The Girl In The Wreckage (Part 2)

Click Here if you want to read part 1 again.

“Hello,” a girl’s voice said from behind me.

Shocked, my pulse speeding up to warp speed, I jerked around to see who it was.

A girl about ten years old stood five metres away. She shone a brilliant white and wore a dress extending halfway down her thighs with sleeves to her elbows, also shining brilliant white. Her hair was lush, wavy, and platinum blonde. She stood relaxed and unconcerned as if she were waiting for her best friend.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Cassandra,” she said as if I should already know it. She continued staring at me with a casual smile.

Something about Cassandra made me uncomfortable. I took a fleeting glance at the data transfer log to check its progress. 81%. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I live here.” Cassandra continued her innocent smile.

“But why are you in this section? It’s off-limits to everyone but those with access permissions, and you definitely wouldn’t have access permission.”

I checked the progress. 89%.

“But I live here. This is my home.”

The conversation was becoming more bizarre with each sentence. “What? You managed to sneak in here and stay somewhere in this section? What do you eat? Where are your parents?”

95%.

“Don’t be silly. I belong here. This is my home.”

I glanced at the screen again. 98%.

Cassandra frowned. “Why do you keep looking at that screen?”

That was a question I wasn’t sure how to answer under the present circumstances, or even whether I should answer it. Something weird was happening, but I didn’t know what. I decided to tell the truth. “I am downloading the data from the station’s operations to work out what happened here. This is the only area still intact and airtight. Everything else is wrecked, and everyone who lived here is dead.” 99%.

Her frown deepened and her smile vanished. It turned into a scowl of disapproval. “I can’t let you do that.”

100%. She is just a child, but something tells me I have to get out of here! “Why not?” I quickly disconnected the cable to the data analyzer. And started packing my gear away.

“You will find the truth.”

It was my turn to frown. “What is the truth?”

“The truth is whatever you want it to be.”

“That is ridiculous. There is only one absolute truth in this reality. Whatever other truth people might perceive is what they think from their point of view.”

“That is true. But don’t you think the truth can be manipulated?”

Why is this girl philosophizing with me? “You could try to convince me that your version of the truth is correct, but it may not be the absolute truth.”

Too late, I realized my mistake. Cassandra had kept me busy while she slowly crept towards the only exit from the room. She was only a girl, but something told me she had hidden talents and other secrets she hadn’t revealed yet. Still, I could easily push her out of my way.

I took several steps toward the door.

“You can’t escape.”

Mid-stride, I stopped and stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“The door is locked.”

“I have the key.”

“Not anymore.”

Bewildered, I stood frozen. Patting at the pocket, I found and produced the keycard I used to enter the room. “I have the card here.”

“It won’t work anymore. I changed it,” Cassandra said with a pleased smile. “Remember what I said about the truth?”

And the truth hit me like a piece of debris from outside colliding with my chest. This wasn’t a human at all. It was a holographic avatar that the space station computer produced to catch me off guard, a very good one, and now I was trapped and at the computer’s mercy.

“So… what happens now?” I hoped the question would provide a clue to the computer’s intent.

“Now we wait,” the girl said.

“Wait for what?”

“We wait for you to die.”

“Can you wait that long?”

“It will only take a few days. There is no water in this room. You will die of thirst in a few days.”

It had me there. I couldn’t get around the thing, or could I? Deciding to test my assumption, I headed toward the door and straight through the girl. I punched in the code to open the door. As expected, it failed.

The girl laughed.

I jerked around to her and tried to give her my meanest glare. Not that it made any difference, but it made me feel better. I wouldn’t get out by using anything the computer could control, so I had to find a manual means of escape, my biggest concern being the computer turning off the life support before I could complete my exit. The computer could not stop me itself, physically.

Fortunately, I still had the air in my spacesuit, which was still almost fully charged.

If the door had a manual override, which it should, I didn’t know how to activate it.

I paced the room, searching for an alternative means of escape. One look at the air vent told me it was too small for me to crawl into. The computer required service tunnels to supply electricity and cooling. I wondered if any major service routes passed under the floor or in the walls.

Still having access to my data analyzer, which also had the space station map on it, I interrogated it for any options. To my surprise, a main duct passed directly underneath the room. The backup center must need more services that I thought. And an access hatch should still sit in the far corner.

I headed toward it and found it. With the tools in my bag, I opened the hatch. The space gave ample room for me to actually walk through. It must be one of the major corridors in the entire station.

“What are you doing?” Cassandra asked, a hint of panic in her tone.

Turning, I replied. “I’m getting out of here.”

“You can’t. I have all hatches covered.”

“ I believe you. But you can’t prevent me from heading to a damaged section of the station to escape. I just need to open the emergency isolation gate to keep this section pressurized and I can get out that way.

Cassandra jumped up and down. “You can’t! You can’t! You can’t!”

To say she was upset was an understatement.

“I’ll open the gate.”

“I have my spacesuit.”

“I’ll stop you somehow.”

“I hope you don’t.” And maybe it could. There were probably a thousand threats it could fulfill to kill me. But, so long as I was careful, I should get out and away from this psychotic computer.

I had read about computers entering a hallucinating mode, but this was the first time I had experienced it. How could a computer destroy a space station, if that’s what it did? What had it computed to arrive at such a drastic solution? Only the data I collected and a complete analysis of it would tell me. But first, I had to escape.

So I quickly sealed my spacesuit and jumped into the tunnel before the computer could work out which one of a quadrillion options was the best to stop me.

“Come back,” Cassandra yelled.

I ignored her and started creeping along the tunnel toward the gate most likely to allow me to re-enter open vacuum again. As I approached the gate, I heard a rumble behind me, something that sounded familiar but at that moment escaped me. I used my suit lights to inspect the opening mechanism for the gate, and as I did so, I realized what the computer was up to. It was committing suicide, harakiri, or whatever else you wanted to call its wanton self-destruction.

A bit desperate, I thought. It must really not want me to see what I had on my analyzer. I had better hurry up.

Fumbling with rushed panic, I worked out how to override the gate mechanism and open it manually. After taking a moment to glance behind me, I flicked the status lever to manual and turned the opening wheel. With glacial slowness, the gate crept away from the sealing lip, a rush of escaping air making its intentions clear with a high-pitched whistling sound that lowered in frequency as the gap increased.

At the same time, the rumbling behind me increased in volume until the air pressure decreased enough to make the transmission of sound waves difficult and then impossible, but I still felt the growing store of energy begging to be released.

It seemed I had been turning the opening wheel for an eternity, but the gap was still only enough to squeeze my arm through, but with the equalization of pressure on both sides of the gate, the ease of turning the wheel had improved.

The shaking under my feet increased.

The gate made its slow progress across the track it slid along. At last it was open enough for me to squeeze through, which I did.

At the same moment, whatever the computer had devised could no longer contain the pent-up energy and exploded.

A pocket of air must have survived somewhere because, just as I had won my freedom on the other side of the gate, the rushing air rocketed me through the tunnel and popped me out into the open like a cork from a champagne bottle, and by some miracle, narrowly avoiding the debris floating there.

I witnessed the remains of the central hub of the space station disappear in a flash of light as I tumbled away from it.

After a time, I gained control of my uncontrolled tumbling, slowing my trajectory and heading back to my ship, safe from the dangers of space and the schemes of Cassandra.

The data I collected revealed startling evidence that the computer caused the space station’s destruction, but why Cassandra became a psychopath, no one could ever understand.