Journey to the stars and worlds of imagination: 2024 S : The Price of Surrender

It was a toss-up as to what battle to use to illustrate surrender. It could be one of the reenactments I covered as a correspondent or as a volunateer. The most logical examples should have come from one of the fights or battle scenes in one of the fantasy series. However, the villains didn't surrender, didn't ritually surrender their sword. Instead, they slunk away beneath a clown of invisibility. So, a different tact was taken. Not surrendering.

One of the stories in the military tribute collection, Hearth and Sand, filled the need.

To set the scene, in a tale of a near-future, a pilot with no future fights an errant artificial intelligence in control on a civilian air transport. While he hid given up and stopped fighting his incurable disease, a sense of duty instilled by decades of service rises and he refuses to surrender his and the other passengers fates to a short-circuited computer.

Courtesy of Pixabay.

The aircraft reached cruising altitude and the last of Chippi’s strength deserted him. After a final pull on his seat belt, he dropped off into a sleep that was neither restful nor deep. From a habit born of years in the cockpit, one part of his mind retained an awareness of his surroundings. The bustle of flight attendants taking food orders and dispensing drinks served as a connection to the life around him.

The plane’s tilt as it entered a steep bank pulled Chippi to alertness. With flights now computer controlled to avoid weather fronts, he knew the steep turn indicated a major problem. Before he could summon an attendant, a computer voice, one almost indistinguishable from a true human’s, came over the aircraft’s message system...

Chippi looked out the window. However, instead of storm clouds, he was greeted by a clear blue sky. The view below disturbed him even more. This isn’t right, he thought. The NorPac dike follows the coastline from MexCal to Puget Sound. It should be just off our starboard wing. But the massive structure that held the Pacific Ocean at bay and served as the foundation for the desalination plants was not visible from either side of the craft. Only a vast unbroken expanse of water appeared in the viewports.

After the aircraft performs erratic maneuvers, tossing people around, a piece of logic code buried deep within the plane’s complex artificial intelligence triggered a relay and the aircraft pulled out of the spin to level off just above the crashing waves. The brief respite allowed Chippin the chance to move. Crawling from seat to seat, the sick, bruised and battered man reached the locked door that gave access to the cockpit.

Amidst the plane’s erratic actions, he tried to punch in the universal emergency crew code. Twice the number was rejected. He thrust his fingers at the keypad in frustration. A loud snick sounded as the cockpit controller recognized the code and released the lock. Tumbling through the swinging hatch, Chippi ended up on his back against a panel of blinking warning lights. “AI ERROR — AI ERROR” scrolled across a panel on the opposite side of the cockpit.
"Thank God,” was his unconscious comment, seeing an old-fashioned pilot’s chair. The passengers and crew would have had no chance for survival if the aircraft had been the latest model Douglas Orbiter 301. Unlike craft designed after the age of AI control, this cockpit retained control stick and rudder pedals just as those once used by the men who pioneered flight.

To find out who wins the competition, human experience or technology, read "Live or Surrender To Technology" in Hearth and Sand.

~till next time, Helen

An author's note: "Live or Surrender To Technology" was written as a tribute to a family member who after years in the sky took his last flight westward just days before 9-11.