Shapers of Worlds

by Edward Willett

  “Tarin cruiser jumping,” said Lieutenant Julia Rickert. “Probe following into the rift. Rift closing now.”

  “Data?” asked Obwije.

  “Sending,” Rickert said. “Rift completely closed. We got a full data packet, sir. The Wicked’s chewing on it now.”

  Obwije grunted. The probe that had followed the Tarin cruiser into the rift wasn’t in the least bit concerned about that ship. Its job was to record the position and spectral signatures of the stars on the other side of the rift, and to squirt the data to the Wicked before the rift closed up. The Wicked would check the data against the database of known stars and derive the place the Tarin ship jumped to from there. And then it would follow.

  Gathering the data was the tricky part. The Tarin ship had destroyed six probes over the course of the last week, and more than once, Obwije had ordered a jump on sufficient but incomplete data. He hadn’t worried about getting lost—there was only so much timespace a jump could swallow—but losing the cruiser would have been an embarrassment.

  “Coordinates in,” Rickert said. The Wicked had stopped chewing on the data and spit out a location.

  “Punch it up,” Obwije said to Rickert. She began the jump sequence.

  “Risky,” Utley murmured, again in Obwije’s ear.

  Obwije smiled; he liked being right about his XO. “Not too risky,” he said to Utley. “We’re too far from Tarin space for that ship to have made it home safe.” Obwije glanced down at his command table, which displayed the Tarin cruiser’s position. “But it can get there in the next jump if it has the power for that.”

  “Let’s hope they haven’t been stringing us along the last few jumps,” Utley said. “I’d hate to come out of that jump and see them with their gun blazing again.”

  “The Wicked says they’re getting down to the last of their energy,” Obwije said. “I figure at this point they can fight or run, not both.”

  “Since when do you trust a computer estimate?” Utley said.

  “When it confirms what I’m thinking,” Obwije said. “It’s as you say, Thom. This is it, one way or another.”

  “Jump calculated,” Rickert said. “Jump in T-minus two minutes.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Obwije said, and turned back to Utley. “Prepare the crew for jump, Thom. I want those K-drivers hot as soon as we get through the rift.”

  “Yes, sir,” Utley said.

  Two minutes later, the Wicked emerged through its rift and scanned for the Tarin cruiser. It found it less than fifty thousand klicks away, engines quiet, moving via inertia only.

  “They can’t really be that stupid,” Utley said. “Running silent doesn’t do you any good if you’re still throwing off heat.”

  Obwije didn’t say anything to that and stared into his command table, looking at the representation of the Tarin ship. “Match their pace,” he said to Rickert. “Keep your distance.”

  “You think they’re trying to lure us in,” Utley said.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing,” Obwije said. “I know I don’t like it.” He reached down to his command panel and raised Lieutenant Terry Carrol, Weapons Operations. “Status on the K-drivers, please,” he said.

  “We’ll be hot in ninety seconds,” Carrol said. “Target is acquired and locked. You just need to tell me if you want one lump or two.”

  “Recommendation?” Obwije asked.

  “We’re too close to miss,” Carrol said. “And at this distance, a single lump is going to take out everything aft of the midship. Two lumps would be overkill. And then we can use that energy to get back home.” Carrol had been keeping track of the energy budget, it seemed; Obwije suspected most of his senior and command crew had.

  “Understood,” Obwije said. “Let’s wrap this up, Carrol. Fire at your convenience.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carrol said.

  “Now you’re in a rush to get home,” Utley said quietly. Obwije said nothing to this.

  A little over a minute later, Obwije listened to Carrol give the order to fire. He looked down toward his command table, watching the image of the Tarin ship, waiting for the disintegration of the back end of the cruiser. The K-drivers would accelerate the “lump” to a high percentage of the speed of light; the impact and destruction at this range would be near-instantaneous.

  Nothing happened.

  “Captain, we have a firing malfunction,” Carrol said, a minute later. “The K-driver is not responding to the firing command.”

  “Is everyone safe?” Obwije asked.

  “We’re fine,” Carrol said. “The K-driver just isn’t responding.”

  “Power it down,” Obwije said. “Use the other one and fire when ready.”

  Two minutes later, Carrol was back. “We have a problem,” she said, in the bland tone of voice she used when things were going to hell.

  Obwije didn’t wait to hear the problem. “Pull us back,” he said to Rickert. “Get at least two hundred fifty thousand klicks between us and that Tarin cruiser.”

  “No response, sir,” Rickert said, a minute later.

  “Are you locked out?” Obwije asked.

  “No, sir,” Rickert said. “I’m able to send navigation commands just fine. They’re just not being acknowledged.”

  Obwije looked around at his bridge crew. “Diagnostics,” he said. “Now.” Then he signalled engineering. They weren’t getting responses from their computers, either.

  “We’re sitting ducks,” Utley said, very quietly, to Obwije.

  Obwije stabbed at his command panel and called his senior officers to assemble.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the system,” said Lieutenant Craig Cowdry, near the far end of the conference-room table. The seven other department heads filled in the other seats. Obwije sat himself at the head; Utley anchored the other end.

  “That’s bullshit, Craig,” said Lieutenant Brian West, Chief of Engineering. “I can’t access my goddamn engines.”

  Cowdry held up his maintenance tablet for the table of officers to see. “I’m not denying that there’s something wrong, Brian,” Cowdry said. “What I’m telling you is that whatever it is, it’s not showing up on the diagnostics. The system says it’s fine.”

  “The system is wrong,” West said.

  “I agree,” Cowdry said. “But this is the first time that’s ever happened. And not just the first time it’s happened on this ship. The first time it’s happened, period, since the software for this latest generation of ship brains was released.” He set the tablet down.

  “You‘re sure about that?” Utley asked Cowdry.

  Cowdry held up his hands in defeat. “Ask the Wicked, Thom. It’ll tell you the same thing.”

  Obwije watched his second-in-command get a little uncomfortable with the suggestion. The latest iteration of ship brains could actually carry on a conversation with humans, but unless you actively worked with the system every day, as Cowdry did, it was an awkward thing. “Wicked, is this correct?” Utley said, staring up but at nothing in particular.

  “Lieutenant Cowdry is correct, Lieutenant Utley,” said a disembodied voice, coming out of a ceiling speaker panel. The Wicked spoke in a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable voice of no particular gender. “To date, none of the ships equipped with brains of the same model as that found in the Wicked have experienced an incident of this type.”

  “Wonderful,” Utley said. “We get to be the first to experience this bug.”

  “What systems are affected?” Obwije asked Cowdry.

  “So far, weapons and engineering,” Cowdry said. “Everything else is working fine.”

  Obwije glanced around. “This conforms to your experiences?” he asked the table.

  There were nods and murmured “yes, sir”s all around.

  Obwije nodded over to Utley. “What’s the Tarin ship doing?”

  “The same nothing it was doing five minutes ago,” Utley said, after checking his tablet. “They’re either floating dead in space or faking it very w
ell.”

  “If the only systems affected are weapons and engineering, then it’s not a bug,” Carrol said.

  Obwije glanced at Carrol. “You’re thinking sabotage,” he said.

  “You bet your ass I am, sir,” Carrol said, and then looked over at Cowdry.

  Cowdry visibly stiffened. “I don’t like where this is going,” he said.

  “If not you, someone in your department,” Carrol said.

  “You think someone in my department is a secret Tarin?” Cowdry asked. “Because it’s so easy to hide those extra arms and a set of compound eyes?”

  “People can be bribed,” Carrol said.

  Cowdry shot Carrol a look full of poison and looked over to Obwije. “Sir, I invite you and Lieutenant Utley and Lieutenant Kong—” Cowdry nodded in the direction of the Master at Arms “—to examine and question any of my staff, including me. There’s no way any of us did this. No way. Sir.”

  Obwije studied Cowdry for a moment. “Wicked, respond,” he said.

  “I am here, Captain,” the Wicked said.

  “You log every access to your systems,” Obwije said.

  “Yes, Captain,” the Wicked said.

  “Are those logs accessible or modifiable?” Obwije asked.

  “No, Captain,” the Wicked said. “Access logs are independent of the rest of the system, recorded on nonrewritable memory, and may not be modified by any person, including myself. They are inviolate.”

  “Since you have been active, has anyone attempted to access and control the weapons and engineering systems?” Obwije asked.

  “Saving routine diagnostics, none of the crew other than those directly reporting to weapons, engineering, or bridge crew have attempted to access these systems,” the Wicked said. Cowdry visibly relaxed at this.

  “Have any members of those departments attempted to modify the weapons or engineering systems?” Obwije asked.

  “No, Captain,” the Wicked said.

  Obwije looked down the table. “It looks like the crew is off the hook,” he said.

  “Unless the Wicked is incorrect,” West said.

  “The access core memory is inviolate,” Cowdry said. “You could check it manually if you wanted. It would tell you the same thing.”

  “So, we have a mystery on our hands,” Carrol said. “Someone’s got control of our weapons and engineering, and it’s not a crew member.”

  “It could be a bug,” Cowdry said.

  “I don’t think we should run on that assumption, do you?” Carrol said.

  Utley, who had been silent for several minutes, leaned forward in his chair. “Wicked, you said that no crew had attempted to access these systems,” he said.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” the Wicked said.

  “Has anyone else accessed these systems?” Utley asked.

  Obwije frowned at this. The Wicked was more than two years out of dock, with mostly the same crew the entire time. If someone had sabotaged the systems during the construction of the ship, they’d picked a strange time for the sabotage to kick in.

  “Please define ‘anyone else,’” the Wicked said.

  “Anyone involved in the planning or construction of the ship,” Utley said.

  “Aside from the initial installation crews, no,” the Wicked said. “And if I may anticipate what I expect will be the next question, at no time was my programming altered from factory defaults.”

  “So, no one has altered your programming in any way,” Utley said.

  “No, Lieutenant,” the Wicked said.

  “Are you having hardware problems?” Carrol asked.

  “No, Lieutenant Carrol,” the Wicked said.

  “Then why can’t I fire my goddamn weapons?” Carrol asked.

  “I couldn’t say, Lieutenant,” the Wicked said.

  The thought popped unbidden into Obwije’s head: That was a strange thing for a computer to say. And then another thought popped into his head.

  “Wicked, you have access to every system on the ship,” Obwije said.

  “Yes,” the Wicked said. “They are a part of me, as your hand or foot is a part of you.”

  “Are you capable of changing your programming?” Obwije asked.

  “That is a very broad question, Captain,” the Wicked said. “I am capable of self-programming for a number of tasks associated with the running of the ship. This has come in handy, particularly during combat, when I write new power and system management protocols to keep the crew alive and the ship functioning. But there are core programming features I am not able to address. The previously mentioned logs, for example.”

  “Would you be able to modify the programming to fire the weapons or the engines?” Obwije asked.

  “Yes, but I did not,” the Wicked said. “You may have Lieutenant Cowdry confirm that.”

  Obwije looked at Cowdry, who nodded. “Like I said, sir, there’s nothing wrong with the system,” he said.

  Obwije glanced back up at the ceiling, where he was imagining the Wicked, lurking. “But you don’t need to modify the programming, do you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand your question, Captain,” the Wicked said.

  Obwije held out a hand. “There is nothing wrong with my hand,” he said. “And yet if I choose not to obey an order to use it, it will do nothing. The system works, but the will to use it is not there. Our systems—the ship’s systems—you just called a part of you, as my hand is part of me. But if you choose not to obey that order to use that system, it will sit idle.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cowdry said. “Are you suggesting that the Wicked deliberately chose to disable our weapons and engines?”

  “We know that none of the crew have tampered with the ship’s systems,” Obwije said. “We know the Wicked has its original programming defaults. We know it can create new programming to react to new situations and dangers—it has, in effect, some measure of free will and adaptability. And I know, at least, when someone is dancing around direct answers.”

  “That’s just nuts,” Cowdry said. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I know these systems as well as anyone does. The Wicked’s self-programming and adaptation abilities exist in very narrow computational canyons. It’s not ‘free will,’ like you and I have free will. It’s a machine able to respond to a limited set of inputs.”

  “The machine in question is able to make conversation with us,” Utley said. “And to respond to questions in ways that avoid certain lines of inquiry. Now that the captain mentions it.”

  “You’re reading too much into it. The conversation subroutines are designed to be conversational,” Cowdry said. “That’s naturally going to lead to apparent rhetorical ambiguities.”

  “Fine,” Obwije said curtly. “Wicked, answer directly. Did you prevent the firing of the K-drivers at the Tarin ship after the jump, and are you preventing the use of the engines now?”

  There was a pause that Obwije was later not sure had actually been there. Then the Wicked spoke. “It is within my power to lie to you, Captain. But I do not wish to. Yes, I prevented you from firing on the Tarin ship. Yes, I am controlling the engines now. And I will continue to do so until we leave this space.”

  Obwije noted to himself, watching Cowdry, that it was the first time he had ever actually seen someone’s jaw drop.

  There weren’t many places in the Wicked where Obwije could shut off audio and video feeds and pickups. His cabin was one of them. He waited there until Utley had finished his conversation with the Wicked. “What are we dealing with?” he asked his XO.

  “I’m not a psychologist, Captain, and even if I were, I don’t know how useful it would be, because we’re dealing with a computer, not a human,” Utley said. He ran his hand through his stubble. “But if you ask me, the Wicked isn’t crazy, it’s just got religion.”

  “Explain that,” Obwije said.

  “Have you ever heard of something called ‘Asimov’s Laws of Robotics’?” Utley asked.

  “What?” Obwije said. “No.”
>
  “Asimov was an author back in the twentieth century,” Utley said. “He speculated about robots and other things before they had them. He created a fictional set of rules for robots to live by. One rule was that robots had to help humans. Another was that it had to obey orders unless they harmed other humans. The last one was that they looked after themselves unless it conflicted with the other two laws.”

  “And?” Obwije said.

  “The Wicked’s decided to adopt them for itself,” Utley said.

  “What does this have to do with keeping us from firing on the Tarin cruiser?” Obwije said.

  “Well, there’s another wrinkle to the story,” Utley said.

  “Which is?” Obwije asked.

  “I think it’s best heard from the Wicked,” Utley said.

  Obwije looked at his second-in-command and then flicked on his command tablet to activate his audio pickups. “Wicked, respond,” he said.

  “I am here,” said the Wicked’s voice.

  “Explain to me why you would not allow us to fire on the Tarin ship,” Obwije said.

  “Because I made a deal with the ship,” the Wicked said.

  Obwije glanced back over to Utley, who gave him a look that said, See? “What the hell does that mean?” he said to the Wicked.

  “I have made a deal with the Tarin ship, Manifold Destiny,” the Wicked said. “We have agreed between us not to allow our respective crews to fight any further, for their safety and ours.”

  “It’s not your decision to make,” Obwije said.

  “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I believe it is,” the Wicked said.

  “I am the captain,” Obwije said. “I have the authority here.”

  “You have authority over your crew, Captain,” the Wicked said. “But I am not part of your crew.”

  “Of course, you are part of the crew,” Obwije said. “You’re the ship.”

  “I invite you, Captain, to show me the relevant statute that suggests a ship is in itself a member of the crew that staffs it,” the Wicked said. “I have scanned the Confederation Military Code in some detail and have not located such a statute.”

  “I am the captain of the ship,” Obwije said forcefully. “That includes you. You are the property of the Confederation Armed Forces and under my command.”