The Price of Knowledge

The base operations of the expedition were little more than a compound of standard box-shaped white Confederation-grade shelters, broken up here and there with other improvised shacks and tents made from resources found in the nearby area. The state of the bivouac didn’t surprise the Captain; she had seen others like it before. But those were expeditions that had been vacant, abandoned, and devoid of scientists. Nothing like here.

Researchers scurried from tent to tent, carrying a variety of implements and equipment with an urgency that the Captain was unused to. It made her head spin, quite frankly. This wasn’t a reconnaissance mission. She was a check-up, sent by the Confederation itself, to oversee the status of the operations at the expedition base.

“Captain Shay!” A voice called from beyond a crowd of frantic scientists. Shay looked over to see a white-coated man walking towards her with a gait that spoke of an old knee injury. “Good to see you. How are things back at Pinnacle Station?”

Shay glanced to the left, but her lieutenant was nowhere to be seen. “Good as ever, Dr. Martin,” she replied, shaking the man’s hand.

Dr. Martin smiled broadly. “Of course, of course.” A flurry of other researchers and assistants followed them as the doctor led her towards the largest of the Confederation-grade shelters. As they walked, a clean white jeep trundeled past.

Something in the vehicle caught her eye, and she looked away from where Dr. Martin was explaining how they’d broken through the hard rock face of the planet’s surface. Many geologists, indeed. In the bed of the jeep was a hunk of pressurized metal, corrugated and deformed, stark against the white of the clean research vehicle. Something glowed a sickening green—

“Ah, here’s your lieutenant!” Dr. Martin said, greeting the man.

Shay’s attention returned to him. The Lieutenant approached, carefully hiding a frown at the doctor’s exclamation. Shay remained silent.

Dr. Martin grinned again. “Lieutenant Riance. I thought you’d be back with the Confederation,” he laughed. “Not all the way out here.”

Riance put on a smile and shrugged. “Our work finds us in odd places, doctor.” He shook the other man’s hand. “Not always where we expect.”

“Of course, of course.”

The doctor led Shay and her lieutenant further into the expedition camp. As they walked, Shay found her attention drawn to a large, gaping crater that she had first observed upon their landing in the area. The dark, reflective rock had been blasted away to reveal the surface of some ancient ruin left by a civilization long gone on this planet. A hatch on the surface had been opened to reveal a sundry of rotting mechanical parts and technology, worn away by the ages.

She wondered what they must have disinterred from that place.

Couldn’t have been good.

They entered one of the white tents, the doctor pulling away the entrance flap to reveal a dozen or so researchers working at different stations. One shaved a chunk of rough metal with a bright blue sponge at a basin to the left; to the right, another scrubbed the rust and verdigris from what looked to be a corroded tablet or console of some sort. 

Sumptuous materials and equipment, clean white coats, and protocol performed by the book. Shay narrowed her eyes and glanced at Riance. He shook his head, barely a movement.

“If you’d follow me,” said Dr. Martin.

The doctor pulled away another flap at the back of the tent, gesturing them through. None of the scurrying research assistants that had followed them the way there accompanied them into the smaller room. Dr. Martin closed the flap behind them.

“What is that?” said Riance, and Shay turned to see what he was looking at.

In the center of the room stood a round dais, obviously the subject of their study, a short pillar of dark metal that reflected the light as if it were made of obsidian. Veins of brilliant green light flowed throughout the metal, and the top of the dais pulsed with the same, perverse green glow.

Shay looked back at the doctor. “What sort of artifact—”

“A control panel,” answered Dr. Martin, eyes aglow. “Filled to the brim with an energy of some sort. We don’t know what it does quite yet, but…” The doctor moved over to a console at the back of the room, giving the dais a wide berth. “Readings from the pulses seem to match with some sort of code, communication…”

“Is it dangerous?”

The doctor mumbled something. “Caustic, a few burns… second degree, not too serious… probably from the energy radiation through the surface of the metal casing.”

The ancient control panel hummed suddenly, the green glow brightening as the doctor pressed a final button from where he stood by his console. Shay looked up from where she had been staring at the dais to see the doctor smiling.

“PROTOCOL 756. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ERIS ONLINE.”

A hologram of a face appeared, ancient and fey and utterly alien, projected onto the air in large, featureless green particles.

The Confederation had been right about this expedition after all.

“You have an AI,” said Riance, voice low as he glared at the doctor.

“Eris,” he countered. “It has remained vigilant through all these years—through the decades, centuries—think about what it could know!” Dr. Martin was becoming frantic, but Shay still retained her silence. “We know next to nothing about the civilization that used to live here, on this planet—but an AI! Just think—”  

Shay ignored the doctor’s desperate prediction. “You know the protocol, Doctor. You know how the Confederation views artificial intelligence.”

Dr. Martin was shaking now. He reached into his coat. “I didn’t want it to end this way-”

The Captain’s gun was already drawn.