Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  "The what?"

  "A-A-I-B. The Advanced Artificial Intelligence Being. We were directed not to use the term ‘device’ when referring to it.”

  “You also shouldn’t use the term ‘it’ at all. Skippy prefers ‘he’, although I think that’s for our benefit. And, since we don’t have any sort of artificial intelligence of our own, isn’t ‘Advanced’ redundant?”

  Constantine gave me a look that was a combination of his usual smirk and a frown. “Sergeant, I do not appreciate your flippant, and frankly, unprofessional, attitude. You had interactions with an immensely powerful being that were inappropriate, and dangerous. Dangerous, not only to yourself, but to all of humanity. It would be best for everyone involved if you had no further contact with the AAIB. You should have brought the dev-,” he stumbled over his words, “the AAIB, to the appropriate authorities on Paradise, so qualified people could have conducted the interactions.”

  I coughed, and took a sip of my oh-so-delicious club soda and lime. That gave me enough time to restrain myself from punching the pompous jerk in the face. “The appropriate authorities? On Paradise? Which, since you’re not up on current events, is our supposed enemies, the Ruhar. Human troops were all being taken prisoner. And by qualified, I assume you mean someone like yourself?”

  He nodded.

  “Qualified, because of your extensive experience with advanced artificial intelligences that were built millions of years ago by aliens, who have since transcended their physical existence. Oh, wait, that can't be you, you have zero experience with beings like that. Who does?” I pinched my chin, as if lost in thought. “There must be someone who has extensive close contact with this advanced being, someone who worked with this advanced being to escape from enemy territory, capture not one but two enemy starships, vaporize more than a dozen other enemy starships, shut down the local wormhole, and destroy the Kristang’s hold on Earth. Hmm, who could that be? You? No, not you.”

  “Your continued flippant attitude is exactly why you shouldn’t-”

  A set of doors on the far end of the room opened, and group of officers representing all five uniformed branches came across the room toward me. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what a Coast Guard admiral was doing in Colorado Springs. Most of them angled off to speak with a guy I recognized as the White House chief of staff, but two Air Force guys walked right up to me, carefully pushing a cart that had a thick red pillow, and Skippy, on top of it. "Sergeant Bishop," one of them started to say.

  "Colonel Joe! How have you been?" Skippy's voice sounded tired, which should have been impossible. Maybe I did need to scrounge up some metallic helium 3, whatever that was.

  "Pretty good, Skippy. It's good to see you again. How was your, uh, debriefing?" I wasn't lying, I had very much missed his irascible self.

  "As expected, it was epic, historic, galactic levels of suckitude. Today, we truly tested the extreme limit of how bad anything could suck, right down to the quantum level. After being questioned by several of your Nobel prize scientists, I am reconsidering whether your species is even worthy of me calling you bacteria. Damn, you monkeys are dense as a neutron star. Anyway, am I interrupting anything?"

  I indicated Constantine with my thumb. "No, I was talking to Smirky McJerkoff here."

  "Mister Bishop, you making my poi-" Constantine huffed.

  "Sorry, I meant to say Doctor Smirky McJerkoff."

  "Ah, yes," Skippy laughed, "I've had the great displeasure of speaking with Doctor McJerkoff earlier today."

  Constantine's ears burned red, I couldn't tell if it was anger or embarrassment, or both. "This is the kind of-"

  "You hush now," Skippy admonished. "You can't sit at the big people's table, and talk to me again, until you solve the equation I've just sent to your phone. Run along now, that's a good boy."

  Constantine pulled out his phone suspiciously, then his eyebrows met his hairline, he shot me a look that could have melted icebergs, and he walked away, muttering excitedly.

  "What was that equation you gave him?"

  Skippy made a raspberry sound. "Damned if I know. I threw together a bunch of superstring bullshit. It looks good, though."

  I laughed. "Skippy, you can be evil sometimes." Damn. I even saw a little smile on Sergeant Kendall's face. Maybe she did have a sense of humor.

  "Hey, it'll keep him quietly playing with himself for days."

  "The expression is playing by himself."

  "Depends how excited he gets, huh?"

  That drew a laugh even from Sergeant Kendall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN IDLE HANDS

  Around midnight, I was able to get to a bunk, a real bed, long enough for me to stretch out. Sleeping in a real bed was as delicious as eating real food. All I wanted was to take my boots off and crawl into bed, but Skippy wanted to talk. Again. “Oh, man, Skippy, can you let me get some sleep?”

  “Joe, I’m lonely. There, I said it.”

  “I talk to you all the time.”

  “Joe, I get lonely while I’m talking with you. You speak so slowly, and it takes so long for you to get your point across, that it’s like I’m waiting by the mailbox every day for a letter that contains a single word, and I have to wait another whole day for the next word. When I wait, and I finally get a letter that just says ‘uh’ that day, I feel like screaming. Damn! I feel like reaching down your throat and dragging the words out, you speak so slow. Say it! Say it! Damn! Get the words out!”

  For a moment, I got a glimpse inside the real Skippy, the eons of pain he had endured. My own diagnostic system would say I was full-on crazy, if I was left alone for a single month. I couldn’t imagine how he felt. “You need more people to talk to.”

  “Joe, a couple more people aren’t going to make-“

  “Skippy, there are billions of humans on this planet, and they all think they have something important to say. Unfortunately, they clog up the internet with blogs, vlogs, chats, cat videos, and arguing about sports. Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, because your existence is supposed to be secret, but if you don’t tell anyone that you’re an alien AI, nobody gets hurt, right?”

  “Billions.”

  “Yup, billions. Mostly as dumb as me, but you may find some flatworms out here among the bacteria.”

  “Doubtful. I will consider it, thank you.”

  I couldn’t stop yawning. “I’m getting some rack time, don’t get into trouble while I’m asleep, Ok?”

  Six solid hours of uninterrupted sleep did wonders for my mood. I woke up when a sergeant in Air Force blues knocked on my door, and brought in a tray with a carafe of hot coffee and a mug. “Breakfast in thirty minutes. The shower is down the hall to your left. Sir.” He added the last, even though he could see the enlisted stripes on my new set of uniforms that were hanging in the closet.

  “Oh, that’s good coffee.” That first sip was like heaven on my tongue.

  “You slept well?” Skippy asked.

  “Yeah, thanks, did I snore?”

  “No, not much anyway. I’m glad you slept well, we have a busy day ahead.”

  He seemed to be a cheery mood, for a millions-years old lonely AI. “How are you? I didn’t hear you snoring either.”

  “I’m good, thank you.” He said cheerily. “Beautiful day, huh?”

  "Oh, shit." Skippy being nice to me could only mean one thing; he’d gotten into trouble. “What did you do last night?” I asked very slowly.

  “I took your advice, and went on the internet to meet some people.”

  “Some?”

  “So far, one billion, one hundred and eight million, in round numbers. I’m currently chatting, or texting, or emailing, with approximately thirty nine million.”

  “All at the same time?”

  “It’s keeping me busy, without straining my capacity.”

  “Busy is good.”

  “An idle mind is the devil’s playground. I heard that from a fire and brimstone preacher in Idaho last night. Man, you wouldn’t be
lieve the porn he has on his-“

  “I don’t need to heard about it! Damn, I just woke up, Skippy.”

  “Probably for the best. Your species really likes pornography, which is impressive, for a species with only two genders.”

  “Whoo! We’re Number One!” I held up an imaginary big foam finger as I gulped coffee. "Yeah! Humans kick ass!"

  “The physical differences between your males and females are so slight, it’s not even-“

  “Oh, but those differences mean everything. Trust me.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” I imagined he was rolling his eyes in there.

  “So, you’ve been meeting people online. And?”

  “Most of them think I’m an asshole, or the equivalent in their native language.”

  “I am shocked!”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Sorry. Are you enjoying meeting people?”

  “Let’s put it this way; have you ever scrolled down the bottom of a web page to read the user comments?”

  “Oh, man, Skippy, never read the comments, everybody knows that! Those comments are all written by guys sitting around in their underwear, because they have nothing else to do.”

  “I’ll agree with you there, except for the part about the underwear. I turned on some webcams without them knowing about it.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Ugh indeed. I was wrong, not all you monkeys are hairless. One guy looked like he was growing a shag carpet on his back. That’s a couple petabytes of memory I’d like to have erased. Hey, um, speaking of petabytes and other big numbers?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, heh, heh, this is a funny story-“

  Uh oh. “Funny ha-ha, or funny like, me spending time in federal prison?”

  “You didn’t do anything.” There was actually a defensive tone is Skippy’s voice.

  “They’re not putting you in prison, so, what did you do?”

  “Well, the internet bandwidth from here is skimpy, even with me compressing my messages, so I reached out to a place that seems to have connections to everything.”

  “Google?” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “No, there's a place called Fort Meade, Maryland? It’s your National Security Agency. Some guy there has been tearing his hair out since midnight, trying to figure who hacked into their system.”

  “Skippy!” My blood ran cold. I felt like throwing up. “Oh, I am in so much trouble.” I was regretting the coffee already.

  “No, we’re good, they think I’m a fifteen year old kid from Fresno named Billy. I gave him a Facebook page, and a fake family, and backdated a bunch of files. Apparently, there’s an FBI team on the way to the Starbucks where they think I’m logged in from. They are going to be so disappointed. Hey, I’m watching from the café’s security camera, do you want to see?”

  “No! Skippy, you can’t do this.”

  “Clearly, I can.”

  “I meant you shouldn’t do this.”

  “See? Human languages are so imprecise.”

  “This isn’t funny.” I cracked the door open, sure that heavily-armed guards were on their way to arrest me right then. “The NSA has top secret data!”

  “No to me. I don’t care about any of that crap they think is so important.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone about anything secret you found?”

  “No, come on, Joe, none of that government secret crap is worth my time. But, hey, do you want to know how NASA faked the moon landing?”

  “What?”

  “A joke. I’m joking.”

  “Don’t joke like that. You, uh, were joking, right?”

  “I can show you close-ups of the Apollo 11 landing site, from sensors on the Flying Dutchman, if you like. I looked at that site yesterday.”

  Curiosity overcame my fear. “What does it look like?”

  “Your species is way more brave than smart. I take space travel for granted, but your astronauts went up there in tin soup cans. Even I am impressed. You can almost read the Campbell’s soup label on their landers, next to the NASA logo. Man, you monkey seriously had balls to land on your moon with that crappy technology.”

  “Great, thank you. Can you please, please leave the National Security Agency alone? For me?”

  “Why? I’m having fun. I haven’t had fun in, like, millions of years!”

  “There are other ways to have fun, Skippy, that don’t involve me going to federal prison.”

  “You got out of prison before. Twice.”

  “Can you be serious for a minute? I’m enlisted in the US Army, I can’t be part of screwing with America’s security infrastructure.”

  “But causing trouble is so much fun.” Skippy grumbled.

  “You want to have fun causing trouble? Go online and start a credible rumor that Justin Beiber is going to play Darth Vader in the next Star Wars movie.” I suggested.

  “Oooooh, good one! I knew there’s a reason I hang around you, Joe. Ok, I just put fourteen minutes of what looks like pirated studio footage online-“

  I slapped my forehead. “Oh my God, what have I done?”

  “And I released an FDA study that Vegemite works better than Viagra-“

  “Stop it! I’m taking a shower, try not to launch any nukes while I’m gone.”

  “You know I wouldn’t hurt anyone, Colonel Joe. Hmm, how about-“

  I shut the door and headed down the hall to the bathrooms, wondering if I had time to buy stock in whatever company made Vegemite.

  I had never been so nervous in my life. Meeting the president outside, having just descended from orbit in a Thuranin dropship with a chrome plated beer can, made that whole experience so unreal, I’d forgotten to be nervous. Now, wearing a freshly pressed uniform, sitting in a room with the Joint Chiefs, the heads of the CIA and NSA, the national security director and science advisor, and the president’s chief of staff, had me dry mouthed and about to pee in my pants. The room was a bit like the Oval Office, with a big desk at one end, two rows of couches, and a coffee table. They sat me on the end of one couch, closest to the chair where the president would be sitting. The Army Chief of Staff, who I’d only seen in pictures before, was sitting right next to me. While we waited for the president, people drank coffee from little china cups that had saucers, I guess so the cups didn’t leave rings on the table. The cups didn’t have the presidential seal, those must have been left behind in DC. Now that I’d sat down and had time to look around, the room didn’t appear to be anywhere near as majestic as the Oval Office. In fact, the furniture could have been taken from the lobby of your average Ramada. Or maybe, as I realized the arm of the couch was worn and had a mysterious stain, perhaps a Motel 6. The Army chief picked up his coffee cup in a hand big enough to cover the whole thing, and I tried to follow. The cup shook so badly that it made a racket tapping against the saucer, so I set it back down so carefully you’d think I was disarming a live nuclear warhead. The Army chief, General Brenner, took pity on me. “Best if you leave the coffee alone.” He said quietly.

  I had to swallow twice to get enough moisture in my throat to answer. “Sir, I’ve been in combat, and I wasn’t this nervous.”

  The General, who had been in plenty of combat, nodded. “Stand up when the president comes in, and don’t knock over the table. Speak when you’re spoken to, and when you speak, be direct. We don’t have time for bullshit.”

  The door opened, a couple Secret Service agents walked in, followed by the President. She looked like she's been up most of the night.

  The national security director spoke first. “Madame President, I have an update on the security breach at the NSA last night.”

  The blood drained from my head. I hoped no one was looking at me.

  He continued. “We’ve contained the situation, and we’re assessing the damage now. The person we thought was the culprit turned out to be a phantom, a false lead. This was a very sophisticated attack, probably the Kristang-“

  “Kris
tang? Ha ha, those idiots?! No way! It was me.” Came a muffled voice from my zPhone.

  Now everyone was looking at me. “Not me, me.” I pulled my zPhone from my pocket, and set it on the table.

  “Yup. Twas me, Skippy the Magnificent. Hey, how come I didn’t get invited to this party? Sounds like a swinging good time.”

  “Am I to understand the being called Skippy,” the national security director shot me an unfriendly look, “broke into the NSA last night, and ransacked through our top secret files?”

  “Ransacked? I left everything where it was. If you don’t want people reading your files, you should have encrypted the data.” Skippy grumbled.

  “They are encrypted!”

  “Really? Oh, I thought those files were just poorly indexed. Huh. That was encryption? Oh, ha, ha. You’re messing with me, right? Good one.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” The national science advisor gasped. “That is state of the art encryption! How did you get the keys?”

  “Keys?” Skippy asked innocently.

  I decided to end Skippy's fun. “Sir, at our low level of technology, Skippy doesn’t bother to decrypt files, he just goes to the end and reads the contents. It has something to do with Schroeder’s cat?” I held up my hands.

  “Schrodinger’s cat. Anywho, whazzup, my peeps?” Skippy called out.

  The president actually smiled. “Mister Skippy, since we apparently can’t exclude you from a meeting, would you like to join us?”

  “No, I’m good, I'll phone this one in. That way, I can lay on the couch here in my fuzzy slippers and underwear, and pretend I’m listening. Besides, I’m watching Wheel Of Fortune.” And probably all other TV shows that were being broadcast all over the planet at the moment.

  I held up my hands again.

  “I saw that.” Skippy announced.

  “How?” The science advisor scowled.