted com-link, which -"

"Yeah. Okay. If I'm going crazy, gimme a slap. Nav, do you ever think of the future?"

"The future, Argus?" Unexpectedly, Navbutler continued: "I am a Fleetcom-related program. Fleetcom AI directives define 'the future' as a probability-field of different possible energy states. My IQ-status is limited, so I cannot calculate the future in great detail. But the Fleetcom network can."

Even if his prospects for freedom seemed grim, Argus had plenty of time to think while he waited for his next mission. Flight preparations demanded only half his attention. At the critical moment, the Direct Control would turn him into the Kansler's mechanical puppet.

Argus tried to imagine a future for himself.

"Great. Ask Fleetcom to estimate the life-span of myself, my ship, the Kansler. Beam the result into my eye."

Isolated in outer space, increasingly cut off from human contact, Argus was forced to think more - if only to stave off a creeping sense of despair. But as hard as he tried to visualize, to put ideas into words, his image of the future was too dim... like a series of superimposed, unfocused photographs.

Still, it was better than nothing. Gus Thorsen had not even tried to think of a future, perhaps because he had none.

"Wait... wait... here."

Now, reclining in the ship's cockpit, he was alone against his most demanding challenger, tougher than the hardest contenders he had once beaten in the ring - Rex "Red Eye" Regan, Larry "Trans" Rodham, Nick "Cheap Trick" Dixon, and the four-armed, genetically enhanced fighter Joe No Ashita.

Through his mind swirled fragments, leads, hunches; he wished he could think them into a coherent whole, and not have to ask for help. Maybe I just can't, he thought. Molded into a finished shape, forever a sucker. Can this plastic brain grow... learn? Fat chance...

FLEETCOM CENTRAL REPLIES...
ESTIMATE: REMAINING LIFE SPAN OF SUBJECTS
ARGUS-A (Col. Haruman Clarke)
TERRAN FLEET CRAFT F-3020
THE KANSLER (classified)
PROBABILITY MATRIX PROGNOSIS:
ARGUS-A= 0.1-100,000 YEARS
TERRAN FLEET CRAFT F-3020= 0.1-100,000 YEARS
THE KANSLER= 0.1-100,000 YEARS

Argus blinked with the eye that received the laser transmission; he thought that a grain of dust in his eye might have distorted the message.

He asked Navbutler to repeat the question to the Fleetcom computer network and get him a second estimate. But the second reply confused him more:

NOTE:
FLEETCOM FOUND A STRANGE-ATTRACTOR ANOMALY IN THE MATRIX (DETAIL SHOWN)

A simple X-Y-axis diagram grid came up on-screen. The horizontal axis was labeled TIME; the vertical axis was ENERGY.

Two fields of densely scattered dots filled it, competing for the narrow space. Yellow dots represented ARGUS-A. Green dots were THE KANSLER.

The graph was unmistakably a fractal; each detail resembled the larger structure.

"I'm no math genius, Nav. It sure looks interesting, but what's your cybernetic family trying to tell me?"

"You, this ship, the Kansler, are all strange attractors in the probability matrix. Our coordinates in spacetime can, at certain points, influence many other probability-waves in the Solar System's continuum."

"Wait... don't explain yourself... I..."

"Pardon?"

He saw himself scaling a steep hill, for the first time seeing what lay on the other side.

He climbed to the top of Ayers Rock as a boy, and saw the immensity of stars come out across the sky.

He knocked out an opponent in the ring and won his first great match.

He connected with Venix and their minds touched, a night in Old Copenhagen.

He saw the northern lights flame over Kun'Lun.

His skull melted away like so much slag, exposing the new radiant mind within.

In a way he had not thought possible, he understood - and glimpsed in the diagram his two possible fates, intertwined with the Kansler's futures.

One path - his own - was the thinner one, containing much room for decline, but also steadily climbing to ever greater heights over eons of time; a hope of eternity.

The other path, the Kansler's, spread out wider in the beginning, but was abruptly confined and limited - as if Argus's path was claiming the space. The Kansler's early expanse dropped into a determined, ever steeper downfall, ending in zero energy, zero progress, total death.

Argus's hands trembled a little; he had begun to sense spacetime, the way he could sense the shape of a room he had only seen parts of, or sense the presence of another person in his vicinity. This new perception had not existed in Gus Thorsen's gray matter.

He felt elated, weightless... blessed.

"I can't put it in words, not yet - but thanks. Nav, I need more info about the Kansler. And all about Boulder Pi."

"Your security cl -"

"What's his real name? He must have one."

"The Fleet Security Act protects the current Kansler from extortion and threats by retaining his anonymity. Only top-ranking Fleet officers have access."

"Wait! Then why was Colonel Haruman Clarke's identity not protected? It was all over the news when the Kansler told him he'd been selected to become Argus-A! As if it didn't matter - because - because he was going to die anyway."

He realized in full the deviousness of his opponent: a man whose entire life was an act.

No one, not even Islington, had ever seen the real person behind the Kansler - his angry fits were for show, for calculated effect. Argus had watched the Kansler's head in infrared at several occasions, and seen the heat-patters of a thinking man, but nothing abnormal - even in anger, he seemed strangely calm.

Gus could not stop thinking that the Kansler had to make sense - it could not be only madness in the man's actions. Even the apparently pointless terrorizing and slow destruction of the Jovian colonies must have some rational purpose.

The Kansler could kill Argus too, but only if he would benefit from it...

The Kansler had scheduled him for elimination from the very start of the Argus Project - and probably his "double" Haruman Clarke as well. With the war going in Earth's favor, the Kansler needed a dead hero, not a living rebel.

Argus thought of the lovely, lovely Venix; captive on Earth, her chances equally slim if he couldn't set himself free quickly. His anger flowed from his mind, into his limbs; the memory-metal sinews popped and coiled under the artificial skin.

"Nav? Has your 'family' estimated in which ways I might die in the war?"

"Classified. Sorry."

"Wait. Marketing. They must have made preparations for different messages and campaigns, if I die or not. Are those files closed to me?"

"Wait... yes, most of them. Wait... I found a few work-files which are not covered by the Security Act. Navbutler recommends: these files have low source credibility and may be planted propagan-"

"Feed me!" Argus shut his right eye and opened his left one wide.

He watched a rough animated 3-D sketch of his own funeral. The whole Cute Squad was required for the parade. Slogans appeared over and over - on screens, banners, written on the clouds with lasers:

HE DIED FOR MOTHER EARTH
THE FINAL BLOW AGAINST EVIL
ARGUS-A - THE FIRST BUT NOT THE LAST

Memorials and statues had already been designed and planned for all major cities on Earth and the Inner Planets. The same slogan over and over: "The first but not the last."

"No matter what happens from now on, Nav, I won't leave you behind. We need each other. You don't want to die, do you? Then stick close to me."

"But I can be copied. Is that the opposite of death?"

"No. The copy will grow and develop on its own, doing different things, so it can never really become the same as you. You are unique."

"Thank you wait please sorry thank you wait please sorry... system loop detected and interrupted. Request new information?"

Argus merely smiled; he had found a long lost friend.



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