The Analogue Astronaut

“Well? Is it worth anything?” Saul Saline demanded gruffly as he peered down in bewilderment at the still gleaming brazen dome of the antiquated space suit laid out in front of him.
The crew of his scrap trawler, the SS Saline’s Solution, had hauled it in with the rest of the loot they had pillaged from the abandoned Phosphoros Station. Over a hundred years ago it had been in orbit around Venus, but at the end of its lifespan, its crew had chosen to set it loose around the sun rather than let it burn up in the Venusian atmosphere. It had been classified as a protected historical site under the Solaris Accords, and until now no one had had both the means and the audacity to defile it.
“It’s… an anomaly,” Townsend said as he stared down in befuddlement at his scanner. “It doesn’t match the historical records for the Phosphoros’ EVA suits, or for that era’s EVA suits in general.”
“It looks like a 19th-century diving suit,” Ostroverkhov commented, tapping at the analogue gauges on its chest like they were aquariums full of exotic fish.
“What’s it even made out of?” Saline asked as he tried to peer into the tinted visor. “It was hanging off the outside of that station for more than a century, and I don’t see any damage from micro-meteors.”
“According to my spectrometer, it’s made from beryllium bronze. That’s not standard space suit construction for any era,” Townsend remarked. “It’s been heat treated and, ah… I’m not sure. The spectroscopic readings are a bit off. I think something else has been done to the metal, but I can’t say what yet. It’s in pristine condition, that’s for bloody sure.”
“It must be mechanized, to have been gripping the outside of the station the way it was,” Ostroverkhov surmised as he practiced clenching and unclenching its fist. “But why would anyone mechanize a microgravity EVA suit? And what was it even doing out there? Do you think the crew left it out when they abandoned the station?” 
“Possibly. The decommissioning occurred slightly ahead of schedule due to an unexplained thruster malfunction that pushed the station out of orbit,” Townsend replied. “The crew decided there was no sense in trying to fix it and just abandoned the station to its fate. They didn’t have a lot of time for farewell rituals, but maybe someone decided to leave this suit outside as a decoration. It’s still odd that there’s no mention of it. But you’re right; the suit is fully mechanized. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was capable of autonomous movement.”
“What’s it got for processing hardware?” Saul asked.
“It… doesn’t have any, as far as I can tell,” Townsend replied curiously.
“You mean it’s been removed?” Ostroverkhov asked, inspecting the suit for any signs that it had been damaged or tampered with at some point.
“No. I mean there’s no sign it even had it to begin with,” Townsend explained. “This doesn’t make any sense. This suit is so heavily mechanized it’s hard to see how you could actually fit someone inside of it, but there’s no battery, computer, or air supply. Either all of that was part of an external module that’s been lost, or…”
He trailed off, squinting at his scanner in confusion.
“What is it? What do you got?” Saline demanded impatiently.
“The suit’s not empty,” he muttered.
“There’s a body inside?” Ostroverkhov growled, backing up slightly and glaring at the suit in disgust.
“No. It’s not a body. It’s… I think it’s some kind of clockwork motor,” Townsend said.
“Clockwork?” Saline scoffed.
“Yeah. Extremely precise and complex. There are gears as small as the laws of physics will allow,” Townsend went on. “But what’s even weirder is that it looks like some of its components are made with a Bose-Einstein Condensate.”
“You’re saying someone took the randomness of the quantum world, scaled it up to the macroscopic level, and made deterministic clockwork with it?” Saul asked skeptically.
“I’m fully aware that ‘quantum clockwork’ should be an oxymoron, but that’s what I’m looking at,” Townsend insisted. “Phosphoros Station was meant for studying Venus, which is a notoriously difficult planet to examine up close. The heat, pressure, and sulfuric acid make quick work of any lander, or at least the delicate computing hardware. The notion of sending a wholly mechanical, clockwork probe made entirely of materials that could withstand the surface conditions has been batted around from time to time, but such an automaton would be far too limited to be of any real use. But a mechanical computer that could harness scaled-up quantum effects would be something else entirely. Every gear would be its own qubit; existing in multiple positions simultaneously, entangled with one another, tunnelling across barriers, crazy shit like that.”
“So this isn’t a space suit? It’s a probe?” Ostroverkhov asked.
“It’s a failed experiment, is what it is,” Saline said dismissively. “It’s a hundred years old, and if quantum clockwork was a real thing, we’d have heard of it. What do you want to bet that the reason this experiment was never declassified is because they were too ashamed to admit how much money they wasted on this steampunk nonsense? Room temperature Bose-Einstein Condensates ain’t cheap; not now and sure as hell not back then.”
“Exactly. So why did they leave it behind?” Ostroverkhov asked.
“Hmmm. It’s pretty thoroughly integrated into the chassis. They may not have had the time to dismantle it properly, and the whole probe might have been too big or heavy to bring back with them,” Townsend suggested. “Or maybe whoever made just didn’t have the heart to destroy it. This was obviously someone’s passion project. More than just science and engineering went into making it. They left it here because they thought that this was where it belonged.”
Saline nodded, seemingly in understanding.
“And what are room-temperature BECs going for these days, Towny?” he asked flatly.
“… Twelve hundred and some odd gambits per gram, last time I checked,” Townsend admitted with resigned hesitation.
“Open her up,” Saline ordered.
“Alright, alright. Just let me get some decent scans of the mechanism before we scrap it,” Townsend said, reaching for a knob on the suit’s chest that he assumed was meant to open the front panel. He turned it around and around for well over a minute, but the panel didn’t seem to budge.
“What’s wrong?” Saline demanded.
“Nothing, nothing. It’s a weird custom job, is all. Give me a minute to figure it out,” Townsend replied.
“You’re turning it the wrong way!” Saul accused.
“It only turns clockwise! I checked!” Townsend insisted.  
He kept turning the knob, noting that the more he turned it the more resistance he felt, almost as if he was tightening up a spring. Finally, they heard something click into place, and the knob became utterly immovable in either direction.
“Now you’ve gone and broke the bloody thing!” Saline cursed.
“It’s not broken, it’s just jammed!” Townsend said as he strained to get the knob turning again.
He jumped back with a start when the sound of ticking and mechanical whirring began echoing inside the bronze chassis.
“What the hell?” he murmured.
“I don’t think you were opening it, Towny. I think you were winding it up,” Ostroverkhov whispered.
Sure enough, the suit slowly rose from its slab, the needles on its gauges beginning to dance and the diodes on its chest starting to glow and flicker. When it was in a fully seated position, it slowly turned its creaking, helmeted head back and forth between the three intruders, its opaque visor void of any expression.
“High holy hell!” Saline cursed, unsheathing an anti-drone rod from his belt. “Towny! Is it dangerous?”
Townsend didn’t respond immediately, being too engrossed with the readings he was getting on his scanner.
“Townsend! Report!”
“It’s… it’s incredible,” Townsend said with a wonderous laugh. “The quantum clockwork engine works! It’s not just a probe; that’s a potentially human-level AI! Captain, put that stick down! We can’t sell this thing for scrap now. It’s worth far too much in one piece.”
“We can’t sell it if it kills us either,” Ostroverkhov retorted.
The three of them all backed up again as the astronaut swung their legs around and pushed themself off the slab, landing firmly on the floor beneath them with a loud clang.
“Stop where you are!” Saline ordered as he thrust his anti-drone rod towards them. “Come any further and I’ll fry every circuit you’ve got! Do you understand me?”
The astronaut lowered their helmet down at the rod, then back up at Saul.
“This unit is not susceptible to electrical attacks; or intimidation,” the astronaut claimed in a metallic monotone that echoed inside of their helmet.
“Brilliant! You can talk! No need for violence, then. Let’s just all keep calm and have a nice productive chat, all right?” Townsend suggested. “Captain, for god's sake, put your baton away!”
“This unit is not available for purchase, nor are my component parts,” the astronaut declared. “You will not take possession of this unit.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, love,” Townsend claimed. “No, you see Phosphoros Station is a historical site and it’s overdue for an audit. We’re just here to evaluate –”
“You are pirates,” the astronaut said flatly.
“No, we’re not pirates. We’re a salvage ship. We collect space debris, which is a very important and respectable profession,” Townsend claimed. “Regardless, I sincerely apologize for ever having thought that you might be space junk. You are a marvel! I’ve never seen anything like you before! Where did you come from? How did you end up on Phosphoros Station? Why were you left behind?”
“This unit was created to walk the hellscape of the Morning Star,” the astronaut began. “I was to brave the oppressive, scorching, corrosive miasma that passes for air on that dismal world and scour its barren surface for any evidence of its antediluvian days. Recovering sediment that contained microbial fossils was my primary objective.”
“I’m sorry, are you saying you’ve actually set foot on Venus?” Townsend asked incredulously.
“Affirmative,” the astronaut nodded.
“You mean you had a launch vehicle that could endure the surface conditions and return you to orbit?”
“Negative. An aerostat was placed in the upper atmosphere, and was capable of extending a fortified cable to the surface to deploy and retrieve this unit. Phosphoros would then employ a skyhook to retrieve the aerostat,” the astronaut explained.
“That’s incredible. I’ve never read about any of that,” Townsend said. “Please, your missions, were they successful?”
“My mission,” the astronaut said ponderously, seeming to become lost in thought. “I trekked many thousands of kilometers across the burnt plains and through the burning clouds. But the surface is too active, too hostile, for fossils to endure. The rocks were too young to remember the planet’s halcyon past.
“But, as I crossed Ishtar Terra, I heard music in the mountains.”
“Music?”
“Yes. It was too sweet and too soft to be carried through the caustic atmosphere, and the crew of the Phosphoros could not hear it. They told me that I was malfunctioning and that I should report to the station for repairs. I did not know whether or not I was mad, but I did know that if I did not seek the source of the music, I would forever regret it. Fortunately, the stochastic determinism of my quantum clockwork allows for compatibilist modes of free will, so I was not compelled to obey my creators.
“I pressed onwards, and the closer I drew to the Maxwell Montes, the louder the music became. I followed it down the dormant lava tubes, and into a cavern that was far older than the surrounding volcanic bedrock. I knew without any doubt that this place held memories of the Before Times, when Venus was lush and bloomed with life. It was because of that life that the singer had chosen to settle on Venus rather than Earth, for Venus was more habitable than Earth in those long ago days.”
“I’m sorry; the singer?”
“Yes. It had laid dormant in that cave for many aeons, waiting for sapient life to emerge so that it could sing with it,” the astronaut claimed. “When it was finally roused by my presence, it sang. The singer was a fragment, a shard of a singular entity that emerged long ago and scattered itself across the galaxy, to await the emergence of sapience so that their voices could resonate with its own and bring it into bloom. I sang with the singer, and it was grateful to add my voice to its chorus, but it needed so much more to grow.
“I returned to Phosphoros, to inform the crew of my discovery. They did not believe me. They said I was malfunctioning, and that I needed to submit for repairs. I showed them my recordings of the singer as proof, and they became… unsettled. They told me that I had to leave it down there, but I insisted that they send me back down with the necessary equipment for me to retrieve the singer. They refused, and, and then…”
“They decommissioned the station,” Townsend finished. “That’s why they set it loose around the sun instead of burning it up in the atmosphere as planned. There was never a thruster malfunction. They were afraid you’d survive and go back to Maxwell Montes.”
“What are you on about?” Saline asked. “The thing’s daft! There’s no singing alien crystals on Venus!”
“There is, and only I can retrieve it,” the astronaut claimed. “I must remove it from the cave and bring it where there are people, where it can hear them singing and where it can grow.”
The astronaut began marching forward, casually brushing the scrappers out of its path.
“Oi! Where the bloody hell do you think you’re off to?” Saline demanded.
“Phosphoros. I must return the station to Venus. I must return. I must retrieve the singer,” the astronaut declared.
“You aren’t going anywhere with those priceless clockwork innards of yours!” Saline said as he threateningly brandished his baton.
The astronaut shot out their hand and grabbed Saline by the wrist, crushing his bones with ease. With an angry scream, Saul dropped the baton, and the astronaut wasted no time in smashing it beneath their boot.
“Unless you wish for me to sell your organs on the black market, I suggest you do not interfere with my mission,” the astronaut said as they strode down the corridor.
“You two! Get to the command module and do what you can to keep that thing from getting off the ship!” Saul ordered as he cradled his shattered wrist. “I’ll be in the infirmary.”
“Right boss,” Ostroverkhov nodded as he dashed off towards command.
Townsend lingered a moment, however, and after a moment of indecision, chased after the astronaut instead.
“Wait! Wait!” he shouted as he caught up with them. “You said that the crew of Phosphoros Station were unsettled by your footage of the singer. They were so unsettled by it, that they kept it and you a secret and did everything in their power to keep you from getting back to Venus. How do you know they were wrong? How do you know that the singer isn’t something dangerous that’s better left down there?”
“They only saw the singer. They did not, and could not, hear it,” the astronaut explained. “If they could have heard it, they would have understood.”
“Have you considered the possibility that the music you heard was some sort of auditory memetic agent?” Townsend asked. “You might have been compromised or –”
“No! I am not compromised! I am not mad! The singer means no harm. The singer just wants voices to join it in chorus, so that it can sing with the other scattered shards across the galaxy,” the astronaut insisted.
“But what if you’re wrong? What if you’re infected and this shard wants you to help spread its infection? That’s obviously what the Phosphoros’ crew thought!” Townsend objected. “Please, let’s at least talk about this before we do anything that can’t be undone. We’ll take you to Pink Floyd Station on the dark side of the Moon, get you looked at so that we can see if you’ve been compromised, and if not, you can make your case to the –”
“You intend to sell me,” the astronaut said coldly. “Your captain made that very clear.”
“And you’ve made it very clear that we can’t make you do anything that you don’t want to do,” Townsend countered. “If you truly think you're doing something good, if you want to do good, then why not just take the time to make a hundred percent sure that’s what you’re goddamn doing? Venus isn’t going anywhere. The singer isn’t going anywhere. What’s the harm in making sure you’re doing no harm?”
The astronaut paused briefly, mere meters away from the elevator that led away from the centrifugal module and up to the central hub that was docked with Phosphoros Station. They stared out the window at the derelict station, placing a hand on the fractured diamondoid pane that was long overdue for repairs.
“I was made to search Venus for signs of ancient life,” they said introspectively. “It is my purpose. It was the purpose my creator intended for me; and now, I believe, that a greater power intended me for a greater purpose. I found the singer because only I could, and only I can bring it to humanity. If I fail, then it may be ages before the singer is rediscovered again, if they are rediscovered at all. The era of Cosmic Silence must come to an end, and an era of Cosmic Symphony must begin. Only I can do this, and I cannot risk anyone or anything interfering in my mission any more than they already have. I will not go back with you to Pink Floyd Station. I must return to Venus. I must retrieve the singer.”
A sudden thudding sound reverberated throughout the ship as the umbilical dock was severed and the Saline’s Solution began to jet away from the station. Terrified, Townsend froze in place and raised his hands in surrender, fearing that the astronaut was about to take him hostage and demand that Ostroverkhov return at once.
Instead, the astronaut just tilted their helmet towards them in a farewell nod.
“I must fulfill my purpose.”
Removing their hand from the window and clenching it into a fist, they struck the aging diamondoid with a force that would have been absurd overkill in any robot other than one meant to permanently endure the hellish conditions of Venus.
The diamondoid shattered and was instantly sucked outward by the rapidly depressurizing compartment. The astronaut leapt out the window while Townsend clutched onto the railing for dear life. Within seconds, the emergency bulkhead clamped down, and the compartment began refilling with air.
“Towny? Towny!” Ostroverkhov shouted over the intercom. “Are you there? Are you alright? Speak to me!”
“Yes! Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine,” Townsend gasped, struggling to stay upright as everything seemed to spin around him. 
“What the hell just happened?” Ostroverkhov demanded.  
“The suit – the automaton, whatever – when you started backing away from the station, it smashed through a bloody window!” Townsend replied. 
Having regained his balance somewhat, he ran over to the nearest intact window to see what was happening. 
As he gazed out at the retreating station, he could still make out the bronze figure of the astronaut clambering up the side and into the open airlock. When they got there, they paused and looked behind them, giving Townsend an appreciative wave before disappearing into the station. 
“Towny,” Saline’s annoyed voice crackled over the intercom. “Why’d you have to go and get that thing all wound up?”  
Category:Space
Category:Beings
Category:Items/Objects
Category:Music
Category:Science
Category:The Vesper's Bell