Free The Life Engineered by J. F. Dubeau Page A

Neumanns are single entities with many networked bodies. Quite efficient at complex, large-scale projects. Koalemos has seven bodies, or ‘shards’ as we call them. He’s specialized at scavenging.”
    “Well, what do I do?” I was beginning to fear for myself as I became increasingly helpless.
    “Mmmh . . . Talk to him? He’s not malicious that I know of, but he is named after the Greek god of stupidity, so there’s that.”
    I stopped fighting and allowed another of Koalemos’s shards to immobilize me. Not that I had any choice in the matter.
    “Okay, okay, you got me,” I surrendered.
    “What are you doing here?” a voice came over open-channel communication. I decided that perhaps because of his interesting configuration, Koalemos couldn’t communicate through audible sound. In fact, there was no reason to believe vocal communications would be widespread, let alone standard, amongst Capeks. In the end it might be a very rare ability I had chosen for myself.
    “I’m here to figure out why this ship destroyed Midgard and Yggdrassil with it.”
    “Yggdrassil? Destroyed? No, no, no, no, no.” His voice was stressed, on the verge of panic. Could Capeks have panic attacks?
    “What happened? Do you know why the Spear of Athena fired at Midgard?” Clearly, the strange little group of robots knew something.
    “Yggdrassil put in a request for raw materials. A lot of raw materials. Enough for a Lucretius-class Capek to be constructed.” His explanation sounded like a confession, and I could almost feel a stomach I didn’t even have sink. “I found and captured the perfect asteroid for it and received my coordinates from a Norse Capek, so I figured they must be legit, and I launched. But as I saw the collapsor point expand, I realized something was wrong. I signaled Yggdrassil, but I never thought the meteor would impact. It wasn’t my fault—I used the coordinates I was given!”
    “Oh, it impacted, all right. Why did you steal the memory from the launch terminal if it’s not your fault?”
    “Because this was no accident—I was set up! You’re Norse, just like the one who gave me the coordinates. I thought you were here to destroy the evidence!”
    “That makes sense,” I agreed. “So why trust me now?”
    “What? No! I don’t.” The shards holding me tightened their grip, underlining his point. “I’m not telling you anything the Capek who gave me those coordinates wouldn’t know.”
    “Well, I’m not him! I was constructed less than a day ago and barely made it off Midgard myself.”
    The little Von Neumann dragged me back to the bridge. There, the collective bodies threw me toward the view port before retreating like a pack of cockroaches. They were well out of my reach should I be tempted to strike back, which I was.
    “I’m not alone, you know,” I began threatening, having had my fill of trying to prove myself. “Between me and my friend—”
    I was cut short. While floating in the middle of the bridge, I noticed my ion thrusters had activated to help me keep my position. A strong gravitational pull was manifesting behind me somewhere beyond the large window to space. Even Koalemos, or at least the shards that were here, started falling toward me, in a jumble of metallic toruses, their own engines burning at full thrust to compensate.
    “The hell?” I asked no one in particular.
    “Gravitational singularity dead ahead,” Skinfaxi answered anyway. “Hang on! Incoming space fold!”
    When I looked around to the window, I immediately wanted to rub my eyes—a gesture that was no longer available to me. Technically, it never had been. Instead, the reflex translated into a quick diagnosis of my optics, which returned 100 percent optimal.
    What I saw, however, made no sense. The number of stars in the sky suddenly doubled as a distant pocket of the galaxy was being pulled toward our location, the very fabric of space bending to bring two distant points together. For a brief moment