by M. D. Cooper
Andy had never heard stress in Lyssa’s voice before. She spoke quickly, biting down on the words. He wondered what she had to be going through if she needed to hurry her communication with humans.
Petral went through the doors first as Andy and Brit pulled off their helmets.
Petral studied the surgery’s control console before bringing it to life. She turned to Andy as he walked into the room, heavy boots clicking on the smooth floor.
“She’s right,” Petral said. “It’s about as standard as any autodoc. We’ll have to let it run a scan and then go from there.”
“What if it doesn’t give us the option of removing the implant?” he asked.
Petral shrugged. “We’ll see.” She went around the side of the bed and lay down. As soon as her head touched the cushion, the console at the foot changed modes.
“Preparing patient,” a pleasant male voice said. The bed split down the middle, spreading apart to leave Petral supported by filament lines. As the sides of the surgery bed slid away from her, they rose around her, forming a cocoon that hid her from sight. Above the enclosed capsule, a holodisplay of Petral’s body formed in the air. The view cycled through her musculature, vascular, nervous and skeletal systems before stopping on the augmentations. Her left thigh was completely prosthetic, along with several other muscular and skeletal reinforcements. Sensors in her major organs glowed and subsided. Her Link system ran from her spine through her cortex, flashing a bright silver. Wrapped around the Link with tendrils reaching into her frontal lobes was the AI implant.
Andy watched, fascinated, as the surgery identified the unknown system and attempted to match it with registered augmentations. The software’s calm voice listed the various checks it was performing as it ran down the list. Finally, the voice said, “Proprietary system 446 identified.”
“Identify System 446,” Andy said.
“Proprietary system,” the software responded. “Possibly illegal augmentation identified. Would you like to notify authorities?”
“No,” Andy said. “No, don’t do that. Hold.”
Andy glanced at Brit.
She stared at the console in surprise.
Brit’s jaw tightened as his words trailed out.
Lyssa cut back in, sounding more harried than before.
Brit sighed.
he said.
Andy watched Brit’s face as she looked into the distance. Her tone had become the same as if were soothing a fellow soldier who wasn’t going to make it to the pickup point. Her words were a warm contrast to the hard lines of her face and the dull brutality of the power armor.
Brit pressed her lips together, her eyes moist with tears.
The display at the end of the surgery cocoon scrolled through a series of new screens, switching to a raw flow of text on a black background. Whatever the system was doing, no one had bothered to write graphical interfaces for the procedure. The holographic diagram floating above the cocoon showed Petral on her stomach now, centered on her upper spine and skull. Outlines of her scalp being pulled back moved quickly to another model of the skull being split open.
In the graphic, delicate articulated arms reached inside Petral’s cranial cavity and manipulated the silver outlines of her Link to draw out the additional spiderweb lines of the implanted AI. A few dark spots on her brain seemed to indicate bleeding but the graphic provided no actual information about the procedure. There was no way to see inside the alloy cover to verify what it was actually doing to Petral.
The arms blurred several times as they appeared to stitch through sections of Petral’s brain. In other places they rotated as if rewinding a long spool of thread. Abruptly the arms stopped moving and w
ithdrew. Petral’s skull was fused and the scalp pulled back into position. The graphic rotated as she was returned to lying on her back, and the edges of the bed rotated outward, splitting the cocoon apart. Petral lay with her eyes closed on the bed.
The lines of text scrolling across the status screen flashed and disappeared, returning to the pleasing colors of the control system.
The pleasant human voice said, “Surgery complete. Please assist patient from the operating couch.”
“Petral,” Andy said, taking a step toward her. “Petral, are you all right?”
She didn’t respond at first, then her eyes fluttered and Petral sucked in a deep breath. She turned her head to look at Andy, then stared at the ceiling with a questioning frown.
“How do you feel?” Brit asked, pushing in beside Andy.
“I think,” Petral said, still frowning. “I think I’m alone in here.” She smiled. “I think it worked.”
“Kylan’s gone,” Brit said.
Petral looked at her, appearing to assume Brit was still talking about the AI being removed. “Yes. He’s gone. Before it was like having someone watching me all the time, from the inside, like an overlay on everything. It’s gone now.”
Petral rolled to one side and rose on an elbow. She felt at her forehead and then the back of her head through her hair. “Wow,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt at all. This thing does good work.”
Lyssa replied.
Lyssa agreed.
Andy pulled his helmet back on and checked the HUD. The power armor returned a green system status.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
STELLAR DATE: 10.02.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Lyssa said.
Kylan looked around himself. He was in a dim space. He had his old form again, the shape of a teen boy with bad skin and lank blond hair. His mother’s eyes. He touched his stomach and looked up at her. Lyssa was in the form of a young woman who might have been one of Kylan’s teachers, with brown hair and olive skin.
he said.
Lyssa said.
Lyssa smiled.
The empty space where they had been standing blurred as Lyssa moved to the game where she had engaged the three ship AI. A school cafeteria filled with long tables, each stuffed with teens, phased in around her. The AI David, in the form of a muscular boy with short black hair and a wide nose, sat at a table near the front of the room, kids squeezed on either side of him. This table was watched by most of the kids in the room. In the game, these were the most successful players, with the most dating points. David didn’t know that Lyssa had been assisting him throughout his gameplay, using a multiplayer function where one player could boost another’s stats by increasing their social capital.
Diane and Fiona sat three tables away, glaring at David. Diane was a small girl with vibrant eyes and purple hair. She had chosen the band as her social avenue and had a viola case that was taller than her, while Fiona had chosen swimming as her primary trait and was lithe with long arms and legs and knuckles bruised from water polo practice.
As Lyssa walked toward them, Fiona picked up a glass of orange juice from her lunch tray and flung it toward the David’s table. She followed the glass with a plate of mashed potatoes and an apple.
The other kids in the cafeteria responded immediately as several screamed, “Food fight!” and the room erupted with splattering food.
Since Lyssa had convinced the three AI to engage with the game, the only way they could stop the game was for one of them to win. What she hadn’t told them was that it was possible to crash the game by shutting down the school through any number of methods. This was a flaw in the game itself that Cara had exploited once to win. After a while, they started looking for the most creative way to crash the game, which was more fun than gathering dating points via dialog trees from random encounters.
Since she had seen what Xander’s expanse looked like, Lyssa had begun thinking of the game as her own similar space. She could manipulate whatever she wanted once she had other AI in the game, but it was easier to let the game play out as designed as long as it kept them distracted. She knew that Diane and Fiona had become aware that something was wrong with the ship but they hadn’t said anything to each other about it that she could tell. If anything, the less the game kept them preoccupied, the more their autonomous systems would be freed to correct problems David’s complete immersion had caused. As long as David was winning in the game, he didn’t care what happened on the Resolute Charity.
David wanted desperately to be liked and Lyssa had exploited this in the game. Not only had she made him captain of the football team, he was on track to be crowned Prom King at the upcoming dance. He was currently involved in a drawn-out quest to plan prom, which required gathering interest points from each of the toughest teachers in the school.
Lyssa hadn’t been stressed by what was happening on
the Resolute Charity. She had been stressed by David’s inability to charm anyone. The AI was completely devoid of any characteristics that might make a human interesting. He showed no curiosity. He interpreted every conversation literally, and he didn’t know how to flirt at all. These might be admirable qualities in an environmental control system but they didn’t make for a winning Prom King.
With the food fight in full swing, Lyssa struggled to maintain the integrity of the game. As long as no one pulled a fire alarm during the food fight, eventually the principle would arrive to figure out who had thrown the first food item. The room would get a stern speech on the value of calories and how many people in Sol didn’t have access to such abundant foodstuffs. Then lunch would be over and each player would have to continue their individual quests.
She spotted Fiona making her way toward the wall where the fire extinguisher and alarm lay. Lyssa suspected Fiona was the most cunning of the three and it made sense she would conceive an overwhelming event faster than David or Diane. Diane’s only interest seemed to be ganging up on David with Fiona’s help.
Lyssa had used David to convince the other two AI to play the game, so they weren’t aware she was like them. Dodging a volley of dinner rolls and stone-hard cupcakes, Lyssa grabbed her lunch tray and acted like she was headed for the dishwashing station, which would take her near the fire alarm. She scanned the nearby tables for something she could use to stop Fiona but all the kids there had already tossed most of their food. Now they were laughing and smearing what was left in each other’s faces.
Fiona was nearly at the wall now, the fire alarm only a few meters away. She swept students out of her way like she was fighting through water polo players for the goal. A girl in front of Lyssa fell off her seat, revealing a tray that still had a bowl of pudding in one corner. Dropping her tray on the floor, Lyssa scooped up the pudding and acted like she was stumbling over the girl on the floor. This move took her directly into Fiona. Lyssa let herself fall, hand full of pudding aimed at Fiona’s determined face.
The engineering AI didn’t even look at Lyssa. Her gaze went to the pudding, and she spun out of the way as smoothly as a seal. Lyssa hit the floor, knocking the air from her lungs and splattering pudding all over the tile.
