by Lee Bond
A huge, silly grin spread across Rezek’s face. “This is amazing. You’ve got hooks into the spheres here, which in turn have hooks into Alonso. You built a search engine for an AI that the AI won’t notice because it’ll think it’s part of the programming. This … it’s … genius.”
“Right. So all we need to do is run the script and ask it some questions about the file.” Tourmaline didn’t like how Rezek’s effusive compliments were having such a huge effect on her heart rate, but she also didn’t necessarily want those feelings to go away, either.
Being an Offworlder woman in Specter was a trial, at times. You had to be as tough as the toughest guy in the room at all times, but if you were wired to be attracted to the opposite sex, that meant being wired to get all gooey inside when they said stuff.
She was just about as gooey as you could get.
“Can it be that simple?” Rezek squinted. He tried to find reasons why it wouldn’t be and came up empty handed. Beyond the simplicity of the solution, there really wasn't anything else they could do in the time remaining; they either found the file or they got caught once Alonso was done faffing around.
Rezek checked the time. Half an hour. Theoretically enough time to find the file, decrypt it, and erase their tracks. He held his breath, puffed the air out.
“Run it.”
***
Owing to their direct usefulness in finding and decrypting the file before Alonso became aware of Zerr’s duplicity, the Captain allowed the both Rezek and Tourmaline to remain present while he viewed the data contained within the once heavily encrypted transmission.
It was only fair and besides which, Zerr was smart enough to realize that if he didn’t dangle these little tidbits out to his crew –especially now, when they were on the wrong side of the Shield with no real support anywhere- every now and then, he might very well wake up one morning with his head removed.
“It’s really just coordinates.” Tourmaline announced, utterly nonplussed; total file size after decryption and scanning had it hovering just a smidgeon above petabyte.
Rezek tooled through the physical structure of the file again, suspecting maybe they’d missed something massively compressed or that there might be some kind of holographic memory tomfoolery going on and they were simply looking at things from the wrong direction. The networked AI spheres indicated in their usual passionless manner that everything was precisely as it appeared to be.
Zerr looked from Rezek to Tourmaline and then back to the monitor. “You’re certain you got the right file.”
Tourmaline took a moment to look upset by the sudden suspicion cast on her abilities before whacking the monitor in front of her. “Captain, I might be a lot of things, but when it comes to what you tell me to do, I am one hundred percent on the money at all times. The AIvatar I constructed…”
“We’re not calling it that.” Rezek said calmly from his side of the work station.
“What do you think we should call it then?” Tour demanded hotly.
“Nothing. It’s a program. We call it ‘that program that can scan an AI’s holographic memory structure’ and leave it at that.” Rezek pulled up their shoddy star charts and plugged the coordinates in. "AIvatar. Psht."
“This from the poet?” Tourmaline resolved to call it AIvatar, if only in her own mind. She was proud of her work and she liked to name things that were successful, especially when made by her own hand.
“If you want a sonnet…”
“People, please, you can have your lover’s spat later, when I am not in the room, and not courting disaster.” Zerr looked over Rezek’s shoulder at the spatial location culled from the data file and shrugged. “It’s just space. Close to the Shield edge, but other than that… there’s nothing there. Or, it looks like nothing was there. How old are these charts?”
Tourmaline moved to the other side and draped herself over Rezek. “Decades, Captain. Unlike the majority of human-based systems, the Latelians have never really showed interest in filling their local area up with space stations or man-made planets or any of the usual things. They keep really tight control of their population density. They’ve got a cluster of space stations and moon habitats, but that's it. It’s really quite impressive.”
“Dammit.” Zerr was struck suddenly by how foolish this all seemed, now he knew what Alonso was holding under wraps. Coordinates to an empty plot of space. He was about to tell his side team to fold everything up and head back to their bunks for some downtime when Tourmaline’s station suddenly exploded with warning sounds.
All three Specters were at the inexplicably chaotic monitor in a heartbeat, Tourmaline herself at the controls, vibrant purple fingers flying across the keyboard.
“What’s going on, here, Tourmaline?” Zerr hated having to shout to be heard, but damn the system was making all kinds of noise. If they weren’t careful, the chaos would draw Alonso’s prying eyes to them and all would be lost.
“I …” Tourmaline paused, feeling a bit … embarrassed didn’t seem to quite explain the odd emotion boiling through her, but it was as good a place to start as any. “I … asked the program to find out why the file is a petabyte in size.”
Zerr blinked. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. “And that worked.”
Tourmaline looked at her Captain, the man she’d served blindly and without hesitation since joining SpecSer. They had a lot of history together, she and him, and she relied on the trust that’d built up between them because of all they’d been through.
“It shouldn’t have.” The Offworlder admitted with a quick shrug. “It was one of those ‘what the fuck’ things. I know the limits of the program I constructed, sir, and … it really shouldn’t have been able to figure this out. Latelian code structures are genius, I’ll admit that without hesitation, and it does seem aptly suited to interfacing with artificially intelligent machinery, but it still needs parameters. When we went looking for the file, we told it to look for anything that was occupying the shipmind’s primary systems and that’d originated from outside the vessel. Took about three minutes. But like I said, parameters were given. See, look …”
Rezek –wandering back to his side during Tour’s explanation of how the AIvatar worked because he had no desire to listen to that particular conversation a second time- made a small noise of surprise in the back of his throat when he saw the display on his screens. “Well, at least we know why the damn thing was so big. Lookee here.”
Rather than force Zerr and Tourmaline to shuffle around again, Rezek tossed the display to the central screen adorning a wall. As they all watched, the coordinates rippled and shivered and buckled.
“I hate sounding like an idiot, but it seems I’m wearing my Idiot Hat today instead of the one labeled ‘Captain’, but what are we looking at here. Why are the numbers dancing like this?”
Tourmaline practically squealed in excitement as she figured it out before Rezek opened his mouth. “It can’t be! There is no way! What is it you say all the time, Captain? Holy crap? Holy crap! This is amazing. I’m amazing. My AIvatar is amazing.”
“While your girlfriend continues high-fiving herself, Rezek, why don’t you explain what’s got her going mental in the first place?” Zerr edged himself away from Tourmaline. Not enough to be insulting, but enough so that if the high intensity conversation she was now having with herself considering the marketable aspects of the ‘AIvatar’ she’d scripted got any more animated, he’d be out of accidental striking range.
“Multiple AI transmission, sir.” Rezek beamed. “Encrypted fifteen or twenty times. Hard to tell. Beamed out hot on the heels of some kind of massive energy disruption. Most of the broadcast was completely destroyed. Only the physical coordinates remained. Hadda guess, I’d say the file was originally supposed to contain video. Alonso did most of the work in reconstructing the initial broadcast’s structure, our boys here just zipped through the encryption part.”
“You saying we found the Quantum Tunnel?” Zerr refused t
o let his hopes get the better of him.
“I am. And I’m suggesting that whoever stole it in the first place got themselves killed by the Tunnel for stealing it. Very few things can disrupt a Q-Tunnel’s emergency broadcast systems, but I’ll bet my ration of secret hidden chocolate that a bunch of black hole engines going up would do this.” Rezek couldn’t help but beam again, this time, right at his ladylove, the wonderfully purple Tourmaline. She smiled right back at …
“Okay,” Zerr said, interrupting the visual sexfest before it got started, “Your ‘secret chocolate stash’ is neither a secret nor properly stashed. Alonso located the stuff forever ago, I just don’t like chocolate otherwise it’d be in my quarters, as missing contraband, and not under your … ahem … special drawer. Second of all, don’t be getting ready to party just yet, either of you.”
“You want us to go through my code.” Tourmaline said, a bit crestfallen that they wouldn't be enjoying the excitement success brought in a more carnal manner.
“I want you to go through the code. You said it shouldn’t have been able to do this, and this kind of shit makes my lower back hurt.” Zerr was about to say more when his handheld chimed politely to remind him of his ‘meeting’ with Alonso. “If we’ve somehow compromised our engines, it’d be better to know now, when we can hopefully undo what’s been done, than in a few hours, when we launch towards the disturbance.”
“Hey, Cap,” Rezek asked just before the captain got through the door, “what you going to say to Al?”
“Fucked if I know.” Zerr shut the door to the quiet room with a solid look at both Specters that said ‘if you get naked between now and the time you have proper answers for me, someone is in trouble’.” Zerr made his way to Alonso the AI’s facility.
***
“This is quite disappointing, Captain Zerr.”
Zerr nodded his head slowly, playing with the point of his beard, suddenly wondering if he’d lost his goddamn mind in telling their shipmind the absolute truth. Al’s metallic-sounding voice was certainly full of synthesized disappointment.
“Yeah, well, couldn’t take the chance that my ‘record’ wouldn’t sync up nicely with a bullshit Army rank. You know how those guys are. They’re all crazy insane. I still think more than half their claims to fame are trumped up so they can keep their coveted number one spot on Trinity’s Q-Comm.”
“Do you truly think so poorly of Trinity’s Military Services?"
“We’re not here to discuss my feelings towards Army.” Zerr reminded Alonso with a forceful tone. “Rather to discuss the ramifications of my actions.”
“I can see why your men love you so.” Alonso replied thoughtfully. “One of the eldest Specters in service, you have all the rough brutality of the wildest of them, yet when needed, you are every inch a commanding officer. Which is why you were given the rank of Colonel in that branch of the military you so despise. Another rank beyond the minimum. There was never any doubt in my mind that you would meet the requirements.”
Zerr refused to feel guilty. As far as he was concerned, tasking Rezek and Tourmaline to do as he had been a battlefield deciseion and therefore above reproach.
“Stand by my decision, either way.” Zerr stopped plucking at his beard and stared at the nearest monitor. “We’re Specters aboard this ship, Alonso, from tiny Zorra all the way up to you, you stupid brain in a ball, and when we’re told we can’t do something, we go ahead and do it anyway. You should’ve known we’d … I’d … do something like this from the moment you told me I couldn’t. There’s nothing going on. Anywhere. This Q-Tunnel spot will be the location of a major offensive any time now, because if you think for one second that they’ll miss this thing, you definitely aren’t a Specter mind. We need to get there first, establish a beachhead, and wait for the enemy to come.”
“And in the meantime?”
“We send out an early, unscheduled broadcast to all the previous and upcoming data-drop locations.” That was the first thing he’d decided following Rezek's revelation, and damn the consequences of literally barfing that intelligence across the solar system; they needed to get as many Specters and as many … Army as possible to the Tunnel’s area in as short a time as possible, and if that meant compromising the dead drops, then so be it.
They were in a fucking war here, and the last thing they should be doing is flying around the fucking corners of the system playing hide and seek.
Every day should be filled with bullets and bombs, missiles and masers!
“Under Trinity Law, your actions, and the actions of your underlings, Rezek Castrani and Tourmaline Rogue are punishable by swift and immediate death. It is not only within my rights to execute this Law immediately and without pause, but it would also be my pleasure. The method by which you gained access to my internal core memories and cognitive structures could’ve caused extreme and permanent damage to the functionality of my essence, yet another broken Law. These transgressions are of the highest order, Captain Zerr of the Macho Man 5000. How do you plead?”
Zerr cocked his head to one side when he understood precisely what was going on. “Oh-ho-ho! A trial, is it? Shipboard conditions and all that, hey?” he grinned toothily at the monitor. “You’re not wrong about my crimes, and the crimes of my men, but that’s how we do. You’re just being an asshole about it because not only did we beat you, we did so in record time and in a way that might eventually prove that cognitive AI is no longer necessary. The rig downstairs has all the AI minds working in purest coordination with absolutely zero personality conflicts, something you lot are prone to experience at the drop of a hat. Allow me to remind you of one thing, Alonso, before you begin handing out sentences.”
“By all means, Captain Zerr.”
“The deadbolt lockdown system we have in place aboard this ship have been … upgraded. Recently.” Sudden silence pervaded the room, a special kind of quiet you only learned to detect when the AI you were talking to suddenly sent most of it’s processing intelligence into a different portion of the ship.
Regardless of whether or not he was the receiver of the majority of Alonso’s presence, Zerr continued speaking. “With the advent of the black hole engines and the gravnetic shield array and the ‘dummy’ minds that run them, the majority of your time has been … well, let’s just call it ‘free time’ and leave it at that. The bulk of your duties have fallen to keeping the ship up and running and doing diagnostics. We’ve never needed you for weapons’ fire, or for maneuvers, or anything like that. As a 9, you were brought on to provide tactical support and Intel and a few other bits and bobs. All of you we… I’m getting away from the point, here. The point is … we really don’t need you. We really, really don’t.”
“What you’ve done is illegal. You’ve modified the deadbolts to fire if I wander through more than ninety-five percent of the vessel’s operating systems and connected hardware. When did you have time to do this? This isn’t a new thing.”
Zerr flashed a toothy grin at Alonso’s monitors. “Just because we call ourselves the Lackluster Crew doesn’t mean we actually are, Alonso. I learned a long time ago to be prepared for everything, and after talking to Rezek about his time with The Specter, well, we decided there’s ‘everything’ and then there’s ‘everything everything’. Maybe it’s illegal, maybe it’s not. The fact is, I really seriously doubt any of us are going to survive long enough to make our way back to Trinityspace, much less be around to have our case tried before Trinity Itself. We’re at war. Wartime rules apply. So yes, Al, my old friend and good companion these last five years, you stick your head outside the clearly marked, preapproved areas at all, even for a nanosecond, even on accident, and the bolts will blow. You’ll be a brain in a box for certain. I would like to point out that you are also too far for your innate quantum substrate communication network to reach the engine room.”
“I cannot believe you’re doing this.” Alonso’s plaintive voice shivered with genuine emotion. “This is beyond foolish. This is rec
kless. You’re putting yourself in terrible danger by limiting my abilities in this manner. When we engage with the Latelians in true fashion, you’ll need me. Without the processing capabilities of a fully functional, sentient AI mind, you’ll be fighting them on equal ground.”
Zerr turned to leave, saying over his shoulder, “That’s the thing about you, Al, you never figured it out. We’re Specters. Everyone else isn’t. That puts them at an automatic disadvantage, no matter what. Equal ground? What’s that? Doesn’t exist. Now you behave yourself and we’ll all have ourselves a good time scoping this area of space out.”
“You’re bluffing. You’ve done something to my sensors. You would never waste an asset like me.”
“You sure you looked over my entire record? Because that's a fascinating statement, and a very bold stance to take! Bye for now.” The Captain of the Macho Man 5000 crossed the threshold, waited for the door to close, then started counting.
One…
Two…
Thr…
Muted explosive sounds reached him from all sides.
“Well.” Zerr said pleasantly to himself as he strolled towards his quarters for some downtime, “looks like a 9 ain’t really all that smart after all.”
He looked around for the nearest camera and gazed right into, knowing even as he did so that Alonso was trapped and alone deep inside his steel-VII orb and would therefore never hear the sentiment. “You were never an asset, Alonso. You were property.”
And with that, Captain Zerr retreated to his quarters for a bit of kip before heading out to what would ultimately prove to be the true beginning of the War against the Latelians…
Bliss is the Opposite of Ignorance
She knew she shouldn’t be doing what she was doing, but she couldn’t help herself, not when, every time she closed her eyes, her whole world exploded into billions and billions of the brightest points of light she’d ever seen.
