The Hydrogen Sonata

She stared at him. It. “Listen,” she said.

“I can hear you, you know,” Pyan said testily. “If I can hear you, you can hear me.”

Cossont turned briefly towards the elevenstring case. “Pyan, shut up.” She looked back to the android. “I am not part of any simulation,” she told it. “I am a flesh and blood human being, and in some pain right now.” She rubbed her aching arms.

“We were flung around a lot as the craft fell,” the android said.

“Uh-huh. And so it makes me very nervous that you think this is just a simulation and I’m just a part of it. I need you to treat me as real and human.”

“I am,” the android said.

“This matters, understand? There is no second try, no extra life. Not for me, anyway; I’m not backed-up or anything.”

“Really?” The android looked sceptical.

“Really,” Cossont told it, firmly. “Even when I was in the military I was never high risk, so I was never backed-up. Maybe you are, or can be, but not me. It’s not a game, not a sim.”

“I understand and I am treating the situation accordingly,” the android said reassuringly, nodding. “That is why I guided this craft safely to ground after its own AI attempted to destroy it.”

“What?” Cossont said.

“What?” Pyan yelped.

“That is why I guided this craft safely to ground after its own AI attempted to destroy it,” the android repeated.

“You guided it—?” Cossont said. She looked towards the nose of the craft. “But how—?”

“Following the aggressive effectorising of both the craft’s AI and the trooper’s suit, an attack which I believe was directed at obvious and conventional military systems and so was not directed at myself, I was able to establish communication with the craft’s back-up control sub-systems and guide it safely to ground. I was able to make use of the debris falling from the remains of the regimental HQ vessel as cover, causing this craft to maintain a similar trajectory to some of the portions of debris as they fell, until the last moment, otherwise we might have been hit again, by kinetic, beam or particle munitions.”

Cossont closed her eyes, feeling her skin crawl. She shook her head. “The… the regimental HQ vessel… the Fzan-Juym asteroid, the moon; it’s… gone?”

“Destroyed,” the android confirmed. His eyes went wide and he made a sudden flapping motion with both hands. “A very extreme simulation scenario!”

“Destroyed?” Cossont repeated, unable to take this in. “Completely?”

The android shook his head. “Not completely in the sense of annihilated, as would be the case had it been attacked with a large amount of anti-matter, say, but completely in the sense that it was pierced by one or more energy weapon beams and blown apart into many tens of thousands of significant pieces, the largest perhaps forming up to five or six per cent of the mass of the craft before its destruction, the smallest—”

The roaring in her ears had come back, drowning out what the android was saying. Cossont remembered Etalde’s face, Reikl’s, the grinning looks on the faces of the line of dancing people she and Reikl had encountered before they took the travel capsule.

She was suddenly glad she was sitting down. She felt dizzy, disoriented. “Would anyone have survived?” she asked, shaking her head, trying to clear it. This hurt.

The android looked at her oddly. “Well,” it said slowly, “we survived, patently.”

“Apart from us.”

“Hard to say with any certitude,” it told her. “Possibly not. While interfacing with this craft’s sensors I think I saw other small craft attempting to escape but all those I was able to pay any attention to fell victim to secondary and/or subsequent munitions and/or attacks. Also, I think I ought to add that I think I detected other space craft in the vicinity of the planet being attacked as well, so the assault was not purely on Fzan-Juym.”

“What did all this?” Cossont asked.

“From the little I could observe, the attack profile would fit that of a single large ship or a small group of sub-capital craft of level seven or eight capability on a semi-rapid closing transit. The weapon signatures would fit those of our own — that is, Gzilt — fleet, though that may represent deceit by those responsible; there is a certain lack of specificity inherent in weapon identifiability at this sort of implied civilisational level. This is known in some circles as the ‘purity’ effect.”

Cossont stared at the creature.

“Ahem,” the muffled voice inside the elevenstring case said.

Cossont felt sore and tired and wanted to sleep some more. She wondered if this was what it was like to be truly old.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“For us, not very much,” the android said. “This craft cannot move, the doors are inoperative and it may be unwise to send any distress signals. The craft is incapable of transmitting any distress signals in any event as I had to permanently disable its signal processing unit to prevent it broadcasting our status and position immediately after we were first effectorised. It may be best to wait for rescue by friendly forces, though in a wider context our present non-participatory immobility may represent an end-run situation within our part of the simulation at this time and we may well experience seeming oblivion or a possibly abrupt transition to base reality at any moment. I am prepared for either, as you may be too, even without knowing it. On the other hand, we are not in a completely stable or static situation given that we are gradually losing heat to the planet’s surface and the external near- vacuum, and a small amount of this craft’s atmosphere would also appear to be leaking. So in that sense this part of the run is continuing.”

Cossont stared a little longer at the android. It/he stood suddenly upright and executed a little bow. “By the way, my name is Eglyle Parinherm. Yours?”

“Vyr Cossont,” she told it. “Lieutenant Commander, reserve, recently re-commissioned.”

“Delighted, ma’am.” Another small bow. “Though,” the android said, a small frown on his face, “for future reference and any subsequent runs, I’d suggest that a real human being would have wished to swap identities before this point.”

Cossont felt her mouth open. She was aware that she probably looked like a moron. She shook her head gently.

“Will somebody,” Pyan’s muted voice said, “tell this fucking lunatic we’re not in a fucking simulation and get me out of here?”

“Shall I?” Parinherm asked breezily.

“Please do,” she told him.

Parinherm opened the elevenstring’s case. Pyan yelped, propelled itself out and flew across to Cossont. It thudded into her chest, wrapped in on itself like a rolled towel; two corners of its fabric extended like clumsy arms to hug her. “This is horrible!” it wailed. “Make it stop!”

“I could disable the device,” Parinherm told Cossont, nodding at Pyan.

“Leave me alone!” it yelled.

“That’s all right,” Cossont told Parinherm. Reluctantly — the thing had never been this clingy before — she cuddled the familiar, patting what passed for its back. She shivered. It was getting cold inside the little craft.

Parinherm had stuck his head into the elevenstring case. “Here is a garment,” he said, pulling out Cossont’s jacket. He held it up, letting it fall open. “‘The Lords of Excrement’,” he quoted, with seeming approval. He chuckled. “What an unexpectedly random touch.”

“I’d better have that,” Cossont said, holding one hand out. Parinherm handed it over and she slipped it on. “So we’re losing atmosphere?” she said.

The android nodded. “Oh, yes. And heat. Assuming the simulation continues, it will be interesting to see whether the last of the available air escapes first, or freezes.”

“This is horrible,” Pyan said again.

Cossont kept on patting the creature. “There there,” she said, for want of anything better.