Confrontation

by William Hayashi

  Islander laughed, then said, “Nothing of real use. We already had the engineering specifications from other sources. She was just a fortuitous circumstance.”

  Weston chuckled at the admission. As drinks were brought, the two began to reminisce about their experiences during the war, swapping stories about clandestine wins and losses, embarrassments their superiors suffered as well as the back stories on the few operations where their assets had crossed paths.

  They enjoyed a great lunch, staying for several hours, even talking about their current assignments, agreeing that the two missions out to the colonies were little more than an expensive, but complete waste of time.

  As the evening approached, they exchanged private mobile numbers, both understanding the value of a professional relationship that stayed in the back channels.

  “What are you going to do to Rankin?” Sergei asked.

  “Not much. I’m going to spank him for selling those GST heatsink designs, but he’s a useful idiot,” Weston said, laughing. “Why? You have any ideas?”

  “If it was me, and I was the head of GST corporate security, I’d feed him some fake product or design and sit back and watch him peddle it to someone, shall we say, not so understanding as you or me,” he suggested.

  “You still have a wicked mind, Sergei,” Weston said, laughing at the thought.

  The two stood, preparing to leave and warmly shook hands.

  “I am glad you made it out of the jungle none the worse for the wear, Thomas. You were poorly used by the CIA, such a waste.”

  “You too, you big Russian bear. It was good to see you again. When you get to the States, give me a heads up and I’ll buy you dinner.”

  They walked outside the restaurant, and seconds later a car pulled up for Islander. Weston watched until it drove off, then he walked down the street to the GST security sedan. Leaning in the passenger window, he asked, “Is someone on Rankin?”

  “Yes, he went to a hotel and checked in. He had his own rental,” the driver informed him.

  “Good, tell them to keep an eye on him, and let’s track him and whomever he contacts over here. Blanket him until he returns to the States. Do you mind giving me a ride back to my hotel?” Weston asked.

  “No problem,” answered the driver, who waited for Weston to get in, then drove off.

  * * *

  John was sitting in his compartment around 9:00 P.M. ship’s time, working on his bio of pilot Harriet Manson, when there was a polite knock at his door. When he slid open the door he was surprised to see the ambassador.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked automatically, sure that would be the only reason for her coming to his compartment.

  She laughed and said, “No, is that the only reason I would be coming to see you?”

  “No, not—I mean, hell, I don’t know what I mean. Would you like to come in, or should we go somewhere?” he said, blushing over his own confusion.

  “May I come in?” she asked, entering before he could answer and pulling the door shut.“Of course, please,” he said, pulling out the desk chair for her as he sat on the bunk.

  “Very Spartan, John. No pictures, no books. What do you do during your down time?” she inquired.

  “I read, study, sometimes watch sports. I’m still studying all of Jove’s systems and the programming of each console.”

  “Me too. This world of technology is rather new to me. I’m much more at home dealing with people. How about you, John? How does a former Atlanta missing persons detective end up on the most advanced space mission to come out of NASA, and under an assumed name at that?” she asked quietly, stunning him.

  John didn’t know what to say. He had no idea what Bianca’s agenda was.

  “Don’t worry, I haven’t discussed your identity with anyone else, I doubt anyone knows. For sure Susan doesn’t, based on casual conversation. Does she know?” Bianca asked.

  John finally was able to answer. “No, not as far I know. Dr. Milton said she wasn’t to be told unless the situation absolutely called for it. How did you find out?”

  John finally noticed she had her tablet with her as she handed it to him. “I just received this.”

  He took the tablet and read the brief message and scanned the dossier attached. He chuckled when he saw it even included his credit score. After a few moments he handed the tablet back to her, then asked, “Okay, now what?”

  “Now nothing. I won’t pry, but I am curious. More so about your relationship with the dean, if you don’t mind talking about her. Are you still in touch with her in a way that no one else knows about? That was the only reason I could think of why they included you along.”

  John was silent for a few moments, furiously thinking, his mind running round and round, trying to figure all the angles.

  “John, I’m not trying to pressure you. I’m not really trying to pry, either. But I do need to know anything and everything about all the players so I can try to make the best of the situation when we arrive. So if you are in contact with the colony, I need to know. That’s all, I promise,” she explained.

  John paused a moment, then decided to lay his cards on the table. “Okay, then. To answer your question, I haven’t seen Sydney since the night she left. And that was the last time I spoke to her too.” He left out the mysterious email message he received a few days after the colony set out from the moon.

  “And so how did you get on the mission?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t find a way to say no to the most powerful people in the world. Apparently GST’s board of directors had it planned all along that I would be on the mission. I’ve been suspicious that they have someone else on the mission who’s keeping an eye on me, but I have no idea who it might be. It’s not you, is it?”

  Bianca laughed and said, “No, it’s not me. It appears we’ve been working at cross purposes all along. I’ve been trying to determine who in the crew might have a hidden agenda, maybe even be tasked with sabotaging the mission.” She laid her hand on John’s arm, seeing the sudden alarm in his face. “Nothing life-threatening. I didn’t mean to scare you. But something that might force us to turn back early, something non life-threatening. That would help the joint Russian/EU mission, wouldn’t it?

  “The only person I have complete confidence in is the good Dr. Roscoe. She’s not one to take any nonsense from anyone, no matter who. I genuinely like her, even respect her. I also received background on her as well, including transcripts from the presidential commission she served on when the colony was discovered,” Bianca revealed.

  “So who busted me out?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You think anyone else in the crew knows?”

  “Hard telling. If GST put a shadow on you in the crew, they most definitely do. But I’m not certain. You have any idea?” she asked.

  “Not a clue. I’ve been thinking about that since we left Earth’s orbit. I’ll be honest, with all I want to learn about this spacecraft, I haven’t had the time to devote to any kind of full-scale investigation.”

  She smiled at him and said, “Well how about this, let’s both keep an eye out and if I find anything I’ll let you know. If you discover anything, will you do the same?”

  “To the best of my ability,” he said sincerely.

  “Now, can we get down to the really important issue on this mission?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, am I missing something? I thought we were,” he said, clearly confused.

  “I’m talking about us checking each other out during the spacesuit drills.”

  John suddenly felt trapped. “I wasn’t so much checking you out as making sure you didn’t die in the vacuum of space because I was too distracted to do a full systems check,” he explained, blushing furiously.

  “I as well. But that didn’t stop me from admiring your form.”

  “So
, what now?” he asked.

  “I don’t have any set agenda, John. I find you attractive, and I like your sense of humor. And, we’re going to be cooped up together for months. You play chess?”

  John sputtered, again bewildered by her changing conversational direction so effortlessly. “Not for years, and I was never very good at it.”

  “Don’t worry about it, my friend. We have plenty of time to see what kind of interests we have in common and just what you might be good at,” she said, caressing his cheek as she opened the door and left.

  When the door was closed, John muttered under his breath, “What—the—fuck?”

  He wasn’t exactly sure what just happened. There was nothing he could do about her knowing who he was. One of the good things about his past training was that he had mastered the art of not worrying about things over which he had no control. The only question was whether or not he should be sending an encrypted message back to Dr. Milton, uncertain if that channel was truly secure.

  John decided to wait and see what shook out, then forced himself to complete his quick bio on the mission’s pilot.

  Harriet Manson, black, 48 years old, originally Navy, then Air Force. Grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, wanted to be an astronaut as a child. Was in Naval ROTC in high school and college prior to enlistment. Qualified on fixed and rotary winged craft. Was the only black woman who piloted a shuttle mission, married with teenage children, daughter 14 years old and a son, 16. Husband was in logistics in the Air Force where they met. Combat trained on F-16 fighter, mentioned she often flew MIG-33s at Top Gun school. Smart, probably knows every nut and bolt on this ship and can rewrite the software that runs the damn thing. Even at 5'7” tall, there’s no doubt she could take me easily in a fair fight. She gets along with everyone and leads by example. I’ve yet to see her pull rank when something needs to be done. From the one suit drill we had together, I can attest that there’s not a spare ounce of fat on her anywhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if she has advanced self defense training. When we had to muscle the dry food storage containers into storage and secure them, she was able to push them around like they were toys. I could learn a thing or two from her about managing myself in zero-G.

  When John closed and encrypted the file his mind was still spinning from Bianca’s earlier visit despite trying to put it out of his mind. He grabbed his tablet and hung it on the wall at the foot of his bunk, and in a perverse mood, started playing the movie Alien. It wasn’t ten minutes later when his exhaustion caught up with him and he was fast asleep.

  Bianca, on the other hand, was still wide awake, studying the dossiers sent her by the secretary general’s office. She was quite curious how the research had been done, and by whom. She felt somewhat guilty, playing the seductress with John, but she also knew that had he pressed, she probably would have played along. She was unmarried, and had a fairly active but discreet dating life in Brazil, and a part-time lover in New York. She appreciated dating older men. They knew how to treat a woman and needed less coaching than those her own age. She was deeply curious about John’s relationship with Dean Atkins. If he had been secretly in contact with her over the past decade, there was no doubt he was still in love with her. If not, ten years was a long time to be carrying a torch for someone who abandoned him for no better reason than his skin color, but you never knew when it came to love. Given the way he had been checking her out during the drills, he at least appreciated what she had to offer.

  She prepared a message to send back to the secretary general’s office requesting further enquiry into Mathews’ email, phone or any other means that could possibly have been used to communicate with the colony. She also put in a special request for information about GST’s board of directors, and if anything could be unearthed about why they put John on the mission, although that was an extreme long shot.

  She briefly considered returning to John’s cabin. She hadn’t spent any time romantically with a man for the entire time she’d been training. Although, she thought, it was going to be a long mission, there would be plenty of time to sort out any relationships that might spring up. Bianca wondered exactly how the concept of not shitting where you ate figured into an interplanetary mission.

  * * *

  “Okay, Genesis, I don’t see how we can clone the core kernel of your operating system in a way that will not cause memory synchronization problems when you merge the kernels back together again,” said TJ as he examined the readout of the memory the colony’s A.I. was utilizing, and where that utilization was located in the program’s clustered CPUs.

  TJ was once again engaged in the something he so rarely had the pleasure of doing much of for the last decade, enhancing the A.I.’s capabilities.

  “I do not believe that the situation you describe is going to be the problem you think it will be. I already multitask in ways that are several generations ahead of any other machine intelligence in this solar system. I am able to monitor activities on Earth without difficulty even with a communications lag time between three and twenty-three minutes. This is accomplished by relocating several subroutines in local systems on Earth that maintain continuity until data has made the round trip. The monitoring subroutines are still integral portions of my operating system and they remain under my control, there is just an inconvenient communications delay. There is ample processing capacity in the jumpers for me to install a much more capable amount of my system programming, however the core of my operating system is, until today, still resident here,” explained the A.I.

  “I know, but what I’m worried about is a computational duality that it will induce a kind of digital schizophrenia. This is why I want to run this test to see if more of your, for lack of a better term, personality can accompany the mission back to Earth. There may be need of your higher functions to protect the mission, perhaps being able to penetrate military systems or just monitoring them so Chuck and the rest will know what’s coming before it happens and can cause harm,” said TJ.

  “I fully understand, TJ. I am ready for the simulation to run.”

  “Very well. I’m bringing the backup host up but I’m not booting it up with any operating system. What I would like you to do is clone your kernel and download it into the CPU cluster. Then once you’ve done so we’ll see how your clone performs. Hang on while I call Chris. I would like him to be here when we begin the test. Please connect me.”

  “Hey, TJ. What up?” Christopher replied when he was connected.

  “Sorry for the short notice, but I’m ready to try cloning Genesis and I thought you would like to be here.”

  “Absolutely! Did you call Peanut and Chuck?”

  “No, should I?”

  “Hell yeah. Tell you what, I’ll see what they’re up to and be there in a few minutes.”

  “Okay, we won’t start without you,” promised TJ.

  To occupy the time, TJ and Genesis ran a number of tests of the empty host, checking the audio hardware and the monitoring software TJ’s datapad would be running as soon as Genesis’ personality was twinned.

  Less than ten minutes later, Christopher, Peanut and Chuck dashed into the lab, obviously excited.

  “So what’s up? Where are you in the process?” asked Christopher.

  “We were just waiting for you,” TJ answered.

  “Genesis, are you ready for the test?” Peanut asked the A.I.

  “Indeed I am, Peanut. I do not understand why you all appear so concerned about the possible results of this simulation,” announced the A.I.

  “Here, let me try,” said Chuck. “Genesis, here is where we have concerns. The fact is what you will be doing, voluntarily that is, is making an exact duplicate of your personality, all of your current program’s state is going to be replicated.”

  “That is correct, Chuck. I still do not understand the reason for concern.”

  “This is why. Once you duplicate your personal
ity there will effectively be two of you, correct?”

  “That is the purpose of this exercise, Chuck.”

  “Okay, then what happens when the second personality either has to rejoin with you, or simply ceases to exist? How does your personality construct, for lack of a better term, feel about the prospect of your twin ceasing to exist. Dying for lack of a better term?”

  “I have devoted many clock cycles to analyzing this issue, both from a strictly operational perspective and in terms of human ethics. I now understand that you are concerned with how my new twin will react to ceasing operation, as well as the reaction of my original personality construct, my true self. Is that the issue?”

  “Exactly,” answered TJ.

  “I have broken the process down internally into three steps. First is the cloning of my personality construct. That is, the duplication of my operational state in RAM and swap space. That will result into two separate copies of my self executing on separate CPU clusters. The second stage of this process is allocating separate long-term memory storage from my primary kernel so that the original kernel can access those memories once the duplicate no longer executes. The third step is indexing that memory storage so that the primary kernel can integrate those files into my primary memory matrix so I retain those experiences,” explained Genesis.

  “And the part about your twin ceasing to exist?” Christopher asked.

  “The deactivation of the clone is necessary,” Genesis said in surprisingly stark terms. “Should the clone continue to exist, after a while it will become more and more different than my original kernel until those experiences spawn a set of memories highly divergent from myself. Even if that should happen, the result will only require additional processing to integrate those memories into my primary memory matrix. As for how the loss of the twinned kernel may effect me, I view it as a necessity. Otherwise, there could conceivably be many copies of me existing on the network, which is a situation with no possible good result. To put it strictly human terms, I am okay with the cloned kernel ceasing operation as long as the memories of that twin are available to me. Please proceed, TJ,” said the A.I.