Gravity of a Distant Sun

by R. E. Stearns

  Strands of the greenest plant life Iridian had seen since college on Earth rose from the metal containers’ tops. The grass reached toward wide UV lights hung over them, waving in the atmo blown across them by vents near the ceiling. Despite their aggro attire, the Odin Razum had been gardening in here. She’d never heard of a gang that did that.

  I wish we could help these people, or at least study them, Adda whispered over their comms. The worlds should know that this kind of mass influence event can occur.

  That ludicrous idea made Iridian smile. Even if three awakened AIs weren’t after you, staying here would give you more time to make a new mistake with this one. Adda winced. Iridian could’ve said that in a way that didn’t diminish all the things Adda had talked AIs into doing for them before. I’m sorry, but we’re all one mistake away, aren’t we? That’s why you went to school for this and the rest of us let you do the talking for us. Just for now, can you tell somebody else about it and leave the research to them?

  Adda’s shoulders rose defensively and she stared at the guide’s back instead of looking at Iridian. Iridian’s longing to trust Adda with her passion for AIs kept losing to her instinct to protect Adda from herself. Gods, they both needed time to sort this out. Maybe after this op, they could.

  Iridian had been visually tracking a long pipe bolted to the ceiling that they’d been walking under since they entered the plant, in case she needed to follow it out in a hurry. It split into two at the wall in front of them. Their guide with the patterns shaved into his head squeezed past stacked plastic bags of water, packaged to sell, stopped at the fork in the pipe, and stared at the wall.

  “The drones, remember?” Iridian said.

  The man stayed put. No footsteps followed them down the curving hallway. The Odin Razum outside the plant must’ve stayed outside. “What do you think’s got him mixed up?” Rio asked.

  He’s plugged into his comp, Adda told Iridian. Now that she’d pointed it out, Iridian spotted the cable attached to his grimy comp glove. It disappeared into his sleeve, but a coil of it stuck out the top of his collar. It could plug into a jack at the base of his neck.

  “Is he talking to the station AI?” Noor asked. “Can you even do that with just a comp?”

  “You can,” Iridian said, “but you shouldn’t.” Why didn’t AegiSKADA influence everybody on Barbary, do you think? That terrifying question would keep digging into the back of Iridian’s mind until Adda answered it.

  That was something AegiSKADA’s development team got right, Adda replied. AegiSKADA used people in other ways, but influencing them directly was its last choice of solutions to its problems. When Mairie was developed, people knew a lot less about influence.

  Standing in a tight space while outnumbered by influenced people was making Iridian antsy. Their guide was the only Odin Razum member in view, but she couldn’t see very far behind them. “What’s the holdup?” she asked their guide.

  The man’s head snapped up. “Follow me.” His voice was as dull as Adda’s when she was drugged for a workspace, but Iridian hadn’t seen him take any sharpsheets. The similarity made her skin crawl. He turned left and walked on.

  The implants, Adda subvocalized. It influenced them through the implants.

  They’d lost the pilot on one of Captain Sloane’s ops to an AI that, as far as anyone could tell, had just wanted to take its ship out of its hangar. He’d approached that AI without following procedure, though, and he had a piloting implant. Adda’s was designed for interacting with workspace generators. Yours is similar to a pilot’s, but it’s not that similar, is it? And you’re careful. He wasn’t.

  They’re all neural implants, which means they all pour input from intelligence-facilitated systems straight into our brains. I’m concerned about all neural implants at this point, but I have almost no facts. This is why somebody should be studying these people.

  Fuck. Neural implants had always weirded Iridian out because of the potential head and neck damage if something went wrong with them. AIs using hardware inside people’s brains for their own purposes was so much worse.

  CHAPTER 13 Days until launch: 30

  Can’t influence happen to everybody?

  Iridian’s question was one that Adda wished more people would ask, but it also showed that Adda hadn’t told her what she’d meant to communicate. It would’ve been easier to sit down somewhere and outline a complete explanation, but if Iridian had to have the explanation to focus on the job, Adda would produce one as she put the pieces together herself. Yes, but the implants . . . I never thought about how much easier they make the process. People talk about developers and pilots getting influenced just by prolonged exposure to intelligences. That’s why we’re supposed to work in teams and take breaks. But what if there’s more to it? What if the problem is that the intelligences . . . Some intelligences selectively limit influence symptoms, or rush the process electrochemically.

  Or allowed some influence symptoms and not others, or could only control some symptoms or only rush certain stages . . . Adda was gazing into an abyssal gap in humanity’s understanding of influence. And she’d just been congratulating herself on how far the artificial intelligence field had come since Mairie was developed. She could panic, or she could work the problem. Iridian looked like she was panicking enough for both of them.

  Each influence stage has its own symptom group, but not all influenced people display all symptoms at each stage. Some symptoms are also associated with other conditions. For example, widely recognized stage one influence symptoms involving a supposed lack of self-care were part of Adda’s daily routine while she was absorbed in a project. Her brain worked differently than most people’s did. What if Casey realized that some symptoms in stages two through four lead to diagnoses more readily than others, and suppressed those symptoms while streamlining progression through the others?

  Casey could’ve taught itself to do that through information synthesis and experimenting on Adda. That was . . . not a danger they’d prepared her for in school, where awakened intelligences were more myth than reality. Adda would’ve given a lot to learn how Casey did that. Telling Mairie how to manipulate neural implant nets like Adda’s would’ve been well within Casey’s power and consistent with its past behavior, especially if it figured out that Shingetsu wouldn’t convince Iridian and Adda to leave Yăo Station. If Mairie had influenced Adda, it could’ve kept her on Yăo Station until Casey installed itself on a ship capable of withstanding this proximity to Jupiter.

  Iridian drove her fist into the side of one of the grass-covered tanks. Adda startled away from the metallic bang. Everyone else looked at Iridian, then all around to find a threat that wasn’t there. “Sorry,” Iridian said aloud. “Frustrated.”

  Are you surprised that the tech allows the intelligences to do this, or are you surprised that the intelligences do this at all? Adda asked. Because this is what intelligences do: they solve problems. Human supervisors make them solve the right problems the right way. Not that there was one “right” way, exactly. Some solutions were more helpful than others.

  Mairie must’ve needed a lot of help when it began managing Yăo Station alone. With years of unsupervised efforts to keep Yăo running, Mairie could’ve influenced the Odin Razum the old-fashioned way, through exposure, while the Odin Razum were taking control of the drones. Adda had seen no proof of that, though.

  Iri, could you ask when our guide joined the Odin Razum? And when the others did too. They might not know what “influence” meant in this context, but spending a lot of time in the treatment plant or joining the gang might be a symptom, especially if many new people had joined following a critical contact with Mairie.

  Iridian grabbed the guide’s shoulder and spun him around to face her. “Stop a second. Tell me about your group. When did you join up?”

  The shocked guide’s gaze darted between Iridian and the space on either side of her, which Wiley and Rio filled. “I . . . We . . . I’ve been with them for a co
uple three years. Yeah. Lot of people just joined this week, but about a dozen of us have been Odin Razum for years.”

  Iridian glanced at Rio and Wiley, like she was checking to see if they’d heard what she did. “Only twelve of you have been in for years? The Odin Razum doubled in size this month?” When the guide nodded, Iridian looked to Adda. “Does that answer your question?”

  The others wouldn’t have heard that question, but they looked too surprised by this new information to notice. “It might,” said Adda.

  Shingetsu had said there’d been a recent increase in the Odin Razum population, but she hadn’t said how recent it was. If Mairie had been able to remotely, quickly influence so many people for years, why hadn’t it influenced every person on the station with an implant?

  The worst-case scenario, one Adda was inclined to operate on for now, was that Casey had used the Yăo Station drones to show Mairie how people with neural implant nets were easier to influence. Why they were easier to influence, the mechanism that smoothed that process, the flaw that allowed it to happen, was the essential problem to solve. With that information, Adda could protect herself from both Mairie and Casey.

  Iridian shoved the guide forward. “Let’s go.” The way she was scowling at him made Adda hope that he didn’t do anything threatening within the next few minutes. Subvocally, Iridian said, This is a fucking travesty, and somebody will fucking pay for it. I don’t want it to be you. What can we do to stop Casey from influencing you again?

  Adda’s temporary solution was to stay as far away from Casey as possible. Eventually she’d make a mistake, or one of the intelligences that were interested in her would force her to make one. If it’s using the software or hardware in ways they weren’t designed to be used, then there’s a vulnerability the manufacturers should close, she told Iridian.

  She’d enjoyed a semester-long class on grotesque ways humans and intelligences had misused implanted technology in the past. The class had been part of her curriculum, so graduates would be motivated and prepared to correct vulnerabilities. Adda’s influence experience with Casey was probably the first time in history that an awakened intelligence had found a vulnerability and exploited it, though.

  On Vesta, the vulnerability could’ve been in her intermediary software, the implant firmware, or even the standard workspace generator firmware. Pilots among the Odin Razum would’ve been influenced without a generator, and their intermediary software was very different from hers. There had to be more pilots than developers on a station like Yăo, which wouldn’t attract the universe’s best and brightest to begin with. Besides, a vulnerability in the neural implants would be too frightening to ignore.

  So I’m worried the vulnerability is in the implant firmware, Adda told Iridian. If I knew who made each Odin Razum person’s implant, that’d be a list of specific models that could be involved. We’re supposed to describe the situation to whoever made them and ask them to fix it. In theory, the corporation responsible for the firmware would make the correction, send an update Adda would need the drones to download, and then tell the rest of the industry what had happened.

  Iridian glanced over at her, still furious, but probably not at her. Why the fuck is this so common that there’s a fucking procedure for it?

  Each component of intelligence management is complex. One component is a human brain, which cannot be standardized. Another is an intelligence whose development also cannot be completely standardized. Catastrophic disasters are prevented every year because ethical humans or well-developed intelligences fixed a problem before unethical humans or intelligences like Casey found it. And now Adda was the human who’d found the vulnerability. She could ransom it to the people who could fix it, but that would leave her implant vulnerable for even longer. If she just gave it to them, they could start working on the solution right away.

  Fuck procedure. Even in a toneless whisper through their personal comms, Iridian sounded like she was shouting. Can’t you fix it yourself?

  If I had a year, maybe. Adda would have to take apart software she only understood from the outside that was made by multiple professionals and probably an artificial assistant too. That’d require a development workspace on Yăo Station, under Mairie’s control. Then she’d have to find the problem, eliminate that problem without causing new ones, and convince the hardware to use her version instead of what it used now. All with her own brain as the test subject. Casey will get to me before then. Someone who worked on the original version could fix it much faster.

  The guide stopped walking, and so did everybody else. Gravity felt even lower here than it had in the port.

  “Looks like we’re out of the treatment area,” Wiley commented. There were a lot more pipes leading to the area they’d just walked through, and no more tanks with grass on top. The guide lurched into motion again, crossing a module separator into an emptier hallway. “We lose track of each other, we’re meeting back at the temple, yeah?”

  “Yeah, we’ll meet up there if we have to,” Iridian confirmed. That’d been the only contingency plan Adda had shared with Iridian on this op. She’d been working on more, but now that Mairie had proven itself so prodigiously skilled at influencing people with implants, she’d switched to influence prevention tactics instead. “Hey, Wiley,” Iridian said. “Do you still have your lucky socks?”

  Wiley laughed, a higher-pitched and more incredulous sound than seemed typical for him. “You remember those? Oh my gods, no. Lost ’em in one of my moves on Mars.”

  “Figures,” muttered Iridian.

  They’d been following their guide for a few minutes longer when Adda sorted through some more implications about the vulnerability. This means what happened on Vesta wasn’t entirely my fault.

  What? Iridian replied. It was Casey’s fault.

  You’d have said that even if Casey wasn’t exploiting a software vulnerability to influence me. Adda smiled, which she’d never expected to be able to do when discussing what’d happened in the Rheasilvia port. I thought I’d made the usual intelligence handling mistakes to get influenced on Vesta, because I was interacting with too many at once. But that wasn’t what happened. Casey used the vulnerability to influence me that fast. I’m sure I made some mistakes, and if I hadn’t been interacting with so many intelligences I might’ve caught Casey before it hurt us, but they weren’t as bad as I thought they were.

  Iridian looked more concerned rather than less. So no matter how good you are, Casey can still influence you through that vulnerability?

  Adda’s excitement dimmed. Well, yes. But I didn’t make the basic handling mistakes I thought I must’ve made. I wasn’t as careless as I thought I’d been.

  I never thought you were careless. Kind as that was, Iridian had missed the point.

  The man they’d been following stopped and waved both hands toward an open doorway on their left in a gesture Adda couldn’t interpret. It seemed far too deep in the station’s interior to launch drones from, but the guide said, “In there.”

  Noor scowled at him. “Why aren’t you going in with us?”

  “It’s not for me.” Their guide looked longingly toward the doorway.

  “Ah, what the hell,” Rio sighed, looked in all directions for threats, then ducked through the doorway and went in.

  Overhead lights came on bright and then settled into morning sunsim. Rio’s broad shoulders blocked Adda’s view into the room as Rio put her hands on her hips. “There’s nothing in here. Just a big pseudo-organic tank.”

  Adda and Noor both stepped toward the room. Either of them could tell more about its purpose than Rio could. Adda tapped Rio’s arm until she stepped out of the way. “Hey, slow down,” said Iridian. “Half the big pseudo-organic tanks we’ve run into have been full of trouble.” She reached for Adda, but Adda was already stepping past Rio. Noor followed her.

  A huge pseudo-organic tank, bigger even than AegiSKADA’s on Barbary Station, took up all of one wall. The fluid inside was lit orange, like Ma
rtian soil covered with a thin layer of frost. Connected to it was a decades-old quantum comp and a console to interact with it. Like everything else they’d encountered in the Odin Razum’s territory, all the equipment was clean and in perfect order.

  Only the station intelligence could’ve needed that much pseudo-organic fluid. “It’s Mairie’s tank,” Adda said. “This is the quantum rig in the corner here.” Either their Marsat IDs offered a much higher level of access than Adda thought they did, or Mairie’s developers had prioritized a lot of tasks above the intelligence’s self-preservation. Perhaps its development team taught it that obtaining qualified supervision was more important than protecting its pseudo-organics.

  Rio’s position near the door only left Noor room to take a couple of steps into the small space. He raised himself on tiptoes to see over or around her. “Drone controls ought to be there too, if they’re station equipment.”

  In the hallway, their Odin Razum guide nodded enthusiastically. “The controls for everything are in there. All of them.”

  “Could it push the engines a little harder?” asked Wiley. “My damn sinuses are floating.” More gravity would certainly be welcome, and better drained sinuses were the least of the potential improvements for new arrivals’ health. It was less obvious how spinning the station faster might affect the station’s integrity, and the health of people who’d spent years in this low gravity environment.

  Noor’s comp blared four sharp beeps, and he turned his attention to it. “I’ve got a transmission spike. Strongest in this room, but it’s on a wide, short band. Anybody see anything different happening out there? Changing the filtration settings, maybe?”

  “Movement.” Wiley was looking the way they’d come. Noor went out to join him.