Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  But my point is, ART was a big transport with a lot of interactive processes and systems working in concert, which meant there were a lot of storage spaces that would not be obvious to human intruders. Or to hostile operating systems like targetControlSystem that seemed unable to use most of the architecture. Storage spaces where you could save a compressed backup copy of a kernel. Possibly your own kernel, if you were an advanced sentient control system who was very smart and very sneaky.

  I still couldn’t make feed connections with any of the operating stations so I tapped the pad below the display surface that looked the most like an internal systems monitor. The display floated upward and opened into an array of small data sources. Taking in information visually rather than through the feed felt horribly slow. I pulled up the manual interface and then had to pull the non-corporate-standard coding language out of my archive and load it into my internal processor. I got my query constructed and then flicked through the floating interfaces to get it loaded.

  After a subjective eternity that was actually 1.2 seconds long, the system started to display the data storage areas currently holding large and possibly anomalous files with structures that didn’t match the protocol for the area where they were stored. I had been betting on the procedural storage for the med platform, but the first possibility my query turned up was in the galley, in a data storage area hidden in a layer under the usual space for food production formulas. But when I searched on it, it read as empty.

  You know, I really don’t have time for this. A loose chunk from my back was sliding down in the station chair and it was hard to hold myself upright. I was leaking a lot, and I hate leaking.

  I checked my targetControlSystem channel, just for the satisfaction, and saw multiple failure indicators through my barrage of contacts. Yeah, don’t let the hatch close on you on your way down, fucker.

  Scout Two in the control area foyer sent me video of Targets Five and Six, banging away at the open panel beside the hatch.

  In a corridor just out of sight of the foyer, Amena’s drone group showed me her, Arada, and Thiago having a tense whispered conversation. Amena waved the fire suppressant container urgently and Arada had the captured energy weapon.

  It was exasperating. Amena, get out of there. You know these people are dangerous.

  She flinched and grimaced. Where are you? I can’t see what you’re doing anymore! Are you all right?

  Sort of, not really. I just have to do this one thing.

  I didn’t feel so good and it was hard figuring out the language to expand the query’s search. I ran it again, and again it turned up the food production data storage reserved space. Huh.

  TargetControlSystem went down, my contacts pinging an empty void. I didn’t discontinue my code attack, just in case it was a trick.

  The query wasn’t faulty, there was something in the food production data storage, no matter how firmly the reader said it was empty. The display station feeds were starting to come back online, so I could access their functions directly via my feed interface, which was a huge relief. I initiated a deep analysis scan of the reserved space in the food production storage, and immediately hit a request for a passcode. Well, shit.

  In the corridor, Amena whispered to Arada, “I think it’s dying.”

  Arada took the fire suppressant away from Amena and handed it to Thiago. She told him, “Be ready.”

  If this was really what I thought it was, the video clip was a clue. I replayed it into the request field and got no response. I ran a quick list of all the character, ship, and place names from World Hoppers. No response. And no time. Eden, the clip had been directed to Eden, a fake name I’d used for human clients, a name ART had never called me.

  My name, my real name, is private, but the name ART called me wasn’t something humans could say or even access. It was my local feed address, hardcoded into the interfaces laced through my brain.

  It was worth a shot, I guess. I submitted it to the request field.

  It was accepted and the storage space opened to reveal a large compressed file. Attached to it was a short instruction document with a few lines of complex code I couldn’t parse. But the instructions were clear. They said, “In case of emergency, run.” I pulled the code into the operating station’s processing area and ran it.

  All the lights in the control area went dark, then blinked back to life. Simultaneously all the display surfaces around me flickered, went to blank, then flashed reinitialization graphics.

  And ART’s feed filled the ship. In the pleasant neutral voice that systems use to address humans, it whispered, Reload in progress. Please stand by.

  Below, the hatch slid open. The Targets started to step inside but Scout Two saw Thiago run into the foyer, bellowing and spraying fire suppressant at them. Target Five turned toward Thiago while Six shoved forward into the control area. Then Arada stepped out from the hatchway and shot Target Five with the energy weapon.

  Which left Target Six still armed, with a clear shot at Thiago through the open hatchway.

  I grabbed Target Four’s energy weapon and shoved out of the chair, but my legs wouldn’t work right. I collapsed, rolled toward the edge of the platform, and shot Target Six. The blasts hit his chest and face and he staggered back into the bulkhead, then fell over Target Three’s sprawled body.

  Target Five staggered and swayed but he pointed his weapon at Arada.

  Then ART’s voice, ART’s real voice, filled the feed. It said, Drop the weapon.

  Arada dropped her energy weapon and Thiago dropped the fire suppressant. Both held up empty hands. I told it, Don’t hurt my humans.

  Target Five shouted something incoherent, then dropped his weapon and lurched sideways, clutching his head. Oh wow, ART must have been able to access Target Five’s helmet, via the code used by targetControlSystem.

  Target Five fell over and convulsed once on the deck, then went limp. Thiago started to put his hands down and then reconsidered. He said, “We mean no harm. We’re here because we were attacked by—by that person and others.”

  Arada added, “Who are you?”

  ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

  Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you.

  So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

  Amena ran through the hatch, shied away from the pile of dead Targets, then ran up the stairs. She dropped to her knees beside me and yelled, “Hey, we need help! We need to get to Medical!”

  ART said, I can hear you, adolescent human, there’s no reason to shout. I’ve dispatched an emergency gurney.

  I’ve always thought that everything ART says sounds sarcastic. If you were a human, I’m guessing it also sounded more than vaguely menacing.

  Arada stepped into the control area. Thiago was checking to see if Target Five was alive. (He wasn’t.)

  ART said, The intruder is dead.

  “Uhh…” Thiago glanced up at the ceiling. “But who are you? Are you a crew member, or—”

  Arada reached the top of the stairs and leaned over me, frowning worriedly. She had a cut above her left eyebrow, a first degree burn on her cheek, and her short hair was singed. She said, “Don’t worry, SecUnit, we’ll get you to Medical.” She squeezed Amena’s shoulder.

  I guess Amena had never seen a SecUnit hit with an energy weapon that caused them to lose 20 percent of the body mass on their back and expose their internal structure, because she seemed really upset.

  I was losing all my inputs but there was one thing I had to say before the gurney got here. “ART,” I said aloud, because ART could silence my feed if it wanted to. “You did this. You sent those assholes to kidnap my humans.”

  Of course not, ART said. I sent them to kidnap you.

  Then my performance r
eliability bottomed out and—

  Shutdown. Delayed restart.

  * * *

  So, that was another catastrophic failure. (Physically, that is. I was going to make a joke about catastrophic failures in other contexts for the second half of that sentence, but it just got too depressing.)

  Waiting for my memory and archive to come back online, at least I knew I wasn’t in a company cubicle. Even with no feed or visual input, I knew that because I was warm, which meant I was in a MedSystem for humans. Once I could access it again, I checked my buffer to see what had happened. Oh right, ART happened.

  The last conversation I had picked up on feed/ambient audio was:

  Amena, her voice a worried whisper, said, “Are you sure it’s going to be all right?”

  ART, whispering back to her on a closed feed channel and somehow managing not to sound sarcastic or menacing at all, said, Completely. The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired. Some systems were operating at suboptimal parameters due to repeated energy weapon strikes. The restart should correct that.

  I said, “Stop talking to my human.”

  ART said, Make me.

  I don’t know if I tried to make ART stop but that was when I lost all input again.

  Now I was at 34 percent performance reliability and climbing steadily, lying on my side on ART’s medical platform. My jacket and deflection vest were gone and the surgical suite had cut away my shirt to get to the burned parts. I was sticky from all the leaky fluid and blood and parts falling off (yes, it’s just as disgusting as it sounds). But I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I had the last time I’d been here, when ART had altered my configuration.

  ART. ART, you manipulative fucker.

  Whatever was going on, there was nothing I could do about it now, and that just made me more furious. So I watched five minutes of episode 174 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Did that work? No, no, it didn’t.

  Tentatively, I checked my inputs. (Tentatively, because I wanted to talk to a human right now about as much as I wanted to lose a couple of limbs and have a conversation about my feelings.) The drones I’d assigned to Amena had managed to survive. Following my last instruction to stay with her before they’d lost contact with me, they had adopted a tight circular formation a half-meter above her head. They had been collecting video the entire time I was out, and I ran it back to see what had happened.

  I forwarded through the boring parts with Amena being upset because of the whole me-lying-in-a-pool-of-steaming-blood-and-fluid thing and Arada trying to tell her this actually wasn’t unusual for me, then the gurney arriving. (It was a medical assistance device, designed to either bring casualties to the MedSystem or to carry them off a damaged ship, so its power and functions were autonomous. It was sort of like a big maintenance drone, capable of a certain range of actions, built in the shape of a rack with expandable shelves and arms. How it had survived the purge of ART’s other drones, I don’t know. Unless the Targets just hadn’t known what it was when it was folded up in its inert state.)

  It zipped in from the foyer, angled itself up the stairs, scooped me onto itself and clamped me down. (I hate being carted around like equipment, even though technically I am actually equipment.) As it started back down, Amena tried to follow it and Arada grabbed her arm. Looking up the way humans did when they were trying to talk to something they couldn’t see, Arada said, “Hello, your name is Art? Can you tell me if there’s anyone else aboard this ship?”

  ART said, There is an additional unidentified human in Medical, but she appears to be an injured noncombatant. I assume the two other humans present there are part of your group. All the intruders are accounted for.

  Amena wiped her nose (humans are so disgusting) and said, “That’s Eletra, she was a prisoner when we got here. Ras is there, too, but he’s dead.” She pulled away from Arada to follow the gurney down the stairs.

  Arada, with an expression somewhere between thoughtful and alarmed, trailed after her. Arada said, “Thank you, that’s a relief to hear. But can you tell us who you are?”

  Amena followed the gurney into the foyer. “That’s the ship. It’s SecUnit’s friend.” She threw a glance upward. “That’s you, right? You’re the transport?”

  Thiago knelt over dead Target Six, turning the helmeted head to see the face. He looked up, startled. “The transport?”

  ART said, Correct.

  “But bot pilots don’t talk like this,” Thiago said to Arada, keeping his voice low. “It can’t be a bot.”

  Hah.

  Arada didn’t bother to comment on that. “Transport, what happened here?” she asked. “Why did you attack our survey facility?”

  ART said, I am still reinitializing after a forced shutdown and deletion. I have prioritized restoring the MedSystem to full function.

  Amena’s drones caught an image of Arada and Thiago exchanging a brow-lifted look before she followed the gurney. Yeah, I think they had both noticed that ART had deliberately not answered the direct question. (Pro tip: when bots do that, it’s not a good sign.)

  I had to forward again through all the back and forth of getting me to Medical. Arada and Thiago stayed in the control area, and Overse went to join them, but Amena’s drones didn’t see a lot of that. She was sitting in Medical watching the surgical suite work on me and trying to tell Ratthi what had happened. It was confusing, with the humans talking on their comms, but I didn’t care enough to filter the raw video and separate out the different conversations. The only part that was new was about the safepod.

  It had been damaged when they separated from the facility. The decision to clamp onto what at the moment had been a hostile ship hadn’t been a voluntary one; the safepod’s guidance system had been damaged and had directed it toward the nearest functional transport before Overse could stop it. Then we were in the wormhole and it was too late to escape. By the time we had exited the wormhole, Overse and Arada had already had to cannibalize four of the EVAC suits aboard while they were trying to repair the failing life support, and they had estimated that they would last another seventeen hours, if that. All four of the humans needed treatment for toxic air inhalation, plus Ratthi had damaged a knee when a gravity fluctuation had slammed him into a bulkhead.

  At one point, Amena and Thiago had this conversation over the comm:

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” This was the fourth time he had asked her that and I was beginning to understand why she was so annoyed with authority figures all the time. “Those people, they didn’t hurt you?”

  “Uncle, I’m fine.” She said that in the normal human adolescent exasperated and borderline whiney tone. (That’s actually statistically normal for human adults, too.) Then she hesitated and added, “When we got here, they hit SecUnit with one of those big drone things and knocked it out and I thought it was dead and I was alone with them. The corporates, Eletra and Ras were there, but they were so scared and I knew … I was in a lot of trouble. Then SecUnit was just suddenly in the room and—and I knew we were going to fight these people, and we were going to win.” She leaned her hip against the med platform and folded her arms, tucking her hands up in her armpits like she was cold. “Are you sure SecUnit’s going to be all right? The transport said it was, but … it looks bad.”

  “I’m sure,” Thiago told her, sounding all warm and confident. Liar, you’re not sure. The others, who had seen me in way worse shape than this, they were sure. “Do you still have those drones over your head? Why are they there?”

  She glanced up, brow furrowed like she had forgotten them. “SecUnit gave me these when it had to go search the area and make sure there weren’t hostiles in our safe zone.”

  Sitting on the bench with a wound pack wrapped around his knee, Ratthi smiled. “That’s SecUnit. I’m glad it kept you safe.”

  Thiago sounded like it just made him more worried. He said, “What exactly were you doing?”

  I checked all my video inputs. Scout One was still in the
control area, watching Arada and Overse, who sat in ART’s station chairs, flicking through its displays. Scout Two was still in the foyer with a view of Thiago, who had searched Target Six’s suit and was trying to get the Targets’ screen device to work. Everyone was listening.

  Amena wiped her face impatiently. “We had just found the alien remnant tech on the engines, right before we came out of the wormhole into this system. We think that’s what let us get here so fast. SecUnit realized there was something wrong about the story Eletra and Ras told us, like they had only been captured a couple of days ago, which wasn’t nearly long enough for a trip to Preservation from even the nearest wormhole. We were trying to figure out what to do about it when we got the signal from you.”

  “Alien remnant tech?” The look Ratthi threw at Eletra was suspicious. Her eyes were open now and tracking, though she still looked confused. He had tried to talk to her earlier, but while she had blinked and shifted position occasionally, she hadn’t seemed aware of her surroundings. Ratthi was probably thinking about past evidence of corporations collecting illegal alien materials and how great that had turned out.

  On the comm, Overse said, “Is it dangerous? Should we try to remove it from the drive?”

  On the general feed and comm, audible to the whole ship, ART said, The foreign device detached from my drive and ceased to function when the invading system was deleted. Further interference is not advisable.

  That was definitely not menacing. Oh no, not at all.

  On a private feed channel to ART, I said, You set me up, you fucker. I was still catching up on archived drone video and fifty-four seconds behind actual time, so ART ignored me.