Belters

Chapter 01:-2

With a thought, Jacob’s suit used the four mechanical arms to pull his body down the mine shaft. The legs and tail of the unit kept him in the center of the tube. Jacob loved the freedom the powered suit gave him. On Earth, or in anything more than microgravity, Jacob found himself restricted to a wheelchair. A genetic disorder, the same one that made him ideal for interfacing with a computer, left his legs weak and jittery. His life was destined for the stars at an early age. That or remain a cripple.

The thing he missed most in space was light. The feeling of the sun on his face. Despite the smoke and smog on Earth, the sky was brighter than this far out in the belt. The tube he worked in would be dark as pitch but for the work lights mounted on his suit.

It seemed the captain agreed. The man ensured a fresh coat of white paint was applied on as many bulkheads as possible, with full-spectrum daylight bulbs installed on most decks. All to maintain as much light as possible.

In most horror stories, darkness always proved the largest enemy.

The tiny rock the crew mined held little gravity. The suit’s augmented strength proved more than enough to lob the enormous stones off the surface. The huge chunk of ore spun toward the Frazier, where it would be hauled in and processed for precious metals.

If he ever made a lucky strike, he would consider gene therapy to fix his legs. That was one of the reasons he went into space training. To save up for the medical expenses, but once he slipped his weak body into a mining suit and discovered the mobility, the strength, the freedom it offered, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go back to only two arms and two legs in a gravity well. In space, he found truer freedom than he felt possible with his human body.

He was one of the lucky ones. Not every mind could interface with a mining suit or any computer. He had a brain that was in demand. On Earth, his handicap would have been the end of him. In space… he could hold his own with any fully functional miner. Some might argue his control was better, as he didn’t have leg muscles fighting to do the work. He needed to rely on his mind. His suit’s real advantage was the prehensile tail. He controlled it as well as his hands. In the specialized mining suit, his perceived disability became his advantage.

“I just miss going outside without a suit is all… feeling the rain on my face,” Jacob pushed another boulder of ore out of the bore tube. A larger combine mining ship would latch onto a whole asteroid, but the Daniel Frazier wasn’t a bigger ship. It was little more than an independent scow making a living on the crumbs the big operators left behind. They scoured the belt, searching for rocks with enough ore to chunk away at. Rocks too small for the big boys to worry about… or come in weapons blazing if they caught a ship full of scalawags.

Some might consider what the Frazier did as amounting to little more than claim jumping, theft in deep space, but they had little choice. Most of the prime rocks had been taken long ago by the major corps or larger independent mining combines. If the little operators like the Frazier wanted to keep flying, they needed to work just outside the law and not get caught.

Allen wouldn’t let up. “You mean the acid rain?”

Jacob ignored the dig.

“On Earth… weren’t you… aren’t you worried about skin cancer… lung cancer… all the other things you can catch? It’s so dirty… there is so much disease.” Ava’s voice sounded concerned, which could only come from a person who grew up in the sterile environment of space.

“Not really… I had most of the childhood sicknesses… My family could never afford the best of medical care. Besides, because of the anti-vaxxers, illnesses thought controlled in the twentieth century came back to cull the weaker children.”

Back at the edge of the tunnel, Jacob let the momentum push the rock toward the hull of the Frazier. From this distance and angle, the age of the ship wasn’t apparent. This far from the sun, most of the ugliness the universe had to offer was hidden in the dark.

“It’s a miracle anyone reaches adulthood…” Ava cleared her throat. “Is that why your legs…” She didn’t finish the question.

This was Jacob’s first tour with this ship and crew. None had asked about his lack of working legs before, and he never volunteered that much personal information. Once they left the gravity of the spinning station, the chair was locked down in his room. The only time he needed wheels on the ship was during a long burn. Normally he would stay strapped in his ship’s chair for the shorter maneuvers. Jacob was surprised it took six weeks for the subject of his broken legs to come up.

“No… I have something called HBS… Don’t worry, it isn’t contagious… My nerves don’t work like other people’s is all. It’s all in my genes.” He laughed at his double entendre, though he doubted many of the crew would gather the second meaning. That was more information than Jacob wanted to share, but during his time on the ship, he’d learned to trust the crew more than most other people. Small ship, tight quarters, few other humans… the conditions bred a need for trust.

The people on the other side of the line might one day need to risk their lives to save their skin. With only a crew of nine, he grew to trust the two other people who worked his shift.

“So that means your s**t downstairs don’t work?” Ava asked with a chuckle in her voice.

Allen growled, “Show some respect, woman.”

Jacob laughed before asking, “You lookin’ for a date?” It was the response he’d learned long ago when the impolite question was asked. It seemed to shut down the follow-on stupid questions about other bodily functions.

He should have known better with Ava.

Her reply came back just as quick in a sing-song voice, and with no shyness. “Maybe…”

Shit, Jacob thought. That was the first time someone called his bluff. Now he might need to find out if he could lie with a woman after all. In theory, he should be able to. He still had some control over his legs, just not enough to achieve his feet and walk without help. His junk should work as well as any other man’s. The problem is he had never let anyone close enough to test the theory. A wheelchair seemed to be the best kind of birth control for a man.

AD 2050 Kuiper Belt – John Huss

Elliot sat alone in his workstation, diagnostics running on the efficiency of the connection between the human mind and AI. It was boring work, a task more suited for a trained monkey, but the data would be sent to the home station for analysis. Work Elliot was capable of doing but had been deemed outside his pay grade.

He remained happy to still have a place on this crew. Too many positions had been automated. Every day, more humans became obsolete. If this experiment worked, the day might come when humans no longer risked their lives in space. Ships staffed by AI/human-interfaced, labeled UI, craft would take over the exploration and exploitation of the solar system. Humans would be out of work.

In a way, Elliot worked towards his own obsolescence.

The image of a teenaged man, dressed in the ship’s uniform of gray coveralls, long dreadlocks held back with a bright red leather strip popped into view.

For the first time, John projected his image into the chamber filled with the proprietary Zen Mist concoction. The chamber gave the man inside the ship a holographic three-dimensional representation of himself to present to the humans he wished to interact with. The holo-tubes were placed at strategic locations throughout the ship. Places where people might congregate, bridge, mess, and engineering, the most likely spots for interaction.

Elliot had never seen the man inside the machine use the contraption before. He’d even checked the logs. The chambers had never been activated. Elliot double-checked, then triple-checked the unit’s operation. The projectors remained in full working order, if unused.

The computer tech saw no reason to ask John why he never used the containers. He left it up to one of the many oddities of being a disembodied brain inside a machine. The list of oddities seemed to grow daily.

So now, when the full-sized body sprang into life next to Elliot, he nearly jumped out of his workstation.

“Sorry… It was never my intention to startle you like that.” John’s image faded.

“No… no… It’s all right, I just didn’t expect you to show up, all at once… so fast… It surprised me.” Elliot righted himself in the chair, doing his best to regain his composure.

John’s head came back into view. “Is this better?”

Elliot shook his head. “Not really… I think the crew would accept your whole body… more than your disembodied head. I’m just saying perhaps a little slower integration into the chambers would be better… It gives people a chance to know you are there, rather than a jump scare.”

The image came into view much slower this time. “Please tell me it isn’t too weird. I feel like a ghost using this thing.” The young black man looked down at his projection.

Elliot wasn’t sure how, what, or if John could see himself. “No… not at all.” Elliot swiveled back to examine the creation more closely, comparing it to the mental image he retained from hours of studying the oil painting of the man in his older form. “Is this what you looked like in real life?”

John nodded. “At least while I was young. I was much older when they… when I decided to reach for the stars.” The image held his arms wide. “In my youth, I was a bit of a rebel…”

Elliot chucked, “Weren’t we all? Yet you became a successful businessman.” He motioned with his head to the oil painting.

“Yes… most of my friends told me I sold out.” The image cleared his throat, almost human-like. “I guess I showed them. I will still be alive and well after they are long dead.”

“You had a great run of it after all… It is my understanding you made it to over one hundred.” Elliot checked a few readings to make sure the chamber wasn’t taxing the system. With a few taps, he started the system diagnostics. “We can’t all keep the indiscretions of youth going into middle years. My father would say… we all need to grow up at some point.”

John sucked the hologram air between his teeth then added, “One hundred isn’t what it used to be.” He motioned to the painting on the wall. “I often wonder if my younger self would agree with what I had… have become…”

“I doubt the ignorance of youth would understand the decisions made by the more—”

“Old.”

“I was going to say experienced.”

“Same difference… Tell me. I have done a few calculations, and I have discovered this craft is greatly overstaffed. The ship needs only a crew of six, yet we carry twenty-five souls onboard. Do you know any reason why?”

“As an experiment, the crew is mostly here to determine the efficacy and practicality of the new UI ships,” Elliot lied. He knew the real reason for such a large crew was only partially there to monitor the experiment. The major reason for the extra bodies was, in case of total system failure, they would take over control of the ship systems.

John didn’t question the reason. “Ah, my judge and jury as it were…”

“You knew this going in. Even as a brilliant businessman, you have no experience running a spacecraft. The company would not place you in a multimillion-dollar ship and set you free.”

“Hence, the firewalls blocking our access to the major systems of the ship.”

Elliot paused for a moment before asking, “Our?”

“Sorry… the integration between the AI and myself is… We have no pronouns to properly describe how we feel right now.”

“I didn’t mean to question. It just seems a little strange to hear people talking about themselves in the third person. Perhaps the term nous would work.”

“French for us?”

“Yes.”

The pause was slight. In machine time, Elliot knew it was ages while John contemplated the new descriptive word. “I like it.” The next pause was even longer.

Elliot watched as furrows appeared between the brows on the projection. The detail of human interaction was amazing.

“What do the others of the crew think of me?” John asked.

The question caught Elliot by complete surprise. “I’m not sure what you mean…”

A series of news headlines flashed on the screen before Elliot. Each one more hysterical than the last, all decrying the AI and human augmentation and the dangers they create to the human race.

Elliot shook his head. “You knew all this going in. The people of Earth are a skittery lot. You lived through this ancient history more than I did…”

“I know about Earth… but how does the crew feel about me?” The words came broken, like fear drove the question.

“I’m sure I don’t know…” Elliot lied once again.

Despite extensive testing and background checks for the crew, he knew more than a few members whispered concerns about the new use of UI and the dire effects the ships might have on humankind. He didn’t know of any plot to sabotage the experiment, but somehow John must have picked up on the feeling of unease on the ship. They sailed into uncharted space, metaphysically as well as physically.

“Maybe if you interacted with the crew more… like you are with me, they would be less inclined to—”

“Fear me?” John cut him off.

The words caught Elliot by surprise. “No. I was going to say question the experiment.”

John nodded. The change of subject surprised Elliot. “I need control of the spiders. I detect a subsystem failure outside the skin of the ship.”

Elliot shook his head. “You know that is outside current control parameters. Tell me where it is, and I will direct maintenance to see to it.”

Once John controlled the spiders, he would not need any of the humans. Several safeguards had been placed that required a human touch to manually switch positions. The spiders were there for when the ship might run without humans on board.

Elliot was certain that would be the end of human space travel.

The words came with a close approximation of a sigh. “Starboard forward, centerline thruster is leaking. The escaping gas is causing a course drift of point-oh-oh-one degrees per second.”

Elliot shook his head. “That is nonconsequential… the navigator will correct the error with each system update.”

“But I can make it more… perfect.”

“The world never needs to be too perfect. Sometimes just good enough will do.”

Curtly, John said, “I disagree.” He cut off and disappeared in one swift action.