Chapter 9

Intrepid - 3756 C.E.

Despite her being imprisoned within an impenetrable force field, Beatrice was still able to monitor the Intrepid's steady progress towards the Anomaly. Because she had an entire Proxima Centauri space fleet at her disposal, she could do this rather more comprehensively than anyone else on the space ship with the obvious exception of Colonel Vashti.

There was a long time in which Beatrice could prepare for the expected time of arrival at the Anomaly. There wasn't much to monitor so far from the ecliptic plane except empty space and vast distances because there was nothing but an enormous amount of essentially nothing. The distance travelled from where the Intrepid had encountered the Sirius space fleet to the Anomaly's location could be measured in light weeks, but since the space ship travelled at a velocity significantly less than the speed of light the estimated time of arrival was in a matter of months rather than weeks. From the perspective of everyone on board, this could only be a long and uneventful journey. There was literally nothing near the Intrepid within a sphere of millions of cubic kilometres. In that empty time in almost totally empty space the most noticeable change was the extent of the communications time gap with Mission Control. This became progressively greater as the Intrepid sped closer to its destination.

Although the Anomaly couldn't be seen, its influence could be detected in other ways. Beatrice continued to receive a constant stream of data from the Proxima Centauri space fleet as it accompanied the Intrepid through space. The first manifestation of the Anomaly's strange character relayed to her was the momentary appearance of a gigantic dragon blowing fire and smoke through its mouth and nostrils. For just five seconds it flew through empty space several million kilometres from the Intrepid. And then it disappeared leaving behind not even a puff of smoke.

This peculiar sight just a light month from the Anomaly was bizarre enough, but as the Intrepid approached ever closer such Apparitions became more frequent although still rare enough that an entire day might go by without even the Proxima Centauri space fleet detecting such an event. There was a floating table on which was spread a feast of fish and meat. Even though it was tumbling through open space, the dishes remained firmly attached to the table. A flock of seagulls flew within a thousand kilometres of the Intrepid for fewer than three seconds.

When the Intrepid was within a trillion kilometres of its destination, these strange Apparitions became manifest not only in open space but also inside the Intrepid. There was a day on which Apparitions appeared on the fourth and sixth levels. The first was the appearance of a man in a dark cloak whose face was covered by a sinister mask. He raised his arms as if he was a bird of prey about to descend on its victim and then vanished. The second was an amorphous blob of glutinous matter that slowly flowed down a pathway between an ornamental pond and a decorative sculpture. And then this too vanished. In neither case was there any witness. They would have passed unnoticed if it hadn't been for the constant scrutiny of the Intrepid's surveillance system.

The number of incidents steadily increased as each day passed by. A tall man with a broad-brimmed hat strolled through one of the laboratories and walked straight through a brick wall leaving no sign of his passage. An ironing board tumbled down and off a villa roof, smashed into a plant pot and vanished in the debris of its making.

Initially these Apparitions were viewed with curiosity and wonderment. Here at last was concrete evidence of the Anomaly's bizarre presence. As their occurrence became more frequent, this complacent attitude was tempered by fear and apprehension. What prevented a large object suddenly materialising in the volume of space already occupied by a human? Two solid objects couldn't occupy the same space for any time at all. This anxiety prevailed even though there was no record of such a thing having ever happened. The Apparitions always materialised where there were no solid objects. They generally appeared on rather than above, beneath or inside the ground.

It was when the Intrepid was within a few million kilometres of the Anomaly that Beatrice saw her first such Apparition. It was nothing more exciting than a candelabrum with several lit candles that came into view just outside the villa. The candles flickered in the artificially generated breeze and the entire object vanished after only six or seven seconds. Beatrice played back her recording of this fantastic event over and over again, not just for her own benefit but for the accompanying space fleet.

There wasn't much that Beatrice could see of the Anomaly. Even at this relatively close proximity, the view was of an absence of stars that would otherwise have been visible through a relatively narrow aperture in space. It was a three-dimensional aperture insofar as the opening faced all directions from back, front and sideways. It narrowed very gradually towards tips that were several thousands of kilometres apart. The Intrepid's modelling software generated an image that resembled a long narrow pole with a very imprecise boundary. It was a misleading image as it suggested that something measurable could be seen whereas the Anomaly was defined by the absence rather than the presence of measurability.

Beatrice was as excited by the sight as an android could be. This after all was what she'd travelled trillions of kilometres to see. Here it now was in all its utter nothingness. She maintained continuous communication with the Proxima Centauri space fleet as they exchanged data and she analysed it in the isolation of her luxurious confinement.

The only visitor to the villa was Colonel Vashti and this was only very rarely. Her visits served only to taunt Beatrice and by implication her entire civilisation. They had sex together of course. Both of them had needs no human could adequately satisfy, but Beatrice was sure that the colonel's lovemaking had become more dominant and even vindictive. If Beatrice had been human the violence of it would have killed her. It also made her orgasm uncontrollably and repeatedly as Vashti used her skill and enthusiasm to bring the android to repeated peaks of ecstasy.

During every such encounter Beatrice tried to extract a nugget of information from her captor, but Vashti only imparted what she and the nearby Proxima Centauri space fleet already knew. The voyage was continuing as expected. It wasn't prudent for Beatrice and the space fleet to be granted independent freedom of movement. No human on the space ship was aware of a change in command. The current course of action was to do nothing other than wait until the Intrepid reached the Anomaly. Only then might there be a change of policy.

However, this change happened rather more abruptly than Beatrice and her fellow robots had anticipated.

One moment Beatrice was, as always, in constant contact with the space fleet. Then, without any warning and in mid-flow, communication between them came to a sudden halt. It was just as unexpected and unpredictable as the appearance of an Apparition, so Beatrice didn't panic. No doubt it was another peculiar feature of the Anomaly and normal transmission would be resumed after a few seconds.

However, when the communications remained interrupted for rather longer than a minute, Beatrice began to be alarmed. It was almost as if she'd lost one of her many senses of perception. It was the abrupt severance of a reassuring link with her civilisation that had been maintained without a break for every second of her long life. It had simply vanished as if it hadn't been there at all.

Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Utterly and totally.

Beatrice was still convinced that this had something to do with the Anomaly. This kind of occurrence had never been observed before but might simply be because the exact same condition of a human space ship approaching the Anomaly escorted by a Proxima Centauri space fleet had never happened before.

There was no means by which Beatrice could investigate this phenomenon. The Intrepid didn't have the technology to detect the space fleet even when it was in constant communication with Beatrice. It would be even more useless now, so all she could do was scan space through the Intrepid's systems in the hope that they could somehow provide an incidental evidence as to what had happened.

Beatrice wandered into the garden outside her villa where she could see beyond her invisible confines but couldn't be seen herself. Beatrice had used the Intrepid's surveillance systems to confirm the truth of Vashti's remark that Beatrice was totally invisible. Any human who wandered by the villa would be unaware that anyone was in residence.

Beatrice pounded her fist against the invisible boundary that still resisted her considerable strength. She could easily punch a hole in a brick wall or pull the villa up from its foundations, but as usual the invisible force field repelled her with the exact measure of force that she applied. She shouted as loud as she could, but the same force field that concealed and restrained her also swallowed up any sound she made. Her exertions were completely wasted.

Beatrice had never felt such frustration and isolation before. There was nobody she could talk to. Nobody even knew she was there. The only thing she could do was wait. Beatrice sat naked on a recliner and stretched out her legs while she regarded the level's verdant landscape beyond the villa. A few deer and sheep were grazing in the near distance. They had no difficulty in breaching the force field. It let them enter and leave with no hindrance. Sparrows and blue tits fluttered about the trees, while a heron was stalking a nearby water fountain. In the further distance, scientists were walking idly by and barely glanced towards the villa where Beatrice was imprisoned.

As Beatrice maintained her vigilance, she saw several more of the strange Apparitions that had become increasingly common as the Intrepid advanced towards the Anomaly. A nineteenth century gas-lit lamp-post sprouted out of the ground until on flowering it promptly vanished. A small human on a bicycle flew nearly fifty metres overhead in empty space and then also disappeared. A doe that poked its head out from behind a tree startled the other fauna because her fur shone with a golden luminescence. She bent down to graze the grass but before her lips touched the ground she too vanished.

Then after several days of uninterrupted vigilance, one eye scanning the horizon while the other reviewed a holographic projection of the Intrepid's external systems, she saw what she at first believed to be just another of the Anomaly's extraordinary Apparitions. A woman dressed in a flowing gown was unhurriedly walking towards the villa from the distance. Although Paul's villa wasn't visible because of the Intrepid's internal curvature, Beatrice knew that this was exactly the direction from which she was coming. A human would only see the figure as more or less a pinprick against the grass, but Beatrice had no difficulty in focusing her gaze. What was especially strange was that this woman was none other than her. Or more accurately it was an exact copy of her. The nanobot community of which Vashti was the most familiar manifestation was approaching her as Beatrice.