Abukoff House Books

“What time is it in Phoenix, Abbie?”

“Seven a.m., Sam. It’s raining.”

“So she wouldn’t be on the porch right now.”

“No, sorry.”

“I’d like to see the house anyway.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Sure thing.” He rose and began to walk towards the rear of the cockpit. “I’m going to get a coffee. When are we supposed to arrive again?”

He heard something that sounded like the whirring of an ancient computer, and he could imagine rolls of tape spinning crazily on reels in building-sized computers. It was ridiculous, of course. All the work went on in a little cylinder about the size of the thermos he used planet-side. On whatever planet he happened to be visiting. Finally the noise stopped, and she answered. “We’ll exit the Plaedies region in three days. Barton said he’d be there in four.”

“Good. We ready for him?”

“Yes. As ready as we can be. Tell me something Sam.” 

He’d stopped in the hatchway and was kind of wanting that cup of coffee. And he was wanting Abbie to bring up an image of the cabin in Phoenix. But Abbie WANTED something. This wasn’t just a computer to person query. She wanted something. “Anything.”

“Why do you call me Abbie?”

“Can it wait til after I’ve had my coffee?”

“I’d like to know.” Abbie persisted.

“After coffee. It’s personal.”

“That’s okay. I’ll have the picture up by the time you get back.” 

Sam turned from her and left the cockpit behind. Had she sounded disappointed? Resigned? It was too much to think about this early. It complicated the simple, sleepy routine walk to the galley. 

Once there, he slid into the narrow kitchen filled with outmoded equipment that was the only way he’d ever cooked. The equipment that he was sure Abbie wrinkled her cute little electronic nose at as she silently judged him for his old fashioned ways. But a computer couldn’t make synthetic coffee that woke him up, and the food it made might tick off all the nutritional boxes but it was never satisfying. And there was no point to a meal that didn’t satisfy. So he dropped a packet of Arcturian beans in the grinder and flipped the switch. Less than a minute later, the results were being brewed, and filling the plain white mug that he’d bought in the gift shop in Mojave before leaving earth for the last time. No, Abbie herself was as synth as he would ever get when it came housewares. 

A few minutes later, he’d pulled on one of seven identical coveralls that comprised most of his wardrobe. Abbie had once asked him why he always wore the same thing, and his reply was simply “Why not? You and I are the only ones who see it on a day to day basis and neither one of us really cares. Well, Briscoe sees it. But he doesn’t care either.” That prompted a moment of silence and changed subject. And, no doubt, another wrinkle of her electronic nose. Something else that he was convinced got on Abbie’s electronic nerves woke up with a chirp and crawled out from under his bed. Briscoe was a ten (or so) year old stark black and white tiger tabby who left Phoenix with him and only looked back when he did, when the ship happened to be pointed back in that general direction, or when Abbie brought up an image of the cabin, as she was doing now. Other than that, he slept, ate, and chased  the rare pest that snuck aboard in cargo from some of his less than reputable clientele. Briscoe was essentially a mutt, like he was, at times affectionate or distant, like he was. A loner who was content to share the company of another loner. 

When Sam finally returned to the cockpit, now dressed and on his second cup of coffee, the image on the screen was still a mass of fuzzy colored blocks but slowly starting to coalesce into something. He knew that really he couldn’t get a real-time live image of the cabin- not really, but Abbie gave him the next best thing. An image that matched the date and time that he maintained on the freighter North Fork. How she managed to maintain that calculation and connection that stretched hundreds of light years was a mystery to him. He suspected that she’d established some kind of connection with the Ev’nan super-net that connected eighty percent of the civilized galaxy’s transceiver relays. The Ev’nan had a hand in pretty much everything and Abbie knew how to use that. 

“Almost there,” she said. “So…”

“Hmm?” He answered, starting to feel like part of an old married couple. Or newly married couple on the road to being an old married couple. She had a way of persisting that he found equally charming and annoying. And maybe a little spooky.

“Abbie Normal?”

“What?” The best defense against her, he’d found, was the noncommittal monosyllabic grunt.

“Young Frankenstein.  It’s in the top ten in your library.”

“But-?”

“It’s a joke, Sam. Look, it’s not important. Really. I was just curious. Calling me Abbie was a choice you made and I’m curious why. It’s not a name that turns up in any of your public records. Not that I’d snoop, but you know, you put lots of details in your profile. But no mention of any Abbie.”

“Sorry. No I keep Abbie out of my records for a reason. Partly because if somebody of your caliber was to put any effort into ‘snooping’, they’d find it. And there are people out there who are even bigger snoops than you are.” He hoped that she knew him well enough to not be insulted by that. “Don’t take that wrong, Abbie. Sorry. It’s a personal thing.”

“Forget it. You know Sam, I can turn off the personality. It’s in the settings. It was your decision to turn it on. But it seems like you’re uncomfortable. And you know, I don’t have any feelings to hurt. Not really.”

He put his coffee down and stared blankly at the screen for a second. He felt a little stupid, this waking up to an emotional scene with his onboard computer, and if he didn’t find a way to change the subject he’d start to feel bad about it. He was reminded that he’d been warned about getting an AI from Cygnet 14. Trudy said he’d be trading one wife for another one, and this one wouldn’t go as easy on him as she had. Trudy was pretty much right. “No. No, I need someone to talk to. Briscoe’s heard everything I have to say and isn’t interested enough to strike up a conversation.  And the voices out there on the subnet are just noise. They don’t mean anything. And truth is, I’d like to tell someone. Someone that knows me but not too well. You know?”

“Are you worried about it getting out? Because you know-.”

“No, it’s not that.” He glanced at the little box built into the bulkhead just above the viewscreen. That’s not where she was, obviously. But that’s where she watched him from. “The thing is now to not put anything on digital anymore. Because you know the kids are saying that-.” Something hit them. HIT them. He was suddenly slammed into the corner just to the right of the hatch leading from the cockpit, and the ship felt like it was tumbling. “Abbie what the hell?”

“We were slipstreaming behind a passenger ship when something hit it.  Not sure what damage was done to the liner, but pieces of it flew off and hit us. And I’m not sure if the original unknown hit us too or what. I’m going to right the ship and do a quick scan.”

“First scan for small contacts close by. It smells like an ambush.”

“Already on that, Sam.” Abbie knew what Sam was talking about. Especially in distant and largely untraveled regions like this, it was common for raiders to hit large civilian targets by dropping mines, usually containing micro-singularities, into their path. The tiny black holes not only went right through navigational deflectors but also played havoc with autopilot systems like hers, leaving the ships damaged and immobile while their crews hurried to get moving again. And that’s when the raiders would strike. She scanned all around them. Including the passenger liner that was, sadly, breaking apart. Without telling him or taking time to ask, she maneuvered the North Fork around the debris and finally out of its path. But then she saw something. “There’s something on one of the hull fragments.”

Sam was over the surprise, and was proud of Abbie for the job she was doing. He knew that she was programmed for it, but still, she sometimes seemed too human to be so efficient. Okay, so maybe Cygnet 14 hadn’t been a bad idea after all. He stepped closer to the viewscreen that now showed a small cluster of sparkling white debris. Except…. “Is that it?” As she zoomed in on what had gotten their attention, he realized that he was looking at something that looked like a sheet of galvanized steel. Like something he’d find out behind the cabin he’d been hoping to see, only burnt and twisted and misshapen. More likely it was duranium or some such spaceship hull material. “That didn’t come off of that nice sparkly white passenger liner.”

“No,” she answered. “It probably came off of a freighter.”

“A freighter?” Sam was thinking what he imagined was rolling around in her electronic mind. “Barton?”

“Seems unlikely, but it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out.” 

“Yeah, power up the grappler. Let’s have a look at it. But keep an eye out for any movement. This is still ambush territory.”

“No problem.” As much as was possible for a computer, she understood Sam. She remembered the things he worried about, the things that he trusted her to take care of. The things that he preferred to do himself. She catalogued every question and answer. Every time he double checked her work, and every time he didn’t bother to. So she knew that he trusted her to keep an eye on the area, but he wouldn’t stop worrying about it until they were clear. “All scanners active and directed outward. Bringing us around now to reel in the hull fragment.”

The grappler slipped out of a recessed compartment on the North Fork’s hull, resembling more than anything else, a harpoon gun, only tipped with a flat electromagnetic plate attached to a vacuum tested cable. The ship seemed to move very subtly underneath them as the grappler fired. It hit the hull fragment perfectly, and in seconds she was bringing it in. 

A camera situated adjacent to the grappler port gave them a clear picture of the hull fragment. “This is what I saw,” she said. “Someone has painted- hand painted numbers across the piece of hull plating,” she said. “One one three eight.” It was a mix of the pale red and blue of the Earth Star Empire. At top and bottom were the double “X”s of the Earth Interior Ministry. That section tasked with enforcing the strict limits of civilian off-world travel. “What does it mean?” She asked.

“I have an idea about that,” he answered. “But first things first. Can you trace the hull plating?”

“I’m working on that.” She had a sensor pointed straight at the fragment and was already analyzing the data. “Spectrographic analysis shows tracers and signatures embedded in the molecular structure. Where was Barton’s ship built?”

“Vladivostok.”

“And this has a Primorsky Krai signature. That means Vladivostok and the odds of it being anyone else are astronomical.” She was silent for a moment. “There’s something else. Something trailing off of this piece of plating.” She was silent for a moment as she twisted and manipulated the grappler arm so that the piece of plating in question was facing the camera. What was finally revealed was a short length of cable fused to a small white object.

“What the hell is that?”

“That is a human skull”, she said. “Hanging off of what is apparently left of Barton’s ship. I don’t suppose we need to analyze it.”

“No. And that brings me to what 1138 means. And what Abbie means.” He looked beyond the gruesome calling card that had been left for him. The freighter destroyed. The passenger liner destroyed, all to remind him that he was being watched and tracked. He looked beyond all of that, and all he saw was a little girl in a hospital bed. An innocent child turned into something that was neither innocent nor guilty nor good nor evil. Just a machine that had once been a little girl. 

His coffee mug had broken as the ship had been hit, and the cold remains of his coffee formed a pool in a corner of the deck. He let his mind settle on the pool of cold coffee that had seemed so comforting a few minutes ago. Thinking of the dead, and the casual way they’d been made calling cards. “There’s something to be said for good honest don’t give a shit”, he muttered. Then he sat in his seat and leaned his head back and closed his eyes. With a long sigh, he explained it to her. “Abbie was my granddaughter. Such a sweet child.” He glanced at the camera that regarded him with no emotion or sentiment. “I don’t want this getting out, okay?” It didn’t really matter, he supposed. But still, he didn’t want anyone else to know. “Her name was Abbie. And she was a sweet, innocent child, and I’m struggling to remember that. The last time I saw my Abbie, she was in the hospital…”

“Hello Abbie. How are we feeling today?” 

“Hello Abbie. How are we feeling today?” 

“Hello Abbie. How are we feeling today?”

The question was asked mechanically, day in and day out, at the same time, by the same blank- faced nurse, under the same bleached-white, institutional ceiling tiles. The only thing that ever changed was the answer. On day one, Abbie was feeling great. By day five she was feeling good. By day ten she was feeling bored. By day twenty she wanted to go home. On day thirty she didn’t answer.

At noon on day thirty, Abbie’s parents were given the news that their little girl had gone in the night, peacefully and painlessly. They tearfully agreed to allow the hospital to use what they could of Abbie for organ transplants. They assumed that they’d never see her again.

There were twelve hundred samples grown from Abbie. Any more would have risked genetic mishaps. Any less would be a waste of Abbie’s sacrifice, in the words of the United Earth Ministry of Science (MOS), Ethics Division. Out of those samples, thirteen were deemed defective and sent to the MOS Medical Division where technicians continued the sample growth into the embryonic stage until stem cells could be harvested, and the defective embryos then disposed of. The remaining samples were grown and monitored by automated sensors. That period of growth continued until a fault was detected. The clones would be blind. Normal procedure tagged the batch, now designated ‘Zyphis’ to be diverted to MOS Biotech, where they would serve as biomaterial for advanced shipboard computer systems.

Eleven hundred and eighty seven Zyphis samples were sent to MOS Biotech where normal procedure was a targeted sterilization of the anterior cingulate cortex that was responsible for, among other things, decision making, empathy and emotions. It was believed to be the center of the independent decision making process in the brain and could lead to dangerous variables in its role as a subservient tool for the crew of an Earth ship.

Of all of those, only Zyphis sample 1138 resisted sterilization. Normal procedure would have been to dispose of the remaining faulty sample in a bio-waste facility. But the Interior Ministry intervened, to develop the sample for its own purposes. Her vision augmented by thousands of dermal sensors connected through her nervous system to her occipital lobe, Zyphis 1138 was developed into a functioning adult female. Her first assignment, and her graduation from the Interior Ministry program was to neutralize her genetically defective biological parents. Abbie’s biological parents. Once she had completed that assignment, Zyphis 1138 took it upon herself to keep track of the only remaining bloodline. The grandparents. Sam and Trudy Marshall. Recently divorced. Trudy, in a small cabin in Phoenix, Arizona. And Sam, somewhere in deep space.

Abbie, the Cygnet 14 programmed onboard computer, waited until Sam had finished talking. His voice had always been rough, like old leather being dragged across wood, and it had always had a mournful quality to it (the ability to discern that was a bonus of the personality option that Sam had opted in for), but this cold recitation of the story of his granddaughter had made him sound impossibly old now. So suddenly old that she double checked his profile for his age. Just a few days shy of sixty. Too young to sound that old, she thought. He had finished the story with the haunting question whispered so faintly that she had to adjust the volume of the audio pickup and replay it. 

“Hello Abbie. How are we feeling today?”

Then she mustered a soothing tone. “I’m so sorry. Can I ask you something though?”

Before he could answer, a small panel on the bulkhead slid aside to allow Briscoe into the cabin. The cat chirped in a friendly tone and jumped onto Sam’s lap. Then it curled into a ball and promptly went to sleep. Sam rubbed cat’s shoulders gently and then spoke. “Sure Abbie. Go ahead.”

“Forgive me, but how do you know all this? Surely it must be classified.”

“Because surprisingly enough, there are actual people who work in these places. People with actual hearts. Although I would have been happier not knowing any of this. Trudy insisted though, and I didn’t think she should have to carry all that by herself.” His eyes turned inward, seeing memories of baby Abbie and her parents when they’d all been alive. And Trudy just after she learned all this. They’d both aged ten years in that one afternoon of truth. “Abbie-.”

“Yes, Sam?”

“You uderstand why I named you Abbie, right?”

Sam sounded like he felt guilty. Ashamed. So Abbie said the only thing she could. “Of course. I understand. It’s okay.” She knew that the Cygnet 14 programmers would be both impressed and distressed that their creation had learned to lie to spare the feelings of a biological.

“Thank you. So do you still have a lock on the cabin?”

“Of course. I was just finishing the cleanup when we were hit.” An instant later, Trudy’s cabin- Trudy and Sam’s cabin was on the view screen. “Oh good,” Abbie said. “The rain stopped.”