NanoSymbionts

by Joseph Philbrook

  “Yes that is definitely a very good thing Jake,” Steve replied. “You were after all becoming a very dangerous individual. I'm still not sure how you became quite so deviously clever without having the advantages of an fully sentient nanosymbiont. But since you've embraced the limiting factors of your Free Spacer oath, I'm very glad you are.”

  Then they spent some time discussing each others plans for the future. Their deliberations ended when captain Waymaker intruded on their privacy to invite them to share a toast to their success in outfoxing the guild council.

  When the Avant-garde's synthuel tanks were eventually filled to capacity, captain Waymaker asked his passengers if it was time to tell him where they wanted to go.

  “Actually we need to go in two separate directions, don't you know?” Jake replied.

  “Yes, I have a little business to finish up on my way to Hillside,” Questor confirmed. “While Jake here needs to find a way to secretly rendezvous with a certain guild ship.”

  “Fortunately there is a place you can bring us,” Jake resumed speaking. “That will, if we can avoid detection, work for both of us.” As he said this, Jake held out a data tab to captain Waymaker. “This confidential data base contains a list of coordinates for some secret rendezvous locations I've selected, including a planet called LosLand.”

  The Avant-garde returned to normal space in close proximity to LosLand's sun. It's trajectory and initial relative velocity was such that it entered into a fast ecliptic orbital path around the star. Which would take just under three galactic standard subcycles to swing around the far side of the star. During which time two of the Avant-garde's shuttle craft were to be launched. First to launch was Questor, in one of the standard short range shuttles. The timing of his launch was critical. He had to launch after the Avant-garde's ecliptic path began to break away from the close proximity with the star. Lest it's massive gravity well should prove too much for the shuttles engines. While at the same time he had to launch before the Avant-garde's slingshot orbit built up so much outward momentum. That even the small mass of the shuttle would inherit enough of it to carry him too far beyond LosLand's orbit.

  Questor wasn't overly worried however. He had checked the math and he'd seen enough of the Avant-garde's crew to feel confident that nobody would screw up. Still it was a pleasant surprise to see that the shuttle's inherited momentum proved to be just enough to effect an excellent trajectory path. Which would have resulted in a survivable atmospheric entry. Even if the shuttles engines had been completely inoperable.

  Meanwhile as Questor began to approach LosLand, the Avant-garde reached sufficient relative speed and distance for Jake to safely take it's only fringe shuttle, on a covert fringe effect flight.

  Unlike the short range shuttle that Questor had taken Jake's shuttle was equipped with a fully certified fringe effect drive. It could even make multiple fringe flights without external assistance but since it was a ship's shuttle, it was designed to fit within a smaller hull design than a standard shuttle of similar capacity. Thus some standard equipment had been omitted from it to make room for the fringe drive. Jake's shuttle's thrusters were underpowered. As was it's gravitational optimizer.

  The shuttle had enough power for normal maneuvering. It could make safe planetfall on any planet within the gravitational norm for human habitation but getting back into space without launch assistance would be somewhat problematic. Because it would require running it's thrusters at maximum for an extended period. By the time it would attain orbit, it would need to shut down it's drive systems for an extended cool down and recalibration process. During which time it would be a sitting duck. That wouldn't be an issue for this flight however. Jake had no intention of making planetfall anywhere. No, he was headed on a carefully plotted indirect course for an unofficial rendezvous location. Which Questor had long ago established with ‘the Captain’ of the Resonance. A location which Jake could expect the Resonance to routinely check on, as it passed by. The original purpose was so that the Questor could quietly get on board the Resonance without the guild's tattletales noticing. Now it would serve Jake the same way.

  Jake was less surprised but just as pleased as Questor had been with the perfectly executed launch of his shuttle. His outward bound trajectory, distance and relative velocity from the star's gravity well, were ideal for the beginning of his subspatial fringe flight.

  Jake double checked his coordinates several times while he waited for the Resonance to notice him. It wasn't that he had any doubt about being in the exact right spot but he was bored. The only other task he'd had to do was to run a passive scan of the area to insure that nobody else had noticed him. With the fringe drive in stealth mode, it had taken him nearly five overcycles to get here. Then he had waited for two more before he suddenly felt a slight lurch. As the Resonance's manipulator array gently latched on to his shuttle and pulled him into their ‘inverse temporal dilation’ envelope. As soon as his shuttle was fully inserted in a docking bay, Jake established a secure communication link to the Resonance.

  “Hello shipmates,” Jake began. “I wish it was safe for me to spend some time walking among you. But if I were to actually step foot on the Resonance, then sooner or later the guild council would come to know of it. And that would not be a good thing for any of us. So it is that I'd like to invite the Captain, to please come aboard my shuttle craft that we may parley.”

  “Now be reasonable Jake,” the Captain's image insisted. “You know damn well that if you don't come aboard and be seen to at least nod at a few of them. My Nearkin crew are going to make my life miserable for several generations.”

  Jake shook his head.

  “By now you must have heard about the sanctions your ‘guild council’ has authorized concerning me,” Jake explained. “It won't matter how much you might not want to, you know you'd be obligated to report my presence.”

  “Of course I'll have to report it eventually,” the Captain's image argued. “But I ‘can’ hold off on that until ‘after’ you've left. And frankly not even that collection of bureaucrats actually think they can force ‘me’ to personally endorse their sanctions. So please do come aboard.”

  “Actually sir,” Jake reasoned. “I'd be more concerned with the parts about guild personnel giving me access to guild facilities.”

  “You can stow that bilge right now!” the Captain's image interrupted in a commanding voice. “The Resonance isn't a guild facility. It never was, any more than Hillside is. You should be aware that the Resonance pioneered the concept of roving long range transport ships. But unlike the others that came afterwards, it wasn't constructed for that purpose by one of the guild shipyards. It evolved from my personal long range shuttle. Aside from that, I don't even own it anymore, my Nearkin do.

  You see, some time ago, when I lost one of my oldest friends in a terrible accident. I realized that not even a questor is truly immortal. So I began to worry about what would happen to my crew if something ever happened to me. I decided to provide for that eventuality by setting up a trust in their name and transferring ownership of the Resonance to it.” A slight trace of a smile showed on the corner of the Captain's lips as he continued. “In fact Jake, the day you accepted honorary membership in the crew of the Resonance. You became part owner of her yourself. Now be a good ship's officer and obey your captain. Get in here and let my Nearkin honor you! Besides, if you don't come on board, you won't be able to finish that special project you were looking forward to.”

  It was a nearly a hundred overcycles before the Captain would even talk to him about anything besides the various festivities the Nearkin had cooked up in his honor. Jake didn't push, because he realized that thanks to being in full temporal inversion, they could put even the most urgent business aside for years of subjective time without any untoward results. Yet that was the whole problem. Subjective time was so named because you felt every moment of it but eventually he was able to sit down with the captain and ask about it.

  “Ye
s,” the Captain replied, “I was able to extract the entire memory core from the AI that was at the heart of the eroded remains of the Star Dragon. I think the AI itself is intact. And yes I've successfully cultured the crystal fragments you left with me. The new crystal has almost overgrown the culture chamber. But frankly I'm not so sure about your plan to embed the entire AI's core logic and memory into the crystal matrix. A process that, I might add, would have had a better chance of success if it had been done during the growth cycle of the crystal.”

  “Well you see Captain,” Jake explained with a sigh. “I'm afraid I didn't quite tell you the whole plan. At least not yet. Though I'd be surprised if you haven't guessed a bit more than your letting on.”

  “Perhaps I have,” the Captain replied. “I'll admit that special isolation chamber you asked me to design gives me some very disturbing ideas about it. For starters, about the only way you could embed as precise a copy of the original AI as your preparations would suggest is by using your nanites to inscribe the pattern within the crystal.

  You must know that recreating the active core of such a mature AI like this rarely succeeds Jake. Even if the copy is perfect. The AI itself usually rejects what it perceives as an altered reality and self destructs.”

  “Which is why,” Jake explained. “I plan to provide it with some supplemental memories. With which it can reestablish the continuity of it's own existence.”

  “But no AI will accept an inserted memory as it's own,” the Captain argued. “Not even the Professor has ever succeeded with that.”

  “That's not strictly true,” Jake said as he shook his head. “There is one known form of AI that routinely accepts external memories from a certain verified source.”

  “I'm only familiar with one kind of AI that does anything like that,” the Captain reasoned. “And that's a nanosymbiont. Which only works because it became sentient within the framework of it's host-mind's...” “NO!” the Captain literally interrupted himself to scream. “You can't mean to attempt that! A nanosymbiont ‘MUST’ first become sentient within the intra-nanite communications network that it forms between it's host-minds nanites.

  Any attempt to fake that is so dangerous that the nanosymbiotic pact expressly lists it as an inescapable trigger for the nano-destruct routines. And you've had your nanites far too long to survive without them.”

  “You know of course Captain,” Jake replied. “That with the guild council's sanctions in place, I won't be able to stick with short or even medium range stardrives. Nor can I afford to risk traveling in stasis. I also can't just stay here on the Resonance, sooner or later my presence would endanger everyone on board. So I can't expect to always have the Nearkin's company and music, to keep me sane on the long voyages I must make. And finally, I don't think I could bond with a new AI even if Sandra would risk trying to help me form a replacement.”

  “Better we should pick a galaxy so far away that the guild wouldn't even think of hunting for you there,” the Captain pleaded. “At least not before you've had time to develop your own hedge against the aeons you must face. On the way you would have my company and that of as many of the Nearkin as we can stand to permit the honor of celebrating your presence.”

  “No! I'm sorry,” Jake replied sadly. “But I can not allow you to spend them on that. Oh, I'm honored that you would even consider it. I know how much you love them. I also know that the Nearkin and their music have become as close to a true symbiont as you will ever have. It is they who keep you sane. It is your very love for them that serves as your only real control.”

  Jake paused briefly but as the Captain didn't respond to his last remark, he continued.

  “Unless I'm very mistaken Captain,” Jake said. “Your own nanosymbiont never quite coalesced into a sentient being has it?”

  “No,” the Captain admitted. “And it was a very long time before I was strong enough to survive long range temporal inversion without the help of my ship's AI as well. And your point is?”

  Once again Jake shook his head and sighed.

  “Sandra told me that she met you once,” Jake began. “She was most impressed with you. And with the incredible power you wielded. She was certain that you had actually detected her scanners, though you didn't stop her from collecting the data she wanted. She showed me the results. She also showed me the results of a similar scan she ran on me just before I left Hillside.”

  The Captain was now certain of what Jake was going to say but as much as he didn't want to hear it, he provided Jake with the excuse to explain it.

  “So she scanned both of us,” the Captain said. “Am I correct in assuming that she thought our results were somewhat similar?”

  “More so than either of us wants to think,” Jake confirmed. “You never speak of it Captain. But you must be aware of your strength. Even the guild council regards you as the single most powerful questor there has ever been.”

  “And now,” the Captain mused. “Your going to tell me that your just as strong.”

  “No!” Jake replied. “At least not yet. But if Sandra's calculations mean anything. I will eventually, assuming I survive long enough, become even stronger than you are. It's for that very reason her calculations predict that my nanites will never truly form a sentient symbiont. Now I'm not actually going to try to force one into existence. But there is a way the recreated AI from the Star Dragon can simulate one long enough to briefly network ‘all’ of my currently active nanites into a cohesive whole pseudo-sentient symbiont long enough to cohesively negotiate a personal upgrade to their copies of the nanosymbiotic pact.

  That's why I needed such a large piece of that specific kind of rare crystal. You see it had to be big enough for 100 percent of my prime nanites to rebuild themselves from it.

  During the reformation process, their ‘bodies’ must provide ‘all’ of them with the resonance value of a single communication crystal. Specifically a single crystal of the kind Steve built into his transdimensional portalizer control systems.”

  The Captain just stared at Jake. Jake quietly waited. Finally, after 3 subcycles the Captain broke the silence.

  “But with your intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Questor's transdimensional portalizer. Absolute control over nanites having the properties of that crystal is an insane idea. You must know that.”

  “Yes it certainly is,” Jake acknowledged. “At least on the surface. But you see Captain, as much as I hate to admit it, the council wasn't quite as wrong about me as I let on. In the long run, the oath of a Freespacer won't be enough. Nor however, would the oath of a questor have been any better. I'm simply getting too good at manipulating things. Sooner or later I'd find a way around any such limitations. Eventually I'll become so powerful that I'll start to think of myself as some kind of god. That is what frightens me more than the risks involved in trying to modify my nanite's hard coded compliance to the nanosymbiotic pact.”

  The Captain snorted.

  “And just how is suddenly becoming the most powerful being in the universe ‘today’, supposed to solve ‘that’ problem?” the Captain demanded.

  “Because,” Jake replied. “The modifications I intend to make are not designed to release my nanites from the limitations imposed by the nanosymbiotic pact nor myself from the obligations imposed by the Freespacer's oath. But rather I intend to plug a few loopholes in both, with specific additional hard coded limitations. Along with reinforcing the oath by simultaneously embracing a rigid code of honor. Both of which must fit snugly inside the existing loopholes in such a way that they mesh with the current code, without actually violating it.

  You see there are certain limitations that I must somehow impose on myself while I still can, while I'm still me. It is something I must do. But it is not something I can do alone. So I must beg of you, to either help me become what I must. Or for the love of every living being in the entire multiverse possessing a measure of free will, including your beloved Nearkin. You must completely destroy me, while you s
till have the power to do so.”

  “And that is why,” Jake continued before the Captain could argue the point. “We will need to take a long side trip like you suggested. We shall need to go the the very brink of the event horizon of a certain supermassive black hole. One that is no longer surrounded by a galaxy full of star systems. For if this all goes wrong, it will require the combined power of such a singularity and that of a transdimensional rift big enough to swallow the singularity whole, to ensure that not even one of the enhanced nanites escape.”

  For the next three subcycles Jake and the Captain simply stared at each other. Neither made the slightest sound nor gesture. It was the Captain who finally broke the silence.

  “You do of course realize,” he capitulated. “Just how restrictive such an oath would have to be in order to contain the power you've described.”

  “Yes,” Jake agreed. “But in order to get the embryonic symbiont to embrace it, the oath will have to allow us to defend ourselves.”

  “You will also need the flexibility to make many mundane decisions about daily life,” the Captain added. “It is only with regard to your ability to impose your will upon other sentient beings that we must restrict you further than the Freespacer's oath does already. It will take much forethought to form a code of honor that not only does the job without violating the existing nanosymbiotic pact but is also something that both you and your AI-symbiont can live with.

  For if this works at all, you will have a nearly unbreakable link to your AI. Which would also become more powerful than before. So it will also need to be bound by this code of honor. It is perhaps a good thing that the anomaly designated as Omega7 in the guild database, is so very far away. I presume of course that, ‘that’ is where you intend that we should do this thing. Anyway, we will need most of the required subjective time of such a journey to ensure that we get the details of that code, exactly right. It will be such a complex web that we shall have to weave for you.