The Stephanie Glitch, part 2
The end of the beginning.
Recommended listening > Ravenous - Mass Mental Cruelty
Last time, we were introduced to an interdimensional traveller called LP, and an almost-human machine called Toumai. Today, we learn a bit more about why LP is here.
The Stephanie Glitch - Part 2
Toumai moved almost imperceptibly, but the intruder noticed. She got in his way.
“No. Don’t tell the crew. Not yet.”
It worked. Toumai was distracted. The intruder had hoped he was still reading her voice, that he would sense the urgency in it and listen to her request. Toumai’s motors whirred inside his eyestalk. The deep light behind his obsidian lens twinkled. Up this close, the intruder could smell the oil of his joints through the vents in her suit.
“A message is held in the dreamscreen network. If you attack or otherwise hinder me, it will be sent.”
“Scan me again. I’m not here to fight,” said the intruder.
“I know,” Toumai said, his social programming kicking back in. This human female had no intention to harm him or the ship, he could infer that much from her speech and body language. But what was she here for, if not invasion?
“You said you want to perform an extraction?”
“That’s right.”
“Of what?”
“We’ll get to that. Look,” LP said. She loosened her helmet, removing it and placing it on a nearby console. She had dark hair, a stoic face, and tired eyes. She smiled slightly at Toumai and opened a wrist-mounted panel on her suit, tapping a few buttons until a faint orange hologram appeared between them. It depicted the Artifice, its metal corridors and connected asteroids building cube by glistening cube in the air. The intruder adjusted the scale with a gesture of her fingers, zooming out. A long way away from the ghostly Artifice a fleet of transparent jagged ships lingered, following it.
“Virtualists,” Toumai confirmed.
“Spikeships,” LP said. “Outside your background scanning range, but you were never built for warfare, or indeed invasion. Don’t worry. They don’t know I’m here, so you’ll have a fighting chance as long as you pretend to only know about them once they are in scanning range. If you react any sooner, they’ll know there’s been intervention.”
“Intervention?” the machine asked.
“From upstairs. From me. Well, it might technically be next door, if we’re sticking to that metaphor. It gets complicated. The point is to make them think you don’t expect them, so I can surprise them. No evasive manoeuvres yet. Don’t wake the crew.” The invader scratched her head and released her hair from the confines of the suit. The machine shook his looming white eyestalk.
“That is suicide.”
“It is strategy,” LP said sternly, “I can defend this ship.” She walked to the sealed door and closed her eyes to think. The machine followed her sheepishly, still debating waking up the researchers and detaining this intruder. LP’s eyes opened.
“I can practically hear the gears in your head turning. Apprehending me won’t save this ship.”
“The gears in my head are not responsible for my thought processes. They are used for movement.”
“I know,” LP said. “It’s a metaphor. Now let’s talk strategy.”
“What is your strategy?” Toumai reluctantly played along.
“This place started out as a geological facility. Do you still have gravity disruptors?”
“They are in storage.”
“Could you bring them out?”
“Why?”
“I’m going to connect them to sensors, turn them into proximity mines. Once a Virtualist spikeship passes they will activate, launching rocks inwards. It’s the best we can do with what we’ve got. The Artifice is already inside an asteroid field.”
After a split second Toumai replied, “That would be a temporary deterrent.”
“But it would work,” LP replied. There was a moment of hesitation.
“Correct.”
“Then we shall do it.” She switched the hologram off and finally turned her attention to the cylinders set into the back wall of the room. She took a few seconds to remove both her gloves and set them down neatly beside her helmet, walking over to the middle cylinder. Inside the murky silver-greenish liquid a human skeleton floated loose. Tiny insectoid machines, too small for their bodies to be seen with the naked eye, glistened under overhead lights as they worked on the skeleton.
“Beetle printers. Nice,” she said. Toumai rolled across the ceiling, following her.
“Is this her?” LP asked gently.
“Who?”
“You know. The glitch.”
“Stephanie?” Toumai asked for clarification.
“Who else would I ask about?”
“Yes. It is her,” Toumai replied reluctantly. Silently he sent a report into the dreamscreen network, advising the crew not to wake until the threat was neutralised. LP winced and said, “I felt that. Stop talking about me behind my back.”
“How did you know?” Toumai asked.
“I’m in your head, slightly. It’s wavering. But I know if you’re thinking about me.”
There was an awkward silence. LP rubbed her hands together, leaning close to the glass, staring at the skeleton. The white room felt huge now, a void sparsely populated by idle screens and buttons, wiring and panels. LP focused her attention on the vacant eye sockets of the skull, at imagining eyes and muscle and skin set into the face. Privately she tried to convince the universe that she was looking back, that through empty eyeholes she could see through time and space, to this strange astronaut staring back at her.
The moment was soon ruined. LP cringed again at a thought passing through the room.
“You just thought about suffocating me, didn’t you?”
“I have defence systems in place.”
“To remove the oxygen in here and wait the ten hours it would take for me to run out of mine?”
“If that is necessary.”
“You know I’m not a threat, right?”
“What I assume could be biased by my social programming. Above that, I am programmed to protect the experiment,” the machine said coldly.
“Are you hearing yourself? ‘The experiment’… she isn’t the experiment. You are.”
“I do not understand.”
“I don’t expect you to. Look, your captain will wake up you know, now you’ve told him.”
“I believe he trusts my decision making.”
“No matter. I guess we don’t have long until I have to have a talk with the grown-ups.”
LP placed her naked hands on the cold glass, directly opposite the skeleton’s hands, and looked up into vacant eye sockets.
“She is unfinished.”
“I am aware.”
“She has such a beautiful skull, don’t you think?” said LP. She bumped her forehead lightly against the glass, pressing against it. She recalled her own experiences in coldbeds and stasis chambers, the feeling of waking up after decades, the smell of the coldbed gel and the prickling sensation as her nervous system rebooted itself after a false death.
“It’s freezing in here by the way. How long has everyone been asleep?”
Toumai ignored the questions.
“Why do you want to extract her, if you can simply defend this ship from the Virtualists?”
“I won’t be able to forever,” LP replied. She pulled her hands away from the glass. Toumai replayed what she had said, checking it again. Dishonesty. Misdirection. It wasn’t an outright lie, but it did cover up the real answer to the question.
How to counter vague answers? Ask straightforward questions.
The machine nudged in close to LP, his welding arm releasing a single warning spark.
“Is her universe in danger? Yes or no.”
LP barely glanced back at him, still entranced by the teenage skeleton floating in the cylinder and the printer bugs that attended to its construction. The final layers were being added now, preparing for the attachment of musculature. Toumai was growing impatient.
“Is her universe in danger? Yes or no.”
“All of them are.”
Author’s notes
The Stephanie Glitch connects to another project, the Earthloop Trilogy, though you don’t need one to enjoy the other. Earthloop is three interconnected time travel novels. It’s a mix of Netflix’s DARK and THE X-FILES, and features the triumphant return of fan favourite Lax Morales.
It’s due to release at the same time in 2024, though it won’t happen at all if I can’t get it funded by September 10th 2022.
I’ve just hit my advertising budget limit, so if you could check it out and share it with your friends, family, pets, etc. I would appreciate it. Anyone who can send proof they’ve shared it gets a free surprise.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realphillipcarter/earthloop-trilogy
I made the decision to remove Stephanie from Amazon pre-orders a few weeks back because I have found several agents I am interested in querying, and apparently there’s a free-for-all SciFi pitching event this week too, not that I know how to translate the acronyms (I am forever relying on kind strangers to tell me what SFPBLTSJHJFHPIT is, so I know if it’s worth my time).
I will also launch Stephanie on Kickstarter, provided Earthloop is successful. Because to be perfectly blunt with you, the main draw of tradpub is the marketing budget, the prestige, and the connections (all of which I can forge myself with more money).
Writing is my full-time job at the moment, so I really appreciate you being here to read the stories. If you have the time, please consider sharing this with someone. It’s the best way to support me, though I also like cider.
-Phill