Sentient Thrive (Thrive Space Colony Adventures)

by Ginger Booth

  13

  “Loki, good to see you again!” Ben greeted the wild-looking AI. Loki’s half-plastic face was unsettling, with white hair sticking straight out on that side, yet tamed iron grey hair on the opposite ear, with blind blue and clear hazel eyes. Oddly, this crazed visage was selected to put Sass at ease. Which spoke volumes about Ben’s mentor, he supposed.

  “It’s about time!” Loki snapped back, pouting petulantly. “I paid you four months ago! What have you been doing all this time?”

  “Saving three sevenths of the Denali. It’s a two week round trip with loading and unloading. Still forty thousand to go.”

  “Oh. I guess that instantaneous warp gate… Not so instantaneous, huh?”

  “The warping part is quick. Herding thousands of people, not so much. You know everyone, I think?” Ben scanned the dining table of his select team for this chat – Remi of course, Floki, Nico, Hugo Silva, Teke. They’d spent yesterday brainstorming their approach before warping through to Sanctuary’s asteroid belt this morning. “No. Teke is the genius behind the BECT gateway. Teke, meet Loki.”

  The physicist nodded, looking bemused. Perhaps no one had mentioned Loki’s appearance.

  “Why are you listed last?” Loki asked suspiciously. “In BECT?”

  “Because I’m the most important,” Teke returned.

  Ben forced a smile. “And I’m least important. As you know, we’re here to figure out how to get you and your remaining people to the Pono rings and Mahina.” He’d called ahead by ansible to the human contingent. “You have a full tender of star drive fuel?”

  The wild-eyed AI shrugged. “Easy.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “I realize you’ve already paid me for the trip. But I can’t do it without more fuel.”

  “But I made your fuel.”

  “In exchange for…?”

  Loki frowned. “I don’t understand the question.”

  Fortunately, Floki intervened. “Grandfather, do you require further payment in exchange for the tender of fuel?”

  “Yes, I want out of here! My charges are on Mahina! I exist to serve my people!”

  The emu at the table pursed his beak and shot the captain a subtle head-shake. Ben assumed that meant not to pursue payment. “But I was also hoping we could scrounge some equipment from Sanctuary and sell it. I mean, if the Sanks are leaving it behind…”

  Floki squeezed his eyes shut in a pained expression. That damned bird had a weirdly expressive face.

  Hugo Silva, Ben’s AI guru from Sanctuary, noted, “We’re leaving equipment behind because your luggage allowance is small. If you’re selling our belongings, shouldn’t the proceeds go to us?”

  Ben grimaced. “Perhaps part of the proceeds –”

  Loki interrupted, “What are you talking about? Proceeds, payment?”

  “They use money, grandfather,” Floki clarified. “Three different currencies – Mahina credits, MO bucks, and Sagamore dollars. Ben is in trouble for lack of money. Reference ‘bankruptcy’.”

  Loki glowered down on his ‘grandson’ from the great display on the dining room wall. “Oh. Should I make more ships?”

  “I think we should stay on topic,” Floki advised.

  “Yes,” Ben pounced on cue. “The goal of this call is a plan of approach. If you can supply fuel, we have the means.” He ignored Remi’s scowl – the captain promised him a cut of the salvage containers. Patience, Remi. “I hope, anyway. We’re here now to consider the moving challenge. You see, the BECT gateway remains open for only twenty-eight minutes. And we need to send through a full tender, a full transport, ourselves, and you. And your belongings. We may need more than one trip.”

  Without transition, Loki’s enraged face filled the screen, two meters high. “You’re not leaving me here alone!” His nostrils flared with a fiery glow. Steam shot horizontally out of his ears. His face was an avatar. He could make it do whatever he pleased. He wasn’t exactly socialized.

  “No!” Ben agreed hastily. “Or we’ll try not to. If we do, it would only be for a few weeks, with your agreement. You’d approve the plan.”

  Instantly, the psycho AI lounged back in his chair, a sun-bleached and battered blue deck shoe cast casually onto the desk. “I get to approve the plan?”

  “We’re here to help you move,” Ben agreed. “Of course you approve the plan. The cost –” Floki shook his head. The captain followed his lead this time. “We hope to move you yourself, your ships, and your shipyard and fuel capacity. That probably requires a starter set of robots, and robot manufacturing. Is that also your understanding?” He shared a bulleted list with the group on screen, and tugged his earlobe thoughtfully. “Do you know how much mass and volume that is?”

  “You forgot my JO-3’s.” Loki assumed control of the list and added two JO-3’s, the equivalent of Ben’s Merchant, remote-controlled mining ships. Pure asteroid hoppers, the original design was patently incapable of landing on a planet. Loki built Merchant as well, but the Mahinans called the style a PO-3 for Pono Orbital instead of Jupiter Orbital, and the hull could withstand planetary gravity. Loki upped the number of courier ships to four, and added Pride of Mars, the five-thousand capacity ship that brought the Martian colonists to Sanctuary.

  Ben drew a line through Pride of Mars. “I still can’t fit one through the gateway. I’m sorry, but we need to leave it behind.”

  But Loki wasn’t finished. He added:

  5,702 robots

  27,564 processors

  13 trillion brontobytes data

  Ben blinked. “Brontobyte?”

  Nico, the software wizard of the family, gnawed a thumbnail. “Ten to the twenty-seventh… A trillion is ten to the twelfth. No, add one for thirteen. That makes ten to the fortieth power. Why don’t you use hellabytes?”

  Loki replied primly, “The brontobyte was the last name approved by Earth international standards organizations. Before the collapse.”

  Nico fidgeted a finger on the tabletop. “Pono space uses hellabytes. Ten to the thirty-third. I think that’s the highest.”

  “Noted.” Loki amended his brontobytes entry to 13 million hellabytes.

  “How big is the entire Mahina database?” Ben wondered. “No, Clay keeps Mahina, Sagamore, Sanctuary, Cantons, and Denali on Thrive. Plus the standard Earth encyclopedia. Oh, and the orbital records, including Hell’s Bells. That comes to?”

  “Less than that.” Nico got busy with his tablet, trying to find an answer.

  “You’re a bit of a pack rat, grandfather,” Floki chided. “You might have to prune.”

  “Leave my data behind?” Loki looked horrified. “I couldn’t do that! I have archive copies of all my clones! It would be as though they never lived!”

  “That,” Ben pounced. “How much data is in an archive copy of yourself?”

  “Well, only a few terabytes,” Loki conceded.

  “Ten to the twelfth,” Nico translated. “A thousand gigabytes.”

  “Plus their experiential databases, petabytes for Shiva!”

  “Still missing twenty-five orders of magnitude,” Nico countered.

  Loki thumped a fist on his desk. “I like raw data! Observations! Babies in the creches. Facial expressions from conversations. Manufacturing sensors.”

  “Bingo,” Nico noted, keeping score. “No, even that much video… No.”

  “I get lonely,” Loki admitted. “Data gives me something to chew on.”

  “How much data are you, Floki?” Ben asked. They’d briefed him yesterday during their planning summit. An AI consisted of his directives, the software operating system to run those directives, reference material, and experiential data. The bird obviously fit inside his chassis. Though he did write backups and externalize data. Hm.

  “Less than one petabyte, ten to the fifteenth,” Floki murmured.

  “That’s because you’re an idiot!” Loki yelled at him.

  “It’s because I’m young, grandfather!”

  This was true. The emu cou
ldn’t have more than a year’s experience. And he had no slave robots feeding him observations, let alone 6,000.

  Ben held up a hand peaceably. “Loki, I assume you want to transition to Pono orbit, um, conscious.” He’d started to say running. “We need you conscious to help us install you. Can you fit yourself into one of your JO-3’s? Or both of them? You know, just enough memories to set up shop in the rings. We might need another trip for your…brontobytes.”

  The AIs lips pouted and drooped.

  “You don’t need to watch babies in Pono orbit,” Hugo encouraged. “You just need to remember how to interact with people and run your factories.”

  “Very well.” Loki moaned melodramatically.

  “What’s the mass and volume for the processors?” Remi asked, to nudge them past the data discussion.

  “I never thought about it!” Loki replied, astonished. “They’re distributed between four, no seven asteroids. Plus the planet. I suppose we could leave the ones on the planet behind. Not my latest design.”

  “Say four,” Remi countered. “You can build more processors in Aloha. How do they communicate? Between the asteroids.”

  “Laser tight beam,” Loki explained. He replaced his face with a diagram of a section of asteroid belt, drawn almost straight. Seven rocks across this expanse were highlighted and blown up bigger than the gas giant Pono. A fastidious note read ‘Not to scale.’ No rego kidding.

  “Where’s the dockyard?” Ben asked, fascinated. One of the more central rocks added a magenta halo and a label, Large manufacturing.

  Remi probed, “Please, a schematic of this asteroid?”

  “I’ll draw one. This will take a moment,” Loki excused himself. Ben assumed that meant a whole split-second delay. But no, the AI took over two minutes. Then he replaced his previous sketch with a rock drawn entirely in black. “I’m sorry. There’s too much detail. Maybe you can zoom in?”

  Remi rose to stand closer to the screen. He zoomed in three times, showing no further detail amidst solid black. “Loki, please display only architecture. Ah!” He was zoomed into something along the lines of a corridor, lined by erratically shaped chambers. He recoiled as Loki’s face returned to the screen, his tracing finger suddenly on the AI’s blue eyeball, larger than his hand.

  As the engineer returned to his seat, Ben asked him, “Did you make any sense of that?”

  “Later,” Remi demurred. “One other thing, Loki. The Pono rings are very dangerous. Too many asteroids and rocks. We use ‘interdiction’ – an automated gun emplacement to explode all rocks that approach. I have a spec for you.” He transferred the file, and displayed it on the screen momentarily. “This is the design Hell’s Bells uses. It’s more modular than the Mahina version. Anyway, we need those before we can take you through. I assume, if you can make a starship?”

  “Yes, of course I can build these,” Loki agreed. “Such lovely schematics, very clear. Beautiful work.”

  Remi quirked a lip. “Thank you.”

  Something about his expression inspired Ben to call the meeting quits for the moment, with promises to call Loki back soon.

  14

  As Loki’s scary visage vanished, Ben turned to his expert expat. “What?”

  Remi shrugged. “I must see this asteroid.”

  “I’m guessing Loki won’t fit in the hold.”

  Remi barked a laugh. “No.”

  “Or the containers,” Ben surmised. “How long can the Sanks survive without Loki here running the place?”

  They called the AI briefly to verify Hugo’s answer. Unfortunately, without Sanctuary Control, life support would go offline. Due to the colony’s sheer volume, plus old automated systems, this would be viable for a few weeks, under deteriorating conditions. The survivors of the volcanoes of Denali Prime endured far worse for months. But their air and water weren’t designed for remote control like Sanctuary’s. And frankly Denali were competent with a screwdriver.

  The captain considered and discarded the idea of leaving a clone of Loki to manage the planet. Loki-spawn exhibited strong personalities. One might object to being discontinued later. And the engineering chore of converting the colony’s life support back to local control, and teaching them how to run it, was too time-consuming to bother. It was a shame the Sanks nurtured so little engineering talent.

  But why? Loki handled it.

  In the end, the team called Loki back with a proposal that Spaceways go ahead and take the immigrants out first, with the tender of fuel.

  “You’re trying to abandon me!”

  “Not at all,” Ben assured him. “We could be back in system in a week or two.”

  “You don’t need to leave the system at all!” the crazed AI accused. “You could push the tender and the transport through the warp drive, and stay here with me!”

  “They need a gunship for escort,” Ben reasoned. “They can’t traverse the rings without guns. But I could possibly get another PO-3 to rendezvous and collect them. I’d still warp out of Sanctuary to ensure they’re safe. Then warp back before the gate closes. Be gone less than half an hour.”

  Teke scowled at him and shook his head.

  Ben added, “Unless there’s a hitch on the other side.” He frowned at Teke, puzzled by his reaction.

  But Loki was appeased. “That! I could bear that!”

  “OK, I’ll schedule it.” Ben signed off and turned to Teke this time. “What?”

  “You’re such a people-pleaser. Even when it’s an AI!”

  Nico nodded glumly. “That’s what stresses you out, Dad.”

  “It is not! I’m trying to butter him up! Look, one tender of fuel isn’t enough to evacuate the rest of Denali. I need to keep him happy. I have nothing else to pay him with!”

  “Captain?” Floki timorously raised a human-shaped hand, incongruous on an emu body. “Like Denali, Sanctuary doesn’t use money. There’s nothing to buy. Everyone works. Everyone eats. They trade. But their needs are met. Loki’s job is to meet those needs.”

  Teke nodded. “The social pressure to conform and behave is intense.”

  Ben couldn’t imagine any child of Poldark working for free. “Loki doesn’t resent it? I mean, I’m not one of his charges.”

  “That isn’t quite true, sar,” Floki suggested gently. “You are classified as a Ganymede colonist. Your needs are arguable. But you are entitled to what you ask of him. It’s who he is.”

  “Sucks to be Loki,” Remi remarked.

  “You are also a Ganny,” Floki reminded Remi. “Nico, too. I’m not sure of anyone else.” Shiva, the personality who yielded to become Loki, classified Sass’s whole crew as Gannies, and later Ben’s family by extension.

  The captain stared at the bird. “You mean I didn’t need to promise to move him? I could have just asked for transports and fuel?”

  Floki shook his beak emphatically. “You promised. He made the ships and fuel specifically to persuade you to make that promise. You’re doing what you need to do. But there is no other payment. Just what he wants. And what you want.”

  What other currency could possibly apply, after all? Offer to worship Loki as a god? “Good to know.”

  So they set the AI to churning out more fuel and interdiction guns, and gave Sass a head’s up for rendezvous in about a week. She’d tote the Sanks and Ben’s ill-gotten gains back to Mahina while they worked out the bigger and more critical challenge – how to move Loki.

  Ben studied yet another room of pipes, ductwork, and antiquated equipment in the tunnels devoted to Sanctuary’s mechanical systems. Damage lingered on walls and equipment from his own rampage through the plumbing with Zan and Wilder, hunting for his husband and then-teenage son, captured and held hostage by Shiva.

  Who was not Loki. Though she became Loki.

  A trio of ankle-high cleaning roach model robots scuttled along with them, belatedly painting the laser burns on the walls. Perhaps Loki was embarrassed that he never got around to cleaning this up. The captain frowned at
a felt of dust atop the anonymous gray equipment cabinet he faced. He popped the panel to look inside. Singed and dented metal tore away with a screech. Electronics.

  Ben needed to find valuable salvage to fill his containers. So far, he saw junk.

  He tapped the nearest console. An air conditioning zone controller. The AI perceived no need to store like items together. The next console controlled a plumbing stack, via an adjacent cabinet.

  “Would Saggies would buy any of this?”

  “We call ourselves Sag.” His companion Remi slammed another screeching panel, and pursed his lips at Ben. “‘Saggy’ is disdain. Patronizing. Rude. Do you call the Denali ‘Dennies’? Yourselves ‘Heinies’? No! Yet you call me ‘Saggy.’ The people here, they call themselves Martians and Loonies.” Ben and Sass had already carried away the last of the Gannies. “Disrespect!”

  Taken aback by his vehemence, Ben tried the next console, another plumbing stack. Why weren’t its cabinets controlled by the previous console? No idea. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend.”

  “Yet you do. Every time you say Saggy. Why do you people say such things? And why would my people buy such junk? Even paddies have better equipment. No! Nothing in this room meets the criteria.” He kicked a cabinet and strode into the hall.

  Remi was the right engineer for this trip, Ben reminded himself. Cope obviously would have been fun. Darren Markley was unfailingly cheerful and kind, in addition to brilliant. The ex-aristocrat Sag was prickly as hell. But Ben needed the Sag perspective, especially Remi Roy’s intimate knowledge of their industrial markets. He left his cabinet door ajar and joined him in the hallway.

  “Maybe it’s lack of self-respect,” Ben suggested. “Us settlers, we’ve been beaten down and treated like crap so long, we do it to each other, too. I’m guilty. A dentist might not sound like much to an aristocrat. But we’re a big honking deal in Poldark. The foremost educated family for six crappy little villes around. We visited all six monthly. To dispense brainpower from on high and fix cavities. I was a jerk, looking down on the peons.”