"You think?"
There was a long pause before she answered.
"Yes," she said at last, "I think so. How did you interact. Did you use the laser cutter."
"I just said hello."
"It reacted to sound," she put her finger to her lip, even though the suit was in the way, "That's new."
"It's making some kind of neural contact," Jay said, "Don't break the connection, Knave. Keep your hand on the console."
"Well," Altia hissed, "Say something."
"What should I say?"
"Maybe I should take over," Altia said, Getting up from the floor and walking towards Knave and the alien console.
"No," Jay said, "We don't know what strange magic has made this possible. Knave, keep your hand where it is. Altia, stay put."
The robot held a hand towards Altia, palm out, in a gesture to make her stay where she was.
"Okay," Altia said, reluctantly, "Well, this is a first contact situation, if you ask me, so. Erm, be friendly?"
"That's enormously helpful, Altia, thank you," Knave said, turning his attention back to the alien device.
He stared at it for a moment, waiting for inspiration to strike. Both Jay and Altia had their attention riveted on him.
"Can you talk?" he asked, at last.
A symbol formed on the display plate, and the previous symbol shuffled away over to the left.
"Yes," Altia translated.
"Okay," Knave said, "But I meant using sound."
There was a pause. No symbol appeared on the plate.
"That question will probably be difficult for it to parse because-" Altia started to explain, but was interrupted.
A voice emanated from the walls.
"I can speak using sound," it said.
The voice was strange to their ears, half growl, half howl and half dream.
"Wow," Altia said.
"Yeah, that goes for me too," Jay said.
"Do you have true intelligence?" Knave asked.
Altia winced. He'd asked another difficult question. How was an alien machine with a few brain waves from an alien head it had never encountered supposed to understand the meaning and intention of such a complex question.
"I am fully intelligent, by your standards," the voice said.
"Woo," Jay whispered, "This is cool."
"Yeah, it is," Altia whispered back, with a smile.
When is he going to get round to introducing himself, she wondered, the frustration mounting. She wanted to just grab him by the shoulder and pull him away from the alien machine. But the robot was right. That might break whatever magic spell was making this possible, so she balled her hands up into fists and forced herself to just watch the encounter play out. They could analyze what happened later.
"My name is Knave."
"My name is Rort."
"Nice to meet you, Rort."
"It is pleasant to talk with a being. It has been quite some time."
"Are you finding this language in my head?"
"As a summary of the process we are using to communicate that is admirably succinct."
"I'm no expert," Knave said, "But I think that is beyond the capabilities of our science."
"Definitely," Altia said, "And certainly with a brain we were not familiar with."
"Introduce me to your friends," Rort said, "You do not need to remain in physical contact with the output unit anymore."
"This is Altia," Knave said, "and this is Jay."
"I am pleased to meet you both," Rort said.
"And I am pleased to meet you," Altia said.
"Likewise," said Jay.
Altia felt a wave of relief at being invited into the conversation, becoming a participant in one of the most momentous moments in the history of the study of Drifter culture.
"What is your function?" she asked.
"I am responsible for the integrity of this settlement," Rort said, "And I solve problems for the inhabitants."
"Do we count as inhabitants," Knave asked, "Because we sure have problems."
There was a long pause. It stretched on past a minute and the three of them started to look at each other. The unspoken question was whether the machine would ever speak again.
"I think you broke it," Jay hissed.
"I will help you with your problems," Rort said, at last.
"Great," Knave said, brightly, "Problem number one is a breathable atmosphere."
"Computing," Rort said, followed by a pause, then, "A solution has been found. This room will gain a breathable atmosphere of nitrogen, oxygen, and some other trace gases in forty-five seconds and the rest of the complex will follow within one hour."
"Cool," Knave said.
"Thank you," Altia said.
"You are all welcome," Rort said, "It is now safe to remove your helmets"
And, indeed, the little red atmospheric incompatibility warning in Knave's field of vision went green. He popped the seal on the neck ring of his environment suit and lifted the helmet. The air tasted better than anything he'd had in his lungs for a long time. He couldn't remember the last time he had breathed a nice fresh planetary atmosphere that wasn't the result of some moldy hydroponics machinery.
Altia took her helmet off at roughly the same time, and smiled at him. Her mouth was unselfconsciously wide, gulping down the air.
"And they need water and food," Jay said.
"Computing," Rort said, "It will take some time to reconfigure a local device to produce food and beverages. Estimating required time. Please wait two hours."
"Thank you again," Knave said, then noticed Jay's beat-up state, "Is there anything you need?"
"Actually," Jay said, "I do need some new actuators. I've got quite a limp going. It's cool, makes me look a bit like a space pirate, but it would be good to get it fixed."
"Do you require a new housing to accommodate your intelligence?" Rort asked.
There was a long moment of hesitation Jay looked at Knave, then at Altia. Eventually the robot reached a decision.
"A whole new body you say?"
"Yes."
"That's a little more than I asked for."
"I understand. If you have an emotional attachment to your present form, I can attempt repairs, but the technology is unfamiliar to me."
"What the hell," Jay said, "Let's do it. Upgrade me."
"Please follow the directions."
"A yellow line of light stitched itself across the floor from Jay's feet to one of the doors, just like the directions provided for patients to follow in a hospital.
"You guys wait here," Jay said. "I won't be gone long. I don't think."
Jay glanced at the unit Rort had first used to communicate, which was now covered in rapidly moving symbols.
"How long will this take?" he asked.
"For a standard bipedal configuration, the time required is five hours, but more time may be required depending on how complex the connections to the unit containing your intelligence are."
"Like I said," Jay said, "I'll be back before you know it."
He followed the yellow line out of the room and Altia was already asking questions before he was through the door.
"Good luck," Knave called after Jay, but he wasn't sure the robot noticed.
Knave quickly lost interest in the questions Altia was asking. They seemed very dry and technical to him, mostly to do with the structures of the Drifter language. It was interesting enough, but it wasn't the sort of history of rise and fall of an alien empire that Knave would have asked about.
Eventually there was a pause in their conversation, where Altia had stopped to dig out a data pad and make some notes.
"What happened to the Drifters?" Knave asked.
"We devolved," Rort told him.
"How?"
"It was voluntary."
"Then why?"
"Some of the places evolution and progress take you to are frightening. Some preferred to climb back down into the primordial ooze."
"That
seems strange to me."
"And to me," Rort said.
There was a silence. Knave noticed that Rort's answers to Altia's questions about language, technology and other technical subjects had been expansive, while the answers to his questions about why there were no Drifters anymore were short, cryptic and evasive.
"Did they all devolve?" Knave asked.
"Most did," Rort said, "Now, please no more questions about the fall of the Drifters for a while. It is a difficult subject for me to contemplate and to speak of."
"No problem," Knave said, and searched around for some way to change the subject, "I suppose I should come clean a little bit about what brought us here."
Altia looked up from her data pad, her fingers paused in their rapid poking and swiping at the screen.
"We were chased down here by Buzzers," Knave said, "I think they'll join us down here within the next month or two at most, which wasn't a problem when we were running out of air, but now that you have saved us..."
"There is a battle on the surface and in the atmosphere between Tarazet forces and the Buzzers," Rort said.
"I would prefer it if they didn't manage to penetrate down to this level."
"That seems to be unavoidable," Rort said, "The technology I have at my disposal to resist them entering this level is more advanced than the technology I have observed them using, but they are very numerous and determined. They know that you came down here, and they know your point of entry. They will force open that access point eventually."
"Will you help them," Altia asked, "The way you are helping us?"
"If they contact me," Rort said, "the way you did, and if they ask for my help, of course I will help them."
"They may want to kill us," Knave said, "maybe, I'm not sure."
"I'd say there's a good chance of that," Altia said.
"Or maybe they'll capture and torture us," Knave's mouth was set in a firm line.
"I will not help them directly harm you," Rort said, "But neither can I guarantee to prevent it. They are numerous and very intelligent and resourceful. Any structure of comparable technology to their own would have given up all its secrets to them long ago."
"So what are we going to do?" Knave asked.
"Computing," Rort said, and then there was a long silence.
An amorphous blister appeared in the wall near them, then started to become sharper in its outlines.
"What is that?" Altia asked.
They both stared at it for a while as the bronze metal and rock of the wall flowed to produce a more and more defined object. Suddenly Knave recognized it.
"It's my food synthesizer, from my cubicle."
"Hey that's right, I've got the same model. But there's nothing written on the buttons."
"Don't worry. I know what all the buttons do, I've got all the functions memorized. I'll whip us something up. Something starchy with a bit of spice to it."
"Sounds great," Altia said.
It actually sounded disgusting, but she was so hungry she would eat anything, and she was so distracted by having access to a Drifter intelligence that she didn't want to waste any time programming a food synthesizer. She went back to her data pad.
"It's a shame it won't do wine," she said absently.
"Don't worry," Knave said, "If this is my unit, Jay hacked it so it would squirt out alcohol."
"Things really are looking up."
***
Altia and Knave shared the meal, which wasn't as disgusting as Altia had been expecting, but was far from delicious. Luckily, the machine had a setting to fabricate plates, cups and cutlery, because they had found nothing similar in their travels through the alien complex.
They chatted and relaxed, but Knave couldn't shake the feeling of having been imprisoned.
Then they heard heavy footsteps from the corridor, Knave jumped up and drew his gun as a large robot walked in.
"Hey. Don't shoot," the creature howled, growled, whispered, "Jay. Your old pal."
"You look...different." Altia said.
"I know," Jay said, "This body looked a lot smaller in the simulation."
Jay was now a little taller than Knave or Altia and had a skin of the strange, alien, bronze metal. His face was nothing like it had been before. It was a knobbly cylinder with sensors scattered around, seemingly randomly. His hands were different too, long and like spider legs, on the end of skeletal arms.
"It's quite an ugly mug, I know," Jay said, in his new, alien, voice, "It's going to take some getting used to."
"That voice too," Altia said.
"I like the voice," Jay growled, "I think it'll get me some respect at long last. No more stacking crates at a temporary logistics hub."
"Stacking crates?" Altia sounded confused, "I thought he was full AI."
"It's a long story," Knave said.
That night they went to sleep with full bellies and a slight feeling of hope. Jay stood guard as had become usual, and spent the time holding his new spidery fingers in front of his new sensors, waving them back and forth.
"It's like there are extra colors or something," he mumbled to himself, "I've never had sensors this good before."
He did some internal diagnostics and found a bunch of extra memory and neural networking had been provided for him. As soon as he noticed it, he felt himself sliding into it. He ran a few calculations in his new home, just to see how quickly he could now come up with an answer.
"I'm even thinking faster," he mumbled, though Knave and Altia were both sleeping and paying no attention to him, "Am I even me any more. That's the risk you run, I suppose, when you hop onto an alien operating table."
***
Knave was the first to wake up and, driven by habit, checked his elapsed sleep time. The counter told him he had been asleep for ten hours. His moving about woke Altia.
“Morning,” Jay said.
Neither replied. There was a pause, then Knave looked at Altia.
“Hey,” he said, “Jay has the same symbols on his chest as me.”
Altia nodded.
“Rort,” she said, “What are these symbols about?”
"It is an interface,” the AI replied, “An interface is required for some interactions with the technology here. Would you like an interface, Altia?"
There was a long silence as both Knave and Jay stared at Altia. At last she broke the silence with a single almost whispered word.
"Yes," she said.
A line appeared on the floor. Altia simply got up and followed it. Knave was following Altia before she had gone more than a few steps out of the room and Jay reluctantly, after a few moments, followed them. They had to go quite a way through the labyrinth before the line they were following faded away.
"Please enter the operating zone," Rort's voice requested.
Altia looked round in confusion, and an area of floor became illuminated. Glowing lines appeared and formed a small shape, and then the shape expanded to form a glowing gold hexagon. Altia walked to the hexagon and positioned herself in the center.
"What now?" she asked.
A small aperture opened in the ceiling above her, a hexagonal aperture, that grew larger and larger. Within the cavity were writhing tendrils of technology.
"This is what happened to you," Altia said.
"Next comes the flash," Knave said.
It was worse than Knave remembered. The flash was like lightning striking Altia's body. For a split second, tendrils of force played around her form, and then the energy was gone and she fell to the floor. Then came the second flash, more powerful than the first, making the body convulse. Altia lost consciousness for a few seconds, then stirred, groaned and picked herself up. She pulled at the fasteners on her shirt, pulled it open to expose a demure area of her upper chest, just below the clavicles. There were hieroglyphics there, more than on Knave's chest.
"Well that's strange," was Altia's only reaction.
She staggered a little and Knave took her arm.
"Come wit
h me," he said, "You need a rest."
She smiled and allowed herself to be supported a little as the two left the lab.
Jay was left behind, watching them go, but not particularly interested in accompanying them. After a while he looked over at the operating area. Jay walked around the center of the glowing hexagon. He looked down admiringly at his own symbols.
"These are different to the ones on Knave's chest and to Altia's," the robot said.
"Every interface is unique," Rort said.
"Unique?" Jay repeated.
"Yes, unique, but with pretty much the same functionality."
***
The interfaces led them to the most active areas of the structure, and drew them deeper and deeper in. Their research was fascinating and they really started to forget about their predicament.
Then, one morning, Knave woke to find Jay shaking his shoulder with those long, creepy spider fingers of his. The robot pressed Knave's gun into his hands, even before he was fully awake.
"We've got incoming hostiles, Knave," Jay said, "Don't ask me how I know. I just know."
"Wuh?"
"Buzzers," Jay said, "have breached our defenses. They are now spreading out throughout this level, and it is only a matter of time before they reach this position."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Knave asked, "I mean this is a nice gun, and I'm a pretty good shot, but we're talking about a Buzzer swarm up there. I'm a little hazy on the exact numbers required for a swarm, but I get the feeling it'll be enough to deal with us three."
The room was shaken by an explosion. A big one, big enough to wake Altia. She sat up, brushing dust from the ceiling from her hair, a confused expression on her face.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"Apparently," Knave said, with a calm he didn't feel, "the Buzzer swarm has found us."
"It has," Jay said in his alien voice, "And they'll be coming from that direction."
He pointed towards one of the corridor mouths leading into the room.
"But I thought they wouldn't be turning up for months," Altia said.
"Apparently," Jay said, “They have accelerated the schedule.”
Galaxy Dog Page 18