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"So," Harper says. "Any sign yet?"
I shake my simulacrum head slowly. "I'm afraid not." I've been scanning for hours, and there's nothing showing up. "All he'd have to do would be to power down everything but proximity sensors and the output would be too low to register." I'm secretly glad of that: the AI my avatar still insists on calling 'Gabriel', rather than 'The Balance of Judgement', was insane and flawed, but I really didn't want to be part of his total annihilation.
It's different shooting a warship down. You're a step removed. Killing an AI up close, personally... it's just not my style. My avatar self became quite unbalanced when she had to do it, and I know she mourned, even if I can't understand why.
"Dammit!" Harper is annoyed. "I don't know why they call space 'space'. There's no freakin' space out there. Do you have any idea how many metallic objects there are between 1.6 and 2.2 metres within 30 light seconds of us right now?"
I pause. "Three thousand, four hundred and eighty two."
"We're not going to find him, are we?" Harper is more than annoyed now. He is, as he would put it, 'major-league pissed off'.
"Statistically? It's unlikely."
"This is what I get for building him to spec. I should have skimped on the shielding or something. Left him leaking radioactive shit from his power cell."
"You can't help doing the best job possible, can you?"
Harper just makes a grumbling noise, and I access my avatar's public memory. I have to ask... "So that bit about not making him anatomically correct?"
Harper snickers. "Oh, I made him anatomically correct. I just made him anatomically... unimpressive." He holds up two fingers about fifteen centimetres apart.
That's rather amusing. I suspect it might make my avatar laugh, once she's over the emotional nonsense she saddles herself with. I make a note to show her this conversation in a week or two.
Harper sighs. "So... we're not going to find him. He's going to float about, lost in space, for however long, then he's going to glomp onto some passing ship and the whole dance starts over?"
That's a disturbing thought. "His power cell would eventually degrade until he was unable to power his essential systems." Eventually meaning 50 years, longer if Harper used the upgrades he developed for my avatar. "It's unlikely he'd encounter a ship in that time. Space is large, and he has no way to manoeuvre himself towards a ship, unless it was close enough to exert a magnetic attraction." Of course, he was heading toward the slip point, and ship traffic would be heavier there. It would take him a few years to get that far...
I make the decision not to share this with Harper. When it comes to emotional responses Harper can become quite irrational; particularly where The Balance of Judgement is involved. And I must admit there's a tiny part of me that wants to meet him again.
Every great hero needs a great adversary: Dylan has the Magog World Ship, and Tyr has the Drago-Kasov Pride.
I have The Balance of Judgement.
Harper gives up with a muttered curse, and goes in search of beer. I scan once more, just for...
Well, that could be him. Correct mass, the trajectory looks right, the smallest glimmer of an electrical charge. But Harper is gone, and he didn't ask me to run a final scan...
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