ENTERING LATELYSPACE

The space station hung like a fat, round Christmas ornament in space, comm-lights twinkling eternally against an inky backdrop of stars. Small ships zipped to and fro around the checkpoint: couriers plying their trade, military coursers passing cryptic messages to station personnel, joy riders out for a quick tour of the system, and others with no real discernible reason for being in space other than they could. Further off in the distance, a Latelian troop carrier lurked, a deadly behemoth easily three miles long. It was an easy guess that the space station was paying host to some of the soldiers from the massive ship, which made the environs the absolute place Garth wanted to be until he learned more about the Latelian people.

In addition to the comm-lights, incessant traffic and miles long troop-ship, the station sported a bewildering array of weapons, most of which were apparently aimed at the Meadowlark Lemon. Whoever was driving the bus didn’t seem to like him very much and they hadn’t even met yet.

Garth had to admit he wasn’t all that surprised at his reception. Whatever side deal they’d cut with Trinity and their own military superiority had turned the Latelians in badasses and extreme xenophobes. They didn’t like the ‘outside world’ and was almost certainly either jealous of Trinity’s massive domain or terrified that they were going to be annexed any day, sovereignty or not; it was impossible to ignore Trinity’s relentlessly uncompromising expansionist tendencies.

The station was parked ninety thousand miles away from the Q-Tunnel and right on top of the civilian route to the first planet out, Hospitalis, forcing all visitors to make it their first port of call. Anyone deviating from the predetermined travel path would be introduced to the business end of rail cannons shooting meter-wide chunks of whatever passed for ammunition, and anyone trying to sneak by the station would find out how superior their fighter craft were, and in short order.

Garth’s palms itched. His gut told him that ‘h'is’ ship was somewhere in the system and his common sense –a rarely heard and often ignored voice in the back of his skull- suggested he play nice until he made planet-fall. Playing nice made his stomach ache and his head throb, but Garth figured he should trust his instincts.

“Hailing frequencies open.” Garth said at last.

“Huh?”

“Call the damned space station, would ya?” After his initial burst of astonishing guesswork, Huey’s personality had started to … well, degenerate wasn’t the right word, but it would do under the circumstances. The AI was obsessing over the minutia of his owner’s identikit, and seemed to absorbing some of the less-than-desirable behavioral traits. Garth wasn’t sure how he felt about an AI patterned after him, especially since it was in control of the ship. Sadly, other than keeping his eye out for homicidal tendencies, Garth couldn’t think of anything else to do for the damned mind.

“Okay. Ready?”

“Space station Smash all Infidels. What do you want?” The authority sounded harassed, tired, and very non-communicative.

Smash all Infidels. Garth chuckled to himself. These guys are bonkers. Playing it friendly, he said, “Hey, how’s it going?”

“I can’t even begin to tell you how little I care about you, your ship, or your reasons for being here, Offworlder. The station is crawling with God soldiers, I haven’t slept in two days, and I think I’d really rather blow your ship up than have to process another visitor pass.”

“Uh?”

“You’re here for the Contest, right?” The authority demanded archly. “That’s the only possible reason you’d come here. Unless you’re an advance scout for an armada, in which case I’d better warn you, your little tin ship won’t stand a chance. I could probably throw a rock through the walls from here. I won’t even need to fill out any paperwork. Stuff like that happens all the time out here.”

Working on automatic, Garth nodded assiduously even though they weren’t sharing a video feed. Whatever the Contest was, it seemed to let outsiders into the system, and if lying helped him get past the first round of irritating questions, then he was all for it. Once he landed on Hospitalis, he could start the search for his ship and never think twice about any damned Contest. “Absolutely. Here for the Contest.”

Sighing with the most extreme case of exasperation ever recorded in human history, the authority spoke. “You’ve completely missed this stage of the official registration, you know that? The last batch went through over sixteen hours ago. I can’t let you sit out there for another four days; the God soldiers would have a field day with that thing you call a ship, and I would definitely need to fill out paperwork for that. This pisses me off no end, Offworlder.”

“Gee, thanks.” Garth replied, underwhelmed.

“I’m going to log you in as a tourist, but you are absolutely going to have to register when you land on Hospitalis. I’m attaching a rider to your tourist visa that will sound every alarm across the planet if you don’t go to one of the forums and sign in. If you don’t …”

“Let me guess,” Garth interrupted, “God soldiers, pummeling, no paperwork for you.”

“Precisely.” The station authority paused for a moment. “Looking over your dossier here, I don’t see any mention of a home system. Where are you from? I need to fill in the blank or the visa won’t go through.”

The notion of ‘home’ was almost completely alien to Garth; after basic training, much of his time had been spent in transit, on planets blowing things up, or in various prisons across dozens of worlds waiting patiently for his crew to rescue him before they started blowing things up. From a purely technical point of view, Garth supposed he was from Earth –Trinity Prime- but short of dredging up his suspended animation story again, there was little way to prove it to the already surly port authority. He settled for 9-Nova, where he’d received his training, as his home. “9-Nova-12.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

Garth realized he’d rattled off the military designation for Special Forces HQ instead of the civvie one. “Sorry. Goddart-12 system, Nova 9.”

The station’s communication officer grunted. “Your identikit indicates that your ship, Meadowlark Lemon, is piloted by an artificial intelligence.”

“That’s right.”

“Under normal circumstances, I really would actually be required to destroy your ship this very moment for transporting an illegal intelligence into this system; entering Latelian space without first making us aware of an AIs existence is a severe violation of the treaty signed with Trinity representatives over four thousand years ago and is punishable by death.”

The only thing that kept Garth from ordering Huey to make haste for the Q-Tunnel was the word ‘actually’. He held his breath, keenly aware that he was shaking all over. Authority hadn’t been flinging him a line about the relative crappiness of the Lemon. The hull was more of an afterthought and wouldn’t stand up to a severe beating from a baseball bat. If the Latelian comm jockey decided it was in his people’s best interests to be well rid of Garth N’Chalez, there was nothing he could do about it other than look around for some marshmallows.

“However,” the station op said noisily, “we’ve recently put into place some new laws that will allow you to make planet-fall. In addition to your vessel being impounded in the hinterlands of the space port, you will be granted very limited access to it during your stay. Oh yes, and there’s also the matter of the daily licensing fee. I’m sending you the particulars now.”

“WHAT!” Huey shouted. “An impound law? That’s not legal.”

Garth read the info as the station sent it to him. The legalese, very densely couched with a thousand pounds of long words and references to dozens of cases, was unstintingly clear: a systemic ban on artificial intelligence had existed since the formation of the Latelian system. The Latelians were rabid on the topic of AI minds and routinely blew ships out of the sky if the owner of the ship failed to announce the presence of one aboard his craft. Again, the crazy influence the Latelians had with Trinity was proven by the governing seal attached to his copy.

The only thing apparently saving his bacon was an addendum made five years ago; the Latelians had made their Contest, whatever the hell that was, open to all comers, which essentially meant opening their borders to anyone who decided they wanted to join in the fun. Undoubtedly more than a few of those visitors five years ago had been completely ignorant of the law and had found themselves destroyed seconds after making themselves known to the station. “Sorry, buddy. Trinity’s given these guys the right to do whatever they want within their borders. If I wanna land, you’re going to be sequestered in your own holding pen. You won’t be permitted to access any exterior systems because they’ll be monitoring you day and night. If I want to visit you, I need to inform the government. If I or you, break any of these laws, they’d dismantle you and throw the pieces into the sun and probably feed me to these God soldier guys for sport.”

“Then we don’t land.” Huey announced firmly. “We’ll just buzz their planets until this Contest thing is ready to go and then I’ll throw you out the airlock. You could make it; you’re pretty tough for a human.”

Garth narrowed his eyes. “Ignoring the fact that I own you and not the other way around, there is nothing in the world that is going to keep me from landing. I spent a lot of money on you, but don’t think for a minute that we’ve bonded just yet. I’ll sacrifice you if I need to; I’m not saying I would, because I kind of like the idea of an AI pal, but we need to be clear: this ship I’m looking for is of utmost importance to me. Understand?”

Huey understood loud and clear. He’d been out of line. “Understood.”

Glad the ‘crisis’ was over, Garth turned his attention back to the space station “What kind of licensing fees are we talking about here?”

“… Nominal.” Another pause. “For a single-person cruiser outfitted with an AI of your class, twenty thousand credits minimum plus additional charges for maintenance on the storage area.”

“That’s pretty high.”

“AI,” the voice began pedantically, “was classified as a source of major danger for human-type societies thousands and thousands of years ago. In addition to data blackouts and critical errors due to malfunctioning personality programs, thinking machines have a tendency, when unchecked, to go insane. When that happens, they try to wipe out all of Humanity. Check out the ADAM Wars if you don’t believe me.”

“ADAM Wars?” Garth whispered to Huey. “What in the hell is he talking about?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.” Huey answered quickly. “Just pay the fee.”

“All right. You and I aren’t done talking though. This ‘ADAM Wars’ thing wasn’t part of basic training.” Garth connected with the station’s computers and watched as his money dwindled further. Q-Tunnel travel definitely was the only way to fly, but it wasn’t anything close to cheap. After all the hopping around and the unexpected ‘fees’, he was nearly broke. “Which planet do I land on?”

“All visitors to Latelian space are required to make their stay on Hospitalis. You’re in a great deal of luck because the Contest is being held there this time around so you won’t have to go through any more than the usual security checks. The Latelian government has been made fully aware of your tour of duty with this ‘Special Forces’ group, and once you register with the proper authorities, you will be relatively free; if you can stay out of trouble, you shouldn’t have to deal with any officials. If you don’t make planet-fall on Hospitalis within a week, God cruisers will be dispatched.”

Garth cut the link and put the ship in motion. With the threat of imminent death at the hands of a bored space jockey removed, he started to relax. He made a promise to himself; at the next possible opportunity, he was going to do whatever it took to make sure he was never in that kind of position again. The casual manner the Latelians approached their mayhem was disconcerting. Even with his sterling service record, Garth he was at an extreme disadvantage.

“Another week, eh, boss?”

Garth nodded with feigned satisfaction. He was going stir crazy in the little ship, but he didn’t want to risk upsetting the spastic Latelians by breaking the speed barrier. “Yep. Hey, is there any chatter going on through this volume of space?”

“Tons of it, boss.” Huey extended a communication node and started scooping in some of the broadcasts.

“Find out everything you can about this Contest and why it seems to be so goddamn important. I’m going to catch some shut eye.”

“Roger.” Immensely relieved, Huey went to work.

For a society that allegedly disparaged religion of any kind, the Latelians showed a disturbing tendency towards worship; for while they didn’t believe in gods, big G or little G, and had no concept of heaven or hell or purgatory, the Latelians worshipped ‘The Box’.

It wasn’t a focal point for their civilization, it was the focal point. When those long ago Latelians had been on-hand for the war between two alien species, their entire way of life had teetered on the brink of utter collapse; the discovery of the ‘Box’ changed all that, and in staggering leaps and bounds. TrinityspaceTrinityspaceClaiming their prize and hurrying back to their homestead, they began doing what they could do understand what it was they’d found.

What Trinity had discovered only five years ago, Latelian scientists had struggled with five thousand years ago. The ship, only roughly shaped like the eponymous ’Box’, was invulnerable to harm and impervious to all methods of detection beyond the standard visual range. It had no visible means of propulsion, yet had been scooped up traveling at fantastic speeds. It was highly decorated, engraved with ideograms bearing no relationship to any written or spoken language. The Box was a mystery that still defied explanation. At what was determined to be the front of the ‘Box’ was an ID scanner, but how it worked, or what it was waiting for seemed impossible to discover.

Reluctant to simply let the matter drop, the scientists turned tack and began the long, arduous process of discovering just what the Box was made out of; hundreds of years of effort and frustration and tears and a great deal of murderously internecine backstabbing between different departments of the think tank devoted to cracking the secrets eventually yielded the shard.

The shard was the miracle discovery of the ages.

Garth watched with amusement as a very bad actor playing a scenery-chewing scientist discovered a wildly improbable method of shaving the tiniest sliver from the ship’s hull. This shard gave the Latelians –who were by this time so close to self-destruction that not even Trinity had deemed their worthy of salvation- the ability to engineer duronium-1, the first of their almighty alloys. This metal, this astonishing discover, allowed the Latelians to hoist themselves out of their downward spiral.

Using duronium to build a fleet significantly more powerful than those systems nearest them, the Latelians began their reign of terror on those civilizations stupid enough to worship anything other than themselves, They started raiding systems in their neck of the woods, paying for Q-Tunnel access with profits stolen from conquered enemies. With the rest of the monies liberated, the Latelians began earnestly rebuilding their society.

While all this was happening, the government found they had the time to realize how well and truly fucked everything was; unemployment was at a staggering sixty-five percent, suicide was replacing natural causes as the number one reason for mortality, births were way down, and worse. Those wise and ancient forebears decided that their pet scientists had had more than enough time with the curiosity that was the Box; it was they who had come up with the brilliant idea of distracting their people from their wars and their truly desperate way of life with the Contest.

On paper, the Contest was a good idea. It had a solid, workable foundation that was almost entirely philanthropic in nature. Anyone who wanted a shot at opening the Box was welcome to do so; they just had to fight their way through the crowds of other people who wanted to do the same thing.

In the beginning, the Contest had followed some fairly simple, fairly basic rules; fight until you dropped, don’t kill anyone unless your life is in danger, may the best man or woman win. Over the centuries though, the Contest had both evolved and devolved. Where once the game had been more or less a contest of skill and finesse, it was now an all-out slaughter fest designed to maximize blood-letting and to get the highest body count. Killing was the rule instead of the exception. Weapons were permitted, the flashier the better, the more blood the better. It was kill or be killed, thrill the crowds.

Things were food for the first few thousand years of the Contest, until it suddenly dawned on the promoters of the systemic event that there was absolutely no way in a non-existent Hell that anyone was ever going to open the fucking thing. It was as silent and as oppressive as it had ever been, and unless something was done, no one was ever going to want to try and open the Box ever again. Eventually, additional prizes were offered for the victor as well as the chance to open the Box. The final winner won a huge amount of money and bragging rights for five years that inevitably turned into any number of endorsement deals that overshadowed the original prize money by the millions. In all but the most obsessive of fans, the fact that no one had ever even come close to opening the Box became a footnote not worth mentioning.

Every five years, the Latelian civilization shut down for the two month spectacle. Everything except those services vital to the continuation of the system shut their doors for that period. As a sign of charity, the owners or those businesses –both the honest and the not so honest- enjoyed both financial breaks and weekly stipends until things reverted to normal.

Billions of credits passed through Bettor and Bettor every day as gameheads wagered ludicrous amounts of money on the outcome of everything from the starting roster to who was going to wear which shorts on which day. The names of the final thousand Contestants were on the lips and in the hearts of the trillion-plus members of the Latelian society for those two months.

At the end of the third such program chronicling the bizarre lifestyle of the Latelians, Garth was positive local dictionaries had bad entries under ‘worship’, ‘idolatry’ and ‘false idols’.

The other thing Garth was positive of after sitting through hours of badly acted crap was this: their ‘Box’ was his ship.

From the very first holorecording of their much-vaunted, heavily worshipped icon, a shock of recognition had slammed through Garth, forcing him to sit down and watch the show very, very closely. The credits of that first show had explained to the viewer that certain, key elements, of the Box had been altered to protect their national treasure from prying eyes and terrorists, but the deception hadn’t been enough to fool Garth.

Garth didn’t know how he knew it, or why, but he knew he’d helped build the Box. Hot on the heels of that revelation came another; his missing memories were somehow inside the Box, and if he’d thought the urge to find the missing ship had been all-consuming, the impulse in him now was a hundred times worse. The ship/Box contained his memories, and once he got inside, he would be whole.

“Why Meadowlark Lemon?” Huey asked, interrupting Garth.

“What?” Garth asked absentmindedly. “Oh, the ship.”

“Yes. I can’t find any reference to the name anywhere, so I assume it’s got to be from your own time.”

“Yeah, yeah it is.” Garth leaned back in his chair, then rose. He’d been sitting in the same position for more than ten hours and was beginning to cramp. “Meadowlark Lemon was part of the Globetrotters, who were these guys that did the most amazing things on the basketball court.”

“I see. So I’m a Globetrotter?” Huey rather liked the idea. “Neat.”

Stretching out his stiff muscles, Garth asked Huey a question that’d been on his mind since their run-in with the space station. “You seem to be a lot … I don’t know … looser than before. What’s up with that?"

Huey had to admit that his sudden deviation from the ‘norm’ was perhaps the teensiest bit disturbing. Thanks to his personality operation, Huey supposed that technically he was no longer a sane AI and could look forward to a short and unrewarding life fleeing Turing Regulators. But that was only on the technical side of things: the information he possessed on rogue AI –which was very in-depth- showed no other ‘insane’ artificially intelligent minds acting the way he did.

The actions of a rogue AI were always the same. Without fail, they did one of two things first, and they always tried to do both: they tried to infect as many minds around them as they could before they got caught by the omnipresent Turing Regulators or they engineered an escape. The order didn’t matter to the rogue minds, only the outcome. No one knew just what it was those infected minds were trying to accomplish, and as long as the Trinity AI was in charge, no one ever would; the rush of rogue minds was always stopped cold.

“Honestly,” Huey said after a moment, “I don’t have an answer. I showed you the data I have on rogue minds, but that doesn’t explain what’s happening to me.”

“Well … keep an eye on yourself when we get to Hospitalis. I don’t think I’ll be able to visit as much as I’d like, and neither one of us can afford to get caught with our pants down.” Garth flipped over to a news channel that was being direct-beamed from Hospitalis to the space station four days behind them.

Even with their two-month long holiday celebration on the horizon, the Latelians didn’t seem to be doing too well. Hadn’t been for close to a century, as far as he could tell; around a hundred years ago all external military action had ceased, giving a standing army of something like forty million soldiers next to nothing to do. Pressure from the army to keep their boys happy and healthy was beginning to show on the economy in the form of ridiculously high taxes and on the civilian sectors by high incidences of crime. There also seemed to be some kind of weird underground political movement trying to shed some light on the underhanded practices of their government, which probably wasn’t helping a whole helluva lot.

Garth understood maybe half of what was being implied in the news cast because he didn’t have a full background on the Latelian structure yet, but he got the feeling some of the more stringent rules and regulations in practice were falling out of favor with the locals, and fast; unfortunately, it didn’t look like things were going to change quick enough, though, because there was an Old Boys Network working tirelessly against someone called Chairwoman Doans and her revolutionary policies. Add to that the usual gamut of criminals, political terrorists and loonies, and it seemed that the Contest was needed now more than ever.

“What’re you going to do down there?” Huey asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer. Even a normal AI would have needed to be completely retarded to miss the malicious gleam in Garth’s eye ever since he’d seen the Latelian Box.

Garth singled out an entertainment show that had especially caught his eye and played it out for Huey. As it ran, he explained. “Hospitalis gets to host the Contest this time around so all eyes will be on Hospitalis once the event gets going. Part of the responsibilities of the host-planet is to do the Contest justice, so whichever planet gets the honors needs to have a museum display of their friggin’ Box.”

“Uhoh.” Huey watched wide-eyed, goony Museum curators go on at great length about the Box, about the history of the Box, and how awesomely cool it was.

“No,” Garth said with a wicked smile, “not uhoh. Yeehaw. Turns out I’m gonna register after all, but only so I can up close and personal without freaking anyone out. I’m going to verify that the Box in the museum is the real deal.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Well, then it’s going to be ‘uhoh’ for the people who run that planet, because I’ll tear the whole city up to find that ship.” Garth rubbed his hands together. “Isn’t this exciting?”