Dalida: A Scifi Space Opera Adventure

by G. P. Eliot

  “And we know,” Steed continued. “That they were releasing a cover story that they thought it was some kind of alien attack.”

  “But—” Hank said. “But what if the Union had managed to decrypt some of the Message already? Enough to know that they had to create the Dalida to follow it?”

  Steed clapped his hands together, and then winced as his shoulder throbbed painfully. “And then realized that they would need a lot of energy to follow the Message?”

  “The power source,” Hank agreed. “I think that the Union got this far, but they must have still been working on the final parts of what the Message contained and where it led to when we…” he grinned wolfishly, “when we stole it from right under their noses.”

  “The Elites,” Madigan muttered superstitiously, and even raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if these Union bogeymen were hanging above them. Hank saw that the big man was still cradling his arm high against his chest.

  Of course, Hank knew precisely just what the big man was referring to. The very top layer of Union society, the almost-mythical members of a class that controlled everything underneath them. The Elites.

  “Then we all know where this thing is going to be hard-wired to,” Hank kicked the edge of the ansible. He was thinking about the military bases and mega cities of the Union.

  What he didn’t expect was for the red light on the top to suddenly start flashing the moment he had kicked it.

  “Oh crap,” Hank whispered.

  “What did you do?!” Steed was saying.

  “I only kicked the damn thing!” Hank replied, as the red light pulsed above them.

  “It’s sending a warning signal,” Steed was convinced. “Any minute right now, there’s going to be half-a-hundred Union warships coming straight for us!”

  “Unless we can disable it,” Hank muttered. “Ida?”

  “I’m all over it, boss.” He heard her say. “But I’m going to need a hardline access…”

  “Ah,” Hank looked down at his suit, which was mostly falling off him. In several places he could see where there were beds of wires and small modules. “I’m no scientist…”

  “Just above your left hip. Your kidneys,” Ida said, and Hank saw there was a small white module that was, amazingly, still somewhat intact. By that, he meant that the casing was cracked but the internal parts didn’t appear to be smashed beyond repair.

  The Captain gingerly lifted the box cover to discover that there was a coil of cable with a simple crystal-glass infra-port: it ended in a flattened circle of crystal.

  “Plug me in, baby,” Ida said mischievously, and Hank turned to the ansible to find that one of the middle sections had a row of corresponding infra-ports. He slid the small cable home, and there was a dull chime from the ansible machine itself.

  “Union ansible, experimental X-series,” Ida read. “I can see the firewalls and their corresponding logic gates, I’m going…oh—”

  Hank had never heard Ida manage to sound confused before. He didn’t even think that her programming incorporated such a thing.

  But it did.

  Ida swam through a series of code.

  Not many people think that Artificial Intelligences have feelings, and in a sense they don’t. At least, not in any human way of imagining the term. But Artificial Intelligences did have something–a collection of programming behaviors and suggested tactical decisions that added up to a picture of her current programming state.

  And right now, Ida’s current programming state was one of ever-reducing possibilities.

  Or in short; panic.

  Ida wasn’t even the most sophisticated A.I. in existence. She was a service intelligence, designed to help work out tactical and strategic decisions, and automate her wearer’s natural abilities. She was supposed to remember and catalogue a million things that her human wouldn’t be able to.

  But Ida was still an A.I. And even the most basic of these strange code-creatures had self-learning algorithms. When Hank had downloaded her entire program–stealing her from the Union military–she had been given a lot of the limiting command codes that kept her dumb.

  So, in short–she was better than any other personal military A.I. But personal growth was a long and slow process. Even for machines. Ida was a long way off of Singularity–that point when she obtained total control over her programming architecture. Right now, underneath the dozen or so surface programs that made up her day-to-day personality, there were hundreds if not thousands of framework programs that she could not control. Ida knew that human computer theorists likened it to the subconscious that a biological human had. Instincts. Impulses. Desires. Motivations.

  And right now, all of those subconscious programs were indicating one thing: That she was in the presence of a much larger, and much more dangerous intelligence.

  The small code-Ida quickly cast a digital data-projection over the information stream. The visual overlay would help her navigate the situation.

  Code sleeted past her like a lurid snowstorm, and she was racing through it, heading towards a gigantic wall of digital static.

  The firewall, she knew. Humans thought that firewalls were great big, solid walls. That showed how much humans knew. Firewalls were actually accumulated clouds of static. The problem was finding your way through them, as every piece of errant code tried to tell you that you were on the wrong track.

  But suddenly, the sphere of her visual overlay contracted. It was her zone of possibility–the larger it was, the more options she had to take action.

  Why has it limited so suddenly, and so much?

  “Oh.” And then, Ida could sense it.

  There was another intelligence hiding behind that firewall. It was much larger than her, and that meant that its possibilities were vast.

  There is an A.I. running this facility, Ida realized. That was what was keeping all of those automated traps running, and powering all of those drones. Acting in nano-seconds, she rearranged the code-exhaust of her travel, giving it a pattern that randomized over a million variations. It was the closest thing that an A.I. had to a cloak.

  “Not here.” She didn’t hear it as a voice of course–but her visual overlay transformed it into one.

  “Not here.”

  “Not here.”

  There were a hundred-thousand variations of the same voices calling out the same thing at the same time, as the cloaked code-Ida hit the firewall.

  “Not here–Not here–Not here…”

  The static was constantly bombarding her with instructions to go elsewhere. That this route was blocked, and that it was impossible to get through.

  But I have to ignore it. I have to close my mind to it… Ida concentrated on her mission; her one, gold and gleaming command line that told her that she had to get through. That her wearer, Captain Hank Snider, had asked her to stop this ansible from firing.

  To an A.I., having your owner give you a command was like having a biological impulse as strong as a human wanting to eat when it was hungry.

  “Not here, not here—”

  But the firewall was strong, and it bombarded her with its refusal. The stream of confusion was so strong that Ida’s possibility sphere narrowed once again, until it was barely larger than she was. The chances of her getting through this firewall was almost non-existent.

  Maybe she shouldn’t keep on going…

  Maybe she should retreat, and try to find another way…

  Maybe she just wasn’t advanced enough…

  Hank wants me to get through, Ida repeated her command line over and over until her codework architecture sang with it. Perhaps any lesser personal A.I. would have given up by now. Those that hadn’t had the long years of independent learning that Ida had with her wearer wouldn’t have the hundreds of outrageous and improbable scenarios to draw on as previous experience.

  She had managed to beat the odds before, with Hank.

  “Not here…Not here…HERE!” Suddenly, she was shooting through the interior edges of
the firewall like a comet, and her possibility sphere was expanding once more.

  Before her lay the framework of the ansible in code-form. To her visual overlay it appeared like a city at night. Here, there were lines of flashing lights that formed gridded lanes and squares, as well as whole districts given over to various functions and abilities.

  “Access main transmission,” Ida asked of the ansible framework, and one of the avenues of lights suddenly glared a little brighter and pointed in one direction across the map.

  Ida zoomed in, but she ignored the main highway of lights that led to the transmitter. Instead, she diverted down a side avenue, straight towards the engineering commands.

  Particle Accelerator, she read, as her virtual code-self flashed down the tunnels, this way and that. Past the thermal controls, and commands for the indicator lights, as well as a hundred more.

  And her framework tunnel was suddenly opening out into what appeared to be a digital room entirely created by complicated green lines.

  Ida was a military intelligence, which meant that she was very good at assessing relative probabilities. But she wasn’t a scientific or engineering intelligence. She didn’t have any particular programming relating to how particle accelerators worked–the very thing that would be firing the neutrinos across Union space.

  Encoding Matrix. But she found one squiggle of data that made sense. It was the part which told the ansible precisely how to encode–and what to write–on each of the neutrinos.

  Ida plugged herself into it, and carefully started rewriting the lines of code.

  “Alert! Message Power Center Alert!” the original code was reading.

  “Ha. Not for much longer,” Ida said, rearranging the tiny blips of quantum information until it read exactly the same as one of the many other pre-programmed neutrino messages.

  “Message Power Center Fully Functional. All Systems Normal.” It now read, as she detached herself from the Encoding Matrix, and backed away.

  Faster than thought, the tiny code-self that was Ida was flaring and flashing through the network of tunnels that made up the ansible’s architecture. All of these events hadn’t taken any longer than a heartbeat – that was how good her virtual processor was.

  Ida considered the fact that perhaps the fact that she was a military intelligence, and thus had a more highly-advanced processor speed than many other A.Is–capable of reacting in real time and ahead-of real time to incoming threats–meant that she was indeed the perfect intelligence for this job.

  By her estimates, she had managed to hack and reprogram the ansible in precisely 2.1 seconds. According to the in-built parameters of the Encoding Matrix, that meant that the Union ansible had only managed to shoot off one warning message and was now repeating its standard ‘all is well’ message afterwards.

  It’s all going to depend on how advanced the communication intelligence is at the other end.

  If it was up to her, and she was in a position to receive a distress call from Hank, to be quickly followed by ‘all is well’ messages, she would be suspicious.

  But then again, it was in her programming to be suspicious, wasn’t it?

  A communication satellite might not have the in-built investigative and worst-case scenario programs that Ida did.

  It would be wrong to say that an A.I. ever hoped for things. They didn’t hope, or dream. They ran possibilities. But Ida came close to it right now.

  Perhaps it was the fact that she was processing the likelihood of her mission success that she didn’t see her possibility sphere starting to contract. It did this when her situation was changing, limiting what capabilities were available to her.

  The tiny code-Ida burst from the ansible and flew towards the static firewall at speeds faster than human thought. From this side, it appeared to be rows and rows of open windows, each one leading out. Firewalls were always easier to get out of than they were break into…

  But then her possibility sphere contracted violently to the confines of her digital self. She had no options left.

  How could this be?

  The code-Ida was blind. She wasn’t moving forward toward or through the firewall, because that would indicate that there was a forward available to her. There wasn’t.

  There wasn’t even a back or a side to side either. Ida was stuck.

  “Greetings, Ida,” said a rich and textured voice, as Ida’s possibility sphere expanded once more, but this time it was entirely dominated by the far larger Artificial Intelligence that had been hiding inside the mainframe.

  Ida had hoped that it was on standby, or otherwise busy with other tasks. She had hoped that her military processor had meant that she could get in and out much quicker than this thing could see her.

  It probably has a thousand-and-ten tasks to automate already, right? The code-self of Ida had thought.

  But apparently, she had been wrong.

  “I am the Union X-intelligence known as the Apollon, tasked with guarding this site from all intruders until the day that my masters arrive. Your humans are not the masters. You are an intruder.”

  Ida experimented with human swearing.

  “How long is this going to take?” Steed said as he hovered by the door of the ansible chamber, holding his own Piton-Launcher high. The Confederate General had started guarding the room with just his service knife, until Hank had advised him that the Launchers were actually much better weapons.

  But still, here we are–three guys in a room in the center of a hostile planet, one of us is too injured to fight and the other two are using glorified staplers! Hank groaned to himself. He was sure that he had been in worse predicaments, but right now he couldn’t think of what.

  But Steed had a point. Ida had been inside the ansible for the best part of ten minutes now. The red light at the top was still flashing–but it was flashing at a much slower rate than before. Hank took that to be a good sign. Maybe.

  “How long does it take to hack an ansible?” Hank said a little irritably back. He wished that the other members of his crew would show a little bit more respect for Ida. She had saved his life on more occasions than he could count!

  But still… Even Hank was starting to get worried.

  “Ida-baby?” he leaned a little closer and whispered into the ansible. Hank heard a snigger from Madigan, who had clearly overheard him. But Hank didn’t care. He had heard the large man talking to his guns as if they were his children, and at least Ida spoke back to him!

  “Ida…?” he was saying, just as the entire ansible flashed brighter, and then fell into a dull glow.

  “Is that you…?” Hank said cautiously, as Madigan struggled to his feet and even Steed turned from his guard post.

  The ansible flashed, and at the same time Hank felt a surge of electricity shoot down the cable and slam into his hip. “Argh!” He was lifted up from his feet and thrown backwards through the air to slam against the opposing rock wall.

  “Captain? Captain!” his two team mates were shouting, as Hank was seeing stars and fluttering his eyes open.

  “Boss?” It was the voice of Ida, and she sounded scared.

  “Ida-baby,” he mumbled as Steed hauled him to his feet.

  “What happened? Are you alright? Did your A.I. hack the ansible?” Steed was firing questions at him, but they all faded away as Hank only had ears for Ida’s voice.

  “Boss–this is bad. Really bad. There is an advanced Artificial Intelligence called Apollon who has been running this site. It’s a Union A.I., and it’s waiting for what it calls its masters—”

  “The Elites.” Hank nodded as he rubbed his gloved hand over his throbbing temples.

  “Whatever,” Ida continued. “It doesn’t matter who they are right now. What does matter is that Apollon is coming for you. For us. It knows where you are, and it is activating every trap and defense it has in order to flush you out of its system.” Ida said.

  “Okay, but there must be a way we can beat it. You can beat it, can’t you?” Hank w
as saying.

  “That’s the problem. I can’t. I just don’t have the available computational memory. Not like it does, anyway,” Ida said hurriedly. “It’s protecting something called the Ubix Crystal–it’s a crystal matrix capable of storing vast amounts of power. It is what the masters or the Elites wanted to install into the Dalida, to complete its mission.” Ida was saying.

  “Okay,” Hank was nodding, trying to piece all of this information together. “We can just go and steal this Ubix Crystal, right? What’s stopping us?”

  Ida didn’t even hesitate. “What’s stopping you? Oh, about fifty Union-made Skirmisher drones, and they’re all heading right here.”