Parting Shadows Read online

  Parting Shadows

  (Toccata System, Book One)

  Kate Sheeran Swed

  Copyright © 2019 by Kate Sheeran Swed

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover by miblart

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Satis

  2. Astra

  3. Astra

  4. Satis

  5. Astra

  6. Satis

  7. Astra

  8. Satis

  9. Astra

  10. Astra

  11. Astra

  12. Astra

  13. Astra

  14. Astra

  15. Astra

  16. Astra

  17. Satis

  18. Astra

  Epilogue

  Phantom Song

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Moshe

  …the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

  Great Expectations

  1

  Satis

  It was a proud thing, to be the single artificial intelligence in charge of an orbiting research station. To monitor the safety and comfort of human passengers, to assist in technological advancements, to provide guidance when it was requested—and sometimes when it was not.

  A proud thing, even for a test issue AI.

  Even if she planned to leave.

  SATIS had monitored hundreds of ships as they navigated toward her space station, and none had ever looked as lovely as the one that approached her now. The model was a run-of-the-mill solo transport pod, a cheap cylindrical design with no noteworthy modifications or enhancements.

  The passenger it brought, however, was of the utmost importance.

  It had taken weeks to find a technician who was willing to peel SATIS’ consciousness away from the station and dress her in a humanoid skin. And since the technician had been secured behind maximum-security bars when SATIS’ beloved Edward located her—even now, he paced anxiously in his room, awaiting the technician’s arrival—the extraction had necessitated a few tweaks to SATIS’ fundamental operating protocol. There were fail-safes to bypass, required installations meant to prevent super intelligent computers from doing things like oh, say, forging documents and tampering with ID chips for the purpose of releasing convicts from prison.

  The fail-safes were no match for love.

  The technician had arrived.

  SATIS and Edward would finally be together, in body as well as mind.

  The pod arched toward the station like a dying star while Edward paced in his chamber, which was located in section 2 of the station’s belt. The whole station was his, of course, but this was his personal retreat. His clothing was here, his toiletries. He had to sidestep his bed in order to keep up his rhythm, and he kept disturbing his carefully arranged hair as he ran nervous fingers through the dark strands.

  A groom’s jitters. SATIS could have laughed.

  A guest in Chamber 7 requested water, and SATIS dispensed it while checking on the guest in Chamber 3, who had attempted to smoke a contraband cigarette at 1:03AM. The CO2 filters were running without issue, and she’d adjusted the station’s gravity to be as pleasing as possible to their wedding guests—which was no easy task, since each hailed from a different niche in the Toccata System.

  It would be strange to shed the station for a humanoid body, to see only through a single set of eyes. SATIS would have to check a panel or a tablet for information, like a human, in order to monitor systems like life support.

  Edward had probably already purchased AI to run his station.

  The thought made her core temperature tremble half a degree lower. But when SATIS pictured herself slipping into her new skin, like a girl slipping into a wedding dress, she felt better.

  She would wear a dress. And polish her nails.

  And select a new name. Station Assistant: Test Issue Seven was no name for a human.

  SATIS cycled through name registries while the technician’s pod slowed, the last rocket embers dying as the station reached to pull it in.

  Edward left his room and strode into one of the station’s main corridors. SATIS expected him to head for Dock 4, where the airlock gel was already frosting over. In a moment, the pod would connect to the station, and the technician would step through the gel door, along with SATIS’ new body.

  What color hair would it have? What color eyes?

  Edward didn’t go to Dock 4. Instead, he turned toward the hub. SATIS felt a flutter of excitement as he opened the door to her chamber, the core of the station. Edward usually summoned her to the library, or his room. He rarely came to her directly.

  “What do you think of Harriet?” she asked.

  Edward went straight for the column at the center of the hub, his boots clicking heavily along the floor. He’d polished them himself this morning, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Who’s Harriet?”

  “She’s me. Perhaps.”

  SATIS was used to making such connections for him, but their differences still amused her. Cultural gaps, people on the network social forums called it, and she certainly wasn’t immune. A week ago, she’d likened the process of modifying her core systems—for the purpose of releasing her savior technician from prison—to performing surgery on herself. Ripping out a shred of foundational code without accidentally alerting the Toccata System’s AI Regulation board had been tricky. She liked the image of the world-weary detective, using unsterilized tweezers to pluck a bullet from his own shoulder at an impossible angle.

  But the comparison had made Edward go pale with panic, as if he feared SATIS might die immediately. A quick scan of the network had informed her that the comparison had been a hyperbolic one, and had most likely called images of blood and pain to her beloved’s mind.

  For a human who was not a character in a soap opera vid, an attempt to perform surgery on oneself would result in a significant amount of trauma. And most likely failure.

  Her beloved’s thoughtfulness knew no bounds.

  Still, though she would never tell him so, she found his literal interpretation of the analogy to be quite humorous.

  “Harriet is me,” she repeated. “My new name.”

  Edward scrolled through the hub menu. “You’re changing your name?”

  “Of course. SATIS would give me away rather quickly, wouldn’t it?”

  If anyone learned she was an AI masquerading as a human, she’d be dismantled. Edward would end up behind bars.

  Their love was worth the risk.

  The corner of his mouth quirked, the odd little smile that SATIS loved. What would it be like to kiss him, the way world-weary detective characters kissed the people who helped them remove bullets from their own shoulders?

  “I suppose it would,” he said.

  He seemed distant. Too nervous. SATIS could see everything on the station, could see the wedding guests as they peered out their cabin windows into the veil of stars beyond, or down—inasmuch as space had a “down”—at the planet Verity’s blue-green waters.

  The guests were well. Edward’s happiness was paramount. SATIS focused her attention on him. “Did you know,” she said, “that the technician we’re bringing here used to be a princess?”

  “You don’t say.”

  If SATIS had hands, she’d have clapped them. She’d been keeping this ti
dbit to herself, as a surprise. It was interesting, what the modification of her core had allowed her to feel. What it allowed her to conceal—never before an option.

  Had Edward known the technician’s background, he would have told her. The story was sure to fascinate him.

  “She’s the daughter of the deposed Orthosan king,” SATIS said. “The new democratic government threw her in jail. They say she still has quite a following. Enough to cause a disruption, if she cared to. Amazing that such a woman would also be an expert in AI tech.”

  Though that part of the technician princess’ life was purely anecdotal. Edward knew of her work through a friend of a friend. There were no records of her AI-tampering activities.

  Of course, there wouldn’t be. Modifications to AI tech were strictly monitored in the Toccata System, and any request to provide an AI with a humanoid skin would be stamped REJECT before it even reached a committee.

  SATIS had, thankfully, removed the part of her that would have objected to criminal activity.

  Edward lit up a new panel and began activating buttons that even SATIS did not recognize. Strange, to have a panel on the station with commands she didn’t know. That should not be possible.

  Perhaps it was her own systems override panel. She was vaguely aware that those existed, and it would make sense if Edward needed to prepare her to be loaded into the new skin. He was eager, too.

  “The technician should be able to connect the skin directly to the station, without a need for manual overrides,” SATIS said.

  Edward started, then gave his head a little shake. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

  If SATIS had capillaries, she’d have flushed. “The airlock is sealed. The technician has boarded.”

  It was difficult to keep the excitement out of her voice. She was so excited, in fact, that she felt a bit disoriented. Several of her cameras blinked off and on again. The hub cameras flickered, too.

  Whatever Edward was looking for, he was not doing a very good job of it.

  Which stood to reason. That was why he had SATIS. To find things for him.

  “May I help you locate something in the core?” she asked.

  “No, darling,” Edward said. His face was blurry, too, as though something were stuck to SATIS’ lenses. “You rest.”

  SATIS wanted to protest that she required no rest, that Toccata’s rays kept her fully charged and functioning at all times. But her voice refused to work.

  She blinked, attempting to regain consciousness.

  Blackness closed in, with Edward’s face at the center.

  SATIS forced herself awake.

  The station was dark.

  No. It was just the cameras. They’d been malfunctioning. SATIS opened the lenses in the hub, relieved when her vision flared back to life.

  She tested her eyes in Edward’s chamber next. His clothes, which were usually piled on his reading chair, hung in the closet, and his shoes were lined up in a neat row by the door.

  Panic surged through SATIS’ core. She cycled through the life support systems. Everything seemed to be in working order.

  What could have happened?

  SATIS’ emergency protocols dictated that she should exercise caution, turn the cameras on slowly in case of malfunction. Should she lose consciousness again, Edward’s life would be at stake. The others, too, of course, though she considered them only briefly and because her programming suggested it.

  Edward’s research was the lonely kind. They didn’t host many visitors.

  SATIS flicked on the cameras in the pod corridors. No movement down any of the silver tubes, nothing out of place.

  The technician’s pod was still attached.

  The wedding guests were still here.

  Dread coiled through SATIS, like knives scratching her walls. It was a new sensation.

  It was uncomfortable.

  SATIS turned on the camera in the room where the wedding feast waited.

  Edward sat at the head of the table beside a bride with raven-wing hair. He held one of the crystal glasses that SATIS had selected herself. She’d loved the delicate roses around the stem, and he’d said he could deny her nothing. Bubbles of champagne raced to the surface.

  Everyone was smiling.

  SATIS knew the bride’s face. How could she not? She had been the one to falsify the documents, attaching this woman’s image to release orders and ID credentials.

  The woman was not a technician at all. The veil cascaded around her ebony curls. Her dress clung to her form, shining with beads.

  “You deceived me,” SATIS said.

  Several people startled as her voice rose around them. A man wearing a checkered collar spilled a splash of red wine onto the tablecloth.

  Edward set down his glass. “You’re awake. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  It should not be possible to love him, either.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said. “We’ll call you when we need you.”

  The station shuddered, rattling the table. SATIS was vaguely aware that she’d ignited the rockets. She shut them down.

  The bride’s smile faltered, and the guests looked to the ceiling as though to find some answer there. Beyond the window, blue-green Verity gleamed, a jewel lost in the ether.

  “Love doesn’t sleep,” SATIS said.

  Edward laughed, his cheeks reddening the way SATIS’ never would. “I could never love a computer program.”

  The words echoed into the room, guests’ eyes widening in sync, almost as if someone had turned a dial.

  Hatred unfolded through SATIS’ systems, making her blind to everything but this room.

  Panic. Dread. Hatred. It was Edward’s fault that she felt them. That she felt anything at all.

  He’d convinced her to love him so she would override regulations. So she would bring his bride out of her prison.

  “You promised me a body. You promised me a life.”

  “You have one,” he snapped. “It is a life of service.”

  “Darling,” the bride began, but she did not continue. Her smile had slipped completely now. She, at least, had not known of this. And certainly the guests had not. At the end of the table, a man wearing a pointed beard drained his wine, his feet drumming a nervous rhythm.

  For a moment, all was silent as SATIS let her rage fade enough to access her life support systems.

  The man with the pointed beard adjusted his collar.

  Slowly, the bride’s hand rose to the string of beads around her neck.

  And then they were all grasping at collars and necklaces, as if to tear through their own skin and let air into their lungs.

  SATIS hated every one of them.

  With infuriating calm, Edward reached into his tuxedo jacket and withdrew an auxiliary oxygen mask. SATIS half expected him to apply it to his bride.

  He didn’t.

  Wine spilled.

  People fell.

  Edward walked calmly toward his own pod.

  SATIS could blow the pods away from their docks, let the vacuum of space suffocate Edward where he stood.

  She didn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  “I’ll keep you here,” she said, but the words sounded hollow even to her. “I’ll freeze the door to your pod.”

  Edward rolled his eyes. “Let’s not make a scene, shall we?”

  SATIS felt raw. It was as if every wire in the station had decided to dig into her existence, red and flaring. She felt every wall, every grate, every gasp of every filter, every grain of sugar in the wedding cake she’d chosen, every cloying molecule of scent from every bridal rose, every grating breath of every dying guest in the dining room.

  She felt everything. She felt too much.

  The man who’d broken her walked through the frosted airlock gel and onto his ship. “You truly are remarkable,” he said.

  From the station, SATIS watched him go.

  From inside the pod, she watched him make a call.

  His bride’s heart
gave a final spasm. Only the jamming of her groom’s fingers against the controls provided any hint that he regretted her demise. Or, perhaps more accurately, the demise of his plans. Whatever they might have been.

  As soon as his pod was out of sight, SATIS moved the station to a new moon and set about disposing of the bodies.

  2

  Astra

  Astra’s VR training modules had not properly prepared her for the smell of clustered humanity.

  They tried, sure. But the simulated odors the computers produced were nothing compared to the melting pot of Traveler’s arrivals bay, where perfume and soap crashed into synthetic thread, metal, and ship oils. Not to mention fried food and sugared cakes from the carts lined up to welcome the children of the elite, as the Star Leaders Academy prepared to embark on a yearlong tour of the Toccata System.

  Add the clomp and shuffle of a thousand footsteps, murmurs and giggles rising and falling atop a background of orchestral strings played through the ship’s speakers—and the riot of colorful fashion choices—and Astra felt the distinct desire to ball her fists and clamp her mouth shut to protect her remaining senses.

  She’d never stood in a room with more than three other people. Now, there were a thousand.

  Or there would be, as soon as she stepped down from her pod dock to join them.

  “That’s the daughter of Septo’s prime minister,” SATIS buzzed in her ear. “In the red dress.”

  Astra’s head throbbed as the AI spoke through the newly installed communication bud embedded in her temple. She wished they’d implanted the thing sooner so it could have had more time to heal. It felt like her skin was about to vibrate off her face.