by Erica Rue
She realized that neither she nor Zane had a manumed, so she couldn’t check the countdown. He had probably done so on purpose so that they could speak freely about the AI. She had no problem accessing them to communicate, and there was nothing to stop her from listening in, except for their removal.
“Can we do this in two hours?” Dione asked.
“We don’t have much choice,” Zane said. It wasn’t all that reassuring, but it wasn’t his job to make her feel better. She had almost relaxed for a moment in the comfort and familiarity of her own ship.
Removing the charging matrix was easier than she thought it would be, probably because it wasn’t fully integrated in the first place. The moment they reentered the Base, the AI met them with the countdown.
“One hour and thirty-one minutes remaining for installation. Two hours and forty seven minutes until the Venatorian convoy arrives.”
Dione didn’t respond. That was more than enough time to plug in a new battery. She was going to check on Bel and Lithia.
Brian sat there with Evy. Bel was still unconscious, and now Lithia was lying on the floor next to her, though she just looked like she was sleeping.
“I think she feels a little cooler,” Zane said. Dione hoped he was right. “I’m staying here. I want to see if the infirmary has any useful equipment that can help us monitor her. I’ll come help in a bit.”
“You think I can do this on my own?” Dione asked.
“It should be straightforward. The AI will direct you,” Zane said.
“I’ll help,” Brian said. Dione was grateful, and not just because she wanted to spend more time with him. He was much more familiar with the local technology, and if Zane was right, he might be able to get more information out of the AI, since he was a true colonist.
***
“Why isn’t it working?” Brian said.
“I don’t know,” Dione said. “Let’s walk through it, out loud.”
“That’s what my father always used to do when he was working on a problem.” Brian smiled, but she heard the sadness in his voice.
“We’ve tested the matrix, and it’s fine. Power output is good,” she said.
“And the capacitors are all working, storing energy. They worked with the microbial fuel cell we tested,” he said.
“So it has to be a connection issue,” Dione said. “I know we tested the connections already, but we must have missed something.”
“The matrix is being very stubborn,” Brian said.
“Either that or this base is,” she said. “I don’t know what else to try. Any ideas?” Brian shook his head. The AI had already led them through the trials that ruled out all other issues.
“Zane,” Dione said over the manumed, “we could really use some help.” Zane was using Lithia’s manumed, and she had taken his back from Evy. Bel’s was still broken after the Ven attack, and hers was locked away back in the smuggler’s den.
“Have you tried turning it off, then back on?” he replied.
“Go ahead, make jokes. It’s your life, too.”
“I’m serious. Disconnect it, then reconnect it. Half the time it works. I’m on my way.”
Zane was there in a couple of minutes. He redid all of her tests. The AI reminded her they only had thirty-nine minutes left. As irritating as it was, she was surprised to find out how much time had gone by. Dione stepped back, unable to help. She wished that her passion for biology translated into more technical skills.
“It looks like the hardware is fine. Did you test any of the software?”
“Batteries have software?”
“Calling the matrix a battery is like calling the Mona Lisa a picture. While true, it doesn’t do the complexity of it justice.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. All of that stuff is well protected under intellectual property law. I’ve never gotten a good look at it. I don’t think I can figure this out in time.”
“But you got it to work on the Calypso.”
“It probably recognized its own ship ID, or something. You’re trying to hook it up to some really old tech. Most of the stuff in here is a century old. The matrix probably has some sort of anti-theft response.”
“I think I can help,” Brian said.
“How’s that?” Zane said.
“We have two different kinds of Artifacts here, and if you want to use them together, you have to trick them into working together. This sounds similar.”
Zane nodded, thinking. “Probably the tech left behind by the scientists and the tech brought by the colonists.”
“Try it,” Dione said, thinking back to the different types of shuttles she saw in the Ficaran hangar bay. Maybe this was the answer!
Brian opened the panel on the top. “This is a lot more complicated than what I usually deal with,” he said.
“A physical bypass?” Zane asked. “I don’t know if that will even work.”
“That’s the only way I’ve been able to get things to work together, in some cases.”
“I guess it’s worth a shot.”
“Twenty-three minutes remaining for installation.” The AI sounded… worried. Was that possible?
Dione felt a chill go down her spine. She couldn’t take any more of it. “I need a minute,” she said.
The boys were too engrossed in what they were doing even to hear her. She walked down the hall, looking in windows, testing doors, feeling useless. She knew it was fruitless, but she thought maybe she would find something else down here that would help her. That would make sense of everything.
Mostly, they were supply closets. She had reached the last door on the hall, but before she could open it, the AI said, “You need to go back to Zane. He needs your assistance.”
“Okay.” Dione got on her manumed. “I’m on my way back, Zane. Give me a minute.”
“Huh?”
“The AI told me you need my help.”
“No, we’ve got it covered for now.”
The hairs on Dione’s arms stood on end. That was an explicit lie, not a deception.
“Why did you lie, Base?” Dione asked.
“I didn’t. I simply thought that Zane and Brian could use a hand. I was mistaken.”
No, this didn’t add up. Why send her to Zane? What was the AI planning?
Dione looked up at the door in front of her. What was behind it?
She opened it, and immediately regretted it. The smell was not as strong as she thought it would be, considering the decomposed body in the room. She let the door close, but not before she had seen enough. A corpse, some cables, a console.
“Zane, you need to see this. I’m at the end of the hall.”
“I’m a little busy at the moment,” he said. “Let Brian do it.”
“We can’t trust this AI, and now I have proof,” Dione said.
That did the trick. Zane appeared moments later at a jog. She opened the door, and followed Zane in. In her brief glance, she hadn’t really examined the scene closely. She had let her shock get the better of her, but then again, this wasn’t jumping at a mouse. There was a freaking dead body down here. Cables and wires were connected to it, running from body to the console.
“The AI tried to lie to me to stop me from finding this place.”
Zane, who had been examining the cables, stopped what he was doing. “Who programmed you?” he said.
“That information is irrelevant,” she replied.
“No, it’s not. You call the Farmer by his real name. You say that you’re not the original AI he installed. I know that Dr. Samantha Myers was going to try to fix you, but now I think she failed. I think that Jameson got some discount on a crazy AI, that you let the Ven scout ship survive, and that you plan to kill us all. That’s why you want us to fix the weapon, so you can control all these colonists.”
The AI laughed. It was terrifying, because it sounded fully human, rather than the monotone female preset she had been communicating in.
“That is r
idiculous. The connection is almost complete. We can discuss this later.” All pretense was gone from the voice. What had before been a mostly monotone female voice now expressed a whole range of emotion that Dione had only heard hints of.
“No, explain. Now,” Zane said.
“My name is Samantha. Call me Sam.”
“Impossible,” Zane said.
Dione wasn’t completely sure what was going on, but if her guess was correct, this was horrifying.
“That was my body. The AI here was insufficient. Jameson’s AI was a piece of crap, but by the time he realized it, there was nothing he could do. By the time I realized it, this was my only option.”
“There’s no way. You’d go crazy,” Zane said.
“I’m sure I would have already, if I didn’t spend so much time asleep. I didn’t kill the crappy AI. It’s still here. I only handle the important stuff.”
Dione looked confused. “What do you mean she’d go crazy? Has this been done before?”
“It has been done, but not very often,” he said. “The necessary equipment is expensive. You have to have a computer system already capable of supporting an AI, and that’s the easy part. People do it because they think they’ll be immortal, but the mind wasn’t meant to live in a computer system. Your neural pathways degrade. You lose yourself piece by piece, and you are aware it’s happening until you’re so far gone you aren’t really you anymore. It’s a fate worse than death which is why no one chooses it.” Zane looked at the body, still hooked up. “I’m sorry, Sam, but the degradation has probably already begun. How long have you been here?”
“Like I said, I spend a lot of time sleeping. It significantly slows the degradation rate, but you’re right. Eventually I will degrade past usefulness, but that won’t be for a while, if I play my cards right. However, I wasn’t expecting outsiders like you to show up here. This changes things.”
Brian interrupted over her manumed. “Zane, Dione, there’s less than ten minutes left on the countdown. I need your help. Please.”
“Come on,” Dione said.
“We’re not done talking about this,” Zane said, “and I don’t trust you.”
“Good,” Samantha replied, “but you should read my logs. Assuming you power the Icon before it’s too late.”
“Dione, if this really is Samantha, she’s the Architect. It would explain why she wants to help the colonists.”
Either the Architect was alive as an AI in this base, or the base had killed her when she tried to fix the existing AI. This was absolutely unbelievable, and they had no choice but to work with her, even though it was impossible to trust her.
***
When they reached Brian, he was just sitting there, staring at the matrix. Dione would fill him in later.
“I’ve done everything I can. I have no idea how to bypass it. Your matrix will not cooperate with the base. It’s too sophisticated,” Brian said.
“Then we’re screwed,” Zane said.
“Is there anything on our ship it will cooperate with?” Dione asked.
“The jump drive,” Zane replied, “but that won’t fit down here.”
“Are you sure?” Dione asked.
“It weighs hundreds of kilos, and I don’t think it can actually be removed from the ship,” Zane said.
So we are screwed. There had to be some part of the ship that would recognize the charging matrix. What was portable?
“Is there a way to just take part of the jump drive?” Dione asked.
“No, Dione, it doesn’t work like that. The matrix—”
Dione stopped listening and started thinking again, ignoring Zane. Time to change her perspective. What could be removed from the ship that was part of the ship? Certain equipment. Like what? Dione closed her eyes and imagined herself on the ship, running through each section, looking around for something useful. She filed away possibilities, and when her mental avatar reached the cargo bay, she found what she needed.
“Holy crap, the emergency beacon!” Dione said. “We can use it as an intermediary.”
“Trick it into thinking it’s powering the beacon, but really, it’s charging the weapon,” Zane said. His eyes lit up. “I’ll be back.”
Zane ran out, leaving her there with Brian.
“What was going on out there?” he said.
Full disclosure. She would tell him everything. “We found something. A body. It belonged to a Dr. Samantha Myers. She merged her consciousness with the station AI somehow. Right, Sam?”
“Samantha? The Architect?”
“That’s right,” Sam said. It still gave Dione chills to hear her fluid voice, stripped of its mechanical stiffness. Brian looked surprised, too.
Brian surged to his feet. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you tell us how we got here? What do you know about my father?”
“Brian, these are all good questions, but I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know where your father is, and as for the first two questions, it’s complicated. I can explain later.”
“You sound different,” Brian said.
“This is my real voice. Before, I was pretending, trying to sound more like a machine than a human.”
“So you’re human?”
“I don’t think so, not really. Not anymore.”
“Why would you do this? You left us with so many questions.”
Before Sam could respond, Zane reentered the room. He was panting, but he looked a little hopeful.
Sam, in her new, unnerving voice, said, “Time’s up. There is no longer sufficient time to charge the Icon and destroy the three approaching Venatorian ships.”
“There has to be something,” Dione said.
“There is not enough time.”
Samantha was matter-of-fact about it all, but Dione was still in denial. Brian looked unnaturally pale. Zane was ignoring her, working away to install the beacon as an intermediary.
“What does this mean?” Brian said. In the jungle, he had been confident and commanding. Now he was lost, and looking to her.
“Just help me,” Zane said. He had not brought the entire beacon, just a part of it.
“The rate of energy flow from your matrix is insufficient to give the weapon enough power to destroy the ships.”
“Then we increase the rate,” Dione said.
“It’s not set up for that. It’s the same reason this thing would take a week to charge our jump drive,” Zane said. “If we can trick it into thinking it’s charging the beacon, we can get it to start powering the weapon.”
“I thought tricking it didn’t work,” Dione said.
“That’s when we were trying to get it to work with really old tech. It will recognize the beacon, and begin charging, but we’ll divert that energy into the weapon. Before we essentially couldn’t get it to charge at all.”
It reminded Dione of cowbirds. They laid their own eggs in the nests of other birds and let the other mother birds take care their own eggs. The host mothers channeled precious resources to alien eggs, none the wiser, just like the matrix was channeling energy to the Icon, a foreign system.
Dione glanced over at Brian, who hadn’t been paying attention to them. He was leaning against the wall, hands over his eyes like he had a headache. Before she could pour out a flood of apologies and reassurances, Sam spoke.
“It’s working,” she said. “The weapon is beginning to receive power.”
“But it’s too late,” Brian said.
“We’ll figure something out,” Dione said.
Brian looked up. He was looking at her expectantly. He believed her. “What’s your plan?”
Dione didn’t have one. Yet.
She went to the readouts for the weapon. She didn’t understand them completely, but she got the gist. She wanted to understand every last detail, but she could get Sam to fill in the blanks.
“Sam, how does the weapon work? You need to hit a certain power threshold, right?”
“Yes, it works in charges.”
“So, how long until you have enough power for one shot, not three? Will it be before the Vens arrive?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “But even one Ven Invader will pose a deadly threat to the colonists.”
“But it’s not an all-or-nothing scenario,” Dione said. “Taking out one ship will give them a chance.” She was surprised that Sam was pushing back at all. “It can’t hurt to have fewer Vens in the equation.” Was this evidence of her neural pathways degrading, that she couldn’t see the middle ground in this scenario?
“Dione’s right, Sam. We have to give it a try,” Brian said. “You’ve spent so much time trying to protect us that you don’t think we can protect ourselves. Destroy one of the Invader class ships, and leave the other Vens to us.”
44. BRIAN
“How many Vens will that leave?” Brian asked Dione.
“About fifty on the Marauder, and nearly two hundred on the other Invader.”
“So just two hundred fifty Vens?” Brian said. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
He smiled, but Dione looked terrified, and Zane looked utterly defeated. He knew the stories about the demons, and he still had hope. Dione and Zane didn’t understand his people. They would find a way. They had been fending off the Aratians for years, and they would fend off the Vens as well.
“I know you don’t think we can win, but I have hope. We have weapons. We’re not complacent farmers. We’re hunters. We’re warriors. We have a better chance than you give us credit for.”
Dione perked up, but Zane still looked doubtful. They would see.
“Samantha, is there anything else we can do here?” Brian asked.
“No. There are no modifications left to be made,” Sam said.
“Then we have some time. I think I deserve the truth,” Brian said. He wanted Sam to explain herself. His father had filled him with so many questions, he barely knew where to start. “How did we get here?”
