Containment (27 page)

The emergency ingress lever was exactly the mechanism for bypassing the airlock's decision making process that Arik was looking for, but there was one significant obstacle: since it was located outside the airlock, he would need a partner. As there was obviously no one in V1 who Arik could enlist to assist him in an apparent suicide mission, his only option was to turn to the unfeeling, unassuming, and indiscriminate nature of technology.

As he began learning the programming language of the robotic rovers, Arik reflected on how perfectly complimentary humans and computers were. Tasks that were simple for humans were still surprisingly complex for computers to perform, but even the most basic of computers could instantly perform tasks that no human in history could ever hope to achieve. For instance, it would be impossible for any human to manage all the variables that went into maintaining V1's life support system, and even the most brilliant of human savants could never hope to perform so much as a tiny fraction of the simultaneous calculations that even the most outmoded computers were capable of. Yet even a three-year-old child could probably complete the task of locating and pulling a lever with nothing more than the most basic of verbal instructions.

It would have been much easier for Arik to control the rover remotely, but there was no way for him to access his workspace from inside the airlock. You could take a polymeth tablet into the airlock with you, but in order to avoid possible interference with the spatial analysis systems, the airlock automatically shut them down as soon as the inner doors closed. The only way the robotic rover could operate the emergency ingress lever was if it were programmed to work entirely autonomously.

The instructions that Arik prepared for Malyshka (the rover that seemed to be in the best repair) were written in a language called SEMAL, or Spatial and Environmental Manipulation Language, and took Arik nearly two days to learn. SEMAL had constructs for dealing with three-dimensional objects and their movements through space, as well as built-in algorithms for visual interpretation and error correction. There were libraries that made writing code for the rovers much easier since they contained all the logic for manipulating things like the camera boom and other appendages. Arik also found he was able to import 3D models from the dock and airlock schematics into his program which meant rather than spending time recreating a digital representation of the physical environment, he was able to focus on teaching Malyshka how he wanted her to manipulate it.

When Arik transferred the program from his workspace to Malyshka, she immediately came to life. She switched on her work lights, raised her camera boom to get a better perspective on the room, began sending out radar pulses, and waited for the verbal command that would commence the execution of her mission. Assuming the program worked, she would find her way into the airlock, activate the pressure pad beside the outer doors, wait patiently while the airlock evaluated its contents and reached the decision that it was safe to proceed, then slowly advance through the outer airlock doors as they parted. She would then give Arik exactly 300,000 milliseconds to finish drinking his water, get his equipment in place, and stand inside the airlock with the inner doors closed behind him. Malyshka was programmed to then locate the emergency ingress lever, grasp it with a sufficient amount of pressure, exert downward force on it until its resistance reached a certain threshold, then repeat the operation exactly 49 more times. If the doors didn't open within about 20 minutes or so, Arik would assume that Malyshka had somehow gotten confused and was unable to complete the mission. He would exit the airlock and take manual control of the rover from his workspace in order to guide her back inside where he would watch the footage she had captured, examine her logs, and make the necessary adjustments to her instructions in preparation for a second attempt.

All she needed was the command from Arik to begin execution. Arik had already gone over his equipment checklist — respirator, two perchlorate candles, goggles, compass, hood, gloves, decontamination kit, change of clothes — but there was one more process he needed to complete: he needed to convince himself one last time that he was making the right decision.

Arik liked absolutes. Although he understood that the world was fundamentally analog, he preferred digital representations of it. True and false were easy to work with, and he liked how they simplified the decision making process. But he knew that booleans weren't realistic. The world didn't easily reduce to yes or no, on or off, a one or a zero. No one could ever be entirely sure that they were making the right decision — no matter how apparently clear-cut it was — until they looked back on it later and evaluated it with the advantage of perspective. Arik knew that the world wasn't powered by the simple diametric opposition of right and wrong; rather, it was the much more complex dynamic of cause and effect that drove the steady unraveling of time and space. The relevant question was never whether something was the
right
thing to do; all that mattered was whether a particular action yielded a desirable reaction.

He accepted that direct exposure to the outside could kill him in any number of ways. His brain could swell uncontrollably from the heat, or the corrosive compounds in the air could cause his respirator to fail. His lungs could react negatively to being filled with pure oxygen and the tiny gas exchange sacs at the end of his respiratory system could collapse. He could get disoriented again, or somehow injure himself severely enough that he wouldn't be able to make it back to the airlock. Arik knew better than anyone how dangerous and unpredictable EVAs were, even with all the proper equipment and a carefully planned program. To attempt one with so many unknowns and without so much as an environment suit was to knowingly put himself at a level of risk that he could not even begin to calculate, much less fully prepare for.

It was also very possible that he could simply fail to meet his mission objectives. Although he believed he had unlocked the ERP's doors, he could make it all the way out there only to find that he wasn't able to get inside. Or he could discover that he was unable to operate the radio equipment, or that other pod systems wouldn't respond to him. Even if he executed perfectly, there were any number of ways that he could either fail, or give himself away and get caught. And this time, he expected that he would have to sacrifice much more than just his memories.

Arik thought about how he was taking risks far beyond anything he had ever imagined. He couldn't tell anymore how far he was willing to go, or even what he might be capable of. The alternative was to suppress what he knew, distract himself with things like AP and whatever other projects Kelley hoped V1 could profit from. He could focus on raising and teaching his daughter, finding joy in his family and work, living a long and relatively safe and possibly even somewhat fulfilling life with his family and friends. He could reconcile with Cam, play the occasional cricket match, get together with other couples after work to watch video feeds, or immerse in massive and exotic 3D worlds, or play four-handed chess. He could convince himself that he was looking for just the right opportunity to act, patiently waiting for an opening that he secretly hoped would never come.

None of his options evaluated to a distinct true or false. There were simply too many variables left undefined for him to reach a definitive conclusion. He might not even know if he had made the right decision until looking back on it from the perspective of weeks, months, or years. Since none of his options were inherently right or wrong, he knew to focus on cause and effect, to reverse engineer the problem, to envision an end result and work backwards from there. He thought about the world he wanted his daughter to inherit, and about the kind of person he wanted to be, not just in her eyes, but in his own. He thought about what he wanted to be to Cadie, to Cam, to the rest of Gen V, to all of V1 and the world beyond, whatever that was. There was only one thing he could do to become the man he wanted to be, and it didn't matter anymore what it might cost him.

He spoke aloud the name that he and Cadie had decided on for their unborn daughter,
Haná
, and the rover advanced. A little more than five minutes later, Arik left the V1 pod system for the very last time.

A
s soon as Arik's eyes detected the light from the ERP's strobes through the dense smog, he realized he was going to make it. Less than 20 minutes before, he was sure he was going to die.

His mistake had become clear to him the moment the airlock doors were wrenched apart; he should have programmed the rover to accept a verbal abort command. As the heat blasted in through the crack and pressed in on him, Arik realized with surprising objectivity that it would be impossible for him to survive. Just because the homeless could function outside didn't mean that he could. There was something about them that had escaped Arik's attention — some physical mechanism for resisting the heat that he hadn't noticed, some genetic disposition earned over dozens of generations that wasn't part of him. It was clear to Arik now that for him to step outside of V1 without an environment suit was much worse than ignorant and misguided — it was suicide.

But when the rover completed its routine, Arik was still alive. He could have aborted by hitting the pressure pad beside the outer doors, but he didn't. Instead, he slipped through the opening and stood just outside the airlock, bracing himself against the scalding wind, deliberately drawing oxygen from his respirator, trying to decide whether he should continue or go back inside. He had made it this far. He was standing outside of V1 almost completely exposed, experiencing the harshness and rawness of the planet more directly than probably anyone else in V1 ever had, and he was alive. Although he could already feel the onset of a headache and his breathing was noticeably labored, he was also experiencing an intense feeling of liberation. He surprised himself with the decision to continue, and the vaguely philosophical notion that this was as good a way to die as any, and probably better than most.

Although it was impossible to become fully acclimated to such extreme temperatures, he found that he was able to function well enough to maintain a steady pace and to navigate effectively. Twenty minutes after leaving the airlock, the ERP's strobes hung in the haze before him, and as he changed course toward the red one, he knew that he was going to live.

The ERP's airlock was designed for a single person and very little equipment. It was similar to the air exchange chamber between the Dome and the rest of the Life Pod, but it was obviously much older and not as well maintained. The pressure pads beside the doors were stiff and cracked, but functional.

The ERP was only big enough to hold two people. There were two transparent plastic chairs which had been left askew from the last people to use them, and a shallow counter which met the wide polymeth wall. There was a squat nitrogen cooling chamber in the far corner inside of which Arik found an opened boxed meal and three vacuum flasks of water. He hadn't brought his own bottle because he didn't know how contaminated it might become along the way, so he helped himself to one of the cold silver flasks, keeping it raised until it was empty.

Arik had never fully understood the logic behind the Earth Radio Pod. Because communication with Earth was considered almost as important to survival as air and water, the ERP had supposedly been built a kilometer away from V1 so that it might be spared in the event of a catastrophic accident. Other than its security system, it operated completely independently from the rest of the colony. It had it's own computer and life support systems, and a small fusion reactor housed in a steel box outside provided it with power. None of these precautions really made all that much sense to Arik. The ERP was every bit as susceptible to an accident as V1 itself — perhaps even more so, considering its proximity to its nuclear power supply — and any incident from within V1 that would have been prominent enough to take out the entire communication system probably wouldn't have left anyone behind to use the ERP, anyway. But since Arik now believed that the actual function of the ERP was to communicate with other pod systems, he understood why it was imperative that it be kept completely isolated, and why all radio signals to and from it were heavily encrypted.

Arik left his respirator, goggles, and mask on the counter beside the door and sat down in front of the polymeth wall. Since the ERP had its own isolated computer system, workspaces from the main V1 Computing Cloud couldn't be accessed, so all the equipment was operated through a single shared workspace. The scanning software was identical to the software used in V1, and it was already open and active. Arik turned up the volume and began scanning.

All of the signals strong enough for the scanner to stop on were encrypted, and each time he came across one, he was prompted by the tuning software for a pass phrase, access code, or some other form of credential. If he had access to his own workspace, he might have had a chance at cracking at least a few of the less cryptographically secure streams, but without the necessary software and CPU cycles, he wasn't even able to sniff out the types of encryption being used. He thought about broadcasting a hail on frequencies just above and below the frequencies with encrypted chatter hoping that whoever was broadcasting might also monitor adjacent channels for unexpected incoming broadcasts, but he decided that sending out hundreds of arbitrary hails was unnecessarily risky. The safest thing to do was to program the scanner to skip encrypted signals, and to hope for the best.

After reconfiguring the scanner's filtering criteria, he got a hit almost immediately. Beneath the static, he could pick out a distant but articulate female voice with an elegant and melodious accent:

"—minor symptoms including a temporary decrease in red blood cell count. Fifty to one hundred REMs: decreased immunity, temporary sterility in males, and mild to sever headaches. One hundred to two hundred REMs: nausea and vomiting for a twenty-four hour period followed by ten to fourteen days of fatigue. Women experience spontaneously terminated pregnancies or stillbirths. Fatality rate of ten percent if untreated. Two hundred to three hundred REMs—"