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CT Short Story 1: Infection

The dull crimson glare of the red dwarf binary system RT-312 A/B bathed the tiny and unkept one-room hovel in the sickly dim glow that only stars suffering entropy's long, cruel demise can provide. The light filters on the room's windows had stopped working months ago, leaving everything in the room the color of blood. Or so thought the room's inhabitant, a generally lonely and unhappy Procyanasian. His people, a race of anthropomorphic mammalians that resemble raccoons, generally lived on forested planets, bathed in white or yellow light. Not in battered old tin cans floating around a useless rock that could barely call itself a planet on a good day. They belonged in a cool, wet breeze, under a blueish sky, the sound of wind rustling through the aromatic leaves of the Aldavian Cypress trees of home...

But no. Instead, Derek found himself once again waking up to the shrill screech of the standard CT alarm systems installed in his room. His fur bristled every time it woke him up. He had been stationed on this tub for two and a half years, and it was never any different. The maintenance ships might make it out this far to the Periphery once every six months or so, but they never had the time to do anything about that. Or his window filters. Of the station's three-Anasian crew, he was the only one who had to wake up to the filthy red light that RT-312 A/B spat in his face every day.

Such was Derek's luck, though. Of all of the glorious and exotic places across the Anasian Confederation and Periphery that one could experience serving in the AC's military, the Califeron Teseretz, the RT-312 A/B station was the closest to Purgatory that one could experience. An elongated, ancient and completely sterile planetoid with no natural resources that orbited an equally ancient pair of stars too plain and uninteresting to even blow themselves apart in their old age. The station itself felt equally ancient, and even by 39th century standards it was, having been held in continuous operation for over 250 years in one form or another.

Derek had plenty of time each day to ruminate on the reasons why the CT kept this place in operation for so long. None of his superiors had been briefed on the situation, and he suspected that the only reason that the station was still open was because it had gotten lost and forgotten under centuries of bureaucracy. The other two inhabitants of the station were as in the dark about it as he was. But it did not matter a great deal to Derek, as he was often far more lost in his own thoughts of why he was stuck on RT-312.

But first, he needed his standard morning pick me up. A strong cup or two of a processed plant beverage containing xanthine stimulants, and the handful of pills that were standard issue for officers this far out at the edge of Anasian space. Generally a series of psychotropic compounds to manage the isolation of deep space service. They might send you out to the Periphery if you screw up, but at least they keep you really stoned in the process. Lots of guys serve out here just for that. Derek just wished he was orbiting a planet that had a breathable atmosphere so he could take some shore leave like normal station crews...

Sitting nude at the edge of his bed vigorously brushing out the mats in his fur from another night of rough sleep, he thought about screwing up. He had done a lot of it in his life, and career. Granted, none of it was criminal, and he was certainly in much better standings than the two other officers on the station, both of whom were technically his subordinates. Vithreel, a disgraced Vul-'Prassad soldier who Derek found terrifying, and Irel, an attractive but extremely awkward and paranoid young Cervinasian, from a race of deer-people.

He picked his uniform up from the pile on the floor that it was left in the night before. When you work in a place like RT-312, keeping up appearances is rarely important. Placing his muzzle up to the fabric of the uniform pants, he sniffed, making sure they could go one more day without cleaning. After passing the test, Derek dressed, brushed his head fur once more, and sighed in relief once he passed through his room's automatic door, and out into the synthetic white light of the stations's corridors. Stumbling and half asleep, he made his way to the control room, to relieve Irel from her shift. He enjoyed his mornings with Irel. She might have been a little bit off, but she had that cervine beauty that Derek had always found attractive. Under other circumstances...

"Good morning Irel," yawned Derek, "Anything interesting come in last night?"

"Ha, what do you think?" Replied Irel.

"Does anything interesting ever happen around here?"

Irel gave him a strange look, and then began giggling. She stood up, shook her head, and wished Derek a good day. She bounded out of the control room, happy to be able to retreat to the private world of her quarters and mind. Her hoped to join her one day, if he could work up the courage to let her know how he felt...

Derek settled into his console, and tuned into the AC newsfeed that the CT was at least nice enough to send all the way out to the edge of space. He sighed. While he desperately missed being back in civilization, some things about it he was happy to be away from. The same political dramas were replayed year after year, and this year's was no different. The AC, a confederation of many different anthropomorphic peoples (as well as humans and other mostly-humanoid species), was undergoing a social transformation at the time. Centuries ago, most spacefaring Anasian peoples were governed by a series of local feudal governments that represented a region of a planet, to entire Anasian races with multi-planet empires. These feudal systems then combined to create the AC, mostly of diplomatic convenience. Centuries later, a majority of Anasian cultures are governed by the AC, with local control given to democratically elected representatives.

In the midst of all of this, not all of the Anasian Houses in the AC have dropped the feudal system, and the royal families of these houses have formed a strong and vocal minority of traditionalists within the AC. These center around Archduke Charles Kithanda, ruler of the third most populous fox (Vulpinasian) planet in the AC, Vulpon. Charles Kithanda had made another series of inflammatory statements against some high level AC official, and blah blah blah. Derek wasn't really that interested in any of the news today. Not really that much to be interested in out here, anyway.

The agonizingly lonely hours passed as they usually did for Derek and his stationmates, with copious amount of mood-enhancing drugs. Derek turned on the station's specialized long-range sensors, and did the standard series of scans of an area of space 1.8 AU from the station. For 250 years the CT has been keeping an eye on this patch of space, and Derek would keep scanning. This is what his life up to this point had amounted to, so he could at least do this right. He drank his xanthine-drink and watched the results.

Nothing. As usual. His thoughts began to drift to how much he was not looking forward to the short encounter with Vithreel he was required to have at the end of his shift. While Vithreel was perfectly pleasant to talk to, foxes made Derek uneasy. Especially the Vul'Prassad, who, frankly, creeped everyone out, even other foxes. Derek had tried to work on his prejudice toward foxes his whole life, but the 'Prassad were a bunch of freakishly trained elite super soldiers who implanted weird technology in their heads to enhance their response time and abilities. It is said that the head implants also give the Vul'Prassad telepathic abilities. But Vithreel was not any ordinary Vul'Prassad, which would have been bad enough. He had been disgraced, and had his implants removed. Derek had never heard of such a thing, as the Vul'Prassad tend to go through rigorous training and psychological conditioning before they are implanted. For one of them to do something that gets them removed from one of the most highly trained and conditioned military societies in the AC... Derek shuddered at the thought of what Vithreel must have done to deserve that fate. He never asked, as he was certain he would regret it immensely.

In mid-thought, two orange lights began flashing under a layer of dust in an unused portion of the console's main panel. Derek brushed off the dust, and noticed that the lights indicated an emergency communication on a general frequency. "Odd," thought Derek. The station was about four light years from the nearest shipping lanes or any areas of space traffic. Who could be out here?

Derek shrugged, and followed protocol. In the time that he had been here, he had never received an emergency communication. He unhooked a pair of earphones from under his console, placed them over his triangular ears, and switched on the console's communication system.

"Hello? Hello?" Derek tapped on the microphone input. "This is the CT recon outpost RT-312. We have received a distress call. What is your situation?"

The earphones replied with silence then a subtle static.

Derek tried again. "This is CT station RT-312. We have received your distress call. Please respond." He boosted the gain on the station's comm antenna, and listened to the grinding of actual gears above him as the old antenna rotated in the direction of the emergency signal. Derek would repeat his request one more time, then run a sensor sweep of the area. If nothing showed up, he at least would have something other than awkward small talk for Vithreel and Irel when he saw them next.

After sending out his final message with the station's antenna on full gain, he sat back and began a sensor sweep. Assuming that this was a false alarm due to another faltering system in the station, he got up and made another cup of xanthine. While stirring the sweetener into the beverage, a series of very bright blue lights and a loud alarm began to very annoyingly announce danger around the entire station. Startled by the deafening alarm, Derek lost control of his beverage and spilled it all over his uniform. He was thankful for his thick fur coat under the uniform; shorter-furred Anasians would have been scalded.

"What in the fuck is going on?!" Derek yelled, as he began trying to find an override for the hideous alarm that was resounding across the craft's hull. "I will never complain about that awful morning alarm..." Derek thought, "if I can get this damn thing to turn off!"

Irel and Vithreel barged into the control room in various states of undress. Vithreel had apparently been woken up, and the stocky fox appeared to be very upset. "Derek!" Irel screamed, "What the hell is going on?"

Derek, highly agitated: "I don't know!"

Vithreel began looking around the room for a way to turn off the klaxons and blue lights. "If I still had my headset implants I could just connect and turn that damn thing off!" he yelled.

"That doesn't do us a bit of good right now! Derek, turn it off!" Irel screamed, and covered her ears.

"I think I found it!' Derek yelled. He flipped a small switch on the underside of his console, which turned off the loud alarm at least.

"Oh thank God!" Irel was relieved. "My hearing is way too sensitive for that kind of alarm. I think they, you know, the CT, they like to screw with us deer. Those alarms are totally designed to-"

At that moment, all of the main screens in the control room flickered on, and displayed both the AC and CT insignia, and the message "Classification Level 12 - Urgent"

"What?" Barked Vithreel. "Only Admirals and Generals have clearance at level 12..."

Irel grasped Derek's hand. Derek pressed a button on his console to play the accompanying message. The screens changed to a strange and very obviously pre-recorded message. In the message was a tall and stately catlike Felinasian General in a CT uniform from roughly seventy years prior.

"Attention base commander. Commander, if you are receiving this message, then this station's sensors have detected the quantum signature of an extremely dangerous threat to not just this region of space, or to the AC, but to the entire universe in general. Back in the year CE 3756, in the region of space that this station scans, a rupture appeared in the boundaries of our universe, and a hole opened. To... somewhere else. Out of this rupture came something, something very alien to us. It lives in a metal and silico--" The message was cut short.

Every screen began displaying an odd blend of static, and what appeared to be geometries or symbols, in constantly flickering patterns and changing colors. The audio system of the station began blaring a series of extremely loud tones and electronic noise that far exceeded the strength of the previous alarms. Irel fell to the floor, her ears bleeding. She began having a seizure due to the high flicker-rate and her species' sensitivity. Derek ran to her.

Several of the screens shattered, as speakers began blowing themselves out. Data and bizarre patterns were displayed on the remaining displays, alternating with images and data from the station's computer core. Fuses exploded. Finally, Vithreel, who was working at the sensor control console, was struck in the visible remnants of his Vul'Prassad implants by a blue arc of plasma. He began speaking in strange languages. His eyes glowed the same color as the plasma coursing through his temple-implants.

"What in the ever-loving fuck is happening?!" Derek yelled, his gaze rapidly going back and forth between his unrequited love interest writhing on the floor, to his creepy co-worker being possessed by some weird plasma space-thing that seemed to be frying his brain. Were the circumstances less suddenly horrifying, he would have scolded himself profusely for wishing to alleviate his terminal case of boredom. The humans had a saying, "Be careful what you wish for...". Well.

Snapping back to the situation at hand, he ran to the bulkhead of the control room, where a first-aid kit was strapped to the wall. He ripped it down, and began searching for the anti-epileptic shot. OSE, or "Outer Space Epilepsy" was a common enough condition among some species, and he was glad to have a treatment on board. He prepared the shot, and administered it to Irel. Derek had no idea what to do about Vithreel, however.

The plasma was clearly doing a great deal of damage to Vithreel's body, but Derek was amazed that he hadn't been vaporized yet. Even stranger, he appeared to be attempting to communicate through this agonizing ordeal. Derek slowly approached him, as the plasma began to singe the tips of Vithreel's fur.

"It's... gasp... Infecting the station!" Vithreel groaned in between strings of incoherent mumbling.

"What is?" Derek asked in reply, "The plasma?"

"The AI!" Vithreel screamed.

"AI? Artificial Intelligence? What AI? The plasma?"

Vithreel arched his back as he was hit with a series of convulsions. "This thing. It interfaced. With me, and the station. It wants to eat us. Look it up..." His once golden eyes now shone a light blue glow.

Derek was even more confused. "The plasma wants to eat us? Its an AI? Vithreel, I don't know what you are talking about."

"It came in through a rift! 1.8 AU, the space we were monitoring. It's in the system, look it...It..unngh.. came in before, and they.... ow!" He began panting.

Derek ran to the nearest console with a link to the station's AC historical database, and queried "AI spacial rift". He found several short entries on an event that matched the year in the announcement. Apparently, this region of space had some form of distortion in it that made its structural fabric extremely weak, and prone to damage from outside sources. A rift had been opened in the region in 3756 by an outside entity of unknown origin. Now, in 3996, it was apparently coming back.

This entity was a form of life that did not take a known corporeal form. It was unlike anything discovered in this universe. It seemed to be of an almost artificial origin, speculated to have been from a universe where it's environment was that of metal and silicon, traveling its realm as a form of living information. However, when it broke into our universe, it found an environment very inhospitable to it. The only places that it could reside here were in the technology of spacefaring peoples. It would completely take over these places, and begin to influence those who interacted with infected systems. These people would then be influenced into making the environment more technologically advanced to facilitate the AI's survival. Usually at the expense of the survival of their own people.

In essence it was a cold, emotionless virus that would consume all technology and thus the lives of advanced civilizations in a universe. When it had consumed a region of space, it could then spread endlessly across a universe. If the AI consumed a universe, it wound punch a hole through a weak spot and infect the universe next door. On and on, until the entire multiverse was nothing but the AI virus and the matter it had converted.

The enormity of the situation began creeping up on Derek. Somehow, this AI signal had entered into this region, and their job was to monitor the weak spot in case it came back. It would have been nice if someone had told him that in the first place. With a renewed sense of confidence after the realization that the only thing that stood between this AI virus and the continued existence of everyone was the three of them. Vithreel, mostly.

Derek took his eyes off the monitor and faced Vithreel. All of a sudden, Vithreel became the most important person in the universe. Hell, the entire multiverse. Realizing that the only thing that was keeping him and everyone else alive right now was Vithreel's old 'Prassadi conditioning. If he had interfaced with both the station and the AI, then there might be a chance for survival.

"Vithreel! Listen to me!" Derek yelled, "You have to keep that thing from accessing the comm antenna! If it sends a signal back to the CT or anywhere in the AC, we are all absolutely done for. Can you keep it back? I'll destroy the computer core and as many non-life support systems as I can."

Vithreel withed in agony as the plasma pulsed through his body. "I'll... I'll try."

"Thank you."

Derek ran back to Irel. He checked on her, and found her regaining her coherence. He breathed a short sigh of relief. He put his hand on her cheek. "Stay here. Everything will be fine. I--" He stopped and looked into her glazed eyes. "Everything will be fine." he gulped.

Along the wall near the first aid kit were several tools, including a large mallet and crowbar. There were also several directed-energy pistols, but Derek just needed to make the station as uninhabitable to the AI as he could, not blow everyone into space. He picked up the mallet, and began smashing the consoles for the non-essential systems. Sparks and shattered glastic flew into the air, which was thick with the smell of smoke and ozone.

At the last minute, he decided to send a general distress signal before destroying his main console. It was likely that they would all be dead before anyone arrived, but at least this would give them a greater chance to be rescued. Plus, the signal's small bandwidth would ensure that the AI could not travel along with it. With the signal sent, he destroyed the main console, effectively severing the station's systems from one another. Only rudimentary life support remained.

Derek returned to find Vithreel intensely focused. His entire body was glowing, and the smell of singed fur was beginning to become nauseating. How was he still alive? Derek, gagging on the hateful odor, approached him. "Did it work?"

"It is weaker, but now it's attempting to leave. I am trying to use everything I have to stop it... I. I know what it is." Vithreel gagged. The veins and tendons of his neck began to show through his fur, which was matted with sweat and carbon. St. Elmo's fire stretched from his whiskers and the tips of his ears. He was struggling, and Derek realized that he might not make it after all. He began encouraging this fox, who he had once feared. The fate of all of existence rested on his training and conditioning. He felt immense respect, and his emotions began to well up. Tears began to form in his eyes as he began to yell encouragement to the now obviously dying vulpine.

With a sickening scream that resonated across the station, Vithreel blocked the AI virus from the antenna's transmitter, sending it to reside in a small sensor processing system backup that had evaded Derek's mallet. His body, now free from the blue plasma, collapsed on the floor with a thud, the smell of fur-smoke and singed flesh emanating from the pile that was fast ceasing to be Second-Lieutenant Vithreel Teinershen.

Derek, with his eyes wide and teary, ran to Vithreel. "You did it! You saved us all!" he cried, slumping down to his side. Vithreel looked at Derek, and smiled. "Tell them what I did here." He coughed. "Tell them what I gave up for them." With that, Vithreel coughed his last and surrendered himself to the great unknown. Derek checked for a pulse and began crying. He has never witnessed a death, despite his military service.

"I will..."

He looked up from the smoldering husk of his former comrade, to see Irel standing before him. She kneeled down next to him, and rested her head on his. They sat back, and looked at the remnants of the fox who saved their lives. Irel took his hand in hers, and stared into his eyes.

"What do we do now?" She asked.

"I guess we wait. It'll be a while before the CT receives our distress call and sends a ship to get us."

"Hmm. Yeah. I guess we can just, um, sit around then?"

Derek moved his eyes up from the floor, and into Irel's. Despite attempting to gain his composure, they were still wet. "I guess so. Nothing else to do, and I can't sit here and stare at this any longer. I have some booze from home I've been stocking up. I need a drink. Bad. You in?"

"Sure thing. It's been a hell of a day." Irel said, staring into the distance. "Why don't we drink it in my room. I can't stand the smell out here anymore. It's making me sick. And sad..."

"No problem. Whatever you want. Same here..."

"Thanks Derek. You know, you're a good guy. There's something I've been meaning to tell you. After this, life just seems too short not to..."

They left the battered remains of the control room and their friend, sealing the compartment behind them.