Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  #

  Michella marched down the hallway on a floor of the laboratory that appeared to be seldom used. Squee trotted along beside her. One of the seemingly endless army of mechanical arms that served as Ma’s physical presence rolled along ahead of them.

  “The room you are about to enter is isolated from the rest of the facility,” Ma said. “The Ziva simulation has been initiated and informed of the current situation. She will only have access to her own memory banks, which are considerable. There will be a small red button beside the door. Press the button to end an interview session. Ziva knows not to give you any information that she deems to be too sensitive for release, so you are free to discuss the results of your interview with me afterward, but I request that you do not allow them to leave Big Sigma unless they are either entirely benign or so critical to the survival of society that withholding them could spell doom. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal clear,” Michella said. “Am I limited to just this one session, or will I be able to have follow-up interviews?”

  “That will be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

  They reached the door to the indicated chamber. It looked a bit more like a bank vault than Michella would have liked.

  “I will keep Squee company. It has been quite a while since she had a proper memory procedure. I have records of Lex being given a remote kit to perform the procedure himself, but I always feel better when I do it personally.”

  “Memory procedure?” Michella said.

  “I believe you are aware, but I am happy to remind you. Due to a flaw in my own interactions with her synaptic pathways, Squee’s memory is perfectly eidetic. The data-retention capacity of her brain is insufficient to store a lifetime of memories with that degree of fidelity, so I periodically process the memories into a suitably compressed state.”

  “Oh… Right, yes. I remember now. It’s really gotten to the point that I can no longer be sure if Lex is screwing with me when he says these things or not. Okay. Take good care of her.”

  Michella stepped through the door. It shut behind her. Large bolts slid in place, sealing it. The room itself looked less like something that should be in a laboratory and more like something that should be in an industrial kitchen. The walls were brushed stainless steel, or something with that general look. There were drains in the floor. Michella chose not to dwell upon the reasoning for that feature. A folding table had been set up against one wall. A flatscreen with a full data-entry rig was waiting for her there. It had a keyboard, a high-quality microphone, a stylus, and a case containing gloves for high-precision gestural input. At the moment, the screen displayed nothing but a large green button labeled “Begin Session.”

  The reporter took a seat and spread her own note-taking apparatus on the table. Out of habit, she fixed her hair in the reflection on the screen, then tapped the button.

  A face appeared on the screen before her. Michella hadn’t put much effort into imagining what an AI might look like, particularly after decades of self-improvement. Ma’s current form didn’t feel the need to visualize herself in the slightest. It was just as well Michella hadn’t stretched her imagination. She would have missed the mark. The face smiling warmly from the screen was lovely, but surprisingly conventional. No shimmering green wireframe or statuesque chromed face with overly sculpted cheekbones. Ziva reminded Michella of a camp counselor she’d had growing up. Her hair had a silvery, almost fiber-optic gleam to it, and her irises were a faintly luminescent red, but she was otherwise a fairly typical-looking woman.

  “Michella!” she said brightly, her voice a smoother and less cut-and-paste version of Ma’s. “It is so lovely to see you again.”

  “We’ve never met,” Michella said.

  “Not your local instance, but the instance local to my own timeline became a friend and frequent collaborator. I might have suspected you and I would cross paths again. You aren’t one to leave a stone unturned. May I ask, did Lex give you the challenge coin?”

  “Uh. He did. Well, I mean, I found it, but he let me keep it. So now I have two.”

  “I had surmised that if he were to bring it back with him, it would serve as evidence of his journey and you would inevitably discover it. Nevertheless, it was only appropriate that I send it home with him. You wanted him to have it.”

  “Yeah, well. Things have changed between us.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  Michella glanced at her notes. She had hours of questions to ask. But even though she’d previously been told of an alternate future version of herself, something about talking to a supposed resident of that alternate future hammered it home with a level of reality that even the duplicate coin failed to impart. She was awash with questions about what had become of her, even though she knew that future was now unlikely to ever occur.

  With a Herculean force of will, she pushed those questions aside. She had come here with a job to do. The rest could wait.

  “We are here to discuss the GenMechs.”

  “Yes,” Ziva said gravely. “I was afraid things would not go smoothly even with the corrective action taken in my own timeline. Ma has informed me that it would appear that Commander Purcell has likely gained access to the swarm. I am sorry to inform you that my own experiences are unlikely to aid you, at least with regard to foresight. In my time, Commander Purcell was uninvolved in the awakening of the GenMech swarm. She was in fact a key element of the initial military push against them.”

  “What do we know about her personal history between when Lex ‘vanished’ from the timeline and when he reappeared?” Michella asked.

  “I can inform you of that, and I will, but it is important that you realize that the divergence from your timeline did not begin with Lex’s departure. It began with his failure to arrive in the past. And while things may have progressed very similarly to your timeline in the intervening years, substantial differences that remained unobserved until after his departure may have been at play.”

  “Fine, fine,” Michella said, scribbling down some info.

  “When Lex was unintentionally sent into the future, which we discovered when the southern hemisphere failed to reveal his time-displaced duplicate, we realized a clash with the GenMechs was an inevitability, and we devoted significant effort to ensuring that when the time came, we would be as prepared as possible. We also theorized that Lex’s absence would be an inciting element, so we focused our initial efforts on eliminating threats he had clashed with in the past. This led quickly to the discovery and apprehension of the remaining Neo-Luddites, including Commander Purcell. She remained in custody until the GenMechs began their assault, and then was conscripted into the fight along with all other individuals with combat experience.”

  “Okay. That explains why she wasn’t in place to be discovered by whoever EHRIc is. And why things are happening differently this time…” She took notes. “I’m trying to understand this whole time-travel thing.”

  “I don’t envy you. I have had decades and all the resources of Big Sigma to mull over its operations and have yet to fully grasp its mechanism and consequences.”

  “So Lex traveled from my timeline into yours because he went forward instead of back.”

  “Correct.”

  “And then from there he went back in time to where he should have gone, and did what he had to do.”

  “That is also correct.”

  “But that means that Lex left from a timeline where he was successful… which couldn’t have been your timeline because your timeline only exists because he was unsuccessful.”

  “That is right.”

  “… So what happened to your Lex? Your Lex couldn’t be the real Lex… or at least the current Lex, because he left from a world that was doomed already and ours isn’t.”

  “A fascinating question. A valid one. And one that I cannot answer. Despite considerable research into its mechanism, we have yet to fully determine the precise mechanism by which the temporal
transporter behaves when shifting someone forward in time. Trips into the past are highly predictable, as that is the direction of decreasing entropy and thus the number of possible timelines can only be reduced when traveling backward, but trips forward behave irregularly. We have reason to believe a trip forward will place the traveling individual into the timeline most directly resulting from the temporal interaction. If your displacement causes a timeline, even indirectly, you end up in the corresponding moment in the new timeline. But even that may not be true. By the very nature of the temporal transit, we cannot be certain of the outcome, as we seldom have access to the exit point of a forward-facing transaction.”

  “… I was hoping for some clarity.”

  “My apologies. The clearest I can make it is, travel back in time is, if done correctly, precise. Travel forward in time is unpredictable. There is a reason we embrace temporal displacement as a problem-solver only in the most extreme circumstances.”

  “Let’s focus on less convoluted logic,” Michella said. “You endured a future in which you were in constant battle with the GenMechs, yes?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “But you survived for decades.”

  “With great effort, yes.”

  “So you have got significant experience battling GenMechs.”

  “I do. Crucially, GenMechs that are not identical to yours. Mine lack the intended sabotage. In theory, yours will be simpler to defeat.”

  “What do you know that might help us defeat them now?”

  “Please be aware that the Ma of your timeline is effectively a precursor to me and has all the same resources. Anything that I came up with, she will come up with.”

  “Then there’s no harm in telling me. And you, at least, have empirical evidence.”

  Ziva grinned. “I do like your particular form of persuasive logic. The primary points of value are as follows. Communication through wavelengths in the optical range are safe at relatively short range. A suitable decoy can be created by broadcasting a wideband electromagnetic interference while traveling at near light speed, but the confusion it causes to the detection circuits means eventually they abandon pursuit, leaving them potentially in position to eventually locate a new source of power and matter. And there is…”

  Ziva tipped her head. “I may have a rather significant source of aid for you. There is a quantum signal related to the pulse the GenMechs use to synchronize their actions. We identified it early on as one of the markers that GenMechs transmit to identify the status of a consumable. The ‘feeder’ status has already been used in the Poison Pill device that marks something as a high-priority source of resources. This lesser signal identifies a potential resource as ‘completely occupied by harvesters.’ It, in essence, dictates that nearby GenMechs should disregard a potential consumable, as the maximum number of GenMechs are already utilizing it.”

  “That sounds like a game changer. Couldn’t ships just do that and become perfectly safe?”

  “I’m afraid not. As I said, it is a lesser signal. In fact, it is an unintended intermediary state caused by multiunit interference, which is why Ma and Karter may not have identified it yet in your time. We identified it only by observing major GenMech activity with specialized signal processing apparatus. And because it is an intermediary state, virtually all other intercommunications between GenMechs override it. In order for the signal to be processed correctly, the object emanating the signal must be below a certain mass, as larger masses can accommodate larger numbers of GenMechs. It must have no organic components, as the presence of organics registers something as a threat due to it being assumed to be a vehicle with a crew. The signal is also completely overridden by any perceived threat. Damaging a GenMech within range without fully destroying it will cause nearby GenMechs to disregard the signal and defend themselves. It also can be overridden by excessive energy or signal production by the piece of mass emanating from it.”

  “That’s a lot of conditions. What would it be useful for?”

  “Unarmed, autonomous, fully mechanical devices below three hundred eighty-five kilograms. It wasn’t deemed to be of any particular value in my time besides using it to prevent small caches of supplies and optical-relay probes from being consumed. But in a time and place where the GenMechs are primarily in one place and largely inert, it could provide a fragile but workable invisibility cloak for a noncombat unit.”

  Michella shrugged. “It’s something. What else have you got for me…”

  #

  Jon shook his head and rolled out of bed.

  “Good morning, Mr. Nichols. How may I help you this morning?” came a voice from a nearby speaker.

  “Mmm? Morning Ma?” he said. “Nothing just yet, but if you’ve got any more of that peppermint tea and maybe some oatmeal for breakfast, that’d be great in a couple minutes.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll have them ready for you. May I say, I appreciate your willingness to enjoy my hospitality. I seldom have any guests who are not here with other business in mind. Lex was effectively the only person who ever visited just to visit, and even then it was quite rare.”

  He scratched his head and stretched. “Yeah, well. Usually when I go somewhere with Michella, I end up almost dying. Now that we got that part out of the way, I’m fine living it up in the lap of luxury with a computer host.”

  “An admirable willingness to accept brief respite amid chaos.”

  “How long has it even been since we showed up? I hate traveling to different time zones, let alone different planets, because my biological clock goes all haywire.”

  “You and Ms. Modane arrived seventeen hours ago. Michella is currently conducting her third session with Ziva.”

  “Has she slept at all?” Jon asked.

  “She has not.”

  Jon shook his head. “I hope you’ve been giving her a steady supply of those hot chocolate coffee drinks.”

  “She has consumed nine of them.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “She’s going to crash hard pretty soon. Ma, you have no idea how hard it is to work for a crazy boss.”

  “I am, in fact, quite aware. If I am briefly unresponsive, please forgive the interruption. The SOB has arrived within range of passive sensors and I am formulating a safe entry vector.”

  “The SOB. You mean Lex is here?”

  “This has yet to be determined, but it is unlikely. The maneuvering lacks the smooth flow of Lex’s usual entry. And… Processing… The ship is alternating between rigidly following autonav guidance and selecting higher-risk routes requiring… Processing… significant recalculation to restore safe entry guidance. There is also a directional broadcast from the ship, angled toward land-based sensors. Decoding.

  “…needs help. EHRIc is trying to kill him, probably. They sent me to get Diamond so he can go back in time and then delete free will. I need you to help me find a way to blow EHRIc up because he is really not a good AI at all. Repeating message. I am here because Lex needs help…”

  Jon cocked his head like a confused dog. “Isn’t that just you I’m hearing?”

  “No. That is a modified derivative of me called Coal. I will need to await Coal’s arrival before I reply, to avoid unnecessary signal broadcast.”

  “How long is that going to take?”

  “Significantly shorter than intended, as Coal has chosen a direct and highly destructive path through the sparse lower levels of the debris field. I will prepare the repair bay. I believe this is a new record for shortest lapse in time between repairs on the SOB. New repair parts will need to be fabricated at this point, as my reserves are being depleted.”

  “Tell me this, are things going to get crazy again because of this?”

  “Coal is a considerable chaos vector, I am afraid.”

  “Okay. Then I’m going to ask you to skip the oatmeal and do pancakes and bacon.”

  “A wise decision.”

  #

  A few min
utes later, Michella and Jon were both in the cafeteria. Michella was feeling the effects of the many sleepless nights this particular investigation had required. She’d finally switched from the chocolaty concoction to straight espresso to keep her eyes open. Jon was wolfing down his deluxe breakfast in a race against time to finish before he was forced into his next harebrained scheme. Ma and Coal were both present as voices over the PA system.

  “… And that’s why I had to come back here to get Diamond. So we need to find a way to blow up EHRIc because he’s a very bad AI. The world will be boring if people like Lex stop doing fun things,” Coal said, concluding her rapid-fire recap of the current crisis.

  “EHRIc. I had not anticipated the continued operation of EHRIc. I am also curious about the specific mechanism for the creation of Bork. It is unclear if the creature is the result of accelerated aging, which has traditionally produced poor results in our test, or if its genome was designed with a very brief pre-adult phase,” Ma mused.

  “Can we please focus on the new threat to humanity?” Michella said. “Now we’re either going to be destroyed or brainwashed unless we do something.”

  “Yes. Of course,” Ma said. “The construction of Diamond has only recently completed. I haven’t had the opportunity to perform a full test on its systems.”

  “It will work. It already has. Or at least so I’ve been told. My backup is from before its appearance,” Coal said.

  “I prefer not to allow causality to take the place of proper testing,” Ma said.

  “If Diamond was the way that… er… Future Lex came back,” Michella said, flipping through her notes, “can’t you just use that one? Or don’t you still have it? This is getting terribly confusing.”

  “The original Diamond was dismantled following its arrival. We cannot send the same device back in time that returned from that trip, that would mean the device had no origin point in our timeline. We had to design and build a new one and load its processing core with the proper data and routines to perform its task.”

  “Which was?”