The Compass

Celeste checked her query against the CUP message, which still had not informed them of what NAB-site they were headed for. The Connectionist Universal Processor, or CUP, was the latest generation of AI to control all functions of the ship. The special language for communicating with it resembled more the building of crystal matrixes than language strings.

She recalled the days when you were able to send a human-friendly message in real time to the computer core. Now you had to construct your message from arcane formulas few people actually understood, before sending it to the CUP-speak translator, before receiving a reply. Everything took more time.

They passed the spinning pink mess of Venus before CUP responded to her second query.

'Mission six: NAB-site 15.'

Celeste bit her lip and gazed into the blank black screen. If no one was present when a message arrived, you missed it. She had been here for this one, but now she wondered if perhaps CUP was wrong. The message did not sound right.

This was their last mission to gather the last Nucleated Alpha Battery on site 13, orbiting Mercury. Her entire crew was to retire to a Rural Community Center and away from the thriving metropolis of young men and women. Her only regret was they could not use their old ship the Agathon for the trip because of its aging CAS system. Proteus, with its new CUP system, was the next generation ship, they said. Take it or leave it.

"What you doing there, girl?"

Of all her people, she liked Ben the most. He was still very handsome with his smattering of gray in that curly black doff, his smooth dark body, as muscular and poised as any young man she had ever met. He was good with people too.

"How do you mean, Ben? I was just building another CUP crystal."

"Oh yeah... " he began, a mischievous grin on his face, "you weren't doing anything when I walked in."

"Come on, you know how much trouble the new language is. What's up?"

"Aside us getting ready for our over-forty beauty pageant back on the rock, we're having difficulties with the retro's."

"What's the problem?"

"It's not entirely clear. CUP sent us a message saying as much."

"Have you run a diagnostic?"

"Angela is preparing the crystal as we speak. It shouldn't take her more than an hour."

He frowned slightly, and glancing toward the CUP-camera in the corner, walked over and turned his back to the lens. The shiny plastic numbers on his uniform flashed in the overheads as CUP recorded him there.

He was eleven. She was one. Apparently, they were elements of Team CUP, each numbered to indicate identity and position within the system. They were the first on Proteus, and should be proud to be members of the CUP System Team managing fuel rods, engines, and communications. That is what management had told her to tell the others.

"At least on Agathon we keyed in our commands and received quick responses," he whispered, "but with this new CUP-speak mathematical crystal crap, our response-time has been extended too far. It is damn inefficient. What are we, janitors?" Ben was disgusted.

Celeste covered her mouth as she spoke. "Actually, we're essential, Ben. If anything happens out here, we are the last option. Besides, I have authorization to disengage us from the CUP Loop any time I feel."

"That's reassuring. What could go wrong out here in space?"

"There is always NAB-site 15 to consider."

"What? So we're dropping into the hottest orbit Mercury has to offer without any propellers."

"Retros."

"Propellers."

The lights dimmed and a buzzer sounded. They looked to a display screen on the bulkhead wall, where a message appeared in bold blue letters: 'Eleven report terminal 6 for retro corrections.'

Ben swung back to Celeste.

"Caffeinate later?"

She nodded. They had a thing for one another.

He flashed her a gorgeous smile, then bustled off through a portal while she turned back to the blackened terminal glass to study herself. Her reflection seemed smoky and dark in there, not as clear as earlier, almost as if the screen housed some presence not part of its material. Had the technicians installed a CUP-camera behind the screens also? She stared hard at it looking for some edge that might identify a lens, but it was seamless, and as black as a well.

"It never returned a message. I sent one in CUP-speak, but it didn't respond," Angela replied to Ben, fluttering her large fake eyelashes and fingering the edge of her dyed bouffant.

She was working hard on it for Ben, though he thought it was disgusting. He leaned over terminal 6 and pressed a number of key commands for a return of the file, then turned to her.

"Did you run a diagnostic on the CUP-speak crystal before sending, to make sure it was structured properly?" he asked, trying to focus on her mousy brown eyes instead of her ugly blond hairdo.

"I know my CUP-speak thank you, Ben," she laughed, and then inhaled, forcing her bust-line into even tighter quarters.

He looked away, trying to ignore them.

"I don't understand why CUP ordered me to this terminal."

He glanced up at the camera in the corner.

"Look Ben, here it comes!" Angela exclaimed, pointing into the luminous screen.

'Eleven-Ben seventeen-Angela good'

Ben looked at Angela, Angela at Ben, and they both turned to the camera above them.

"What does it mean, Ben?" Angela asked.

"I don't know."

"Hold on, here comes another one."

'Eleven retros D to H disengaged subs L to M engaged'

"Man, what a relief! I have to tell Celeste CUP has corrected the problem," he said, rising.

"Just a minute Ben, something else is coming in," Angela declared, grabbing at his hand. Another message appeared.

'Eleven-seventeen go junction 07 module B59'

Then the screen went blank, and so did Ben.

"I don't get it. Lewis is the engineer. Why does CUP want you and me to check out module B59?" Ben asked, glancing up at the camera.

"I don't know, but we have to," Angela replied gleefully.

"No, I have to tell Celeste what's going on first," he announced, and turned away.

The terminal 6 screen glowed quickly back to life and another message appeared.

'Eleven-seventeen go junction 07 module B59 immediately'

This message was identical with the first, though with the more urgent 'immediately' attached. Ben ground his teeth, glared at the terminal, and then back to the CUP-camera.

Rising from her seat, Angela seized his hand, poked her bouffant a couple of times, and pressed an opulent breast against his arm. They headed down the long dark corridor toward the cramped junction 07, and then the even tighter quarters of module B59.

Celeste was constructing another CUP-speak crystal for CUP when her screen began to flicker. She had been working on a query regarding Mercury's newest aphelion point as well as some secondary coordinates for another approach to NAB-site 15. She stared perplexed at the screen for a moment, wondering why CUP had removed her crystal before its time. The screen began blinking uncertainly, as if in the final stages of receiving a message, but instead of a message, the terminal filled with an image of the ship's interior, near one of the junction modules.

Two naked crewmembers stood there, one unmistakably Angela with her messed up bouffant, the other maybe Charley, or... Both figures leapt up as though called to attention, and she recognized the man standing beside Angela.

She shrank from the terminal. How could Ben have done this after signing the Pair Form with her? The screen went blank, yet the image remained frozen in her mind as CUP returned to its dark seamless nest in the Mainframe. How had this happened? Why had CUP passed this image on to her terminal?

Celeste went to her quarters to collect herself. She could no longer sit before that cold eyeball or terminal screen and await its luminous messages... not for a while anyway. Maybe she should consider Charley instead. She dreaded the return to Earth now, for if you weren't paired at retirement to share resources, you were allocated to the dessert areas.

How could Ben have done that, or CUP shown her? Now she was threatened. Sitting in her room away from the screen and camera, she began reviewing those still eligible. There was only three left on Proteus: Charley, Jensen, and Bob. Jensen was a blond slob, and Bob, an effete, personally troubled geek. Charley was a Casanova that made her feel like a bimbo.

As she learned over her desk, a scrap of paper fell to the floor. It was one of her notes to herself. She picked it up and held it under the lamp, her paper and Styrofoam body suit crackling slightly. 'Mission six: NAB-site 14' lay scribbled across the top in her own handwriting. This did not make sense, for it contradicted the CUP view they were going to NAB-site 15.

Mercury was coming into view on the monitors, its light and dark craters filled with bowl-shaped ejection-aprons, mountains. The thin atmosphere, composed mostly of helium, argon, and neon, was in constant movement due to the solar winds carrying streams of metallic particles. One of these streams lit by the sun now, had become a luminous ribbon that stretched a thousand or more miles across the Mercury sky.

This new sight struck Celeste as eerie against the ruffled darker half of the planet. Everyone, including Ben and Angela, had gathered in the ships central chamber to watch the approach into vector two.

She avoided eye contact with Ben as she studied the various screens for inconsistencies. Since discovering her note to herself, she was wary of CUP messages. Even these images of Mercury's ribbons seemed off. All four screens looked the same somehow, as if the Proteus's hull cameras were all aligned. If they were close enough to Mercury to see the NAB-sites sparkling along the horizon, none of the cameras should be set to the same screen co-ordinates... unless of course CUP was simulating the images.

"Jensen, build a CUIP-speak crystal as quickly as you can with the capitalized message: Query Retro Subs L to M Engaged: NAB-site 15?"

Capitalize meant urgent.

Jensen turned to her.

"But Celeste, that will take... " he began.

"Do it now, Jensen!"

Everyone turned, shocked by her tone.

"Ben, do you still have your old compass?"

He nodded.

"Get it for me!" Celeste ordered, and swung back to the screens.

"Bob, I'm going to need a calculation based on the screen images before us, specifically, on the Proteus's L through M retro positions. In other words: Is our present perceived approach appropriate for the transfer to orbit?"

"I don't know where the L to M retros are on this ship... I'll need a schematic," Bob whined.

"Well, get one!" Celeste yelled.

"But... "

"What now?" she glared at him.

"I'll need a crystal."

"Build the damn thing! Angela, you help him."

Were retros L-M sufficient to orchestrate them through to NAB-site 15, she wondered? Last year Theseus Star and her crew had been lost at NAB-site 13. Their approach had been too steep and it had broken orbit, spiraled into the hot side of Mercury.

This whole CUP-speak technology was a real concern now. Though supposedly extraordinary for danger assessment, the CUP disparity between what was happening in real-time and its planned approach was nearly dysfunctional.

"Here's the compass, Celeste," Ben announced, stepping up beside her.

She turned to him, smiled. He smiled, handed it over.

Perhaps that scene at the junction box...

"A message is coming in," Jensen declared.

Everyone turned.

"Says: Subs L to M Engaged Vector fifteen unfeasible."

"What?" Celeste barked, "Please repeat that."

"Subs L to M Engaged Vector fifteen unfeasible."

"Jensen, crystal quickly, the message: 'Abort Transfer Orbit: Reconfigure Retros L to M to Vector Eight. Help him, Ben!"

As Jensen spun back to his screen, Ben dropped to a terminal beside him.

"Oh my God!"

It was Bob. All four monitoring screens were updating.

"Get back to work, Jensen-Ben!" Celeste ordered.

Both hunkered over their stations.

"What the hell is that Bob? What is going on? I thought these images were live."

"So did I, Celeste."

The monitor screens had suddenly filled with huge silvery ribbons and the dark cratered face of Mercury, all bearing down on the Proteus. This 'updating' had just eliminated two hours of trajectory time. They were coming in too steep.

"At least tell me which direction the hull cameras are pointing, Bob."

"I just received a message saying the screen alignment is identical to that of the forward camera positions on the hull."

"Exact wording please," Celeste demanded.

"Screens One to Four Mercury Camera," Bob said.

"That says only one camera is active, Bob."

Celeste raised Ben's compass toward the screens above and watched the arrow. The arrow was not pointing toward the heavily magnetized iron silicate crusts of Mercury, but to somewhere behind her, which if the message was correct, was utterly impossible. She returned the compass to her pocket.

"Ben, Jensen, what's going on over there?"

Ben swung around.

"We're sending it now, Celeste."

"What the hell... "

It was Bob again.

Celeste spun toward him, followed his gaze to the monitoring screens. Another 'update' was coming in. This was impossible. Nevertheless, Mercury's dark face loomed forward to fill all the screens, blank out the sun, the horizons, the silver ribbons. Only blackness greeted them now.

She caught her breath and froze. Somewhere before them lay the great Caloris Basin with its wrinkled ridges and long polygonal fractures expanding toward them like some version of CUP's cold black screen.

"A message is coming in," Ben howled.

His voice broke her free of the ice encircling her, and she swung toward him.

"Says: Aborting Transfer Orbit Requires Confirmation."

Ben faced her. There was no time for a confirmation. Surely, given its own updates, CUP was aware of the situation.

Celeste made a decision. She pulled Ben's compass from her pocket and studied it again. Here was the enigma. The arrow pointing away from the monitoring screens looked like an encrypted message she could not read.

"We're out of the Loop!" she shouted, and punched in the emergency code.

No coordinates or virtual controls popped up on any of the screens. The brakes aboard the Proteus were not working.

"Everyone to the pods!" she yelled, and dashed to a terminal to punch in another code.

A green light went on and she lifted the security lid to a smaller keypad attuned to her biometry, entered the final code. The exodus was under way.

In her headlong rush to her pod, the compass popped out of her pocket and skated under a bulkhead. She glanced back, but there was no time to collect Ben's prized antiquity, for in a few moments the Proteus would be spiraling into Mercury. She spun around and swung into her pod. As the hatch closed behind her, she turned to the control panel.

There was no control panel, only the smooth steel walls of a coffin-like chamber. The lights went out. A strange hissing filled the pod, and within seconds, Celeste felt the heat and heard the crackling sounds of her Styrofoam body suit burning up around her.

All was quiet on Proteus now.

A light started blinking on Celeste's private terminal, indicating the arrival of the new message: 'Retirement complete.'

Some time later, two young men with cleaning devices came in through an outer hatch and started working on the ship.

"Hey look at this man, someone left an old compass behind," one young man said, crouching to pick up the compass.

He held it up for the other fellow to see.

"It's pointing toward the North end of the hangar," the other replied.

Both inadvertently glanced toward Celeste's Pod door.

"Had to be someone in that one," the first young man said.

"Yeah, I guess," the second replied, and then more reflectively, "Say, do you think they should have known they were in a furnace?"

"Naw," the first said, "It's better to go out thinking of something else."

THE END

Bio: Mr. Smithson studied Philosophy at SFU Vancouver, programming languages as UC Berkeley Extension. His previous publication credit include “Spinoffs and Spin Backs” and “Zen-Moiré” 2013 on Cuke.com, “Saving Souls” 2011, Schlock! Horror Webzine UK; “Mail from Hub” 2008, CrossTime Science Fiction Anthology #7; “Ghost Skin” 2005, Nocturnal Ooze Magazine (online horror); “Invasion of Nod” 2004, Dream Quarterly International  (magazine/ fantasy); “Skidder Trails” 2003, Elephant Magazine (magazine/literary/art).

E-mail: Leland Smithson

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