Eclipse Phase: Oblitus Memorias

[Josh]

The process of creating was notably uneventful for the person being copied. The command impulse was sent and moments later an icon would flash the announcement that the fork was created.

Downloaded into the probe, the fork would remain inactive until probe launch, a merciful measure to minimize the prospects of self-awareness pushing the stunted capabilities of the fork into realizing that it was in fact the debased copy of a copy of a copy of what had once been a simple human being, installed into an expendable machine in this instance for the purpose of providing humanlike judgement in realtime.

He'd done this very procedure more times than he could count, sending some small, expendable piece of himself into danger. He used to ponder just how many times he'd 'died', but the Eli that had awoken in orbit was moving past such trivial concepts. He was intact, here and now. Like anyone who'd gotten out of that horror, he was if nothing else a survivor, and that was what counted.

He looked up from the chair and nodded to the others. "I'm finished," he said. "Muninn, you may initiate option Epsilon as you please."

[raulpascal]

For reasons he didn't know himself Jameson found himself standing by Eli's chair. As if I could do anything if something went wrong, he thought to himself, but nonetheless he let his hand stray to his medical kit, ready for...well, just ready. He watched as the other man closed his eyes, then open them again, announcing he was finished. Jameson offered the other man a hand to help rise.

"I don't remember being yanked from my body," he remarked. "I know I was, and I know that things happened before, but I don't remember the moment of being removed. I wonder... Well, that copy of you out there in that can. Does it know it's not you? Does it remember having a body? Am I...well, this may be dumb, but am I a copy like that, an incomplete piece never meant to stand independently? Maybe I'm just a probe. Hell, maybe I'm a copy meant to be the imbedded AI for a medical scanner. That might explain things, and weirder things have happened."

He shook his head, stepped back. "Sorry, lost the thread there for a minute. Anyway, so now we wait. What's the end goal? If we find out that they're hostile and looking for us?"

[B4UTRUST]

"Acknowledged," was the only reply.

A second later the announcement came through to everyone's muses.
"Attention. Emergency deceleration commencing in 3... 2... 1..."

The ship shuddered as maneuvering thrusters engaged, trying to slow down the massive ship in far less time or distance than it should be taking. The primary engines disengaged at the same time. Any sense of gravity that the ship had a moment ago was lost and anything that wasn't strapped down or secured was left moving in the new zero gee environment. Deeper in the ship than the flight deck there was loud groaning noises as systems were strained and parts were stressed. There was two more large shudders as the probes were launched in rapid succession. Lights began to dim throughout the ship and non-essential systems began to go dark as Muninn switched a low powered operation mode.
"Probes successfully launched, receiving data."

[Josh]

βEli awoke in the cold dark of space, drinking in data. It was all passive sensor data at the moment, and none of it yet notable or interesting. However βEli soaked up the information regardless, understanding that it was his purpose to gather this information and make one or more critical decisions. Being a human consciousness, he automatically established mental orientation along the plane of the ecliptic and satisfied himself with the diagnostic data present of the drone, and what information fell into its sphere of passive data collection.

[B4UTRUST]

The other ship continued on its course through the void of space as βEli continued to analyze the passive readings of the probe, watching for changes. Waiting. It took hours in real time, though it felt much longer at the processing speeds βEli was operating at even having cycled down to minimize power, but there was a shift. The other ship began to slow down and turn towards the projected path where Muninn would have been projected to be flying. It was subtle at first, a slight inward arc, the flare of forward mounted thrusters firing to cut their velocity. And it continued on the slightly altered course for another hour before the arc changed again, and the aft engines glowed hotter as the thrust increased. They had clearly noticed the shift in direction and had believed they had lost contact with Muninn. This also confirmed that this was no accident and they were purposely following the ship. This was the moment for βEli to make the decision to act, to communicate findings.

[Josh]

Decades came and went, and yet the most secure covert communication available still remained the antique laser tightbeam. Sensing no overt threat in the confusion evinced by the bogey, βEli waited patiently for the optimal point to attempt a message, laser bursts pulsing out in factions of a second. There was redundancy built into the transmission system, the actual information-bearing pulse with confirmation code coming in no less than sixty times, and in that same burst other pulses were directed at fractions of a degree of an angle, an insignificant adjustment for the beam that would result in massive variation on destination points. If the beams were noticed, the bogey would have fourteen different plausible locations to choose from as the actual destination point. Then βEli waited for any sign that its message squirt had been detected.

[Josh]

Eli remained in his couch, as everyone else should have in case sudden maneuvers were needed. As βEli's report came in, he spoke without look over at the others.

"Protocol will be to engage in pursuit once the fork determines optimal point for stealthy pursuit. We've bought some time. If detected, the probe will go hot and illuminate the target, then open a comms channel between itself and the ship. Fair warning in advance, it's going to sound a little strange."

[B4UTRUST]

The game of cat and mouse continued on for over a day before Muninn successfully lost the other ship in the void. The crew knew it was still out there but for the moment they were safe. It, of course, raised a whole lot of questions as to who was on the other ship and why they were there. How they had been followed for so long. Lots of uncomfortable questions.

It was a less than enjoyable day to say the least. Between the limited power, limited systems, poor lighting and environmental regulation the crew was trapped more or less in isolation with only periodic minor updates trickling through from Eli or Muninn interspersed with sudden accelerations and decelerations as the ship made rapid course adjustments. But they made it, even if they were a little banged up and uncomfortable at the end.

It was a few more days before they narrowed down the search to find their target. In that time they hadn't seen any further signs of being tailed. Their target, 34351 Decatur was absolutely unimpressive. A few kilometers of regolith rubble in a potato shaped lump with microscopic gravity levels and a seven hour day cycle. Muninn didn't orbit it so much as drift next to it. al-Bahth was concerned that any bit of ionization in this sort of environment would attract very hard to remove but very abrasive dust that was very likely to get into Muninn's exterior sensors.

al-Bahth was once more on the bridge, running sensor sweeps and scans on every frequency he could think of. No nuclear backup batteries, no distinguishing features, no detectable radio emissions or anything else was coming up.
"I do not understand it. It should be here..."

[Josh]

Eli stood by his side. "Easy now," he said, voice modulated to be warmly reassuring, almost paternal in nature. "What's the specific sensor profile you're looking for?"

[B4UTRUST]

"I've scanned for every sort of radio frequency I know. I've scanned across using passive and active visual scans, ultraviolet shows nothing as well. No sort of radiation other than background levels. No neutrino emissions or significant heat gradients indicating nuclear power or any sort of active power systems. But there has to be some marker somewhere to describe where the cache was put. It doesn't make sense otherwise."

[Josh]

"Well then," Eli said, his voice still entirely reasonable and warm, his face radiating paternal concern. "We'll take a closer look. Muninn, I think a probe launch is in order. In the meantime, let's stay low emission, shall we?"

Eli's face sat placidly warm even as his mind began to run calculations on the savings in reaction mass for a return trip if al-Bahth were to be ejected from an airlock.

That, of course, would never happen. The morph ah-Bahth wore was entirely too valuable to be so casually wasted, especially as light on resources as they were running.

[B4UTRUST]

"Launching probe," came the response from Muninn. A few seconds later the sensors indicated that the probe had successfully launched and then subsequently made landfall.
"Probe successfully deployed."

[Josh]

"Please start search pattern gamma," Eli said. He normally wouldn't bother to speak the request aloud, but his voice was modulated to be calming and reassuring to al-Bahth. "If there's anything there, we'll find it."