Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

“Damn!” one of the crew exclaimed. “We had to give Sandra a reset capability so she could function autonomously, but she's started using that to get around our commands."

  “She's not using it,” Yasmina objected. “There's no conscious thought involved. I'm sure it must be a defensive response operating below the level of consciousness. Her subsystems are telling her something has to be done so she's working around obstacles to action."

  “Captain! Airlock doors are opening! Interior and exterior!"

  The captain hesitated the barest fraction of a second before yelling and springing into action. “Into suits! Everyone into your suits and seal them! Chen! Ragosa! Seal your suits!"

  The emergency suits were stored next to the seats, fortunately. Kevlin's hands were shaking as he pulled on the suit, fumbling with fittings that should have been second nature after countless emergency drills on the station. A growing breeze was tugging at him as he struggled to get the chest seal in place.

  “Strap in!” the captain was shouting. “As soon as you get the suit on, strap in and then get your helmet sealed!"

  Kevlin dropped into his seat and pulled the harness across, clicking it into place just as the breeze grew to a gale of wind trying to suck him out through the hatch and ultimately out through the airlock. Wondering if he was really gasping for air already, Kevlin got the helmet down, trying not to panic as the suit automatically pressurized. Cool air flowed from the recirc unit and Kevlin slowly got his trembling under control. Shocked by a sudden realization, he looked over and saw Yasmina also strapped in, her own suit just finishing pressurizing. Ashamed that he had forgotten about her, forgotten about anything but his own fears, Kevlin looked away again.

  “It's okay,” he heard Yasmina over the suit's circuit. “Perfectly natural reaction."

  Kevlin mumbled a reply, wishing she hadn't been able to understand his embarrassment.

  Other voices came over the circuit, the captain's finally overriding them all. “I need an estimate as to why that happened. Anybody? Any ideas?"

  It suddenly seemed so obvious. “Sandra is trying to get rid of us,” Kevlin stated.

  Momentary silence followed that declaration, then the captain came on again in a deathly calm voice. “Explain that. There's numerous safeguards built into the operating system that put human safety at a premium. Sandra can't attack humans."

  “She's not attacking humans,” Kevlin explained, feeling more and more certain. “Her repair subsystem is attacking an infection. Don't you see what you've been doing? You've been deliberately causing damage to her, on an escalating level. Her repair system has dealt with it at every stage, evolving the whole time. Well, it's a simple leap from being reactive to the damage to reacting to what's causing the damage. The cutting back there was the last straw. To Sandra's repair system, we're parasites at best and harmful infections at the worst. Sandra can't override the actions of her repair system any more than we can without the help of targeted medications."

  “She tried to expel the parasites?” the captain asked. “What happens if that doesn't work?"

  “I'd imagine her repair system will go after the parasites directly. Her repair system is rapidly developing an immune component. I should have seen that coming. It's a logical progression for any such system."

  The captain's voice rang through the circuit. “Chen! Ragosa! Stop cutting and get back here!"

  “But we're almost through—"

  “Stop cutting! We can see a new wave of repair drones headed your way! Get out of there fast!"

  The wait for the two engineers to return seemed interminable. Chen and Ragosa were pulling themselves through the hatch when it started closing. They barely cleared it before it sealed. “We've lost all internal control,” someone reported in a desperate voice.

  Kevlin saw the captain gazing around as if thinking through her next action. “All right,” the captain announced. “I'm declaring an emergency. All nonessential personnel are to leave the ship. Get to the boat and stand off in it. We've lost comms to the chase ship, so bring them up to date."

  The captain and three other crewmembers remained seated, but six of the engineers unstrapped and began hauling themselves to the hatch, beckoning to Kevlin and Yasmina to follow them. Kevlin unstrapped as well, making a point of waiting until Yasmina had done the same and started after the engineers. Scared as he was, he wouldn't race ahead of her.

  Two of the engineers had braced themselves and were tugging at something. The hatch swung open reluctantly under the pressure of the emergency release.

  The journey through the ship to the boat dock was strange. The passageway was deserted, yet to Kevlin it felt haunted. He couldn't look at a bulkhead without thinking of Sandra's pseudo-life functions pulsing behind them.

  The engineers reached the access panel to the boat dock and wrestled its manual control until that opened reluctantly as well. The first one who started to enter the dock stopped and stared. “It's gone."

  Kevlin shifted so he could just see over the engineer's shoulder. The boat, which should have filled the dock, simply wasn't there even though the outer hatch remained sealed. On the deck, a swarm of repair drones were picking at a diminishing pile of something.

  One of the engineers laughed in a slightly hysterical way. “I was wondering where Sandra was getting the resources to build so much. She ate the boat."

  “Oh, God,” another engineer responded. He tried calling the captain, to no avail. “Back to the control room. Let's go before those things try to recycle us."

  The captain gave them a startled glance when they returned, her face setting into grim lines as her engineers reported what they had seen. “That does it. I'm pulling Sandra's plug. Once she's off, we'll get aft and shut down the main power supply.” Unstrapping, the captain went to the aft bulkhead and lifted a cover to expose a large manual switch.

  Kevlin gave Yasmina a questioning glance as the captain pulled the switch down. All of the lights went out and Kevlin's virtual display vanished, leaving only the lights on the suits to illuminate the control room.

  “The Frankenstein switch,” Yasmina answered Kevlin's unspoken question. “Some people also call it the wooden stake or the silver bullet. Every artificial intelligence system has one built-in that manually cuts all power. Just in case the AI starts singing ‘A Bicycle Built for Two.’”

  “How many artificial intelligence systems have built-in autonomous repair capability that can operate without power for a while?” Kevlin asked.

  The captain heard, stared toward Kevlin, then placed one palm over the bulkhead next to the manual cut-off switch. “I can feel activity behind the bulkhead."

  “They've identified the cause of Sandra's problem.” The lights came back on. “And they've fixed it. Captain, you've got a wonderfully effective simulation of a living organism here in terms of identifying injuries and taking corrective action. And it knows what keeps trying to hurt it, and that we just tried to shut down its brain."

  “Sandra can't be sentient!"

  “She's not! It's all happening at a level way below sentience!” Kevlin yelled. “Why should that be a surprise? Out of all the threats to human life, how many are sentient and how many are essentially mindless, like bacteria?"

  A momentary silence fell. “Can we stop the drones if they try to take us out?” someone wondered.

  “What about the nanos? Sandra's subsystems have been modifying them right and left. The rate of evolution seems to be on a exponential curve."

  “If it's like the evolution of living organisms, most of the modifications will be harmful or useless and die out,” Kevlin suggested. “Some of them might even threaten Sandra."

  "Most will die out? Or some might further harm the ship? That's not all that reassuring, doctor. The seals on our suits are supposed to keep out nanos, but nothing's perfect.” The captain gestured. “We're abandoning ship. Everybody out. Back to the boat dock."

  Repair drones of various kinds were visible in the passage
ways this time as they pulled themselves through the ship. Kevlin stared as he saw several drones attack another and disable it. They had to veer to one side as a bulkhead bulged perilously toward them. In another area, drones were busy dismantling what Kevlin recognized as a cooling unit. “She needs that!” one of the crew protested. “Why would Sandra take apart an essential component?"

  “Sandra isn't,” Kevlin insisted. “Her subsystems are doing it. Just like when humans run short of calcium and the body robs it from bones to keep the teeth strong. Part of the repair subsystem thinks some other part of Sandra needs those components more."

  The last remnants of the boat had vanished along with the drones that had digested it for Sandra. The captain and another engineer tugged at the emergency release on the outer hatch with no results. “I'll have to blow it using the explosive bolts.” She yanked open a panel, pulled out a battery, connected leads to two attachments behind another panel, then pushed a button.

  Faint echoes of the explosions reached Kevlin through his handhold on the ship as the hatch swung out. The captain turned to face them. “Push yourselves clear of the ship. We don't dare wait here for rescue from the chase ship. Go!"

  They went. Kevlin shoved off, looking back to see Sandra's shape diminishing behind him, the captain's suited figure going last out of the hatch. He heard her calling the chase ship on the distress frequency. “SOS. We need emergency pick up. Full macro and nano-scale decontamination required. Remain clear of Sandra. Repeat, remain clear of Sandra."

  Kevlin wondered how long the recirc unit would keep him alive. Full-scale decontamination took a while. But then, he couldn't argue with the captain's order, either.

  * * * *

  Yasmina joined him at the display, looking like she'd been vigorously scrubbed with sandpaper over every part of her body, every hair shaved clean. Kevlin knew he looked the same, and knew she also felt like her insides had been similarly sandpapered. He would probably shudder for the rest of his life whenever someone mentioned a full macro and nano decontamination.

  She gestured at the image of Sandra. “What's happening? Any guesses?” Sandra's clean lines had been distorted by random bulges. Remote readouts showed system failures cascading through the ship.

  “She's dying,” Kevlin stated. “Pure and simple. Some of her repair functions evolved into harmful out-of-control infections. Other parts of her are attacking her. See this stuff? Any immune system risks getting too efficient. At that point it starts attacking itself. You can see where all the control system filaments in this part of Sandra are dead. I'll bet her own repair system is destroying them."

  “Autoimmune diseases,” Yasmina observed in a shocked voice.

  “Yeah. The testing process matched with learning routines and an ability to improve repair capabilities inevitably pushed Sandra into becoming better and better at identifying and fixing damage. Unfortunately, living organisms are obvious lessons that there's no optimum point at which that stuff stops. It keeps trying to get better even after it gets so good at its job that it turns harmful."

  The captain had come to stand with them, face sober. “It shouldn't have happened. We knew everything there is to know about every one of the components on that ship."

  Another engineer shook his shaved head. “It's a scientific principle that you can know everything there is to know about something, and still not be able to predict an outcome. We just proved it again."

  “Assuming you did know everything,” Kevlin snapped. “You tried to make a machine work like a living creature, with self-direction and self-repair capabilities. What made you think you could tell how it would act? Humans are the mature result of millions of years of evolution and we only function halfway well because of an enormous investment in cultural, organizational and medical systems designed to control our actions and compensate for our faults!"

  “What'll happen to Sandra?” Yasmina wondered.

  The captain glanced at Kevlin. “Do you think she'll be safe once the power dies and everything goes dark?"

  “The macro stuff, probably. I don't know about the nanos. It all depends if they evolved in the direction of viruses that can remain dormant for almost indefinite periods while awaiting conditions to reactivate."

  This time the captain grimaced. “We'll have to junk her. There's no telling how some of her internal components have evolved, so we'll probably use an automated drone to shove her onto a trajectory into the sun. We'll have to severely limit or block evolution of nanos on the next model. Maybe not even use them. They're too hard to track if they do start changing. But we can put limits on the macro drones, too. We'll do better next time,” the captain vowed.

  “That statement probably could've been carved on a substantial number of tombstones throughout human history."

  “Next time will be different,” the captain insisted.

  “You're right about that,” Kevlin agreed. “Next time I won't be aboard."

  “Yes, you will."

  “No, I won't. My contract clearly limits the duties to which I can be assigned."

  The captain smiled. “If you're right, these ships will need medical expertise to identify, diagnose, and treat problems. One of the potential duties listed in your contract is ship's doctor. So congratulations. That's what you'll be. The ship's doctor."

  Copyright (c) 2007 John G. Hemry

  * * * *

  Show me a thoroughly satisfied man—and I will show you a failure.

  —Thomas A. Edison

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  LOKI'S REALM

  by C. SANFORD LOWE & G. DAVID NORDLEY

  * * * *

  Illustrated by William Warren

  Engineers must work with what they have....

  * * * *

  Chapter 1

  Broadford, Isle of Skye, Scotland,

  12 March 2260

  I suppose it's more interesting when, in the words of Robert Burns, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” than otherwise. I'll have no quarrel with that, though I do have to say that, had everything gone according to plan, it still would have been quite an adventure. I'm Bruce Macready, historian of the Epsilon Eridani mission to build and launch one of the four impactors of the Black Hole Project.

  The idea of the BHP was to accelerate four billion-ton iron-rod impactors from four different stars up to relativistic velocities, then crash them together to generate a pressure at their meeting point that far exceeds what even quantum mechanics can resist, the result being a miniature black hole. Though smaller than an atomic nucleus, it would mass a billion tons or so—enough to stay around long enough for the physicists to play with it and someday, perhaps, use its progeny to construct vast Faustian machines that would manipulate the very fabric of space itself to humanity's purposes.

  Aye, that was the hope.

  How, you might ask, did a Scottish professor, who had not left the Isle of Skye more than a half dozen times in his 147 years—let alone go into space—become involved in this? Well, I had taught the history of science and technology at Broadford College for over half its existence, and held every position including chancellor at one time or another. I thought the human race was in a flat place of late, not making history like it had done before. Earth was pacified. Mars was nearly terraformed, and it would be centuries before Venus followed suit. So I sensed that, short of the possibility of alien contact, the BHP would be the signal event of this era.

  I found that among the BHP principal investigators was one Bradford Adams, an Australian physicist who had attended Broadford for a year on exchange and had taken one of my classes. Year after year, in explaining our expansion into space, I unleashed the words of Tsiolkovsky to thunder down on Brad and my other students, telling them that one could not live in a cradle forever. Now he spoke to me.

  I took it on myself to contact Brad and offer my services as an historian on the fifty-year expedition to Epsilon Eridani—a star about a third of
the Sun's luminosity, which, due to its extreme youth, was not suitable for a colony and thus had no indigenous historians. To my great surprise, the project leader, Dr. Zhau Tse Wen, showed up at Broadford to interview me. We hit it off well, and over a glass of fourteen-year-old Talisker, my proposal was accepted. So, with a little more fuss than I need relate here, I made my goodbyes to my older brother, to Macready Manor, to Broadford College, and to my past life.

  I sent a few personal things ahead and began this journey of some thirteen light-years on foot, hiking the ten kilometers to Kyle of Lochalsh. One travels light among the stars, and I wanted to savor what little time I had left on Skye. It was October—clear, bright, and nippy—and the view of Skye from the height of the bridge almost made me turn in my tracks and head back.

  But no, I have an inertia in me that is legendary, and my path I'd chosen. I sighed and marched down the mainland side of the span and into the transit station. There I caught a fan bus to Glasgow and took an orbital shuttle four hundred kilometers up to Sheffield Spaceport, the rotating toroidal space station near which the starship Admiral Byrd was then keeping station.

  As I left the shuttle, a smiling attendant met me. “Dr. Macready?” he said. “You're wanted on the starship."

  I was surprised; the Admiral Byrd wasn't due out for two more days, and I'd anticipated some time to explore Sheffield Spaceport.

  The attendant handed me a pair of somewhat old-fashioned looking spectacles. Smart glasses, I realized. They'd been around for a couple of centuries, but with an old-fashioned wrist comp for all my needs, I'd never used them before.

  “They're for those who haven't had bioradios installed,” he said.

  Of course. I'd been born a wee bit early to have the genetic modification that allows people's brains to send and receive radio waves. The spectacles were a prosthesis for those of us so handicapped, and they'd known I was coming. I put them on with a frown. Nothing appeared.

  “Speak the name of what you want to know as quietly as you like, or stare at something for more than a second, down the hall to the shuttle dock, for instance."