by G M Steenrod
“That's too bad,” commented Ada.
“I can see where you're headed. The only unusual variable was your trip to Mars. That could have been an opportunity to get to you or it could be that the something you had planned for Mars was a threat.”
“It's not possible to go any further on the available information, Baby Girl.”
Cassie nodded. The logical possibilities were finite and had all been closed for now.
“Promise me, you'll make sure to isolate your quantum, whenever you activate this module. You can't integrate it into your main system without alerting any probes.”
“I will, Mom.”
“Are we done for now, then?” asked Ada, taking a sip from her glass.
“For now,” Cassie answered.
The screens around Cassie flickered. Ada's image blinked out and then returned. It was identical, but it felt different to Cassie. More than likely, Ada had used some form of unique glyph structure to create a sense of familiarity. She'd study it later.
Cassie, sitting in her kitchen, realized she had no idea of what to do next. She felt compelled to explore her mother's notes further. She would do that.
She had to protect herself, if she did so. Most people regarded her as a lesser version of her mother. While Cassie's artistic ability, and her ability to innovate the art was far greater than her mother's ability, she didn't have her mother's technical genius. That perception protected her from the intrigue that surrounded Ada.
“Lovely flesh,” Cassie murmured to herself.
Was she going to explore her Mother's death? Was that the direction she was headed? She was no detective. She could easily hire someone. She could also tap into her father's friends.
That didn't feel right.
Cassie knew, deep within her, that she had to know why her mother had gone to Mars. It was a missing bit of information. The why. Why had this all occurred. Why had they taken her mother from her.
She also knew, unequivocally, that she need to turn Alfie back on. Then get Samuel. Then take a nap.
“The journey of thousand miles, begin with nap,” she said to herself in a faux, slightly racist, Asian accent.
“Samuel. Samuel!”
CHAPTER TEN
Blue and Red
Trago Verd looked through his office windows to the broad assault of greenery through his windows. It looked distinctly post apocalyptic. Trees and shrubs grew through the remains of buildings that had been abandoned but not demolished. A lack of funds and motivation kept them there.
He was old enough to remember the apocalypse movies of his youth, and old enough to have lived through the Brink—the wave of unrest, financial collapse, and environmental failure that most had believed would pre-sage the Apocalypse.
Sometimes he would would walk the desolate, asphalt path to his office, listening to the chorus of birds, imagining that he was a lone survivor. It was far from the truth. He was at the center of a large campus that ringed him. The building that held his office was the capstone of a complex that sank 30 stories down. It held the Great Quantum, “Mighty Blue.”
Trago's office was fashionable, and decorated in a Spanish flavor. A single corner was screened, enough to be functional in this modern era of the pervasive screen. Trago was one of the chief architects of the Mighty Blue and the lead scientist on Big Red.
Trago found that he needed big space to think big. His mind needed enough room to spread out. Of course, Mighty Blue had a full complement of human researchers and simple robots, to provide maintenance and labor, in the many stories underneath. Trago was one of the few people to hold an office above the complex. The offices were built in the initial phases of Mighty Blue's development. As parts of Mighty Blue were tested, a quantum distortion emerged that blocked the function of single processor True Quantums. The result of that interference had been that the bulk of the research needed to be moved out of the radius of interference. The buildings in that zone were considered useless for technical work as a result.
Trago had been too stubborn to move when the interference first emerged. He only needed the quantums for simulation and would travel the short distance across the radius to do that type of work.
The quantum interference continued to this day, but terminals linked through the Ether to Mighty Blue were used in the main complex now.
“Doctor?” an assistant had slipped in, unnoticed by Trago as he looked out the windows.
“Yes?” he answered.
“We're cycling the processor banks now. There is nothing unusual to report.”
“Thank you. That's very good. Notify me as needed or when the task has been completed,” Trago said automatically.
Mighty Blue was 24 years old. It had been fully shutdown once for maintenance at year 8. The shutdown had been prompted by a failing processor. It had taken 5 days to bring it back online after the swap. Mighty Blue was the backbone of the Ether. The Ether could function without it, in a halting, lagged fashion. However, by day 2 of the outage a panic had spread throughout the team. It had looked suspiciously similar to the failed Greats. By day 4, Trago discovered that even when fully and manually powered down, there was limited activity in the processors, and random bursts of software activity.
Trago, working on a hunch, plugged a Near Quantum into the system and uploaded some of the new screen software that used an emotive glyph. The Great, slowly, haltingly, came online.
From that day forward, Trago looked at Mighty Blue as a life form. Life forms couldn't be powered down. Mighty Blue had resisted it somehow at the quantum-level, and had been in the equivalent of a coma. The software update, a piece written by Ada, had given it back a voice, and caused it to reorganize many of its data structures.
When Trago had first documented his perceptions, they were met by a lot of sarcastic commentary on the screens. The subsequent failure of two more Great Quantum builds that were exact clones of Mighty Blue's pre-glyph design shifted scientific opinion strongly into Trago's camp. Dealing with the Great, in Trago's mind, became a matter of dealing with a hybrid life form.
Trago's maintenance methods, which involved very limited shutdowns of subsystems, allowed the support team to do “surgery” when necessary and do medical-like inspections. After new attempts to build a Great became banned on Earth--to prevent the quantum interference zones from spreading-- Mars became the next likely site. Its exploding population, use as a hub for space travel, and scientific work required the advanced capabilities of a Great. Trago was the only candidate worth betting trillions on.
“Auntie?”
Trago was distracted again. Such recurrent episodes always came before a major set of new thoughts. He felt his brain was pulling resources from his basic environmental awareness. His mind was agile, but it didn't have the threading ability of a Great.
A slim figure, alluring, with a comfortable sensuality radiating through a skintight, burnt-umber jumpsuit, stood in the doorway. He recognized her instantly.
“Hello, Cassie,” Trago said, while gesturing toward an overstuffed leather sofa. It had bold wooden arms, and big buttoned upholstery.
Cassie admired the piece from the doorway. It was impressive. The room also was a deliberate, haphazard mix of items that created a tremendous subconscious impulse. It both stimulated and comforted. It was a good reflection of Trago.
Cassie suddenly darted toward Trago and hugged him. It was a spontaneous outpouring of affection that had characterized Cassie as child. Cassie had been a short child. While still short, Cassie, the woman was about 8 cm taller than Trago.
“It's good to see you in person, Auntie.” They had spoken on the screens, but there was a difference in person.
“It's good to see you too, Baby Girl.” Shortly after using Ada's software, Trago had met with Ada to plumb the depths of the emotive glyph. The chemistry between the two had been enormous, and they became lovers shortly after. When the relationship became consistent, Ada introduced Cassie to Trago. Trago presented as a petite,
Mediterranean woman at the time.
Cassie, a precocious 8 year old, and Trago became fast friends.
“First, sit down and relax,” Trago said motioning to the couch. “Second, how was the trip?”
“It was lovely. I haven't been on a blimp in years. They've really improved.” Blimps had resurged as the fossil fuel supply collapsed. Initially, it was a more fuel efficient, but slower way to travel. What it had evolved into had little similarity to a blimp of that earlier period or to the blimp of history. It was a product of space travel and materials crafted in orbit. Gone was the iconic, netted balloon, and the dangling gondola. In its place was an aerodynamic, lighter than air craft, composed of a fibrous, metal mesh. In places, the mesh was hardened to form an inflexible surface. In places, the mesh was left untreated to remain pliable.
It was very large, capable of moving 2,000 people comfortably. The electric turbines moved it at speeds that rivaled the passenger jets of old, smoothly, silently, pollution-free, and at an economy impossible with fossil fuels.
Cassie sat and removed her hat. It was a small, white felt box with gradually transforming images of feathers. Her hair spilled down in a tumble of locks. They seemed a spontaneous outgrowth of her jumpsuit.
Trago offered her a glass of red wine. Cassie accepted, and the two sat side by side on the coach.
“You must come to the house with me and stay while you are here. We can catch up,” offered Trago. Cassie had been expecting the invitation, and knew Trago would find it grotesquely insulting if she didn't accept.
“Of course, Auntie. I do have a matter to talk to you about that I didn't trust over the screens first, though. We can talk privately here?”
While Trago's assistant and Cassie had strolled in apparently at will, that was not the case. The security system had monitored their every step, and both had been granted admittance by Trago at an earlier time. This close to Mighty Blue, security was strict, but invisible. A small garrison of armed guards was one floor down. Another contingent was outside of the interference zone. There were also unconfirmed reports of countermeasures to vehicle assault hidden about the campus.
Trago's office was regularly swept for eavesdropping devices too.
“Baby Girl, only space would be more private,” Auntie smiled, his thin, expertly crafted mustache framing his face.
Cassie took a studied sip of her wine.
“Why was my mother going to Mars?” she asked.
“We missed one another, and I wanted her feedback on some software....”
“Auntie,” Cassie said, “Auntie, I need the real reason. Something has happened, and I need to know.” Cassie had channeled her mother, quite to her surprise. The word use and tone was that of Ada. Trago recognized it immediately. There was no way Cassie was going to be mollified. She would, like her mother, exert pressures on Trago until Trago cracked. He had often felt Ada had the skills of a reincarnated Inquisitor.
Trago sighed. “You are very much your mother's daughter.” Trago sank back into the sofa, and looked across the room and back out of the windows.
“I've told you or was about to tell you the truth, before you interrupted. Just not all of it,” he smiled wryly, with a hint of pouting.
“You know that your mother contributed software to allow the Ether to more quickly process the screens? She also worked with Mighty Blue in helping it to determine a location with a higher probability of successful deployment of the next Great.”
“Yes, I've viewed her logs on the subject, and some of her notes.”
“There's more to it. The Mars Great Quantum, Big Red, had a much different start up than Mighty. It started in a partially active state, with sharply reduced computing power. Mighty came online instantly, on first boot, and initially behaved like one would expect an enormously powerful supercomputer to behave. Big Red didn't. The hardware of Big Red and Mighty is near identical.”
“Did you think it was Mom's software?”
Trago smiled. “No, that worked. The rest didn't. It seems the Quantums have a preference for your Mother's code.”
“Really?” The doctoral students would love that tidbit of information. It meant her mother was more intrinsic to the shape of modern culture than even they believed.
“She had to write a series of routines for us using her glyph theories to bring the rest of the system online. Of course, she could do that from here,” Trago gestured around him, ”Earth, I mean.”
“Why did she go to Mars then? Everything should be doable remotely.”
“Yes, that's true. Mostly. Baby Girl, you need to not repeat this. It threatens the Ether.”
Cassie nodded and sipped.
“Big Red came online, but was erratic. It's still erratic. The computing power is so great that we were able to segregate the unstable processes from the stable processes without it being noticeable.”
Cassie recognized the problem immediately. “You are afraid it could collapse. It would take the quantum connection to Mars down. Comms would slow down tremendously, and the processing power available to the Ether would drop. Screens would be impacted.”
“Yes, Baby Girl,” Trago acknowledged. The enormity of the problem that he had been wrestling with for years was laid bare before them. He felt as if Cassie was there to pass judgment upon them. The glyphs had been motivated by Cassie. Ada would have built something remarkable without Patrido and Cassie in her life, but it would not likely have been the glyphs.
Trago continued, “The gains human culture have experienced are dependent on the Quantums, and they are fragile. More than these wine glasses. Even suspicion that those gains are unstable would send the markets into a panic.” The times of trouble could return. The stability that exists on Earth now was a product of both the social changes from the Quantums and improvements in fundamental conditions. The fundamental improvements alone weren't enough to back the social optimism that Earth residents now had. As long as people had faith in progress, they would be patient, and ignore the shortcomings. They would have hope.
Trago paused again. He knew Cassie had already pieced together the holes, and there was one big hole. One that required confessing something that had never been published.
“Here's the thing. Your Mother couldn't work remotely, because Big Red wouldn't allow it. It would alter the data stream being transmitted through the Ether to conceal itself.”
“What? Why? Why would it do that? How is that even possible?”
In response to her question, Trago picked a screens tablet off of the coffee table. He gestured a few times. “On the left,” he said pointing to the left side of the screen, “is the data at a terminal in Big Red's complex. The diagnostics are hardwired to bypass possible software failures. Now look to the right.” Trago pointed at the right. With a gesture, Cassie enlarged the image and compared them. Key metrics between the two sides were different.
“We used the quantum connection to send the stream to your mother. It started as the information on the left and became the information on the right.”
Cassie became her analytic self. That was sufficient evidence that the stream was being altered. It wasn't sufficient evidence that it wasn't being altered by a third party. Trago answered her thoughts.
“We checked for probes inside the system. If they were present, we...I couldn't find them. We also intercepted the stream immediately outside of the transmit buffer, before it entered the Ether. It had been altered by that time.”
“So, it was definitely the Great,” she said musing aloud, “or a saboteur. An uber-saboteur.” The issue of potential sabotage had been addressed even with the failure of the first Great. With each of the 19 failures, security experts dissected the systems and facilities looking for sabotage. No indicator had ever been found.
Cassie knew that the puzzle of the Great's behavior was too enticing for her mother to ignore. She would have been compelled to go to Mars.
“Auntie, did you and Mom have a plan?”
Trago shook
his head. “Not specifically. She was going to help me diagnose Big Red's behavior and write work-arounds. Besides the pleasure of your mom's company, she was one of the few people that could tackle this problem with me.”
“Why's that?” asked Cassie.
“Your Mom was able to handle the oddity of the situation—the fear of it—she was fearless, you see.”
“Yes, she was.” Cassie bobbed her head in agreement. It was a gesture very reminiscent of her Mother.
“The others,” Trago said, referring to the other system designers, “couldn't deal with it. Everyone was prepared for AI, but this was different. This was a designed system that demonstrated the features of a life form. That was very different than software simulating human intelligence. The fear they had inside of them kept them from properly assessing the Great or creating proper solutions. The fools wanted to shut it down. Shut it down!”
