Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Listen, if you are tracking me, you probably know exactly what sort of contact I’ve been making, so—Squee stop it!”

  Squee had managed to click the release button for the retractable leash and bounded for the door. Before Michella could try reeling her back in, she’d activated the door panel and slipped into the corridor.

  “Having some trouble, Ms. Modane?”

  Squee reached the end of the leash’s travel and nearly yanked it from Michella’s hand. She grabbed the slidepad from the table and followed Squee out into the hall.

  “Never mind what I’ve got going on,” she muttered in a harsh whisper. “If you’ve been tracking me enough to know where I am, and you’ve got access to the whole supersecret VectorCorp apparatus, then you know that I haven’t been in contact with anyone suspicious in that regard.”

  She took her eyes away from the slidepad in order to get an idea where Squee could have gotten off to. Tethered as she was to a few meters of leash, Michella didn’t think it would be difficult to find her, but the door to a neighboring booth was just closing. It managed to shut with the ribbon of a leash slipping along through the gap as Squee got up to some sort of mischief on the other side. Michella tried to buzz the door open, but it was passcode locked.

  “How did… how did you get in there?” she hissed, thumping at the door. She glanced down at the slidepad.

  “You have been enough of a thorn in our side in the past, we would never put it past you to find ways to communicate surreptitiously. Despite what you may think, VectorCorp isn’t all-powerful.”

  “Well, I haven’t been trying to contact anything even close to the GenMechs. I almost got killed by those things, okay? I’m not going to do something that might unleash them. What were the network events?”

  “Mass data requests from an unidentified node that somehow still provided valid credentials. It’s what us IT people call a Skeleton Key attack, except we’d been under the impression they were theoretical, since no properly designed system should have that sort of vulnerability that was accessible. It would take a normal computer until the heat death of the universe to brute-force an attack like that.”

  “You are being awfully open about what seems like privileged information.”

  “That is because whatever’s happening is connected to something you’ve been doing. There is no doubt in my mind. Maybe it’s not something you’re meaning to do. Maybe it’s whoever you are digging up that’s doing it. But you are closer to it than we are. So I’m keeping you in the loop. If this goes bad, it goes bad for the entire galaxy. You need to give me the information I need to stop it. Unfettered access to our network is a recipe for total collapse of the transit system, the financial systems, everything. If this is some sort of a coordinated attack by someone hoping to unleash the GenMechs, they won’t just threaten society, they will very effectively eliminate any chance we might have to defend ourselves.”

  “I’m taking it seriously. I’m digging. I assume you’re digging too.” She held the slidepad away from her face and whispered through the door. “Squee, you come out of there this instant.”

  “We’ve got investigations going on at multiple levels, but anything that leads in the direction of the GenMech cluster has to get shut down, and we can’t even give the reason for the shutdown. Knowledge of the scope of the GenMech threat and the location of the swarm must be suppressed at all cost. You are one of the few people in this circle. We can lean on you without widening the network of informed individuals.”

  “You want me to dig for you, you need to give me some privileges.”

  “Ask.”

  “I need to rendezvous with my assistant, who is on his way to a planet called Big Sigma. I need to get there fast. I guarantee there is information there.”

  The door Squee had opened slid open again. She trotted out. Her face was smeared with mashed potatoes. A well-grilled filet mignon was clutched daintily in her jaws. Michella peered inside the room and saw a ravaged room-service cart and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

  Motion farther along the corridor suggested whoever this booth belonged to was about to return. Michella quickly buzzed her own door open and retreated inside. Squee happily munched on her stolen steak. Michella made sure the door was locked.

  When she checked her slidepad again, there was another message waiting for her.

  “Would this be Jon Nichols, currently in an autonav route from Golana to Station 88791?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “I’m elevating transponder code to executive-level priority and altering his flight plan. You’ll be meeting him in thirteen hours at Equipment Facility Aries 3. That should be six hours from Big Sigma with access to all priority transit windows.”

  “That’s fantastic. Now I just need to figure out where that is and how to get there.”

  “It won’t be a problem.”

  The strange sound of a PA system activating but no one speaking rang throughout the ship. When the announcement started, it was with some uncertain murmuring of a pair of voices.

  “We’re sure? It’s weird though… It’s got the right auth code. Fine, fine.” A throat cleared. “This is your captain speaking. There has been a… fairly significant reroute due to some corridor maintenance. We will be making an unscheduled stop at Equipment Facility Aries 3. In order to minimize inconvenience, we have been elevated to executive priority. Please enjoy the rest of your flight.”

  “Wow,” Michella said.

  “Report your findings on anything that can be done to calm this situation without traveling to or communicating with the GenMech swarm.”

  Her mysterious helper broke the connection. As Squee finished scarfing down her ill-gotten meal, Michella slid back into her seat.

  “I’m beginning to think if I’d been able to get a couple more friends in VectorCorp security rather than getting their boss locked up, my life might have been a whole lot nicer, Squee.”

  #

  In the conference room of Karter’s space station, an hour of constant discussion and debate was coming to a head.

  “Look, we’ve got a way to communicate. Isn’t there a way to tap into the GenMechs themselves?” Garotte asked. “EHRIc was able to exert control.”

  “EHRIc was able to do it from the inside, though,” Silo said.

  “Initially yes,” Ma said. “But only a handful of the GenMechs were subsumed from within. The rest of the swarm was subsumed by those initial seed mechanisms, if the record is accurate. It follows that there is a means to exert direct control over the GenMechs through external means.”

  “So can we do it?” Garotte asked.

  “Unlikely. The GenMech swarm was subsumed as a massive sequence of individual units. Now that they are part of a larger computational collective, it is reasonable to assume that there is a far greater security protocol in place. Furthermore, any attempt, successful or otherwise, to gain control of a part of the network will necessarily alert the rest of the network, potentially triggering precisely the events we are attempting to prevent.”

  Garotte drummed the table with his fingers. “Karter? You’ve been quiet. Any thoughts?”

  “I’m thinking I’d really like to get my hands on that hologram tech,” Karter grumbled, scrutinizing the latest image from Lex’s spacesuit. “Though I don’t know if it’s worth the processing overhead.”

  “Karter, can we please keep on the topic? It’s a wonder Lex has been able to keep anything horrific from happening down there,” Garotte said.

  “I am on topic, you limey dope. Ma, run me an analysis of the estimated computational output of the local swarm, graph it, and array the spacesuit images underneath.”

  The holoprojector produced the requested data. Though it wasn’t immediately apparent what Karter was trying to prove with it, it was clear that the processing had been rising steadily since Lex’s arrival.

  “Check it out,” Karter said. “Look at the c
omplexity of the simulation. It doesn’t just raise the network utilization whenever the simulation becomes more detailed, it spikes exponentially. That network is doing multiple molecule-resolution passes for physics, for visuals, for everything. Super, super overkill on the accuracy. You could trim that down by a few orders of magnitude of complexity and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to standard human senses. This is why you don’t throw unlimited resources at something. You end up needing unlimited resources.”

  “We are all very proud of your superior intellect, Karter. What do you say you use it to solve a problem rather than wrenching your shoulder out of joint to pat yourself on the back?”

  “Are you not paying attention? Bigger simulation, more processing. More processing on the sim, less processing power for other stuff. Like security. Tie that in with what we learned earlier, that there is a maximum size of a calculation unit before data latency causes issues. If we can get a suitably complex simulation to consume all available processing capacity, what happens?”

  The data display changed, now showing a simplified version of the entire shell.

  “Observed behavior indicates the following,” Ma said. “Processing subtasks are delivered according to priority. Lower-priority tasks are sent to more distant units for processing, as lower-priority tasks by definition have higher tolerance for high latency. When the high-priority nodes have reached capacity, tasks will shift to lower-priority nodes. A cascade of process reassignments occurs.”

  “Ma, sweetie, I know that was meant to clarify something, but this really isn’t my area,” Silo said.

  “Here’s the dumb version,” Karter said. “This part, where Lex is? If it thinks hard enough, everything else that needs doing starts getting done worse. That means, the farther away you get, the more sluggish the processing. If you get the north pole spinning its wheels fast enough, the south pole might end up basically in a holding pattern because nothing in between is taking the time to deliver jobs. There are reasons we don’t make solar-system-sized processor arrays. This is one of them. It’s a solvable problem, but just like the inefficient simulation, an AI wouldn’t bother trying to solve it unless it needed to.”

  “So you’re saying a complex enough simulation might open up a security vulnerability?” Garotte said.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Once,” Karter said. “Like I said, an AI wouldn’t bother trying to solve a problem unless it needed to. Once it notices something’s up, it’ll start devising a defense, and if it gets that loophole closed, it won’t open up again.”

  “One shot is better than none. Do we know how to grab the reins of a GenMech if we get the chance?”

  “We will require a far more precise understanding of how the GenMechs currently operate,” Ma said.

  “What do you need to know?” asked Coal.

  Garotte tipped his head. “Since when are you a part of this conversation?”

  “Coal has been cross-linked with the optical and audio sensors in this room since the beginning of the discussion,” Ma said.

  “Well then why didn’t she say anything?” Garotte asked.

  “Because you people are boring, and you’re busy arguing over how to stop the GenMechs instead of talking about how to save Lex. Someone needs to keep an eye on him. He is my friend. But what do you need to know about the GenMechs? They continue to ignore me despite my close proximity. They physically dragged me clear of the laboratory complex but did no lasting damage despite my best efforts to tear them to pieces with my tractor beams. I believe my association with Lex has provided me with a special exception in their defense protocols. An active scan should raise no attention.”

  “That is not a safe assumption. An active scan could easily be seen as the first stage of an attempted network breach, as, in this case, it absolutely would be the first stage of an attempted network breach. I perceive such a scan to be far too dangerous to risk,” Ma said.

  “You should have transmitted that assessment to me as raw data rather than vocalizing it, as I have already initiated an active scan.”

  Garotte motioned for the microphone in the room to be muted. “May I say that I was rather vigorously opposed to that malfunctioning AI being trusted to be a part of this mission?”

  “Scan complete, sending it along the secret connection. It will take a while, as the data is significant.”

  “There is no significant reaction from the surrounding GenMechs. EHRIc either did not notice, or has indeed given any element known to be a part of the initial mission a free pass to behave in a way that does not directly obstruct its completion,” Ma said.

  “If that’s the case, Coal might be the key to solving this problem,” Karter said. “Assuming we can find a way to jack into these GenMechs, Coal would have the bonus of being able to get into position to execute it without tipping EHRIc off.”

  “Or she might just decide to ram herself through as many GenMechs as possible and blow herself up,” Garotte said. “I would prefer an operative who can be trusted to behave in a consistent and logical manner.”

  A full, updated schematic joined the projection.

  “Well, the inconsistent, broken AI just got us the complete, current blueprints to the enemy,” Karter said. “Ma, even broken you’re better than any other AI out there. Load this into the station’s servers. I’m going to take a look at it while I’m on the can.”

  Karter marched out of the room. Silo watched him go.

  “I’ve been sharing a space station with that man for months, and he still impresses me with his lack of manners. His parents really dropped the ball.”

  “His parents spent a significant portion of his upbringing under the influence of potent recreational narcotics,” Ma said.

  “Ah… I… Okay then.” Silo cleared her throat. “Let’s open the line up to Lex and give him an update, huh?”

  #

  The last few hours would have been, under different circumstances, an absolute delight for Lex. EHRIc was nothing if not thorough. His little information “request” had netted him, as far as Lex could tell, the entirety of racing history. Starting with horse racing and ending with the first hunk of the very racing season Lex should have been planning to finish right now.

  EHRIc had been pulling up assorted vehicles and tracks for Lex to assess as potential ways to illustrate his prowess.

  “Oh, is this the Gray Track on the Earth Sea Circuit? Man, they shut this one down because too many sleds went off turn seven. That was before they had the enhanced-grip repulsors. If they’d just waited another six years, that track would have made for some seriously intense racing without any real risk of being launched off the turn.”

  “Lex,” Silo said. “We’ve got something up here that looks promising. We don’t have it finalized yet. Karter is working on it. We all are. But we know two things. We’re going to need time, and we’re going to need you to find a way to really, really push the calculations EHRIc will have to do. Seems like the best way is to get him to create an incredibly complex and expansive simulation. We’ll let you know when to start pushing it. It’ll be a few hours.”

  “I’ve always wanted to give that Gray Track a try,” Lex said.

  “I don’t know, buddy. The real Lex never raced on that track. Seems like it’d be a pretty poor test if you raced on a track you don’t have an existing time on.”

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

  “The obvious solution would be to have you rerun one of your previous races. If you have precisely the same performance, then you must be the real Lex.”

  “Uh, yeah. Humans don’t really work like that. There’s going to be a range. Technically, I guess you should analyze all of my prior races and put together an analysis of my methods and tactics. Maybe if you can make sort of a fingerprint of how I race, then see how I stack up against it, that’d tell you if you have the right person. Probably, the sort of thing would take quite a while to—”

  “All done, bu
ddy.”

  A figure coalesced out of the simulation, assembled as if by motes of dust accumulating onto each other. It was visually similar to Lex, but no one would get them confused. He looked… wrong. Like someone had averaged the last six years of his life. His outfit was a dark blue mashup of the last few uniforms he’d worn, including subtle elements like the bowtie from his chauffeur job and the jaunty stripe on his gear from when he was doing package deliveries.

  A vehicle came together beside him, assembling out of different pieces of equipment. This one wasn’t quite so unsettling. Seeing a hoversled that wasn’t quite the same as the one you remember is a whole different animal than seeing someone that doesn’t quite match the reflection in the mirror.

  “Gonna have to do better than that, when the time comes, hon,” Silo said.

  “Would you like to get this over with?” EHRIc asked. “We can use any of the individual tracks you have raced on, or perhaps an extrapolated mean? What’ll it be, ol’ pal?”

  “Uh… Tell you what? I’ve been through an awful lot. If I’m going to be racing against… Techno-Lex here, I should be at my best, right?”

  “Records indicate you performed extensive preparation before races. It would be an inaccurate test if you did not prepare adequately.”

  “Okay. Then I need food, and a good night’s sleep.”

  “Good thinking, Lex,” Silo said.

  “You’re really smart! Biological lifeforms perform best when they eat food at least once every three-to-five days,” EHRIc said.

  “I usually like to eat a couple times a day.”

  “Really? That explains how grumpy Bork would be before getting his semiweekly treats. I will adjust the feeding schedule appropriately. As for you, I will remind you of your dining options: cheese, chocolate sandwich cookies, and kale.”

  “That’s a weird combo.”

  “Don’t be silly, pal. They are all foods, and I have evidence in my files that you have consumed each of them at least once.”

  “Yeah but…”

  Lex hesitated. The chances were very good that this AI could cook up anything he wanted, not unlike Ma. But the chances were equally good that in order to do so, he’d blast the network with another data request and risk permanent damage in the process. He’d already allowed that to happen too many times.