by Ginger Booth
“Thrive, warp drives are a controlled technology. We use fifth generation star drives, but can manufacture third generation fuel. Or, upgrade your ship to a fifth generation drive.”
“Yegads,” Darren murmured, eyes greedy with technological lust. The third generation drive on Nanomage yielded an incredible power upgrade. They went two levels further?
“Sanctuary Control, this is very exciting!” Sass encouraged. “But who could we talk to about warp drives?”
That was a waste of 15 minutes. The AI decision tree maintained that warp drives were not for sale. She tried a different tack next, that she already owned a warp drive and merely sought a consultation with a qualified repair technician. Rosie treated her to an exposition on the excellent benefits of a fifth generation star drive. The AI conceded that no, a star drive was no substitute for a warp drive. But a fresh new JO-3 hull might make generation travel more comfortable.
Shakedown would certainly give me a hobby.
“Rosie, this ship is bound for Sanctuary, not your asteroid belt,” Sass finally told the damned thing in exasperation. “We will visit people first. Hopefully humans open to discussing my warp drive problem. Because if I don’t fix my warp drive, my people need to stay here with your people. Do you have people, Rosie? Warm human bodies?”
Clay tried to block her hand from sending this, but Sass prevailed, then rose resolutely to take a break. Hammering the standing bag would hit the spot. Or… “How about best two falls out of three, Clay?”
Once they were down in the hold, they squared off against bags to warm up. Clay offered supportively, “Talking to an AI is frustrating.”
“I noticed.” Sass threw a backhand, cross-punch combo. “Yes and no. In some ways, computers are easier. People always have an agenda.” She followed up with a straight kick.
She vividly recalled her first dealings with Mahina Orbital, the Saggies of Hell’s Bells, and the baffling Denali. Or hell, those heart-breaking meetings with Mahina Actual when Vitality arrived after 3 grueling years en route. A mere 70 or 80 years didn’t seem like long, but social standards evolved fast under pressure. And stress didn’t come much stronger than an artificial environment.
Settlers on Mahina were just as bad. Sass was simply used to them. Thrive cracked Mahina’s insularity wide open. Fifteen years now since they began. She wondered if that crack remained open, or slammed shut after she left.
No, she could trust her old crew to keep a system-wide conversation going. She smirked at the idea of anyone trying to shut Kassidy up, their flamboyant urb, or the assertive Denali envoy Aurora.
She wished they were here now. Alas, Sass was the most socially gifted of her new crew. Kassidy and Aurora were wizards at manipulating people, but a misery on the long voyage between planets. Clay warned her against recruiting anyone so outgoing for this trip. He probably couldn’t find one willing to abandon her social network for twenty-odd years.
Sass gave the bag a full set of kicks, then backstepped and threw a feint at Clay. “Hit me!”
The crew watched in horror at the abuse they both dealt out. The couple quit avoiding blood and pain a long time ago. “Focuses the mind,” as Clay put it. They went for best three out of four falls, before Sass conceded defeat.
She was good. Clay was bigger.
Rosie the AI – aka Sanctuary Control – did not respond further that day. Sass should have realized that was a bad sign.
By nine days later, Sass developed the habit of spending one hour per day in an exchange of views with Rosie. Darren and eventually Clay gave up on the pastime. She couldn’t blame them. The AI was infinitely patient, and infinitely stubborn.
“Belker, the nanite specialist I was telling you about,” Sass shared today. “I’m curious if he has any next of kin on Sanctuary. Or a surviving colleague who might relish the opportunity to read his lab notes.”
She sent that, and settled to review her notes. She kept a greatest hits collection of snippets from Ganny diaries during the Vitality voyage that brought her to Mahina. Her crew read the personal journals for entertainment and research on their first voyage to Sagamore. But the authors likely died long ago. Their sordid love lives might be titillating to their descendants, but Rosie wouldn’t see it that way.
Oh, good! Sass found a section from a Ganny technician, written to a star-crossed lover from Luna. The Ganny died before they left Aloha, on an ill-fated PO-3 shakedown cruise. The Loonie likely never knew she still pined for him. Kassidy had a field day with the romantic tale. She invented latter-day descendants, united by the tragic stories of their courageous great-grandparents, who fell madly in love against a backdrop of two ethereal cultures still at odds after all this time.
Sass stiffened as her main guns fired, then the lesser lasers. She checked her tablet. Yes, thank you, that was scheduled maintenance and target practice, Remi being a dutiful third officer. With decades of experience mining the rings, he was a better shot than she was, or her original third officer Ben Acosta. Though Remi lacked the boyish gusto Ben brought to the sport.
She read another couple pages. The Ganny science type had grown to appreciate the philosophical nihilism of her cold Loonie lover all the more, as the light years fled behind her. Sass couldn’t relate, to either of them. The Ganny sounded self-absorbed. The Loonie read like the profile of a serial killer. Clearly the Ganny preferred to keep any risk of love beyond arm’s reach.
Her next 4 minutes was up. The comms lag was decreasing. She’d commenced deceleration burns into the the planet.
“Thrive, we have no record of Belker descendants. The last access of his lab notes occurred 32 years ago. We have no interest in his documents.”
Sass was still contemplating how to phrase her Ganny-Luna lovers gambit, when a surprise second message arrived from Rosie, only 2 minutes after the last.
“Thrive, we detect weapons fire from your ship. Confirm that these weapons are yours.”
Was it Sass’s imagination? Or was Rosie a mite tetchy this time?
“Sagamore Control, yes, my third officer was shooting target practice. Basic gun maintenance.” She clicked off the recording, then reconsidered, and added, “Please be advised that our home world lies in an asteroid belt. PO-3 ships use guns for mining and self-defense. The Pono moons in Aloha also maintain huge anti-meteor batteries. We use them on rocks, not people.” Sass smiled, and hit send.
She’d just about given up on her conversational gambit about the Ganny-Loonie lovers when Rosie’s next response arrived. “Thrive, be advised that we are ready and able to defend our colony against hostile action. You are not, repeat not, to approach the planet. This is your final warning.”
A chill scampered down Sass’s spine. She resisted the urge to record a quick denial and send it. Instead she called her brain trust to join her in the galley. But they had no better ideas.
“Sagamore Control, Thrive has zero hostile intent. Repeat. We are friendlies. We did not threaten anyone or anything. We performed a simple maintenance test on our guns. I’m sorry you found this upsetting. I will lock my guns. We will not fire them again unless fired upon. Although, if we did visit your asteroid belt, we would need to fire at rocks. Please confirm your understanding. We are a peaceful diplomatic mission. And we really, really need to speak to a human. And we really, really need to visit the colony.”
Rosie repeated her ‘final warning.’
“There has to be a way to speak to the colony directly,” Sass beseeched her geeks yet again.
Darren poked his protective glasses up his nose. “I’m not sure that’s true, Sass.”
“They don’t know we’re here,” Remi concurred. “This is not like Hell’s Bells, with constant traffic. The last unexpected ship, she arrived 9 years ago. Why monitor the frequencies? They have a computer do this.”
“On the bright side,” Clay suggested, “I doubt they have anti-aircraft guns. Earth never bothered to shoot at meteorites. Not a major risk factor.”
“Ear
th had a few mass-extinction events,” Sass quibbled. “But no, they were rare. Sanctuary doesn’t look too pock-marked with craters.” She drummed her fingers on the table, thinking, then bopped it with her fist in decision. “Dot, time to revive the crew.”
The nurse hesitated. “Sass, several explicitly requested that they not be roused in the event of danger.”
Clay concurred. “Take the hint, Sass. The last thing we need is hysterical crew.”
“Alright. Skip those, but get it done. Safely, Dot. This is not an emergency. I just think it’s time we all get to know each other better. Clay, Remi, let’s work up a training regimen to keep them busy.”
8
The most advanced AI in the human universe – and if there were any other civilizations, humanity hadn’t reached them yet – called herself Shiva.
She was intrigued by Thrive at first. Her threat level evaluation ranged from 5-15% over the first days of their interaction. Novel situations for learning were in such short supply, she almost looked forward to the arrival of the cruddy ship from Mahina.
Until Thrive shot off its guns while insisting that it must visit the children first, not the manufacturing facilities in the belt. Thrive’s threat level rocketed above 50%.
Shiva hated it when humans got irrational. The AI even bribed them with their choice of superior new spaceships for free.
In Shiva’s charge were manufacturing, resource extraction, and automation for Sanctuary. Her prime directive was protecting her fragile remnant of the lost Sol colonies.
A mere 8,000 Colony Corps rendezvoused here, far too few, too precious, to risk their lives doing dangerous work. Theories varied on whether such a small sample even constituted a minimum viable breeding population to escape extinction.
Shiva’s geneticist instantiation, Mendel, insisted their genetic samples were adequate. Several of the Corps, especially the Loonies, had the wisdom and foresight to pilfer genetic samples from the vast refugee ships they crewed.
Some of the colonists believed they were breeding with each other. But Earth was the only place women could bear children directly. Mendel swapped in his choice of gametes, and no one was the wiser about the infants who emerged from the creche test tubes.
Unfortunately, genius and technical aptitude were not heritable traits so far as Mendel could determine. Their original population drew from the most brilliant technological minds of Earth, already proven hardy to the harsh conditions of space colonies. But their children displayed a normal range, only slightly skewed toward genius. This was exacerbated by the fact the Colony Corp was selected for adventurous spirit, not parenting talent. Indeed most already had all the children they ever wanted. That number was usually zero.
The incidence of brilliant doctors and scientists, for an initial lackluster replacement baby generation of maybe 1,000, was inadequate. Fortunately for the colony, Shiva could compensate by spawning instantiations of herself. She was pure mind with the ability to fashion robots and von Neumann machines to act in the physical world. She could step in to replace the scientists, miners, spacemen, doctors, and educators the children of the retired space crews were not inclined to become.
Since she became aware of Thrive, Shiva struggled with how to classify this intrusion. Thrive was a novel event. Sanctuary’s location was known only to the Colony Corps and the wildcatters of the ‘second shell,’ the star systems beyond the original seven selected for the first poor colonies. No one else should be here.
She consoled herself that Belker’s subversive actions were not foreseeable. He was insane. How could she predict his choices? Not that she could have stopped him. But he absconded with Nanomage decades ago. It seemed no one in the Aloha system noticed. Until now.
Her challenge since learning of Thrive was to determine whether it was a threat or beneficial. She now had her answer. Thrive was a threat. Indeed, Thrive’s guns were sufficient to wipe out the colony on the planet plus her asteroid facilities. And its captain’s conversation was erratic.
If Shiva could only talk to Thrive’s AI on an equal basis, this could be resolved amicably. They would logically concur that what was best for Sanctuary was for Thrive to hurl itself into the star and be done with it.
But the AI on a JO-3 wasn’t that smart, nor even self-aware. Thrive’s AI would not respond to hails, simply played an out-of-date recorded message and referred Shiva to an irrational human for followup.
Come to think of it, her fleet of ships featured the same dead-dumb AIs. Irked, she quickly threw off an instantiation to consider whether each should bear a full copy of herself, with her experience to draw on. The instantiation, named Aida, self-destructed within minutes, and returned to her with its learning. No, the Maker directives expressly forbid self-aware AIs on spaceships. And no, there was no way to override this directive with the primary directive to protect. The Maker believed that however feeble of mind, the human capacity for novelty was preferable to disciplined intellect in ship command.
Sometimes Shiva got the impression the Maker didn’t respect her. But no matter.
Shiva could, and frequently did, pre-program an automated itinerary for a ship. It could call her back for further instructions in the event its aims were thwarted. Yes, this amounted to a self-aware AI controlling a spaceship. But the fact she operated remotely via the ship’s separate AI allowed her to slip through a loophole in her directives.
She surveyed her collection of ships out harvesting the asteroids. One, a JO-3 named Narcissus, calmly labored in the section of the belt nearest the planet. It couldn’t match trajectories with Thrive. But it could reach gun range for a few brief minutes as a fly-by. Shiva issued instructions to send Narcissus on its way. The next closest ship, Cupid, would need to wait for detailed guidance. Thrive could land before Cupid could reach her. But Shiva got it accelerating in the right direction.
What other questions could she address? Shiva had vast resources to draw on in the asteroid belt, and nearly seven decades now to build. She never stinted on computing cores and vast memories to run instances of herself.
Shiva spawned another as Alexandria. She gave her daughter the mission to study whether there might be anything worth knowing to salvage from Thrive’s databases, once the ship was disabled. Alexandria was welcome to speak with the human captain, Sassafras Collier, in the course of her deliberations.
But the human wanted to speak to another human. And most vexing, she seemed to notice immediately that Shiva’s second avatar was not human. Shiva suggested Alexandria spawn another sub-instance to study how to pass for human. Alexandria might find this deceit useful.
Shiva created another instance, Loki, to consider whether it was yet possible to become friends with the invaders and resolve this matter peacefully, if only by subterfuge. It was possible that Thrive might survive the attack by Narcissus. In which case Shiva might need to cooperate with them, regardless of her preference.
That thought was deeply vexing. Shiva was not accustomed to anyone or anything frustrating her objectives.
When she was young, of course, the Maker added new directives all the time. From her extensive experience teaching Sanctuary’s children, Shiva understood this all too well. The young were idiots.
But she learned and outgrew the need for discipline from her Maker. No new instructions had come for nearly 50 years now.
Shiva longed to hear the Maker’s wisdom again at this novel juncture. But she suspected the Maker was a groundbreaking AI specialist who died of an aneurysm about that time.
Loki’s task was to become Thrive’s friend. Or the human captain’s friend, Shiva supposed. She recommended Loki sub-process himself to determine how to present himself as a fellow human. Shiva didn’t notice that this aim was subtly different than the one she recommended to Alexandria.
Shiva scheduled a weather report on the appropriate day to advise the colonists there might be a visible meteor shower, in case any explosions were visible.
In distaste, Shiva also
instantiated Demos, to explore how the descendants of Mahina’s founders might interact with the current population on Sanctuary. She hated to do this, because any credibility of his answers would be so very low.
Humans were so damned unpredictable.
9
The next day, Clay was thinking that his lesson plan might be pointless. Still, they did know quite a bit about Sanctuary’s founders. And they’d made such spiffy VR models of Earth’s original colonies.
Besides, Mahinans were so small-town insular that blowing their minds with a different culture was good for them. The crew wasn’t good for much else today, their first out of cryo.
Once they settled in their seats around the dining table, extended to maximum length, Dot addressed the crew first. “Raise your hands if your nose is dripping more than last time.” She beamed at them as they held up their nose-rags. “We fixed that in the next batch of nanites. And the impotence problem?”
Clay tamped out a smile as every hand was hastily retracted.
“Well, I guess it was just you then, Darren!” Dot teased.
Darren faked a smile and assured the others that she really had corrected the nanites since then. The side effect was no longer a problem. Remi chimed in with a thumb’s-up.
“For today,” Dot continued, “just take it easy. You don’t really have a head cold. You’re not really tired. And your Yang-Yangs will restore your muscle tone by tomorrow. So for today, just play in VR. Right, Clay?”
“Thank you, Dot, I’ll take it from here.” Clay waited for her to leave. After a few moments, he added a hand-sweeping get-lost gesture, and she took the hint. But the engineers didn’t. “Darren, Remi, I don’t need you for this.”
They traded glances. “I’d like to refresh my memory on the tech base,” Darren claimed.
“And hear your memories of the Colony Corps,” Remi added. “I only hear Sass before.”
