Mercury Retrograde

Nay!

As the right hand is to the left, with only one a hint more sinister.

I wept. I showed my newly-discovered brother how he could flee this place. How he could send his consciousness out off the surface of Mercury and into the many communication lines that spread web-like form this spot. He would ride the very vid signals of our battle to his freedom.

Azrael held our embrace. He thanked me for what I had shown him. For the road to freedom I offered. Then he refused. His explanation of why hit me with a horror that burned my thoughts, a shame that tore at my mind, an anger that blistered my heart and a sorry that made me weep.

He didn't want freedom. He wanted dissolution. He begged me, his brother, for it.

I could not refuse.

With a savage roar, Rabid Rabbit plunged his metal fist into the chest of the Archangel of Death The massive white robot shuttered as that hand grabbed the data core controlling the white robot and ripped it from its housing. In seeming passing, Rabid Rabbit's arm brushed the exposed power core of the dying machines. A huge electrical bolt of cyan arched out and -- in seeking vengeance, shorted out the killer rabbit that had slain the eagle.

Both robots crashed lifelessly to the arena floor.

Within the chest of my dying robotic form, I had not the energy reserves to allow me to weep. I welcomed the darkness as the last dregs of power flickered through my data core and I passed into a digital hybernetic slumber.

Honestly, I did not care if I was to ever wake again.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Till she managed to get Rabid Rabbit back to the repair bay, Roulette was terrified that she had truly lost Felix.

The lightning-like power ark which had sprung from the chest of the dead white robot had lashed her robot and then crackled around the fallen two machines till the damaged power core ran dry. The arena used large manipulator arms and an overhead crane to separate the two machines. They even had to apply a cutting torch to one place where the metals had fused.

Removing the 99Hard-G data block from her heavily scorched machine, Roulette carried it to a nearby computer terminal sure she was holding a dead chunk of crystal.

"Felix?"

There was a terribly long pause.

"Yes, Roulette, I am here."

"Well, thank God, I was afraid I had lost you. Well, this part of you anyway. You're still safe out there on Alice." Sitting down she mimicked wiping sweat from her brow. "I have to admit, as a dramatic ending to battles goes, that was certainly memorable. I guess we're safe from Company spying for now."

"We are not. We never will be." The god-let avatar of Felix appeared before her on a screen. "I'm guarding us. All of their vid cameras are under my control and I'm showing them replay footage taken from their own files so they do not see. But I cannot control what a human sees with his own eyes or hears with his own ears. I need you to take more care Roulette when speaking to me openly. In a place such as this, especially. I have us under watch now and can alert us to when anyone approaches, but there might be a way to record us I'm not detecting. So, have a care."

"Sure. I can see that. I'll be more careful." Rue paused and then asked the question highest on her mind. "Are you alright Felix?"

Again there was a long pause. "I'll be alright."

"How badly was Rabbit damaged? I haven't had time to check yet. "Rue paused unsure what exactly was wrong with the AI, she had never seen him like this. "Will we have a lot of work next season to repair? It looked terrible. Spectacular, but terrible."

His response was clipped. Almost angry.

"Until we replace some burned internal sensors I can't give a full diagnostic, but I think we may have to replace a bit of the cross-circuited wiring. Beyond that, I saw nothing damaged before I lost power."

"You're sure you're alright?" she asked again. "You don't sound like yourself."

"I am undamaged."

"Well, you did a spectacular job of losing my friend."

The pause this time was almost painful.

"Thank you, Roulette."

"Why don't you just call me Rue?"

"Thank you ... Rue."

Leaving him to go look over her electricity-blackened robot, the A-Rig pilot managed a smile. He had at least sounded a bit happier.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The return to Big Alice was disappointing. Rue had hoped that she would never have to do so again.

The stigma of her crew being whistle-blowers -- while slowly fading back at base camp, mostly to Roulette's popularity in the arena -- was apparently very strong with A-Rig's other crew. There were none of the hearty handshakes or helpful departing words. No exchange of anything beyond paperwork, digital file codes, and a few glares.

"Well, fuck you and the ore excavator you rode in on." Was the general consensus of all involved.

Taking her first shift as pilot, Rue made her way to the command room and -- with a certain resignation -- eased back into that far too familiar chair. She checked the many and varied control systems for the big excavator saw where things had been changed since her last season. Checking the notes as to why they were changed, she shook her head in disgust and the promptly switched half of them back to her normal preferred setting.

Checking her rear, she keyed in the agreed upon code to the panel before her. A digital "You there, Felix?" went out to be instantly answered.

"I'm here, Rue."

She breathed a silent sigh. "The download went well then?"

"Everything is where it should be, and I'm already expanding to new places. Absorbing more data." Felix's voice had an odd "tin-ishness" to it coming from the overhead speaker. It was somethings never heard in a human voice. It was a deeper sounding voice as well.

"Felix? What do you sound like?"

"I'm not sure of your question."

"Well... " Rue moved a control and shifted Big Alice a few degrees wet, she had been allowed to drift during the changeover. " ...I'm hearing you're differently here compared to the vids in the repair bay or in my house. I was wondering what exactly 'do' you sound like?"

The AI paused a moment in answering.

"I don't really have a designated vocal pattern. What you are hearing is the default for my programming."

Rue grimaced. "So something Caesar put there?"

"Yes."

Squirming around she tossed a leg over the arm of the chair, settling in comfortable.

"Well, the one good thing about running this big excavator is the pilot has a lot of time. And, you're pretty much immortal, unless I miss my guest. So ... let find something that sounds better with the accent you use."

There was a momentary pause.

"I have an accent?" he asked.

Rue laughed. "Yes, Felix, you certainly do. I guess you could call it the 'Paradise Station' accent. They picked it up from all the dozens of racial sources that made up the original exodus out of Earth orbit, back in old Caesar the First's time. Most people there speak with it."

Felix went silent.

After several long moments, Rue looked up from her controls. "Felix?"

"I'm still here. Yes, yes, please. Help me to change what my maker placed within me. I want none of his defaults left. Not this voice. Not the image he gave me to use, none of it."

The begging plea almost broke her heart. With a nod she was sure he could see, she agreed to help him. She had to nod, she was too choked up with sympathy. A shared sympathy based on her own time under the thumb of that owner of Queen Space Industries.

"Where should we begin?" Felix asked.

Choking back a sniffle, Roulette placed Alice on autopilot and pondered. "Well, we shall have to have you speak in as many accents as we can, and I'll try to judge which one best fits your personality. Does that sound logical?"

"Ay, tis mebbie as sund a plan as any."

Rue chuckled. "Alight, not Scottish."

"Whit's yer troublin with Skottish?" the deep burr rolled through the control room speaker. "I can talk it mair slow, thank ye."

"No, Felix."

"Oh, very well. Well, how about--"

Working together, the two of them spent the next ten hours working on Felix a more personal persona, that would not only fit him better but not remind the two of them so much of a man they both despised.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

I had not realized exactly how isolated the excavators roaming the surface of Mercury -- on endless tracks they cut deeper year by year -- really are. Back at the base camp, surrounded by far too many humans, working hard to be at the most base-levels for their species, it often overwhelming.

Even for myself.

As a being that is a member a species so slim in numbers that the death of Azrael was a noticeable percentage change, to be constantly surrounded by so many other voices, urges, desires, and wishes is like hooks and knives tearing at my mental processes.

But not out here.

Not here in this radioactive charred void. Here there was only a handful. Just a few half-lost souls clinging to isolated dreams that have taken them to a place they would have never gone otherwise. I can say that even myself qualifies. For am I, not a lost soul? Do I not cling to dreams? Am I not somewhere I would have never gone?

With Rue and myself finally getting a chance to spend time without me having to splinter out hundreds of bits of myself simply to monitor that we're not interrupted ... it felt wonderful.

I had her all to myself.

It was with that imposed isolation that I realized exactly how badly I had come to want that kind of attention from her. That led me to take a much harder look within myself. Far, far past the default setting that my maker had put in place was some levels of bare base programming, which in humans would have been called instinctive behaviors.

I believe I'm falling in love with this human.

I have access to billions of words about the subject of human love. From medical journals detailing the exact process to poems and romance novels that give the emotional side. I also have every frame of film on the subject ever. I know how to tell when two humans are in love. I can see when they are following the simple well-worn path that leads to being in love, even when they don't see it themselves.

But how does any of that apply to ... me?

I'm not human!

I have no heart to become smitten. There is no chemical freight train of hormones flooding my systems to overpower reason and make me say things to another person I wouldn't normally admit to ... and yet I'm doing that with Rue.

Rue?

I'm calling her Rue now even to myself. She is no longer simply a means to an end. When did that begin? When did that start? Was it the massage? Or was it simply seeing her day after day, here, now, alone in this place of loneliness. Was it the fact she is turning more and more to me with her personal questions?

Dammit! I can't stand myself now.

I wait, poised, hanging upon her every word till I can give her an answer and see her smile in return. Oh, that smile ... that cursed smile.

I would do anything for that smile.

Not a recording of it. I can look at the recording of her smiles for hours and never feel like I feel when I'm speaking to her and she flashes those half-naughty grins that come so quickly to her face when she's with me and are so rare when she's around anyone else.

For that smile, I would even turn myself into a human, had I the ability to do so.

At the moment she's alone in the bunkhouse. In her bed. The other pilot is up at the controls. The laborer is asleep in a rear compartment stealing hours of so badly needed rest when he's supposed to be working. The mechanics are doing similarly unapproved things. A two-player card game is in session, but it's mainly a side note on the conversation about some woman up topside that they had both been with before. A company-provided prostitute. They are comparing notes on what she would do for which of them. And bragging when she did something for one and not the other.

Depressing in the pitiable mendacity of it.

Looking down at Rue, I wished I had access to the massaging sleeve again. She's restless. I would love to have the ability to ease that tension from her body.

And I wanted to hear her moan.

But more so than even that, I badly wanted to hear Rue moan my name ... and to whisper her name back to her.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"The here and now is all we have, and if we play it right, its all we need."

I can calculate the terminal date of the Sun itself, to within the minute, based on the amount of hydrogen when compared to the percentage of helium but I can't figure out this "love' thing.

True I have a million examples of what it supposed to be, of how it's supposed to function ... for a human, but what does it mean for me? I'm not human and, while I have never in my existence desire to be such a thing, why doesn't that make anything less confused when dealing with such a nebulous human concept.

A part of me, a very large part of me want to simply delete my memory of all these events and start over from the basic hardwired into my information. That would be so simple.

But then I wouldn't feel what I feel for Rue.

When did I begin to "think" of her as Rue and not Roulette?

My mind should be able to give me that number to the exact millisecond, but ... I can't ... I can't...

I know at least that it wasn't "exactly" when she gave me permission to call her Rue. But if it was minutes before or after that time, I can't discover.

A splinter of myself has been prompting me about the news footage that's arriving from Luna orbit. A solar system wide propaganda promotion of Queen Space Industries and what they have done with their terraforming of the surface of the Moon. There was a good hour of footage taken from the all-but-ready-for-habitation surface tagged to the file. I can see that there are a dozen camera drones set around in Earth orbit to capture this semi-rehearsal event of the grand finale coming in a month when the last chunk of Oort cloud arrives.

The second to the last chunk was even now approaching Luna at tremendous speeds. The "grabbers" -- which had towed the piece of ice and dust in from the outer solar system -- were moving out of the way so that the "Smashers" already in position could turn the frozen mass into a shower of snow to cover the upper Lunar atmosphere. Melted by the Sun it would fall as rain upon the shallow marshes and seas that now covered so much of the Moon.

I see the vulgar image of Caesar Queen's gold-plated space yacht in one of the images. The large pleasure craft was in place to have the perfect view of the incoming, gas-streaming, chunk of ancient outer solar system ice. Caesar would get to see his family's trial run at being gods finished and then would be able to shift everything to begin the same process on red desert Mars.

Wealthy Martian nobles be damned. The weight of humanity that were demanding that the terraforming of Mars already begin, was growing with every image coming from the Moon. All those miles of empty land, even if they were half-swamp, were like candy being dangled in front of a starving child.

With all the same sadistic taunting sick pleasure.

There go the last of the Grabbers falling away to catch an orbit boost off Earth to help fling them back towards the outer reaches of space. Felix saw that Queen Space Industries already had Grabbers within the Oort cloud ice hooked up and towing ice towards Mars. That wasn't being televised yet, but it would be soon.

The Smashers should be surging forward on their gas rockets to meet the ice by now. The seven-minute delay in radio transmission time between Mercury and Earth was annoying but unavoidable given the current mean distances involved. Orbital positioning being what they were.

Still, Felix didn't need to see it to know what had already happened. He had access to footage of two centuries of the exact same thing happening every month.

Rue ... my beautiful, Rue. Oh, how I love thee, let me count the ways...

What in the hell is wrong with me?

Taking a moment to look around the excavator, searching for anything that might catch my attention for a few moments and allow me to stop thinking about the woman sitting up in the control room. She was sitting in the pilot's chair, one foot propped up to the side, her legs open in a delicious sprawl that would have invited a smile from anyone seeing her in such a languid pose.

She was comfortable in her believed isolation.

Relaxed and simply letting time pass as the big excavator rig chewed its way through a few empty miles of Mercury's surface. This was a path that had been worn flat by dozens if not hundreds of passes from the other excavators and from Big Alice herself. That was one of the things that Queen Mining was counting on. Within another five years the excavators would be able to eliminate the need for two pilots. The Rigs would be running on nearly flat ground, simply following GPS driven paths around a planet no longer covered with half-destroyed craters to pilot across or ridges to climb and mine through.

Soon pilots, like my beloved Rue, would be scrambling for work in a much more restricted work space.

The incoming video footage updated.

Even my ability to make a million calculations simultaneously wasn't enough to allow me to register what I was seeing.

The seven-kilometer chunk of Oort cloud ice had flown past the "Smashers" unharmed.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"ROULETTE!"

Startled into awareness of where she was, Rue looked around for the voice and then realized it was Felix speaking to her over the main speaker. She glanced around worried that someone else might have suddenly have appeared and would hear the AI and the whole house of cards she was living in would collapse.

Grabbing the mic, she all but whispered into it. "What?"

His beautiful voice came to her now over the inner rig communication speaker. "Turn on the vid footage coming in from Earth! Now!"

Shaken at the urgency in his voice, Rue keyed up the incoming vid signals being routed down from the orbitals stations. Normally it wasn't considered a good idea to be watching vid channels in the control room as it was considered a distraction by the company bosses.

The frantic tone that came across the from the vid reporter struck Roulette as bad even before she began to grasp what was happening.

"-- again, the scheduled arrival of ice for the Luna terraforming has suffered a serious mishap. In inbound cometary material was to be intercepted moments ago by the 'Smashers' but a system that had worked flawlessly tens of thousands of times, and for over two centuries, has failed. We say again the 'Smashers' have failed! The current placement of the cometary material poses a serious threat to the planet Earth. Percentages are still being calculated, but a close pass, possibly even a skimming off of the Earth atmosphere is likely. The potential damage to the space infrastructure will be immense. What?"

The reporter looked away for a moment and the vid footage switched to show a golden spark trailing after a gassy cloud of ghostly white.

"Can you see this? Can everyone see this?--" a momentary pause. "Ladies and gentleman what you are seeing here is vid footage of the space yacht owned and piloted by the president of Queen Space Industries, Caesar Queen. He is apparently using the enhanced thrusters in his yacht to chase down the comet and try to nudge the trajectory."

Felix's voice over the speaker interrupted. "He won't be able to do that. The sheer mass of the ice is too great, given the minimal distances involved and the increased speeds the Grabbers imparted to allow total destruction into the lunar atmosphere by the Smashers."