Finally, the HOPE-067 spacecraft had been found; it was wandering in the immensity of space, and all its systems were deactivated, except for one, the beacon signal transmitted on different frequencies. Suddenly, a ship came out of hyperspace right next to it. After matching the craft's speed, the seals of the SEARCH-200 expeditionary craft's docking bridge were clamped. A pair of cosmonauts crossed it, not knowing what they might find inside HOPE-067. They had tried to open communication but their efforts were in vain. Lieutenant Samantha entered the opening code. The hatch squealed and jammed half open.
"Ensign, a little help," the lieutenant requested.
Erick came out of his lethargy and began to push the other side of the hatch. After a great effort by both of them, the hatch gave way and opened automatically. The lights in the entrance corridor came on. The lieutenant touched a few buttons on the device on her arm and suddenly a three-dimensional schematic emerged from it. She located the bridge and ordered the ensign to proceed to the cargo area, where about 1000 souls were in a cryogenic state.
"Understood," the ensign replied.
In every corridor through which the lieutenant passed, the lighting system would turn on and then turn off. Immediately, she knew that HOPE-067 was in saver mode, possibly the crewmen had passed away. Upon reaching the bridge, the bridge turned on the lights, revealing a general artificial intelligence assistant, seated at the helm of the spacecraft.
After a thorough check, the lieutenant managed to reactivate the assistant. The android opened its eyelids and observed the lieutenant's uniform for a few seconds and then its gaze stopped on her face. Its database recognized the Federation insignia.
"Resetting operation. My internal chronometer registers 1200 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes, 25 seconds in hibernation mode. My designation is Gaia-3205 but you may call me Gaia," the android commented politely.
After a quick interrogation by the lieutenant, Gaia had reported that the FTL drive had stopped working 20 years ago, forcing them to drift at impulse speed. So, being the last crewmember, in the last 3 years, she redirected all the ship's power to the cargo area, more specifically, the cryogenic units, bypassing the vital systems.
The lieutenant's communicator activated giving way to the ensign's words.
"Lieutenant, the surviving cryo units are in good condition. However, the charge level is well below what is required for them to function."
"Understood," the lieutenant replied.
Samantha continued to stare at the android, wondering how it would have survived this long. She pressed the button on her intercom again.
"Send a message to the Federation fleet, indicate our location, and advise that we require assistance immediately."
"Copy that," the ensign replied.
"My motor systems are not operational," Gaia observed.
"That is a Federation directive," the lieutenant commented.
"Your model had misbehaviors on many of the HOPE spacecraft, which is why your assistance was dispensed with on most of them."
"I understand," replied the android lowering her gaze; "I'm very sorry to hear that."
A human behavior that the lieutenant did not expect to see in such an old model. This led her to think that the android had to have spent a lot of time with a human. Immediately, the lieutenant ordered access to the ship's logs. The android turned its gaze to a console on a panel to the left and indicated the authorization codes.
Again the lieutenant's communicator came on.
"Fleet indicates ETA 15 hours."
"Understood," the lieutenant replied. "Transfer power from our transport to the cargo area."
"Roger that," replied the transmitter back.
She closed the communicator and sat down in front of the command console. After entering the codes, a screen listed a series of entries. The lieutenant tapped the first of them.
"Starlog 3751-1, Lieutenant Mark Stingray: the FTL drive on the HOPE-067 spacecraft has stopped functioning after a meteor shower. We have been adrift for over 30 days. Unfortunately, there were human losses, more than 50 capsules were impacted, including technical personnel."
The lieutenant was a thin man with a broad forehead, a half-shaved beard, and pronounced dark circles under his eyes.
The communication stopped suddenly. The lieutenant stood at attention. Immediately, she tapped the console a couple of times, to no effect.
"As I mentioned before, the ship's power is redirected to the maintenance of the cryo pods, that's why the console has stopped working," Gaia recalled.
The lieutenant bit her lips as she observed the percentage of oxygen remaining in her suit.
Samantha tapped the console again and that was all Gaia could observe before disconnecting.
—---------
Gaia felt disoriented as she didn't recognize where she was.
"What happened?" she asked
"I have brought your artificial neural network to our ship to avoid consuming more power on HOPE-607 while we wait for help to arrive."
"I require you to describe to me what happened to Lieutenant Mark Stingray, from where I stayed."
"Very well," Gaia replied
She then began to narrate what happened to Lieutenant Mark:
"Warning lights flooded the lieutenant's room, everything turned red. Like a bolt of lightning, he jumped up from his bed and ran to the control panel. My system came on immediately and we both realized the problem. The ship's central processing unit immediately sealed the cargo room to prevent oxygen loss, which gave us time to process the situation.
The ship had dropped out of hyperspace and fallen into an asteroid belt. We were the victim of a shower of small meteors that tore through the hull of HOPE-067. The cargo room sustained the most damage. Unfortunately, the FTL drive was also damaged.
We split the repair work. While the lieutenant replaced the damaged circuits from the impacts, I soldered the holes in the hull. Once the repairs were finished, we started checking the cryogenic chambers. It was inevitable to lose 50 souls that day.
Reviewing the list of victims who had perished during the event, Mark stopped instantly, unable to believe his eyes. His confused mind could not process the information. It must have been an error, a malfunction of the spacecraft's servers, possibly due to the meteor shower. However, my assistance confirmed what he did not want to know.
Indeed, his name was among the victims. His eyes did not leave the last line on his console screen: Lieutenant Mark Stingray, deceased.
How was that possible, he asked
The most logical solution, though unlikely, was to realize that he was a clone. I recommended a blood test, the results indicated that he was indeed a clone.
From that point on, Mark fell into a spiral of denial about his existence. The fact that he was a clone implied that all the memories he had were not his own: birthdays, his first car, his first love, his years at the academy, and even losing his young son in an accident, and his divorce, were not his own experiences.
Can you imagine that your whole life has just been a memory that doesn't belong to you? he asked.
Faced with his identity crisis, I had no choice but to reveal the cloning directive for military personnel.
In interstellar travel, cloning makes it possible to extend the use of human resources, to solve the ethical and moral problems that I am not allowed to solve as an AI since I do not yet know what it is like to live as a human being.
Even so, Mark wondered if his existence had any relevance once the HOPE-067 spacecraft arrived at its destination. Or would his existence, and therefore his life, come to an end?
The days passed and Mark's depression grew to such a degree that he stopped feeding himself. It was then that I turned to the morality of the human being that lived inside him.
You may not be the man you thought you were, but it doesn't take away from the fact that the fate of 1000 souls depends on you, a job that only You can do.
Those words struck a chord within Mark's being, awakening him from his lethargy.
From that day on, he became the lieutenant I had known and vowed that he would do everything possible to get all those souls to their destination. It took him two years to repair the beacon and study the route to our destination and after more than 6 months of calculations, he managed to trace the fastest way, taking advantage of the gravity of the celestial bodies to accelerate our speed. According to his calculations, it would take us about 30 years to arrive.
He was willing to die if necessary to bring the 1,000 souls on our ship alive. However, I decided to put him in a cryogenic capsule against his will, when food became scarce so that he would also reach the destination planet alive."
With these last words, Gaia ended her narration.
Lieutenant Samantha meditated for a long time on what had happened while the work of recovering the cryogenic capsules was being carried out. Finally, she decided to save the memory of the android's neural network and deposited it in the hands of Mark, whose identity she had changed so that he would have a new opportunity on the target planet thanks to the effort he had made to save the 1000 lives.
In her final report, she excluded what happened with both the android and Lieutenant Mark.
