and I managed to get into the alien system. It wasn’t really that hard—the encryption was pretty simple. A lot of it we don’t understand, so it’s going to need translating, which is going to take time. But I think we’ve managed to tease out a couple of main points.”
“Which are?” Dash said, stepping back in front of the console and lowering his weapon, but keeping it ready. Not all of the bots might be as innocuous as the one that had skittered by, vanishing with a small rattle of metallic limbs.
“First, the designation of what you’re on seems to be something like Arkubator.”
“Arkubator?” Leira said. “Strange name.”
“Sounds like a combination of ark and incubator,” Jexin said.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Conover said. “But that’s not a literal translation of whatever the Deepers might call that ship. That’s more a translation of what seems to be its purpose.”
Well, ark implies it’s meant to carry creatures,” Dash said. “And incubator suggests it’s for growing creatures. Am I close?”
“Again, pretty much exactly right,” Conover said. “Kristin’s trying to glean what she can right now.”
“Actually, I can confirm that’s exactly right,” Kristin cut in. “That ship is meant to carry and nurture a whole buttload of critters, taking them through their life cycles from birth to death. Pretty cool, huh?”
“To what end, though?” Leira asked. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble, time, and resources to invest in something you’re just going to shoot into the big black and let coast for forty million years.”
“I believe I can offer some insight, or at least a suggestion,” Custodian said. “I have been discussing the matter with the other AIs, and we believe that the Deepers have created a nearly perfect closed system. Organisms are born, they grow, they live out their lives, then they die and their biomass is recycled back into the various environments.”
“Well, sure,” Dash said, looking around. “That all makes sense, but again, I’m with Leira. Why? What’s the point?”
“These are all sub-sentient species,” Sentinel replied. “In other words, they may have a capacity for sentience, and may be in the process of developing it. By repeatedly running each through its life cycles, studying it, and then using a variety of intervention techniques, it may be possible to guide the evolution of a species to a particular end-state.”
“Wait a second,” Conover said, holding up a hand. “I’m not an expert in biological evolution, but I’ve read enough to know that a lot of evolution can happen to a species in forty million years. Why wouldn’t every creature aboard that ship already be sentient? For that matter, some of them should have developed tech all their own, spaceflight—”
“Because this evolution is specifically controlled,” Leira offered. “They might only pick certain species to evolve, and they’ve done that, and they’ve been taken off to form their own civilizations or whatever.” She gestured around. “All these that are left were further down the list to evolve. Or maybe some of them evolve really, really slowly.”
“Or maybe some of these are just evolutionary dead-ends,” Jexin put in. “And they’ve taken them as far as they can.”
“So now they’re born, they live, and they die, spending the whole time in tubes and tanks,” Amy said. “That sounds awful.”
“Hey, from their perspective,” Leira said, watching something like a bulbous fish with long, prehensile whiskers sail past, “this is just their universe. They don’t know anything else.”
“Maybe it was meant as insurance against the Golden,” Jexin said. “A way of repopulating the galaxy with sentient life, in case they actually won the war and wiped all of the existing life out.”
“Having a hard time thinking of the Deepers as altruistic guardians of living things, intent on keeping life going,” Leira replied.
“Depends on why they want life kept alive,” Amy said.
Leira sniffed. “Well, that didn’t sound too chilling.”
Dash, who’d been just listening to the exchange, shook his head. “We can stand here and speculate all we want, but I think the answers are probably in that data that Kristin’s downloading.”
“Have downloaded, actually,” Kristin said. “I’ve got all I’m going to get.” She paused. “There is one thing that’s immediately interesting.”
“What’s that?” Dash asked.
“Well, it seems like the critters aboard that ship are all constantly being scanned, and some are sampled—”
“Sampled? That has a chilling ring to it, too,” Leira said.
“Well, yeah, and for good reason,” Kristin replied. “If you were suddenly scooped up, poked, and had pieces cut off you, chilling would certainly be a word to start with.”
“Chilling