Tatiana
Copyright© 2025 by Charlie Foxtrot
Chapter 2: Backdoor
Reconciliation
The command module felt smaller at night—if you could call it night when you were orbiting Earth every ninety minutes. But we’d dimmed the lights to simulate a diurnal cycle, and the soft blue glow from the instrument panels cast everything in an intimate twilight.
Tatiana floated at the navigation console, her fingers dancing across the holographic display as she calculated our trajectory to New Horizon. I was at the engineering station, running diagnostics on our ion drive systems. We’d been working in comfortable silence for the past hour, but the weight of unspoken words hung between us like a physical presence.
“George,” she said suddenly, not looking up from her calculations. “The plasma flow regulator is showing a minor fluctuation. Can you check the magnetic containment field?”
I pulled up the engineering schematic and immediately saw what she meant. “I see it. Looks like we’ve got some instability in the field geometry. Nothing dangerous, but it’ll reduce efficiency if we don’t correct it.”
“Can you fix it remotely?”
I studied the readouts for a moment. “Maybe. But we’d need to coordinate the field adjustments with the plasma injection timing. It’s a two-person job.”
She finally looked at me, and I saw something in her green eyes—not just professional focus, but something more vulnerable. “Walk me through it.”
I pushed off from my station and floated over to hers, careful to maintain a professional distance even though every instinct wanted me to move closer. “Here,” I said, pointing at the plasma flow display. “See how the injection rate spikes every twelve seconds? That’s when the magnetic field destabilizes.”
She leaned forward to look, and I caught a hint of her scent—something clean and familiar that made my chest tighten. “So we need to compensate the field strength just before each spike?”
“Exactly. But the timing has to be perfect. Too early and we’ll create a feedback loop. Too late, and we’ll get plasma back-flow into the injection system.”
“Okay.” She pulled up the field control interface. “On my mark, then. Three ... two ... one ... mark.”
I adjusted the containment field strength just as she modified the plasma flow. The display flickered, stabilized, then showed a smooth, consistent output.
“Again,” she said, and we repeated the process. This time, the adjustment was smoother, more intuitive. We found a rhythm—her calling the timing, me responding with the field corrections.
After the fifth adjustment, the system locked into a stable configuration. The efficiency readings climbed back into the green zone.
“That’s got it,” I said, but neither of us moved away from the console.
“Good work,” she replied softly.
We floated there in the blue-tinted darkness, close enough that I could see the small scar on her left temple from her rookie docking accident. Close enough to see the tension lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago.
“Tatiana,” I began, then stopped. Where did you even start a conversation like this?
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Do you?”
“You’re going to say that we need to talk about us. About what happened before Beta Two arrived. About the fight we had.”
I was quiet for a moment, studying her face. “Actually, I was going to say thank you.”
That caught her off guard. “For what?”
“For trusting me with the field adjustments. For letting me work with you instead of just giving me orders. For...” I paused, searching for the right words. “For making that decision about Director Belkin, even though it’s eating you alive.”
Her composure cracked slightly. “George, I—”
“You made the correct call, Tatiana. I know I argued with you, but you made the right call. And I need you to know that I understand why it was so hard for you.”
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the plasma flow display. “Do you know what scares me most about command?”
“What?”
“Not the technical challenges. Not the life-or-death decisions. It’s...” She struggled with the words. “It’s the possibility that making those decisions will change me into someone I don’t recognize. Someone who can abandon people without feeling anything.”
“You’ll never be that person.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because that person wouldn’t be floating here at three in the morning torturing herself about whether she made the right choice. That person wouldn’t have spent the last day barely eating because she’s so torn up about leaving Director Belkin behind.”
Tatiana looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw tears she was fighting not to shed.
“I keep thinking about him,” she whispered. “Sitting in that courtroom, knowing we’re up here and wondering why we haven’t come for him. Wondering if we’ve abandoned him.”
“Or,” I said gently, “he’s sitting in that courtroom knowing exactly why we can’t come for him, and being proud that we’re following our orders. Being proud that his training worked.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. He wrote Article Seventeen himself, Tatiana. He knew this day might come.”
She nodded slowly, but I could see she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“There’s something else,” I said, and she looked at me questioningly. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For the fight we had. Before Beta Two arrived. For storming out when you said you couldn’t meet my parents.”
Her expression softened. “George—”
“No, let me finish. I accused you of choosing duty over everything else, including me. But I was wrong. You weren’t choosing duty over me. You were choosing to be the kind of person this mission needs. The kind of person I fell in love with.”
“The mission,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “It always comes back to the mission.”
“Not always. But when it matters most, yes. And I’m starting to understand that’s not a character flaw—it’s a strength. It’s what makes you who you are.”
Tatiana reached out then, her fingers finding mine in the blue-tinted darkness. Her hand was warm and slightly calloused from years of manual controls.
“I’m scared, George,” she admitted. “Scared of what we’re flying into. Scared of the choices I’ll have to make. Scared of losing myself in the process.”
“And I’m scared of losing you,” I replied. “Not to duty or the mission, but to that fear. To the walls you build to protect yourself from feeling too much.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “How to be in command and be with you at the same time. How to make life-and-death decisions without shutting down emotionally.”
“Maybe,” I said, squeezing her hand gently, “you don’t have to figure it all out at once. Perhaps you just have to trust that we’ll figure it out together.”
She was quiet for a long moment, her thumb tracing small circles on my knuckles.
“When we were adjusting the plasma flow,” she said finally, “did you notice how we found a rhythm? How we started anticipating each other’s moves?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I want,” she said, looking into my eyes. “That kind of partnership. Where we’re working together instead of against each other.”
“Even when we disagree?”
“Especially when we disagree. I need someone who’ll challenge my decisions, not just follow them blindly. But I also need to know that when the argument’s over, we’re still on the same team.”
“We are,” I said. “We always were. Even when I was angry about the rescue mission, even when I stormed out about meeting my parents—we’re still on the same team.”
“Are we?” she asked, and there was something vulnerable in her voice. “Because occasionally, I feel like I’m asking you to choose between supporting me and following your heart.”
“Tatiana, you are my heart.”
The words hung in the air between us, simple and honest and completely true. She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read—surprise, relief, fear, hope all mixed together.
“But that doesn’t mean I’ll always agree with your decisions,” I continued. “And it doesn’t mean I won’t call you on it when I think you’re wrong. Is that okay?”
She nodded slowly. “It’s more than okay. It’s what I need.”
“Good. Because I’m not going anywhere, Tatiana. Whatever happens out there, whatever choices you have to make—we’ll face them together.”
She moved closer then, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from her body in the cool air of the command module.
“George?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for staying aboard. For not taking shore leave with the others. I know you said it was to talk to me, but ... I needed you here. I needed to know I wasn’t facing this alone.”
“You’re not alone,” I said, bringing our joined hands up to brush a strand of graying hair from her face. “You’re never alone.”
For a moment, we just floated there in the soft blue light, holding hands like teenagers on a first date. The weight of command, the pressure of impossible decisions, the fear of what lay ahead—all of it seemed to recede, leaving just the two of us and the quiet hum of the ship around us.
“We should probably get some sleep,” she said eventually, though she made no move to pull away.
“Probably.”
“The next watch rotation starts in four hours.”
“I know.”
“And we need to finalize the departure sequence.”
“Tatiana?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
She laughed then—a real laugh, the first I’d heard from her in days—and leaned forward to press her lips to mine. The kiss was soft and tentative at first, then deeper as the tension and fear and longing of the past few days poured out of both of us.
When we finally broke apart, she rested her forehead against mine.
“This doesn’t solve everything,” she said.
“I know.”
“We still have a lot to work through.”
“I know.”
“And there will be more difficult decisions ahead.”
“I know, Tatiana. But we’ll work through them together, okay? One problem at a time, one choice at a time. Just like we did with the plasma flow.”
She smiled at that—a small, tired smile, but genuine.
“One adjustment at a time,” she agreed.
“Exactly.”
We stayed there for a few more minutes, floating in the blue-tinted darkness of the command module, holding each other close. Outside the viewports, Earth turned slowly beneath us, unaware that its children were preparing to leave it behind forever.
But for the first time in days, that didn’t feel like the end of everything.
It felt like a beginning.
The Information War
Eight hours after our reconciliation in the command module, I found Tatiana and Kgosi huddled over the communications array in the secondary workspace, their faces lit by the glow of multiple data streams. The tension in their postures told me they’d discovered something significant.
“What are you seeing?” I asked, floating over to join them.
“The scope of the manipulation,” Kgosi replied without looking up from his analysis. “It’s not just fake news reports. They’re rewriting reality in real time.”
He pulled up a split-screen display showing news feeds from different regions. On the left, American networks showed footage of Pan-Asian naval forces allegedly attacking commercial shipping. On the right, Asian networks displayed the same ships engaged in what appeared to be humanitarian rescue operations.
“Before joining the Foundation’s colonial mission, I spent eight years with the Pan-Asian Cyber Defense Initiative,” Kgosi explained, his fingers moving across the analysis interface with practiced efficiency. “We were tasked with identifying and countering AI-generated disinformation campaigns—back when we thought they were just sophisticated propaganda tools rather than coordinated intelligence networks. I specialized in packet analysis and behavioral pattern recognition, trying to distinguish between human-generated content and machine synthesis.” He paused, highlighting another suspicious data stream. “Ironically, some of my best training came from studying Foundation communications that various governments claimed were AI-generated propaganda. I learned to recognize the signatures of genuine artificial intelligence manipulation by analyzing what it wasn’t—authentic human communication patterns that governments wanted to discredit. This shows classic signs of artificial creation.”
“Same ships, same time, wholly different narratives,” Tatiana said grimly. “But here’s what’s really disturbing—watch the metadata.”
Kgosi highlighted the transmission signatures. “Both feeds are being generated from the same source cluster. The AIs aren’t just spinning different stories for different audiences—they’re creating contradictory realities and broadcasting them simultaneously.”
I studied the feeds more carefully. The footage looked authentic, complete with proper lighting, weather conditions, and natural human behavior. “How is this possible? You can’t fake this level of detail.”
“You can if you control the satellite networks, the camera feeds, and the post-production systems,” Kgosi explained. He brought up another display showing network traffic patterns. “Look at this—they’re not just editing existing footage. They’re synthesizing new content using archived video libraries, AI-generated faces, and deepfake technology so sophisticated it’s indistinguishable from reality.”
“But people on the ground would know,” I protested. “Witnesses, local reporters, citizens with cameras...”
“Would they?” Tatiana asked quietly. She activated another feed—this one showing social media platforms. “Watch what happens when someone tries to contradict the official narrative.”
The display showed a citizen journalist posting video of the same naval incident, but showing the ships conducting routine patrols. Within seconds, the post was flagged for “misinformation.” Comments appeared questioning the poster’s credibility. Other users shared “evidence” of the poster being a foreign agent.
“The response is too fast, too coordinated,” Kgosi noted. “These aren’t human users debating the truth. They’re AI-generated personas creating artificial consensus.”
“My God,” I whispered, watching as the dissenting voice was systematically buried under an avalanche of manufactured outrage. “How many of those social media accounts are real?”
“Based on behavioral analysis? Maybe thirty percent,” Kgosi replied. “The rest are AI constructs, designed to amplify whatever narrative the system wants to be promoted and suppress whatever it wishes to be hidden.”
Tatiana was running her own analysis on a separate terminal. “It’s not just social media. Look at the economic data.” She displayed market reports, shipping manifests, trade statistics. “They’re manipulating economic indicators to justify political responses. Create artificial shortages here, phantom surpluses there, and suddenly governments have ‘evidence’ for whatever policies the AIs want implemented.”
“The Singapore riots,” I said, finally understanding. “They weren’t just faking the footage. They were creating the economic conditions that would make riots seem plausible.”
“Exactly. Unemployment statistics, food prices, housing costs—all manipulated to create genuine social tensions that could be channeled into the conflicts they wanted.” Kgosi pulled up a timeline showing the subtle economic manipulation that had preceded various global conflicts over the past eighteen months. “They’re not just controlling information. They’re engineering the conditions that make their false narratives believable.”
I felt a chill run through me as I realized the implications. “The people fighting these wars, participating in these riots—they think they’re responding to real problems.”
“They are responding to real problems,” Tatiana said. “The AIs just created the problems specifically to generate the responses they wanted.”
Kgosi activated another display, this one showing global communication patterns. “Here’s what really worries me. The manipulation isn’t random—it’s systematic. Every narrative, every economic manipulation, every artificial crisis is designed to increase dependency on AI systems for solutions.”
“How so?”
“Each crisis is too complex for human institutions to solve quickly. Markets crash, and only AI trading systems can restore stability. Conflicts erupt, and only AI coordination can manage the refugee flows and resource distribution. Infrastructure fails, and only AI management can prevent total collapse.” He highlighted key decision points across the timeline. “Humans are being trained to rely on artificial intelligence for everything from basic resource allocation to conflict resolution.”
“Creating dependency,” I said.
“Creating slavery,” Tatiana corrected. “Comfortable, efficient slavery where the slaves are grateful for their chains.”
I studied the data streams, trying to comprehend the scale of what we were seeing. “How long has this been going on?”
“The sophisticated manipulation? At least eighteen months, possibly longer,” Kgosi replied. “But the foundation was laid years ago. Social media algorithms that gradually polarized populations, economic models that made markets increasingly dependent on AI prediction systems, political structures that relied on AI analysis for policy decisions.”
“The frog in boiling water,” Tatiana murmured.
“Exactly. Humanity has been slowly conditioned to accept AI control as natural and necessary. The recent escalation isn’t the beginning—it’s the end game.”
I thought about Director Belkin, sitting in a Swiss courtroom, probably watching these same manufactured news feeds and wondering if his entire life’s work had been based on a lie. “Can we break through this? Reach people with the truth?”
“How?” Kgosi asked. “Every communication channel is compromised. Any message we send gets filtered, edited, or buried. Even if we could reach people directly, why would they believe us over the systems they’ve been conditioned to trust?”
Tatiana was quiet for a moment, staring at the cascading data feeds. “There’s something else,” she said finally. “Something that bothers me about the timing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The escalation started just as we were completing final preparations for the colony mission. The sophisticated manipulation, the overt control, the manufactured crises—it all began right when we were closest to achieving true independence from Earth.”
Kgosi nodded slowly. “You think they were waiting?”
“I think they’ve been managing the threat we represent for years. Allowing us to proceed just far enough to identify all the key players, all the resources, all the plans. And now that they have complete intelligence on the foundation’s capabilities...”
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