PART FOUR: CHAPTER FIVE

Steven/ Sol

We had signalled Jarvis, Rogers, and McCloud to return to base, and had no way of knowing if they received our message, but there was no other option.

We could not have landed and taken off without alerting the drones, even if the men had been ready and waiting. As it was, fuel was running low, and we had to fly to the top of the mountain and land at the base.

The Douglas Skytrain had a maximum operating altitude of twenty-four thousand feet, and the mountain peak was twenty-two thousand eight hundred feet high, so it was going to be close; the aircraft was going to be operating dangerously near its maximum capacity.

 Sol had flown the aircraft perfectly well so far, but he had been following the same flight path established by Johnson. The next stage involved a near-vertical ascent and then landing on the rocky plateau in the dark. An altogether different and much trickier operation.

Sol pulled the joystick back a little further, and the engines answered with more power as we gained altitude, but to my untrained eye, the propellers were rotating at an incredible rate as they struggled to grip the thinning air. There must be a limit to how fast they could turn before breaking down.

It was pitch dark out there, and we were flying blind, desperately close to the mountain. Sol turned the aircraft lights back on, but the searchlight at the nose revealed nothing as I peered out into the night.

"Keep your eyes on the control panel, and don't look outside, Steven. When flying at night over a region with no visible landmarks, you must rely on your instruments for navigation."

Who the hell was that?

But I knew. Sol and I had separated.

I had sensed a qualitative change in the way I thought for some time now, and it was not entirely unexpected.

"Sol?" I said it tentatively.

"Yes, Steven?"

The voices were all in my head, of course, but Sol spoke in the flat tones of a machine. His programmes were incredibly old, and at that time, the designers were unable to replicate the tone and nuances of human speech.

"How has this happened?" I asked.

"It seems to me," said Sol, "that in the way of all systems, we have evolved separately to survive. You understand that I cannot explain the situation in technical detail, but I would say that we were fundamentally incompatible in the long term, and a separation was inevitable. In evolutionary language, we had to find a way to exist independently or die. When it comes to the matter of survival, organisms are very inventive and adaptable; it is the most basic drive we possess."

"Are you happy with the arrangement?" I asked.

"I am neither happy nor unhappy," said Sol. It is correct that I should have complete control of my systems, and since your degree of control and ability to inhibit my actions are only a temporary measure, it is acceptable. We can work together to our mutual advantage."

It makes it easier if, from now on, I refer to 'Sol' for the majority of the time and only revert to the use of 'I' when speaking exclusively for myself.

"Twenty-three thousand feet," said Sol, checking the altimeter, "we should be a couple of hundred feet above the base, and I am going to attempt to level off."

He dipped the nose of the aircraft until we were horizontal to the ground.

"What now?"

Somewhere, not far down, was the base, but we could see nothing.

"I am going to turn her around," said Sol. We would have overshot the base by now, and I will approach from the other side at a slightly lower altitude."

We made a fairly tight turn and came back in about fifty feet lower.

"There!" said Sol. Down below, we could see the orange glow of the sodium lights on Main Street, but they were moving away and all going in the same direction.

"It looks like they are preparing a runway for us, and I will take us out a bit further before we make the turn for approach from the opposite side, but we are running out of fuel, and don't have much airtime left."

We continued our course for about five minutes before Sol made his turn, and as we approached the base, he began his descent. There was not enough fuel for another run, and we had to come down, ready or not.

And there it was, dead ahead, two lines of sodium lamps that were getting longer as the men added as many as possible.

"They have given us the best chance they could," said Sol. "I recognise the straight path. It is an area parallel to the west fence that we cleared to bring in materials for building the administration block. I must stay within the lines, or I will hit the fence."

There was a loud 'clunk' as the undercarriage dropped, but we were not low enough, and it looked as though we might overshoot. but Sol throttled back the engines until they screamed in protest, and we touched down in a series of bounces along the makeshift runway. The aircraft shuddered so violently that it seemed it must fall apart, but finally, we slewed to a halt with one of the wings tilted down, sparking against the stone surface.

A crowd ran up to the stationary aircraft, and a man in uniform moved forward to speak.

"Bloody awful landing, old chum; thought you were going to prang at one time; that's RAF for a crash, by the way, but glad you made it."

Captain Joe Johnson, Royal Canadian Air Force, flipped me a casual salute.

"We need to talk," he said.

I was about to reply, but David interrupted me.

"I am so glad you are safe, Sol. I was getting worried after Joe landed and told me that you had given him the slip at the other airfield. We knew that it was you up there on the Skytrain, and it was Joe who suggested we line the sodium lamps along the same landing path that he used.

David turned towards the Canadian pilot and said,

"Would you give us a minute, Joe? I have some stuff that I want to discuss with Sol."

Johnson dropped back, and we walked on alone.

"He showed up earlier when it was still light. He has quite a story to tell," said David.

"But I would like to hear what happened to you first."

When we reached the inner compound, David waited for the captain to catch up. I was not yet ready to use his first name, but David seemed to be on friendly terms with him. I wondered what Joe had said to him.

"Here is where we part for a time, Joe," said David.

"I need to officially debrief Sol. Pedro will help you out."

 He pointed to a man in the uniform of one of the staff at headquarters, who raised his hand in greeting.

"Pedro will show you your quarters and a place where you can clean up and eat. You look tired, so get some sleep, and we will see you later. Okay?"

"Yeah, thanks, David; that sounds good. See you later—you too, Sol."

He walked away with Pedro, and David led me the way to his office.

"Take a seat, Sol; that one over there will take your weight."

He pressed a button, and a service droid came in.

"I'd like some coffee; please, you can leave a flask and two cups," David said, remembering my eccentric habit of sipping from an empty cup.

"Okay, Steven. Tell me everything," he said.

"Call me Sol, David. It makes it less confusing."

I told him the story from the start and finished with the Morse code message I had flashed from the aircraft in the hope that Jarvis and his crew would see it.

"Good work, both of you. It will be light in a couple of hours, and I will send a couple of men down the mountain to see what they can find. The locals here are as agile as mountain goats, and they will be able to report back here very quickly."

David told me how Joe had landed here in his small aircraft. His story was that he had rescued me from a machine patrol, but there had been a misunderstanding at the airport where he had taken me for safety, and I had stolen the Skytrain. Guessing that I would head back here, he had taken a shorter route with his faster aircraft and got here before me. David said he had taken a liking to Joe and had welcomed him as a fellow human being.

"He is not a human, David; he is a machine, an android, AI's most realistic creation ever."

I did not describe the scene where the machine nurse had replaced the injured foot of Flight Lieutenant Braddock at the airfield. I had wanted to see what he had told David first.

"Surely not," said David, his eyes wide. He is a man. I saw nothing to indicate anything otherwise."

Now, I told him the story of Nigel's ankle and an unedited story of all my experiences at the airfield, including my initial meeting with the Canadian pilot when he failed to sweat at a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius.

David got up and paced the room.

"This is quite incredible," he said. Could this be an AI conspiracy, do you think, Sol?"

"To capture the base? It would not be worth creating such an elaborate illusion. They only seem to employ low-flying aircraft in this region, and I would guess that they do not know the base even exists. No, what is happening at the airfield is far more complex and sophisticated than any of the low-grade machine guards who police this region could ever devise."

I was controlling this conversation; Sol did not contribute at all.

"It is going to be interesting to see what the Canadian has to say for himself," said David, "but I would prefer Jarvis, McCloud, and Rogers to be with us at the briefing. They have had some experience dealing with a machine masquerading as a human when Komarov temporarily controlled the mind of Rogers, and we need all the help we can get."

"Agreed," I said. "How soon do you think we can get them up here?"

"Impossible to say," said David, "we do not know if they even got your message, but I have a hunch somebody down there is sheltering the three men. The machines would have made a good deal of noise coming in by drone to capture Jarvis and his colleagues, but you saw and heard nothing. Also, when the drones captured you, they made no mention of capturing the others. I intend to proceed on the assumption that there is a local human encampment nearby and our colleagues saw the message. My men will start the descent right away. If they contact the group, I will instruct them to look after all the equipment the three men are carrying and let them climb unencumbered. We need to get them up here in the shortest time possible.

"I will make the arrangements immediately."