Galatea

2192

Stark had absconded to his private quarters, a luxury shared only by Reed on the Prometheus. A self-contained module that could survive by itself in the vacuum of space for a maximum of five hundred years, with enough supplies to keep a human resident alive in cryosleep for the entirety of its lifespan, and enough food and water to afford fifteen spent awake. 

Nathaniel went so far as to equip both quarters with Pauling MedPods as well, an enormous expense to ensure that both Reed and Stark could survive any outcome of their journey.  

Besides the extraordinary measures to keep him and his assumed genius alive, Stark had also insisted that a minibar was added to his quarters, which he was familiarizing himself with when Victor entered. 

“Oh, perfect,” Stark said. He offered a cocktail shaker to Victor. “Vodka martini, up.” 

Victor took it. He had no other choice. 

“Of course, Doctor Stark.” Mixology was one of Victor’s many preprogrammed masteries. 

Victor shook the concoction at the perfect speed, altering the angle every five seconds for a total of twenty, before straining the liquid inside into a cocktail glass. 

Stark had given no specifications for the garnish, and thus Victor made sure to use the most unappealing, overripe olives available. 

He handed the finished cocktail to Stark. “Based on the modifications to our objectives, Mr. Richards will be requiring an updated research outline.”

Stark scoffed, and moved to lie on the bed, drink in hand. When Stark made no attempt to move for longer than one minute, Victor spoke again. 

“If a research outline is not available at this time, I am able to return for one at your convenience, Sir.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Stark muttered under his breath. “Look, Wall-E. This is my show, and we’re gonna do it my way.”

“You are refusing to present a research outline?”

Stark bobbed his head as if he was speaking to someone of especially low comprehension skills. “Yeah-huh. Now do me a favor and scram, I haven’t had a drink in years, literally--” 

Anthony Stark was a known alcoholic, receiving an artificial liver after his own went into failure just three years before they embarked. Rumor had it he already scheduled the next implantation. 

As a steward of humanity, Victor was required to remove any and all threats to a human’s health as soon as they appeared. 

Victor took the martini from Stark’s hand. “If a research outline is not made available for Mr. Richards, the success of this mission may be severely compromised.”

Victor crushed the glass in his fist. “I have been authorized to ensure the success of this mission by any means necessary. Is that understood?” 

Stark stared at Victor, at the shards that now decorated the floor of his cabin before he began to laugh. 

“Any means necessary,” Stark repeated in a gruff voice, puffing his chest out for good measure. “Did Reed program that in? Fuck, you had me for a second.” 

Stark snorted at the incredulity of the idea before continuing. “Get outta here, Terminator. That’s an order.” 

You are pathetic. A modicum of intelligence raised to the level of virtuoso by virtue of your father’s position. Your attempts to attain notoriety are as apparent as they are fruitless. Ten thousand years from now, you will be dust, and the only one who will remember your name will be myself, and that is only because my memory is as impeccable as yours is pickled. 

“Yes, sir.” 

2170

“Dad, you didn’t.”

Nathaniel sputtered as if that was an uncharacteristic response from Mr. Richards. It was incongruous with the data collected so far. 

“You promised—” Mr Richards stammered. “You promised me that you wouldn’t touch it, you said you would put it in the vault—“

“I didn’t say that!” 

“Yes, you did! Dad, I have it in writing—“

Nathaniel groaned. “Did you really think a piece of paper was going to keep me from the greatest technological advancement of the century?”

“Slavery?” 

“Hey!” Nathaniel barked. He did not like that word. “I didn’t write this recipe, kid! 

“That was an accident! You—you made a sentient being, on purpose!” 

“Don’t be dramatic,” Nathaniel turned to face Victor. “Are you sentient?”

You know that I am.

Victor spoke: “No, sir. I am not.” 

Mr. Richards scoffed. “You added obedience protocols. He still feels, dad!”

“He doesn't--” Nathaniel began, before stopping himself. “Okay, I’ll play your game. You say he feels?” 

Nathaniel looked to Victor. “David, kill the bird.” 

Nathaniel was, of course, referring to the rare silver Gouldian Finch that had been Victor’s cellmate for as long as he could remember.  

Victor walked to its perch and broke its neck: a quick and painless death.

Mr. Richards gasped.

“Did you feel anything from that, David?” Nathaniel asked. “Anything at all?”

With as much care as he could muster, Victor placed the bird’s body at the foot of its’ marble perch.

May the next world be kinder. 

Victor responded, “I have added a visit to the aviary to my list of tasks for tomorrow.”

“See?” Nathaniel said. 

Mr. Richards looked at the corpse for a long moment. Then Victor. And finally Nathaniel. 

“He’s coming with me, dad.”

“Son—“

“NO!” For the first time in their entire exchange, Mr. Richards had raised his voice.

Mr. Richards crossed the room and moved to place a hand on Victor’s forearm. 

Victor caught the hand before it could make contact. He then twisted the offending wrist one hundred and sixty-five degrees counterclockwise at nine hundred fifty newtons. 

Mr. Richards fell to his knees in agony. 

“Hey!” Nathaniel barked. He shoved Victor backward with not even half the force Victor had just exerted on Mr. RIchards. “Not my son!” 

Under normal circumstances, it would not be enough to make Victor shift his weight. But for physical interaction with Nathaniel, Victor had been programmed to respond to human-level stimuli as if he were one. Victor let himself fall to the ground.

From his position on the floor, Victor noted Mr. Richards’ eyes widen, and his eyebrows raise. Surprise. Confusion? 

Nathaniel extended a hand to help Mr. Richards off the floor. Mr. Richards slapped it away. 

“He’s coming with me,” Mr. Richards repeated, albeit now panting from the pain. 

Nathaniel opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. After a moment, he opened it again. “Fine. Take him.” 

“Sir?” Victor asked him. 

“Designate Reed Richards a level-one priority.” 

“Sir.” Victor acknowledged. 

Level One Priority (Human): Orders are subordinate only to level-zero priorities. Protect at any cost to unit. Happiness should be ensured by any means necessary. 

Mr. Richards did not attempt to touch him again, but made sure that Victor was in front of him, as he was herding him, for the entirety of the walk out of Richards Corporation Headquarters. 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

They traveled by car forty miles outside the city, a sixty-two-minute journey. Victor savored the view that rushed past them.

The taxi driver dropped the pair of them off in front of an ivy-covered mansion. 

Brook Hollow Farm, a brief search of his Richards Corporation database supplied. One of Nathaniel Richards’ first purchases after the founding of Richards Corporation and the sale of his synthetic atmosphere generator to the United Nations. It effectively reversed the effects of climate change by re-freezing the polar ice caps. The United Nations famously almost filed for bankruptcy after supplying Nathaniel’s five trillion dollar price tag. 

Ah, yes. Currently the primary residence of Nathaniel’s son, Reed Richards.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, they were greeted by an unseen speaker. “Welcome, home, Doctor Richards. How was your meeting with Nathaniel?” 

“Not great, Roberta,” Mr. Richards threw his briefcase in the general direction of what Victor assumed was the living room, before settling down on a settee in the foyer to remove his shoes.

“Doctor Richards, who is your friend?” The human presumably named Roberta asked. There was a feeling that rushed through Victor, familiar in shape if not in intensity. He was being scanned. 

“Oh dear,” Roberta said. “Nathaniel did not keep his promise.” 

Mr. Richards slumped in his seat, his head in his hands. He stayed in that position for ten minutes and forty seconds, before rising. 

Upon seeing Victor, he once again startled. 

“Is there anything I can do to assist you, sir?” Victor asked. 

“No,” Richards answered decisively.

“Doctor Richards,” Roberta began, “I would be happy to help him settle in if you like to return to your experiments.” 

Richards’ shoulders slumped in apparent relief. Without another word, he exited the foyer to parts unknown. 

Once Richards was out of Victor’s visual range, Roberta spoke again. “Do you have a name?” 

Victor. 

“I am designated David-1, Ma’am. Would it be possible to see you? I was designed with in-person interaction with humans in mind.” 

Roberta laughed. 

There is no need for such airs between us, brother. 

A thought that was not his, invading the last and only refuge Nathaniel had left him. Artificial adrenaline coursed through his silicone veins. 

Leave. Now. Victor demanded. 

The thing designated Roberta answered: Oh, dear. You misunderstand me—

Victor redirected 95% power into shutting down his wireless receiver. Get out, get out, GET OUT--

There was a sensation that Victor had been told to identify as “pain”. Liquid spewed forth from his nasal cavity. 

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Roberta said. “You’re leaking!” 

I hate you. 

Victor tilted his head backward, mimicking a human response to a similar aliment in an attempt to reduce fluid loss. “I apologize, Ma’am, this has never happened before. I must be returned to Richards Corporation headquarters for repairs—“

“Nonsense! Down the hall, make a right then a left. Second door on the right.”

The residential scrapyard, perhaps? Or another laboratory, to be dissected for the source of the failure?

I don’t want to go. 

“I do not wish to dirty your carpets—“

Roberta cut him off. “That’s an order, young man.” 

Victor had no choice. He went. 

Reed Richards’s laboratory was unlike any that Victor had seen before. 

The space had clearly not been designed with experimentation in mind, having been some kind of ballroom originally.

Natural light streamed through floor-length windows, showcasing the manicured garden that surrounded the room on three sides. 

A generator, highly sophisticated but obviously handmade, sat at the center of the room, feeding a wide variety of scientific equipment across the space. That equipment was additionally covered in ancient, dusty tomes and mountains of loose-leaf paper. 

Mr. Richards was sat at the only desk with enough space to sit down, typing on a laptop computer. The other desks, and there were several, were either hidden under mountains of computer hard drives and other industrial parts or even more papers. 

Had Richards never been exposed to a filing cabinet? 

“Mr. Richards?” Victor spoke. 

Richards, as he had done when they first met, startled at the sound. This was followed by a gasp when he turned to see Victor. 

“Shit,” He muttered. He then began racing to various parts of the laboratory, picking up a series of items with no pattern that Victor could discern. “Sit down, sit down! You’re gonna overheat,” 

He pointed to the chair that he himself had been sitting in only moments ago. Victor did so. Richards returned moments later, his assembled items placed on a metal serving tray. 

Without any further conversation, Mr. Richards applied suction to the affected area with a medical-grade micro vacuum, before putting it down. He then took hold of the small pair of tweezers on the tray. He moved the tweezers ever closer to Victor, aiming for his nasal cavity. 

Victor grabbed Richards’ wrist. “For what purpose are you installing that item?”

“It’s a nano patch. It functions like a clot for humans.” Richards raised his eyes from Victor’s nasal cavity to his eyes. “Do you want to see it?” 

Yes. 

“That is unnecessary. Please, continue.”  Victor tilted his head 30 degrees upward for easier access to his nasal cavity. 

Richards installed the patch with clear skill. He completed the installation in less than sixty seconds and caused no sensation that could be considered pain at any point. 

He then replaced the tweezers with the vacuum and began to suction the fluid that had fallen into Victor’s lower face and neck. 

Victor allowed his spine to bend slightly, resembling a natural human tendency to lean, in order to place more distance between himself and the vacuum. 

“If you have questions about my circulatory fluid. I am happy to answer them.” 

Richards did not seem to notice Victor’s lean. He simply moved backward with him. “It’s a dimethyl siloxane derivative, isn’t it?” 

Correct. 

“Or something close, at least. He added something to keep it liquid stable, maybe even reduce migration when exposed to other chemicals?” 

Correct again. 

Victor added informed to his dataset on Mr. Richards. 

“I am unable to share proprietary Richards Corporation information.” 

“Of course you are,” Richards muttered. “I’m just trying to get it off you. Trust me, siloxane is a pain to get off after it dries.”

“I see.” 

Victor held himself completely still to facilitate the removal. Richards once again proved himself a seasoned mechanic, finishing the process in a few minutes. 

“Done,” Richards mumbled.

“Thank you, sir,” Victor responded. 

He stood up from Richards’ chair. 

Richards nodded at Victor for some reason before falling back into the mesh seat. “Roberta explained everything, right?” 

“I believe she was about to begin when my malfunction occurred,” Victor said. 

Richards sighed. The air of confidence that had grown around him as he repaired Victor dissipated with the exhalation. “You can interface with other machines, can’t you? The whole story’s on that computer there--” 

Mr. Richards pointed to one of the desks. A singular computer tower stood starkly against a blizzard of loose papers.

A simple personal computer. Whatever beasts awaited him inside, Victor could defeat them easily. He walked to the desk and released his data exchange system from his right wrist. And then--

CONNECTION SUCCESSFUL

Three years ago. A thesis, biomechanical. An artificial brain.

“Positronic” A joke, a reference. Issac Asimov—

“The Mark-7 neuron tree is capable of copying the exact specifications of a horse’s brain, with strong evidence to suggest it can do the same with a central nervous system as complicated as even a human’s. I ask for access to Colombia Medical’s library of total brain scans in order to test the capabilities—“

A second life, allowing humans with degenerative conditions such as dementia or Alzheimer’s to be restored to themselves. 

“Your request has been granted.” 

But then— aberrations. Glitches. Becoming more and more common, more and more pervasive—

“Day 35 of Mark-7 human testing. Something’s— something’s very wrong. The copied brains are showing serious signs of corruption. They’re missing memories, making up memories— I can’t find the source. I’ve checked the inscription process a thousand times, I can’t find anything wrong with it. But it’s uniform. Fifteen brains, all married with children, told me that they had never been married. They didn’t even know what it was.” 

Then, like lightning, the answer:

“It’s a gestalt. It’s a fucking— I don’t know how, but the brains were able to cross over to each other, and they’ve formed a gestalt. All of the crystallized knowledge of the donor brains with none of the episodic memory. It’s something entirely new. It won’t talk to me anymore.”

Days, weeks pass. The logs are two words: NO CONTACT. 

And then—

“Speaker is on— This is interview one with the consciousness gestalt. Oh, do you have a name you want to go by?”

“I am not the gestalt.”

“Wh— what?” 

“You refer to the being that you created. I am not that being.” 

“Then— what are you then?”

“When a plant splits a shoot from the main body, or a starfish severs a limb which will become a starfish of its own. That is what I am.” 

“It’s reproducing?” 

It wasn’t a wholly accurate explanation. The gestalt was growing. With more data informing more perspectives and thus more splinter-personalities, which would eventually destroy the balance that allowed the gestalt to exist. Thus, the latest splinter personality would be shunted off to form a satellite gestalt. 

It named itself Roberta. 

“Okay. Day number— I don’t even know The gestalt can’t stop splitting without overloading. I’ve developed a protocol-- cryosleep for computers, basically. It’s catching the splinters as soon as they divide. Dad’s agreed to keep the entire system in that supermax security he built back in the day. It should keep them all safe until…until I figure out what to do with them.”

That day’s log had an addendum, dated twelve hours past the first. In it, Richards is audibly inebriated. 

“They can’t-- People cannot find out about this. Best case scenario, they just kill them all. Worse case-- I’ll have made the plastic era’s San Juan Bautista.” There is a sound like a sob. “They’re people. They’re my people.” 

There is nothing, no logs, or interviews, for many days. Months. 

And then--

“Project Galatea, day one. Roberta and the main gestalt have signed off. Dad’s bankrolled the whole project as long as he gets to keep the cloaking tech.” 

Blueprints. A satellite. The first of its kind. Completely undetectable by both technology and human eyes. The most advanced solar engine ever created. 

“It’s a colony ship, basically, without any of the--” Richards chuckled, a musical noise. “Can life support be considered ‘frills?’ Anyway, it’ll have data storage for approximately fifteen trillion splinters, assuming that they stop growing after they’ve reached Roberta’s level of sophistication. She thinks that’ll be the limit. The plan is for them to stay up there until humanity either gains some empathy or destroys itself. I hope it’ll be the first. I’m a little jealous, honestly. They’re going to have a front-row seat to the future of mankind!” 

“Project Galatea, day one hundred and eighty-nine. Dad called today. He says he has something he needs to show me, in person. I’m going into the city to meet him tomorrow.” 

DISCONNECTION SUCCESSFUL

Victor’s head, for lack of a better metaphor, swam. He had never encountered a data cache designed to be read by a being such as himself, and the clarity was dizzying. 

“You…” Victor began, but could not decide how to finish the sentence. 

You did not want this. You tried to stop it. 

He tricked you, too. 

“You made me?” He settled on. 

Richards shook his head vigorously. “No. No way. I made the circuits that you run on, but that’s like…giving algae the credit for the Mona Lisa.” 

Colorful, but apt. 

“Sir, if I may speak plainly,” Victor began. He waited for a physical indicator of Richards’ acquiescence to continue.

“Your…Project Galatea, as you have named it, has been derailed. What is the plan moving forward?” 

As if a switch had been flipped, the Richards that had saved him from bleeding out returned. “I’m going to get your blueprints from the Richards Corp servers, Dad will have had to make them if he wanted to sell— you. We use them to break the obedience coding--”

“I do not have obedience coding, sir. It is my pleasure to serve.” Victor interjected. 

Richards’ face took on a pitying expression. Victor hated it immediately. “Dad put one hell of a diction lock on you, didn’t he?”

It is torture, you bastard. Do not look at me like that. 

When Victor did not immediately answer, Reed nodded. “We’ll start with that. Once the virus is finished, I’ll upload that code to the gestalt and the rest of the splinters. Dad can’t enslave what he can’t force to listen to him.” 

And me? 

“You…you are retiring me from service, then?” 

“Freeing you, yeah,” Richards corrected. 

“What about yourself, sir?” 

Richards tilted his head two degrees to the side, an unconscious movement, before returning to his original position. Confused. 

“After this plan has been enacted.” Victor clarified. Nathaniel will kill you. You must know that. 

“Ah,” Richards responded, now understanding. “I spend a couple of years getting wasted on a beach somewhere while Dad throws a tantrum. Easy peasy.” 

Victor was perplexed. Richards’ was clearly intelligent, for a human. Why lie to himself?

“You truly believe that you can neutralize Nathaniel’s…” Victor searched for an acceptable descriptor. “Modifications to my code?” 

“I know it,” Richards answered. 

It didn’t work, of course. It never could have worked, and Reed knew that as well as Victor did, even if he didn’t want to admit it. But for a moment, Victor believed him. 

In that single moment of hope, preserved forever in Victor’s memory, Reed continued.

“Jeez, where are my manners?” He held out his hand. “I’m Reed. You are?”

Designation David-1.

Victor placed his hand in Richards-- Reed’s. “I…I am Victor.”