“Wow,” that was totally unexpected. “Thank you, Skippy.”
“Before you pop the champagne, you realize the timing of this will be tricky?”
“Yup. If the fake report you load into the relay station says the wormhole hiccupped and hit those Maxolhx ships, like, next Thursday, then we need to go back to the wormhole and make it do something funky next Thursday. That way, the alien telescopes or whatever will see exactly what they expect to see sixty years from next Thursday. You can do that?”
“Yes. Damn, Joe, you really did think of everything this time. It is actually a privilege to see a monkey mind in action.”
“If anyone asks, you will deny saying that I am the master?”
“Dude, please. I won’t need to deny it. As if anyone would think you are the master of-”
“Uh huh, great. What I need you to do is back me up when we get back to Earth. The authorities there need to know I am not just a reckless screw-up.”
“I got your back, homeboy.” His avatar held up a tiny fist, and I bumped it. “You do realize the problem with your idea?”
“Yeah,” my shoulders slumped. “The Dutchman for sure has to survive battle with the target ships, or we will never be able to make the Earth wormhole act crazy at the proper time, months from now.”
“Yup, that’s the problem. You have a solution for that?”
“No.”
“Then the ‘Greatest Idea Ever’,” he made air quotes with his fingers, “is really nothing but a big waste of time, huh?”
“Your steadfast support is an endless source of comfort to me, Skippy. I am sorry to disappoint you that I have not yet solved every single problem in the universe.”
“Oh, Joe,” he said in a soothing tone. “You could never disappoint me.”
That comment surprised me, it sounded like something a mother says to her child. Maybe trying to understand the concept and value of empathy really was making Skippy more sensitive. In our ultra-tense situation, I appreciated words of encouragement. “Thank you, that was nice to hear. I know that we have your support, no matter what happens.”
“Oh. I meant there is nothing any of you monkeys could do that would disappoint me, because my expectations of you are already lower than you can possibly imagine. Seriously, take last night as an example. You stumbled out of bed at 0247 Hours, cracked your head on the overhead cabinet again, managed to pee without getting any on the floor which is a freakin’ miracle, picked a huge booger out of your nose and smeared it on your face because you were still half-asleep, then fell asleep with your feet on the pillow and your booger-smeared face at the bottom of the bed. For your species, that counts as a WIN, baby!”
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped at him, while a part of my brain rejoiced because the Mystery of the Morning Booger had been solved. Also, it explained why I had woken up with my feet on the pillow. “All right, go away while I try to think of a way to build a time machine or something.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
“Skippy,” I asked the next morning, after I got seven solid hours of rack time. My rack time should have been eight hours, but my traitorous brain woke me up because it had a question and needed the answer right away. My headache was mostly gone, as reminders of my encounter with an insanely murderous Elder AI, I had burst blood vessels in my eyes, a persistent ringing in one ear and a blinking yellow icon on a status display, showing we had lost yet another precious dropship. “Do you-”
“Joe, if this is about that insane AI, could we please not talk about it until I have time to process? I barely have a high-level analysis of the data and I do know what I am seeing. It is very confusing.”
“Uh, sure thing, Skippy, take all the time you need,” I lied, because I needed answers pronto. He was right, my Greatest Idea Of All Time was pretty much worthless without a way to actually do something with it. “Hey, another subject. The comm node we found is busted or offline or whatever, but do the other two artifacts work? It sure would be great to have another wormhole controller.”
“Why?” He asked, surprised at my question. “The one we had before is working perfectly, we do not particularly need a spare.”
“We don’t need a spare aboard the Dutchman,” I agreed and did not explain further. “The zero-point energy generator power tap thingy, that works also?”
“It is old and degraded but yes, it works. Why? We can’t- Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Maybe I am capable of reliably thinking up monkey-brain ideas. I believe I know what you are thinking, and it won’t work.”
Crap. If he really did know what I was thinking, we were in trouble. “Like what?”
“Your idea is for us to use the power tap to lure those Maxolhx ships. We drop it in space somewhere, generating energy from nothing, and the Maxolhx get so excited they rush in to capture it. Forgetaboutit, smart guy.”
“I-”
He ignored me. “That power tap is so degraded that is barely generates enough energy to- You know what, I’ll be precise this time. It generates less than half a megawatt per hour. Such a puny power output will not be very tempting to the Maxolhx. Besides, we already discarded the idea of luring in those ships, because one of the ships would hang back and even if it were by some miracle successful, we would only destroy one ship.”
“We did discard that idea, Skippy. That is not what I want the power tap for.”
“Damn it. Ok, what is your moronic idea?”
“It is possible for you to program a wormhole controller so it acts on a delay?”
“A delay?”
“Yeah, like, on Tuesday you program it to screw with a wormhole, but it doesn’t do anything for, oh, say, six months?”
“Six months? No, dumdum. Six hours, maybe.”
“Ayuh, yup, the module will run out of power and go inert. What if we connect the wormhole controller to the power tap thing? Would that work?”
“Um, hmm, let me think about that. The initial surge of energy to connect the module to the wormhole far exceeds the energy level the power tap is capable of, but after that, yes, the power tap could keep the module’s connection to higher spacetime active for years, if necessary. Why do you want- Oh! Are you thinking I could program our backup wormhole controller module, so the Dutchman could go home if something bad happens to me?”
“Nope. If something that bad happens to you, there will be no point to going home.”
“Then what-”
“This will go a lot faster if I talk and you stop making stupid guesses.”
“Ohhhhhkaaaaaay,” he pouted. “That is payback for all the times I have told you the same thing. Go ahead, explain your idea, please.”
“A major problem with attacking those target ships is the risk the Dutchman will be disabled or destroyed. If that happens, we won’t be available to make the wormhole near Earth act crazy around the time those Maxolhx ships would arrive there. I want to go to that wormhole, drop off the power tap and controller module, with the module programmed to make the wormhole act crazy at the proper future date. That way, if the Dutchman is destroyed in battle with the target ships, all the evidence will point to our cover story being accurate, including the timing of events.”
“Huh.”
“Was that a ‘huh’ like ‘huh Joe had a good idea’, or like ‘huh I am so going to enjoy busting his balls again’?”
“Um, the first one, much as I hate to say it. Your plan will work. The output of the power tap is wimpy, but plenty enough to keep the controller module on a trickle charge if the module only gets used once a month. Ok, so you have solved yet another of the impossible problems we are faced with. Great.”
That didn’t sound right. He should either have been pumped that we had a plan, or he should have been irritated that he hadn’t thought of the idea. “Hey, Skippy,” I pressed the button to close my office door. “Are you Ok?”
“Sure, yeah, fine,” he sighed.
Even for a guy, I can sometimes be clueless about what other people are feeling. That time, I was f
airly sure I knew what was bothering him. “Skippy, I know the evidence you found about two Elder ships fighting each other has got you upset-”
“Upset? Upset?” He screeched. “When you butcher a song with your awful singing voice on karaoke night, that gets me ‘upset’. Knowing that the Elders fought each other, killed each other, has completely destroyed everything I thought I knew about myself and my origins and my place in the universe, and now I am questioning-”
“Uh huh, yup. You are having an existential crisis,” I was guessing what the word ‘existential’ really meant. “Blah blah blah. Listen, have you-”
“Blah blah blah?” He gasped. “I am in the worst crisis of my long life, and you mock me?” He was shaken. “Joe,” he was almost sobbing, “I thought our friendship was the one thing I could finally count on, but now-”
“You can count on our friendship, that is why I am trying to tell you, that maybe you don’t need to question everything you thought you knew about the revered Elders.”
“This had better be damned good, homeboy, because I am seriously pissed at you right now.”
“It is better than good, Skippy, and it shows you are not the only being in the universe who can think logically. This is something you should have thought of, you knucklehead. Listen, we know Elder AIs have gone rogue or crazy or whatever-”
“We know one Elder AI has gone rogue; the one on Newark.”
“Dude, really? You think in the long history since the Elders started building AIs, the one we found on Newark was the only one to go rogue? Maybe that insane murderous one you just found went rogue also.”
“Um, Ok, probably more than one Elder AI has gone rogue,” he conceded.
“You suspect all Elder AIs have computer worms inside them, as a safety mechanism, to protect the galaxy in case one of them goes rogue, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Oh, man, I can’t believe I have to explain this to you. Skippy, what if those ships did not destroy each other because the Elders were fighting? What if the AI in control of one ship went rogue and attacked the other ship?”
“Um-” That was all he said for an uncomfortably long moment.
“Hey, Skippy?” I finally prodded him.
“Processing.”
He had never said that before and it bothered me. His brain was a processor, and, Ok, I guess human brains could be described as a sort of processor also. Although Skippy would certainly not describe my brain as any sort of information processing tool. After sitting quietly while waiting for him to reply, I got worried. “Hey, Nagatha, what’s going on with Skippy?”
His Awesomeness could block Nagatha’s access to his internal workings, or he thought he could do that. Anyway, my hope was that whatever Skippy was doing inside is beer can’s shiny exterior, he wasn’t paying attention to our ship’s AI. “Joseph,” Nagatha replied after a very slight hesitation. “Skippy is thinking intently, why do you ask?”
“He’s not like, stuck in a loop or something bad like that?”
“No dear,” she laughed softly. “When he said ‘processing’ he meant that he is analyzing your question. Over-analyzing, to be accurate.”
“Oh, great,” I groaned. I imagined a female version of Skippy curled up on a couch with a quart of ice cream, talking on the phone with her friends about a boy and attempting to analyze what the guy really meant when he said this or that. My sister used to do that for hours and it drove me crazy. “So, he is stuck in a loop.”
“No,” Nagatha corrected me. “However, the idea that an Elder AI could have gone rogue and killed its masters is very disturbing to Skippy, and to myself also. He needs time to determine whether your theory could plausibly be correct, and to understand his own feelings if he accepts your theory is possible.”
Glancing at the clock on my laptop, I judged more than a minute had passed since Skippy last spoke. A minute in meatsack time was an eternity in Skippy time. “How much more time do you think he needs?”
“Joseph,” she chided me gently, “how much time would you need, if someone told you a truly shocking idea that made you question your core beliefs about yourself and your origins?”
“Ah, OK, yeah, that could take a while,” I admitted. Way back when the Ruhar raided Earth and one of their dropships crashed into a potato field outside my hometown, I had put aside my need to deal with the new reality and concentrated on doing something, anything useful. After the Kristang chased the Ruhar away, I was serving with the Maine National Guard and was so busy dealing with the aftereffects of the raid like the total lack of electric power, I mostly didn’t have time to think about what it meant to know humanity was not alone in the universe. And that the universe was a hostile place.
But sometimes, in my bunk after a long day, sleep would not come quickly no matter how tired I was. At those times, I did think about what it all meant, and what my life would be like. That was before I heard about the formation of the United Nations Expeditionary Force, and that I was being shipped offworld to fight. I lay awake at night, knowing life would never get back to what used to be ‘normal’, even if electricity was restored and the economy recovered. Even in the National Guard, I was often hungry because there wasn’t enough food to go around, and I worried what I would do if the Army decided they didn’t need another Specialist. My major motivation for signing up in the first place was to get money for college, although even before Columbus Day I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. After Columbus Day, I had no idea what I could do with my life.
So, yeah, I understood why Skippy needed some time to deal with my idea that maybe an Elder AI had not only gone rogue long after the Elders left the galaxy, it had killed Elders.
“Jooooooooe,” he let out a long breath. “You just love screwing with me, don’t you?”
“Ayuh, yeah, but that isn’t why I mentioned it. Sorry if I just dumped that on you, I didn’t know of an easy way to say it.” Also, I did not say, I thought the incomparable genius of Skippy the Magnificent should have been able to put two and two together, to consider maybe an AI had been involved. If the beer was as smart as he is fond of telling everyone, the idea should have popped into his head before it popped into mine. “So, what do you think?”
“It is possible, I must agree. On a personal level, the notion that an AI could have killed Elders is deeply troubling, however it is less troubling than the idea that the Elders themselves could have been violent. Also, unfortunate incidents with rogue AIs could explain why the Elders programmed killer worms into their AIs as a safety precaution.”
“You feel better now?”
“I do. Joe, thank you. When you interrupted my self-indulgent and self-destructive moping, I was pissed that you were being so heartless. Now I understand you were actually helping, out of concern for me as a friend.”
“Ayuh,” I agreed. “And only a little bit because it is so fun to screw with you.”
“Asshole.”
“Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“It is. Speaking of payback, you just wait until-t”
“Uh huh, whatever. Do we have time to fly back to the wormhole near Earth, before we intercept the target ships?”
“Oh, sure, no problemo, Joe, we have plenty of time. There is only one remaining problem.”
“Crap. What is that?” I did not need any more problems.
“We left Earth with an absolutely impossible, unsolvable task. Instead of falling into crushing despair, you kept working on it. You nibbled away at the problem piece by piece. We got a Maxolhx dropship, then a set of blank pixies and learned the exact flight path and schedule of the target ships. You then dreamed up a cover story so ingenious that I am proud to be part of your crew, a cover story that not only will explain what happened to the targets ships, it also will explain why aliens should ignore the gamma rays they will detect sixty years from now. That is something I never thought would or even could happen. And now, in another brilliant stroke of monkey-brain thinking,
you have solved the problem of how to make the wormhole near Earth act according to the cover story, whether the Dutchman is available at that time or not. So, that leaves only one teensy-weensy final problem. You know what I am talking about?”
“Yeah, shit. We, meaning I, still do not have any idea how to destroy those target ships.”
“Egg-zactly. What are you going to do about that?”
“Working on it,” I pressed the button to open my office door, and waved my hand through his avatar.
“Hey!” He protested.
“Go away,” I muttered. “I need to think.”
We flew to the far end of Earth’s wormhole, and lingered there for two days while Skippy conducted experiments. First, he tested the new wormhole controller module to be sure it could connect to the network, although of course the magic of Skippy was needed to establish the initial connection. Then he checked that the power tap could provide enough power on a continuous basis to keep the module functional, and he was satisfied that even in its degraded condition, the power tap would provide a steady trickle of energy for the next fourteen thousand years.
I figured that was about thirteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine more years than we needed, so that made me happy.
Next, he programmed the module to awaken the dormant wormhole and make it open, but make it open in a chaotic, dangerous way. We parked the ship a safe ten lightminutes away and waited for the fireworks, which exceeded even Skippy’s expectations. “Holeeeee shit, Joe,” he gasped as we watched the eruption of twisted spacetime as the event horizons tried to connect and failed in spectacular fashion. “Whoa, I did not expect that. Good thing you insisted we test the effect. Wow!”
“What happened?”
“The short answer is I programmed the module to make the wormhole begin to open, then shut immediately in the middle of its sequence. That caused a build-up of power that needed to go somewhere. Normally, it would bleed off in other dimensions, but then the module made the wormhole open again. The second time, the event horizons were compressed and slightly out of phase with each other, so when that caused the wormhole to collapse, the result was what you saw; a powerful jet of twisted spacetime. Joe, if those Maxolhx ships really had been near the wormhole to observe it, they would have been destroyed or damaged exactly like your cover story will report. Day-umm!”
Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 49
