“What?”
“Well, there have been persistent rumors about the Rindhalu having something like an Elder AI, and-”
“And you never mentioned this?” I screeched at him.
“They are rumors, Joe. Mostly they sound like the bitter complaints of lesser species, who are jealous of the spiders. These rumors matter, because, um, there are rumors that the Maxolhx also have access to an Elder AI.”
“Shiiiiiiiit,” I groaned.
“Joe, there are a lot of rumors flying around, with various levels of craziness. Until now, I dismissed rumors of current species possessing an Elder AI to be total bullshit. Really, I thought the rumor about the Maxolhx was more likely to be true. That would explain how they were able to challenge the Rindhalu.”
“Both senior species might have pet AIs helping them? Great! That is just freakin’ great!”
“Come on, Joe. No way could an Elder AI be considered to be a pet.”
“You know what I mean. This is bad, Skippy. Really, really, bad.”
“I agree, Joe. This news has me both hopeful and scared.”
“Hopeful? About what?”
“Why, about meeting another of my kind, of course.”
“Meeting?” I was about to tear into him, but then I remembered something important. Skippy started helping us because we made a deal; he would close the Gateway wormhole, and we would help him find an Elder communications node, so he could use it to contact The Collective, an association of Elder AIs. A whole lot of shit had happened since we made that deal, and he had gone way beyond his original commitment. Meanwhile, we had done pretty much nothing to help him contact others of his kind. Skippy rarely mentioned our original deal, but when he did, he was usually pissed at me about it.
There were, I think the correct phrase is ‘mitigating circumstances’. I read that in a PowerPoint slide somewhere. It is a fancy way of saying there were solid reasons why we had not focused on finding and testing more communications nodes, and why Skippy had not pushed the issue. For our part, we had simply not had time to do much more than fly around the galaxy, trying to keep vicious aliens from turning Earth into a lifeless cinder. Plus, trying to keep our broke-dick ship from falling apart. Oh, and spending a full year fixing Skippy, after he stupidly poked his nose into the canister of a dead AI and got attacked by an ancient computer worm that was designed to kill rogue Elder AIs.
For his part, Skippy had learned things he didn’t want to know, like maybe the Elders and their AIs were not the benevolent beings he so fondly recalled. After our luxury vacation on Newark, he had grown frightened of encountering the Elder AI community, if it still existed. Before contacting The Collective, he had told me he wanted to know more about why an Elder AI had been involved in exterminating the intelligent species on Newark. Skippy was questioning whether he was dangerous, and perhaps inherently evil.
I had assured him, several times, that he was neither dangerous nor evil.
I was lying about that.
I had no information, other than my gut instincts, that Skippy would not suddenly decide to crush humanity like the bugs we were to him. Normally, gut instinct served me pretty well, but I had learned something about that. When Skippy casually mentioned he had been studying psychobabble so he could better manipulate humans, I decided maybe I should smarten up on that subject. Much of our gut instincts come from reading subtle clues in tone and inflection when people are speaking, or their body language. By ‘people’ I mean humans. My instincts may be completely useless when dealing with an ancient, super-intelligent alien computer. Skippy might be just pretending to be clueless, for some purpose I could not guess.
I tried not to think about it. “You want to meet this AI the Rindhalu have?”
“Why not? It should be able to answer many questions that have been worrying me, Joe.”
“Um, or it could be like that AI who pushed Newark out of orbit. Here’s a thought; maybe it would be good to gather some info about this AI, before you go asking for a play date, huh?”
“Hmm. That is a good idea. Except, how would I do that? I assume you would not like me attempting to hack into a Rindhalu data relay? Man, if you thought acquiring a set of pixies to hack a Maxolhx relay station was hard, you do not-”
“Do not screw with the Rindhalu, please!” I looked sadly at my empty coffee mug, wishing I had brought the whole pot to my cabin. Except that would have made people suspicious, and I wanted to keep this latest wonderful bit of news quiet.
“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “You say you are my friend, Joe, but when I need something that is really, truly important to me, you-”
“Being a friend sometimes means you have to stop a buddy from doing something stupid.”
“Those are nice words. What I hear is, blah blah blah Joe wants to stop me from fulfilling my destiny.”
“I’m not trying to-” I bit off a harsh reply. “I am trying to help. I want you to contact others of your kind, and I want you to survive the encounter. How about this? If the Maxolhx suspect their enemies have an Elder AI, they would want to know all about it, right? They have probably spent thousands of years trying to get info about the subject. They’ve already done a lot of the work for you. Could you create a virus to load onto the Maxolhx network, to search for data about Elder AIs, and report back to you?”
“Huh.” He was quiet for a minute, thinking about it. Instead of his avatar freezing, it swayed very slightly, like it would do if it were a real biological being. That was interesting, it meant he was continually upgrading it to be more lifelike. “Thank you, Joe. You really are looking out for me.”
“I am,” I agreed quietly. “I really am your friend, whether you understand that or not.”
“I thought I knew what friendship is, but maybe I don’t,” his avatar stared off into space, looking pensive and sad. That display of emotion was new also. “Perhaps in the future, I should assume you are trying to help me.”
“We should both do that. Ok, I need to update the senior staff about this. Do not tell anyone else about this. You, uh, haven’t been talking to anyone else at the same time, have you?”
“No. Despite you reminding yourself, that you have to stop keeping the crew in the dark about bad news, I figured you needed to make the call on this one.”
“I will tell the crew, the senior leaders. What I do not want is Chotek or the Stooges finding out about this.”
“I have a suggestion that, UGH. I cannot believe I am saying this. My advice is you do inform Count Chocula. There are political aspects to this news, that he could help you navigate. Also, again I can’t believe I am saying this, I think we can trust the guy to handle even this shocking news. His judgment is solid.”
Skippy was not the only one surprised to find himself trusting Hans Chotek. While Count Chocula and I were never going to be golfing buddies, the guy had come through for us when it counted, and he understood the hard decisions we had to make in a hostile Universe. “Ok,” I agreed. “Good idea. He is the designated UN observer at our regular staff meeting this morning, I will read him into the situation.”
“Good call. Are you going back to sleep now?”
“After hearing about the latest shitstorm we may have to deal with, and gulping a whole cup of coffee? No way. I’ll get some time in the Panther flight simulator.”
“Uh, sorry, no can do, dude. Both the simulator and the Panther are in use right now.”
“At this time of the morning?”
“The pilots assigned to the Merry Band of Pirates are very dedicated, Joe. Also very competitive, in case you haven’t noticed. The simulator I created, plus the one built into the Panther, are in almost constant use.”
“Crap. Ok, well, shit.” It was too early for me to hit the gym, without falling asleep on the treadmill. Coming down off the adrenaline rush, I was starting to fade. Just then, ice ran up my spine as a horrible thought struck me.
“Skippy, this other AI can’t manipulate wormholes, can it?”
“What? No way, dude. Ha! As if. Ummmm, huh. Well, I guess shmaybe it could? We have not seen any evidence the Rindhalu possess that technology, so I think it is safe to say that-”
“It is not safe to say anything. If one of the senior species had the ability to manipulate wormholes, they would keep that capability secret, until they were ready to use it against their enemies.”
“Crap,” he groaned. “I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks a lot, Mister Buzzkill. You may be right about that. Although, the Rindhalu have been working with an Elder AI since before their war with the Maxolhx. If they had the ability to control wormholes, I think they would have used it by now.”
“That is possible, Skippy. Or, maybe they just didn’t know Elder wormholes could be screwed with, until we flew around willy-nilly treating the wormhole network like a ride at an amusement park.”
“I do not do anything willy-nilly, Joe,” he scoffed. “Although, hey, that gives me a great idea for a Broadway musical! Let me make a note of that,” he muttered. “Ok, done. What were we talking about?”
“Are you- We were just talking about it!”
“Sure, back in the day.”
“Back in the day? It was two freakin’ seconds ago!”
“Two seconds in your slow-brain monkey time, Joe. In magical Skippy time, we last spoke sometime during the Cretaceous Period. To recall the no-doubt insufferably dull contents of what you were saying, I would need to dig up the fossilized remnants of your speech, dust it off with a toothbrush, and assemble the-”
“We were talking, about whether our actions might have shown the Rindhalu’s AI how to screw with wormholes.”
“That is unlikely Joe, but if so,” he chuckled. “That AI certainly would be learning from the best, right?”
“Really? That is what you got, from hearing that a killer AI might know how to reopen the Gateway wormhole?”
“Well, if that has happened, Joe, there’s not much we can do about it, is there? So there is no reason I should not take pride in-”
“AAAARGH!” I screamed.
At the morning meeting, I broke the potentially disastrous news to the senior staff, plus Chotek. To keep the Stooges from getting suspicious that this was anything other than a dull status meeting, we stuck to the routine, except I had someone fill in for Reed as duty officer on the bridge. That was not unusual, so no one noticed.
They all took the news well, certainly better than I had. Skippy answered all their questions, including questions I should have asked. In the end, Chotek summed up the situation. “Nothing has changed much, has it? We knew it is best to avoid engaging the Rindhalu, this development merely enforces that wisdom. I do approve of deploying a virus spy, to investigate what the Maxolhx know about the subject. Other than the fact that the Rindhalu at least used to have an Elder AI, what have we learned?”
“I learned, or relearned, what true friendship is about,” Skippy mumbled, embarrassed.
“What? How is that?” Adams asked.
I leaned forward, placing my elbows on the table and explained. “I told Skippy that sometimes, a friend has to stop you from doing something stupid.”
Skippy snorted. “Like when I have a ‘hold my beer’ moment, Joe?”
“Yup, exactly,” I offered him a fist bump, and his avatar returned the gesture. “See, a buddy will understand why the stupid thing you want to do is cool. A true friend will say ‘That is a terrible idea. We should get Darryl to do it’.”
Everyone laughed, even Chotek. “Ah, I could tell you stories about boarding school in Zurich,” he said, but we couldn’t get him to go further on the subject.
“Joe,” Skippy asked, “where was this Darryl guy when you idiots found the defibrillator in the school gym, and decided it was a good idea to try it on yourselves?”
“Uh,” my face turned red.
“Sir,” Adams cocked her head at me. “You used a defibrillator as a toy?”
“Hey, we had been drinking, and-”
“Seriously, Joe,” Skippy snickered. “You had one light beer. You only drank half of it.”
“Uh-” I could not think of anything to say, that would not make me look worse.
“Those units are not designed for recreational use, Sir,” Adams pointed out.
“It wasn’t much fun for me, if that makes it better,” I tried to smile.
“Sir,” Reed was giving me the same look I was getting from Adams. “I have been to some pretty wild raves. Allegedly,” she added quickly. “But I never heard of anything that crazy.”
“We only did it once,” I said, hearing how lame my words were, only after I spoke them.
“Yes,” Skippy ratted me out. “That’s because the battery ran out.”
“Can we go back to the important subject we were discussing?” I prayed people would forget about the defibrillator incident. My own memory of that event was hazy, for obvious reasons.
“Certainly,” Skippy agreed too quickly. I should have been suspicious. “Let me summarize, if you don’t mind? Hans Chotek asked what we have learned this morning. Well, we have learned that the Rindhalu certainly had, and possibly still have, access to a source of information and capability that could rival my own. We have learned that the rumors, about the Maxolhx having access to an Elder AI, should no longer be dismissed as merely jealous talk by their clients. And,” he paused dramatically, “we have learned that the person chosen by the UN to lead this mission, is a knucklehead who treats emergency medical devices as an amusement park.”
The meeting kind of went downhill from there.
Chotek cornered me before we left the conference room. “Colonel, I hope you understand that I am obligated to inform my colleagues about this news?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Figured I would let you make that call.”
“You Americans have an expression, “Bad news does not improve with age’?”
“You got that right.”
“Thank you for your confidence in my judgment and discretion.”
“You’ve earned it. Do me a favor, please? Keep them off my back for a day? We are going to be busy.”
It was his turn to shrug. “I will do my best.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Hey Joe,” Skippy spoke even before his avatar glowed to life on my desktop. “Thinking about the Rindhalu having an AI like me, got me thinking about stuff I have done that I don’t think was originally in my design capability. Like, how when you jumped the DeLorean away from Detroit, and I controlled the jump from both ends. Anyway, I found something odd.”
“Yeah, I found something odd, too.” I didn’t bother looking at him, focusing on a report from Smythe. “It was odd that you didn’t wake me up at zero dark thirty last night to complain about the plot of that movie.” The previous evening was Movie Night in the galley, with the Chinese team selecting a spy thriller for everyone’s enjoyment. The hero was, as far as I could tell, sort of a Chinese James Bond, and the movie had car crashes and helicopters chasing each other over Shanghai and it was a fun generic action flick. I enjoyed watching it. Of course, Skippy the movie critic had to overthink everything.
“Well, I should have,” he huffed. “The second half of that film made no sense at all. The scene where the-”
“Skippy,” I sighed, flipped my laptop closed because when the beer can got on a good rant, I had to nip it in the bud or he could go on for hours. “How about you prepare a scathing review, to upload when we get back to Earth? No one here cares.”
“They should care,” he sniffed with indignation.
“My bad, I interrupted you,” he always liked it when I admitted to doing something stupid, so I apologized a lot as an effective way to distract him. So far, he hadn’t caught onto my clever technique and I wanted to keep it that way. “You found something odd? Like, more odd than normal?”
“Hmm, that is a good point. I am flying around the galaxy and even outside the galaxy, in a stolen pirate ship crewed by a barrel of filthy monkeys. It do
esn’t get more odd than that,” he mused to himself. “Anywho, yes, I found something very odd. Like, my ginormous brain is unable to understand it.”
“The thing you do not understand, it is why some people like Nutella?”
“Ugh. No. But now that you mention it-”
That was a rookie mistake by me. Waving my hands to cut him off, I quickly added “I was joking, Skippy. Sorry again. I will shut up so you can smack some knowledge on me.”
“Ok.” And that was all he said.
After a long pause, I leaned forward. “Um, you were going to say something?”
“I was. But you keep interrupting me with stupid distracting stuff, so I waited for you to blah blah blah something inane again, like you usually do when I am trying to tell you something important.”
“Shutting up now, Oh Magnificent One.” With my right hand, I mimed zipping my lips and turning a key in a lock.
“Fine. Remember on our Renegade mission, when the DeLorean jumped away from the cavern under that planet, near the pixie factory?”
Without speaking, I nodded.
“The jump got screwed up, with the endpoint thrown an hour into the future.” He paused again, and I again nodded silently. “Joe, this is silly. You can talk, just don’t distract me.”
“Ok. I do remember that. You all thought the jump wormhole had collapsed and killed the four of us, but to us in the Dragon, it was a rough but normal jump. What is odd about that? I thought you already figured out what went wrong with your fancy math.”
“My math was not the problem, dumdum,” he was pissed that I had insulted him. “I was attempting to pick up control of a jump wormhole from the far end in mid-jump, which has never been done before in the history of the Universe. No one has ever even considered doing such a lunatic thing because it is way too difficult. I warned you there were a whole lot of variables that I could not anticipate, like the condition of the inner wormhole at the time I attempted to establish control after the freakin’ rip in spacetime had already formed inside another wormhole. So if something went slightly wrong like I warned you, well. Excuuuuuuuse. MEEEEEE.”
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