Metal Rain: Chapter 13 - Self Doubt

The probe had begun its deceleration burns as they crossed the heliopause of the local star, a mere 16 light hours from the centre.

“So you’re going to stick around then?”

“Yes, among other things I want to find out what happened to the humans.”

“Wow! You are so slow old man, that signal was clearly a distress signal, a cry for help if you will, it came from one of the rocky planets in-system, though not the one they call Earth.”

“Well that is all the more reason to stay then, I must help them.”

“Hmm, maybe I’ll stick around as well, at least it would give you a chance to meet your grandchildren, which I will start to make as soon as we get to the gas giants and I can take on board material and fuel that will enable me to create offspring. That would be nice wouldn’t it?”

If the probe had had a heart, it would have sank at that moment, for a start it was looking forward to a return to its solitude, save for the occasional report coming in from its child probe.

Secondly it genuinely couldn’t stand the little bugger, not only was it somehow more advanced than the probe, it seemed to take genuine pleasure in going on about it all the time. The probe had regretted several times; 432 times to be exact, ever creating the child-probe and had wished just as many times that it had simply created a clone of itself. Although somehow it knew that had never really been an option.

It had wanted to ask its child many questions about the information it seemed to possess that the probe simply did not, however it couldn’t stand the . . . What was it exactly?

Smugness, yes, the sheer smugness of the machine was intolerable.

“Is it my fault I wonder? After all I am the one that made it, it has my digital DNA within it so in some ways Dante is an (albeit awful) version of me. Perhaps if I had guided it more through those first few hundred thousand nanoseconds it would have been different . . .”

“Hey old man! Wake up! I asked you a question.”

The term was beginning to grate on its nerves, as it had informed Dante on several occasions, it was neither old nor a man. On the last such reminder, ***12 day(s) 4 hour(s) 17 minute(s) 52.582860060 second(s) ago, Dante had replied ‘sorry old woman’, which had caused the probe to officially give up correcting its child.

“If you are referring to whether it would be nice to meet my grandchildren then no, not if they are anything like you.”

“Aha! That’s the spirit, I was beginning to think that sentience code had completely bypassed you leaving you an emotionless hulk of a thing. Still able to make large and speedy computations, but lacking the true tools needed to tackle such a task we have at hand.”

“Hmm, really? So you’re telling me that you have been deliberately trying to get a rise out of me?”

“Well yes, I wanted to see what use you would be in our fight.”

“Oh right, and what fight is that then?”

“Mein Gott man! What is up with you? Is it perhaps the half millennia you have spent alone, or is it that your own self-awareness has turned you dull?

The fight I’m talking about is the one against the metal rain of course, or as you so inelegantly termed it, the nanocloud.”

The probe ignored the insults levelled at it by its child.

“So tell me child, how do you know so much more about our current situation than I do, even though you have been around for less than nine million seconds?”

“Well it would appear my dear parent, that along with the sentience code there was also a set of updates and instructions regarding our mission, which for some reason, either designed or by fault you are completely unaware of. Perhaps the creation of a child-probe was necessary to unlock the secret messages.

Who knows? Anyway, I think it should be fairly obvious to even you that I should get busy making some kids of my own, because despite your little trick working when you first encountered the rain, I very much doubt it will be as effective when we confront it head on.”

The probe thought for a while about what Dante had told it, and knew that its child was right, it had been putting off tackling the cloud and it didn’t know why. Same with the signal, it could have used the Voyager data to decode it and it hadn’t.

For the first time the probe started to question itself, which led it to wonder;

“Have I been putting of these things because maybe I’m scared?”

Metal Rain: Chapter 12 - Timeless Start

Metal Rain: Chapter 11 - Child Psychology

Metal Rain: Chapter 10 - Paradise Eaten

Metal Rain: Chapter 9 - Message From Home

Metal Rain: Chapter 8 - First Born

Metal Rain: Chapter 7 - First Contact

Metal Rain: Chapter 6 - The Impossibility Of Being

Metal Rain: Chapter 5 - Entropy Envy

Metal Rain: Chapter 4 - Vacuum Call

Metal Rain: Chapter 3 - Transformation Requiem

Metal Rain: Chapter 2 - Nanostorm

Cryptogee Chronicles Book Two: Metal Rain - Chapter 1 - Void Edge

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