Clear plastic tubing stuck out of Diego’s right arm and extended up to a bag of foggy, slightly blue liquid. The lady pumped something into the bag with a needle, and the solution turned pale yellow.
“No!” shouted Jamal. He banged on the glass with both fists. “Stop it! Stopit, stopit, stopit!”
Diego’s eyes flew open as Afi and the technician’s heads both snapped in Jamal’s direction.
“Please,” Jamal pleaded. “Please don’t take him away.” His vision blurred, and he had to take huge gulps of air as his lungs stuttered. “Please.” His voice cracked and he turned away.
As he hid his face there was a commotion on the other side of the glass. Furniture squeaked across the floor, metal rattled, three voices argued and one yelped. When he looked up and rubbed his eyes, Diego stood before him, palms pressed to the window.
“It’s okay, Jamal. You have to let me go. It’s time for you to learn new things and meet new people. You can’t hang around an old fool forever.” Diego sounded muffled, but the words were clear. So was the meaning.
“I don’t want to let you go.” He knew how selfish it sounded. He pressed his palm against the glass as if pressing it to Diego’s hand.
“Go back out that door, now,” said Diego. “It’s time to say goodbye.” With that he returned to the chair, lay back down, and shut his eyes.
Jamal had never been in more trouble in his life. Apparently hitching a ride to the retirement wing was almost as bad as abandoning the mission. Almost.
No one cared about his excuses. No one cared he’d done it for a noble cause. All they cared about was teaching him never to do it again. They gave him a week to grieve, then enacted his penalty.
As punishment, they made him clean the access ducts without the aid of bots. Ironically, they were the same ducts he’d highjacked as a shortcut to the server room.
Gleaming before him now was a plate that read:
Here are interned the ashes of Dr. Leonard McCloud
May the convoy carry him, in death, to the stars he only dreamed of in life
2029–2106
It marked the final resting place of some guy from Earth—some guy who had helped build the mission, but never saw it launch. Guess there really are dead people in the walls, Jamal thought.
Viscous cleaning solution ran down through the words, obscuring them. He mopped the orange-scented cleaner with a rag.
There would be no plaques for Diego. Spoons only get remembered by other spoons.
“I.C.C.?”
“Yes, Jamal?”
The boy rubbed a hand across his eyes. The fumes stung. “Does it hurt when you die?”
“I have not experienced death, and do not have enough information to extrapolate—”
A burning rimmed his eyes. What strong cleaner.
No, he couldn’t fool himself. He wasn’t crying because of the chemicals. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Never mind.”
A long pause followed. Jamal continued to polish the plate long after it was clean.
“Diego . . . he was your friend?” asked I.C.C. It was a cautious query, asked microseconds slower than usual questions from the AI.
“Yes,” Jamal croaked.
“I don’t comprehend what that means.”
Wiping the snot from his nose, Jamal cleared his throat. “I know,” he said, and patted the wall as if I.C.C. could feel the gesture. “I’ll teach you.”
Chapter Four
I.C.C.: Look Now How the Mortals Blame
Eighteen Years Later
October 19, 48 PLD
2589 CE
“Identify where the program came from,” Ordered Captain Mahler II. The tiny blue server lights cast an—ethereal, Jamal would tell me—glow over his tight, attentive body. He faced me as he spoke. Almost no one faced me. Only Jamal Kaeden III.
“I can’t,” I said, wondering if I should have thrown in a stutter. Some people stutter when they are unable to offer up demanded information.
“You can’t? How is that possible?”
“The information is not available.”
“I told you, Captain,” said Jamal, resting his work cap over his shoulder with one hand. “I’ve asked every trigger question in the book. I’ll run a code diagnostic, but I couldn’t identify any main terminal breaches—all were directly accessed by personnel who were scheduled to access them. And no, nothing unusual was uploaded during those times.”
“I.C.C., is it possible someone developed a program that would erase its history in your system?”
“Possible,” I said.
“And it would shield itself from your self-diagnostic tests?”
“It must. Or else I would secure and delete the program.” I didn’t want to broadcast the message. If I knew where it was, it would’ve been contained and we wouldn’t have been having this discussion.
The captain turned to Jamal. “You’re sure it’s only localized? Only the ships are receiving it? It hasn’t . . . ?” He glanced at me briefly.
Whether he didn’t trust me or didn’t trust the program hiding inside me, I don’t know. I haven’t learned all of the nuances yet. But I did catch his unspoken question. “There have been no nonstandard messages to Earth,” I said.
I’d hoped he’d relax a little. I looked for the signs: shoulders dropping, spine loosening, deep exhalation. But, if anything, he seemed to tighten everywhere. “Good,” he said curtly. “Keep it that way.”
“You don’t think we should inform Ms. Pavon? Shouldn’t this be in the report?” Jamal slapped his cap back into place, adjusting its fit.
“Not unless things get worse. Not unless I.C.C. gets worse.”
Worse . . . Was I sick? I hadn’t considered that. I’d thought whatever had been uploaded was simply rerouting resources and blocking my traces. It hadn’t occurred to me that something might actually be wrong with my functionality.
Jamal patted the outside of my primary camera housing; a place I tended to equate with the side of a human face. “It’ll be fine,” he said. “We’ll work this out and excise the system in no time.”
The captain nodded. “I have every confidence.”
As he should. Jamal was the best. The third iteration of his line, and so far the most attentive colleague I’d had.
Captain Mahler turned to leave.
“May I make a request?” I asked.
“Of course, I.C.C.” The captain was strict, but not ungracious.
“May I turn on continuous consciousness in all areas? And simul-stream from all total-input ports?”
He squinted at me, as though looking for an expression on my camera lens. Sometimes I think it would be easier to communicate if I had a body and could use its language. Although, perhaps that would make some crew members unwilling to interact as intimately with me as they do. I am in a—or, it is a—catch twenty-two (is that how this idiom is used?). The more machine I am, the more trust I get from some. Others desired me to behave more like a member of the convoy than a piece of equipment. The more I slide to one side of the scale, the more trust drops off on the other.
Will the entire crew ever accept me as a confidant, companion, and colleague?
Well, that’s why Jamal was helping me with the finer points of verbal expression. Perhaps, in the centuries to come, I could learn to tailor my interactions. Be what each person expects—well, wants me to be.
“To what end?” asked the captain. “Will continuous consciousness throughout the convoy be a drain on your computing power? Will you be able to perform all background functions correctly? Will you still be able to perform the tasks demanded of you?”
“The purpose of my request is to monitor crew member activity and look for behavior anomalies. I may be able to identify the individual who uploaded the message. This should not interfere with my usual work. If I cannot complete required tasks appropriately, I will shrink the consciousness.”
“And what about privacy?”
I could not compute
his meaning. “Repeat question.” Remembering what Jamal had taught me, I added, “If you please, sir.”
“If you are constantly scrutinizing activity, are you not invading the crew’s privacy?”
“Sir, all investigations require a breach in privacy. And I fail to see how this intrudes more than usual. Part of my function is to monitor all activity, in case of emergency, as installed during the second mission year, after twelve consecutive cases of—”
“Thank you, I understand the operation. But your conscious presence changes things.”
I failed to see how. So I simply said, “It is necessary to find the breach.”
“Fine, but I don’t want you to archive anything unessential.”
“Recordings deemed unessential will be wiped from the database seventy-two hours from recording, as is standard.”
He found my answer displeasing, I was sure, but he did not argue or order me to disregard customary procedure. “Permission granted on all points. I want the individual found. We need to know why they did this.”
“Couldn’t it just be a prank, sir?” asked Jamal. “The content seems harmless enough.”
“We don’t have pranksters, Kaeden. Not with access to I.C.C. in this way.”
He meant the children. There was no way to tamper with me on Aesop, true, but it wasn’t as though the children never left the education ship. And intelligent youngsters play intelligent games, as Jamal had demonstrated as a child. His suggestion seemed probable to me.
“I must get back to the bridge. I’ll check on your progress later.”
“Sir,” said Jamal, saluting.
When the captain was gone, I said, “I am having trouble processing Captain Mahler’s stance on privacy and pranks. His attitude was confusing. Unreasonable.”
Jamal adjusted his jumpsuit before sitting down at his workstation. He picked up his full, now cold, cup of coffee. It left a ring on the console. “What a waste,” he mumbled, shaking his head—how would he say it? Forlornly—at the cup. He took a swig anyway. “He runs a tight ship,” he said, grimacing at the taste. “It’s unthinkable to him that an adult might tamper with something and not have mal-intent. And children, well, he figures they’re corralled. The message is a banner to him, and it doesn’t read, Remember clouds. Remember sand, and such. Not when he reads it. When he sees the message it says, Captain Mahler has lost control. Captain Mahler’s tight ship has a leak.”
Sniffing the coffee, he got up and went to the small break room to make a fresh pot and flush away the old. “Your main controls and largest server bank are on his ship, so he feels responsible for you.”
How strange. I thought I was responsible for me. And perhaps, by extension, Jamal and I were responsible for each other, since he saw to my maintenance and upgrades. But I’d never seen the captain as anything more than just another crew member. One with authority, but not one who held responsibility for my actions and faults.
Jamal came back into the room. I sensed small molecules of coffee being released into the air. The old-fashioned brewer was doing its work.
“And the privacy?” I asked.
“Now that you’ve been compromised, he’s worried unauthorized personnel could have access to your video archives. That someone might be getting their cables buzzed by watching their coworkers doing the nasty.” Jamal frowned, then wandered up to my camera and looked me in the lens. “He’s not worried about you peeking in on people, if that’s what you were thinking.”
Was that what I’d been thinking?
“I’m going to turn on full consciousness now,” I said.
He nodded, and I recognized his expression. He always pursed his lips when trying not to attribute human emotions and thought patterns to my responses. My segue must have seemed abrupt.
I activated my consciousness throughout the convoy, and suddenly felt expansive—larger than myself while still being limited to myself. In human terms, it’s like being aware of every function in your body, and being able to observe those functions with all of your senses. Simultaneously observing and openly comprehending everything about yourself at once. My network was always on, I was always present throughout each ship, but now I, my sense of self, was there as well.
As an AI, multitasking is my middle name. But this was new. I’d always had the capacity to be conscious everywhere, but I’d never activated it before.
So many conversations. So many movements to track. So many particles in the air—smells and tastes. The only sense I did not possess was touch—that I could only infer through my visual inputs.
“I.C.C.?”
“Yes, Jamal?”
“You went quiet all of a sudden.”
Jin Yoon dropped a stack of dishes in the galley. I must remember next time I speak with her not to address her by name. She says she’d like to preserve some of her culture, though I’m not quite sure I understand—
“I was having a moment. I was experiencing,” I explained.
—Kira and Abdul were fighting again. They’d been doing that a lot more since deciding to share quarters—
“You’ve been more contemplative recently,” said Jamal.
“Have I?”
—Dr. Grimle (he didn’t like it when I used his first name, either) on Aesop was lecturing his twelve-year-olds on the importance of good hygiene—
“Yes. Are my hints still useful to you?” Jamal inspected a server. “Or are they confusing? Boring?”
—Two engineers on Solidarity, who shall go unnamed, were taking part in what Jamal had called “the nasty.” Why do I get the feeling that is an impolite term?—
“Not boring,” I said. “But yes, sometimes the nuances confuse me. I am grateful for the aid. I do believe it helps me work more efficiently with some individuals.”
—Sixteen people on Holwarda were in the lavatories, being sick. Something must have contaminated lunch. That might bear looking into. Of course, it could just be poor food hygiene, as Dr. Grimle was explaining—
“How are you handling the larger consciousness? I have noticed a slight lag in your verbal responses. Though it’d probably be imperceptible to most people.”
“It is taking a larger chunk of processing power than I had expected,” I admitted, zooming in on the server room for just a moment. Jamal deserved my undivided attention during a conversation. “Shall I do a sectioned watch instead?”
“No, it’s all right. Keep your awareness broad. It’s the best way to spot a problem, you’re right. I’m going to run through some code, now. Keep your eyes sharp.”
Who in the history of mankind has actually had sharp eyes? What an odd saying. I made a note to ask Jamal about the origin of the idiom at a more appropriate time.
—The ticker screen on deck eight of Bottomless flashed large red letters. Remember ocean waves. Remember salty air.—
“A new version of the message is playing on Bottomless,” I informed him.
He had several monitors on, all with scrawling code. His gaze flicked back and forth between them. “That’s a weird place for it. Not a lot of people around. Maybe the message is just running around randomly through the system.”
Perhaps. Not knowing the intent of the message, it was hard to say if its appearances were random or purposeful. This did seem to indicate it was randomized. Bottomless was a supply ship. A warehouse, essentially. It had few regular workers, and few visitors. All of the other iterations had occurred in populated areas during high-traffic hours. Perhaps the message was simply cycling through all the ships. It hadn’t formed any kind of pattern yet, but it hadn’t made it through the entire convoy either.
But what if it wasn’t random? Why Bottomless? Why deck eight?
And what did all of these “remember” messages mean? No one could possibly remember these things. Everyone who was old enough to recall such things had been retired.
No one on board had ever seen real clouds or real sand or real waves. The only way they came close was either through viewing the vid
eo archives, or visiting Eden.
Perhaps the word was used to invoke an emotion. Loss? Regret?
I focused in on deck eight, scanning for crew. If someone had viewed the message, I’d like to know who.
There. Two men and one woman. All Bottomless crew, all familiar to me, but not friendly. Speaking emphatically, the men discussed the message in the hallway on their way to a lift. Their conversation revealed little. They were baffled, and somewhat amused by what they called a “cheap shot.” I failed to see how cheap shot applied, but clearly the male crew members were surprised and only mildly affected.
The woman, Ceren, went about her business inventorying a plastics supply room. She was of relatively young age, Turkish descent, and had a meticulous eye. The screen just outside the clear supply room doors still flashed the message, but either she hadn’t seen it, was ignoring it, or had been unmoved by its presence.
Or, at least that’s how I interpreted her routine behavior. Right up until she put down her tablet, exited, examined the ticker screen, and deliberately turned it off.
Strange reaction, I thought. Perhaps the blinking bothered her.
Quickly, I scanned my archived recordings of all the previous visual data related to the messages. Had anyone else done the same? Yes, twelve others, one when Remember rain surfaced on Mira, three when Remember seasons had—
“I.C.C. I need your attention.”
“I’m here.”
“Full attention. You’re lagging.”
I halted my study of the visuals. “I am?”
“More and more,” said Jamal. “I’m beginning to wonder if the culprit didn’t also upload something dangerous.”
“Have you located any corrupted code?”
He sighed. “No, but there’s a lot to go through. If the software doesn’t recognize a problem, I may have to go through it manually. I’ll have to enlist some help. Otherwise it could take me years.”
“I can’t help?”
He gave me a sideways glance, his dark features scrunched. “Do patients diagnose themselves? Besides, what do you think the software is? I’m not running that on brainpower. Its nano-neurotransistors. Artificial, not biological. You, in other words.”
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