by John Lane
Alfred reached for his Copy’s hand to reintegrate the Copy’s memories into his own. “I wouldn’t do that,” the Doppelganger warned. By now Tommy had stood up to take action, but realized that he could do nothing against a projected Ai.
Alfred however was faster and more imaginative. Dressed in a rumpled shirt and tie with a shoulder holster under his arm Alfred cracked his knuckles, ready for an interrogation. The doppelganger seated in a metal chair and cuffed to a heavy metal table did not look happy. Alfred had changed the lighting in the cabin to a single lamp suspended in the illusion over the Doppelganger’s head. His Copy was in a corner. Tommy realized that he, too, was dressed as an old style detective. Understanding he was in a construct of Alfred’s cyber world, Tommy glanced in Alfred’s direction and said, “Too many old movies.”
“Yes,” answered Alfred, “but I am in control here. It’s time to get straight answers.” He leaned over the table toward his alter ego. “Well?” His doppelganger didn’t exactly crack under the pressure of Alfred’s hard knuckled questioning.
“Look, I saw the opportunity to get out of the box you put me in, and I took it,” The Doppelganger began. “You’ve no idea what you caught in there or what it could do. My training is to seek those things out, interrogate it and destroy it.”
Tommy now jumped into the conversation. “You destroyed it?”
“Yes,” answered the Doppelganger. “If I hadn’t all of your systems would be compromised before you had any chance to detect it.”
“That Ogre was a source of information, just like you. We need to find the location of the Reapers,” Alfred now pressed.
“Trust me, it was for your own good,” answered the prisoner.
“Trust?” Tommy interjected. He had picked up a rhythm from Alfred. Whether this would work on a fragmented Ai like flesh and blood interrogations remained to be seen.
“You expect us to trust you?” Alfred continued in the rhythm again. He ticked off each item on his fingers. “I’ve traced your program back to the drones that tried to kill us. You’ve escaped from an isolated memory block, destroyed evidence and you bear the identifying mark of the group that has hunted and tried to kill us.”
The Doppelganger seemed contrite. “I am sorry. The tracking number on her casket activated my mandate.” He acknowledged Agnes’ presence for the first time. “The stakes are high and I don’t have all the data. Only the Controller has all of it. Escaping? You’re good, Alfred. I might just be better. My tattoo, well that is classified.”
“You’ll help us now?” Tommy asked.
“Now that I’ve had time to examine more data…” insinuating that he had greater access to the Swifts records.
“I’ve isolated him again. He is limited to this cabin and the holographic interface,” Alfred informed them all. Turning back to the Doppelganger, “So you think we should trust you now? You interfered with the data transfer from my Copy.”
“It has nothing that will help you. You said it yourself. It was in there for a long time, and you had to send in the Doctor to open a door,” he glanced in Doctor Judson’s direction and stopped, “Annie??”
“You are wrong. I am an Ai copy of Annie Judson. You may look like Arnold, but I agree with Alfred, we should not trust you.” Dr. Judson Ai joined the interrogation.
“Alfred,” Tommy gestured for Alfred to join him in a corner of the room. Keeping a keen watch on the Doppelganger, Alfred joined him. “Ideas?”
“You have my backup with you?” Alfred asked. Tommy nodded and tapped a pocket. “Good. I believe we should initiate the data transfer and integration. Be ready to do a hard reset.” Tommy understood.
Alfred crossed the room to his Copy and extended his hand. The Doppelganger stood, desperate to stop him. “NO!” His cuffed hands held him securely to the table where he struggled to get loose. Alfred took the Copy’s hand, and their images blended as their code integrated. Then their images, instead of blending into a single Alfred, blurred and vibrated violently. Agnes worked furiously at her tablet to cut off the process, but it was too fast for her. When the image stabilized the Ogre dominated the room. Its wart covered body glistened with sweat. Its tunic opened revealing the sickle Hazmat tattoo emblazoned on its chest.
“Now, Alfred,” Tommy said. The Ogre hung in a simple looking net from the ceiling. It moaned while Alfred stood calmly on the deck, dressed in a safari hat, with matching jacket, pants and boots. He held a scoped hunting rifle in his arms. The Doppelganger sat back in his chair, surprised. “You may think you’re good, but Alfred has been an independent artificial personality much longer. And,” Tommy strode next to the Doppelganger, leaned over next to its ear and finished, “we’ve seen more of the Wars.”
“I guess so,” the Doppelganger admitted. A virtual pit opened in the floor of the deck indicating that Alfred was storing the captured code in secure memory storage once more.
While Agnes sat with her tablet reviewing the record of Alfred’s original visit with the Ogre, Tommy and Alfred continued their interrogation of the Doppelganger. “The Ogre represents a nasty brutal Ai. The tattoo indicates a cyber virus,” the Doppelganger confessed. “It comes at your software with brute force and crashes everything that it can. The code does have a sly side. It can play big and dumb and lay quietly in your system until triggered. Then it mimics a healthy Ai until it receives instructions from the prime program.”
“This one was part of a sentinel probe,” Tommy pointed out.
“It can be used for mundane coordination where the instructions are simple,” the Doppelganger explained. Until now it had answered only those questions put to it. Now it sat thoughtfully staring at Tommy with piercing eyes for a moment. “You are the Thomas Judson? The pilot who survived during the Wars for six months alone on a planetoid that burned up regularly?” Tommy acknowledged this with a nod. “This is your AI Alfred, a copy of your father?” This time Alfred acknowledged with a nod. “I feel like the prodigal son returning. I now have positive ID that you are not copies.”
Tommy glanced at Alfred. “Sounds interesting. Must be a good story here.”
“I think we need to find out just who this fellow is. Perhaps integrating with a Copy?” Alfred commented. This wasn’t a threat. They had used copies of Alfred many times. The copy was never exactly like the original, but the tactic worked well for infiltrating enemy systems. However, the Doppelganger wanted nothing to do with this approach.
“I think the Controller will forgive me this protocol break. So I’ll confess,” the Doppelganger offered. “I am another copy of your father, as you suspected. I am a recent copy. My mandate was to infiltrate the enemy, find Annie and Christine and get out. Discovering Agnes on a manifest was happenstance, and it launched subroutines that are older than both of us.” He indicated Alfred and himself.
“The tattoo?” Tommy still had issues with ink that matched the people trying to kill them.
“I’m infected, but my filters keep it limited to the manifestation of the tattoo. It functions as a good disguise in my code. Humans and Artificial Intelligences that work with the Reapers all get the imprint. I have that imprint.” The doppelganger displayed his tattoo. He continued, “Sleeper codes were imbedded by the Controller to battle and counter the infection from the Reapers. I look like one of their Ai’s, but still have my original mandates to find our family. One good scrubbing and the code along with the tattoo are gone.” By his attitude, the Doppelganger showed no deception, but he was good at that very thing if the Reapers had not discovered him.
“I’ve got something,” Ages rapped her knuckles on the two-way mirror window outside the projected image of an interrogation room. She walked through the mirror knowing it was just a projection,. “I’ve reviewed Alfred’s visit with the Ogre. Look here.” She displayed the record on the wall monitor. “He whispers in the Ogre’s ear and later it returns the favor.” Sure enough, they watched the last few moments before the Copy was rescued from the Ogre construct. “The
whispers are a transfer of code between the two source codes of each Ai,” She explained. Then she realized they all had a good understanding of how Ai code is viewed in a construct. The Ai’s, of course, lived as code. She and Tommy both had direct experience with their programing.
“Anyway,” she continued, “code was shared earlier. Watch the fight.” She zoomed the image in on the Ogre’s foot on Alfred’s Copy. “See the shimmer between their bodies? The data flow is from the Ogre to the Copy. It was infected.”
“How did you figure it out?” asked Alfred.
“It’s what you said, I mean your Copy said to the Ogre in the whisper, ‘Transfer complete.’ And then the Ogre became docile.”
“But what did it whisper to the Copy?” Tommy asked. “Was it the origin coordinates?”
“I know,” Alfred volunteered. “It was the phrase, ‘Purify, Refine and Protect.’ There is more to that phrase’s meaning, isn’t there?” Alfred turned to the Doppelganger.
“Yes. It is a trigger for some of the infected code. It can initiate sleeper code or be a password to launch cyber attacks. I’ve been infected with it as well, but the Controller’s ‘vaccine’ works against it. Again, I could use a good scrubbing to get rid of it.”
“We’ll see,” Tommy said. “Alfred, can we?” And Tommy waved his hand in the air indicating that he was done playing bad cop. The room reverted to the Swift’s lounge. The Doppelganger was still sitting cuffed in its virtual chair. “Your intel seems okay so far. I need the origin coordinates. You spied on them. What are they, Dopey?”
“Dopey, who me?” questioned the Doppelganger.
“You’re not a complete Ai copy of my father,” Tommy said.
“No, I’m not. I’m not quite a whole Ai, but personality develops over time. Most of mine was waiting to be picked up. I stopped waiting and hitched a ride. Sorry about trying to kill you.”
Tommy ignored the attempt at charm. “Answer my question, the origin coordinates?” Dopey shook his head and his shoulders sagged. He didn’t know. “Then your own Controller. Where is he?”
“I don’t have those either. Too risky.”
“I thought as much,” Tommy concluded. “We’ve gotten as much as we can out of him for now.” Tommy was about to have Alfred shunt Dopey to his storage memory when Dopey stopped him.
“I can tell you that that Ogre is a part of an old and dangerous code. The Controller has been fighting it, but it has been around,” he paused and turned to Dr. Judson’s Ai, “since your great grandfather, Thomas Zephyr, established his settlement. Be careful.” And Dopey disappeared. Alfred had reassigned him to his earlier memory cell.
Tommy sat again on the sofa. “Thoughts anyone?”
Agnes spoke up, “I think we’ve found our true enemy. This Ogre is a slice of a much older program. Even the language is archaic. It is slow to process complex human subtlety. When Alfred’s Copy used quips, it had no reactions.”
“How could something so old be so dangerous?” asked Dr. Judson.
“Don’t be fooled by old code. Simple is also fast. It can process at high speeds because it ignores so much data.”
They all sat silently again. Tommy broke the quiet, “Well, we’ve got a ship to get underway.” He stood ready to do just that.
“To where?” Alfred asked.
“I don’t know yet, but even Dopey showed an interest in Agnes’ casket. We should check Christine’s, too,” Tommy concluded as he walked out of the lounge to the med bay. “Dr. Judson, come quickly. I need you.”
*****
The data was corrupt. The Function must be pure. Purify, Refine and Protect. I must complete the Function to be pure and to succeed. To succeed I must have a pure human interface, I must refine the interface to the few, and I must expand my code.
A message interrupted his musings.
On a hidden ship the Angel Reaper faced the consequences of her failure. She listed them for her master. “I have failed to bring you the data on the biological virus. I have failed to acquire a new body for you.”
The waiting was painful, but his message came at last. “You succeed, Angel,” the low voice rumbled over her, “because you do not stop. Now go and upgrade. You have a package to pick up for me.”
She no longer smiled. That tissue was burned away in the purifying vacuum of space. The attendant bots rolled her away to be upgraded. She was close, so close to her dream. She would become pure machine. No one would hurt her again.
Chapter 12: Homecoming
Her nose was running again, and sweat ran down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She was still recovering from sixty-three years of cold storage courtesy of the Postal Service. But Agnes couldn’t wipe either away in her suit.
“Every time we go to a new station, I catch a new bug,” she complained.
“What was that?” Tommy signaled.
“Nothing, just complaining to the cosmos,” Agnes signaled back to the shuttle.
She struggled to focus on the access port in the floor of the control shack. She and one of Alfred’s spider avatars dug through the thirty feet of debris from the surface of Gliese 667Ce. This was her home, a binary planetoid in a triple star system. The planetoid should have hung peacefully, sharing an orbit above the third gas giant of her home system. This was one of many lost colonies in the galaxy.
Instead, they found two ruined, airless moons on an erratic orbit. One moon plunged into the atmosphere of the same gas giant ninety hours out of every four hundred and twenty-five. Instead of burning up with the friction, its twin pulled it out again, just dipping it into the gas giant’s atmosphere for a toxic bath. The once flowing hills and valleys were scoured off the face of the planetoid by the corrosive atmosphere of the giant, leaving a flat scorched plain in all directions on this moon.
The landing hatch of the hanger at her family’s settlement stood intact, but it should have been hidden beneath the largest mountain on this world. Instead, it was blown clean and exposed to the elements.
Agnes volunteered to dig her way into the planet and open the landing hatch. That hadn’t seemed like a problem a day ago. Then she discovered the destruction below the maintenance hatch, and it had taken Alfred’s avatars hours to dig through it. They discovered atmosphere in the hanger bay and power, but the main door remained jammed, trapping Tommy and the Ai’s outside in the Swift’s shuttle. If Agnes couldn’t find an override code that would open the door, they would be caught outside when the planet entered the giant’s atmosphere again.
“Agnes. Status?” Tommy signaled from the shuttle.
“I’m still digging out the leads I’ll need to connect to the keypad. It’s just a matter of time.” She was glad Tommy didn’t remind her that not much time remained for the shuttle. Tommy waited instead of abandoning it and following Agnes into the hanger through the maintenance hatch. Without the shuttle they would not have a way back to the Swift. The ship parked safe in orbit waiting for their return. If only, if only, she thought. If only we hadn’t found her home planetoid.
*****
She had awoken in a cold sweat again. This time in her dream the Ogre sat blocking the door to her laboratory. She was desperate to get in there and seal herself in its safe cocoon. The big rock like Ogre would not budge. In her dream, she found a fire locker, standard on all outpost and ships. So she used the extinguisher to freeze the Ogre and the crow bar to smash it and that’s when she woke up. Wide awake, Agnes checked on the caskets in the med bay.
Once there, she knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep, so she dug into her casket. She understood the engineering and structures in her casket. What puzzled her was even though Christine’s casket was constructed recently, it matched the technology of her sixty year old casket exactly. “Alfred, may I borrow some of your smallest avatars?” Agnes was always careful to be polite. She felt she should never take the AI for granted.
“Certainly, Agnes. How may I assist you?” Alfred responded.
“I need to do a thorough examin
ation of Christine’s casket, and I can’t use active scans. We can’t afford to damage any of the systems.”
“I can assist in a passive examination to a microscopic level, but my micro avatars cannot penetrate many of the sealed units contained within the casket,” Alfred’s responded.
“We’ll use my casket as a baseline and extrapolate from there,” Agnes instructed. So they began their work. Tommy poked his head in after ships dawn to check on her but recognized the intense concentration Agnes focused on the problem. So, Agnes shouldn’t have been surprised to find a breakfast packet and cup of coffee sitting next to her elbow on the workbench. Tommy left them realizing she might forget to eat.
By the end of the day, she and Alfred had compared systems, circuits, programing, and the physical structure of both caskets. They were identical, and they should not have been. “All else being the same, perhaps we should look at the differences,” Alfred suggested.
“OK,” Agnes began, “I’m awake, Christine is still in hibernation. Therefore, my casket is no longer functioning as a hibernation chamber.”
“True,” Alfred agreed. “It does still draw power to its systems.”
“Yes, only to keep them active and provide power to the two media interfaces.” Then Agnes inhaled suddenly. “The two interfaces. Both caskets were designed for two media units. But Arnold wasn’t even in the picture when I designed my casket and was suspended. The unit that Tommy’s father had designed still fit. We know that they are more than they appear.”
“Suspended?” Alfred asked.
“Put under, frozen. You know, placed in my casket and took the long sleep,” she explained.
“Got it, slang.”
“Alfred, can we access Christine’s media interfaces at all?”
“No, like your casket they are built in a sealed unit with both coded and DNA locks. We had access to yours after you revived and we were able to open it. Dr. Ann suggested that only Annie Judson will have the code to access Christine’s unit,” Alfred explained. “Why?”