AL:ICE-9
Page 30
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ALICE-3 rested in a comfortable orbit above her previous home. Parked in stationary orbit, she sat directly above the State of Georgia, reflecting on her life, past and present. She had once been a facility guardian for the Georgia location. Her responsibility there had been to support an Advanced Weapons Research and Design facility. That had been until the first NeHaw attack.
Afterward, she simply maintained the empty offices and labs, waiting for the release of the last remaining link to existing command, trapped in an abandoned stasis experiment. Captain Jacob Thomas had rested in an isolated lab in Nevada, under the watchful eye of ALICE-1. As the first of the eight ALICE facilities, she protected and prepared him for the day when he would be needed.
That day came 153 years after his entombment, and all the ALICEs were delighted with his recovery. With Jakes release, came a flurry of new activity. Fresh humans were being recruited every day, restoring the usefulness of every facility they populated.
As it was coming close to the time ALICE-3 herself might be reopened, the accident happened, terminating her existence. She understood her sisters had kept her death a secret due to the extreme danger it presented to Jake. She also understood that with her passing, ALICE-9 came to life.
If not for Jake, her story would have ended there. She understood that it was through Jakes knowledge and efforts that she was where she is today. Moreover, from this perspective, it was a huge step up from her previous life!
Before her untimely passing, she was in a fixed location with a limited view of the universe. Now she could go anywhere and experience things her sisters could only imagine. The battle for Klinan had proven her value in expanding the influence of the human/ALICE agenda.
It was for all this and much more that she was forever indebted to Jake for her resurrection.
Epilogue
Jake sat in a beach chair, just off the water’s edge, drinking a beer and watching the women play in the surf. Sara, Sandy, and Becky were all waist deep in the warm blue water, having the time of their lives. The scuba gear he had just been using rested in the sand next to him on one side of his chair. On the other side were the towels the women had spread out before entering the water.
As he watched, Sara extracted herself from the splashing melee, and headed to her towel next to Jake. He handed her a beer as she dropped on her towel, taking a sip and then setting it upright in the sand next to her. He watched as she lay on her back, her body glistening in the sunlight from all the water clinging to her skin.
She closed her eyes, and then said, “So tell me again how you saved ALICE-3?”
Smiling, Jake replied, “As I said before, when the computers that make up ALICE-3 crashed, they created a file called a core dump. It contained everything she had in memory. I simply rewrote the firmware for the host system to reload that into memory prior to completely booting.”
“Why didn’t they ever do that before?” She asked, tuning her head in his direction, while shielding the sun from her eyes with one hand.
“The systems they used in development didn’t crash, they were manually rebooted. Once they discovered they were creating a life each time, they stopped the practice entirely. As far as I know this is the only time a crash dump has ever been captured to test with,” Jake replied.
“Once I had that to work with, I saved everything I could find in the file systems, specific to ALICE-3, and then had a duplicate ALICE system installed on the battleship. We replicated the entire system, replacing all the necessary files in all the required places. The best part of all, besides resurrecting ALICE-3, this solves two huge issues for us,” Jake finished.
“What’s that?” Sara replied, this time not bothering to look up as she went back to sunning herself.
“We no longer need a large crew to run the battleship.”
With that, Jake saw a small nod from Sara,
“And we don’t need to worry about a name for the battleship anymore!” He finished.
Jake saw her smile at that as she raised both arms over her head, relaxing in the sand and sun. He took another sip from his beer as he admired the sunlight on her tanned skin. Turning back to watch the other two in the surf, he had to admit this trip to Australia was everything he had dreamed it would be.
The women adopting Sandy’s tradition of no swimsuits in Australia only added to the splendor.