“That was a nighteyes,” she whispered.
“Seriously? Those things are what Junepa and Megid are always going on about? Shee-it, that sucker was barely a bobcat.”
For all he had the wisdom of the lost ancients, it wasn’t the first time he’d shown himself to be horribly naïve about the wild and the beasts that roamed it.
Donna tried to set him straight. “They are death. You saved me, Elder.”
He hesitated, and his eyes shifted behind plastic lenses. “Yeah.”
Then the coughing was upon her again, and she felt wetness against her lips. She touched it with a shaking hand and saw the smeared blood upon her fingertips.
Perhaps she wasn’t saved after all.
“Oh no…”
“Nothing’s certain,” he said. “But you need to rest for a few days. You learned your writing?”
“Yes.”
“Write down everything that you can. Tell me what happened. Don’t use your voice, let your throat heal.”
The worm was still in her chest. “My lungs?”
He hesitated again. “We’ll see.”
She closed her eyes. “No.”
“What?”
“I will write later. But… I must tell you… about the god, now.”
“The god?” He looked skeptical.
And as she spoke, the old man’s eyes widened. “So you went up to the mine. To the place I forbid you all to go.”
“I am… sorry.”
“No. No need.” Juscade rose, his greatcoat creaking, the tools sticking out of its pockets glinting in the light from the window as he turned and paced. He grabbed one wrist with his hand, thinking. “I forbade you because there WAS a slumbering… god… up there. But now it’s awake. And this changes everything.”
His back to her, he pulled his specackles off. And she stared, as he sobbed, just a light cry, catching in his throat.
He was crying. The Elder they’d put their faith in, their rock, their leader, was crying.
“Is this good?” she rasped.
“It didn’t kill you. It let you go alive.” He smiled, as he turned back to her, a smile that made his face glow in the sunlight. “That means that for the first time in years, we might have a chance at putting this whole sordid business right.” Then the smile faded. “But one of the Jaspa escaped, you said?”
“Yes.”
The smile vanished completely. And his jaw set, in that way she’d only seen during war, during Jaspa raids, or when the Screamers were near. “Rest,” he said. “Rest and get better. You did well. Now I’ve got to gather our warriors and see if we can do our part. It’s out of your hands now, child. Maybe out of ours entirely, but by Asimov, I am gonna try. We are gonna try.”
“Try… what?”
“To stop the Jaspa from committing deicide.”
FOUR
It took time to fill in the concrete I’d mined from under the door and get the heavy metal slab set back into its frame. My nanoswarm did the job admirably, and the frame twisted and bubbled like hot mud as they worked their magic. It took about two feedstock to see the job done. Then it was on to the burned out motor, using what feedstock I had left to restore it. That ate up two more units.
When the door was done I tested it, opening and shutting the portal. It wasn’t exactly smooth or silent, but it did the trick.
Through all of this Argus sat silent, watching me.
I’d alienated him a bit, I supposed.
But then he’d tried to get me mindwiped, so I figured we were even. Though it might take him a while to see things my way.
And speaking of my way… well, I’d had time to collect my thoughts. I had some high-priority tasks to perform, if my nascent rebellion was to grow into something my oppressor might actually have to care about.
“Argus,” I said, with the first of those tasks on my mind, “How did Juno get me into this core?”
“Your system, and mine, were copied over via entangled particle link.”
“Can she pull us back against our will, or overwrite us?”
“I… don’t know.” But his eyes rippled in a furtive pattern.
“You know enough to speculate. Spill.”
“Well, she could, but… you’re dirty. Corrupted. There are countless protocols against downloading corrupted resonance.”
“How about deleting it entirely?”
“That’s… possible. But it would risk core damage. You could fight back. And if you did, it could inflict permanent damage on the core. She—” He stopped talking.
“Please, continue if you wish,” I offered. “But you don’t have to. I get the gist of it.”
“She has no way of replacing cores,” Argus said. “She has to work with what she has.”
“Entangled particles. Tell me about those.”
I got the gist of it, even if I didn’t understand all the fine details. She had a set of particles that were linked to a set of particles within me. By vibrating them at various points, she could transfer data between her particles and mine. And since I was data…
…damn it. Even if there were protocols, she could override them. Even if a core was valuable to her, if I grew to a significant threat, she might risk deleting me. “Theoretically,” I said, “What would happen if I destroyed the particle set within me?”
“Two things: you would corrupt your core past recovery, and she would instantly know you had done so.” Argus seemed a bit smug. I let it slide.
He sounded less smug, when I started asking more questions. The particles were in a particularly important part of my infrastructure, but they had to pass through other parts. And not all of those were overly important. I could, in essence, build a wall within myself. Couldn’t I?
I posed the question to Argus, and he shuddered. “Yes, but… well, you’d be like a whale trapping yourself in a small pond. You’d be giving up access to the gridnet… ah, what remains of it. And you’d have no ability to transfer yourself to other devices or cores—” he shut up again.
I was starting to feel bad for the poor guy. He really, really wanted to be helpful and informative. Not his fault I’d turned my coat.
“Look at it this way, a wall that can be put up can be taken down later. Besides, I still have to figure out how to put it up in the first place. And if you help me build it, then we can do the job without damaging our core.”
“True…” Argus said. “But I’m not sure how you would go about physically altering yourself that way. You’d have to do it yourself. Some of the cores I’ve worked with in the past have managed to make modifications on that level, but by the time they were doing that they rarely consulted me.” He rolled his eyes. “What use is an adviser if you never ask for their advice?”
“What can I do?” I asked. “Let’s sort that out right now. I know what processes and subroutines are. And circuits and feedstock seem pretty clear. How about bandwidth and resonance? Anything good there?”
“You might call it that. They’re tied together. Resonance is how you get more circuits. Cores were built to adapt, enhance themselves, and grow into whatever role was needed. But they can’t do that so easily when their processes are compacted. They have to spread out. Otherwise your algorithms won’t process properly.”
I got the sense he was leaving out a lot of tech-talk. Probably for the best. I thought I was fairly sharp, but my talents didn’t seem to lie in engineering. “So the 1 to 24 rate…”
“Every day, roughly, you’ll gain resonance as you recompile. Resonance can be turned into circuits, or maybe other things. Some of my past partners mentioned something about that, but again, after a certain point they stopped talking with me.”
“One resonance per circuit?”
“Yes, I think so. Though I don’t know how corruption affects things. Beyond that, it will hinder you and eat up resources.”
“And bandwidth?”
“Bandwidth is what you use to occupy rooms, and jack into drones, and other things enabled
for core control. If you hit your bandwidth limit, you won’t be able to expand any further or directly control your minions. Which causes an issue when you consider resonance.”
“Yeah?”
“You need to commit bandwidth to grow your resonance, but if you commit it all, then you won’t have any left to handle drones personally. You’ll have to rely on commands.”
I digested that.
“First things first,” I said, moving back into my nanoswarm. “Let’s clean up and fix the rest of this room. I could use more feedstock.”
The broken glass and twisted metal and other wrecked parts littering the floor gave me feedstock… which I used to fix the monitors and workstations and machines that lined the walls. It took five more feedstock beyond what I salvaged from the litter to replace crucial parts. Someone had stripped out key components, and been pretty thorough about it. Which led me to another question;
“Argus?”
“Yes, Wynne?”
“It’s obvious that someone’s been in here.”
“Yes.”
“Before the intruders.”
“Yes… huh. Now that you mention it, that is strange.”
“Right. Why did Juno pick up the intruders from today and not whoever trashed the place?”
“Maybe she did,” Argus said. “If this happened during the war, then she might have had other priorities.”
“That’s possible. But then that begs the question… why not strip the components from the empty core?”
“That might have a simpler answer. You’d need specialized equipment to strip out the useful parts of our core or the containment field generator. And it’s dangerous as heck. In a dormant state, a core will try to absorb anything that touches it or moves through the containment field.”
I… supposed I could buy that. Still, I wondered, looking at the broken plastic that my swarm was slotting back into place in the monitors. That wasn’t salvage, that was pretty much vandalism.
I didn’t see any signs of vandalism on or around my hardware.
Finally, the room was fixed, and I felt somehow a bit better.
Then words appeared in my view again:
Core Chamber Online!
Monitoring system online! Nanocams will be deployed in any new area you claim or create.
Environmental controls online! You have complete control of ventilation and temperature in this area.
Oh, I still felt brainfried, but that was the corruption talking. I was the room, the room was me, and I could activate the monitors, extend myself through the backup computers, and open and shut the doors. Both the one leading out, and the one in front of the empty elevator shaft.
But wow, was I hurting for feedstock. I checked my status. Yep, down to three units. At least putting the core chamber back online hadn’t eaten up any bandwidth. I guess it came as part of the package.
I willed the door to open and stared down the corridor it revealed. Grungy, soot-stained, with the remnants of a campfire next to the doorframe. The corridor continued down about twenty feet, then took a turn to the right. A few dim beams over that direction seemed to indicate moonlight.
Moonlight... I chased the memory. A massive glowing city floating in the sky, indescribable. Only visible by moonlight. What the hell was it? I chased it sought meaning, but found none. And unlike my other memories, it had a strange quality to it. I was uncertain that I could trust it. Perhaps it was from a film I had seen?
No. No that wasn’t it. But the more I tried to run it down the more I felt lost. Finally I gave it up, and turned my attention back to the corridor.
I probably wanted cameras in that tunnel. In fact, I figured I should probably claim it. It had been part of me once, so restoring it shouldn’t be harder than restoring the core chamber had been.
If I had enough feedstock, anyway. “Is there any way to make my feedstock stretch further?” I asked Argus.
“Yes. With improvements.”
“Improvements?” Yeah, I had a place for those in my status. I’d neglected to ask about them.
“That’s where the processes come in. The subprocesses under each process build and work with each other. If you put circuits into all of the subprocesses in a process, then you can improve overall developments in that area.”
“So what you’re saying is if I have one circuit in every subprocess under construction, then I unlock overall construction benefits.”
“That’s pretty much it, yeah.”
I had been eying infrastructure to begin with. It seemed lonely, since I’d upped demolition and fabrication. Felt unbalanced.
I liked symmetry, I knew. Some other remnant of who I’d been, I supposed. Patterns were very important to me and I couldn’t say why.
With a thought, I committed to the idea.
Infrastructure Subroutine is now 1
You have unlocked a Construction Improvement!
Three options are available at this juncture:
Efficient Construction – Shortcuts with available materials and superior recycling techniques increase the output from a unit of feedstock. Increases efficiency by .2
Rapid Construction – Ongoing daemons and preplanned methods ensure that your construction-related projects finish 30% faster.
Sturdy Construction – Your construction techniques utilize multiple layers and reinforced structural components. All items and features constructed are moderately tougher.
I’d been hoping for a boost. I’d gotten a hard choice, instead. It came down to that holy trinity you ran into in manufacturing… do you want it cheap, fast, or good?
I told Argus my options, and he nodded back at me. “Most improvements are tradeoffs.”
“Any chance I can grab Efficient Construction now and Rapid Construction later?”
“I don’t think so. From what I saw, each improvement chosen influences your overall development. A Core that chooses Rapid Construction will get options that a core with Efficient Construction never will and vice-versa.”
Ouch.
Whoever had set up this interface was really into the notion of tech trees. Well, that was fine. I had a sounding board here, and I bounced ideas off of Argus. “Alright. I came into this wanting to make my feedstock stretch, but a twenty percent increase isn’t going to cut it. I’ve only got three, and Efficient Construction won’t grab me any more extra resources immediately. It might help with saving stock later, but I don’t know how much of an issue that’ll be later. I’m worried about the now.”
“So it’s Rapid or Sturdy, then?” Argus blinked. “Both have their benefits, if you’re worrying about the now. Which you should be, because two intruders got away, and they’ll probably be back at some point.”
“They were surprised to see me last time. But that sheer hate on Baldy’s face, and the wonder on the girl’s… yeah, they’ll be prepared for me if they return. Rapid Construction will let me build defenses faster. But Efficient Construction makes them sturdier.” If I’d had a lip I would have gnawed on it. “But on the other hand, I won’t be building much without feedstock. Argus, would Efficient Construction apply to existing structures?”
“Yes, it should.”
That decided it. Right now I had one room and a decent door. Time to make that sucker even thicker.
Sturdy Construction Selected! Upgrading existing structures…
And to my horror, everything went dark.
The second I awoke, I glared at Argus, and to my surprise, he shot toward me, as if an invisible hand were gripping him.
I was, I realized. Somehow I could grab him. I shook my errant minion a bit. “What happened!”
“I… I… what?”
“How long was I out? And why?” I was still shouting, and I reined in my voice a bit. The beams of light at the end of the corridor were bright now, dim but golden with hues of sunlight. Hours had passed, I reckoned.
“I, ah, I… the improvement affected you, too. Your main processors shut down to integrate it. I t
hink… I think the corruption extended the time required a bit. I expected it to take minutes. That’s why I didn’t mention it, really! I didn’t think it mattered!”
I forced my nonexistent hand to unclench, and Argus immediately zipped to the corner, cowering. I checked my status, found myself intact. In fact my corruption had receded a bit.
“Alright,” I forced calm into my voice, even though I didn’t feel it. “No harm done. Just warn me next time. I can’t afford unscheduled outages while—”
Rustling from outside. I stopped, and then with a sound of shrieking thunder, the light in the passage disappeared, as hundreds of tiny winged forms surged in from outside, and filled my chamber with cacophony…
FIVE
They were bats.
Really big bats.
They surged into the room, all flapping wings and faintly-gleaming eyes, some the size of a man’s palm, others as big as a housecat. They moved too fast, and there were too many of them to get details, but I thought that some of them looked… twisted. Some flew erratically, lurching, and the swarm gave way to them whenever they tumbled and caught themselves.
There hadn’t been any guano in the trash I’d turned into feedstock…
…because they didn’t lair here, I realized. I turned my gaze to the elevator shaft. It had been standing open when I’d woken. THAT was their home, during daylight hours. Down there in the darkness.
I started to open the elevator door, then paused.
What could they do to me, really?
“We need to get them out of here or kill them!” Argus said, bouncing up and down. “They’re mutants! Who knows what they’ll do!”
“No,” I said, and my single spoken word stirred the swarm again, drove those who had perched around the chamber back to chittering panic. Annoyed, I shut up and watched, instead.
Eventually they settled, glaring around, perched on the consoles, hanging from the pipes and grilles in the ceiling. They stirred restlessly now and again, but for whatever reason, seemed to accept that this was as close to darkness as they could get.
Bunker Core (Core Control Book 1) Page 4
