Tower and Town, May 2018

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The Cassandra Curse

The ship glinted in the leaden daylight, just visible to the naked eye in its geostationary orbit overhead. It was of little interest to the crew in the camp below as their comms implants kept them in constant touch with Cassandra, the on board AI.

Proxima B had been identified as the nearest habitable planet to Earth and the crew were investigating the cause of the loss of communication with the base built by the exploration team that had preceded them. The crew had expected to head the colonisation of the planet, but they had to leave the thousands of colonists in hibernation on board the ship while they landed to investigate.

They had expected to find damaged equipment and a team of relieved explorers at the base, but so far there was no sign of human life. In fact there appeared to be no sign of animal life at all, apart from insects that appeared to be completely vegetarian. The speculation was that perhaps the lack of animals had resulted in the evolution of vegetarian species, but why there were no animals was a mystery.

Using the open channel Matt, the captain, called out to the crew “OK people, let’s meet in the canteen in five minutes, we need to review and decide on the next move.” The crew all made their way to the largest of the structures which provided a mess, meeting room and dormitory facility.

After helping themselves from the coffee machine, Matt opened the meeting, “Right Anna, can you give us an update”. Anna glanced briefly at the screen on her arm and said “Well, so far we have checked out all the buildings and the campus area and found nothing unusual. The work seemed to be progressing well and they had made good progress in identifying potential vegetable food sources. Cassandra has interrogated their ship and found that normal communication ceased suddenly after the explorers went to work on what appeared from satellite survey to be a good location for large mineral deposits….” Ben chipped in, “Yeah, they think they found diamonds!” “… they appear to have set up a small working area, then comms went dead and they dropped off the radar. The working is South from here and there is a track going that way” Anna finished.

There were various mumbles of agreement and additions regarding the apparent success of the work of the explorers. “Well” said Matt “They were a small team and it seems as if they all went to the site together, we will need to go and look but only a recce party. We’re a small group too, so we will have to be careful. Phil, you pick a couple of people to stay and carry on the work here, the rest kit up and come with me. Meet by the garage in ten minutes, they took the main RV but there is an ATV that will do”. The captain and the crew set off cross country following the track that came to an end in the foothills of a low mountain range strewn with a litter of large boulders, making their way on foot through the gaps, they discovered the entrance to a large cave. Evidence of their predecessors was everywhere, including a small array of solar panels with cables running into the cave “We have not seen any wildlife so far, but keep a good look out” said Matt, as the group moved into the cave. Wide angled torches sent brilliant beams into the darkness as they walked cautiously forward until, following the cables, one called “Hey guys, how about this.” With a click the cave was illuminated with overhead lamps leading to a wide tunnel off to the left .

While they worked, Phil and his two companions kept track of Matt and his team via the comms link bounced off the ship with occasional commentary from Cassandra. They went cold when the noise from the chatting search party suddenly became a loud grating noise, like a huge mortar and pestle then stopped, but they were relieved when Phil reasoned that Matt had found a cave and going underground could be the cause of the comms failure.

They were less reassured when, after two days, Matt and his reconnaissance party had not returned and they had decided they would have to go to see what had happened. It took much longer to reach the cave on foot, but Cassandra was not surprised when the sound from the three again became a repetition of the grinding noise then stopped. Orbiting in the ship high above the AI thought, “I told them there could be life other than carbonate, but they would not listen”. The colonists slept on.

Roy Smith