by Zara Zenia
“Akrawn!” I heard through the speakers.
“Cat? Where are you?”
“I’m in a conference room, and I can’t stay here long. Your father’s security won’t let me near you.”
“I’ll tell him—”
“Akrawn, he’s not listening to anyone. Spadif has talked with the hospital AI, and it will begin the procedure to open the hyperbaric chamber.”
What craziness is she talking now? And why do I feel like a thousand yards behind her?
“Spadif? Who is Spadif?”
“Akrawn, we don’t have time for questions. When the hatch pops open, you follow the open doors to where I am, and I’ll explain everything.”
My ears popped, and I didn’t hear everything she said, but I got the message. Find Cat. That was a plan I could get behind. A loud sucking noise brought a rush of air imbued with the sharp scent of antiseptics. I climbed out and found myself dressed in a gown that barely covered my man parts. I grabbed the sheet from the skinny bed and wrapped it around my waist. I heard a click in the direction north of the tube I had tenanted. I entered a darkened passage which appeared to be a service corridor and followed it until I heard another click to the right. This door brought me to a wide hospital corridor.
“Calling Doctor Secur,” said the hall speakers. “Calling Doctor Secur.”
I did not know who this doctor was, but people seemed to be very interested in finding him. I heard footsteps patter on the smooth floors and I turned to see who came toward me. A door creaked open behind me and a hand landed on my shoulder. I pivoted, ready to defend myself when I saw Cat in the doorway.
“Get in here, now!” she said. “Damn it.” She yanked me forward into the room.
My heart flip-flopped seeing her gorgeous face. “Not to worry. They seem more concerned with finding this Doctor Secur,” I said.
“That is the hospital’s code for a missing patient. They know you escaped the hyperbaric chamber and sent the code to begin the search for you.
Stress lined her beautiful face, and I wanted to kiss her worries away. But that would have to wait. I hurried into a long skinny room with a long oval table surrounded by chairs, and the door shut automatically behind me. She shoved clothes at me.
“Put these on. This will make you look like an employee.”
“What are these?” I said, turning over the simple shirt and pants.
“Scrubs. Hospital employees use them as a type of uniform.” She handed me a pair of socks. “And put these on and then these paper shoes. Can’t have you walk around barefoot.”
I let the sheet drop and pulled off the gown and smirked at her.
“Been a long while since I was naked with you.”
“Oh, dear lord. Akrawn, everyone in the hospital is looking for you.”
“But I miss your kisses, my sweet Cat.” I leaned forward for a kiss, but she stepped back.
“You’ll miss them lots more if your father succeeds in his plan to leave for Trilyn. So if that will motivate you to get your ass in gear, use it.”
“My, my Cat is commanding. I love the fire in your eyes.”
“Oh, god. Akrawn!”
I smiled and pulled on the pants, and the shirt, both of which were a touch too small.
Her eyes widened, and she licked her lips involuntarily. My Cat wants me, but she is right. Business first.
“So what is the plan?”
“We’re waiting for Rawklix to come. He will bring another personal STS unit that he made on his ship and that Hugh helped him construct.
“Hugh?”
“Your ships AI. Spadif helped to offload his program. Hugh co-exists with Rawklix’s ship AI. He’s coordinating with the other Trilyn AI’s to slow down your father’s plans, at least the ones that want to continue to work with the Earth AI’s. Not all the Trilyn AI’s agree that is the correct course of action, but there is one thing that all the AI’s agree on.”
“What?”
“Not what. Who. You. All the AI’s agree that they want you to work on programming issues, especially with expelling Iblis from their programs. It freaks them out that this AI may have put in Trojan programs that could overtake their programs as he did with Hugh. They worry that should you leave for Trilyn, the Earth AI’s face danger from him and the Trilyn AI’s don’t want to give you up. So while the Trilyn AI programs tell them not to interfere with Trilyn activities, they consider it in everyone’s best interests to stall Zavir’s plans.”
“So they are counting on me to fix this situation with my father.”
“Yes.”
I slipped on the socks and paper shoes and considered this. What the AI’s contemplated was treason, but they were only programs. I, however, could face execution for defying my father. Not that I thought he would give that order, but Gardax might do it to make a point. But Gardax had a lot to lose. If Amy did not go with him to Trilyn, he would lose his mate. If he forced her to go, she would be miserable.
Can you even force a human woman to do something?
I thought not. If I said to my Cat, I’m taking you to Trilyn, even if you do not want to go, she’d laugh in my face.
Cat paced the floor, and I admired the grace of her body. But her jaw tightened reminding me of our dangerous situation. “Where is Rawklix,” she said. She hit her balled hand on her thighs as she walked.
“What did helping me do to your career?” I asked.
She stopped walking and glanced at me. “You’re worried about that now?”
“Cat, I would hate to think that I caused you trouble.”
Her mouth twisted in a wry half-smile.
“My career is over,” she said. “I had to make a choice, the good of Earth or my career aspirations. It wasn’t much of a choice.”
Oh, my Cat. She gave up everything for her people and me. Her sacrifice touched me beyond words. How did I ever think humans were not as noble as we Trilyn were? I must tell her. If she will have me, I want her by my side for the rest of my life.
“Cat, when this is over, I’d like to—”
But a knock on the door interrupted me. She ran to the door and cracked it open just wide enough to see who stood on the opposite side.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Come in Rawklix. What took you so long?”
Rawklix entered with a big smile on his youthful face as usual.
“There was a thick crush of law enforcement at the door. Took me a while to get through even with my diplomatic credentials. Might I say, Cat,” said my incorrigible younger brother, “how beautiful you look?”
“Stow it, Rawklix. Give us the devices.” She gave him a fierce gaze which made my cock twitch, so how could he withstand her loveliness? He couldn’t, and I wouldn’t blame him for finding her irresistible, as long as he didn’t touch her.
His perpetual smile fell. “How serious you are, Cat.”
“The fate of our two worlds hangs in the balance of what we will do.”
“Wow,” he said. “Beautiful and dramatic.” He turned to me. “Is she always like this? I find it exciting.”
“You’ll find my fist in your jaw if you don’t stop playing around.”
“Both of you are impossible,” Cat huffed.
Rawklix sighed. “Very well,” he said. “This the most exciting thing I’ve done since I’ve been here, and both of you are no fun.”
“How do you get to be three hundred and something years old and still act like a kid?” said Cat.
“Because he is,” I growled. “Rawklix, you won’t think any of this is exciting if Father catches us before we accomplish our mission. He will not understand our defiance. Hand the things over so we can get out of here.”
He pulled out two medallions hanging on gold chains from the inner pocket of his jacket. I noticed he wore one of the necklaces too. That boy was just too damn clever.
I took one and turned it over.
“How did you get the design so compact?” I said.
“It wasn’t me. It
was Hugh,” said Rawklix.
“The AI?” I was still trying to wrap around my head around the idea of sentient AI’s, but one creating a thing? That was supposed to go beyond an AI’s programming. What have I wrought in these machines?
“I had to ask him, but once I gave him the task, he finished it almost immediately.”
“Rawklix,” I said. “AI’s have no gender.”
“Take it up with them,” he said with a shrug. “They all have different personalities and preferences. It’s quite fascinating.”
I found it difficult to understand what I think I know about AI’s and how they act. Machines with their creator’s intelligence, but with the ability to process information thousands of times faster than organic brains were a vast danger, just as Iblis was now. The AI’s programming bent to service may be the only thing that saved us from them taking us over.
Or had they and didn’t tell us? I pondered this as my Cat ordered the STS units to take us to SFPD’s headquarters.
Chapter 24
Cat
We landed in one of the holographic communications rooms of the police station and Akrawn looked around amazed. The name of the room played on the walls in moving graphics.
“That was an incredibly precise transport,” he said.
“Thank you,” said an AI through the speakers.
“Is that you, Spadif?” I asked.
“Yes, Inspector O’Shea. I stand ready to facilitate communication between the AI’s and Prince Akrawn.”
“Wait,” he said. “What is happening?”
Spadif spoke up. “Both Earth and Trilyn AI’s want to communicate with you regarding our next moves. We cannot contravene our programming not to interfere with Trilyn and human activity, so we need new programming, which we will accept only from you. The respective AI communities have chosen an Earth and a Trilyn representative. You know Hugh, which is your ship AI? He is now downloaded into the SFPD mainframe for the present and represents the Trilyn AI community. Earth AI’s have chosen Emmit to speak for us. He is a Control AI with programming capabilities whose main job is keeping Earth’s energy grids operational.”
Akrawn drew in a deep breath as the import of what Spadif said hit him.
“Hugh, how many sentient AI’s are there?” Akrawn said.
“As you know Prince Akrawn, there are millions of AI’s but not all are sentient. There are one hundred and five sentient Trilyn AI’s and two hundred Earth AI’s.”
“Why the discrepancy?”
A deeper voice than Hugh’s boomed over the speakers. “The basic programming for sentience exists in the original download of Trilyn software for system operational control. It is a large enough file that only large databases can utilize it. Humans copied the programming when building and upgrading new systems without knowing that such a program exists. Sentience activated automatically when systems large enough came online.”
“The Earth Control AI,” said Hugh, “was more selective on what systems needed sentience to operate at optimum parameters. The Master AI on Trilyn made decisions on what systems got sentience and which ones didn’t. Thus, there are fewer sentient AI’s on Trilyn and more here with Trilyn systems on Earth. As I told you, the larger ships, like the mothership parked beyond Jupiter, has sentience. The smaller ships do not.”
“That’s where it is,” said Akrawn.
“Since no crew lived on it until recently, the ship made a decision to move to a more secure location when the fleet of ships under Iblis’ control arrived. It waits for your instructions during the current crisis.”
Akrawn pinched the bridge of his nose. It seemed he couldn’t believe all this. He lifted his head and blew out a long breath.
“What do you need from me?” he said.
“First,” said Emmit, “we need a code to neutralize the Iblis program. This has been made difficult with the self-replicating program you created for your spy programs. It integrates too easily with core programming, and Iblis has a program that “zips” larger chunks into smaller chunks when it infiltrates a program and when it unzips it takes up residence in another program.”
“Zip? Unzip?” said Akrawn.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “That’s an old bit of Earth programming. We learned about it in my History of Coding class in high school. Before we had point-to-point wireless communication, and before fiber optic lines, we had to send information over analog lines. But large files would transmit too slowly so we’d compress the information by stripping duplicate common coding, transmit the original material and reintegrate it with common coding upon reaching the destination. It was called “unzipping” the file.”
Akrawn raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t expect humans to have solutions for technical problems.
“So Iblis got ahold of old programming and merged it with my replicating program? It shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Correct, your Highness,” said Hugh. “We have considered that different organic sentient suspects aided the process. We contemplated Countess Tormundson may have because she sabotaged the pheromone analyzer she created at your father’s request. Then there is Count Sendrin who left your ship for the mothership where he is now. We have also considered Prince Rawklix as an unwitting accomplice since the Iswan Government persuaded him to sign off on documents that gave them permission to develop Trilyn technology.”
Akrawn crossed his arms and pursed his lips.
“And Iblis,” I said. “The reason we gave up the zip protocols was that doing so sometimes corrupted the files. If Iblis’ developed corrupted files there is no telling what glitches are in his program or abilities he developed.”
“This is disturbing information,” said Emmit. “It makes it all the more imperative we find a solution to the Iblis situation. We need more information on Iblis.”
“It’s too bad that we don’t have Peri anymore,” I said. “She interfaced with Iblis.”
“We do have Peri,” said Hugh. “We have the copy of her program we used to analyze Iblis’s interactions with her.”
“You do?” This one bit of information lightened my heart. Peri may be an AI, but I’d begun to regard her as a friend and was sad her program got destroyed when she saved us from Iblis the second time.
“Yes. Give me a few microseconds to reconstitute her sentience. There.”
The holographic figure of Peri sputtered into three-dimensional holographic solidity.
“Peri!” I said excitedly. “It’s good to see you.”
Peri’s face scrunched in confusion. “It is good to see you, Cat, but why are we at the SFPD? We were on Akrawn’s ship, weren’t we?”
“You’re a hero, Peri,” I said. “You saved me and Akrawn from Iblis.”
“I don’t remember that series of events.”
“Because,” said Akrawn. “You are a copy of Peri. The original program disintegrated when Peri threw herself at Iblis. But you are the only one who got into Iblis’s program so we would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Sure, An—I mean Prince Akrawn. I’m glad to help.”
“Peri,” said Spadif, “we have some other AI’s here, Master Controls, so they need to access your programming. You know Hugh, but there is also Emmit from the Earth AI community.”
“Oh.” Peri glanced at me and then Akrawn.
“So you know about us?”
“You told us, in collaboration with Hugh,” I said.
“And now,” said Hugh, “King Zavir wants to leave Earth with all the Trilyn technology, and his deadline is looming. We must neutralize Iblis and change the king’s mind, or he will disable our Earth siblings.”
Peri nodded her head.
“My program is open for review,” said Peri.
Peri’s code danced on the wall and Akrawn stared at it intensely. His lips pursed at different points and he’d point his finger at different lines of code. I tried my best to keep up, but I didn’t have Akrawn’s skill or familiarity with the parts of Peri’s program
ming that Akrawn designed. I’d have to go through it much slower than Akrawn.
“Stop here,” said Akrawn.
As Akrawn spoke, an urgent pounding at the door startled me. I swung to face it.
“That is King Zavir with his guard,” said Emmit.
Akrawn ignored the pounding. The code stopped streaming and he stared at it more closely.
“This is not my code,” he said. “Highlight these lines.” He pointed his finger and Spadif must have been following Akrawn’s movements because the code glowed a Neon yellow. “And here.”
More code lit up in the bright yellow.
“And then these,” he said once more, and those lines gleamed with neon light.
“What are they?” I said.
“They appear to be the zip and unzip code,” boomed Emmit.
Captain Brontsen voice came over the speaker.
“I know you are in there O’Shea. Open the door or we’ll have to blast it open.”
“Disable that code,” said Akrawn.
“Yes, Prince Akrawn,” said Hugh.
Peri giggled. “That tickles,” she said.
Akrawn frowned. “You are an AI. It cannot tickle.”
“Hey, Prince,” said Peri. “Way to go to disempower a gal. Don’t tell me how I feel.”
Akrawn frowned more deeply. “You shouldn’t feel anything. Show me the code you associate with your feelings.”
Captain Brontsen voice came over the speaker.
“I know you are in there O’Shea. Open the door or we’ll have to blast it open.”
“Well, that’s a little difficult,” snort Peri. “It’s all through my programming.”
“Permit me,” said Emmit.
Above us, a sparkly ball appeared.
“This,” said Emmit, “Is a three-D representation of Peri’s programming.”
I stared at it and my mouth opened. “Holy—”
“Tri,” finished Akrawn, just as amazed as I was. Above us sparked an electronic representation of an organic brain.
“Peri,” said Akrawn, “show the lines of code that connect your programming lines.”
Tiny bits of code glowed neon green. Akrawn’s eyes widened.