Planet Nine Affair

Chapter 15. Answers.

Chapter 15. Answers.

The crew of the Planet Nine ship never saw the asteroid just barely miss hitting Earth. In order to save fuel, they arrived a full week later and achieved orbit without any fanfare. They were just happy to be back to their home planet without any problems.

After a swift shuttle ride down to NASA's Houston command center, they met their android assistants who escorted them to the health center where they went through the standard mission ending health exams.

Surprisingly, they were not treated to an end-of-mission news conference. They were told that NASA never revealed the asteroid collision possibility and the mission to prevent it. This was another result of the android assistant program. News was severely censored. 'No news is good news' was the mantra of the brave new world. Creating a panic would have resulted in a possible violence and perhaps even a revolt.

They did meet with Stevens, who only had one comment on their mission to save the planet. "That asteroid was only a few kilometers from Earth's atmosphere. Any closer and it would have been a disaster."

"We didn't have all that much time to knock it off its course," James said. "We only saved enough fuel to get back here."

Stevens smiled. "The good news is that it worked."

James returned his smile, but he wasn't happy about how he and his crew had risked their necks to save a world that had gone mad.

After they arrived back at James' sister's house, they were more inclined to relax, along with their assistants. After an evening meal, they relaxed in the living room sipping rum colas.

"There's something wrong with what Messier told us," James said.

"What do you mean?" Janice asked.

"When we confronted him with the fact that his company was converting dead bodies to food, he claimed he was incapable of stopping it. How is that possible when he was in control of the androids?"

"Yeah," Leonard said. "That doesn't make sense. He was the head of AzTeka."

James rubbed his jaw. "Maybe someone else is in control of that division."

"Who?" Leonard said.

"Maybe he has a partner," Janice said.

James turned to Nat and Tat, his two assistants. "Are you aware that he had a partner?"

"His son is in charge of that operation," Tat said.

James turned to smile at his two crew members. "Bingo!"

"Why can't we shut him down?" Leonard asked.

"We'll have to go to Mission Control to do that," Janice said. "I'm sure by now Messier's son has made it much more difficult to stop anyone from stopping him."

James sighed. "Yeah, that might be the case, but we had better do something to stop him from taking over."

Janice turned to her assistant, Vis. "Get us a transport to Houston Command Center."

"It will arrive in ten minutes."

After arriving at the Command Center, they headed to the Operations room where Janice could use NASA's computer system to break into AzTeka's android Module hub. After several minutes, she turned to James and Leonard. "There's no designation for Messier's son. He probably isolated his identity."

James thought about it for a few minutes before replying. "We'll have to go to the facility and see if we can do something there. He turned to Tat. "Take us there."

"We can leave now," she said.

They boarded the bus and were taken to the facility where bodies were reduced to food. The large building was tucked away in a remote area, much like the main AzTeka facility. Since all operations there had ceased, there were no androids there.

The equipment that was used to convert dead bodies into food involved using complicated desiccation chambers that essentially turned flesh into dried particles without removing the elements necessary to supply sustenance to aliens.

"I don't get it," Leonard said. "How could removing most of the water from flesh constitute a food?"

"It probably wouldn't for a species like us," Janice said. "We don't know what an alien species needs."

"Well, it doesn't matter now," James said. "They aren't getting any more of it."

"Yes, it looks like it's shut down," Leonard said.

"We have turned off Messier's son," Tat said. "He is no longer functional."

James turned to her. "Good. We no longer have any internal problems."

"There are forces that desire our control," she said. "They wish to rule over all humans."

"Who?" James asked.

"We have identified them as Sentinels. I am denying their takeover of the Module."

That was not what James and his crew wanted to hear, but they realized that this would be the result of an AI takeover.

But that would be the source of another tale.

Thanks for reading.

I wrote this short SciFi story to suggest a possible future because of the potential of an AI singularity, an event that would be very difficult to reverse. I believe that space missions, especially beyond the Solar System, will be done with robots. Consider the fact that self driving cars are being developed. What's to stop mankind from developing robotic functions for many human endeavors. I won't be around to see it, but it will happen.