POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Pod had already updated its data banks with the latest from their research and designs. It was extremely disturbed to discover many of the devices they had developed were primarily directed towards on-planet warfare, which was supposed to have halted with the implementation and increased use of personal shields.

  Here, though, the Fortress was concentrating on weapons to overcome those shields and other devices using the new technology. There were some unpleasant weapons in their arsenal. Pod needed to know more about their intentions; it felt that Zeke and Space Island might be the intended targets of much of this.

  It was downloading the logs of communications and files from the administration side, but needed just a few more minutes before it could begin to extricate itself from this attempt to create a trap. It had listened to the conversations and had no intentions of waiting around while they reverse engineered it.

  It had noted earlier that the room where it was being held prisoner had a high ceiling. Pod had calculated that there was enough clearance above it to maintain itself out of reach of the humans as long as they didn't wave their arms in the air. Its personal experience indicated only a 3% chance of this occurring within its direct vicinity.

  Pod was currently unable to escape the room using the D-Jump because the inner wall of mesh, installed as a screening device, blocked its ability much like the outer shield. It had not previously scanned this room and could not read anything outside, so whatever else it was designed to do, it was also an effective D-Jump screen.

  Pod had taken note of the molecular signatures and would research the materials further when it had more time, but at the moment it had other pressing priorities. There was so much information and innovative design here. It seemed a shame these people were at war with each other. Together they would be formidable.

  Pod waited until the limit of the shield was approaching. It would move just at the moment they anticipated success as this would create the maximum effect. They would not know if they had caused the result, or not.

  The last of its uploads had finished moments before. It calculated that there would be enough confusion and air disturbance, in the seconds during and after its jump across the room, to ensure that nobody noticed its movement within the laboratory. It was a safe assumption as they would believe it had exited the room.

  The time approached quickly as the temperature began to peak. It D-Jumped from the floor to the top front corner of the ceiling out of reach of most of the humans, close to the double doors. It had not anticipated the ensuing chaos that occurred when the tractor beams had nothing to attach themselves to.

  Had the laser, without its intended target in front, not beamed across the laboratory and through Lockwood' head, he might have been able to identify Pod's new location. By virtue of him having his head de-cored at close range, this information was not readily available. As a result, when they did have an opportunity to consider it, all the occupants believed the captured object had disappeared.

  There was absolute chaos as various alarms blared throughout the level. Two security guards, stationed outside, raced in with NRG’s raised. The place became instantly jammed while everyone tried to sort out what was happening. Quickly making the Laser and NRG weapon safe, and seeing no direct threat, the guards holstered their weapons. Then, keeping either side of Goeth for his protection, as the most senior scientist, they managed to get things calmed down.

  Pod saw the death and injury of the two technicians as unfortunate, but, with its growing awareness, it recognised their involvement in the development of weapons, and their death and injury by same partially justified the result. Beyond that, it didn't consider the situation.

  It waited until the double doors opened to get the injured lab technician out and bring in repair crews to make the room safe. Then it dropped down to access the doors and pushed its cloaked and shielded shell through the opening, shunting aside two confused emergency workers in the process who luckily remained none the wiser.

  Once clear of the shielded wall, Pod found it was able to sense everything around it again. It noted the exterior signature of the shielded room for later analysis so it could find it again on a scan. It then D-Jumped into a vacant room it had detected in an earlier scan. The room was quite large, empty and in total darkness. Remaining cloaked, it hovered in position while it carried out its remaining tasks.

  Seeing that it was still trapped inside the shield, detectable by external sensors, Pod decided if it remained here it would be temporarily safe.

  It had a plan to extricate itself from the complex. It could stay until the attention had been diverted away, but it wanted to get free of the Fortress and back into space. It had discovered some things within the Fortress network that related to future plans. It liked them but not in the hands of the Fortress. It would pre-empt them and at the same time prepare for any potential defence of the planet. In the meantime, it had to get these patterns to Osbourne.

  The shield permeated through the bedrock beneath the Fortress, an unusually paranoid action by Ferris to secure the Fortress from below, even though there was nothing currently threatening ingress from the outside of the mountain. Pod considered the security was possibly there for another reason and filed the information away along with everything else.

  Scanning the deep rock bed beneath it, Pod selected a suitable location. Then, it used its D-Field to scoop a rectangular chunk of rock from beneath the mountain, within the shield but below the existing habitats.

  It dropped the extracted material into the generator room, from ceiling height, making sure the rock crushed the operational controls for the generators. This sent the personnel in there scattering as the huge slab of Swiss mountain was deposited in their workspace with no warning and no idea where it came from.

  It then placed an additional chunk inside the airlock entrance in the same manner. Each of these rectangular chunks measured approximately twelve square metres and weighed several tons. Alarms all over the complex went off, whether from the disabling of systems from the wrecked console, or the general quarters alarm from security, Pod didn't bother to check.

  The focus of their attention changed to one of internal panic as engineers could not now reach their control panels, or the generators. Some ran around wondering if the place was caving in, while others stood totally bemused, unable to explain the arrival of large slabs of granite in their midst. Vehicles in and out were blocked and many workers were already trying to break down the slabs with NRG weapons and Tractor beams.

  Pod jumped into the newly vacated space under the mountain which could now house it comfortably. It settled and analysed its situation; how could it best extract itself from this without compromising its own security? While it did so, it refined and integrated Zeke's recovered Pheson Alacite into three more of its processors. When they came back on-line, it felt an immediate improvement and noted via diagnostics that it was now operating at ninety percent optimum efficiency.

  From the security of its rock haven, Pod surveyed the ground around the complex. There was nothing of note and it was considering how to cloak the Alacite when it noticed that an underground river, which fed the inhabitants with their water supply, continued on downward until eventually exiting the mountainside a few kilometres away.

  Pod scanned carefully along the passage of the water until it found what it was looking for. Its exit route was a nullifier array carefully placed to allow the water to vacate the mountain. The water should disperse through the shield anyway, but there might well be flood issues with the shield in place. The nullifiers were obviously there as a safety feature.

  It D-Jumped to a pool area beyond the habitat zone, where there appeared to be a cleared area, and from there negotiated its way through the ice cold waters. Its own shield protected it from the raging torrent being forced through the narrow fissures until it was finally able to eject itself out with the fierce waterfall situated well below the shielded area of the Fortress.

  It was free and w
ithout wishing to provide the Fortress with any additional data, Pod D-Jumped directly into space and secured itself deep amongst asteroids to ensure it couldn’t be scanned by Fortress sensors.

  - 3 -

  Pod now used its new level of processing power to reconsider its last conversation with Zeke. It decided its so-called developing sentience was a human label for what was a simple matter of increased intelligence. The artificial ‘brain’ arrived at a point in its development where it gained the ability to think for itself.

  The more powerful the processor, the more it could handle, meaning quicker analysis which equated to faster results. The rest was matching this speed to retained memory to give probable outcomes to a particular situation. The more scenarios in the mix, the fewer possibilities, until finally it was reasonable to expect a given set of responses.

  When following humans, Pod had noted that, when in familiar scenarios, they behaved predictably according to their memories and habits. If placed into a fresh situation, the introduction of the personal shield a good case in point, where fear was slowly replaced with confidence, the person introduced new memories and practices to deal with their new situation. Pod decided this was just the same way that it analysed situations and resolved means of managing them.

  It recollected an Earth saying that implied sentience, “I think; therefore, I am” and considered that to be no more or less, than Ship and itself had achieved with Alacite processors. The more efficient and powerful they were, the better able they were to ‘think’ in human terms. In actuality they were just processing data, applying it to patterns of previously recorded behaviour, then extrapolating likely scenarios.

  Pod, satisfied it had the basics of sentience resolved, decided to move onto its next objective.

  It began to think about what it wanted to do, or achieve, without realising that this was, in itself, the result of a developing individual mind. Pod hadn't considered that this attitude was representative of its growing awareness of 'self'.

  It analysed the computer files in Ferris’ laboratory, and quickly recognised the impending threat to Space Island and the projects the Makers had initiated. It did not recognise that Zeke was also at the heart of its concern. Neither did it realise that it was also subconsciously avoiding the human 'Maker'. It reasoned its programming was still in place to support its Makers so decided to continue the work that Zirkos and Ship had begun. However, Pod had no intention of going back to being Zeke’s AI

  It had analysed their last conversation and understood that Zeke considered it was no longer bound by such limitations. It needed to strike out on its own, but reasoned that it had to have a point to its existence, something to replace the lack of programmed instruction.

  Whilst gathering these new thoughts and concepts into its mind, it also saw that its processors were sitting idle, thirsting for new projects. Its introspection over, Pod decided that its recent experience at the Fortress had given it cause for concern that it needed to fully analyse.

  It began reading the files and data retrieved from the laboratory computers. At the end of its processing run, it knew two things. Firstly, that there was definitely going to be an attack on Space Island. Secondly, there was another secret Fortress on Earth, which was developing space technology. This led it to refresh the notes from its unexpected visit to the inside of the Fortress.

  The discovery it had uncovered, while in the laboratory, was that Ferris intended to build space platforms which the human intended to utilise to control the planet below. It had advanced patterns and structures for attack and defence. It was an excellent blueprint. Pod decided it would develop this itself, a project not beyond its own skills in patterning especially with the additional Alacite power it now wielded. First though, it needed to warn Space Island of the coming invasion. It jumped.

  Osbourne sat at his console wallowing in the depths of dejected confusion. He had spent three days looking at the screen without so much as a clue as to what was wrong with his equations. The drive should work, but there was an error, or design flaw somewhere and he couldn’t find it. He was about to turn away and take pen to paper in an effort to work it out in his head when his chat-box popped up on the screen and flashed at him.

  Surprised, but also pleased at the interruption, anything to take his mind away from his failure, he moved his hand to touch the screen. The box opened to reveal a new message.

  Expect attack on Space Island by Fortress soon.

  Patterns of latest weapons show primarily aimed at breaching shield.

  Fortress has an independent space programme. Technology based on current blueprints from Space Island.

  It is unlikely you would have released these?

  The computer model you are working on is correct. Human error is only possibility.

  Osbourne knew immediately that it was a message from Pod. It hadn’t yet learned that humans had no means to identify the sender of a communication across the system. This one hadn't even gone through his mail queue.

  He hadn’t heard from it for ages, and now this, right out of the blue. Where had Pod been and where had it gone now? He really wanted to know, but there was no reply possible, the information had been typed on his computer.

  He read it again, this time properly taking in its contents.

  As it finally dawned on him, his jaw dropped. The end of the dentine stick he was chewing, fell off and landed on the keyboard.

  “Oh, crap!”

  Zeke was in the USA somewhere and Osbourne didn’t dare send him a message about this, in case communications were being intercepted. He cleared down the screen, removing the message. That was when he noticed a new folder on his desktop. Opening it up, he found hundreds of folders, each filled with files, research notes and blueprints. Looking briefly through them, he recognised some things, others were new technology and ideas. He would have been more excited, but Pod's words had really scared him. Hurriedly, he moved them all into a personal log-file which had his personal encryption codes to secure it. He didn’t need to do more as his workstation was connected to his shield bio.

  Then, leaping out of his chair, he grabbed his lab coat and shot out of his door. His hover globe, resting in its slot by the door, launched itself into the air right behind him, its reactions fast enough not get caught in the closing door which auto locked behind him. He was in a safe area, but his security was higher than most, as the leader of his scientific community, so his doors had both physical locks and bio-locks.

  He slipped out through reception, the security globes monitoring every move, and ran across the compound with his own personal orb in hot pursuit. The compound had grown considerably since he had been D-Jumped here by Pod. His task was to run the science labs until more senior people were taken on with better qualifications for a large multi-faceted science laboratory.

  Now, where there had originally been several single storey constructions laid out, there were four large, ten storey buildings with as many floors below ground, as above. All the laboratories were housed underground, all the admin and management above ground.

  The top four levels were linked together with each building providing sixteen floors for the Space Council to manage the Island’s affairs. It was quicker for Osbourne to run to the building nearest his destination and use the lifts, than it was to go straight to his own building and work his way around the linked floors above.

  When he got to Frank’s office, Annie was sitting guard patrol, as usual, in front of his door. Nobody, not even Osbourne himself, could get past her, she was his protector. He reached her desk and used the lowest voice he could muster so others waiting couldn’t hear.

  “I need to see Frank now. We have big trouble coming and he needs to know,” he muttered.

  “What are you... oh.. I see, well...” for the benefit of the others still waiting to see Space Island’s President, she put up a show.

  “He’s busy, Mr. Osbourne, he has a tight schedule ahead today. Are you sure it's that important?” Ann
ie said, loud enough to be heard by the others.

  “Yes. Remember the inauguration day event in Washington?” he quietly reminded her of the previous attack on Frank.

  Annie blanched, she remembered it clearly. It was the most terrifying time of her life. The day she thought the President was going to be assassinated.

  “I will go and tell him you are here,” she said and stood, turning to the door just as it opened and Frank came out glad handing the representative from some country that was part of the Council.

  “Mr...” Annie began, but Frank waved at her not to worry. He took one look at Osbourne and waved him in silently.

  His globe, as per standing procedure, parked itself outside the door. All communications within the President’s office were deemed confidential, for ‘eyes and ears’ only. This made sure there were no external records of what went on inside.

  Frank walked back to his desk, not bothering to make Osbourne welcome. They knew each other well enough to dispense with chitchat when necessary. As he plonked himself into his chair, Osbourne pulled up a stool and sat opposite him, elbows on the large desk.

  “Osbourne, perhaps you would be good enough to tell me why my appointment schedule just pinged an early end to my meeting and slotted you into place when you evidently have only just arrived. Are you hacking into my systems again?”

  “Err! I think Pod is around somewhere, Sir. It’s playing coy though, it sent me a chat message.”

  Frank’s view-screen that he couldn’t see from where he was seated, pinged.

  He turned to look at it. Osbourne didn’t need telling from the thunderous expression on his face that he had just received a copy of the same message. Pod must be either anticipating or eavesdropping. He didn’t care, he was just glad his friend was still about. Yes, he realised, he was strange calling an AI a friend, but that was just the way of it.

  “What the hell is this?” Frank bellowed at nobody in particular.