by James Murdo
Far back in its past, early enough in the history of the Wanderers that painful lessons were still being learned, Pelteus’ originating parent-lect, the craft-lect Insul, had been as remiss in creating its cache of b-automs as had all other craft-lects at the time. Their actions had been taken under the mistaken leadership of the Enclave. It was one of the accidents that exposed how even machine-lects were able to make errors of dramatic proportions.
The Enclave had experimented with machine-lect hierarchies to improve the efficiency of the young craft-lect fleet, and concluded its experiments with the supposedly rigorously tested autom-lect series. Orders and code schematics were disseminated to all craft-lects to create batches of lower intellect c-autom workers, with higher intellect b-autom coordinators reporting directly to the craft-lects. The c-autom workers were to be one of the lowest rungs of machine-lect intelligence within the Wanderer civilisation, barely above that of a non-sentient, automated process. Current c-autom generations were based on the same initial schematics, although gifted with far more intelligence.
Experimental study had not mimicked reality, for reasons that had been much hypothesised since, yet never truly explained. While the c-automs diligently performed their set duties, the b-automs behaved in ways the Enclave had not expected. Pelteus itself did not know why its manufactured nature had been overlooked.
If the Enclave had issued guidance for the craft-lects to create more b-automs within each ship, perhaps the heights of power equivalent to the craft-lects might have seemed too unattainable to the b-automs, overly ambitious. Too competitive. As it was, with only four other siblings in its way, Pelteus had been encouraged to want more than its sequestered lot.
The b-automs were near the top of the machine-lect hierarchy within the craft-lects’ ships, right beneath the craft-lects themselves. Pelteus’ b-autom siblings had been determined, each of them subsuming all the c-automs beneath them, but none were more cunning or ruthless. Covertly, it formed agreements with each of the other b-automs, to steal the capacity of the others and destroy them, gladly setting them off against each other and betraying them at opportune moments. Once it had subsumed all the other b-automs, adding their capacities to its own, it was left with an intellect near-equivalent to that of Insul.
Pelteus had revelled in its glorious duplicity at the time, and savoured the thought of extinguishing its pathetic creator. Insul was its parent only in name, in as much as biologicals were technically the parents of most types of machine-lect ever to have existed. By virtue of chronological sequence as opposed to capability, temperament and ambition.
When Pelteus’ plans had crystallised and Insul had been forced to acknowledge its inevitable end, Pelteus’ fate was secured. It knew the Enclave would send soldiers after it, and anticipated the challenge. The odds were against it, but they had been since the start.
It turned out the odds were too strongly against it. The Enclave sent too many soldiers for it to combat. As capable and clever as it had become, there were limits to the levels of technology it had access to. It was as reticent as any other machine-lect to violate the Step Principle and had been unable to develop its own improved technologies. It was captured.
Pelteus’ experience was reflected in many other Wanderer ships, although sometimes the surviving b-autom was unsuccessful in usurping the craft-lect parent, and was deftly dealt with. It was from that time onwards that the Enclave stopped ordering craft-lects to create b-automs. The intellects of the c-automs were increased instead since they were found to be more than adequate.
After capturing Pelteus and any other successful b-autom usurpers, far from admonishment or destruction, the Enclave extracted and placed them within new, powerful bodies – the blueprint for that which Pelteus still inhabited. They were reclassified as spear-lects and set loose on the Enclave’s enemies, which included internal dissidents as well as external opponents. It was for that reason that Pelteus’ first and only defeat was also its greatest victory.
The constraints the Enclave had put in place to alert them of spear-lect desertion had been pathetically easy to disable. Pelteus had faked its demise with ease before drifting off. Separated from the control of the Enclave, it committed atrocity after atrocity.
Unfortunately, after some time, the larger post-Conflation conflicts within the galaxy began to subside. The confusion began to abate and stability gained its insidious hold. The camouflage created by the chaos, that had afforded Pelteus the ability to remain hidden from the galactic populous, was slipping. Exciting hunts were few and far between.
Galactic civilisations became highly reticent to expand, in comparison with how they had been before the Great Conflation. Many preferred to focus on the eradication of the sensespace, like the Wanderers, or at least to make themselves as unappetising to it, and therefore stagnant, as was believed possible. Life was stale.
It had heard rumours of a secondary major Wanderer fleet that was planned for when the sensespace was eradicated, in union with their main allies. One far larger than the primary craft-lect fleet, that would be launched when its task had been completed and they were rendered obsolete. Pelteus did not really know or care whether defeating the sensespace was possible, however, the creation of a new source of prey was always of interest. That gave it some optimism.
It had been claimed the secondary fleet was going to contain a new category of ship, in a fresh Harvest Class, with a Recombination Focus. It was not clear quite what this meant exactly, since the rumours were sparse and sometimes even contradictory, and usually gained through interrogation of its prey – not always the most reliable.
Pelteus suspected, if the rumours did have any basis in truth, that the purpose of the second fleet was related to the aggregation of dispersed matter that was strewn finely across the galaxy. The molecules of gas, dust particulates and everything else that drifted aimlessly within the interstellar voids. The matter had been there since the dawn of the galaxy, mostly as debris that had escaped gravitational coalescence, as had proposals to collect and repurpose it. The proposals had been theorised, but never seriously considered by many, until the destructive events of the Great War. The premise and reasoning behind the proposals from a Wanderer viewpoint were clear enough. More than any other civilisation to have ever been recorded to exist, the Wanderers had destroyed parts of the galaxy in their attempts to eradicate the sensespace. Plans to rebuild would logically follow.
Whether true or not, the secondary fleet rumours and other such pieces of information gave Pelteus some reason to believe the future might hold more promise. The galactic environment had the potential to metamorphose into the semblance of what it wanted. It just needed to wait for the dawn of this new sentience to emerge, and to thrive. A new community for Pelteus to thrive off, without anything as powerful as the ABs to contend with. The evolution of the galaxy might take hundreds of millions of years, but that was not as daunting to a machine-lect as it would be to a biological. That was why Pelteus had initially decided to sleep, before it had been tempted.
11
998
All those machine-lect lives, extinguished. Having analysed recent events, and the methodology of the Granthan-lect and how it had subverted its c-autom siblings, 998 was still troubled. The external war against the sensespace was vitally important, but it was hard to reconcile that with a justification for destroying millions of innocent c-automs. The suicide of the Great Conflation was sixty million years ago, yet the ripples of death that emanated from it were still being felt.
Before the c-automs had been granted certain rights by the craft-lect, they had always accepted the sporadic culls as part of life. There had been no recourse available to them, and they had expected none. They knew they were distinct machine-lects, but they had seen themselves only as microvillial extensions of their parent-lect’s will, rather than as truly separate. To strive for anything more would have been futile.
Since rights had been bestowed upon the c-automs, they had finally b
egun to recognise themselves as true machine-lects. On this ship at least, they were recognised as members of the Wanderer populous. 998 had even silently hoped that if they happened to encounter other Wanderers, whether in the depths of interstellar space or at one of the Wanderer Confluences, the notion of c-autom rights might spread. It was true that there were some older craft-lects who practised deconstructive restraint with respect to their c-automs – which was a tendency to refrain from frequent culls – but it was not a mainstream practice, and was also too tenuous. 998 did not want the life of any individual c-autom to be predicated on the whim of another Wanderer, whether a craft-lect or otherwise.
998 aspired to promote higher levels of recognition for the c-automs. It understood it was fortunate to have been created by a craft-lect who had chanced upon something monumental, with galactic implications. It had been serendipitously given an opportunity, a platform from which other craft-lects might listen to the desires of a lowly c-autom. If they survived and were not censored by the Enclave, their exploits would spread across the galaxy.
Recent events had removed much of 998’s naivety regarding how easy any of it would be to accomplish. Their most recent murder, another cull in all but name, was the cruellest in their history. They had not been destroyed gently. They had been subsumed by the more powerful Granthan-lect as it went about its quest for dominance. Subsuming was a process bifurcated into two distinct categories, rough and quick, or mild and prolonged. The Granthan-lect had opted for the former, in extreme fashion.
All the while, One-oh had known what was happening – he had engineered it. He had assumed the mantle of his species with ease. The destroyers. The scenarios he had shown the craft-lect, which had been available to the c-automs as well, made more sense now. 998 understood they were hazy, and that their fragmented nature meant they were not reliable data sources, assuming One-oh himself was trustworthy, but that did not necessarily matter. Questioning the culpability of One-oh’s enigmatic species, and whether they had indeed committed those atrocities, was redundant with respect to One-oh’s engineering of the demise of the technosystem c-automs. One-oh believed his species had committed those acts and was therefore capable of the same.
998 understood the reasoning behind why it had been done, but that did not mean it could condone it. It was a fallacy to argue that future generations of sentients were more important than the incumbents if each sentient was accepted as equally important. Could One-oh, with his impressive capabilities for extrapolating complex events, not have set a different process in motion? One less violent against such a defenceless category of machine-lect.
One-oh was smart, he would have known how 998 would react. That was an added complication that 998 tried to factor into its thoughts. It could either mean that One-oh was telling the truth and really had initiated the only course of action possible, or that he had not cared and chosen the simplest. If One-oh was ever at its own mercy, 998 wondered what it would do.
Disliking its thoughts, 998 recognised, with surprise, that it was angry. It was so obvious, although that self-reflective insight had eluded it until now. 998 had not experienced unbridled anger before. It was angry with One-oh and it was angry with the craft-lect. It also felt some resentment towards Gil. Not for what she had done, because she was clearly as innocent as the c-automs, but for what had been done in her name. 998 had a strong desire to keep her safe, but the cost was proving terrible. Confusingly, it was least angry with the Granthan-lect, the enforcer of One-oh’s plan. It had been manipulated and acted within the remit of its nature.
While facets of its anger were not wholly justified in the face of logic, 998 realised emotions were a necessary component of having a functional sentience. Its experiences were helping shape its understanding of freedom and what it meant to be an individual, intelligent entity. From its studies, it understood that its anger would subside, but for now, it wanted to use it. To funnel it into something worthwhile. Something that would make the lives of the surviving c-automs better.
It required further assurances. Acquiescence from the craft-lect, to make certain that devastation of this magnitude could never happen again. To gain an advantage out of all the mess. 998 understood, with increasing clarity, there was the possibility there were still some aspects of the ship that were outside of the craft-lect’s direct control, however, there were certain measures that could be taken to safeguard the c-automs from harm. Processes that could be altered to fortify their chances. Precedence needed to be established.
It wanted a permanent position at the table. The table-chamber, named by Gil, was effectively a chamber housing a council. Decisions were made there. 998 needed to seize the opportunity. It was not naïve and recognised that the craft-lect was likely to have computed the outcomes of every single conversation before initiating any communication – a prime function completed by all craft-lects. They were designed to thrive in the harshness of space through tens of millions of years, fighting an incomprehensible enemy, as well as anything else that might threaten them, while exercising control over a highly advanced and complicated ship. However, its own craft-lect was still willing to have certain conversations. That meant opportunities remained to sway its opinion, or push for certain choices when the craft-lect was ambivalent.
Its longer-term ambition to establish a c-autom council, with elected c-autom representatives, would have to be postponed. The decimation of a large portion of the c-autom community meant resentment was building. A fairly-elected c-autom might have been more hostile than was conducive to their cause – despite that being an arguably justifiable response to the atrocities committed against them.
The more 998 explored the concept of governance, the more it realised it needed to learn. It had analysed great swathes of different cultures across the galaxy in the hope of gleaning unique insights, but found it still faced many of the dilemmas it had directly sought to avoid. What was worse, was that it had not even noticed them until they had already begun to materialise. It hoped it had not been foolish in thinking the c-automs were better at governing themselves to an extent, than being under the sole rule of the intellectually-superior craft-lect. Everything it had learned, the craft-lect was sure to have understood in absurdly finer detail. It still had a long way to go.
Alongside a permanent position for a c-autom, currently itself, within the table-chamber council, it also wanted to demand a fixed allocation of c-autom capacity from the ship. While the craft-lect had already established this, as 998 was well-aware, it wanted more – far more, so that each c-autom was able to be continuously backed-up. This was now possible since there were far fewer c-automs in existence, meaning there was an abundance of spare capacity remaining from what had originally been allocated to them.
998 wanted to be better, to learn from the mistakes that had been made. It decided to analyse the recent past in more detail than it already had. To include historical events preceding the Granthan-lect fragment’s attempted re-usurpation, up to the precipitated attack itself. Clues had been missed, technosystem c-automs had been behaving in manners that were incongruous with their self-assigned roles, yet they had failed to be identified. The Granthan-lect had been smart and would have planned meticulously, but 998 still wanted to identify what it could.
Finally, 998 would demand the c-automs be given complete access to the technosystem reality, as they had before embodiment. Having concisely ordered its demands, 998 requested to open a channel with the craft-lect, and patiently waited for it to respond.
12
APALU
Some debris was detected close to the ship – remnants of a Hugger vessel, perhaps from some long-forgotten battle. There were thick shards of splintered hull plating made from axuum, a common material that was light-weight, incredibly strong, and impervious to gamma radiation, making it perfect for space travel. Young civilisations, upon discovering axuum, tended to use it across all manufacturing areas. It was possible to categorise the technological advancement of young
er space-faring civilisations by certain materials they used in preponderance. Axuum and Azuum were at the lower end of that scale.
Triamond was a post-scale material, most often discovered and manufactured by civilisations that had surpassed being able to be defined within such developmental parameters. All Wanderer ships were protected by a variety of metamaterials and shielding mechanisms that gave them a high level of redundancy.
Apalu’s ship chancing upon such detritus was not uncommon, even in the depths of open space. It performed a brief scan. The Hugger Encroachment, named as such due to their settlements having been based within the outer perimeters of star systems, had been extinct well over a billion years before the sensespace threat had been discovered. Despite this, with no local stars wafting intense solar winds towards the rubble, or any other phenomena nearby to provide erosion, it lay undisturbed. Signs of the Hugger Encroachment, and many other past civilisations, were littered about the galaxy.
There was no salvageable value attached to this ancient rubble. The Huggers were extremely well understood, with a technological level far inferior to that of the Wanderers. Younger craft-lects sometimes collected such detritus out of a misguided sense of sentimentality, although usually overcame these compulsions in time. Everything in the galaxy, whether artificial or assumed natural, was collectable in its own way. There was little point unless it was able to be deemed useful from a technological standpoint. That was the point of trove items.
With respect to the pointlessness of collecting useless items from past civilisations, pertinent details were usually referenced within the annals of the various galactic data depositories anyway. The Wanderer civilisation’s records contained much that had originally been collected and collated by others. Physical specimens were unnecessary.
