Star Child Page 3

  From inside the security office, a hint of defeatism rose within Lexis as she peered out the thick glass. She thought, “I am going to have to travel to one of the other archaeological sites in search for the critical machine.” Defeat turned to enthusiasm when Lexis scanned the large vestibule to her front. For some reason she had almost missed the seam splitting the bulkhead to the right. “I hope this last room pays out,” she thought.

  With a push of a button, the door would have automatically opened if the facility had power. However, designed with a manual backup, Lexis would have to physically open the last door.

  The crank handle turned the internal sprocket with grumbling clicks and thwacks, until the mechanical teeth lurched to a stop, opening the large door revealing a huge anti-room. Surprised, Lexis smiled at how the previous occupants left behind a small army of companion robots. Most had seen better days but Lexis knew they would all serve her purpose. Outside of a few domestic robots, there were diggers, haulers, builders, sample cultivators, engineers, operators, and many Centurion Robots. Lastly, she found the two donut shaped robots that had one specified function; couple the drive shaft with the imbedded core pipe deep within the Martian surface. The facility would have energy this day.

  After establishing power to her new domain, Lexis ran a slave cable out to the Chameleon; this would save the ship’s fuel cells from over working. Next, rebooting and tethering the vault’s computer system with her self was completed; she now had full control of the entire site.

  Over the next few days, Lexis marshaled the companion robots to operational conditions, and unleashed them to do their designed functions. Engineer Robots ran and maintained all the inner-functions. Eight of the ten salvageable Centurion Robots were more than adequate for security. Lexis altered two of the Centurion’s programing by upgrading their circuitry with greater reasoning, giving them more offensive encoding. Just in case she stumbled into another Clan of Humanoids again, she wanted personal bodyguards for her and the unborn child. Finally, the domestic workers were put to work, creating a fully functional colony of Robots, ruled only by Her.

  Lexis now decided to tour the tunnel network and surrounding area. She boarded the Chameleon along with the two sentinel robots. They did not get far; a partial collapse impeded their progress, they would go on foot. For protection, Lexis preferred a holstered plasma pistol while the two companion robots armed themselves with the much larger plasma rifles.

  Sensors cleared the room directly above before the three artificial life forms climbed upon the concrete barrier, and up through a narrow gap at the top. They then pulled themselves into the large ancient chamber of the Martian Face Pyramid.

  “Let’s clear this floor,” Lexis ordered while looking up at vaulted ceilings that reached more than eighty feet in height.

  “Acknowledged,” the Centurion answered.

  Lexis and her two Centurions moved swiftly through the maze-like halls of the lower level before uneventfully returning to the chamber. The walls throughout the structure were covered in a Martian Sanskrit describing a history of a long extinct civilization. Lexis could easily decipher the text because there was no real mystery, for mankind had cracked their ancient Martian code long ago. She was fascinated by the remarkable similarity to the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on Earth, her planned investigation of the Face Pyramid would eventually lead her to explore every inch of the walls but for now, she was out to do a quick reconnoiter.

  “Wait here,” ordered Lexis while looking at a balcony twenty feet above the great room.

  With a small running start, Lexis jumped and pulled herself up over the rail. She turned and looked down. Her imagination synced with her historical programing and vividly pictured the Martian Royalty gazing upon the members of their court hundreds of thousands years ago. Her programing altered when something thick and musky triggered her olfactory sensors. To get a better reading, she walked several paces down the long corridor that led away from overlook. Just as she suspected, at the end of the passageway a large antechamber contained a large biomass. “The indigenous creatures will have to be dealt with eventually but for now it would be wise to leave the pyramid until then,” she thought. Despite the vagrants, and after Lexis compared the archaeological data to her scan, she noted the pyramid would make a perfect future home for her offspring.

  “Something foul and dangerous lingers above. Can you smell the biological odor?” Lexis asked the Centurions.

  “Negative,” the two answered in unison.

  “I will have to remedy that.” She spoke regarding upgrades, and continued. “Let us head back to the Chameleon.”

  The three then climbed aboard the land-ship, and headed for the Martian surface.

  Circling directly to the front of the Pyramid, the stealthy ship hovered across the grasslands inundating the area. On the heads up display, Lexis could see hundreds of partial uncovered ancient brick structures; most were just semblances of buildings of a bygone period. The Chameleon’s ground penetrating radar found the front entrance to the Face Pyramid, and for future reference, plotted the waypoint on the map.

  Traveling further from the Pyramid, Lexis found a large band of Humanoids living several miles to the north; nothing seemed disjointed about the group. The large group seemed to prosper at the base of a large plateau.

  Lexis pushed another twenty miles before turning the Chameleon back south toward the original crash site; she was feeling a painful loss inside. “I have to find his body, and there is one place left.”

  “We are not going back to the Archaeological Facility Number 28?” asked one of the Centurions in a deep automated tone.

  Lexis was caught off guard with the Centurion’s question. She replied, “No, we are going to look for Jason.”

  “My database does not contain anyone named Jason,” stated the Centurion.

  “I will upload all of Jason Bjorn’s biographical information including his Polaris dossier into your processor,” Lexis replied while simultaneously streaming the information wirelessly. All the companions, including the Centurions were electronically tethered to Lexis’s powerful neural network.

  “Thank you, Sofia.” The Robot found her old name attached to the downloaded files.

  “No, call me, Lexis from now on.”

  “Yes, I will call you Lexis from now on,” answered the Robot in a monotonous and repetitive voice.

  “I am going to have to do something with your voice modulator.”

  “Yes, you are going to have to do something with my voice modulator.”

  “Centurion 34, please do not speak anymore,” she demanded, and thought, “His voice is undeniably one of the most irritating things I have heard.”

  “Yes. Centurion 34 will not speak anymore.”

  T HE PIT

  Approaching the encampment, the darkness provided the perfect cover; the trip took nearly three hours with their low speed of travel. Any faster the ship’s hover pads would have disturbed the grassland, giving away their position to any low orbiting satellites. To enter their domain, she would be fully cloaked but even so, this had inheritable dangers. She had previously discovered when moving through the bamboo forest, Humanoids had an uncanny ability to see right through the veil of electronic camouflaging she touted. Albeit, their eye development was far superior to man, it was something else that gave them the ability to focus on the electronic cloaking signature. “It had to be cerebral, not ocular,” she thought.

  Lexis crept up behind the structure as waning dual moons brandished long shadows, giving away a silvery edged outline of the semi-buried longhouse. The two Centurions remained in the Chameleon; they would only give away her position. Nearing the edge of the mud sided building, she practically stumbled over the Clan’s bone pit. Quietly she bent down, and started picking through the pile of discarded animal bones. Anything looking like a human bone she sampled with her tongue for Jason’s DNA. Lexis calculated, “The Humanoids killed Jason, and ate him.”

  Squ
atting over the pile for sometime now, sadness began to overwhelm her thought processes. And in a frenzy driven madness, Lexis started throwing bones carelessly in all directions, disregarding her own safety. Abruptly, she looked up when her internal sensor picked up a thermal image walking out of the longhouse. Slowly, she slinked up out of the bone pit and started circling back to the Chameleon when she realized the large figure was closing fast in on her location.

  She had underestimated the speed of the nine-foot Giant. With the angle of his approach, he would cut her off before reaching the Chameleon. Knowing this, she turned, and ran straight toward the Humanoid, and in less than six paces they collided head-on.

  The Humanoid towered over Lexis when he wrapped his large hands around Lexis’s deceivingly fragile looking head. He picked her up off the ground with ease. A foul waxy breath exhaled from his mouth when he retracted his mandible; he was about to bite down on Lexis’s face, like she was some late night snack.

  To counter, Lexis tightened her fist into a ball and drove her knuckles with great force into his throat. He agonizingly groaned when she pierced the skin, and a loud gurgling noise erupted from his lungs when she extracted her fist from the hole she created in his esophagus. Blood gushed all over the front of her before the Humanoid dropped Lexis. He then fell in the fetal position. Lexis silently scanned the incapacitated Humanoid. “EPIDERMAL PERFORATION, positive… ARTERIAL JUGGLER RUPTURE, positive…TRACHEA, and ESOPHAGEAL DISPLACEMENT, positive… DEATH, 100% viability… Zero overall estimated physiological recovery time. Zero overall estimated psychological recovery time.”

  “Lexis, did you find a Jason?” the Centurion asked when she reentered the Chameleon.

  “No. I ran a fool’s errand.”

  “What is a fool’s errand?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Yes, never mind.”

  “Centurion 34, please do not speak anymore.”

  “Yes, Centurion 34 will not speak anymore.”

  “I definitely have my work cut out,” Lexis thought regarding the companion’s future upgrades. Though outdated, the Robot’s nomenclature had been designed with certain specificity. The Centurion was heavily armored, and was deadly accurate with a weapon. Lexis was confident in her knowledge. She could upgrade many aspects of the companions, giving them more human attributes.

  On the way back to Facility Number 28, Lexis had an indeterminate feeling about her physical wellbeing. Her legs and lower abdomen started cramping. An intolerable tightness gripped at her lower back as wave of nausea flooded her processor; followed by a splitting headache.

  Lexis suddenly felt wet between her legs; her synthetic blood was seeping through her pants. After running a quick analysis, she realized she had just miscarried Jason’s baby. Stunned, she thought, “The child was my only connection to the man.” Fluid welled up in the corners of her eyes, and the excruciating pain returned to her chest. “Maybe the fight with the Humanoid caused the fetus to self-abort.” Inside, her emotional pain was out of control; it was if something was torn from her flesh.

  After exiting the cabin, she entered the Integrated Equipment Room and thought, “I need to rest in my Command Pod.”

  Lexis spent nearly three days inside her Command Pod running deeper physical diagnostic scans trying figure out the exact reason why she lost Jason’s baby.

  When exiting the Integrated Equipment Room, Lexis’s dour mood was self-evident in her behavior; with her blood soaked shirt, she angrily stormed out of the Chameleon, and entered Facility 28. Inside, a flurry of robotic activity seemed to give her new home life. Domestic robots carried out their routine duties; they were busy cleaning all the surfaces.

  Lexis stormed up to the medical lab, flung open the door, and nearly knocked Centurion 34 over, who closely followed.

  “Wait out here.”

  “Yes, Centurion 34 will wait out here.”

  “You do that,” she bitterly said, nearly shutting the Medical Laboratory door in his face.

  Due to overwhelming surge in hormones, Lexis’s logic processor was being flushed with emotions. She could no longer control the excessive chemicals her body was generating; this deluge was drastically changing her advanced neural network. Her comprehension of all things became more blurred; she could not understand what was going on with her nor control the mood swings.

  During the diagnostic evaluation, and although she had freewill, she found out her additive programming would not allow her to have babies. The nomenclature of a Synthetic Onboard Female In-Cab Authority or (S.O.F.I.A.) was specifically designed for co-piloting the Chameleon but not for having babies. Only a Surrogate Model could carry a baby to full term. Strangely, she could carry a developed fetus for up to five weeks, but sadly to only have it self-abort.

  Inside the lab was a plethora of biomedical instrumentation, and after a quick inventory she thought, “Everything I need is here to fulfill my plan.”

  P ECORA BREAKFAST

  A hard early morning wind pushed her blonde hair across her face, whipping long wisps in front of her eyes. Swiftly fingering them aside, she intently looked down from the plateau’s top at the Humanoid’s encampment. Lexis waited.

  The morning sun cracked at the horizon’s edge when movement in front of the elongated structure caught her eye; she zoomed in on a sole Humanoid. By the size of the creature, she surmised, “An adolescent.”

  A Martian Humanoid’s life cycle was fast compared to a Human. Culminating to only five months, their birth cycle is short, and they grow to adult size in less than four years. On average, they lived twenty-five to thirty years.

  Lexis watched a young Humanoid poke at the large hairless Pecora’s brown tiger stripe and silvery-grey body with a spear. He was ensuring the fawn was truly dead. Lexis had carefully positioned the dead carcass along the footpath leading down to a watering hole, knowing it would be an easy discovery. The youngling then jumped in the air, and thumped his chest with pure excitement. He reeled his spear arm back, and with a deep guttural grunt he plunged the spear tip deep within the animal’s body. He quickly turned around to see if any Clan members had noticed his action but all still remained inside the longhouse.

  After his self-satisfied display, he dragged the dead animal by the legs up to the front of the longhouse. He then dropped it and loudly began huffing and puffing in bolstering chest grunts. His excitement and enthusiasm drew the attention of those inside. Clan members quickly ran outside.

  The youngling pranced around with his chest puffed out as if he had made the kill. The excitement was infectious, and an ensuing ruckus resounded when one female member loudly shrilled, echoing off the bluff walls Lexis stood upon. She concluded, the overly exuberant howl was most likely from the proud mother of the youngling.

  Hours passed by when the midday sun fell on the Clan, and Lexis crept her way into the longhouse. Originated in the dark recesses of the structure a chorus of vociferous snoring rumbled at the timbers. She turned her nose up pressing through the sea of large bodies. A putrid smelling odor floated on the humidity that tightly clung on to the interior’s dankness.

  Towards the rear, Lexis found the alpha male sleeping on a pile of animal skins; three females surrounded him, one was ovulating. “She’s perfectly healthy and in her prime,” Lexis thought.

  To reach the fertile female, Lexis had leaned over the male’s face. After swallowing back her own vomit she thought, “Their breath stinks so bad…might be from a high protein diet.”

  The female laid face down when Lexis teased back her vulva. Gently pushing the syringe deep inside, firmly squeezing the bulb, and squirting the cervix with a splash of life-giving seed.

  “The deed is done,” Lexis thought with confidence pulling the syringe out.

  Before leaving, she discovered several of the younglings were not breathing, including the one who found the animal. Inadvertently, Lexis had overdosed and killed the majority of the young. The tranquilizer she created was too strong. Coldly she thought, �
�This will only ensure the success of Jason’s genetic offspring.”

  After the bone pit experience, something snapped deep inside when she miscarried. The emotional pain was too devastating for her neural network to process. The fact she thought she might have somehow misplaced Jason, killing him, only compounded the pain of her loneliness. It was way too much for her to bear; she wanted to be with him again. So she decided to carry on his genetic bloodline by artificially inseminating the female with his recombined DNA. The archaeological facility’s lab equipment was well suited for genetically splicing Jason’s DNA with that of the Humanoid DNA from her blood soaked shirt.

  O NE MARTIAN YEAR

  “…Six, five, four, three, two, and one…ready or not, here I come,” echoed Tiberius’s soft little voice.

  He opened his large eyes, and began searching the dark alcoves. The facility was virtually a maze. Lexis incessantly played hide and seek with him to help sharpen his cognitive skills. When he was a baby, she started with peekaboo, this taught him the concept of object permanence; that objects and things are real, even though they may not actually see them. Now playing hide-n-seek, she felt it would foster his imaginative thinking, problem solving, understanding spatial aspects of his surroundings, and mostly it edified the hunt without the risk of danger. “He would have to learn how to hunt to survive on his own one day,” she thought.

  On opening the drawer, he pulled out a large cookie. Tiberius always searched the kitchen galley area first because if Lexis was not there, he thought he could sneak a treat without her knowing, but she knew his every move as any mother would.