Chapter Three:
Valentina retired to the crew quarters for a few hours, curling up into the sleeping bag that was fastened to the wall with thick Velcro straps. Even though there was no need for a pillow in zero-g, she wore a sweatshirt to bed, with the hood’s strings cinched up. It made her feel more secure as she floated gently in her sleeping bag. Sleep proved elusive, instead she lay awake with her eyes closed, nebulous thoughts and half-formed plans interrupted by the occasional spike of anxiety.
When she finally gave up on sleep and floated through the corridor back into the command module, she was feeling groggy with a dull headache. Finn had prepared a report for her while she slept on potential hazards they could begin planning for, but it didn’t really tell her anything new. For better or worse, they were stuck in this situation. Yes, there was still the possibility of rerouting to 1e and joining forces with JMTEP, they had several more hours before that window closed. But she couldn’t imagine changing course now. Whatever situation they were headed toward would be the situation they had to deal with. Valentina knew quite well that the decisions she made yesterday could very well doom everyone on board. She just prayed that nothing else happened before the captain was awakened from her hibernation cycle.
The FORBIN computer asked Valentina if she was okay. She hadn’t realized she had been staring off into space for as long as she had, but now she was annoyed. She wasn’t sure why empathy from a robot made her more uncomfortable than any other emotion it was programmed to replicate. But the tone with which it generated concern made her skin crawl, enough that she genuinely wanted Finn to just leave her alone.
That is, until she saw a red light flashing on one of the nearby console screens.
“Finn, what’s going on?” Valentina asked.
“Comms request from JMTEP, originating from TRAPPIST-1e,” Finn said.
“Again?” she asked.
“This is the fourth such attempt,” Finn said.
“Fourth?” Val’s heart lurched. Why would they be attempting contact so often? Were they aware of their situation and trying to offer up some sort of help? That didn’t seem likely, altruism had never been a profitable business model. This definitely seemed out of the ordinary for them.
“Would you like to accept their comms request, ma’am?” Finn asked.
Val didn’t respond. She honestly didn’t know what to do. She rubbed a knuckle against a painful knot forming in her neck as the stress of the past couple of days was getting to her.
“What’s your assessment, Finn? Do you think I should accept it?”
“It is plausible that they are attempting to relay critical information related to the situation on TRAPPIST-1f. Absent other data sources, engaging with JMTEP may yield clarifying intelligence.”
Val was worried the computer would suggest that. But if Finn didn’t see any harm in it, then why didn’t she feel right about it? She did need more information, she just didn’t trust any that came from JMTEP. She pulled up the flight plan to 1e, compulsively looking up how much time they had before their window to reroute to JMTEP’s planet closed. In her opinion, that time couldn’t come fast enough.
“Finn, have these just been simple comms requests? No additional messaging explaining themselves?”
“Correct. All four have consisted solely of handshake requests sent by laser line. No identifiers or encoded payloads have been included.”
“Laser line?” Val asked. If their comms request was sent by laser line, that meant this wasn’t some radio frequency that could be intercepted by any nearby ship with a transceiver. No, this meant JMTEP was tracking them. Like a sniper’s laser trained exactly on their ship, except the sniper was on a planet as far away from their ship as Earth is from Mars.
But even if there was no inherent danger from laser communication itself, Val felt exposed—like she was being watched by someone she couldn’t see.
“That’s strange though,” Val said, trying to collect herself. “After this many attempts, you’d think they’d include more than a bare comms request. Why not try over radio?”
Were they testing her?
Val shook her head, dispelling the thought. She was being paranoid.
The feeling didn’t go away. In fact, it seemed to mix with her grogginess and amplify it into a brain fog, making it difficult to rationalize away her anxiety.
“That does seem like a reasonable expectation,” Finn said. “However, these communications could be automated and will only send additional information once we’ve indicated our intent to accept the request.”
Valentina crossed her arms. “Do you really think they might know something we don’t?”
“JMTEP maintains a higher degree of technological advancement relative to our current capabilities. Their persistence could indicate knowledge of our situation.”
“Why even bother though?” Val asked, getting frustrated and rubbing the knot in her neck again. “Why monitor us at all when they have their own mission objectives?”
“From a strategic standpoint, it would not be inefficient for JMTEP to monitor parallel colonial efforts within the same system. That sort of intelligence could prove valuable as each of the TRAPPIST colonies grows.”
Val shook her head, her annoyance at Finn getting worse. She just couldn’t believe in altruism from JMTEP. There had to be a trick or an angle she wasn’t seeing. This all felt too convenient, reaching out when they were at her most vulnerable.
“Valentina,” Finn continued. “I would gently observe that your current hesitation appears influenced by prior negative perceptions of JMTEP. While such perceptions may be valid, they are not, in this instance, supported by actionable threat indicators.”
“Can you blame me?” Val blurted.
Finn paused for a moment, though she wasn’t sure if it was to simulate a true human conversation or if Valentina had actually changed its mind.
“No, your mistrust is historically grounded. Caution in such matters is rational.”
“So I’m right to be cautious then?”
“Caution is always prudent, but we are not certain of their hostility. While JMTEP’s motives may not be altruistic, they may still be informative. Disregarding their attempt does not prevent their influence, only our preparation.”
“So which is it, Finn?” Valentina said, growing angrier at what she felt were multiple non-answers in a row. “Is my caution prudent or not?”
This is what drove her nuts about the FORBIN computer. It was built as the ultimate assistant, but Finn’s programming made it too neutral in facilitating decision making. It was a non-directive advisor, offering help in walking through potential scenarios, but in the end, providing everything but concrete recommendations. All of this would be so much easier to deal with if she had someone else awake with her.
“Ma’am, accepting a transmission need not imply trust, merely curiosity. And curiosity is a core value at NASA.”
Valentina couldn’t roll her eyes hard enough. “Okay fine, you want to talk curiosity? Then, Finn, aren’t you curious about why their comms requests started right around the time we got our last message from the surface? That’s weird, right? The timing can’t be a coincidence.”
“You’re proving my point, Valentina,” Finn responded. “The timing of their communications, relative to the surface warnings, may indeed indicate correlation. If so, they could possess data we currently lack. Disregarding such a potential source of information would limit our capacity to respond effectively.”
Dammit, Valentina thought. She couldn’t decide which of them was being naïve here. The knot in her neck was now making her shoulder painfully tight. “But what if they’re the reason for the colonists’ quarantine?”
Even as Valentina said it, her argument sounded far-fetched, despite the timing of these messages. She knew she had to acknowledge that JMTEP might know something crucial for their survival, but every instinct she had was telling her the timing of all this indicated danger, not potential lifesaving data.
“Continuing to 1f while refusing available data elevates the risk to this mission and its crew. Are you, on record, prepared to place their lives at risk based on an acknowledged bias?”
“Son of a bitch,” Valentina slammed her fist on her console screen, disturbing a packet of water she’d taped to her console and sending an explosion of water droplets across the command module. “We should be worrying about preparing for arrival at 1f, trying to figure out how to solve the problems at hand, not worrying about JMTEP’s motives!”
Finn started to generate a response, but Valentina cut it off, “This is a distraction!”
“Ma’am,” Finn started.
“Maybe if the captain was awake,” Val yelled over the computer, “I’d feel more comfortable deciding, but I’m just a pilot—a junior officer who signed up for this assignment because it would look good on my resume. I shouldn’t be making decisions that might doom everyone on this ship!”
“Respectfully, Lieutenant Nelson, you accepted command responsibilities for this phase of the mission when you agreed to oversee deceleration. You are, in every operational sense, the representative of NASA and the acting command authority for the Asclepius IV crew. Whether you feel qualified or not, the authority is yours.”
Finn’s tone shut her up. It had stopped calling her by her official rank years ago when she initially asked a different FORBIN computer in training to do the same. Finn doing so here felt like a censure.
“I must also note,” Finn continued. “Declining to act is, itself, a form of decision-making. Inaction may preserve comfort, but not the safety of the crew. Shall I continue holding the incoming request?”
She hated that Finn was right. Generations of NASA astronauts had found themselves in similar situations and dealt with the circumstances given to them. Hell, dealing with the perils of spaceflight was in her blood. Her grandfather may have been killed while working as a contractor for NASA, but that didn’t stop her dad from spending most of his life doing maintenance on robotics in space. And that was just on her dad’s side. Her mother had worked on multiple NASA missions as a systems technician, and her maternal grandparents had both been astronauts. To top it all off, Valentina had been named after the first woman to ever travel to space, Valentina Tereshkova, over three hundred years ago. She knew she could deal with this, even if she didn’t want to.
Valentina took a deep breath and swiped the comms request from her wristpad so it would pull up on her command console. She was ready to get over herself and accept the comms request. Yes, her gut was telling her not to, her hands shaking as her thumb hovered over the acceptance button on the console. But she had to accept that her bias was not an effective decision-making process when lives were at stake.
Besides, what truly was the harm in accepting their comms request?
She was just about to accept it when she finally pieced together the paranoia she’d been feeling since their first comms attempt. Their bombardment of messaging had begun around the same time they got their last message from the surface. What if her initial instinct about the colony’s intended message had been right? What if the colonists on 1f hadn’t spelled out “Quarantine” as an explanation for their own actions, but as a suggested course of action?
Valentina immediately dismissed the comms request, feeling resolute. “Finn, do not initiate contact. Do not acknowledge in any way that we have received their request.”
“Understood,” Finn said. “Per protocol, this decision will be logged as a mission-critical refusal for the captain’s review upon emergence from hibernation.”
Mission-critical refusal—so if this ended up being the wrong decision, it could end her career. Though that would mean very little if they all died.
She was still pissed at Finn, though. It had already moved on from their conversation and was generating reports that popped up on her console, as if she hadn’t just had one of the most significant arguments of her life that may have just doomed her and the crew.
She dismissed the FORBIN prompts on her console screen. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Finn. But I’m going to need you to leave me alone for a while. I’m serious, silence all non-essential notifications, including any more comms requests, unless you have another mission-critical piece of information, leave me alone.”
“Acknowledged,” was all that Finn said in response.
Her anger at Finn aside, she was feeling calm about her decision. The past couple of days had been far more than she bargained for. But she was now positive the quarantine message had been an instruction.
Valentina spent the next few hours checking through the computer’s log, seeing to easy tasks that could occupy her mind so she wouldn’t keep dwelling on the general stress she was feeling. She even forced herself to find something to eat, preferably, something high in protein like walnuts or peanut butter. Her mouth was dry due to her anxiety, though. She’d forgotten to drink any water since her argument with Finn, so the handful of walnuts she ended up deciding on were more difficult to chew than she had been anticipating.
After a few hours, Finn finally broke its silence to send an alert to Valentina. They had just received a new batch of images from the satellite orbiting 1f that appeared to have a new message written out. Thankful for a distraction, Valentina pulled up the new images on her wristpad. The colony had indeed spelled out a new message for them, though it wasn’t as readily apparent to Val what it meant. It read simply: FRBN ER001.
“Huh.” Val said. “What do you think this means, Finn? FORBIN Error Code zero zero one?”
There was a sudden, loud thump throughout the ship as every light and console screen went black, plunging Val into complete darkness. Everything was completely silent. She couldn’t even hear the low hum of the life support systems, before red emergency lights flashed on throughout the ship and deafening alarms blared.
Val recoiled from the sudden onslaught of sensory overload. The normal lighting of the ship slowly flickered back on, though the red flashing didn’t stop. Each console screen was rebooting too, leaving Val to be met with urgent notifications and alarms plastered across each screen. Even the haptics in Valentina’s wristpad were so overwhelmed with notifications they wouldn’t stop squeezing her wrist.
Valentina frantically went through each alert, trying to gain some understanding of what was going on while also looking for a way to turn off the audible alarm that continued to blare in her ears. She found the control and quickly typed in an override code to turn it into a silent alarm.
Through the chaos, all she hoped for was that they hadn’t somehow been attacked by JMTEP. But there weren’t any attack patterns in any of the notifications she was receiving. None of them had to do with any system failures or errors, nothing that was evidence of an attack, instead, they were all a series of executive admin requests. It was as if every system on the ship was suddenly requesting that she accept complete control over it.
“Finn, what’s going on?” she asked while she delved into settings on her wristpad, but every time she tried to get to diagnostics, notifications popping up would prevent her from doing so. Notifications only did that when they were emergencies, and unfortunately each of these systems saw whatever was going on as urgent enough to spam her wristpad, making it warm in the process.
“Finn, I need you to answer me!” The lights throughout the ship flashed off and on again, though thankfully none of the console screens did this time. “Finn?”
The air felt stale around her, it was a strange sensation after being used to the constant airflow of their life-support systems. Val gulped. If life-support had failed, she was already dead, even if she hadn’t suffocated yet.
A loud metallic groan sounded throughout the ship. Valentina froze, it sounded like the hull was straining. Why the hell would it do that? Maybe they had been attacked. Or wait, no, maybe the PTC roll stopped? Shit—if it did, that could fry some of their instrumentation unless she got the ship rolling again. Why would it stop? That didn’t make any sense!
She needed Finn. Wondering why she hadn’t heard from the computer, Val pulled up the FORBIN widget on her wristpad, only to see it was grayed out. She tapped it, but nothing happened.
“Finn, what’s going on with you?” she tried to sound calm when she asked, but her heart rate was elevated. Val turned to the main command console to find the FORBIN module grayed out as well.
Was this ship-wide?
She unbuckled from her seat and pushed off, making her way out of the command module as quickly as she could in zero-g, down through several corridors into the heart of the ship. Once at central processing, she opened the sliding doors to find a simple pillar in the center of the circular chamber, the FORBIN computer itself. Normally, this chamber and the console screens within would be lit with activity monitoring the central processes of the ship. But right then, every screen displayed the same message: FORBIN ER#001 – Isolation protocol initiated.
At the FORBIN console, Val dismissed the error message to find another permissions request from the software that handled the ship’s core functions: life support, hibernation cycle functions, and their guidance computer, all things that Finn was exclusively authorized to administer.
Valentina didn’t understand how, but Finn was gone.
Her hands shook as she accepted the executive request, passing all core functions under her command. To her relief, she soon felt air flowing again throughout the ship. If she had thought everyone’s life on board this ship had been in her hands previously, they certainly were now. She just didn’t understand why.
Back in the command module, Valentina scanned through Finn’s documentation log, trying to find out exactly what had caused this isolation protocol and why.
What was she going to do now that Finn was completely isolated from the rest of the ship? FORBIN was the heart of their ship’s computer and was interconnected in all of its architecture, it quite literally was against its programming to do anything but administer the ship’s systems for the crew. For Valentina to suddenly have complete control of the ship was baffling to her.
She finally found what she was looking for in the ship’s command log, something she didn’t have access to previously. It was further documentation detailing the error code.
Over the next hour, Valentina dug deeper, her investigations taking her into intelligence logs she never would have had access to without the ship’s admin having been passed to her. Apparently, this classified protocol was created to protect against an adaptive virus that NASA Intelligence claimed was being developed by JMTEP. The engineers suspected such a virus could infiltrate through any type of infection vector, use polymorphic coding techniques to adapt its code base to stay undetected, and rewrite the FORBIN computer in the process. Given just how embedded FORBIN was in the ship’s systems, this would have been catastrophic.
It was horrifying reading all of this, realizing what had actually happened, why the colonists on the planet told them not to land, why they’d manually shut off the communications capability of their satellite, why they’d urged quarantine, and risked triggering their ship’s isolation protocol.
They had been attacked. Each communication attempt, an attempt at infection.
Val only hoped no data had passed between JMTEP and their ship during the multiple attempts. What if FORBIN had accepted some kind of data packet request? They wouldn’t know until the isolation protocol diagnostic was complete. According to what she could find, this diagnostic could take years to complete.
Sitting in her chair in the command module, Valentina felt a crushing loneliness settle into her chest. Floating there in zero-g, in a ship with forty-nine other people, all asleep but her, she became profoundly aware of the ship around her. She felt small.
There were fifty other colonists in hibernation. Now that the FORBIN computer was no longer a safeguard to help her protect them, it was entirely up to her to make sure they survived the rest of the trip. Earth was tens of trillions of kilometers away, a distance so astronomical that traveling here at relativistic speeds meant, with time dilation, everyone she had known back on Earth was either old or dead. All she had left in her entire world was on this ship, heading toward a planet they couldn’t even land on.
She had spent so much of her life telling herself that she enjoyed being alone. But she’d never been alone. Until now, at least.