Über Jason's unique condition

The Most Ancient didn't normally bother with flotsam. Any vessel that wandered into range of their considerably sophisticated sensors had been adrift for an extremely long time. If there had been any live cargo to begin with, it would be well beyond the point of compassionate return. The Most Ancient had learned the hard way that as sad as it may be that living creatures had to die, it was usually wiser to let them stay dead. So whenever a spacecraft raised a blip on their awareness, they usually let it pass undisturbed, until it was out of their range again.

But this was different. The cargo inside was not alive but it was no longer dead. That would have been strange enough by itself, but then one of the Most Ancient also determined that, through no fault of its own, it was temporally dislocated.

The entire Most Ancient continuum went immediately to crisis discussion, something that had not occurred for aeons. Temporal dislocation just didn't happen. Only in this case, it had. Something had slipped out of order and the wrong course of events had been set in motion. This was further complicated by the fact that the not-alive, not-dead entity had continued not only to exist out of place, but also to act in such a way that it could not be temporally relocated without invoking a disastrous and criminal contradiction.

For a Most Ancient moment, a nano-second by human reckoning, all seemed lost. But then the Most Ancient reviewed the case and understood that the solution was actually quite simple. If they could not temporally relocate the entity and they could not leave it alone, then there was only one course of action left to them: they did both.

They had no idea at the time how unfortunate their decision would be for quite a number of living creatures, nor did any of them ever find out.

   Jason X: The Experiment, Epilogue

"Cassandra, could you plug in to the motherboard for a second? I need to see this on abstract."

"Right, captain."

Cassandra packed the pink plug of one of her neural inserts into the onboard computer. A green matrix swam over the onscreen image. Data analysis boxes scrolled up and accounted for what the comp could see.

According to the comp, the dark patches were due to "insufficient memory". Not an answer, really.

"Insufficient memory? That doesn't make sense," Gupta said. "I think the probe is picking up some EM interference."

"Exactly," said Cassandra. "It's a machine artifact. Haloing. Or it could be simply ghosts. I'm going to try and clean up some of this noise."

"You do that," said Gupta. You'll need an industrial-strength sponge for that job, he added mentally.

Cassandra's irises swarmed with numbers. The text boxes whirred past at the speed of light. Infinity's calculus flashed in databeds in her dark eyes. The spinning letters resolved: "MASSIVE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE".

"Can you tell me where the damage is mostly located? Is there a pattern?” Gupta hunched down over the console.

"Let's see,” said Cassandra. "Of course, there is always a pattern."

"Wiseass."

"Sorry, captain. Engaging structural analysis." She twiddled with the pink plug, looked apologetically at Gupta. "Sorry, this could take a few seconds."

She was definitely cute, this psycho bitch droid from hell.

That fact established, Gupta's stress had reached meltdown level. Thoughts of imminent peril, plus his love for Lakshmi, shut down incipient stirrings of robo-love. Anyway, robo-love wasn't quite what its advocates promoted it to be. Or was it?

"What in Shiva's name is going on here?"

"Wait. Okay. It looks like the damage applies mostly to living quarters."

"Meaning?"

A gruff bark broke out behind them. Gupta whirled to see Gunny Thomas rushing towards him in bulked-up fury, a button hanging from a loose thread on his uniform collar, gnashing his unlit cigar.

"What's going on here? What do you mean, damage to living quarters? Do we have a body count yet? Anybody want to fill me in on this new information? Or is the military last in the loop, again?"

Every word uttered at pitch volume. The "again" was emphatic.

Everyday overkill.

"Meaning," said Cassandra without altering her pace or intonation to the slightest degree, "whoever or whatever did the damage was going after people. With greatly hostile intent, I should think."

"What about life forms?"

"Sentient life mostly negative. Unless you count robots. But there's something else. Something I can't account for."

"What do you mean, you can't account for it? Is it living or not?" This query burst from both men at once.

Cassandra paused, keeping her android cool. She passed a hand through her neural weave. Static fizzed in her eyes like seltzer water.

"It's both. It's neither. But that thing, whatever it is, that's what's responsible."

"Great," said Gupta, finally giving voice to the rage that had been building inside him since the military Shanghai began. "So we're looking for a non-living, non-dead organism of some sort. I knew this was a bug hunt!"

   Jason X: Death Moon, chapter 1