Stealing Light

Thirteen

Dakota was relieved to find no one else on the bridge of the Hyperion when she got there.

For a sophisticated piece of technology, an imaging plate didn’t look like much. Just a circular platform: you took an object, stuck it on the plate, and waited while the item was scanned. That simple.

Except, it wasn’t really so simple as that. Placing her figurine on the plate wouldn’t just return data concerning the raw composition of the materials comprising it. If the imager’s database was up to date, it could also return a whole slew of information about the figurine’s probable cultural origin and significance, and maybe even the name of whoever had created it. Beyond that it could also return reams of forensic data, including the DNA traces of every human-or non-human-who had ever handled it.

Accordingly, any number of artefacts-jewellery, mementos, even works of art-had been designed specifically with imager technology in mind. A ring placed on such a plate might generate a wide-band artificial sensorium representing the sight, sound, memory and tactile experience of an associated loved one. The pornographic potential of this technology had therefore been explored for centuries. On top of which, plate-readable data could be encoded into almost any substrate, and often was.

Perhaps this, then, was why the alien had handed her the figurine-because it contained some form of encoded data.

She had muttered curses at the empty corridors as she passed through them on her way across the ship, wondering why she’d taken so long for this to occur to her.

She pushed back the cover over the imager, a horizontal flat black disc set into a wall recess. Dakota pulled the figurine out of her pocket, placed it on the plate and stepped back. A few seconds passed and nothing happened.

She began to wonder if she’d been wrong after all.

‹Dakota…›

The Hyperion shuddered and the bridge lights flickered.

Piri! What was that?

‹I am investigating. ›

A light blinked and she realized the imager had begun its scan, although it was taking a lot longer to do so than normally. Numerical and compositional data began to spill across the imager’s screen: