12 Days of Fiction 2018, Day Six
An Interview With Primus: Epilogue
The lift stops and Primus walks out. He stands by an observation window. Beyond the glass, shuttlecraft after shuttlecraft takes off, all of them on a course towards the orbiting Traveller.
Primus stares at the artificial vertical clouds the ships leave behind.
Primus comes up and stands beside himself, also staring. He doesn’t really need talking, but he’s old school.
“There we go.”
“Yes.”
Someone else walks in and also stands by the window.
“Madeleine,” Primus says.
She greets them using their link.
“Primus. Everything went according to plan.” She’s not asking. She was there throughout the interview, as all of them were.
“Yes. Within expected parameters.”
“I still feel… uneasy about it,” she says. Another shuttlecraft roars up. She gazes at its number, 147. “I go there.”
“We can feel you,” Primus say. Only one Primus speaks. “Consensus, Madeleine. Majority. We decided it was better that way.”
“I know. I was there. And you know I agree. But I still don’t like your lying to her.”
“Well, in fact I lied to the whole of them. They will never know we are here.”
“I can’t help but feel the way I do.”
“You are entitled to that. We are all different, after all.”
Madeleine focuses on Primus. Primus looks back. Primus still gazes out.
“I’ll never understand your sense of humour,” she says. But he smiles at her, and she smiles back.
“There we go,” Primus says when the last ship takes off. Madeleine and Primus turn to look. Below them, Star City is engulfed in mist.
“What will they do with it?” Madeleine said.
“We’ll see. Literally.”
They stay in silence for a while. Then Madeleine actually speaks.
“Primus?”
“Yes?”
“How will that be? The detachment?”
“We cannot really know,” Primus says. “Our mind is up there, in our body. And here.”
“Gradual,” Primus adds. “That’s what I have thought. The delay will grow longer as Traveller moves away. Eventually, even relativistic effects will kick in.”
Madeleine seeks Primus’ hand. He holds hers.
“What if they ever come back?” she asks.
How young you are, Primus doesn’t voice.
“We will see,” he actually says. “Those would be interesting times indeed.”
“You know,” she says, “I think that sooner or later Vonn will join the dots.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, she’s brilliant. She just was fed too much information. Eventually, she will realize that we must have gone a few steps beyond.”
“Multiple bodies. Collective minds. Real AIs. Too many novelties, all of them potentially dangerous. That’s why we’re doing this. We’ll guide them through it all,” Primus says.
Madeleine wraps her arm around Primus. Primus does the same, and Primus also steps closer.
“Do you know about the Illuminati?” Primus asks.
Madeleine doesn’t answer. She just checks the link, and then she knows. She actually chuckles.
“Conspirationists. Really popular in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
“Well, now we will indeed be the Illuminati.”
“In a sense, Primus, we have been for quite some time.”
“Indeed. And our work has led us here, to this point. We are reaching for the stars,” and he points at the fading speckles up in the sky, “together with artificial sentient beings, and at the same time we remain back here as guides.”
“Hidden guides in our secret bases.”
He smiles at that.
“Yes.”
Primus walks around and also wraps his arm around Madeleine.
“It’s funny.”
“What is?”
“Have you ever imagined if we ever meet aliens?”
“They. They meet aliens. We’ll have to start saying it that way.”
“You’re right. Old habits. Well, have you?”
“No, I cannot say I have.”
“The first contact of the human race with an alien civilization. And the human race they will meet is us: ‘ahumans’ and artificial intelligences.”
“Well, who knows, perhaps that’s the only way to sail among the stars.”
“Perhaps.”
“It would be nice, if we ever got to know.”
“Well, we just have to wait.”
“And we have time.”
“That we do.”
