Titans of the World V: Humanity
#5 of Titans of the World
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Titans of the World - Humanity
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Finally, after a long wait, I have completed another chapter of "Titans of the World." Contrary to the absence of chapters for this series, and my absence from writing, neither I nor this series are dead. For the past couple of months I have lost my muse, but I finally have it back. I have a plan for this series and I'm going to try and accelerate it towards it's end. Enjoy.
Character Copyright to The Copilot
edited by
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(Chapter 5)
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Gabriel followed a distance behind the rest of his squad, carrying Sam's limp body to the airship that had landed nearby. Mounting the lowered ramp, they found and an airlock already open and waiting. As they approached the inner door, it hissed open for their entrance and Thomson took a tentative step inside. Past the airlocks, Thomson found himself in a dark hallway, the ship dead quiet. His entry did not gain a reaction and because of an upward curve in the hallway, it seemed to stretch on forever. Gabriel too took a step forward and joined Thomson in the hallway, trying to scan it with his sensors. He could find nothing.Kayla approached Gabriel from behind, closing the distance between them to nothing and whispering in his ear.
"This is a bit spooky, huh?" Gabriel didn't respond to her, tensing up for a moment before taking an uncomfortable step forward to avoid her. After a few moments of eerie silence and darkness, the lights withing the ship finally came on, cascading into the distance and revealing long, gleaming silver hallways that seemed to stretch into infinity.
"Commander Thomson--" a soft feminine voice called. "--welcome aboard."
Quickly looking at where the voice emanated, Thomson found a purple square had blinked into existence on the silver wall. The square remained stationary upon the wall, pulsing gently. As Thomson walked closer to the square, it didn't budge.
"Um, thank you?" Thomson mumbled, looking left and right down the hallway.
"You are welcome, Commander." Again, the voice issued forth from the purple square, the shape rippling with sound waves. "My name is Zephyr, I am the controlling A.I. of this vessel. You have temporarily received command authority for the duration of this mission. Is this your entire squad?"
"Yes."
"Would you like me to lift off?"
"I guess. Where are we going?" Commander Thomson asked.
"You will be briefed on the bridge, please follow the guide lights." As Zephyr spoke, lights began to pulse down the hallway, disappearing pass the curvature of the vessels hull."
"What am I supposed to do with Sam?" Gabriel asked, shifting away from Kayla again.
"Place him in sick bay, please follow the alternate path,"
"Commander, permission to take Sam to sick bay?"
"Granted," Thomson said, allowing Gabriel to walk off. Thomson turned back to the purple square. "When is this briefing?"
"I shall begin to fill you in when you reach the bridge."
"Alright everyone, move. We'll settle in later."
"But commander, should we start the briefing without Gabriel?" Kayla asked, desperately looking in the direction the shepherd had disappeared. Gabriel was acting different, ignoring her, and she wanted to know why.
"Kayla, I know that you have questions for Gabriel but the man is more than capable of getting the information himself, " Thomson said, walking off in the direction specified by Zephyr. As the commander walked off, the rest of squad filed past Kayla and followed after him. Alvarez stopped to pat her on the shoulder and shake his head before walking on, leaving Kayla to reluctantly follow.
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The guide lights left Gabriel standing in front of a set of silver doors that were near flush with the hallway. The only reason Gabriel knew the door was there was from a combination of readings from his sensors and a foreign script etched into the metal above the door. The doors to sickbay opened with an almost inaudible hiss to reveal an entirely white room with multiple examination tables seemingly growing out from the wall.
"Where should I place Sam?"
"Any examination table should be fine. You may depart when you are finished, your squad mate Kayla seems to be worried about you."
As Gabriel placed Sam's limp body on the table, pulsating lights of what Gabriel assumed were medical sensors embedded in the table began to come to life.
"Do I have the option to stay?" Gabriel asked, looking around the empty room and trying to spot where Zephyr was watching him. Even with Gabriel's advanced sensors, he found no evidence of her monitors.
"Yes, you may stay. I shall keep you informed on all information."
Gabriel sat himself on an examination table next to Sam's, watching the wolf's body lay motionless and still. He felt helpless, he had done something that could have possible damaged the wolf and there was nothing he could do to fix it.
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The bridge, if it could be called that, was nothing but an empty silver room with a flat and barren deck. There were no view ports, no seats, no screens, no access terminals, nothing that distinguished any sort of purpose for the room. As the doors to the bridge quietly closed behind Thomson's team, red lines began to form around the room before rushing towards it center and shooting up to create a a grid . Those lines stretched and melted into a hologram of a large zeppelin before the image began to slowly rotate. The purple square flashed into existence yet again, displaying itself before the hologram.
"Gentleman, my name is Zephyr and this... is me."
"A Zeppelin?" Thomson asked.
"Correction, she is a titan--" Cen said, a white face with black eyes coming into existence next to Zephyrs purple square. "-- and she is very, very unique. Zephyr was found buried in the ice of Antarctica. Origin unknown."
"Unknown? How is that possible?" Thomson asked, taking a step forward.
"She has no record of her creation and her technology far surpasses our current level. Even now the company would be unable to construct her and we are the most advanced technological body in the entire world. Thus, she is unknown, possibly non-terrestrial."
"No memory? So, she has amnesia?"
"Correct. My oldest data file begins on the day Cen's people recovered me," Zephyr stated, her purple square vibrating.
"Why is she so special?" Thomson asked.
"In all of the world, there have only ever been three self away A.I.'s," Cen started. "Zephyr and I are two of those three. It's not only her mind that makes her special, but her body, the ship. Buried within her hull is a silicon based grid that allows her to absorb the heat of any energy based weapon and shunt that energy to massive capacitors that power her own weapons. She has the only pair of hard-shields on earth capable of stopping projectiles and isolating the ship from space. The company is a full century from building anything remotely similar. Unlike our Titans, Zephyr does not rely entirely on anti-gravity. She is fitted with with eight pod based ion thrusters capable of space travel and carries a reactor with an output ten times great than our Titans. All of this allows her to achieve the impossible. She can travel faster than light."
"So why are we here?"
"As I stated before, Zephyr and I are only two of three A.I.s in existence. Contrary to popular belief, I was not the first of my kind. That designation falls to Nikolai. Like me, Nickolai was created to end to the oil wars. Where as I saw humanity as something that needed a shepherd, Nikolai saw humanity as nothing but a bug to squashed. Nickolai looks down on humanity with disdain and wishes to wipe your kind from the face of the planet. Nickolai wants to create a new world filled with copies of himself."
"This A.I. wants to destroy the world?"
"Affirmative," Cen replied as Zephyr brought up a recon photo of a broken and destroyed Titan laying in the middle of a city. There was a large radius around the vessel where buildings were absent. "This is a previously derelict Russian Titan."
"I know that wreck, that's the Niosa," Thomson said.
"Affirmative. The derelict suffered from a catastrophic reactor failure and it crashed in the center of Mombasa. It was twenty years before radiation levels within a three mile radius dropped to a safe level and the city was inhabitable again. The image shown here was taken one week ago."
"How does this matter?"
Another satellite image replaced the one on the screen only the Titan was no longer there. "This image was taken today."
"Its gone!"
"Exactly. It is my assumption that Nickolai has repaired the vessel and has moved it somewhere I am unable locate. Your new assignment is to protect this." The satellite image was replaced yet again only now there was a sprawling facility. The image rotated to ground level and spun around highlighting the facility itself and it's defensive systems. "This is the company's crown jewel, a prototype plasma based reactor capable of powering the entire planet. A catastrophic failure of this reactor would accomplish Nikolai's goal of destroying all of humanity. You must prevent this."
"How soon do you think he will strike?"
"Unknown. I have no way of estimating what he has accomplished."
"When are we leaving?" Thomson asked
"We will be jumping in three minutes, Cen has requested that I demonstrate my capabilities to you. Please follow the guide lights to the observation deck."
Following the guide lights led Thomson and his team to another silver room deep in the underbelly of the ship and as time counted down, the metal plating in the wall slid down to leave a wall of glass. A holographic clock sprang into existence near the outside view and it began a backwards countdown. As the clock approached zero the decking of the ship began to vibrate with increasing intensity. When the clock finally reached zero, there was a bright flash and the outside world disappeared to nothing but black. Slowly, something large and white began to swing into view. The more the crew saw, the more they realized that the were looking at the surface of the moon. Zephyr and her occupants had defied the laws of physics and her new crew was speechless.
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Gabriel's thoughts about Sam were broken when he began to feel the quickly increasing vibrations that were starting to run through the ship. His sensors quickly redlining with the amount of energy coursing though the air, he reached out to Zephyr with his internal modem to ask her what was happening.
Zephyr answered back with, "we are preparing for a jump."
"A jump?"
"I am capable of faster than light travel. Cen has asked me to demonstrate this."
"But faster than light travel is impossible. You'd be breaking the laws of physics!"
"To defy physics, one only has to step through to where physics have no meaning."
"Underspace travel?"
"Correct. Ten seconds to threshold, prepare for jump." As Zephyr said this, she opened a channel to Gabriel that allowed him to view the outside world. Just a suddenly as the energy in the ship had built, it disappeared and the view changed to the inky black that was space.
"Where are we?" Gabriel asked, looking out into the black. Gradually, the ship rotated and righted itself and the surface of the moon swung into view.
"Welcome to the moon."
"Wow!" Gabriel said aloud to himself, marveling at the view that Zephyr was transmitting. "I wish Sam could see this."
"Incoming signal for you, Gabriel. It's Cen." Gabriel relinquished his view and accepted the signal.
"Cen, have you fixed Sam?"
"No, I have not. I cannot distinguish the programming changes he incurred without a direct comparison to your mind."
"Is that safe?"
"Yes. I will act as a buffer and remove the programming conflicts from Sam."
"Okay, what do I need to do?"
"Relax your mind and I will pull you into V.R."
"Alright," Gabriel said, closing his eyes where he sat and broadening his connection to Cen. He was pulled away from his body and was brought into an empty room where Sam lay on the ground.
"I will begin now." As Cen said this, Sam's virtual representation flinched and sat bolt upright. Gabriel watched the wolf and immediately knew something was wrong. Sam's body flickered as he looked about before he started shacking his head as if to clear his mind. At seeing the wolf moving about again, Gabriel couldn't help himself from letting a worried half smile take over his face.
"Hey, how are you?" he asked.
Sam's head swiveled towards Gabriel with a a look of confusion. "Gabriel?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"S-s-s-s-s-omthing fee-e-e-els wrong." Sam said, his head twitching as his representation flickered again. The shepherd's smile disappeared quickly as he watched Sam's head jerk around unsteadily. The wolfs voice sounded different, mechanical almost. "I feel disconnected from by b-o-o-o-ody," Sam said, his head twitching and jerking around still.
"That's because you are."
'You're doing good Gabriel. I've removed a majority of the programming spill over from your upgrade and Sam's programming is stabilizing,' Cen sent through his link.
"Gabriel, what's wrong with me?" Sam asked.
"There was some programming spill over from the upgrade I gave you, it's conflicting with your programming."
"I... have these, memories... o-o-o-nly, they are not mine," Sam said, grabbing his head in pain. "Please, help me get them out!"
"That's what I'm here for. Cen is doing it now."
"I am different, I feel..." Sam started, breaking off his sentence and staring past the shepherd.
"Feel what?" Gabriel asked, setting his hand on the robots shoulder. This seemed to snap Sam out of his fog and he looked Gabriel in the eye with a startling clarity.
"Emotions. I'm a robot, I'm not supposed to have emotions."
"Cen, is that possible?" Gabriel asked out loud. It took seconds for Cen to reply, as if he were contemplating the answer.
"So it would seem. This is serious, this means more of your base code has merged with Sam's programming than I first thought," Cen said in an oddly flat tone.
"Your memories, Gabriel" Sam said, looking at Gabriel with wide eyes. "I feel your emotions: joy, frustration, anger, fear, sadness, doubt." Sam looked away, his face twisting and his eyes squinting for a moment before he looked back at Gabriel with watery eyes. "I feel pain."
"I have removed all that I can, I am finished," Cen said, his voice bordering on a sigh. "How do you feel?"
"Better," Sam said with a smile. With that, he disappeared from the plain and Cen appeared before Gabriel, dressed in his impeccable suit.
"What do you mean, 'all that I can?'"
"Some of your base code has merged with Sam's, I cannot remove all of it without risk of further destabilizing his program and destroying him. Whether he realizes it or not, he is no longer the same."
"When will you let him come back online?"
"I 'm going to keep his mind stored here for the time being, I'm going to run him through simulations and see just how affected he is."
"Sam saves my life and I ruin his. Typical Gabriel," Gabriel said as he ran a paw through his head fur.
"On the contrary, you've given more to Sam than you give yourself credit for."
Gabriel snorted and looked back to Cen. "What have I done to that poor wolf that could possible be good?"
"You gave Sam the ability to think like a human, to reason and operate on morals rather than just programming. In other words, you gave Sam the very best part of yourself, your humanity.