Andromeda Day and the Black Hole Read online

  Andromeda Day and the Black Hole

  by

  Charlie Jackson

  *

  Copyright 2016 Charlie Jackson

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  “She only gets top grades all the time because she’s a robot.” The comment was—purposefully—just loud enough to be heard above the whispers in the classroom.

  Andromeda Day had been gazing out of the window, smiling at the thought that she had just achieved the highest mark for yet another assignment, a complicated essay on the nature of black holes and the effect they had on nearby star systems. She’d worked so hard on that essay and knew it deserved to get the top Polaris grade, but still, it had been nice to see the symbol, glowing gold on the top of the computer screen.

  She’d watched the rain falling on the Astronaut Training Academy buildings as she imagined what Deneb’s face would look like when she told him. Outside, cadets were running across the quadrangle, books and folders doubling as umbrellas as they tried to escape the downpour, and water pooled on the flagstones, mirroring the iron-gray sky. It was a miserable day but, up until that moment, the weather had not reflected her feelings.

  Now, however, fear gathered like the rain clouds that circled the Academy. Perhaps the comment had not been about her? She looked up slowly, her heart sinking as she saw that everyone was staring at her. The faces of the eleven young men and women in her class showed surprise, shock and disbelief—all except the dark-haired young man sitting directly opposite her. Merak was smiling, but his eyes were narrow with dislike, betraying his real emotions as he studied her carefully. Like a tiger watching a wounded deer, Andi thought.

  It had been a passing comment by Merak though, she was sure, a blind guess, intended to provoke her. She would treat it as a joke. “I think you’re in the wrong class,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “This is Astronomy. Science Fiction and Fantasy is down the hall.”

  Laughter rippled around the table, which was what she had intended. Merak, however, did not laugh. He surveyed her coolly, then ran his gaze along the students until they grew quiet. “I’m not making it up,” he said. He’d doodled a picture of a robot on his screen with his stylus, and he projected it onto the display pad in the center of the table. The three-dimensional image—ridiculous-looking with square eyes and zig-zag antennae—toddled towards her, arms outstretched.

  Andi’s cheeks grew hot as everyone waited to hear her reply. Merak’s gaze was open, challenging. He knows, she thought suddenly. She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. How had he found out? “I’m not a robot,” she stated, sketching a black hole with her own stylus. It spun slowly in the center of the table like a Catherine wheel. The robot was sucked into it and disappeared.

  She glared at Merak. He was a good-looking boy with smooth light-brown skin and chocolate-colored eyes, a favorite with most of the girls, but he had taken an instant dislike to her, and they had been enemies since the first day of class. At least now she understood why, she thought sadly.

  Merak cleared the images from the table. He knew that everyone was waiting to hear what he had to say, and he was obviously enjoying being the center of attention. “Well my dad knows the scientist who made you,” he said eventually. He looked back at her, eyes hard. “So you’re lying.”

  So that was how he’d found out. Everyone knew that Merak’s father was one of the most powerful members of the Coalition of Governments. It was quite conceivable that he had contacts at the Clinic, although all customer records there were supposed to be confidential.

  Andi had always suspected that Merak had achieved his place at the Academy solely through his father’s connections, rather than because of his scientific ability. She had become more convinced of this as the months went by and he failed repeatedly to achieve a pass mark on his assignments.

  “Just because Daddy said so doesn’t make it fact,” she said, watching his face flush at the baby term for his father. “And I’m not lying,” she continued. “Nobody made me. A woman gave birth to me just the same as the rest of you.”

  Merak didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of ridicule and, as his eyes narrowed even further, Andi realized she’d only made things worse for herself. She watched warily as he leaned forward and tapped his skull with his stylus. “You’ve got a computer for a brain, haven’t you?” he snapped. “That makes you a robot.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she retorted just as angrily, not willing to let him win on a technicality, “which you would know if you ever did any real work. Robots are built entirely from mechanical pieces. I am a person who just happens to have some bits replaced with computers. Which makes me somewhat superior to you, I have to say.”

  Merak was unperturbed by her remark. “Okay, an upgrade, then.”

  Andi flushed. The term was technically correct, but it was an abusive one, only ever used as an insult. “You shouldn’t make fun of someone with a disability,” she said, changing tack, hoping to get some of the others on her side by appealing to their political correctness. “There’s a law against it.”

  “Upgrades aren’t classed as disabled,” he said, “and you know it.”

  The girl sitting on her right stared at Andi, her mouth slightly open. “Why have some parts of you been replaced?” she asked curiously.

  Andi looked down and at where she’d clenched her hands into fists. She took a deep breath and made herself uncurl her fingers. She knew from experience that it was pointless to try to evade the students’ questions now they knew. “I was in an accident,” she said quietly, “and bits of me were badly injured, so a scientist replaced them.”

  “What was the accident?”

  “A pod crash. I was with my mother at the time. She died, and I nearly did too.” There was a little catch in her voice. She stopped and cleared her throat.

  The class fell silent. Even Merak didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Which bits of you have been replaced?” one of the students asked eventually.

  Andi stopped herself from touching her hairline self-consciously. “Half of my brain. Most of my heart.”

  “I can’t believe we weren’t told about this,” said one of the other male pupils, looking distinctly put out.

  “What business is it of yours?” she demanded. “Why should you have been informed?”

  “Well it’s hardly fair, is it, having an upgrade in the classroom? It can’t be as difficult for you to achieve a top mark as it is for us. No wonder you always get Polaris grades.”

  “I make Polaris because I work hard,” she snapped, her cheeks growing even hotter with anger and embarrassment. “It’s got nothing to do with what happened to me.”

  “She’s lying,” said Merak. “She can calculate Pi to a hundred decimal places in her head.”

  Andi glared at him. She couldn’t deny the fact because it was true, but it wasn’t fair of him to insinuate that it was the computer part of her brain that was responsible for her good grades. She very rarely used her exceptional talents, and never in her schoolwork. She’d worked long and hard on her star system studies, often staying up well into the night to comp
lete her essays, and she burned with the injustice of his remarks.

  The dark-haired boy was talking ‘confidentially’ to the girl on his left, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear. “Metal brain and metal heart,” he stated behind his hand. “She can’t think or feel anything like a real person.”

  “Shut up!” Andi yelled, rising to her feet. “Why do you want to make trouble for me? What have I ever done to you?”

  He stood and glared back at her. “You’re a freak, that’s why, and you don’t belong here!”

  Andi glanced at the other students. Some of them were amused at Merak’s comments, but most showed a mixture of fascination and revulsion. She had seen that look before in other children’s faces when they found out about her. Oh why did Merak have to go and spoil things?

  So angry that she forgot what she was doing, Andi swung her fist at Merak’s head. As her body in the classroom was only a holographic representation of the real Andi on board her spaceship, it passed right through his astonished face, but not before all the lights in the classroom fizzed and the computer screens went blank.

  “Andromeda Day!” snapped their teacher, having walked into the classroom at that inopportune moment, “I’ve told you before about leaving the confines of your seat when you’re a holographic visitor to my classroom. Kindly sit down before you blow the fuses on the entire floor.”

  “Don’t worry Professor Watson,” Andi said stiffly. “I’m leaving now, and I doubt I’ll be back.” With that she removed the small crystal card from the console in front of her, and with a sharp click the Virtual Classroom disappeared and she was back in her room on board the Antiquarian, staring sadly at the blank Liquid Crystal Display unit in front of her.

  Andi studied her reflection on the empty screen, too depressed to move. She looked like an ordinary fourteen-year-old girl, not overly pretty but pleasant enough to look at, long blonde hair swept back in a neat ponytail, the pale blue, all-in-one suit emphasizing her slim figure. She raised her hand and ran it along her hairline. There was no sign of the operations she’d undergone. The scars had faded now.

  She slid her hand over her heart. The organ thudded beneath her ribs, driving the blood around her body. So what if some of her organic cells had been replaced with computer chips? So what if metal and silicon and rubber pumped her blood, instead of muscle and sinew and veins? Just because she didn’t have a ‘real’ heart, it didn’t mean that she didn’t feel.

  Ten minutes later, she was still sitting there when the door panel emitted a loud bleep. Sighing, she got down from the VR pad and pressed the green button to open the door. It was Deneb. He did not look pleased.

  “I’ve just had a call from the Academy,” he said, coming into the room. He stood there, arms folded. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Andi turned away, but Deneb caught her arm and swung her around.

  “Tell me, Andi. This is the third time in as many months that you’ve left a class. I haven’t questioned you before because I thought it may take you time to settle down, but you can’t keep doing this or you’ll never pass your studies. I deserve an explanation, so I’ll ask the question again. What happened?”

  Andi said nothing, mainly because it was not an easy question to answer. She hadn’t told Deneb about the problems she’d had school because she didn’t want to worry him. Her urge to protect him continued now, even though she was bursting inside to blurt it all out.

  Deneb turned away in frustration to look out of the window at the panoramic view of the stars, hands on his hips. Andi watched him, biting back tears, thinking about what he’d gone through for her.

  After the pod crash just over a year before in which her mother had died, Andi had lain in intensive care for six weeks, totally reliant on life-support. She couldn’t remember any of it, of course, but Deneb had told her what had happened during that traumatic time. The doctors had informed him that she had severe brain damage, which had meant it was very unlikely that she would ever have regained consciousness, and even if she had, she’d probably have been a shadow of the girl who existed before the accident. They’d also told him that her heart was failing, and a complete transplant was the only option to keep her alive.

  Andi knew that Deneb had loved her mother passionately, and she guessed that Sagitta Day’s sudden, shocking death had shaken him to the core. She knew that the thought of losing his only child, the next closest thing to his heart, must have been more than he could bear. He’d told her that, sitting in the waiting room, his head in his hands as he despaired over the situation, he’d looked up at the man sitting opposite reading a paper to see on the page facing him an article for the revolutionary but highly controversial Organ Replacement Clinic. When the man had gone out, leaving the paper behind on the seat, Deneb had picked it up.

  The article had stated that scientists at this center were in the process of developing ways to replace damaged parts of the human brain, as well as other organs, with computers that carried out the same functions. The advert had said that some ethical groups disliked the idea of computer organs and had tried to ban the experiments, but the Coalition of Governments had yet to shut the ORC down. The paper had speculated this was because of the Coalition’s interest in using the ORC’s work in the development of cyborgs—people who were part human, part computer.

  Deneb hadn’t been interested in that, though, and he’d also skipped over the part of the article that discussed the difficulty that people with ‘improvements’ had in settling back into society. All he’d been able to think about was that this was a possible way to save his daughter.

  So Deneb had paid the Clinic a visit. At his free initial consultation, he’d been told that the ORC’s doctors would almost certainly be able to replace the damaged part of Andi’s brain successfully, as well as the whole of her heart. But it would come at a price—literally. An extremely high price. Deneb had told Andi that he hadn’t balked when they’d read out the figure to him, however. He’d known that he’d get the money for the improvements for her. There was no way he was going to let her die as well.

  So he’d done everything he could to raise the cash. He had scraped together what little he had, borrowed even more and stolen the rest. And the operations had gone ahead.

  To Deneb’s relief, the improvements had proven to be an astounding success. It had taken Andi six months to recover from the grueling procedures, and there were times when the replaced parts of her brain and heart had to be monitored and adjusted for optimum performance, but eventually she was cleared by the doctors and released from the hospital.

  Unfortunately, there was more than one authority waiting outside the ORC to question Deneb on missing funds. Andi had been shocked when she’d found out just how much money he owed, and a little frightened when she realized there was no way they could pay anyone back. So when Deneb had suggested that they leave Earth, Andi had agreed without an argument, as she didn’t want her father to go to prison. They both missed their home planet, of course, and although it was never mentioned, they both knew it was unlikely that they would ever return. But Deneb felt that his exile was a small price to pay, because he had his daughter back, as good as new.

  Except, of course, that she was far better than she had been before the operation. Deneb, however, had no idea about Andi’s improved brain functions. He knew that her body worked as well as it had before, and that was all he was worried about. But he didn’t have a clue what her abilities were now that part of her brain was a computer, and she doubted he’d even given it a second thought.

  Andi didn’t feel any different after the operation. However, she’d discovered her improved abilities soon after leaving the hospital. She’d found out that she had an amazing memory, and could, for example, recall pages of text and figures after looking at them for just a second. She could work out complex equations without a calculator, and she could understand easily some of the new scientific theories that even the top scholars struggled with.

 
At first, she’d been delighted with these new talents. Well who wouldn’t? And she’d taken great pleasure in applying her newfound knowledge in her lessons.

  And then, of course, she’d realized that not everyone was as happy about her having a computer brain as she was. She’d discovered that other people found her intimidating, to say the least—many more found her threatening, and even repulsive. Other students became angry when they thought she had an unfair advantage over them. They demanded that she leave the class, and she did so, to avoid having to take the matter to Deneb. Because if she told him the truth, that she was ostracized because of the improvements that he’d stolen money to pay for, she knew he would never forgive himself. It would make him unhappy, and the death of her mother had scarred him deeply enough. She didn’t want to add to his pain.

  And so she’d hidden her abilities deep inside her. No longer did she flaunt her superior brain. And yet, people still found out somehow, like Merak.

  Andi’s bottom lip trembled. She longed to blurt out the truth, but she wanted to be grown up now and save him from this distress. “I just find it difficult to make friends,” she said finally. “We travel around so much, and everyone’s in their own little groups. I’m always on the outside, that’s all.”

  Deneb pulled her to him roughly and she buried her face in his chest. “I’m sorry Dad,” she said, fighting against the tears that wanted to pour down her cheeks.

  Deneb caught her face in his hands and brought it up so he gazed into her eyes. She looked into his, dark blue like Earth’s sky at dusk, at his handsome face, with his swept back, light brown hair.

  “You don’t have to apologize to me,” he said fiercely, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “It’s I who should apologize to you. It’s my fault we can’t go back to Earth. I know I shouldn’t have stolen all that money. But what option did I have?”

  Andi said nothing for a moment. He had done so much to bring her back from the dead. How could she throw that in his face and say that she wished she’d died in the pod crash? She couldn’t lie and say she’d never thought about it, had never wished that Deneb had just switched off the machines and let her go. But that was only in her worse moments. Most of the time, she knew she would much rather be here on board the Antiquarian than dead.