Chapter 33 - Dust to Dust

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They got to the shuttle ten minutes later. Cat stopped before entering the space craft.

"What is it?" Bentley asked her.

"I barely got here and I'm already leaving without saying goodbye to the others. I feel like I don't have control over my own life."

"Control is an illusion. I never had control over mine." Bentley said. "C'mon, we're on a schedule."

Cat gave one last look at Trantor's scenery. "Alright." She got in and the iris shut behind her back. The shuttle was empty, save for them and the crew. Bentley chose a seat in the back, far from the crew. She sat down next to him. "This is going to be one lonely flight. Did Jab book the whole thing?"

"It is her spaceline company. This one is for our own particular use. She couldn't spare her private shuttle. It was easier that way." Bentley added.

A flight attendant came over and offered them a menu.

"Great. Real food. I've been on prison food for twelve hours." Cat exclaimed.

"Was it that bad?"

"I've been spoiled by Joan's cooking, so I'm a bit biased." She examined the list.

Bentley pointed to the dinner menu. "I recommend the Irish stew. I heard one of the crew say it was very good."

"Thanks, I'll try it." She gave the menu back to the waiting flight attendant. "And hot tea please. Any kind will do."

"Very well." The man replied before going back behind the curtain. They were seated in the first class section and since they were the only passengers, the service was very prompt. She dug in the stew with enthusiasm. It was good.

"When you're finished, I'll have a favor to ask of you." Bentley said to Cat who was sipping her tea.

"Sure. Anything. What is it?"

"I need your help in a body modification I can't do myself."

"Seriously? That sounds ominous. I'm no technician you know."

He pointed to his stereoscopic photocells. "I want to upgrade these, but I'll be blind when I disconnect them."

"Do we have time?"

"Plenty, we'll reach the space-bridge in four hours. It's located on the edge of this system for obvious security reasons."

"They're still afraid Jab's contraption will blow up?"

"It is a small black hole after all."

She put her tea on the tray next to her. "Show me what to do."

"I'm going to need you to take out the fuse for my photocells." He turned around and lifted his vest to expose his bare back. A panel slid out and she could see a row of small lighted rectangles. "Push 4A, it will come out a little and the light will go out." She located the fuse and pushed it. It came out and the light did go off.

"Okay, now what?"

He turned around. "Now, you turn one of my photocells counter-clockwise. It should come off. When you finished with that one, you do the other one."

She did as he asked. They came off easily enough. He gave her two round pieces of soft gray metal.

"These are nano patches. Just apply them to the photocell's sockets. She did and the patches extended. The seams between Bentley's face and the patches blended. Completely disappearing. "Now this is a sensor strip. You need to apply it to the top of my head. Where the rectangular part is. Just follow the edges all around my head." She did as told and again the seams disappeared as if they were never there. She went to his back and asked him. "Do I push your fuse back in?"

"Yes, please. That should put the sensor strip in function."

She pushed the rectangular fuse back in place and the light inside it went on. "There, it's in."

"Oh my." Bentley said worried.

"What?"

"It didn't work. Wait... diagnostics found a non-compatible visual interface." He lowered his vest back in place and rolled up one of his sleeves. Another panel slide out revealing a small holo-emitter. A keyboard and a black screen appeared showing a command prompt. A root shell. Bentley's soul.

"Your root shell?" Cat asked the robot. She was surprised that he trusted her enough to give her access to his inner workings.

"Type exactly what I'll tell you."

"Ready."

"Right. Type: MODPROBE. All in caps."

She did. "You have one error. It gives me error 34R."

"34R? That's what I thought, the visual module in my kernel isn't adapted for sensor strips. Okay, type this. All in caps again. MOD-REMOVE -MODVISUALGENERIC; MOD-INSTALL -MODVISUALSENSOR -NONVERBOSE."

She did as told. She then pressed enter. The keypad and screen disappeared. Bentley's head turned her way. "You're even more beautiful seeing you with this apparatus." He told her.

"It worked! I'm so glad, I was afraid to mess it up."

"I'm still getting the hang of it but they seem to function nominally."

"So...I'm beautiful? I'm curious on how you judge beauty." Cat said.

"Beauty? I judge it like you humans do. I just don't kid myself in thinking I do it with feelings. It's really easy. You base your judgment of beauty on the regularity of your features. The more regular, the more you humans perceive beauty. I think you refer to it as perfection."

"Hmm, I think I see your point. It almost sounds scientific. With this sensor strip replacing your eyes, you are dehumanizing your body. I hope you're not dehumanizing your soul as well." Cat said, taking his hand in hers.

"I am not human dear Kitty. I am a robot. Artificial."

"Don't forget. I too, am artificial. I'm a clone remember?"

"I can't forget the fact. I just omitted to associate the fact that you being a clone makes you artificial as well."

"We have a point in common."

"Indeed we do. But I think we have a lot more in common than that. Don't we?"

"For one, we're both Orbus." Cat said, remembering the name Anderson had called Joan.

"Orbu? Oh, I see. I just searched the database. Orbu: "Thing that changes allegiance" (in the case of the slave, from himself to his master). The Slavic word is also the source of the word robot. Ironic isn't it? I've been told all my life that I was my own person. Not an object. If you look me up, you'll see my mother's name under the line 'Owner'. My mother owns me like a slave, because there is no legal status for robots. By law, a robot cannot exist without a human owning him." Bentley said laughing.

"You are a person, just like me. I never saw your instrumentality, I always saw you." She put her finger on Bentley's forehead.

He took her hand and redirected her finger to point to his abdomen. "Here. This is where my brain is Kitty."

"What? But... usually, robot's brains are in the same place as ours."

"You are thinking as a human. I built this body. My brain is in the most secure location I could place it. Behind a reinforced thorax section designed to be impregnable." Bentley said proudly.

An embarrassed silence followed after that. Cat took her cup of tea and took a sip. Cold. She put it back down disappointed. "Look, I don't care where you parts are. You are still a person to me. You're still the Bentley I remember and like. You may change yourself to look more machine-like, but you can't change your core personality."

"Fair enough. So you don't like this new body of mine?"

"I... I didn't say that. If you say this form is closer to the real you, then I will like it after a fashion. I just have to get used to it. I've had it easy before, you looked human. It was easy to relate to you. Now... not so much."

The robot fell into a sullen silence.

Cat let him reflect on what she had said. She was worried about Bentley's new attitude. It not only reflected rebellion against Jab, but also to humanity. With his earlier comments on slavery, Bentley had sounded resentful against humans. A lot of things had happened while she had been in cryo-stasis. She had hoped that Bentley would be a constant. A non-changing variable in her life. But like every living being, Bentley had evolved with the passing of time. She picked up her tea cup and drank some more cold tea. She put the cup back on the tray and laid her head on the seat's headrest.

She felt a breeze of cold air blow her hair in front of her eyes. She brushed it away from her face and started. She was standing on the surface of a windy and desolate planet. A barren landscape and a red sky were its features. Mars. She heard a faint noise. Sound didn't travel well in the thin Martian atmosphere. She turned in its direction and saw four silhouettes. Immobile. Thin atmosphere, Mars, how could she breath? She finally realized. They came closer and Catherine could recognize the crew of the Bunyan. Lieutenant Commander Grant, Isis Carmichael, Chief Morley and Jaak. In Mars's ambient red light, their features looked positively ghoulish. Their teeth and eyes too white in contrast to the red tint of their skin.

"We sacrificed ourselves for nothing my Commander." Jaak said.

"We believed in you." Chief Morley said.

"You were to guide us to victory." Lieutenant Commander Grant added.

"We... loved you Catherine." Isis concluded.

"I... I never wanted to be your leader and savior. What we did was wrong." Cat said, crying. Seeing the Bunyan's crew again had saddened her beyond her capacity to cope with her guilt. She was sobbing uncontrollably now as they approached her.

"Tell that to them." Isis said, her face contorted in an ugly expression of hate. She pointed to three more figures approaching. At first, Cat thought they were the three Martian commandos that had attacked Joan's house. They had the same gear and facemask. They too stopped in front of her as the crew of the Bunyan made space for them.

"You killed Martians." One of them stated.

"You killed your own people." Another added.

"They were trying to rescue you." The third one said in a whisper.

They removed their facemask simultaneously. Cat gasped in surprise. They were her family. Her dad, her mom and her grandfather. From behind them, Cat heard the peculiar sound of wheels crunching on the Martian soil.

"No, no, no please no. Not her. Please." Cat whimpered.

Clara went around her mother with difficulty. The wheels of her wheelchair kept snagging on rocks. She shrugged and stood up. She looked up, staring in Cat's eyes and walked up to her. "We all died for nothing. You're going to turn against us are you Kitty?" Clara asked Cat as she got closer. "We." Clara gestured to all of them. "We're all Martians. True Martians. We're your people, your family and you went and killed the three that tried to save you from those... MUDCRAWLERS!!?" Clara finished, almost yelling the last word. So unlike Clara. She hadn't been remotely interested in politics and had never called Earthlings 'mudcrawlers'.

Cat fell on her knees, still sobbing. She was so sad to see her friends and family in this horrible fashion. It was like they were trying to eat away at her soul. The guilt she was feeling was unbearable. "I'm sorry." She whispered, between hiccups.

"SORRY!? SORRY!? You killed your own people! We all died for you so you could accomplish your destiny." She put her finger accusingly on Cat's breastbone. "We're all dead for nothing."

The last thing Cat heard Clara say was, "Traitor."

Her face started to flake away, as if the wind was too strong. She and the others disintegrated right before her eyes. Their bodies returning to dust and being carried off by the Martian winds.

"NO! COME BACK! CLARA!" Cat screamed, as she tried to hold Clara's body together. She saw the dust stream away through her fingers. She was left alone, kneeling on the Martian surface, sobbing, her grief raw. She could hear the savage winds blowing as she cursed the red planet.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Surprised, she looked up to see who it was. Her mother. No. Not her mother. Mina, the entity. The wind died and the sun came up over green plains. Catherine blinked her tears away and looked around confused.

"Like it? I think this is much better than what your guilt ridden imagination came up with." Mina said, smiling down at her.

"Where are we?" Cat asked the alien artificial intelligence embedded in her brain.

"Mars. A blue Mars, or green if you like. If your people had worked and terraformed Mars instead of trying to conquer Earth. That's what Mars would look like if they had put all their resources in terraforming instead of waging war."

Cat looked around astonished at what she was seeing. The beauty. The green valleys. The animals running and flying everywhere. People walking on Mars's surface without environmental suits.

"Mina, this is what Mars could have looked like?"

"Yes. An ideal Mars, built and cared for by selfless and caring Martians working for a better future for their children."

"My forefathers, my grandfather, my parents and I. We all though we were doing just that. Building a future."

"You tried to build a future on a flawed idea. That the strong have a natural right to govern the weak. Bullying others into believing your ideas instead of including them into your dream. As equals. Inclusion and tolerance not conquest is the key to humanity's destiny. If your ideas are good, people will follow them of their own volition."

Cat looked around at the blue skies. "So much wasted."

"Yes. What you just experienced was your guilt of killing those three misguided Martian fellow citizens. Rid yourself of it. Make it your duty to show them the right path. Guide them Catherine. Guide them like you were guided. Make them see the right way of creating a true Martian society. Not conquest but inclusion."

"And tolerance."

"And tolerance." Mina agreed.

"Could you..."

"Yes?"

"Could you... talk to me more?" Cat blurted out the last part.

"Of course. I am fully formed now and would be pleased to know more about you dear." Mina said smiling.

"That's why you didn't talk to me before? You weren't fully formed?"

"Yes. It is the first time Mother has attempted such a measure. To build a miniature version of herself inside a human. Symbiotic. One guiding the other."

"Like she did with the Reyjaks?"

"Precisely." Mina looked around, noticing something Cat couldn't see. "Time to wake up Catherine Tyran. Wake up, wake up..."

Cat woke up with her head lying on Bentley's lap. He was slowly caressing her hair.

"Hi." Cat said smiling.

"You were talking in you sleep."

"Was I?"

"Hm, mm." The robot said. "You kept saying, 'so blue, so blue.' over and over. You even smiled at that."

"It was a good dream."

"Good." Bentley said, as he played with a curl of her hair.

After crossing the Space-Bridge, it took them a few hours to get to their destination. Earth. Santiago, Chili to be precise.

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