A trek through the darkness

The blackness is absolute. On normal nights, the sunstrand still emits a faint bluish glow, just enough to see. This is something else entirely, the kind of utter blindness I can only experience by closing my eyes and placing my hands over my face, or--more recently--needing to recharge the flashlight while deep within the installation. And it has fallen on everyone, everywhere, from here all the way to the blueward polly. I feel a sense of panic rising within me before I remember I am still holding a flashlight in my hand. I switch it on. The beam shines weakly against a partition a couple dozen ems away. The panic subsides, though a deeper dread remains.

Screams and shouting come from all sides. Valerie wrenches the flashlight from my hands and begins waving it around in all directions. "Be quiet!" she thunders. "Be calm! Follow my voice! Follow the light!" She repeats this chant until nearly everyone in the polly has gathered around us, staring with wide, frightened eyes.

"What should we do?" asks Cedric.

"Get more flashlights, to start," says Valerie. "Then...we'll talk."

Once the dozen flashlights in the stores have been disbursed and equipped, the center of the polly starts to feel properly illuminated again.

"Alright," says Valerie, continuing to lead. "Any ideas?"

"Auto," I say on an impulse, "Auto, can you hear me?"

There is no response.

"He is not answering," says Tina. "I tried talking to him earlier."

Martin is lost in thought. "I...I think I've seen something like this before. Of a sort. In my old life. But I can't be sure..." His eyes lock with mine, then Valerie's. "Regardless of the exact reason everything's gone to hell, it's clear Auto is at the heart. Any solution begins and ends with it."

Valerie nods. "To Lakepolly then, where Auto lives. And quickly. We do not have much time if the sunstrand remains inert." She partitions the gathered residents in two--a group of a couple dozen including her, me, and Martin to set out on the trip, the rest to remain in the polly and search for anyone missing. Once the decision has been made, it does not take long for those of us headed out to restock our utilities. Soon we're on the path blueward, guided by Duncan--who has often done provisioning runs to and from Lakepolly and knows the route "blindfolded and asleep".

As we walk, I stay close to Martin, the two of us sharing custody of one of the precious flashlights. "It's a good thing we had these devices," he says. "The other pollies--not so fortunate." Already, I can see flickering orange lights--to the left, the right, directly above--popping into existence, one by one, a constellation of stars not dissimilar to those outside the ship. Deprived of all light, the others are quickly falling back to the most immediate and primitive form of illumination--fire. I can only hope some fool doesn't accidentally burn down one of the woodlands.

"You mentioned you might have seen something like this before," I say. My words feel as though they are being swallowed by the darkness around us. It takes an effort to speak normally and not whisper. "What did you mean?"

Martin is silent for a moment. "I can't say for sure, but...I've used AI's all my life. For work...for other things. None of them were as sophisticated as Auto, but they always shared a common weakness. Their...memory." He laughs mirthlessly. "Perhaps not so different from us in that. They could only retain so much context--of past conversations, of what they had done before. After a certain point, they behaved erratically--failed to perform, gave false answers unknowingly. The only thing to be done was refresh the session, begin again."

"You...you think this is what's happening to Auto?"

"Thousands of years, millions of users, billions of queries and commands. All that context..." Martin takes on a pensive look. "Auto isn't magic, for all his seeming omniscience. Something had to give eventually."

"But why now...after so long...?"

"I don't know. It's just a theory. But if true...well, lucky us, I guess."

We fall silent as the march continues. Time passes--but how much, I couldn't say. All my life, I marked time by the cycles of the sunstrand, by its waxing and waning. Now that is all gone. I can only determine mealtimes by the rumbling of my stomach, or sleep time by the heaviness of my eyelids. Otherwise, time--like space, in this dark emptiness--feels static, unmoving.

The path takes us through and near other pollies. At each one, we find residents huddled around bonfires for vision and comfort. Every time, Valerie stops to give a quick speech about where we are going, inviting volunteers to join us on our trek. Soon our party has grown to over a hundred people, strung out along the path, clumped together tightly around each flashlight as if leaving the area of illumination means instant death.

I plod along listlessly, my head drooping, every step more difficult than the last. I am certain if the sunstrand were still in operation that night would have fallen long ago. Valerie seems to recognize this when she calls a halt. "We will rest here," she announces, indicating with her flashlight the broad grassy verges to either side of the path. "No beds, I'm afraid, but I think this should be almost as good. Take what sleep you can, but quickly. We cannot delay for too long."

As we are accustomed to do, I curl up in a ball on the grass with Martin wrapped against my back. I extinguish my flashlight, returning to complete darkness. There is still a gnawing sense of fear deep within me, but not as acute as before. I can hear the murmurs of the other people settling down around me. Martin's strong arms reach around my torso and tenderly grasp my bubs. Feeling warm and protected, I allow my exhaustion to take me away.