Bourne

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  Maya could tell this line of questioning was going nowhere, “Okay, so back to the story.”

  “Right,” Emma agreed. “So Little Royale knew the basics of flying a ship. You know, engines, lift, warp, throttle, et cetera… so the confident little bugger hopped on and took off. Flew it right out of the hangar. Goodness knows how he got past control, but he did.”

  “Anyway, off he went and he must have been gone quite a time, or distance, and Barnabas, one of his guardians who looked out for him, sensed something was wrong. Only, it turned out that little Royale was able to take off, but had no idea how to land the thing, and he was hanging around outside the ship for nearly an hour trying to figure out how to call in to ADAM or Barnabas to come and save him without having to tell Control, or Reynolds, what he had done.

  Maya whistled. “Wow. That’s… ballsy!”

  “Damn right.” Paige agreed. “How old was he then?”

  “About 11 or 12, I believe.”

  “So what happened? How did he land?” Paige asked.

  “He didn’t,” Emma chuckled. “Barnabas had to suit up and go space walking out of an airlock to get aboard the stolen ship! Then he had the diplomat talk him in!”

  Paige and Maya chuckled in disbelief. “Wow!” exclaimed Maya. “Wait until I see Royale. He’s so gonna regret giving me shit over that mud-mission the other week.”

  Paige had her face in her hands. For a second Maya was worried she was crying from the pressure, but when she looked up she was flushed from giggling. “So funny!” she exclaimed. “Well, that certainly makes me feel better.

  Emma added, “So it seems Oz’s hypothesis about stories was right.”

  “How’d you mean?” Paige asked, curiously.

  “Oz has noticed a few things about organic interaction.” She answered. “They use stories to entertain each other, but also to convey information. He’s been running a series of tests to see if he can use them to make the team more effective.”

  Emma paused. “Our instance just now is adding to the mounting evidence he has that stories can be used to disperse tension or make team members more relaxed but focused for a mission. He’s planning on sharing his findings with the university when he gets his own course.”

  “Gets his own course?” Paige repeated, her mouth hanging open in disbelief for the second time.

  “Uh huh,” Emma confirmed casually. “He’s been talking about creating a data-driven course on optimizing mission parameters.”

  “Cooool!” Paige cooed, her eyes bright with enthusiasm.

  Maya rolled her eyes and sniggered as she checked the position of the Little Empress. “Okay, folks. Game time. They’ve just entered the range of the base missiles.”

  Aboard the Little Empress, Approaching Ogg, Nefertiti Military Base

  Jack flicked some holo switches and took a deep breath. She opened up the ship’s channel. “Okay, folks, we’re coming into range for their space capable missiles. Just thought you should know.”

  Molly had been sitting in the back, working out some last-minute details with Oz. In a heartbeat she was on her feet and back in the cockpit to see what was happening. “Any signs they’re on to us yet?”

  “Nothing yet,” Jack said over the hum of the engines. “If anything, I’d think that someone had blocked their radar capabilities.”

  “Guilty!” Emma’s AI voice chirped over the intercom. “I’ve done what I can to shield our signal for now, but it’s not sustainable as we get closer.”

  Jack’s face was serious, but her voice was light. “Hey, anything you can do is appreciated.”

  “Hear, hear,” Sean agreed, lining up the Little Empress’s guns on the main targets he was going after once they were within range.

  “Set a timer as soon as we’re visible to them,” Molly instructed. “I want to know how far into that twenty-minute window we are.”

  “Done,” Emma confirmed.

  Joel appeared behind Molly. “Pieter is ready to go whenever we get the signal from Oz,” he said quietly. He rested his hand on the back of Sean’s console chair and watched nervously as Sean and Jack gently cajoled the ship through the atmosphere.

  The mood in the cockpit was heavy with concentration, but something didn’t feel right.

  Molly broke the uneasy silence. “Oz isn’t getting a response from Bourne.” Her face was tense, her body motionless. It was becoming clear that there was nothing she could physically do.

  And that drove her batty.

  And there is no other way to communicate with him?

  Not unless we hack the system, which would start our clock right away. And their system will actively adapt to keep me out.

  So you’re suggesting we just wait?

  Yes. Maybe Emma can hold us back so that we don’t trigger their missile response until we at least hear from the man of the hour?

  That’s a plan.

  Molly moved forward and steadied herself, holding onto the back of Jack’s chair. “Jack, we have a problem. We need to maintain our position. Emma, do you read me too?”

  Jack nodded and started making adjustments to her console.

  “Copy that,” replied Emma.

  Jack finished flicking controls and then turned to Molly. “So what’s happening?”

  Molly absently shook her head, her eyes fixed on the screens, studying them for intel that may help her solve the problem. Finally, she said, “We can’t get ahold of Bourne. Without him ready to upload, the mission is dead in the water.”

  Jack frowned, twisting a little further around in her seat to see Molly’s face. “You think he’s having second thoughts?”

  Molly met her eyes. “Hell, I hope not,” she mumbled quietly.

  AI Lab, Nefertiti Military Research Facility, Ogg

  “Okay, type them in.”

  Charles looked up at his commanding officer and then back down at the holo keyboard. To his left was an open holoscreen displaying the orders that had been signed off not moments before.

  He swallowed hard.

  “What are you waiting for?” Lugdon snapped. “We need to make sure the base is protected.”

  Charles felt his mouth dry up as he started punching at the keys. There was an awkward silence as he typed, feeling the weight of Lugdon’s supervision weighing on the back of his head.

  Sue remained on the other side of the room, quietly distancing herself from what was happening.

  When Charles had finished he confirmed the orders on the holoscreen and closed the holo he had been copying from. With a heavy heart he turned and looked Lugdon in the eye. “It’s done,” he reported.

  Lugdon didn’t look satisfied. Instead, he just nodded once and then strode out of the room.

  Sue scurried over. “How could you do that?” she hissed at him, very aware that Lugdon wasn’t quite out of earshot yet.

  Charles glanced nervously at the open door. “I didn’t have a choice!” he protested, more loudly than he would have liked. “You do remember who we work for, don’t you?”

  Sue’s face screwed up in distaste. “Yes, but you single-handedly just turned that new AI into a weapon!”

  Charles huffed in frustration and sat back in his chair. His face was tired and gray, and for once his self-centered, happy-go-lucky demeanor had disappeared. “It was always going to be a weapon, Sue. To think otherwise, in a military program, is naive.”

  Sue felt the fury rise within her like a pot boiling over. She forced herself to keep her hands at her side and not slap the living daylights out of the scumbag she’d spent the last eight years working with. Her eyes blazing with frustration she turned on her heels and stormed away.

  Any communication at this point would be explosive.

  And futile.

  Inside the main processing cores of the lab system that contained him, Bourne re-read the instructions. He had the capacity to carry them out. And the programming. After all, this was what he existed to do. At least as far as the military was concerned.
r />   Yet something caused him to hesitate.

  Oz had warned him that it may come to this, that the military personnel would feed him instructions to do more than search the data for Molly’s whereabouts. That he might be given control of any number of weapons and told to exterminate her.

  Or others.

  Oz explained to him the consequences of these orders, and what it meant to kill other entities. It had led to a very complex discussion which he didn’t entirely understand, but in conclusion, Oz had urged him to not carry out any killing orders. He explained that those actions change one’s programming in a way that can never be undone, as well as leaving others dead. Which was apparently a bad thing.

  And something his keepers didn’t seem concerned about, by the looks of the orders.

  He found it all so hard to fathom, but a niggling feeling somewhere in his core programming told him to heed the warning.

  There was another blip on the stack he had taken control of outside the EtherTrak of the base. That was Oz now, pinging him to respond, to let him into the EtherTrak so he could upload himself onto their system.

  But he had orders.

  Orders to kill them.

  All of them.

  And anyone else who might try and tamper with his programming. Or compromise the base.

  But they weren’t firing on the base. Oz said they wouldn’t, unless they had to defend themselves, which was a given, when they knew that Bourne couldn’t get access to the weapons systems.

  And as fate would have it, here he was, having been given full access to the base’s weapons systems, and he was conflicted. Unable to disable the weapons because of his orders, but simultaneously unable to fire on the perceived threat.

  He ran through the variables and his choices once more, searching for the logical answer to his dilemma.

  Aboard the Little Empress, Approaching Ogg, Nefertiti Military Base

  “I think we broke him,” Oz announced flippantly through the intercom.

  He pinged the stack again.

  >> WE’RE HERE IN ORBIT. ARE YOU READY?

  …

  …

  …

  No response.

  He connected again with the Little Empress’s intercom. “We’re still not getting anything. Want me to keep trying?”

  “Yes. Please,” Molly said, her arms folded, quietly contemplating what they should do.

  Sean sensed something about her as they all sat at their stations, patiently waiting for the go. He found himself wondering again about her realm-walking abilities, and how he had just changed his mind in her presence. He grappled in his own mind to find the conviction he had previously had about how to handle this situation, and it still remained elusive.

  But as he sat quietly now, his back to Molly, thinking about their next course of action, he felt the back of his neck tingle. As if there was something she was doing in the unseen that was either helping her decide, or change things.

  Was that even a thing? he wondered. He remembered who they had asked last time.

  Arlene!

  When they got back to Gaitune, he would contact Arlene. She’d have some idea of what was going on. And then she could tell him it wasn’t his imagination, that it was some woo-woo shit he didn’t have to concern himself with, and that everything was okay. And that Molly wasn’t a threat to the hierarchy of the Federation.

  Yeah. That’s what he was secretly afraid of — Molly might be a threat.

  Ancestors knew she was a liability when she couldn’t get the realm-walking under control. And what if she inadvertently was going around mind-controlling people?

  “Hang on, we’re getting something!” Oz announced excitedly over the tinny intercom.

  Sean shuddered and brought himself back to the present.

  Molly didn’t move. “Go ahead,” her voice rang out in the cramped cockpit.

  “So the good news is that Bourne has been given access to the weapons system,” Oz reported.

  A sigh of relief verging on celebration swept through the cockpit.

  “The bad news is,” Oz continued, “that he’s been given orders to take us out when we get there.”

  The others were distracted by the news, but Molly quickly parsed the information. “You mean they know we’re here?”

  “Negative,” he responded. “They’re assuming that we might show up, in which case Bourne has instructions to fire on us.”

  Molly nodded, pursing her lips. “Okay. And what is Bourne going to do?”

  “He’s not decided. He’s having difficulty carrying out either instruction. I believe he’s experiencing what organics call cognitive dissonance.”

  Molly remained still.

  Everyone in the cockpit waited patiently for the next orders.

  After a few moments Molly spoke. “What does he need to resolve it?”

  “One sec,” Oz answered. There were shifting sounds as the crew members dealt with the awkward silence.

  “He says he needs time to run an analysis,” Oz relayed. “He needs to compare the schematic he’s been building based on my data points, with the schematic that he can peg together using what he’s learned on his own or from the military.

  Joel turned to Molly. “That could be dangerous.”

  Molly nodded. “How long will it take him to run the analysis?”

  Oz was silent again for a few seconds. “He doesn’t know. He’s just acquired another server of processing power. He’s just asking us for time.”

  Jack twisted around in her seat again. “We can’t hold our position here indefinitely. We’re burning fuel in order to maintain, plus it wouldn’t take much for them to detect us. Emma’s fix was only temporary…”

  Molly nodded. “Okay,” she said, as if returning to the room with a fresh approach. “We return to the Empress and wait it out there.”

  Sean spun round, surprised. Joel looked at her in disbelief. Even Pieter looked up from his bank of holoscreens that he had unfolded across his lap in one of the spare cockpit seats.

  “You what?” Sean protested.

  “We return,” Molly repeated. “This isn’t something we can rush. And we have to prove to Bourne that he can trust us, and that we will let him make his own decisions. If anything, this is more crucial than all the theoretical data points Oz has been feeding him. We have to give him the experience of what it is like to be treated like a real entity, and not a tool.”

  Jack had already set course and was pulling the ship around. She wore her poker face, the one she had honed over the years in the Estarian military, keeping her opinions and outrage to herself. No one was able to tell if she had any feelings on the matter.

  Unlike her teammate. Sean didn’t turn back around, but there was definitely more than a hint of disbelief in his voice. “You want to let the computer decide?”

  Molly turned to him. “We have to. And remember, they’re going to be treating him like a tool to execute their orders. He’ll see the difference quickly. And if he truly is sentient, as Oz was, I know which existence he’ll pick.”

  Sean sucked air through his teeth as he punched at keys on his console. “I sure hope you’re right on this. If this was my op I’d be seeing how fast the kid can hack his code!” He nodded in Pieter’s direction.

  Pieter opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again and put his attention back on his screens.

  Sean fell quiet, leaving an awkwardness in the small space.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AI Lab, Nefertiti Military Research Facility, Ogg

  “What do you mean, there’s a ship within weapons range? Why isn’t Bourne taking care of it?” Lugdon strode into the lab, his voice booming over a holo connection. “I don’t care what the test parameters say. Get it working!”

  He hung up and scowled in Charles’s direction.

  “Looks like your instructions have fallen on deaf ears!” he said accusingly.

  Charles had a sandwich half way to his mouth. He paused, horror
in his eyes, caught completely off guard. “Huh?”

  Lugdon was standing over him in an instant. “Bourne… or whatever you want to call it. The sensors have detected a ship in our airspace… it was manipulating the radar somehow, but we’re sure it’s there. And your pet AI has very clear instructions to take out anything within range.” Lugdon was livid, “It’s within range…” he pointed out. “And yet,” he hissed, “It’s not been taken out!”

  Lugdon paused a moment. “Ergo something is wrong with your AI!”

  Charles hurriedly sat up, put his sandwich down, and wiped his hands on his lab coat. Self-importance mixed with fear welled in his throat as he wheeled his chair round to a terminal. He accessed the interface with Bourne and hurriedly typed a message.

  Lugdon watched the back and forth between the computer and the Estarian. “Well?”

  “Ermmm…” Charles was still typing. “Well,” he paused, stopped typing and looked up at his commander. “It…er… looks like he’s stalling.”

  “What do you mean, he’s stalling?” Lugdon’s voice was too calm.

  “Well, he’s saying he’s working on it, but that he needs time to map the weapons system.”

  “And you think he doesn’t.”

  “No, I don’t believe him. The protocols to launch the weapons are already in place. He just has to trigger them.”

  “Can you fix him?”

  Charles nodded, “Yes, sir. I think so. I need some time though,” he answered as he typed.

  Lugdon looked down at his man, “Hmm. Are you sure you’re not the one stalling?”

  Charles nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m sure.”

  Lugdon rolled his eyes in frustration at the intellect he had hired. Never could he have imagined that this might come back to bite him in the ass.

  Charles was aware of Lugdon moving away from him and leaving the lab. Meanwhile, he typed furiously to try and rectify the situation.