by Neal Asher
The Polity AIs would have extrapolated his survival as an AI; his apparent death would not have fooled them. They would see a prador AI, made by Penny Royal, taking control of one of their biggest wartime factory stations. They would move to stamp on him just as fast as they could and, almost certainly, ships were already on the way here. The only question was whether they would get here before the King’s Guard. Sverl, therefore, needed this station’s U-space drive running.
An initial inspection revealed that it too had been cannibalized and that the esoteric process it ran had been destabilized. Sverl first made a lengthy inspection via all sensors available, meanwhile delegating to an AI in its vicinity the task of attaching missing power cables and optic feeds. Gradually, as robots installed those feeds, the quantity and accuracy of the data available to him increased. It soon became evident that repairing this drive was a massive task, which he began to divide up into manageable chunks. The first of these was the rebalancing of some Calabi-Yau frames. This would require some heavy computing, which he delegated to a particular AI that had controlled one of the onboard runcibles and had the mental muscle for the task.
And that was when he found it.
Observing the AI loading data on the frames, he began to note discrepancies. The AI was routing data in unexpected ways, occasionally struggling with things that should have been simple but also occasionally making unexpected intuitive leaps. Sverl focused more intently on the thing, noting that it was avoiding some portion of its own mind, yet, when that wasn’t possible, then came the intuitive leaps. Building and then studying a data flow map, Sverl surmised that there was a partition in its mind that he had missed. And it seemed to be not only a virtual partition but a physical one too.
Sverl carefully began cutting the AI’s connections to its environment but, so deep was it into the esoteric math that it hardly noticed. He next gazed through the sensors within its abode—a circular armoured chamber containing only the skeletally enwrapped crystal of the AI itself caught between the splayed-end columns of its interlinks. Something was decidedly odd here, so Sverl assumed control of everything around that AI and cut it off. The column separated, all physical connections to the AI unplugging from the skeletal case surrounding its crystal. It was still functional since that case contained a limited amount of power storage, but it could no longer draw further power and data, so dropped into a resting state.
Next Sverl searched the surrounding area and found some of the runcible maintenance robots in storage, powered one of them up, and sent it over to the AI’s abode, opening an armoured hatch to admit it. The thing trundled in on four legs and, following Sverl’s instructions, halted at the base of the column, stretched out its mantis limbs and snatched the AI from its platen. Next it turned the ring of sensor stubs on what was nominally its head to select the right one and pressed it right up against an area of crystal exposed through the skeletal case. Then took a long hard look inside.
The crystal was translucent in both the human and prador spectrums, though with a deal of distortion and refraction. One brief look was all that was required, for it revealed a flaw right at the centre of the crystal. Sverl had the robot try another sensor stub against the crystal for deeper molecular analysis, but for confirmation only because he had already guessed what he had here. The object was formed of super-dense carbon, every atom in itself an etched-atom processor, overall spin states interlinked in synergistic processing, strange femto-tech connections operating, zero energy time crystals . . . Sverl supposed one could describe the thing as a black diamond, if one were to severely strain the term for that gem. This AI contained a little piece of Penny Royal at its heart.
“You’re not done with me yet, are you?” said Sverl, only realizing he had clattered that out loud with his prosthetic mandibles when Bsorol clattered a query back.
Sverl ignored his first-child as he instructed the robot to return the AI to its column. Now aware of the subtle signatures, he created a search program which at once began to come back with some positives. He had gone through fifty of the station’s AIs before he cancelled the search. He didn’t need to check every AI to know that every one contained that blackness at its heart.
Trent
Trent gazed down at the utterly pristine carpet moss and wondered what Florence had done with the bodies. Had she sent them to one of the flash furnaces to be incinerated with so much other junk, or stored them away until such a time as relatives could be found to decide what should be done with them? He shook his head and walked over to the three loaded anti-grav gurneys floating a few feet above the floor and gazed at three living bodies there. Meanwhile, a skeletal Golem android, which had earlier been intent on killing him, placed the last of the three cryo-caskets, in which these bodies had arrived, inside the airlock. More would be arriving any minute: another robot on the other side of the airlock would take out the empties and replace them with full caskets. First would be people he did not know, for Reece and her children were not here yet. He felt selfish about that—about wanting to be sure everything here was working before she and her children went through.
The body of the man on the first gurney terminated above the hips and was without arms, a lower jaw, nose or eyes. Silver-grey skin sealed all points of severance, while the body was cold, inert, the heart beating just once every few hours to pump the special freeze-resistant artificial blood around inside. Even as Trent inspected the body, the gurney beeped a warning and set off towards the door from the reception area. Trent watched it go, then headed over to a door on the other side, pushed it open and climbed a spiral stair, finally entering a viewing station. This place wasn’t for humans to oversee the hospital, but a courtesy provided for researchers and students.
Glancing over at his particle cannon, which he had plugged into a wall socket here to recharge, he plumped himself down in one of the four seats. Before these a curved panoramic screen displayed numerous scenes throughout the hospital, while over the arm of each seat a control hologram hovered. He sat back, inserted his hand in the hologram and, sorting through menus on the screen, highlighted the patient he had just seen and set the viewing system to track.
“Morbid fascination?” wondered Sepia vaguely, sprawled in a chair further along.
“I could say the same for you,” Trent replied, nodding at the screen frame she had up before her. This showed Cole seated in one of the editing suite chairs and auged in as he reprogrammed the entire system. Sepia, meanwhile, had a glazed look as she gazed internally at what her aug was showing her, and as she tried to follow what Cole was up to. “Any idea of what he’s doing?”
Sepia blinked, then, after a long pause, her eyes came back into focus. “Seems most of them are into their suicide season—most of them are well into or past their second century and bored with their lives.”
Trent winced. “Yes, so Spear told me.”
“Time seems to pass faster as you get older, because your mind doesn’t bother recording the things you’ve done before. If it did, our skulls would be full of detail on the thousands of cups of coffee we’ve drunk.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“The less variety in your experience of life the quicker you reach the point when you’re just going through life on autopilot, never doing anything new, never doing anything worth laying down permanently in memory. In the past this was always exacerbated by senility and swiftly terminated by death.”
“A history lesson now?”
“If you don’t want me to tell you in my own way then I’ll not bother.”
“Sorry, please continue.”
“In our age of permanent physical health the brain does not decline into senility but hits the point of extreme ennui, usually somewhere between the ages of one hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty, depending, obviously, on how much variety your life has had. This can be, to a certain extent, negated by mental editing. However, people don’
t like ridding themselves of knowledge and experience only to go through it all again and, usually, once a person hits this point, it’s too late, because they’re already looking for novelty to ease the boredom. And generally that novelty becomes increasingly dangerous.”
Trent nodded. “I understand that those in ennui seek danger, but I have some trouble with the idea that people so old, and surely wise, would choose to worship the prador.”
Sepia waved a dismissive hand. “The search for novelty is not only the search for new things to do, but new attitudes to have. The two-hundred-year-old atheist might well go searching for God.”
“Or pretend to,” Trent added. He looked up at his screen frame to see that the amputee had arrived in the production-line surgery where they had first seen Florence.
Sepia didn’t seem to hear him.
“How old are you, Sepia?”
“As an old projectile-hurling game would have it: one hundred and eighty.”
Projectile-hurling game?
“And searching for dangerous novelty?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, Spear is certainly that.”
She grimaced and waved a hand at the screen. “What Cole is attempting to do is some subtle reprogramming. He’s trying to shift the context of their inner perspective so, even though they are beyond the point of ennui, they will look upon their experiences with new eyes. He’s also reinforcing their memories of being enslaved by the prador hormone, their ensuing fights to be top dog, and their experience of, apparently, dying. And, do you know what? I think it will actually work.” She shrugged then added, “At least for a little while.”
“Really?” Trent prompted.
“Changing that inner context has been tried before, but the effect fades quickly as the brain starts comparing surrounding reality with memory. These people have experienced the novelty of converting themselves into shell people, but the sordid unpleasantness that ensued should give them an aversion to that previous state. Next they’ll wake fixed up with Golem limbs in this.” She waved a hand again to encompass their surroundings.
“It certainly is novel.” Trent glanced at Sepia in puzzlement.
“Don’t you see?” she asked. “They wanted to become prador. They fixed on an ideal represented by the nearest prador, who was Sverl. Their aversion to all that went before will be reinforced when they realize their previous admiration of Sverl was based on a falsehood. They will learn that he was an amalgam of prador, human and AI and has now been converted into an AI. Their false-premise belief system should collapse into a new shape.”
She was, Trent felt, showing her hundred and eighty years, because she baffled him. Obviously she could see this because she continued, “Trent, they will enjoy the novelty, and then they will experience what they feel is a moment of epiphany and begin to shrug off their organic bodies and choose to upload to crystal.”
Still Trent could not see that as a logical course. He focused on the screen. The amputee had been scanned and now a pedestal-mounted autodoc had plugged a thick ribbed pipe into his chest. Already the man was looking a better colour and, while the silver-grey skin started sagging and dropping away to expose raw flesh, his chest began to rise and fall. A moment later the doc unplugged the pipe and the man went through to the next stage.
“You’re having trouble with this, I can see,” said Sepia.
“I’m sorry, but it all sounds a bit dubious to me,” Trent replied. And a touch like projection, he added to himself.
“It’s as pure as math,” said Sepia.
“In the same situation, would such effects be the same with you?” Trent asked. “These aren’t just simple people, but old and loaded with experience, and as I said before: maybe even wisdom.”
“It wouldn’t happen to me so easily,” she said sniffily, “because I am not the kind to fall for the lure of belief systems.”
“And you think they all are?” Trent realized she truly hadn’t heard his point about people pretending to believe in God.
She shrugged again, looked uncomfortable.
“I think you’re simplifying and hoping for a solution that will apply to them all,” he continued. “I’m now coming to the conclusion that I will go so far and no further. I’ll ensure that they’re again healthy and mobile and I’ll let Cole have his chance at them. After that, just as Spear says, if they pick up the gun again I’ll wash my hands of them. That’ll be the end of my responsibility.”
“We’ll see,” said Sepia, attempting to display a confidence she evidently did not feel.
The printing heads of cell- and bone-welders were now at work, dipping and stabbing like frenetic herons. Trent watched a ceramal pelvis being shifted into place, muscles and tendons attached, the black pennies of nerve interfaces being inserted, meta-plastic muscle bracing affixed. Next, the man was moved on to the ministrations of Florence. The big surgical robot now really got to work, cutting in where the arms had been severed, inserting motorized shoulder joints, delving deep into empty eye sockets, and then deeper still with micro-tool probes right to the visual cortex at the back of the skull. Interface plugs implanted and then eyes, with rear optic connections, just plugged in like memory sticks. Arms next, fixed into those shoulder joints, then legs to the pelvis. The next robot waited with reels of translucent syntheflesh and syntheskin, already threaded through with artificial nerves and with its pixel content ready to be adjusted to match the colour of the host body. When this was over, the man would hardly know that he had ever been without limbs . . .
“Florence,” said Trent.
“Yes,” the surgical robot replied through the hospital PA, no hesitation as it continued working.
“I want the syntheflesh and skin left at its translucent setting,” he said. “In fact, if it’s possible, I’d like you to make it even more transparent.”
“As you request,” the robot replied.
Sepia shot him a querying look.
“Call it a constant visible reminder to them,” he said. “And a further novelty.”
Sverl
So what do you want of me now, Penny Royal? Sverl wondered. And is this part of it?
Had the U-space drives simply been disrupted, it would have taken just days to get them running, yet now, only on coming to the end of the process of balancing the force-fields inside them, did Sverl discover that certain components were missing. These items were plain rings of metal measuring three feet across, an inch and a half wide and half an inch thick. They weren’t of a particularly exact size, merely having a tolerance of plus or minus a thousandth of an inch, and even that wasn’t highly critical because other components or processes could be adjusted to suit. However, the fact they were fashioned from super-dense iron just a spit away from what you might find in the core of a dead sun did present a bit of a problem.
“Father,” said Bsorol. “We’re demounting the—’
“Not now,” Sverl clattered, focusing his attention outwards.
He again surveyed the surrounding system, trying to see what remained of his original ship. News was not good. Only one quadrant of it had survived, and it wasn’t the one with the gravity press inside.
“We’ve found something,” Bsorol insisted, just managing to duck the swipe of Sverl’s free claw, “in the Room 101 AI’s sanctum.” Bsorol quickly scuttled away when Sverl stabbed at him with the spine clutched in his other claw.
Damned AIs, Sverl thought, then remembered what he was and rephrased that thought: Damned Polity AIs. This whole massive station, which had turned out vast fleets of warships, did not have the tooling aboard to manufacture all the components for U-space drives. Sure, facilities were here to make some components, to assemble a drive and tune it, but it seemed some critical items had to be brought in by runcible. This was understandable because certain components, like those rings, had at one time required for their manufactur
e either massive planet-bound factory complexes, or very high-tech factories actually down on the surface of a dead star. However, Sverl couldn’t help but have the suspicion that the reason there was no gravity press here was due to the Polity AIs’ paranoia about letting humans get their sticky hands on drive tech.
He would have to build a gravity press. Even as he considered that he knew it wouldn’t do. It would take weeks and, unfortunately, the only singularity available would first have to be dug out of one of the deactivated runcibles here. Even after he’d made the press, the process of actually fashioning the rings would take further weeks and, by then, he felt sure, a Polity fleet would have arrived and turned Room 101 into a steadily expanding cloud of hot gas.
So what do I do, Penny Royal?
The only answer was his own: he needed to buy time. That meant he needed to get the defences of this station up to modern standards. He needed some serious hardfields operating and he needed . . .
Sverl suddenly hit a mental wall.
U-jump missiles!
He could bring the defences of this station up to date in terms of Kingdom weaponry. But technologically the Kingdom was now far behind the Polity. Polity attack ships now had a whole cornucopia of gravity weapons—maybe other things too that he knew nothing about yet. But why worry about those when U-jump missiles were enough? One of their modern attack ships could simply jump a series of CTD warhead missiles inside this station and he would be, as Arrowsmith would have put it, toast.
“The best defence is to have an operating U-field meniscus within your vessel, which is . . . difficult.”
What?
Sverl suddenly found himself to be walking, in human form, through an exploded holographic schematic of a U-jump missile. He reached out to touch the representation of a CTD warhead, gave it a light shove to send it down towards the main body of the missile, where it slotted neatly in place.
