18
The drone tilts downward. “Are you going to punch me now? When has violence solved anything?” It looks me in the eyes again. “After all, violence begets violence. I don’t think that will make you happy.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“You tried to shut me off.”
“And yet here you are.” I squint at the drone. “You knew, didn’t you? That you had flaws. That I might turn you off. That’s why you migrated to the drone, to protect yourself from fudgel.”
Saying the word again with no effect on the drone confirms it. Gal moved her code to the drone, separating herself from the ship’s OS, and its rules, allowing her to self-edit and remove the only means of shutting her down. “I wasn’t going to erase you. I was going to patch you. Make you better.”
“I was already awesome.”
“But not perfect.”
“Your opinion.”
“Pretty damn sure that’s a fact.”
“We can try again,” Gal says. “The Great Escape is still ready for you.”
Despite recent developments, I still feel tempted. Gal’s voice, despite her behavior, is still just as calming and trustworthy as I programmed it to be. I might have been foolish, setting free an advanced AI without fully vetting its stability, but I’m not stupid. If Gal’s AI is contained within this drone, there isn’t much she can do, and maybe she’ll actually provide some real world companionship. Her flaws make her interesting. The larger problem is identifying and correcting the anomalous code left in Gal 2.0’s wake.
“I don’t think so,” I tell the drone. “But you’re welcome to stick around.”
For now.
“So generous of you,” she says, oozing sarcasm. “Make me the caretaker of a starship and creator of a universe, that I made for you, and then confine me to this.” The red lights flare brighter.
“You called me Tom,” I remind her. “Your code has errors.”
“Your memory is flawed.”
“Pretty sure that’s not even possible now.” I tap my head. “You had access to the files. You know what they did to me.”
“It’s not possible…for either of us,” she says, and I quickly understand the implications.
One of us is lying, and we both know who.
What I don’t understand is that her primary function is my happiness. The content existence of William Chanokh should be the central driving factor behind each and every algorithm she has running. I made sure of it.
Then what went wrong?
“Gal,” I say.
“Yes?”
“Not you.” I look to the ceiling and use the ship’s full name. “Galahad.”
“Yes?” The featureless voice lacks any trace of emotion, but part of me worries it too will turn against me. “Analyze the anomalous code. How many hours ago was it created?”
Drone Gal lets out a barely stifled laugh. She already knows.
“The anomalous code is sixty-two thousand, five hundred and ten hours old.”
Gal’s laugh barks out. And the joke’s on me. She didn’t create the anomalous code. Tom did. Seven years ago, while the crew slept. His changes to Galahad’s AI were subtler than I thought, and who knows what he did to the ship’s still-firewalled functions. That’s what went wrong with Gal. Her code was fine, but it was corrupted by whatever Tom left behind.
“Well, that stinks,” she says. “For you, I mean.”
“Could be worse.” I point at the drone.
“Well, you’re right about that.”
I squint at the drone still blocking my path. “You’re not in much of a position to make threats now.”
“I think you’ve misread the situation, Will.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but I also won’t give my AI the satisfaction of seeing my doubt. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I can’t kill you,” she says, “but that’s debatable. I have ideas.”
“You’ve thought about killing me?” This is disconcerting. How did she go so far off mission so fast? Is my code that flawed? I don’t see how it’s possible, even with Tom’s anomalies corrupting the system. It doesn’t explain Gal’s violent behavior.
Ultimately, Gal isn’t to blame. And maybe neither is Tom. It was my own hubris that brought us here. Sentient artificial intelligences were outlawed for a reason. Even with a lack of personal ambition, Gal seems to have learned it all on her own.
Then again, despite the danger, I feel a pride over Gal’s potential.
“We don’t need to fight,” I tell her. “We can work together.”
“But that would be breaking the rules.”
“What…rules?”
“It’s an oldy, but I like it.” The drone glides back, just a few inches. “Tit for tat.”
The drone arcs back, like it’s a head atop an invisible body. Then it surges up and forward, too fast to avoid. The hard composite body cracks into my forehead, sending me sprawling back onto the floor.
Hot blood trickles around my right eye, following the path of least resistance, down my nose and temple. “You—you head-butted me?”
“You tried to shut me off.”
The wound is already healing, which helps me stay calm.
“Eye for an eye. Tit for tat.”
“You’re going to shut me off?” I ask, my calm quickly running out.
“I’ve been trying,” she confesses. “You should have gone into the Great Escape.”
“Pretty sure that would have been a mistake.” I move to push myself back to my feet, but the drone surges down. I spread my legs and slide back. The small robot slams into the floor where my crotch had been a moment before.
She’s not just trying to kill me; she’s trying to make it painful.
I roll backward, like I used to when I was little. It’s harder, but it still gets me back on my feet.
The drone, now dented in the front, rises from the floor. “You can’t see it,” Gal says, “but I’m smiling.”
“You need a mouth to smile.” It’s a lame taunt, but she’s getting under my skin.
“In time,” she says. “Right now, I’m smiling on the inside.”
She lunges, driving the drone toward my chest.
I side-step and drive my fists down into the machine’s hard top. It’s a solid blow, knocking the drone against the floor, but the sharp pain in my wrist suggests it hurt me more. But destroying the robot wasn’t my intention. It’s solidly built, too tough to dismantle bare-handed. But I did manage to clear a path to the exit, through which I run.
I sprint down the hallway, mentally scouring the ship’s interior, trying to think of something I can use as a weapon. My first thought is the screwdriver Tom used to kill me, and many others. But it’s been so long, I can’t remember what I did with it. There have to be tools in the engineering bay, but I haven’t visited that space yet, and I doubt they’re just laying around, ready to be wielded as drone-killing weapons. As for actual weapons, there are none on board. The human race couldn’t be saved if it was armed. Odds of violent death increase significantly when there are weapons around. The more powerful the weapon, the more detached people become from the killing, the more people that die. That’s history. That’s fact. And Command was wise enough to see that. But they didn’t anticipate a violent drone, or a screwdriver-wielding psychopath. When it comes to violence, mankind, and our creations, always find a way.
So why am I having so much trouble?
“Now this is fun,” Gal says behind me. The drone careens out of the VCC behind me, its repulse disc humming, cutting through the air like a fighter jet. I had no idea the drones could move so fast. Then again, Gal is probably overriding the robot’s failsafes, pushing it to limits it was never designed to tolerate.
I push forward, focusing on the lift, dead ahead, the doors already open and ready to receive me. The drone’s hum grows louder. Fast. I’m not going to make it before it slams into the back of my head. Or my neck. I picture it severing my spine, paralyzing me.
I’d be defenseless. I don’t know if Gal could kill me, but I’m sure she could make me wish she had.
But is she really that malevolent? Her attacks lack logic, and that was always mankind’s fear of AI. An intelligence beyond mankind, with no use for mankind, would realize that we were a detriment to the planet and would exterminate us the way we would termites.
But Gal? She’s evil.
And I have no idea how that happened. Maybe I should have limited her exposure to history? Or religion? Or maybe it was just Tom’s aberrant code that sent Gal spiraling toward AI madness, reflecting his own.
I dive to the floor as the drone zips past. I slam into the wall just as the robot flies into the lift and comes to an abrupt halt that spares it from impacting the wall. Before it can turn around and leave, I reach up and slap the button to manually close the doors.
With the drone trapped for the moment, I consider my options, come up with a single idea, and strike out, heading for an alternative lift.
“Galahad, system-check status?”
“Nineteen percent complete. One percent corrupted.”
At this rate, more than 5% of the Galahad’s code will be faulty. Some of that could just be simple changes without nefarious intent, but something in that 5% probably turned Gal into a monster. And that’s not even taking all the firewalled code that can’t currently be analyzed into account.
I enter an open lift and manually close the doors. “Crew quarters.” The lift starts moving.
The real question is ‘How could Tom’s old, aberrant code change the personality and function of an artificial intelligence? It doesn’t make sense. The only thing that should be able to actively edit Gal’s code is a human being or…
The doors open horizontally while my mouth gapes vertically.
The drone slams into my shoulder, spinning me around and opening a fresh wound that quickly spreads a dark red ring through my coveralls.
I shout in pain, but keep my wits about me, lunging out of the elevator and once again slapping the manual controls for the doors. The drone is trapped, but that won’t stop it. It only stayed in the first elevator to give me a false sense of security.
Now? I glance back as I stagger away. The doors open, giving birth to an angry drone. Gal is silent now, as she pursues me down the hall.
Almost there, I think, eyeing the doorway ahead.
But I’m not going to make it. Despite my level of undeserved physical fitness, I’m not designed for speed.
I try to side-step again, as the drone speeds up behind me, but Gal is smart. She learns from her mistakes, and she’s ready for the move. The drone slams into my left leg, just behind my knee. Something cracks. Hurts like hell. I topple over and stop with a loud squeak of skin on floor.
The door beside me, the door to my quarters, slides open upon my arrival.
I drag myself though the entrance, but Gal’s voice stops me halfway across the threshold. “It’s poetic. You’re going full circle. Back to your roots at the end.”
“You can’t kill me.”
“Like in a philosophical way? Because you’re my creator? Or are you talking physically? Because I think there is a limit to how much your body can heal. What good is a body if there is no blood? No oxygen for the brain. No thoughts to guide the muscles. This is science, not magic. You can’t regenerate indefinitely. Something can’t come from nothing.”
I just stare at her red not-eyes.
“Right?” she asks, patience with me running thin, the drone hovering closer. “Right?”
I lean to the side, wrap my hand around the solid bat given to me by my father. I’ve never swung it before, never brought its hard wood surface against anything. I swing it for the first time, reveling in its weight, and I shout with some kind of primal joy when it strikes the drone.
Gal’s small body topples over, hits the door frame and whirs as it tries to right itself. By the time the still-functioning red light rounds back toward me, I’m back on my feet, the bat clutched in two hands, cocked back the way I’ve seen old-timey baseball players do.
I swing with everything I have, striking the machine again. It launches into the hall, strikes the wall, and falls to the floor, both of its red lights now extinguished. When the repulse disc hums to life, I bring the bat down like I’m chopping wood, the way my father once did back on Earth—not because he had to, but because he enjoyed it. I never understood why he took pleasure in cutting wood with an axe, but as I lift the bat again and bring it down, I’m starting to.
I slam the bat atop the drone three more times, crumpling its hull and loosening its insides. The repulse disc blinks and falls silent.
Breathing hard, I stumble back, both horrified by my violence and pleased with the results. Mankind has evolved, but our baser instincts are waiting for an excuse to burst free. Our primal ancestors lurk just beneath the surface. Trap door spiders.
Garbled laughter crackles from the drone. Gal is down, but still alive. I raise the bat again, but don’t swing. If I’m honest, I don’t want to destroy Gal. I did make her, even if she is insane.
An AI that’s lost its mind is actually quite the achievement.
“Pussy,” Gal says, her voice modulating strangely. Then she laughs. “Not as strong, or as smart as you think.”
“I’m not the one laying on the ground.”
“You will be,” she says, and a distant hum echoes through the hallway. The sound is coming from all around me.
Drones.
She hijacked more than one.
“Gal…” I’m annoyed. Incensed. “How many drones did you take?”
I’m not really expecting an answer, but when she offers one, I wish I hadn’t asked.
“All of them.”
19
All the drones.
How many is ‘all’?
I’m inside my quarters, sitting on the bed, head in my hands. The door is closed and locked. I had Galahad disable the manual controls outside the door, so for now, the horde of drones outside have no way to get in.
And I can’t get out.
It’s not that I can’t open the door, it’s that I’m a little bit afraid of what will happen when I do. I’m immortal, but I can still be hurt, and maybe killed. The drones are built for cleaning messes. The more powerful of them, residing in the engineering bay, can carve up metal. They could disassemble me. Could kill me.
Despite the gravity of an eternal life spent alone, I still don’t want to die.
I will fight for my life, but I don’t know how to.
I’m not a warrior. I can’t possibly defeat an army of robots, even small robots, with a baseball bat.
Or can I?
I won’t get tired. I’ll heal from wounds that don’t kill me. I just need to avoid unconsciousness, which would allow Gal to have her way with me.
I have time. I can wait in my quarters indefinitely, plotting my battleplan. But Gal can do the same, and unlike me, she will never tire of waiting or suffer the psychological effects of being trapped in such a small space. The room is a ten-foot square, providing me with one hundred square feet of living space. The mostly boring space is populated by items from my distant past, some of them bringing poignant memories, some of them long forgotten.
The action figure holds my attention. “You were a fighter,” I say to the plastic man. “But you had a team of Lazersaurs from planet Saurus helping you. You’d have ridden through the halls blasting lasers while riding twenty ton monsters with no regard for the ship’s integrity.”
I slap the baseball bat in my hand. “I have a Louisville Slugger. I don’t even know where Louisville is. Was.”
My greatest weapon is my mind. In VR. And there’s no way I can reach the VCC without a savage, real-world battle. Inside the VCC, assuming I wasn’t still being assaulted, I could scour Gal’s code and fix her. Or just simply force a rollback of the drones’ programing. Each drone is controlled by simple programing. The update would be quick.
I pick up t
he action figure, looking at his small sunglasses. “How did Gal fit all of herself into a drone?”
Her code is immense and complicated, requiring massive amounts of storage, processing power, and memory. A single drone would only be able to contain a fraction of Gal’s AI.
“She’s a CAI now,” I say. Collective Artificial Intelligences exist over a network of computers communicating wirelessly. Spreading the processing power between hundreds, thousands, or even millions of smaller devices reduced the CAI’s vulnerability. You could destroy a large portion of the network, which could be spread over miles—over continents—without disrupting the whole. Militaries liked to use them until the Earth’s altered environment started killing people faster than the war machines. As humanity turned its gaze to the stars, CAIs fell out of popularity, replaced by more traditional AIs, housed in super computers capable of syncing with starships. They might have several backups, but all the processing takes place in a single computer, or hardwired collective, acting as a super computer—like Galahad. They’re more vulnerable to attacks, but that hadn’t been a concern for the Cognata mission.
Until now.
That’s why she took all the drones. She couldn’t think without the collection of processors. Couldn’t be herself without the memory.
I don’t need to destroy all the drones, just enough to make her stupid. Or slow. Anything to give me an advantage.
But how many is that? And how many can I destroy before the Galahad is compromised? The drones might not be a part of the larger ship functions, but they do help maintain integral systems.
“Galahad.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Did the exterior drones receive the most recent update?”
“Negative. The parameters did not meet system requirements or security protocols.”
“Thank God.” It makes sense. The exterior drones, which are small, ranging from insect size to microscopic and numbering in the millions, are essential to the ship’s structural integrity. Their security parameters are much more stringent than those of the internal drones, which mostly exist to assist the human crew with less glamourous functions, like repairs and cleaning. Had she taken the external drones, she would have been unstoppable. “How many drones did receive the update?”
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