Andromeda Day and the Black Hole

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

“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 complete 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.