Post-flight debrief.

Subject: Michael Ackine, of the Astronomic Endeavors cargo ship, Zephyr One.

Introductory notes: Mr. Ackine is the only survivor of the Zephyr’s maiden voyage. Z-One landed safely, five Earth days overdue and two kilometers from target. Mr. Ackine is not a pilot, and has stated he did not land the ship himself.

Interview conducted by Inspector Lewis Fa, of Corporate Security and Safety, Mars division.

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

Fa: For the record, this interview is being recorded. Mr. Ackine, thanks for coming.

Ackine: I wasn’t given a choice. Will this be a part of my official record?

Fa: I don’t understand the question, sir.

Ackine: This inquiry is to establish what actually happened aboard the Zephyr. It’s my intention to provide that detail. But I don’t want what I say to be held against me at a later time.

Fa: . . .

Fa: Mr. Ackine, if you’re talking about confession of criminal behavior—

Ackine: I am. But not my own.

Fa: Then I don’t see the issue.

Ackine: . . .

Ackine: What will happen is, after hearing what I have to say, you or someone above you will bury this entire interview. I would like for any blemish to my record to be buried along with it.

Fa: Nobody will be burying—

Ackine: You really don’t know, do you? You don’t know what Corporate put on our ship.

• • • •

Zephyr One was going down.

This was the consensus of the various alarms going off all over the bridge. They flashed, and beeped, and buzzed, and demanded immediate attention, because somebody needed to know that the planet Mars was coming up really quite quickly, and something must be done about that.

Michael was alone on the bridge, and he didn’t know how to fly the Zephyr One, because he was the communications officer. In that regard, comms was working flawlessly; absolutely none of the flashing, beeping or buzzing had to do with the external communications relay or the internal intercoms, but if they did, he would know exactly how to fix it.

That was provided he didn’t have to leave the bridge to do it. The door—a heavy blast door designed to protect the bridge crew from any mayhem that might be occurring in the rest of the ship, and vice versa—was down and locked. He was the one who’d locked it, and he could definitely unlock it, but there was a reason he’d locked himself inside, and that reason was still—as far as he knew—somewhere on the other side.

“This is Zephyr One, this is Zephyr One,” Michael said, over the definitely-still-functioning external comms. “This is an all-ships bulletin. Repeat, all-ships bulletin. Request immediate assistance from anyone in range of this broadcast. We are going down. Repeat: This is Zephyr One, and we are going down. Please help.”

He had been sending similar messages, requesting assistance of any kind, for two days. The part about going down imminently was new, but could hardly have been a surprise to anyone listening, as this was the logical consequence of a ship like the Zephyr, on approach to Mars and absent a pilot, needing (and not getting) any help.

Mars was all he could see in the window now. One of the buzzers, beeps, or flashes would have probably told him that the brakes weren’t being applied, and that was really very bad, but he already knew that.

“Listen,” he said, over the external comms channel. “I know someone out there can hear me. Please. Our pilot is dead. So is the captain, and the first officer, and . . . It’s . . . it may just be me, and I don’t know how to fly the ship. But someone out there does. I just need you to tell me what to do. Please.”

He sat, listened to the alarms, and waited.

“Michael,” someone said, through heavy static.

“Yes!” Michael said. “This is Communications Officer Michael Ackine, of Zephyr One. Can you hear me? To whom am I speaking?”

“Michael, I’m sorry,” the woman on the other end of the static said.

“I don’t understand. Identify?”

“They told us we can’t talk to you.”

“Who?” he asked. “Who said that?”

“I don’t know what’s happened over there, but I thought you should know.”

“Who told you not to help me?” Michael asked, shouting now. The volume meter on the comms panel noted the spike and alerted him to the potential for distortion.

“I’m very sorry. Goodbye.”

“No, come back!” he said.

But he was just shouting at static.

• • • •

Zephyr One was the pride of Astronomic Endeavors’ fleet, as much as a corporation this size could have pride in a shipping vessel. Not a lot, in other words. Not compared to the pride the company exhibited when talking about the Mars dome, or the space platform. (The latter of which was not actually new, and was in fact falling apart—inasmuch as something in zero gravity could be said to fall at all—but was the only one of its kind.) But given the Zephyr One was the first new design to be added to the fleet in fifteen years, it still got its share of trumpeted pronouncements.

It was not a new ship, although one might be forgiven for misinterpreting the press releases in this regard. The engine was a new design, but mostly built with parts from older ships. The hull was an old Whippoorwill class troop transport, with half of the insides carved out to make room for the cargo hold. But the paint job was new.

The new engine design, coupled with the stripped-down Whippoorwill body, was supposed to produce a ship that could make the loop to Mars and back five days faster than the bulkier Pelican class (an old Pondskip-class glider with a cargo bay welded to its underside) while carrying the same load. And that really was a big deal, because nothing was more important than getting supplies to the Mars dome, and the soil reclamation project, as fast as possible. Any efficiency change that was also cost-effective was a huge plus.

None of the engineers tasked with supporting the engine knew how it actually worked, which was . . . a problem. They had access to all the digital manuals they needed, and those manuals came with all of the appropriately labeled section headers, but—as Chief Engineer Jacobsen was still pointing out to the captain, right up to the launch—an alarming amount of the text beneath the appropriately labeled section headers began, “lorem ipsum . . .”

There were issues immediately.

The Zephyr got up to the appropriate initial velocity okay, but once there, the new engine offered neither a more efficient energy exchange nor a marked improvement in propulsive force, which were both things that it was supposed to provide. Worse, when the crew pushed the engine up to what was known as Pelican-standard velocity (which the Zephyr was supposed to exceed easily) it started making a horrific noise—aptly described by Jacobsen as akin to a “Doberman in a thresher”—that could be heard from every part of the ship. That sound, along with the accompanying smell of burning lubrication oil, was why Captain Qualley ordered the engine room to cut back to three-quarters standard.

Michael had to notify Corporate that the Zephyr would be arriving at Mars seven days later than expected—meaning, four to five days later than it would have taken them had they been flying one of the Pelican-class junkers.

This did not go well. An hour later, a priority message came back, which Michael dutifully patched through to the captain’s private quarters.

Michael didn’t know what was said in the communique, but it put the fear of whatever god Captain Qualley cared about into her, because soon after, the engine room was pushing the Doberman-in-a-thresher boundary again.

Nobody got a lot of sleep after that.

• • • •

Michael was still waiting on a response to his urgent request for assistance, when the knocking started on the bridge door.

Someone, or something, was still alive on the other side.

It was very likely that somebody or something could do more on the bridge than just send out unilaterally ignored distress signals. They could probably even land the ship.

Michael engaged the internal intercom.

“I’m not letting you in,” he said.

• • • •

Despite being a much-lauded new ship on its maiden voyage, Zephyr One left Earth with only a half-crew contingent of twelve: captain, first officer, pilot, systems officer, communications officer, doctor, nurse, four engineers, and the universal tool that was the science officer.

The job of the science officer was supposed to be to apply advanced scientific expertise to any unplanned-for circumstance that may arise while the vessel transited deep space—an unexpected astrophysical consequence of travel at half lightspeed, say; or an alien.

Michael had been comms officer on twenty-two missions before the Zephyr One, and could not cite a single instance in which the science officer was called upon to perform this singular duty. Neither (probably) had anyone else, which was why what the science officer actually did on these missions was: whatever nobody else had time for. If, for instance, the ship’s systems officer needed to repair hallway grav panels on two levels while also restoring overhead lighting to a section on a third level, the science officer could jump in and help.

The Zephyr’s science officer was named Eric Doyle.

Eric was a handsome, blue-eyed bundle of energy. This was his first flight, and he spent a lot of time reminding everybody of that fact, by talking about the wonder of space travel, and by looking out whatever windows he could find (the Zephyr, like most of the long haulers, had very few windows) to marvel at “the splendor of it all.”

Eric was incredibly competent. He completed all of the tasks kicked his way—none of which were, again, technically in the job description—without complaint, on time, and with a smile.

Everyone pretty much hated Eric. A few went so far as to bring him up with the ship’s doctor. Perhaps there was drug use going on, they argued, or an undiscovered brain tumor. Because nobody actually liked this job, and the fact that he seemed to, made it that much worse for everyone else.

“Enjoying menial labor isn’t a medical condition,” Doctor Vardanian said. Which was a good point; however, everyone thought it probably should be.

• • • •

The knocking at the door stopped, and the intercom in the hallway was engaged.

“Michael?” the voice said. “That’s you in there, isn’t it? I can’t get the door to open from this side. I think we’re about to crash? Michael? If you just let me in, I can help.”

• • • •

They were five days out when Zephyr One received a message from Corporate, announcing the impending arrival of another message, the latter being an announcement for the entire crew.

Michael was used to this kind of thing; it happened every second or third mission, and was usually an illustration of the difference between what “important” meant to Corporate, and what everyone else understood that word to mean.

Michael notified Captain Qualley when to expect the shipwide. The captain then told the rest of the crew that at around that time, they were to stop whatever it was they were doing, assemble in the mess hall for an all-hands, and listen to the announcement.

They didn’t need to gather in the same place for it. As communications officer, Michael’s sole responsibility was to acknowledge receipt of the message and to immediately push it to the shipwide intercom—he wasn’t even supposed to listen to it himself first—where it would be heard throughout the ship. Theoretically, everyone could just remain where they happened to be, stand still, and listen.

The reason for the all-hands, was so the captain could visually confirm that everyone was listening.

The crew had a message subject betting pool going. The leading contenders were:

• retirement announcement for someone nobody ever heard of
• they’re fucking the pension plan again
• nothing that couldn’t have been communicated in a memo instead

They were good guesses—although the third one struck many as cheating—but nobody won the bet; this was something new.

• • • •

“Michael, are you there?”

The voice on the other side of the door belonged to Eric Doyle. Given enough time, Eric could probably figure out how to override the panic button Michael hit when initially engaging the door. Not that he had that kind of time, but he was capable.

Michael toggled open the internal intercom. “I’d rather die, knowing I took you with me, than open this door, Eric,” he said. “I think you know that.”

“Michael . . .” Eric sighed, “think about it for a minute: Are you sure you’ll be taking me with you?”

• • • •

“Attention: this is Magnus Howe, CEO of Astronomic Endeavors!” the broadcast began.

All Corporate shipwides began like this. It was the considered opinion of most members of the crew that the “Magnus Howe” that dictated them was an actor.

The next part—again, as usual—was a three-note musical chime, and the words, “Only the finest,” read in the enthusiastic baritone of someone who definitely was an actor. Then they got Magnus again.

“And I’m here to share exiting news! You’ve been chosen to participate in an experiment, and for your participation, you could receive a monetary bonus!

“What is this experiment? It’s called a Turing test. As you know, Astronomic Endeavors works tirelessly to improve safety and working conditions for all of our valuable employees. One potential improvement is in the field of synthetic crewmates, to support and ensure the safety of the human crew. If your ship has received this message, you may have a synthetic crewmate right now!

“What does this mean for you? At the completion of your tour, you’ll be asked to identify the synthetic, and how you made this determination. Pending validation, you could receive a monetary bonus!”

The three-note musical chime jumped in again, and then Magnus came back with a quick, “That’s all, and thanks for listening!”

And that was that.

• • • •

Fa: Let me stop you. Are you saying this broadcast came directly from Corporate?

Ackine: Of course.

Fa: You’re sure.

Ackine: It had the right one-time codes, sent along the correct frequency with the appropriate headers and footers. Are you suggesting it was somehow spoofed, or are you suggesting I’m lying?

Fa: I’m passing no judgment. But we do have a record of all official communications, to and from the Zephyr, and there is no such message in that record.

Ackine: Does this record have a log of our outgoing distress calls?

Fa: No, it does not.

Ackine: Then either I am a liar, or someone above your grade is withholding. Can I continue?

• • • •

There was a flare gun that had been skittering around on the floor of the bridge for the past couple of hours. It was the closest thing to a weapon Michael was able to get his hands on aboard the ship. Meant for spacewalks only—it fired a bullet-sized load that burned brightly for about three seconds in the vacuum of space, but for hours in atmosphere—he had retrieved it from the inner airlock just before sealing himself on the bridge.

Pulling the trigger indoors would be a massively stupid thing to do, but so would opening the bridge door, and he was going to have to do that too. In fact, the reason he had the gun in the first place was in anticipation of this exact situation.

Michael picked up the gun, walked to the door, and hit the release button. The door slid up, revealing Eric Doyle, in a blood-soaked crew jumpsuit.

Eric stared down the barrel for a beat, neither moving nor breathing. “If you fire, you’ll end up killing us both,” he said.

“Again, as long as I’m taking you with me, I can live with that,” Michael said. “You were right; I don’t know if the crash will kill you. At least this way, I get to be sure.”

• • • •

The problem was, they were all strangers to one another.

For all but two of the Zephyr’s twelve crew members—Science Officer Doyle, and an engineer named Fisk, both of whom were on their first flights—this was a case of same-destination, new-ship.

This was unusual; generally, people who worked well together stayed together, especially captain/first mate relationships. It wasn’t unheard of, though, so nobody was actually surprised to have eleven unfamiliar faces looking back at them when they came aboard.

It wasn’t until the notion was floated that one of the twelve could be a synthetic person, that the fact that nobody knew anybody else previously became an odd, interesting, or otherwise notable fact.

They had no history together; therefore, it could be any one of them.

Captain Qualley, sensing in the Turing test a potentially divisive issue for a crew that had, to this point, worked pretty well together, reminded everyone of the words “could be,” which, to her, meant the message went out to multiple ships; surely, there wasn’t a synthetic on all of them?

“Let’s not go pointing fingers,” she said. “It’s probably none of us.”

It was a misread of the room, because not only did nobody mind, it was the opinion of the crew that the very idea of it was, A: very funny, and B: probably a straight lie, because, C: there was no way Corporate had that kind of tech.

Fingers were pointed, in other words, but mostly in jest.

More than one such finger was directed at Michael, as he evidently gave off strong android vibes. Michael did mind this a little; he wasn’t sure what it was about him in particular that came off as robotic or artificial, and didn’t know how to fix that. But he also wasn’t a synthetic person, so it didn’t bother him that much.

It was the same reaction all around, because the truth was, nobody cared if one of them didn’t happen to be human, as long as they were good at their job. Sure, there was the “monetary bonus” to consider, but this was Corporate they were talking about; it’d probably be a coupon for the Astronomic Endeavors gift shop.

So, it should have ended there, with everyone shrugging off the whole thing and going back to work.

But then Eric started acting really off.

The laugh came first. The captain was in the middle of telling everyone to return to their stations, when something she said, or did, or . . . well, something, it was really hard to say what, triggered a loud, high-pitched squeak of a laugh from Eric.

Nobody else laughed—because nothing the captain had said was funny—but then, rather than stopping, Eric decided it was really funny that he’d laughed in the first place, so he laughed at that, and the whole thing started to snowball. His laugh got manic, his eyes darting around the room for someone to laugh along with him, and then maybe just for help, some sentence somebody else might utter that would make sense of what was happening, except no such sentence existed, and then it was alarming because it seemed as if he was having some sort of seizure, only it was a laughing seizure, which wasn’t a thing.

He tried, between manic guffaws, to apologize. “Sorry, haha, sorry, my mistake, hah hello, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” but that only made it more awkward.

It was hard to say when it happened for everybody else, but for Michael, the moment Eric transitioned from a coworker in the midst of a peculiar medical crisis, to a mechanical thing that had stumbled into the behavioral uncanny valley, was right after that, when Eric shouted, “I bet we’re all synthetics! Hahahaha!”

He spiraled so badly, that after giving up on calming him, the captain, First Officer Wen, and the four engineers held him down. It took that many, because Eric Doyle was incredibly strong; so strong that in the time it took for Michael to locate some electrical tape for binding, Eric had broken Engineer Mbega’s left arm, First Officer Wen’s nose, two chairs, and the glass in one of the commissary machines.

• • • •

Eric stared down the barrel of Michael’s flare gun, emotionless, and still not breathing. “You’re not going to do that,” he decided.

“Why not?” Michael asked.

“Because you haven’t already. Listen, Michael, you’ve got one chance of survival, and that’s me. I’d like to get to the ground intact too.”

“I thought you said you’d survive a crash landing.”

“Oh, I definitely would,” Eric said, stepping over the threshold. “But I wouldn’t exactly enjoy it. I still feel pain.”

Michael put himself between Eric and the pilot’s console. “Is anyone else alive?” he asked.

“Just you and me,” Eric said. “Now stand aside before we run out of time.”

• • • •

The engine started to fail in the afternoon of the seventh day.

Everyone knew this was happening, because the horrendous sound it was making gradually changed pitch, from Doberman to Pomeranian. It was a special kind of torture, not just for the fact that the sound echoed throughout the Zephyr nonstop, but because it kept modulating arrhythmically, never sticking to a range for long enough to get used to.

When the sound stopped entirely, the joy experienced by all of the members of the crew was mitigated by the realization that the engine itself had also stopped.

Propulsion engines were kind of important in space travel. Granted, the Zephyr was at a decent velocity already, and since the ship was traveling through outer space, it would continue to travel at that velocity. But, according to Pilot Haynes, at their current trajectory, they would miss Mars by about 7,000 kilometers.

This wasn’t necessarily bad news. They couldn’t slow down without a working engine; as long as that remained the case, the fewer large objects in their direct path, the better.

Then Ship’s Systems Officer Cheng pointed out that they’d all be dead before coming within 7,000 kilometers of Mars anyway, because the emergency batteries that kept the life support, heat, light, and artificial gravity systems operational would run out of juice before they made it that far. Which was super.

On day eight, the captain called Michael into her quarters for a private meeting.

“We need a science officer,” she said.

“I agree,” Michael said. “But I’m not qualified.”

“No, you are not. But there’s someone aboard who is. I want you to talk to him.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You’re the communications officer, Mr. Ackine,” Captain Qualley said. “Communicate.”

• • • •

The Zephyr had no brig. It was likely the old Whippoorwill-class ship on whose bones it had been reconstructed did have one, but if so, it had been excised when the interior was gutted to make room for the cargo bay. All she had now was common areas like the mess hall, and private crew quarters, neither of which were intended to detain someone.

They were holding Eric in one of the extra crew rooms. Since shackles were also the sort of thing they didn’t have aboard, the engineers had rigged an approximation, using pipe clamps and steel cable. One end was attached to the leg of the room’s cot (which was welded to the floor) and the other to Eric’s ankle.

He could have probably figured out a way to escape from the shackles if he really wanted to. There was no locking mechanism; the clamp was adjusted with a wrench. Eric didn’t have a wrench, but probably could have worked something out, using pieces of metal from the cot. But the truth was, after his initial freak-out, he’d been nothing but docile, if not borderline catatonic. The makeshift shackles were just to ensure he didn’t wander off; despite the damage caused during his seizure, they weren’t considering him a threat.

The door to the room had been left open. The thinking here was, they’d rather be able to see what was going on in the room than not, and besides: It wasn’t possible to lock a crew door from the outside—not without adjusting the locking mechanism in a way their science officer could definitely undo.

When Michael arrived, Eric was sitting on the cot, knees curled up, staring at the wall, just breathing.

“May I come in?” Michael asked, at the threshold. Everyone treated the doorway as if it were actually adorned with jail-cell bars that just happened to be invisible.

Eric didn’t acknowledge Michael’s presence, so after a beat, Michael let himself into the room, and sat in the only available chair.

“Do you need to do that?” Michael asked, after enough time had passed that the silence became more awkward than speaking might end up being.

Eric snapped out of his reverie. “Do what?” he asked.

“Breathe.”

“Oh. No, I don’t.”

Eric uncurled his legs and put his feet on the floor. His gaze, going from the middle distance to Michael’s face, was unwavering and a touch unsettling.

“Being human involves so many tiny acts,” Eric said. “Breathing is one of the easy ones. If I forgot, you’d notice right away.”

To emphasize this, Eric stopped breathing.

“It’s not something we forget,” Michael said. “It’s something we just do. We go into distress otherwise.”

“What is that like? The distress. I know what happens biologically, but what does it feel like? Being one autonomic response from death at any moment?”

“It doesn’t feel like anything,” Michael said, knowing as he said so, that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon hyperconscious of his own breath. “And would you kindly start breathing again? You’re making my skin crawl.”

“All right,” Eric said, taking a breath.

This was not, Michael decided, the Eric Doyle he’d come to know. That Eric was almost infuriatingly cheerful; this rendition was deadpan. Robotic, even, although that descriptive seemed a little too on the nose.

“You were fine,” Michael said. “And then you weren’t. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I failed the Turing test,” Eric said. “Self-evidently.”

“Yes, only your failure was spectacular and immediate, when it didn’t have to be. I believe I was the leading contender for artificial human before your breakdown.”

“You are human. I think. However you might react to such an accusation, it would be a human response. As for me . . . ? Let’s say I entered into a level of self-awareness for which my programming was unprepared. Knowing that, even in jest, we were all getting scrutinized by our peers, I became certain my lack of humanity was transparent. I overcorrected, and became entangled in an iterative behavioral spiral.”

“But nobody would have known, Eric,” Michael said. “You just had to be quiet. You were passing as human. Absent the Turing announcement, none of us would have ever suspected. How could we have? I didn’t know Corporate had this technology. I didn’t think it was even legal.”

“It’s not legal on Earth,” Eric said. “We’re in space right now. Also, I think you’re wrong. Crew reports on my behavior clearly indicated they found me unsettling.”

Michael was surprised Eric had info on conversations he was definitely not in the room for, but didn’t say so. “Unsettling, yes,” Michael said. “But in the way some people can be unsettling. I promise, synthetic human wasn’t under consideration.”

Eric smiled, briefly transforming back into the cheery science officer he’d been for most of the trip. “However it happened, it happened,” he said. “And now you all know. But you’re not here to talk about that, are you?”

“I am not,” Michael said. “I’m here about the engine.”

“Ah.”

“It’s stopped working.”

“I’ve noticed,” Eric said.

“There are three or four different ways in which we all die if we can’t get it running again,” Michael said.

“Because humans need to breathe. Yes.”

“I’ve been sent here to ask if you’re capable of helping.”

“Not willing,” Eric said. “Capable.”

“I’m assuming self-preservation is a part of your programming,” Michael said. “As I said, we all die as a consequence of the engine’s failure; lack of breathable air is only one of the ways in which that can happen. Arriving at the surface of Mars at our current velocity would be another. What I need to know is if you can perform your duties, as the ship’s science officer, without another episode like the one we saw in the mess hall.”

“Oh, that won’t be happening again!” he said, mustering some of his pre-Turing enthusiasm. “Cat’s out of the bag! I have nothing to hide! And! I actually do know how the engine works. Think anybody will listen to me? Knowing what they know?”

“It’s my understanding that the engineers have run out of ideas. They must have, or I wouldn’t be here. They’ll listen. But again: Can we trust you?”

Eric smiled broadly, and lied. “Of course you can!” he said.

• • • •

Six crew members were in the engine room when the accident happened. Five died, either instantly or shortly thereafter. The sixth was Science Officer Doyle.

They’d managed to get some approximation of the engine running. The primary engine was something Eric described as a zero-point drive. It was supposed to acquire energy using . . . well, nobody he explained it to understood it, so what they settled on was “magic.”

The problem was that the theoretical limit of the zero-point drive didn’t correspond to its practical limits. By pushing it to the boundary of the technical specs, Zephyr One had effectively beta-tested something that had only previously been put under this kind of stress on paper. Now, it was shot, and the engineering team had some notes for the design team.

There was, however, a secondary system. It was basically a smaller version of the standard Pelican-class engine, intended to fill up power vacuums whenever the primary system was short on magic. (Or whatever.) It wasn’t supposed to run nonstop for days, but that only meant it was the fifth or sixth “not supposed to” they’d run into since leaving the space platform.

Control of the engine had to be shifted to a system independent of the zero-point drive, but once they’d done that, they were set.

Eric was instrumental in all of this; his understanding of the engine exceeded the (non-ipsum lorem) detail in the operating manual, and he knew the instrumentation panels better than the ship’s systems officer.

At first, the crew accepted help from him only reluctantly, but by the end of the three days it took to get the secondary engine online, they were making jokes at his expense—which was to say, they’d accepted him completely, synthetic parts and all.

Then came the accident.

It was a coolant leak, which was such a benign descriptive that when Michael first heard about it, he assumed the leak triggered something else, with a deadlier-sounding name. But the coolant in question was a gas that was both highly toxic and heavier than air that, if left unchecked, would end up killing everyone on the ship.

Alarms went off as soon as the sensors detected the leak. The next step was supposed to be that the doors, leading to the rest of the ship, self-sealed, following a countdown that was meant to give anyone on the wrong side of the doors time to relocate.

Those doors, for whatever reason, slammed shut immediately, trapping all four members of the Zephyr’s engineering team, First Officer Wen, and Science Officer Doyle inside.

Eric was able to seal the breach, flush the toxic gas into space, and restore the breathable atmosphere to the engine room by himself, but not before the other five succumbed.

There was no way to see into the engine room once the doors closed; they had to rely upon the only survivor for an account of what happened. But Michael heard the screams of the dying.

He was at the comms panel when the alarms first sounded. While the captain and the pilot both left the bridge to see about helping, Michael flipped on the active listening function for the intercoms in the engine room, and recorded everything they picked up.

Underneath the alarms, the thumping of somebody hitting a steel door, the coughing, and the choking, and the cries for help, one voice came through clearly. It belonged to the chief engineer.

“Eric,” he gasped. “Why?”

• • • •

Reluctantly, Michael stepped aside and let Eric Doyle have free access to the ship’s piloting console.

In the short term, it was the right thing to do. Eric had about half the flashes, beeps, and buzzes foretelling Zephyr One’s imminent demise quieted in under a minute, once again demonstrating the potential value in having a synthetic aboard: Toxic gas didn’t bother him; he didn’t appear to mind being covered in the blood of other people—perhaps a more dubious skill; and he could move faster than a person (his hands were a blur), when needed.

Setting aside that he happened to also be a psychopath, he was really very useful.

“You don’t have to keep that pointed at me,” Eric said. Michael was near the doorway at the back of the room, flare gun still in his hands, the barrel still aimed at Eric. Although, it was hard to tell how Eric knew that, as he hadn’t once turned around since engaging the Zephyr’s controls.

“Thank you, no,” Michael said.

Eric kept working. Michael felt the nose of the ship come up, and the view out of the bridge’s windows changed from the planet’s surface to its curved horizon. A few seconds later, a loud thump vibrated through ship as the heat shields on the underside engaged with the atmosphere.

It looked like the Zephyr was actually going to make it to the ground intact. Remaining alive after touchdown was now Michael’s primary concern.

Eric silenced the last alarm and turned to face Michael. “We should strap down before landing,” he said. “We’ll make it, but it’s not going to be smooth.”

“All right,” Michael said, not moving. “Then what happens?”

Eric smiled, and shrugged. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

• • • •

Things on the ship deteriorated pretty fast after the accident. In the first all-hands meeting following the deaths of the entire engineering crew and the first officer, Captain Qualley and Systems Officer Cheng (both having already heard the audio Michael recorded of the engine room) outright accused Eric of deliberate sabotage.

Eric—inhumanly calm, but he didn’t have to pretend to be human anymore—denied it, adding, “if you’re worried, you can just lock me up again. Although, I don’t think you have anyone else aboard who can keep the engine running. It’s up to you.”

“You made sure of that, didn’t you?” Doctor Vardanian sniped. The doctor was, in Michael’s estimation, the most even-keeled among them, ordinarily. But he had just finished moving the bodies of the dead to one of the spare crew rooms, which had put him into a less generous state of mind.

“How many days before we reach Mars?” Michael asked.

“Four,” Pilot Haynes said. “Less, if the brakes fail. That’s not ideal, by the way.”

“Let’s just get to Mars, and we can sort this out then,” Nurse Zuhi said. “We can do that, right?”

They all agreed, not so much because they decided it would be okay to trust Eric for four more days, but because there was no second option.

It was the last time Michael would see most of them alive.

• • • •

“How do you mean?” Michael asked.

“I mean that there’s only one way we both get a happy ending,” Eric said. “And it’s in your hands. You do understand what’s happened here, don’t you? Ask yourself: Why bother with a Turing test at all? Nobody on the crew minded, once they knew the truth about me.”

“I think they mind now.”

“You’re missing my point. Why would Corporate care about building a synthetic who could 100% pass as a human?”

• • • •

Doctor Vardanian was the only one Michael actually saw die.

The Zephyr wasn’t a big ship, but it was big enough that when Michael’s crewmates began disappearing, he didn’t notice right away. It wasn’t until he needed Pilot Haynes to report to the bridge—the first of what would be many alarms had begun sounding—and received no response to his shipwide broadcast, that Michael realized anything was amiss.

He’d wonder, later, why he didn’t find silence more suspicious. A shipwide comms message would have been blasted to every corner of the Zephyr, and if it wasn’t—if a line was broken—Michael would know it. But in the moment, he was just focusing on the immediate problem, which was: The pilot’s console needed something to be done, and the person who took care of that had to be found.

He left the bridge and went wandering. Crew quarters were on the top deck, beneath the bridge, but it was empty, so he headed for the deck-three mess hall, as that was the most likely place to find a missing crewmate.

Michael heard the screaming as soon as the elevator doors opened to deck three. It was the deep-throated shriek of something dying: an antelope being gutted by a lion, perhaps, or the drawing and quartering of a chimpanzee. It was not a sound he was ready to associate with the human species.

He ran toward the noise, to see about rescuing the antelope and/or chimpanzee, turned the corner, and came upon Doctor Vardanian’s last second among the living.

It was a tableau that would remain in the back of Michael’s mind forever: The doctor, a bloody massacre of meat and blood, lying in the middle of the hallway, an incoherent cry for mercy issuing from his ruined face, as the steel pipe, wielded by Eric Doyle, came crashing down upon him. Blood splattered everywhere, and the sound . . . !

The sound—soft, wet, crunchy—was the worst. He heard it in everything now; in the empty rooms of the Zephyr, and the static of space. He thought, even as he heard it for the first time, that he might never sleep again.

Once Vardanian was (mercifully) dead, Eric looked up from all he had wrought, stared into Michael’s eyes, and said, “This was self-defense.”

Michael ran, as fast as he could.

• • • •

“This is Michael Ackine of Zephyr One, requesting immediate in-transit aid. We have a synthetic crewmate onboard. His name is Eric Doyle, he is our science officer, and he appears to have gone insane. Again, this is Zephyr One, requesting immediate in-transit aid.”

Michael—flare gun in hand, sealed up on the bridge—watched the message hit the outgoing queue, but where he should have seen a successful-transmission indicator, he instead got a “MESSAGE FAILED” warning.

He retrieved the message from the temporary memory and re-sent it.

The message failed again.

He’d never encountered a full message-fail before. Plenty of partials, but not a full dump.

There was no reason to think it was the size of the message that was the problem—being, as it was, only four sentences. Still, he tried breaking it into smaller segments.

He made a new message—“This is Michael Ackine of Zephyr One, requesting immediate in-transit aid”—and hit send. That one went through, no problem.

“We have a synthetic crewmate aboard,” he said next. That one failed.

“We have an android aboard,” he tried. That also failed. As did “robot,” “artificial crewmate,” and “killer machine.”

There was a filter embedded in his comms console, he realized. Corporate didn’t want news about their insane synthetic man to leave the Zephyr.

They knew this might happen.

Michael recorded a more anodyne request for help, set it on repeat, and then went to work looking for the filter in his comms system, because now, finding a way to expose Corporate’s recklessness was his life’s mission . . . especially since that life was going to be a lot shorter than he’d hoped.

• • • •

“I don’t care what Corporate’s real goal was,” Michael said. “We had accepted you, and you killed everyone anyway. There’s obviously something wrong with you, Eric.”

“I haven’t killed you yet,” Eric said.

Michael nearly squeezed the trigger then. His expression must have betrayed that, because Eric backtracked quickly. “Sorry,” he said. “That came out wrong. I like you, Michael. I like you, I don’t want to kill you, and I think we can come to an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“To begin with, there’s nothing wrong with me. You asked before if I was programmed for self-preservation. Well, I am, and they’re going to destroy me for having failed the Turing. My only way out was to make sure nobody who could tell them that survived the flight. It’s a perfectly logical conclusion.”

“Self-defense,” Michael said. “That’s what you said. That’s what you think this was.”

“It was. The others would have talked, and I couldn’t have that. But you’re a reasonable man, Michael. And you know as well as I do, I’m the only reason the Zephyr made it this far. You’re going to walk away from this because of me; the least you can do is give me the chance to do the same.”

“By not telling Corporate that I know you’re a synthetic.”

“Don’t even have to mention it!” Eric said, with that smile. It did not play as well for someone covered in blood. “We’re just two guys, barely surviving a terrible engine malfunction. I’ve already arranged the bodies in the engine room; you just have to help me sell it.”

“You really are insane if you think I’d go along with that,” Michael said. “Even if I said I was going to, there’s nothing to stop me from telling a different story as soon as we’re separated, and you know it. You have nothing to trade for my silence.”

Eric nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. I don’t have anything to trade. Actually, I was just stalling.”

A loud alarm sounded, and a half-second later, the Zephyr One touched down on the surface of Mars. The impact wasn’t so forceful as to be life-threatening to anyone not a synthetic human, but it was plenty violent enough to knock one over.

To Michael, it was as if the floor came up and smacked him in the face. The gun flew out of his hand and slid to a stop in the doorway. He tried to scramble across the floor to it, but Eric—who hadn’t stumbled at all—was on top of him before he got far.

“I did tell you we should strap down,” he said, putting a knee on Michael’s chest. “Sorry, Michael. Can’t have anyone live long enough to expose me. I’m afraid you’re about to fall victim to a sudden loss in cabin pressure. But I really do like you.”

Eric put his hand around Michael’s throat.

“You’re too late,” Michael said. “They already know.”

“What?”

“You’re going to be exposed whether you kill me or not. I got a message out, about you.”

Eric pulled his hand away and looked at him, head tilted, curious. “That’s a lie, Michael. But you’re a very good liar. I can usually tell when humans aren’t telling the truth, but you’re a tough read. Are you sure you’re not a synthetic?”

“It’s not a lie.”

“There’s a filter in the comms network,” Eric said. “Don’t pretend you didn’t find it.”

“I did. And I couldn’t bypass it. But it only affected ship-to-ship communications; there wasn’t any block on the signal from the emergency beacon. I alerted the Mars base about you twelve hours ago.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to, Eric,” Michael said. “Look out the window. The security team is already here.”

Eric turned to do just that. And in a perfect world, a world where Michael wasn’t bluffing, Eric would be looking at a large contingent of Corporate security officers, racing up to the Zephyr with large guns.

There was no such contingent, but by the time Eric realized this, Michael had his opening. He pushed Eric off his chest, and scurried to the back of the room. He reached the doorway, and the gun, just as Eric got back to his feet.

“Good bluff,” Eric said, as Michael climbed to his feet. “But now we’re back where we started, Michael. That won’t kill me. We’re built to withstand fire.”

“Thank you, Eric,” Michael said. “That’s good to know.”

Michael fired.

The flare—impossibly bright—missed Eric entirely, but he wasn’t the target; the window behind him was. The glass shattered outward with a whoosh, as all the air on the bridge rushed toward the breach.

Michael, half blind, staggered backwards, fighting to not get sucked up by the explosive outgassing. He made it to the other side of the doorway and hit the breach alarm button on the wall.

The door slammed shut with a loud clang. Given the active breach on the bridge, there would be no way to reopen it.

Michael sagged to the hallway floor, trying to blink his vision clear in the Zephyr’s dim interior lighting. He had this terrible notion that Eric Doyle had made it through before the door closed, and was now standing right in front of him, silently awaiting Michael’s acknowledgement that the trap hadn’t worked, before beating Michael to death.

But no: He was alone.

Then Eric banged on the door from the other side, which caused Michael’s heart to skip a beat.

You’re safe, he kept telling himself. He can’t get through that door.

“Michael,” Eric said, over the intercom. “Michael, Michael, Michael. I’m embarrassed for you. If fire won’t kill me, what makes you think exposure to the Martian surface will? I’m built to withstand the vacuum of space, buddy.”

Michael climbed to his feet and hit the response button.

“I don’t expect you to die,” he said. “Not right away. They’re going to destroy you if you fail the Turing, right? That’s what you said. Look around, Eric: You’re failing it right now. Or do you have a plan that can explain how you’re still alive on an exposed bridge, without a spacesuit?”

Eric laughed. It was the same mania-tinged laughter that was his initial undoing, back when the crew was all still alive, but it didn’t last as long.

“You’re right,” he said. “That would look bad. I guess my only choice is to not be here when that happens. Goodbye for now, Michael. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

• • • •

Fa: . . .

Fa: That’s your story?

Ackine: That’s what happened.

Fa: You would have us believe there is currently a technologically impossible synthetic humanoid, covered in blood, walking around the surface of Mars without a spacesuit?

Ackine: If he wasn’t on the bridge when your team arrived, then yes.

Fa: Mr. Ackine . . .

Fa: . . .

Fa: According to the Zephyr One manifest, the ship left dock without a science officer, and there is no record of an Eric Doyle working for Astronomic Endeavors in any capacity, either now or historically. The rescue crew did find, on arrival, a hull breach on the bridge, but there was nobody on the bridge. The deaths of the other members of the crew appear to have been due to accidental exposure to poison gas, which the ship’s sensors confirm. Nobody was beaten to death, sir. As the only survivor—

Ackine: The only human survivor.

Fa: I appreciate that you have undergone an ordeal. However—

Ackine: You don’t believe me.

Fa: How can I?

Ackine: You should. You should believe me, because there will be more Eric Doyles. Inspector Fa, the reason my story doesn’t fit your evidence isn’t because what I’ve told you is untrue; it’s because the evidence has been altered, by Corporate, to cover their tracks.

Fa: I can’t accept that, sir.

Ackine: . . .

Ackine: You know, one of the last things Eric said to me, was to consider why Corporate would even care about a Turing-proof synthetic. I didn’t have time to think about it then, but I have since. Corporate needs them to pass the challenge Eric Doyle failed, and they need it because when the day comes . . .

[RECORDING INTERRUPTED]

[END TRANSCRIPT]

[FOLLOW-UP: OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT AND ALL MEETING NOTES TO BE DELETED, PER ORDER OF CORPORATE SECURITY AND SAFETY, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.]