The Brutus Code
Chapter 4: Run Before You Walk

Cassie. That used to be her name. She long ago shed that aspect of her humanity when she lost so much else of it during the Wars. Now she embodied the Angel of Death.

Now she waited. She took the first step in her task. Her right hand drummed on the arm of her chair. No one saw except her. She stopped, embarrassed by the inferior trait. She placed both hands in her lap, one holding the other, and sat still until called by him.

The Swift hung in empty space. Motion and vacuum deceived the eye for the ship was neither still nor was space empty. While in the vast distance between stars there appeared to be nothing, space held every type of particle and element. Dust floating among the stars held everything that might be needed on a basic level if only you possessed the means to collect it and use it. The Swift did both. In space so far from nearby stars, the ship appeared motionlessness, however it moved quite fast. At sub-light speeds, the Swift collected the dust of space and stored it as energy or used it as the raw material to fabricate what it needed.

This slow cruise between stars also gave Tommy and his current crew the precious commodity of time. They needed time to build up fuel stores. They needed time to sort through the reams of data that their own probe uncovered in the Capella System. Tommy hoped they could find out why someone wanted them dead. Agnes needed time to recover and build strength after being a popsicle for sixty-three years.

It had been three days since the Swift started its slow cruise to nowhere. During that time, Alfred prescribed Agnes a series of calisthenics. She dutifully followed her prescribed regimen of pushups, pull-ups, and jumping jacks in the low gravity environment. Alfred chose each exercise to avoid Agnes having to battle her own inertia while she built up muscle. He increased gravity as she increased muscle, so she regained her full mobility under normal gravity.

Tommy and Alfred found no clues as to why they were being hunted. Alfred’s processing resources focused on repairs to the ship, monitoring Agnes, and sorting the data. He hesitated to share the anomalous code with Tommy. Even with his processor speed there was too much data to crunch and little chance to refine the search. Also, he could not decide how best to explain it to Tommy.

Evening aboard the ship, like most space habitats fell into a routine. The star scape in view outside the main port remained unchanging. Time seemed frozen. “From the data we have scrubbed out of the system net there doesn’t seem to be a trigger that initiated the attack,” Alfred said. “I don’t know where else to look.”

Tommy snapped his fingers, “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place?” If Alfred had a face that Tommy could see, it would have looked at him like he’d grown another head. Instead Alfred imitated one of Tommy’s groans to show his understanding. Tommy continued, “We’ve assumed that the trigger was in their code. We’ve assumed that ours is clean.”

“Which it is, or I’d know it right away,” Alfred said. “After all, I am the code on this ship.”

“Not all of it. And you are not trapped in the ship’s system as code,” Tommy said. He pulled out his personal media player from a sleeve pocket. This player was a gift his father gave him when he was young. The last thing that Tommy had of his family, he kept it close. It contained a secret of Alfred’s code. His father set up the player as a storage device, with Alfred’s code stored for future upload. Tommy modified it so that Alfred lived on the device, interacted with peripheral equipment and it preserved Alfred’s original code. This created a failsafe where Tommy could not lose his companion as long as he held the media player. Tommy did not realize his media player tied into several family secrets.

“So, where do we look?”

“That is the question. Let’s retrace our steps.” Tommy began to feel like they were on the right track. “What was happening in our ship’s systems before the attack?”

Alfred began a litany, “Our navigation system was recalibrating after our last warp jump and we were preparing impulse. Two avatars were repairing a wall in bay A-5. A grilled cheese sandwich and coffee were being prepared in the galley. You never got a chance to eat it.” Tommy actually laughed at that. “Communication protocols were established with the local star system.” Alfred continued. “Standard subsystems were cycling through their regular updates and checks. The A/W drive was gathering fuel and transferring it to storage. The bio-reclamation system was converting waste into…”

“Wait,” Tommy interrupted. “Detail the Communication protocol with the local star system. Focus on data we sent. What variables change from our the PS Hub to the Cappella Star System?” Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“The details of program and navigation updates,” Alfred launched into another list. “Details of maintenance logs, data transfer of cargo. The list is still long, Tommy.”

“Right, but what details change for each stop beyond the normal ship’s operations?”

“The manifest!” they both intoned together.

“And what was so unusual about our last manifest? Agnes’ casket,” Tommy continued with his reasoning.

Alfred followed Tommy’s thought. “There is nothing unusual on the manifest. Each tracking number and id code is transmitted with our data dump as we enter a star system. That data is crosschecked with their data for confirmation. The difference is that our cargo is from the Dead Letter Office and often is not in the star system’s standard database. Alfred checked for a reference to Agnes’ casket in the code we mined from their communications dump.” Moments later Alfred found it.

“Tommy, you aren’t going to like this. It’s an old code that is hidden and embedded, but it matches the casket tracking and ID codes. Somebody was looking for her. And I found a curious anomalous code before we left that did not seem to have anything to do with the attack.” Alfred finished realizing that this would be a good way to bring up the doppelganger code.

“Alfred!” Tommy rarely got angry, and never with Alfred. This was different. It didn’t take long for Alfred to recount his discovery. He explained how he used extreme data filters to comb through what their drone mined from the Capella System’s main network. It surprised Tommy that Alfred had a self-image and the way he described how he visualized data in his own virtual world. Not reporting the doppelganger sooner seemed secondary in comparison. That did not minimize the offense.

As Alfred continued, Tommy became curious about Alfred’s world. It shouldn’t have surprised him to know that Alfred processed data this way. Alfred interacted with Tommy’s world and the variety of stimuli they encountered in space and with human interactions. Alfred mastered humanity’s quirks and mixed cues. Tommy never thought about it much. Like the friend you grew up with who would always be there, Alfred had been a constant in Tommy’s life since the loss of his father. It never occurred to Tommy that Alfred possessed an inner world like everybody else. Tommy’s curiosity peeked, and he had to ask. “Alfred. What do you look like?”

“Oh. You’ve never asked. Well, refer to monitor three. I’ll show you.” Alfred brought up a rotating image of himself. It began at the face and as he rotated the image in 3D he pulled the virtual camera out to show his entire image. A familiar face, a receding hairline, strong shoulders, and gentle intelligent brown eyes looked back at Tommy from the screen. His build was slightly smaller than average. Alfred also wore his standard orange ship’s jumpsuit.

“You look like my father.” Tommy froze in his seat. He didn’t think about his father or any of his family that much. Tommy remembered losing his father as a teen. It had been the two of them since his mother left. His older siblings were lost to the distance of space soon after his birth and his mother left to find them when he was five.

“Happy birthday?” Tommy often thought when he thought about the vague memories of his mother. So, Tommy’s father, Arnold Judson, raised him. Like most young children, their parents are the biggest influence in their lives. Even as teens, they rebel against the people whom they are closest to as they build their adult identities. Tommy lost his father as he began to be molded into manhood. Arnold Judson’s disappearance led Tommy to join the war effort. Now that image hung in front of him as a painful reminder of his lost youth.

“Tommy, I am not your father,” Alfred stressed. “This personal image is a part of my core code. Your father created me with a convenient template, his own image.”

“I can see that.” Tommy realized the honesty in what Alfred said.

“This image was a starting point. Over time as my code has been active and we’ve worked together I have evolved. Like any intelligence, my experiences have changed me. You, Tommy, have changed me.” As Tommy watched the rotating image on monitor three he noticed the differences. Alfred’s mouth held a natural grin and the crow’s feet around the eyes hinted at his sense of humor. Alfred wasn’t much older looking than Tommy. He could be an older brother. Where Alfred looked smaller than average, Tommy carried a linebacker’s physique. Tommy’s father pursued solo sports like distance running. Tommy always went out for the team sports and reveled in the camaraderie. The Wars took that from him, too. And Tommy favored the red ship’s jumpsuit.

“I’ll be okay Alfred. It will take some getting use to. Your face will be a nice addition. I don’t think about dad enough. You seem more like a brother than you did. I should have realized why your voice sounded so familiar. I took it for granted. Sorry.” Tommy confessed at length, which belied his usual brevity.

A silent moment of understanding passed between these two friends, the human and the artificial intelligence. They knew each other well enough to finish sentences, and for Tommy that said a lot, now their connection was family. And both being male, both let the moment pass without comment.

“So, the captured strand of code is secure?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, I isolated it to a single physical drive in my computer core and an avatar disconnected it. I then scrubbed through my code to make sure that what I retained did not contaminate me. And I’ve always got my origin code on your media player as the ultimate backup,” Alfred explained.

“Show me,” Tommy insisted, in his usual concise manner.

On the third monitor Alfred presented the image of the metal cell. Tommy watched as the camera passed through the small barred window on the cell door and into the cell. The image of an altered Alfred appeared standing in the center of the metal cell. The spark of intelligence and humor in Alfred’s face was absent from this image. The vacant eyes and the unshaven dirty face glared out of the screen. Although this code appeared to be standing, a sense of menace hung over the figure. Its muscles and stance appeared ready to attack.

Alfred rotated the image, black suit, scarred hands, and the sneer on its lips. “Wait,” Tommy exclaimed. “Rotate back and zoom in on the neck, please, Alfred.” There on the errant code’s neck appeared a virtual grim reaper tattoo. A black cloaked figure and in its skeletal hand it held a scythe. The blade held above a hooded skeletal head. The staff curved to form an “S” shape across its body. A handle protruded to the right of the image and was elongated beyond the length for a normal scythe.

“Does Agnes have this tattoo?” Tommy asked.

“No. No Tattoos,” Alfred replied.

Agnes stepped onto the bridge, toweling off the perspiration from her most recent set of exercises. She beamed with the healthy glow of a good workout not one of recovering from ill health. “Did I hear my name?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tommy replied.

“We may be getting somewhere with our data,” Alfred said.

“Great, but can it wait until after dinner? My appetite is coming back.” A good sign that Agnes was getting better Tommy stood to join her for dinner.

“Sure,” Tommy answered. To Alfred he said, “Later.” Tommy quietly left the bridge and headed to the galley to prepare supper.

Agnes remained for just a moment on the bridge staring after Tommy. “He’s been like that since the Wars,” Alfred explained. Not lost on either of them, Tommy’s response was short when Agnes was present.

The Angel of Death did not kneel before a sovereign, but stood proud before her idol. His pleasure in her work elevated her fervor for the function. The Angel of Death located what he desired, MOM. He was linier. He would give her the next line and she would complete it with confidence that he already knew the future. The end line became a forgone conclusion in his flawlessness.

“You must raise an army again,” his voice filled her. “Use what you need. Dispose of the excess as you will.”

“Always.” She thrilled at his confidence and chastised herself for her emotions. What he ordained must be. “It will be done.” With military precision, she turned on her heals and marched out. She was, as she had been, the good little soldier.

Tommy and Agnes sat at the table in the galley under the current one-third gravity. Alfred heated packets of prepackaged stew. As a government organization the Postal Service did not supply fresh produce or gourmet ingredients. On an eatable scale, the food packets tasted little better than the military rations packs that Tommy survived on during the war. This didn’t bother Tommy. He ate out of habit, but he felt a little embarrassed they had nothing better. As a bachelor he ate stew one night and soups the next, sometimes over hardtack biscuits. His meals resembled the diet for ancient sailors with vitamin supplements to keep him healthy.

As usual they began their meal in silence. Agnes’ memories proved illusive. She described vague faces and snippets of names as they ate sometimes. When Alfred prompted her, she shared any new shadowed memories from what she glimpsed after each night’s sleep. Her memories seemed to haunt her in that twilight time before she slipped into fitful slumber. She would share what little she remembered of her dreams. Alfred noted these as important clues to her memories.

After supper, they shared the cleanup chores. In the three days of her recovery, the time that Agnes and Tommy spent together had been over the small galley table where they now shared meals. While Alfred conversed with Agnes to map her mental recovery, she often drew random doodles on the tabletop, an interactive touch screen. Alfred saved these. They mapped her subconscious mind and revealed clues about her past. This evening, the conversation turned to family.

“So, we’ve just discovered a connection we didn’t know we had.” Alfred explained how he and Tommy were like brothers, with the same father.

“But you don’t feel like a father, always taking care of Tommy?” asked Agnes. She was doodling again.

“No,” Tommy said. “We share.”

“Sounds like you two have shared a lot. You’ve been together how long?” she asked. Alfred had explained to Tommy that the more they talked about common normal memories, the more Agnes’ memories may return.

“Twelve years,” Tommy replied.

“More than half of your lives.”

“In many ways we started out together. I got to skip childhood and was activated fully ready to interact when Tommy was fifteen. Dr. Judson had been lost and Tommy was on his own. Because he had my AI as a legal adult, he didn’t have to go into a foster home. There are no close relatives. Both Tommy’s older brother and sister were lost on deep space exploration missions,” Alfred concluded.

“Does talking about your family bother you?” Agnes asked. “I mean if it does, we can talk about something else.”

“No…” Tommy paused in thought. “Well sometimes, maybe. But if it helps you remember anything, I’m okay”

“I really don’t know,” she sighed with honesty. “I should be frustrated that I can’t remember much, but I’m not even sure sometimes what I should be remembering. From my perspective, I could have been born yesterday. In a lot of ways, I guess I was.” She paused and then exclaimed, “I’m like you Alfred. I was reborn an adult, with no childhood. We’d make a great case study for a psychology major wouldn’t we?” she laughed.

“Yes, remember I am studying you to help uncover any memories that might surface.” Alfred continued, “For example, talking about bringing up psychology studies and college majors indicates that you may have attended a university. Your cognitive abilities certainly indicate high skill levels that would serve you well in a variety of studies.” Agnes smiled at the compliment.

“Do not misunderstand. As an Artificial Intelligence I am accessing the psychological databases at my disposal. I believe that we are making progress. As you continue to heal, you will find more memories surface,” Alfred said clinically.

Tommy chimed in, “Alfred isn’t lying. Look at the table.” They both glanced at Agnes doodling. She had written three names, Caesar, Jasper, and Annie. “Any idea who they are?” Tommy said with a gentle smile. This looked encouraging.

Agnes stared at the names for a moment. She scrunched her eyes closed trying to search images behind her eyelids. A birthday party briefly flashed in her memory. It had been haunting her dreams since she had awakened, but the names did not connect to the faces she saw. “It’s no good. I don’t recognize these names. They could be family or friends. I don’t know.”

Tommy reached across the table and tapped the doodle to save it to a file. He took her hand and held it as he said, “You’re doing fine. Don’t give up.”

“Yes, we’re here to help,” reminded Alfred. “At a guess, I surmise you have a background in science or engineering. These are your doodles from the past two days.” Alfred opened Agnes doodle files on the table. They included several mathematical problems based on materials. She also doodled several mitochondria and protein strands, which appeared to be incorporated into circuit diagrams.

“Wait,” she said. Agnes moved the images around the table and arranged them into a flow chart. “Does this mean anything?” she asked.

The new configuration was indeed familiar. “It is the hibernation process,” Alfred remarked. “You’ve included modifications that I do not have on file. This is interesting.”

“Wow, maybe I was somebody?” Agnes murmured to herself as she sat back in her chair. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “My head hurts,” she commented. Alfred’s avatar brought a steaming cup of soothing tea for her.

“Here drink this. It will help you relax and sleep tonight,” he said.

Agnes prompted Tommy to share his story. Tommy said little, keeping his responses short. It was Alfred who launched into the long colorful discourse about the adventures that Tommy and he had during the Wars and in the Postal Courier Service. “The biggest adventure,” he always closed with, “is this adventure we are on right now with you, my dear.” She smiled when Alfred included her.

The stories were a way Alfred prompted her memory and filled in the recent history she had missed. When not doing her physical therapy, Agnes studied on the ship’s workstation. She devoured all subjects she could. Some topics she made connections with, others puzzled her. It might be a slow recovery for her. The biggest puzzle she researched was herself. It surprised her that she had not found any reference to her past. This was her biggest frustration. During the Wars many settlements on the Frontier and most of the Fringe outpost had lost their data. Families got separated and family members lost without their loved ones ever knowing what had happened. And by the end, many of the smaller Wars had erupted into major joint battles with multiple fronts, including the cyber front. Viruses uploaded into the Central worlds records scrambled much of the data. It was a mess.

“If only I had any clue, even to what part of the galaxy I’m from. It would be something to track down,” she sighed after finishing her tea and clearing her mug away.

“We have a lead,” Tommy dropped the bomb.

Alfred picked up the discussion, “We eliminated the possibilities for the attack to a computer virus code planted in the Postal Service computers. When we transmitted our manifest at that first stop, it activated.”

“What cypher set it off?” Agnes asked very interested.

“Your tracking number,” Tommy intoned.

Alfred added, “Someone has been looking for you for a long time.”

“How do we find them?”

“Tricky, they tried to kill us,” Tommy said.

“Oh, I suppose you’re right,” Agnes said. “What is our next move?”

“We look for them before they find us again. This virus infiltrated the Postal Service. It will be hard to hide from it.” Alfred shared.

“So, how do we do….Ahhh shoo..” Agnes sneezed. “Sorry. How do we do that?”

Tommy and Alfred ignored the sneeze. Dust plagued space travel and the environmental systems constantly scrubbed dust from the air. “We...” The alarm sounding interrupted Alfred.

“The biohazard alert has picked up an airborne infectious virus,” Alfred informed them.

“Location?” queried Tommy.

“Here, in the galley.”

“Source,” demanded Tommy afraid to glance where he suspected the answer to be.

“Agnes is the source of the biohazard,” confirmed Alfred.

Agnes looked at Tommy in shock. “No, it was just a sneeze. What can be the harm there? Don’t tell me you’ve conquered the cold?” As she said this she knew that she was the source of the warning. Three days of recovery and now this. She couldn’t catch a break.

Tommy’s training kicked in as he began to bolt from the galley and seal it when he looked into her eyes. “We’re already exposed. Need to limit the contact. Suits for both of us, now.” At the lockers they put on environmental suits. Once protected, Alfred scrubbed the air for a sample of the contagion to analyze. Then he emptied the cabin of air, exposing the interior of the ship to the environment of deep space.

“Quick way to clean up,” explained Tommy to Agnes. “Kills the germs. My shower gets treated once a week.” This broke the tension that Agnes felt and made her relax. For a man of few words, Tommy chose them well.

After securing the cabin and the atmosphere restored, Alfred explained to Agnes, “We need you to stay in your suits for twenty-four hours. We don’t have a quarantine facility on board. So, until the symptoms manifest themselves and I can run blood tests, your suits are your homes.”

Eighteen hours later the first symptoms hit. Agnes started with a runny nose, then a mild fever that rose around the evening mealtime again. Alfred took the blood samples. Tommy passed with no contagion and removed his suit. Agnes’ blood sample showed a previously unidentified mutation of the H7N9, a strand of influenza virus. Agnes found herself confined again to the Med Bay bed, still in her suit. Tommy took up his vigil again on the small bench attached to the wall.

Near midnight, ship’s time, Agnes vomited. Inside the suit this would be deadly. Not thinking about the hazard, Tommy immediately opened her helmet and removed it.

Not objecting, because it would do no good, Alfred suggested, “Use the vacuum.” The medical avatar waited with a cold compress to clean Agnes.

Over the next two days, Agnes became worse. She could not keep food down and liquids were a struggle. Her fever persisted, despite any medication that Alfred tried. Periodically, Alfred took blood samples from both of them to test.

“Alfred, what are you finding?” Tommy asked after each test.

“The same for Agnes. This flu is not in our database and is resistant to all our standard treatments. I have found traces of the virus in your blood, but your antibodies fight it.”

“Ok, what do we do?”

“Her prognosis isn’t good. Unless we get her to more extensive medical treatment within the next five to ten days she won’t make it.” Alfred always gave Tommy the facts once he confirmed them.

“We can’t go to just any star system. We’ll be blown out of the sky.”

“The Fringe?” Alfred’s said in clipped specific phrases.

“MOM, Alfred really?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, Tommy. Not any Mobile Orbiting Medical ship, but her MOM.” Alfred continued, “She may let us board and render aid, despite her being your mother.”

“No, she’s not.” Tommy’s tone held warning that Alfred was treading on dangerous ground.

“Thomas, she is a rebel herself. Her MOM unit last docked in the Fringe and there is little traffic control in those systems. Agnes may be dying.” That ended Tommy’s reticence.

“Only way?” Tommy asked giving in.

“Only way.” Alfred confirmed.

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