AL Clark, Jonathan G. Meyer [the little red hen ebook .TXT] 📗

The leader of the colony rearranged his place setting, looking down as if thinking.

“Nothing that’s panned out yet. Now, what’s this all about Mister Clark?”

The captain had gotten directly to the point, and Al was not yet sure how to start. What he asked next could be the moment of truth; or not. He liked the captain and wanted to trust him, but should he dip in a toe...or jump in feet first. He was tired of mysteries. He dove in.

“Did you know I was...artificial?”

Captain Effinger took a deep breath, checked his place setting again, then looked him in the eye and said, “Yes Al, I did.”

“You’ve known all this time?”

The captain visibly tensed and with more than a little guilt he answered Al’s question. “Since I received the order to allow you on board. A month before we left. I have a book that came with you that is way over my head. However, to the right person, I’m sure it explains a lot.”

After a pause, he continued, “You have the most advanced robotic body ever created—or at least, it was forty years ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve been going crazy trying to figure this out.”

“I was ordered from the beginning to keep your secret. Most people wouldn’t understand that you are a human with a robot body, they would only see you as a robot; disguised as a human. I am truly sorry, Al. Maybe I should have told you.”

“Is my name Al Clark?”

The captain took a sip of his wine and chuckled, “That is the name the technical assistants gave you. They thought it was clever. The name on your compartment door actually said ALARM CLOCK. How you got Al Clark out of that, I don’t know...but you were close. You were supposed to be our backup if the computer failed and were to wake us up if all else failed. It worked too—only ten years later than we planned.”

A Porter stuck his head through the door and asked if they were ready to start dinner. The captain said, “Yes, of course, come on in.” While the Porter was with them, they lapsed into silence, both thinking thoughts of their own.

The cheeseburgers were good. Al couldn’t remember ever eating one even though the taste was familiar. Somewhere in his past, he had liked cheeseburgers and still did.

While Al ate several more questions came to mind, and he voiced one, “Why do I eat and drink? My robot body doesn’t need it...does it?”

“Your body runs on a power pack inside your chest. Your brain and the outer layer of your skin, however, are organic and require nutrition and fluids. You get that by eating and drinking. Though you need less than most people do,” the captain explained.

His cheeseburger was only half eaten when Al found he’d lost interest in it. He was already full. The captain was right; he did seem to eat less than other people. He pushed himself back from the table, leaned back in the chair, and picked his next question.

“Do I need sleep?”

“Your brain needs sleep, but there again not as much as other people.”

“Why can’t I remember anything before my...awakening?” Al wasn’t sure if he woke up or was turned on.

Captain Effinger answered, “Now there I can’t help you. The first time we met, before departure, you knew precisely who you were. You volunteered for this you see. The paperwork I received said you were in a bad accident and left without the use of your arms or legs. They offered to give you a new body and a ticket on the Excalibur, and you jumped at it. You were excited and counted the days until departure. I don’t know what happened.”

What the captain said made Al feel better. His life had apparently taken a turn for the worse, and when they offered him a chance for a better life he had accepted. Now he wanted to know more about the benefits of that decision. “What’s good about his robot body? I don’t seem to be unusually strong or that much faster than an average person. Do you know why?”

“The roboticist that designed your body, a Doctor Hawthorn, told me your body was locked in a human simulation mode until conditions allowed the setting to be overridden or changed. They didn’t want you drawing unnecessary attention to yourself.”

Al thought it might be nice to meet his creator, “I would sure love to talk to that guy.”

“Hawthorn was aboard. He went through a lot to get a pass and accompany you. Unfortunately, he died before we could wake him...sorry. I’ve done some checking, though, and there is a roboticist aboard that was familiar with Doctor Hawthorn’s work. He’s someone you might want to talk to.”

“What’s his name?” asked Al.

There was a twinkle in Tobias’ eye as he answered, “His name is Edward Florida. I should warn you—he is quite a character.”

The captain’s smile grew. “He works in the robot repair shop, and I think he can fix you up.”

“That’s funny, sir,” Al replied half-heartedly. “I have some coordinating to do with my officers about your investigations and won’t be leaving until tomorrow, so I think I will look him up.”

The captain and the security chief spent another hour talking about the situations both on board the ship, and down on the planet. Al asked if he needed more men to find the saboteur, and the captain declined, believing Al needed the men he had.

By the time they parted company, Al was feeling better. It was the most enlightening afternoon of Al’s life—that he could remember.

AL WANTED TO SPEND some time with his friends while on board and made his way to Elizabeth and Chris’ quarters to finish the evening. Al was struggling with whether or not he should tell them, and was stepping through the airlock into the yellow section when the lights flickered, and then went out.

For a few seconds, everything stopped. Total silence joined the absolute dark until the emergency lights stuttered, flashed, and relit the corridor. In the distance came the sound of running footsteps, and the world restarted; quickly winding up to full speed.

Elizabeth was running down the corridor toward him. Right before she reached him, the ship jumped, followed by the sound of a distant explosion. That’s not good.

“What’s going on Liz?”

The racing woman used him to break her forward momentum and slid to a stop. She took a moment to catch her breath and exclaimed, “We have a fire in the habitat ring’s main power room in the blue section. That sound was an explosion, and we need to get there fast.”

Any fire on a spaceship can be a ticket to disaster. In such a contained space, if the flames didn’t get you, the smoke would. There is also the risk of breaching the hull and rapid decompression. Fires created fear on a spaceship.

They worked their way through the airlock and ran down the orange section to the blue access airlock. The closer they got, the more people they saw going the opposite direction towards safety. Liz and Al did not have that option. She was the senior electrical engineer, and he was responsible for ship security. This problem was their job.

The air around the airlock was smoky, and they had to force their way through the people leaving to wait for the doors to cycle, then push their way into the blue section. The blue corridor on the other side of the airlock was thick with black smoke.

“The power room is at the end of the passageway by the number three spoke,” Liz told him in-between coughs. They made it halfway to the room before she collapsed onto the floor and passed out.

Al could barely see, but he picked her up and rushed back to the airlock and handed her to the last of the evacuees. He pointed to one of them and said, “Give me your shirt. I need something to wrap around my face.” He held the man’s shirt up to his mouth and went back to try again.

He ran to the other end of the corridor and realized the shirt was not needed. He seemed to be breathing just fine. When he reached the power room, he found all three airtight doors standing wide open, blocked from closing. That is not supposed to happen.

He crouched as he entered the room, and tried to discover the reason for the smoke and alarms. In the middle of the chamber, a console of large circuit breakers was engulfed in flames. Al knew the fire system couldn’t operate with the doors open. If he can close the doors, it might activate the system and allow it to extinguish the fire.

Al crawled to the nearest door and gave it a solid push. Nothing happened. It was getting increasingly difficult to see, and the reason it wouldn’t close was hard to determine. He pushed again—only with more force. Something popped at the bottom of the door, and it reluctantly closed. He pushed firmly on the other two open barriers, and they too swung shut.

He slipped out of the room as the last door closed, and was relieved to see the fire system activate and empty the room of air. Fans came on in the corridor, and the air began to clear. As fast as it started, the crisis ended.

He hurried down the hallway entering living quarters looking for casualties. Inside the door of one apartment, he found a little girl lying on the floor unconscious. Quickly, he picked her up and carried her to the airlock.

When he walked out of the airlock, all smoky and dirty holding that little girl, the entire corridor full of people burst into applause. The parents took her and were standing there in tears, thanking him over and over. Al thought, that worked out well, and nobody suspects I am more than I appear.

A much recovered Liz took his arm as they left the crowd, and she walked him to her quarters. She left him to recover and get cleaned up while she returned to assess the damage. Chris was there when they arrived, and she filled him in on Al’s heroic deeds before she grabbed a flashlight and left.

Chris asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m all right; there wasn’t much to it,”

“Not according to my mother. She made it sound like you saved the day.”

“Really, Chris, it was nothing.”

The young man was aware they had a saboteur, and it raised a logical question, “How do you think it started?”

Al told him what he discovered. “Someone blocked all the doors open and set a fire. It was sabotage—no doubt about it. We need to catch this guy before he starts killing people.”

“He already has. A girl died a little while ago from drinking the water. She was only twelve years old.”

While Al was saving one girl, another had died.

He was getting angry, and he didn’t understand how anyone could hurt people on purpose. “I need to get back to the scene of the fire and see if I can help.”

He got up and went to the kitchen to clean up. Chris went to Al’s quarters to get him some clean clothes