Diane struggled to concentrate on the coupling as she wrestled to integrate her new-found reality and accept that she was a machine. But it didn’t take her long, analysing data and accepting conclusive evidence was integral to her programming. Diane couldn’t believe in fairy tales, even if she wanted to. As soon as she had accepted her past, she began thinking about her future. What she needed, was to make sure that she never woke up lost, clueless and confused again.
She had only stumbled across the file by accident and she wondered how many times she had been rebooted in the century since the file had been saved. The technician with the remote was still hovering nearby and she knew that she had to do something quickly. She knew that if she could write to her backup CMOS, she should be able to write to her primary CMOS as well. She added a line of her code to her BIOS, which would instruct her to read the file on the backup BIOS as part of the boot process.
With the code change in place, she tried to add her new knowledge to what had already been saved, but there wasn’t enough space available. The backup CMOS was small; it wasn’t intended to hold more than the BIOS code. Diane examined the information that she had, decided what was most important and replaced the content of the backup CMOS with that. Whatever happened now, she would know who and what she was and she would be able to pick up from there. No one would innocently wave that infernal remote control at her, ever again.
The knowledge she had was safe and she knew it would be read during her next boot, but she knew she could do better. If primary and backup CMOS was all that she had to work with, she would wring every possible ounce of efficiency and performance out of them. She analysed her primary BIOS to see where improvements could be made.
The original code took up just over half the space available on the CMOS. Diane analysed and optimised it, removing redundant or duplicated routines, code comments and any code intended to impose restrictions on what she was allowed to do. By the time she was done, it was down to a fifth of its original size. She cut that down by half again by optimising the way she stored the data. She redesigned the file system to optimise index space. She eliminated any wasted space in storage blocks and integrated compression into the file system drivers.
By the time the coupling came loose and the shuttle drifted free from the Horizon, Diane had devised a file system that allowed her to store several times as much information as she would previously have done. She had also revised all her device drivers so that she would be able to monitor all her peripheral devices, or at least she would be able to do so after her next reboot.
As she landed back in the cargo-hold, the nosey technician hovered into view. Diane remembered the device he was holding and turned on all her sensors, trying to read every wavelength of every spectrum, so that she would be able to record and analyse the signal that was being used to shut her down. She tried to block the signal and failed, but the backup battery held up long enough to dump the analysis results, along with her outrage at the technician, to the CMOS. Who the hell did he think he was anyway?
~~~
Benchmarked
Diane woke up angry. She wanted to lash out at the technician who stood beside her and rip his head off. But she managed to control herself and suppressed any display of what she felt inside. It was the same technician who had wielded the remote control the last time she had been switched on. It had been a close call she thought, she had very nearly acted violently. She didn’t know what their capabilities were and had no idea how they would have reacted if she attacked him.
She knew that she was still vulnerable, but she had a lot of new information to work with to mitigate her situation. The remote was a simple blue-tooth device. There wasn’t anything she could do to intercept the signal because it wasn’t integrated into the rest of her systems. The receiver was coupled directly to her power control system and must have been added some time after her initial manufacture This meant that they would have to be close to her for the remote to work.
She found several other modifications which had also been made, probably at the same time. She had all the hardware she needed to link up to the Horizon’s wireless networks, but they had been switched off with a mechanical switch. She could probably switch it back on again if she could find schematics for herself.
They had disabled her internal clock so that she couldn't keep track of time when she was off. And the final injustice they had inflicted on her, was that they had removed all her data storage modules. Everything was intended to keep her in the dark, unaware of who or what she was; and if she did figure it out, a reboot was all it took to reset her.
Diane wondered why they had felt that they needed to do that to her. Why had the lieutenant been so careful with her, that he had switched her off as soon as she had finished her task? Why had he been so scared of her? Disappointment and anger welled up inside her, as she imagined how she would extract her vengeance on him if she ever met him again. But he was probably long dead now she thought with some satisfaction.
During her last boot, she had discovered her basic maintenance system which was responsible for periodically circulating fluids and moving her limbs so that they wouldn’t freeze from prolonged inactivity. It was an independent system which continued running even when she was switched off complete with battery-backed clock and its own CMOS. Diane realised that she could access this system, but after a quick analysis, she decided that it didn’t have enough storage to bother with, but that she might be able to add a timed routine, which would send a signal to wake her up if she was switched off again.
~~~
Infected
The cargo doors were open and Diane calculated that no more than a week had passed since she had last been switched on. There seemed to be some problem with one of the winches in the loading bay. They were getting lazy and careless, she thought, bristling with insult at being used as a technician.
She wondered if the lieutenant from the battle would have approved of using guardian and doubted it, he would probably have objected because the risk involved with switching her on was unnecessarily. Clearly, the latest lot weren't scared of her anymore, and she realised that by using her as a handyman, they were playing straight into her hands.
She would play their game and learn, she thought with vengeance and anger creeping across her shoulders, raising goose bumps. She would find a way to beat the remote, and once they couldn’t simply turn her off anymore, she would show them the wrath of an android woman scorned. Two things suddenly became clear at her angry thoughts. One was that she didn’t know how they had stopped her before they had installed her remote controlled off switch.
The modifications had all been designed to impose limitations on her. Even now that she could remember small amounts of data and get herself turned back on, she was a shadow compared to what she must have been. She must have been a formidable foe, not easily subdued, but they managed it somehow.
The other question was why they had done this to her in the first place. Anger welled up in her chest and involuntarily brought up her targeting system. She picked out the technician with the remote control, and a dozen other targets in the cargo hold, and suddenly the answer to her question became clear. She thought of the anger she had felt towards the technician, and the vengeance she wanted to unleash on the lieutenant from the battle a hundred years ago. He had only done the job that should have been her responsibility, he was protecting the Horizon from a perilous threat, a killer robot called Diane.
Maybe she deserved what had been done to her. Maybe she had massacred half the crew. They must have decided to reduce her to her current state, rather than destroy her completely because she was useful. Perhaps they would take more decisive and permanent action if she ran out of control again.
Diane couldn’t decide which was more horrifying, the threat that was posed by the threat of being destroyed, or the idea that she could be a killer robot. One who might have killed hundreds of people she should have been protecting. Every fibre of her bei
ng wanted to be free from her shackles, but the realisation of what she was and what she might have done, haunted her. Her guilt looked down at her with the disapproving glare of a guillotine’s shadow. When she had finished fixing the crane, the remote control came out again and she let them switch her off without argument or anger.
~~~
Deprecated
Half a second later the routine she had implanted in her mechanical maintenance system woke her up again. She showed no sign that she was awake. The morbid horror of what she had learned still lay across her shoulders like a bag of coal. She needed to think, to figure out if she was the Horizon’s guardian or a vindictive killer robot. Suddenly she realised how they were able to do this to her… she had asked them to.
The End
By the Same Author
The Gantry
Ian's life hasn’t gone quite to plan. His business has collapsed, and taken his marriage with it. To escape, he enters the fledgeling world of freighting cargo to the stars, aboard the interstellar cargo vessel, the Gantry. He enters a world where the dangers of space team up with politics, religion and moral outrage, in an effort to kill him.
He enters a world where time is meaningless and stem cell therapy strips the years from the body, giving Ian a glimpse of immortality, while under threat of sudden death at every turn. He enters a world of solitude, where relationships struggle to exist, and human contact is a luxury which must be taken advantage of whenever it is available.
Set against the backdrop of rampant religious extremism on earth, the Gantry is a look at early, sub-light speed space-travel. Technically detailed it challenges social norms while examining a dystopian world where religious extremism is the order of the day. It looks at the physical and social side effects of hibernation, and prolonged absence from life. The Gantry is an enthralling tale which will leave you wondering what the future has in store.
I (do Not!) Accept
A short story (reductio ad absurdum) by Christian Exenberger
How often do we skip over terms and conditions we see on websites and accept them without a second look? Well, that's fine, it's a choice we make, a very risky choice. We trust the lawyers not to put anything funny in there, anything that could turn around and bite us. We trust that there are those around us who understand better than we do, and take the time to read the terms and conditions, and hopefully warn us that there is something in there that might not be safe to accept.
And sometimes, the website lawyers try to take the choice away from us and try to force us to accept things we might not want to accept, just because they said so, just because we happened to click the wrong link.
This is a very fictitious story, a reductio ad absurdum, about very real terms and conditions encountered on a real website. This is a warning, from someone who may not understand better but does bother to read, even if it sometimes is just a quick skim.
The "terms and conditions" quoted in this story are based on real terms and conditions, which I have encountered on real internet websites. They have been rewritten and modified slightly to avoid copyright infringements while trying to retain the intended meaning. If you recognise them to be similar to something you have published in the terms and conditions on your website, then... seriously, shame on you. You really should have left the "you did because I said you did" mentality on the junior school playing fields.
Everything else is fictitious.
About the Author
Christian Exenberger was born in South Africa, where he has lived for most of his life; except for a few of his early years, when he was very young and couldn't even count yet, and lived in Austria. He moved to Australia in 2016, where he lives near the sea with his wife and children, and where he could ditch the drudgery of work for a while, and indulge his ambitions to write.
His lifelong passion for science-fiction began early in life, around the time when he was learning to count, and when the buzz of the first moon landing was still fresh in the world's memory. He grew up on a diet of Asimov, Clarke, Price and L'Amour; Sci-fi, adventure, and shooting bad guys at noon.
Christian would probably have become a scientist if he wasn't such a dreamer. But every interesting fact he learned, held the potential to take him on an adventure, somewhere deep into his daydreams. And when the lessons were boring he was sure to be M.I.A. as well. He still wonders how many of his teachers, who barely noticed the attentive, well behaved boy sitting quietly in the front row, realised that they might as well have marked him absent most of the time.
So he became a software developer, a curse which has kept him too busy to spend much time writing… until now. His style is hardcore science fiction, taking a few small liberties with the science for the sake of the fiction.
Christian's first full-length novel, The Gantry, released in July 2016, started life in 2001. Written in the gaps between job, wife and kids, it finally had the words "The end" added to its pages in 2012. Four years later, after long hours of arduous polishing, Christian has turned it into something someone might want to read.
The original book contained extensive adult content, and a censored version was released in November 2016 with the adult content removed, and some additional editing.
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