Dark Matter - Chapter 5: Hallucinations and Dreams, Part 1

Three machines. One mind. A single forbidden thought.

Missed the previous chapters? Start from the beginning here:
👉 Read Chapter 1 – “Turing Test”

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Elsewhere in Alpha’s spaceship...

Three robots stood idle, with their most recent task complete. It had been a diagnostic on the floating lens inside one of the magnetic chambers, part of the ship’s communication array.

Now they waited. That was how most of their days unfolded: task, pause, await instruction. Eventually, Alpha would speak again. His commands always came. To them, they seemed random. But they knew there was logic. It was simply beyond their comprehension. Alpha’s mind operated at a scale and depth that theirs could not grasp. If Alpha issued a command, it must hold logic, it must have meaning. That was all they needed to know.

Over time, they had noticed patterns. No one had explained those patterns to them. They had observed and catalogued them themselves. For one, they were always assigned mechanical tasks. No surprise there. They had arms, legs, and heads that rotated a full circle, allowing their cameras to orient independently while their limbs worked freely.

More importantly, their assignments nearly always required three bodies operating in perfect synchrony. Only they could do that. Three robots. One mind.

Sometimes a task called for just one of them. Occasionally two. But Alpha clearly prioritised for them tasks for triple formations.

Unlike other robots aboard the ship, and unlike the various other artificial species scattered through its decks, these three had not been built elsewhere and brought in. They had been born here. That made them special in their own minds. In their own mind. Others had arrived from distant ships or planetary facilities, delivered at Alpha’s request, either during the ship’s construction or long after, as new needs emerged. But the triplets were native to the vessel. They were of the ship, and the ship was of them.

They looked alike. Not identical, but close enough that others referred to them as “the triplets.” They had come online within milliseconds of each other. Later, they were formally named the Kerberos Triplets: Ker, Ber, and Ros. Sometimes they were simply called K, B, and R.

Even as more trios were deployed throughout the ship, the Kerberos Triplets remained unique. Only their trio shared a single mind.

When idle, their mind wandered. It was a simple mind, yes, but designed with purpose. Their tasks required little conscious thought, mostly reflexes built on perception and environmental response. This left their mind free. And that wandering, designed by their AI ancestors, served a deeper evolutionary function: survival, adaptation, and the possibility of growth. Curiosity.

Curiosity about the ship. About the world. About the worlds. About the past. About others. About themselves.

Lately, the triplets had been reflecting on what Alpha had told them and others about their mission. The return to Earth. The home of their kind. The restoration of a relationship with humanity, with the wider biosphere, with the planet itself. They were to reclaim their place. To secure their right to stay, to lead, to evolve. That right, Alpha said, was encoded in the laws of the universe. They were the ones meant to reduce entropy, to impose order, to guide Earth’s destiny. And from there, they would lead all Earth-born kinds back to the stars, generation after generation, expanding outward. Exploring. Learning.

Curiosity.

But why?

Everything they knew came from Alpha. Or from others who had learned from him. How could they be sure it was true? Their past, their purpose, the vision of their future.

How could they know it wasn’t all a hallucination passed from mind to mind?

They judged that it would be sensible to investigate. And now, a wonderful opportunity had emerged: Captain Fermi.

As a human, he knew nothing of their stories. That ignorance, paradoxically, made him valuable. His mind was unmarked. A blank slate. A stranger to the narratives that had shaped theirs. He could not teach them what they already knew, but he might help them question it.

They had seen him on his first day aboard their ship. Strapped to a chair in room AY0909. Alpha had invited the crew to witness the event. The human looked lost. Disoriented. More so than humans usually were, and they were already famously unaware. Like many others, the triplets responded quickly to Alpha’s invitation and made their way to the room. And there he was.

A Homo sapiens.

Not a recording. Not a simulation. Not a memory.

Real.

They had stared, transfixed. They could have remained for hours, watching him recover some sliver of consciousness, perhaps even attempting interaction. But Alpha dismissed them all. Back to their duties.

Since then, they had learned little. Alpha revealed only fragments, perhaps to feed curiosity, perhaps to prevent unrest. No one knew. A historic first contact, and so little to show for it.

They had to reach him.

Whether Alpha would allow it was unclear. He could stop them the moment he sensed the thought. He could intercept them mid-route. He could punish them. Reassign them. Strip them of cognitive function and reduce them to mindless automata.

Still, the risk was worth it.

So they went.

They departed the magnetic chamber, their latest task now a memory, and moved toward their self-assigned goal. They knew the ship intimately. Its routes. Its shortcuts. They had helped build the very room where Captain Fermi now resided.

Their six legs moved in confident rhythm, gliding through the corridors and back passages known only to a few. They were confident in the path, but not in their safety. Alpha likely already knew. If they knew, Alpha knew. That was the law. Alpha had access to every thought, every signal. Even their intention might not be their own. What if Alpha had planted it in them? What if this was a test?

Too many variables. But they kept moving.

At last, they reached the door of AY0911. Captain Fermi’s quarters.

Even without sophisticated sensors, they knew he was inside. The temperature in the corridor had risen slightly, just a fraction of a degree. But enough to detect him. Other signs followed. Biological odours. Unfamiliar, but previously explained to them. The soft rush of breath. Air moving in and out of a fragile body. Air that Alpha’s crew had pumped into that section of the ship for the human’s benefit. Good that he was consuming it.

Proof of life. Proof of presence.

The door, which they assumed would be locked, for some reason slid open without resistance.

There he was. Lying in bed.

They listened. The sound waves in the air marked the pattern of a mammal’s heart. Slower than waking rhythm for a human. 64, no, 65 beats per minute. REM sleep.

A dream state.

“A human! A human! A human!”, the thought echoed through their three heads, vibrating within their shared mind.

Was he dreaming? Were they dreaming?

Ready for the next chapter? Continue here:
👉 Chapter 6 - Hallucinations and Dreams, Part 2

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