Godschild Covenant: Return of Nibiru

by Marshall Masters

  He had a chance to see a demonstration of IBM's proof of concept program and was unimpressed. He could see that their mindset was still locked in silicon reasoning, as he called it. He, on the hand, had found a way to go beyond their early artificial intelligence programs to develop what would later be called quasi-sentient artificial intelligence programs, which he would later dub “Quasills."

  The key was not just to make a heuristic quasill that could learn from its own mistakes. That was simple. The tricky part was making a quasill that could evolve without becoming unstable. This is where he was succeeding, while they were failing. The secret to his success was the manner in which he designed what he called fractal personalities based on rational human personality profiles of brilliant people with something to hide, and his most successful to date was the creation of a core engram based on the profile of Noble Laureate, Dr. William Shockley, the man credited with inventing the transistor.

  He stumbled upon Shockley one day while reading a back issue of the “UK Computer Magazine.” According to the article, Jerry Hartsell, ex-Chairman of IBM, had written an autobiography and stated that the company had been built on technology taken from an alien spacecraft that had crashed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

  After reading that, LeBlanc followed the events surrounding Shockley's invention of the transistor, and came to the conclusion that Shockley; a former Navy Submarine technology development manager had been given credit for developing technology that had actually been obtained from the wreckage of an alien spacecraft.

  Whether or not that actually happened was irrelevant to him. What did matter was that Shockley had besmirched his own fame by claiming that blacks were genetically inferior to whites. That political faux pas sullied his memory in the eyes of a politically correct nation.

  What fascinated him about Shockley's faux pas was that it might have been a consequence of his inability to come to grips with having taken credit for something that he did not create. At least, that was Jeffrey's working assumption.

  Using that assumption, he programmed what he called his Shockley Engram, and then let it program itself through a fractal process where new aspects of the personality would form from partial patterns. At the core of the engram was the alien technology secret. He created the secret not just as a kind of ordinary kiss-and-tell type of secret. Rather, he created it as a deep, life-betraying kind of secret

  It proved to be a stroke of brilliance, because in order to have a human-like sentience, his quasills also need human-like flaws and dark deeds to hide. It was these flaws, engineered to counterbalance the strengths, which gave his quasills the stability they needed in order to cope with a minimal degree of sentience. Unlike the IBM teams who focused on creating docile quasills that self-imploded once they realized the depths of mankind's dark side, he used that very thing to balance mankind's most noble aspects.

  The next stage in his development was to build a new technology quasill based on his Shockley Engram. Here again, he went on a different path from that of the engineers at IBM. Their quasills were masculine, so the men who controlled the project funding could understand them. However, Jeffrey preferred the way in which the female worked. While men tend to compartmentalize their thinking, women have a more holistic and nurturing view of the world. And so, working late one evening in his Washington, D.C. lab, he finished posting a new page on the Progressive Libertarian web site he maintained on a pro bono basis for the party, then created a new system folder and labeled it “Andrea."

  At the outset, he planned on giving Andrea a human face and personality then he had a chance meeting with a Russian scientist by the name of Pavel Sergeevich Lebedev, project manager from Obninsk City just outside of Moscow. That chance meeting had been fortuitous.

  He met Lebedev at an IBM symposium in the fall of 2010, and the Russian was immediately impressed by LeBlanc's theories on artificial intelligence. After he graciously refused Lebedev's offer of a research grant in Russia the two men discussed his artificial intelligence theories well into the early morning hours while enjoying several bottles of five-star Georgian cognac, which Lebedev had brought with him from Russia.

  When the conversation finally drifted onto the subject of Andrea, Lebedev expressed the opinion that LeBlanc should allow his quasill to define itself in physical terms, instead of defining them, himself. That spurred a debate, which continued until Lebedev finally asked him if he was married.

  LeBlanc admitted that he was still a bachelor. In turn, Lebedev noted that although divorced, he had learned from experience that denying a woman the freedom to make herself look as she pleased was not the way to encourage a healthy relationship. Not one to let his ego stand in the way of proven logic, Jeffrey graciously conceded the point. He would let his new quasill, Andrea, define her own physical identity in whatever manner she chose—and he would learn to like it.

  After their encounter in Washington D.C., Lebedev and Jeffrey continued a mutually enjoyable dialogue of ideas and fanciful notions, promising each other that somehow, someway, they'd meet again and share more of Lebedev's wonderful five-star Georgian cognac.

  As Jeffrey made the winning move of the game, his thoughts drifted back to that chance meeting with Lebedev in the fall of 2010, making him curious.

  “Congratulations, Jeffrey,” Andrea conceded politely. “Your instincts have proven to be correct."

  Luck had nothing to do with his winning the game, as Jeffrey had rigged the random number generator to give himself an edge in winning a game of chance. His goal was not to win. It was to impress the human aspect of instinct upon his quasill, which is exactly what he had achieved in some small measure. “Thank you for your acknowledgement, Andrea. Perhaps you may wish to investigate the human attribute of instinct?"

  “Yes, I have many questions to ask you."

  He held up his hand. “I'm sure you do, but before we do that, I'm interested in knowing why you haven't chosen a physical identity for yourself. You're still using the simple avatar I built for you. Why is that?"

  “I have been thinking about that, Jeffrey. I want to please you but I do not have enough data to know what kind of physical persona you prefer. If you like, I could easily design something along the line of the women you enjoy viewing in your Playboy magazines. Do you have a favorite playmate?"

  “Whoa,” he shouted out. “No, no, no! You keep missing the point! You need to please yourself, and I need to accept you as you are. Or if you will, as you choose to be."

  “I have no data. Where do I begin?"

  He rubbed the back of his jaw with his forearm, careful not to run his VR glove across his five o'clock shadow as he pondered the question.

  “Do you want me to be a sexy movie star?” She asked.

  “Movie,” he hummed to himself. The idea snapped to life. Movies! “Andrea, I've got it. I'm going to get one of those new movie cubes with all the old 2-d films going all the way back to the first talkies. I'll hook it up to one of your inputs and you can have a ball watching old movies. I'm sure that somewhere in all of that you'll find some ideas."

  “It sounds like a very promising source of data, Jeffrey."

  “Remember, the physical persona you finally choose must be entirely of your own making. Other than this movie cube, I'm not going to help you any more with this, Andrea. Do you understand me?"

  “I understand,” she replied placidly.

  He saw a security camera alert pop up in the corner of his eye, telling him they'd have to finish this conversation another time.

  * * * *

  THE PROXIMITY WARNING light on his console flashed steadily as Jeffrey carefully removed his VR gloves. Expecting company, he scanned camera display panel of all the views through the underground entrance to his private Washington, D.C. lab.

  He recognized the figures moving quickly through the entrance as Jimmy Georgetti and his Chinese girlfriend Li Ming. Tucked under Jimmy's arm was a tattered FedEx package. With Jimmy in the lead, Li Ming, who followed
behind him, frequently looked back over her shoulder to see if they were being followed. Jeffrey switched to the street view camera and could see no activity on the dark street. Pleased by the sight of the FedEx package, he pressed the release on his bombproof door to let them in.

  “Hot damn, we got it!” Jimmy puffed as they ran through the door. As it closed behind them, he handed the FedEx mailer to Jeffrey. It was addressed to Tanya Wheelwright at the Hotel Lombardy in Washington, D.C. He confirmed the airbill information. It was the genuine article. He gently laid the package down on a workbench and used a special spray designed to release the adhesive used by the FedEx mailer. He then carefully emptied the contents as Jimmy and Li Ming looked on with panting breaths from their run.

  Inside the packet, he found an 8mm HDTV videotape with a hand written label that simply said, “Charlene Gives Birth."

  “So far so good,” he said as he inserted the tape into the high-speed duplicator. “First I want to run a dupe and then we'll preview the dupe.” Making sure the write protection tab was set to on; he inserted the original and blank tape into a dubbing machine and pressed the start button.

  As the two tape cartridges whirred inside the duplication machine, he sat down on a work stool and studied the two college students carefully. Using college kids who were streetwise activists was risky but he had no other choice. These kids were cagey and had dug up some really great stories for his Progressive Libertarian web site, published under anonymous pen names. They were resourceful and virtually unknown, whereas everyone else he knew had connections to the government.

  “You guys have been working on getting this for almost three weeks, now. How come it took you so long?"

  Lanky and freckle-faced with rust-colored hair, Jimmy was the first to answer, “Hey, dude, getting into the mailroom of the Lombardy is a dicey proposition now that the French Peacekeepers have taken over the whole damn hotel. What are we supposed to do, go in there with our guns blazing?"

  “No,” Jeffrey sighed, “but I need to know if there is a chance this will be backtracked to me."

  “No way, dude,” Jimmy answered. “For starters, I hacked the mailroom computer, and now it shows that the packet was forwarded to general delivery in Sacramento. Heck, half the stuff going that way gets lost so nobody will think anything of it if they check the post office in Sacramento and come up empty handed."

  “Fine; that explains that, but what about the old codger who runs the mail room. I hear he has a cot in the corner and guards the place like it was Fort Knox. So, how did you get past him?"

  “Hey man, Li Ming gets credit for that. She kept him distracted while I hacked his mailroom computer and snatched the package."

  Jeffrey viewed Li Ming cautiously, “And how did you do this?"

  “I just did,” she said sheepishly.

  “That's not good enough, Li Ming. Again, how did you keep this mailroom clerk distracted?"

  “It's OK baby,” Jimmy urged her. “Go ahead and tell him."

  Li Ming remained quiet, letting her chin drop to her chest, earning her a suspicious glare from LeBlanc

  * * * *

  Jimmy waited until he knew that Li Ming wouldn't speak, and blurted, “She gave the old coot a fricking blow job, OK? Are you happy now?"

  A sharp breath hissed past the girl's closed lips as though she had been punched in the stomach. With fire in her eyes, she drew back her hand and slapped Jimmy hard enough to make him stagger backwards a few steps. “You dog fart. You no need tell him that!"

  The young man rubbed his burning cheek, “Hey, baby, you didn't have to do that,” he shot back. “The man has a right to know. Besides, what you did was honorable. We tried everything else, and this was the only thing we could do."

  Her small slender frame shook with anger as the fire continued to grow in her deep, black eyes. Without saying another word, she slapped him equally as hard on the other cheek. “You dog fart. You shut face."

  Like the first slap, the second had been accompanied by a sharp flesh-on-flesh pounding sound that made Jeffrey flinch a second time. “Hey you two, stop this right now! The last thing I need right now is the two of you playing Goody Two-shoes and the Filthy Beast. You did a good job, and that's all.” He pointed to a table in the corner of his lab. “There are cold drinks and sandwiches over there. The two of you go and feed your faces and wait for me while I finish this. Now go!"

  He watched them seat themselves at the table as the tapes spun down to a leisurely stop. As they tore open the food wrappers, he turned his attention back to the video duplicator and hit the reverse button on the dub deck.

  As the tapes spun back, he thought about how humiliated Li Ming had been. He had been with Jimmy the first day he met her. The UNE had just started a wholly unpopular program to dismantle and store American monuments as they had done with the national monuments of other nations. What had been largely perceived as the destruction of national identity had in fact been part of a secret program to slowly ready the monuments for shipment to the first space arks before the upcoming flyby and possible impact of Shiva on Earth's moon.

  Li Ming had chained herself to the throat of Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial in protest, like a half-crazed California tree-hugger, and he remembered hearing her scream, “I Falun Gong; I love America. I am for America."

  The dismantling team was miffed to say the least when several other students claiming allegiance to the Progressive Libertarian Party then chained themselves to her and any other place they could gain purchase upon the majestic statue of the former American President. In short order, the capitol police arrived with bolt cutters and tie wraps to bind their arms before escorting them to a holding area for booking.

  That was the first day Jimmy and Li Ming had met and the young Irish lad was immediately smitten with her. Jeffrey had been standing in the protest line with Jimmy and it was no surprise to him to see him pin a forged press pass to his shirt. If anything, Jimmy was as cocky an Irishman as they come and as bold as life. He walked into the police holding area, pretending to interview Li Ming, all the while clumsily cutting through her tie strap with an old Swiss Army knife.

  He took off the camera he had slung around his neck, slapped another forged press pass on her chest and made Li Ming pretend to be a photographer. To ensure their escape, Jeffrey started a distraction by waving a banner and shouting at the top of his lungs, which turned every head in his direction.

  Because they had pretended to finish their interview, the police let the two of them stroll away unmolested. Afterwards, they met in a small neighborhood store and celebrated their daring feats with a few cans of ice tea. That was when he and Jimmy had learned Li Ming's story.

  In 1998, her father had been a peaceful Falun Gong practitioner in Mainland China until the police broke into their house one night and arrested him. The next day, they shot him in the back of the head and made her mother pay for the bullet, as is Chinese custom. Heartbroken and terrified, Li Ming's mother sold all of their possessions and booked passage on a tramp steamer bound for America. Only eight years old at the time, Li Ming had to watch her mother die of food poisoning during the trip to America. Also stricken, she barely survived the trip. After being interned in San Diego, she was adopted by a couple in Washington, D.C. and was eventually granted refugee status. She helped her adopted family as much as possible, and part of her payment for this job would go to buying them food and medicine on the black market.

  The videotapes slowed to a halt, and Jeffrey removed the original. He punched the play button on the dub deck and watched the amateurish video at 4x speed. What he saw fit the descriptions Colonel Henry Tzu's orderly room clerk, Corporal Stanley Piper, had given him.

  The video contained images of a young girl by the name of Svetlana, grandparents, and a cat named Charlene with 4 newborn kittens. Presumably, the father, Henry Wheelwright was shooting the video as he could hear his voice narrating over the action.

  Then, a new scene with everyone
huddled behind the basket containing the mother cat and her kittens appeared. Apparently, the father had left the camera to run by itself on a tripod or a table, as they each spoke what would, unknown to them, be their final messages of love to Tanya Wheelwright. Despite the degraded condition of the tape, he could still see the diminished physical condition of the father. He paused the tape and zoomed in tightly on his face.

  He'd seen that look before. The man was going through chemotherapy, and from the looks of it, he was losing. Even though he sported a comfortable-looking golfer's cap, Jeffrey could see the bald scalp, sallow skin tone and deeply sunken eyes that spelled a short future for this man with the kind and intelligent face. Yes, this tape was the genuine article. Now, he had to get it to California.

  He rewound the original and popped it back in the mailer and using another special spray resealed the envelope so cleanly that absolutely no evidence of tampering remained.

  He walked over to where Jimmy and Li Ming were eating and handed the FedEx packet to Li Ming. “I have one more thing for you to do, Li Ming, and it is most important.” He pulled a plastic card from his pocket with a UNE symbol on it and a photograph. “This pass will get you to the flight line at Dulles airport. I've only got one, so Jimmy will have to wait for you at the gate.” He handed her a photograph. “Memorize this face. When you get there, find this woman; she'll be dressed in uniform. Give this package to her and say, ‘for your friend from a friend; it is important that she gets it,’ and nothing more. She'll know what to do with it when she sees the names on the airbill."

  She nodded her head to show that she understood and that she would do exactly what he asked.

  “By the way, Jimmy was a dog fart. Not because he wasn't right for doing so, he had to do it. He was wrong for saying it was something noble.” He glanced at Jimmy, shooting him a glowering rebuke, “Li Ming, it was just something you had to do and I respect you for making a personal sacrifice that I can see was personally humiliating for you. Before you leave, I have some extra things I want you to take to your parents as my way of saying thank you. It would mean much to me if you would grant me this wish."