Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

ANALOG
ergy. But eight years ago—in this very spot—it
had been different. We’d first sniped at each
other, then fought openly, then sullenly retreated
to separate work spaces as the signals
we’d worked so hard to locate fell apart under
our hands. We used different tools, I merged
with the ship and she with goggles and gloves,
but both of us were frustrated, angry, despairing—lashing
out at each other because the distant,
roaring stars and nebulae that were our
real enemies were beyond our reach. When
we gave up and transitioned back to the Institute,
we hadn’t spoken in days. I awoke the
next morning to a cold void in my bed and a
paper note: “Don’t try to follow me.”
I tore the note to pieces with my teeth,
then set it on fire.
But I’d never been able to burn away the
pain in my soul, the question that seared my
heart.
Why?
Why did she leave me?
We’d fought many times before. Why had
this fight been so different? So . . . terminal?
At last I am done filtering out the engine
and sensor noise. But pulling those away reveals
finer structures, fidgeting like a tangle of
fine wires. I’ve never seen signals like these
before; they were below the threshold of my
detectors at the time, even at a range of zero. I
look more closely.
These signals are the leakage from the ship’s
internal electronics. In a way, I am looking at
the workings of my own earlier mind. It’s a fascinating
and slightly disturbing thought.
I wish I could ignore these vibrating wires,
but I can’t; faint though they may be, these signals
are stronger than nine-thousand-year-old
radioartifacts. I must strain them out of the
data stream now or I’ll have to chip them off
of every single item later. I pull the old ship’s
documentation from storage and begin the
painstaking work of building a filter to remove
them.
Later. I find myself in the cabin, blowing the
steam off a bowl of miso soup. The hot bowl
trembles in my hands and I realize I haven’t
eaten in over twenty hours.
Evon is munching on one of his ubiquitous
food bars. “Is good, new detector?” he asks in
a conversational tone.
“Too good.” I sip cautiously. Still too hot.
“It’s picking up new sources of noise as well
as the new signals.” I find myself reluctant to
explain exactly what those noise sources are.
I’ve always been a private person, and never
shared the pain of my severed relationship
with anyone.
“I see on my readouts,” he replies. “Signal
source is nearby. Probably ship.”
“I know what it is.” I won’t let this bloodless
man tell me how to do my job.
“I can help filter it out.”
I feel my teeth grind together. “I have the
situation in hand.”
“You be careful,” he says, waving the food
bar. I wince as crumbs dirty the table. “Detector
is verrry sensitive. Focus on strong signal
could damage. Or worse.”
“I’ll be careful,” I snap, and take another sip
of soup to calm my nerves.
Damn it. I’ve burned my mouth.
After finishing my soup, I retire to the command
couch for a few hours’ rest.
In my dreams I’m back in school, my hair
luxuriantly curly and my mind still entirely organic.
I’m on a dig, a physical dig, in some
hot, sandy place where an unremitting sun
hammers down from a pink sky. An infinity of
scraped earth, neat terraces of precise excavations
divided into squares by glittering laser
beams, stretches away to the horizon.
With brush and pick and trowel I work
down through layer after layer of char and ash,
the ruins of some ancient disaster. The dark,
gritty stuff embeds itself beneath my fingernails
and makes me sneeze black goo. And
then I find a pair of skulls.
One bears a diadem of fine wire. The other . . .
I pick it up. Embedded in the skull are metal
plates, scratched and pitted with age.
The skull’s eyes open, and they are my own.
I thrash and gasp awake.
It takes only a few more hours’ work before
I’ve pared away the last of the intruding signal.
Or so I think. But I find the artifacts still gritty
with hard, encrusted noise. What have I
missed?
I switch back to the data stream. Although
I’ve filtered out every trace of my old ship’s
systems, and even my own augments, one
fine jittering wire of signal remains.
A wire like the wire diadem on the first
36 DAVID D. LEVINE