by J. L. Curtis
“No family?”
“No, sir. I was an only. My mother and father died when I was at MIT.”
“What do you know about the MK-Thirty system being installed on here?”
He shrugged. “Nothing more than what I read in Sci Technica. It’s estimated to be a collection system, so I’m assuming it’s wideband, and some combination of multispectral meshed with hyperspectral, and three hundred sixty degree planar array antennas separated by a minimum of one hundred twenty feet. And it’s got to be able to do everything from millisecond to segs of data, vid, and voice.”
Major Kelly looked at him curiously and asked, “Where did you find that information?”
“It’s common sense.”
“Uh, could you step out for a minute, please?”
“Sure.” Roberto got up and headed for the hatch. Glancing back, he saw Major Kelly typing quickly on a holo keyboard and thought, Did I just fuck up? I saw the original RFP for the system, but I didn’t actually work on it, and it was in Sci Technica. Well, not a lot of detail. But… He walked onto the bridge and Jace said, “That was quick.”
“I dunno. He asked me about what I knew about the MK-Thirty and he asked me to leave after I answered him.”
Jace sighed, “You guessed didn’t you?”
Roberto cocked his head. “Well, he asked…”
“Humans. Never know when to shut up.” A seg later, he said, “They want you back.”
Roberto went back to the crew’s mess and saw a second officer sitting with Major Kelly as he went to the autochef and dialed a bulb of coffee. Juggling it, he went back and asked, “You wanted me?”
“Major Whisnand has a few questions. Major?”
Roberto immediately classified Major Whisnand as an engineering geek. The hair awry, the wrinkled uniform, and the stubble screamed techie and Roberto smiled to himself, Ah, I must have touched a nerve. “Mr. Diez, what gave you the idea we would use three hundred sixty degree planar arrays?”
“Major, do you know my background?”
“No.”
“I helped design the FTL system for De Perez Galactic.”
Whisnand typed on his holo keyboard for a few seconds and shook his head, “Kelly, you’ve wasted my time. Hell, Diez could probably improve the damn system. And he’s already had Star level clearance.” He got up and said, “Mr. Diez, I’d appreciate your thoughts if you see anything we can improve on the system.” He stomped out the hatch as Kelly slumped back in the seat.
Roberto turned back to him, and Kelly said, “Well, I think I know all I need to know. You’re complete. Since you’ve already been briefed at Star level, this is a Star level three system. Your…” Ten segs later Roberto said, “I understand and will comply with all GalPat rules and regulations concerning security and protection of the assets and capabilities of a Remote Intelligence Gathering ship.”
***
Roberto was in an EVA suit, floating over the ship as robots pulled panels on the dorsal ridge, “Careful. The antennas are critical for FTL and point communications. And please don’t block the ports to the comms laser.”
A gruff voice answered, “Not planning on breaking them. The laser head we’re installing is gimbaled and only fifteen feet long. The shaft will project it ten feet out of the hull, so even if it has to sweep, it won’t impact any antennas. We’ll be doing the same thing on the bottom of the ship in the same location.”
“Gotcha. Appreciate it. If you don’t need me, I’ll get out of your hair.”
The bald warrant in the other EVA suit turned and glared at him, “Not funny Commo, not funny.”
Roberto looked and said, “Oh sorry, I didn’t know. Really sorry. Leaving now.” As he maneuvered down the side of the ship, he saw modules that looked suspiciously like missile tubes being inserted in a number of empty bays along the centerline of the ship.
Once he was back in the hull and divested himself of the EVA suit, he shook his head and maneuvered forward in zero G toward the bridge. Once there, he hooked a leg into the navigation couch and brought up the built in test on the antennas. Jace swam in, and he asked, “Where the hell did you get missiles, and how long before we get gravity back?”
Jace rumbled a laugh. “Same place I got the dorsal lasers. Tech eval. There are lots of interesting pieces of hardware floating around out here with no home, so to speak. I just…allocated it to us for R&D field testing. It’s a lot easier to move stuff in zero G, so we’ll be in it until they are through loading.”
Roberto sighed and shook his head. “I’ll say one thing, you’ve got…balls. How many missiles are you getting, just out of curiosity?”
“Twelve packs. Each with twelve missiles, so one hundred forty-four. They’re defensive, so they fit in the bays that were originally designed for the anti-personnel mortars on the assault shuttle.”
“And nobody said anything about the convenient size and armored cable runs to those bays?”
Jace laughed, “Other than complementary, no. The techs love the fact that there are multiple armored runs with spare cabling in there already. Just like the other two hundred and thirty spare runs I’ve discovered. What were you really planning to do with this ship anyway?”
Roberto grinned, “I designed it to be able to test anything up to cruiser sized equipment, including weapons and systems. There might have been a bit of overkill in a few areas.”
“Well, I’m liking the full size fabber that is squirreled away in space two, three twelve, echo, quebec. Needless to say, that space is staying sealed. And nobody is taking a close look at the power plants either. The reduced nozzle size keeps them from getting curious about the humps in the hull, they just assume it’s something for the aerodynamics package. And since it’s an India Consortium manufacture, they just assume the overbuilding was typical, since they don’t know the truth.”
Roberto shook his head, “I just hope this doesn’t all come crashing down. All it will take is one slip. Or one nosy inspector. Or somebody wondering why the crew is so small.”
Jace rounded on him, “It won’t. As for crew, I have more simulacra now and more coming. By using various species, I can up crew or justify the small crew and flextensionals to handle cargo, since we’re advertising as a high priority cargo hauler.”
***
Three months later, Hyderabad kicked loose from the Bethany yard, transited down to the planet and picked up nine cubes of cargo and thirty passengers and GalPat officers transferring back to Ganymede, Mars, and Earth.
Nine hyper transits later, they dropped into the Sol system, and Roberto looked through the armorplast windscreen at the Earth for the first time in almost ten years. Never thought I’d see Earth again. A tear rolled unbidden down his cheek, and he wiped it away savagely. They say you can’t go home again, and in my case, I really can’t. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. He sighed and keyed the comm suite, “Ganymede approach, Hyderabad, Inbound from L3. Three cubes of cargo and six GalPat pax on transfer.”
Hyderabad, you’re cleared customs bay five alpha. Terminating?”
“Negative. Drop and go, request routing for Mars/Earth approaches.”
“Roger, will give you a two point oh delay, expect route foxtrot six departure and stay up this freq.”
“Hyderabad copies all.”
Nineteen days later, Hyderabad landed at the Miramar Space Port in a welter of dust. “Still fighting the sand I see,” Roberto said.
“Sand?” Jace asked.
“I can’t believe I know something you don’t! This area has always had an issue with the sand blowing in from the desert. It gets into everything. And the damn winds blow almost constantly. We’ll need to change the filters after we leave, otherwise there will be dust throughout the ship inside a week.”
“Are you going ashore?”
Roberto sagged back in his couch, “I don’t know. I just…don’t know. Things have changed so much, and I…”
Jace said, “You might want to read this. It might help
you make up your mind.” A message cue popped into Roberto’s screen, and he tapped it.
FROM: GALSCOUT ADMINISTRATION, ACCESSIONS
TO: DIEZ, ROBERTO NMN C/O SV HYDERABAD
SUB: ACCEPTANCE FOR TRAINING
IAW APPL SUBMITTED SEPCOR, SUBJ IS ACCEPTED FOR GALSCOUT TRAINING COMMENCE 27960301, CLASS 279601.
NEG RESPONSE REQUIRED IF NOT ABLE TO MEET SCHEDULE.
GALSCOUT WILL PAY TRANSIT TO MARS BASE BY MOST EXPEDIENT MEANS TO COMPLY WITH CLASS DATE.
CONTACT- LT IMMANUAL OKAFOR. [email protected], IC 2437839-1248
Roberto scrubbed his face and sighed. “Well, now what the fuck are you going to do,” he mumbled. Surprisingly, Jace kept quiet as Roberto wrestled with himself, This is what you wanted. A clean break. A new start where nobody cares about your previous life. But how… How do I continue to do what I like and develop things? Especially when I have no idea where in the galaxy I’ll be? But it’s a fresh start… And it’s not like I need credits. Or really anything else.
He turned to Jace, “I’m going ashore, gonna see if my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant is still there. When I get back, we need to figure out how I’m going to stay in touch with you, and push new inventions back here.” He got up and headed for the bridge hatch, “Be putting some of that memory to work on that, will ya Jace.”
Jace simply said, “I already am.”
The End
Afterword-
One of the genesis for this character was the issues you commonly see portrayed in movies and novels about ‘self-aware AI’ systems. I wrote this based on my experience with autonomous systems and the issues that continue to ‘plague’ those with artificial intelligence built into them. I also have experience with Rules of Engagement (ROE), and Man-in-the-Loop weapons systems (MIL).
Even in the far future, I can’t see any sentient species actually giving total control of weapons systems to a self-aware AI. If you’re familiar with Bayesian methodologies in statistics and probability, you’re probably cringing at that thought too…
Not saying anything would happen, but… Are YOU willing to bet your life on that self-aware AI making a binary decision that you are/are not a threat to it?