Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “The design intent was for it to have an advanced decryption engine to infect local transmission nodes and, through them, disable the time-displaced Alternate Future Karter’s security systems,” Ma said.

  “Bad… Future… Karter…” Michella annotated.

  “Just put a big bomb in it,” Coal said.

  “That was not the design intent,” Ma said.

  “Not for the one that went back in time, but who says we have to go back in time right now? EHRIc isn’t the boss of us. Just put a big bomb in there.”

  “There is only one explosive phenomenon conceivably available to us that could obliterate a full star system of material, and that is a supernova.”

  “That’s no good. Karter already has some Nova Igniters on the space station, but he can’t use them because they probably won’t get past the GenMech swarm. We clearly need a larger bomb.”

  “No other destructive phenomenon exists sufficient to the task,” Ma said.

  “Maybe not yet, but we’ve risen to similar challenges before.”

  “If you blow up the star system without getting Lex out first, you’ll kill him,” Michella said.

  “We will blow up the star system to get Lex out,” Coal said.

  “He’s in the star system,” Michella barked.

  “Processing… We will blow it up and get him out at the same time.”

  “We’re not killing Lex,” Michella said.

  “What do you care, he dumped you,” Coal said.

  “I still don’t want him dead.”

  “Lex’s death is an undesirable but potentially acceptable outcome if it ensures the survival of the rest of the human race,” Ma said. “But we presently have no means to ensure even a Pyrrhic victory of that sort.”

  “And you said the plan right now is for them to come up with a way to overburden the supercomputer so it’ll be distracted?” Michella said, trying to catch up.

  “Yes. Lex is doing it by driving very fast in a simulation,” Coal said.

  “He seriously thinks you can solve any problem by racing,” she grumbled, jotting it down.

  “This is indeed foolish. Some problems require explosions,” Coal said.

  “Based upon the estimated calculation capacity of even the subset of the swarm below the ideal data-delay threshold, it is exceedingly unlikely any action he can take will be sufficient,” Ma said.

  “Is there anything that could work?” Michella said.

  “The GenMech swarm is the most powerful known calculation engine in the history of the universe,” Ma said. “Though there is no shortage of computational tasks that are more complex to unravel than to create, to create something of suitable complexity to exceed EHRIc’s calculation capacity for any measurable amount of time would require something of the same order of computational magnitude. Processing…”

  “Processing…” Coal said.

  “What’s happening?” Jon said.

  “I think the computers have an idea,” Michella said.

  “Correct,” Ma said. “It is a violation of nearly every protocol presently active in my moral heuristic. It further depends upon unproven aspects of causality and statistically implausible good fortune, and failure could trigger the very sequence of events we are hoping to prevent. However, by my calculations it is the plan with the highest possibility of success.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Coal said. “How do we get started?”

  “I will begin crafting the code necessary and initiate the experimental fabricator to construct the necessary equipment and personnel. This will require all available computational and mechanical resources to complete within the required timeline. My apologies, Ms. Modane and Mr. Nichols. I will not be as attentive to your needs for the next three hours. Food and drink will remain available here. Upon the completion of time-critical tasks, I will return to provide you with an update on what actions will be taking place. Diverting computational resources now.”

  The PA system crackled.

  “Ma?” Michella said. “Coal? … I guess they’re working together on this one.”

  Jon scratched his head anxiously. “Did she say she was constructing personnel?”

  Chapter 16

  “Three days have passed, my good and friendly friend,” EHRIc said at the very moment Lex had finished his breakfast. “You are rested, you are fed, and I have simulated, from scratch, three hundred thousand suitably developed human psyches to fill the stands and enhance the realism of the race. While it doesn’t quite fit the absolute realism of the race, since this is intended to reveal whether you are the real Lex or a duplicate, I have created fifteen subtly different simulated versions of yourself as your opponents for the final simulation of the Tremor Grand Prix.”

  “Great. Super. Let’s do this,” Lex said flatly, standing up from the simulated table.

  The world shifted and sparked around him, fading from the cozy breakfast nook to the starting line of the very same raceway he’d been tested on last time. This time, though, it was much different. The place was filled to capacity. The crowd was too far away for him to see with any clarity, especially because the exceedingly precise simulation meant there was a wavy heat haze rising off the blacktop of the track. But even obscured as it was, the crowd was just a bit wrong. Blotches of completely random colors suggested the outfits EHRIc had dreamed up weren’t entirely reasonable for a normal crowd. Also, despite the fact that the race had not begun, there was an awful lot of murmur and din.

  “So, remind me. What are the stakes, EHRIc?” he said.

  “If you win this race, it means you are most certainly Lex, at least to the best of my capacity to test you. In that case, you will be sent back in time to fulfill your temporal tasks, and your frozen self will be thawed to pursue the rest of THE TASK. Following the failure or successful completion of THE TASK, assuming I remain functional, I shall pursue the more generalized interpretation of my altruism mandate. If you lose this race, it will mean that you are potentially not the real Lex. And as you are identical to the molecular level to the frozen Lex, you will both be disregarded and a more active search for the real Lex will begin.”

  “Can you define ‘active search’ for me?” Lex said.

  “Sure, buddy! If you aren’t the real Lex, it means there has been an attempt to deceive me, and that means a general awareness of THE TASK by forces capable of resisting it. This would justify the removal of any requirements to remain covert, as that horse will have already left the barn. I’d probably begin by systematically subverting and sweeping the networks of the most likely planets to find Lex. Failing that, I would send probe teams of GenMechs to locate him.”

  “You’ve got to win this one, hon,” Silo said over the private connection. “You win and we still have time, even if what we’ve got in the works fails. You lose and the war begins.”

  Lex resisted the urge to nod. In a way, it was a relief to know it all relied upon him winning this race. It would have been quite a kick in the pants for fate to engineer a return to this venue and require him to throw the race again.

  “I can’t help but notice you sort of positioned me in the middle or the pack.”

  “You’ve illustrated your capacity to hold a lead once you secure it. I figured this was a good way to test multiple scenarios.”

  “A fully loaded grand prix does a rolling start, you know.”

  “I did my research, pally boy! One lap keeping pace, then put the spurs to her. And I’ll even keep Bork out of the way this time. I would wish you luck, but if you’re Lex, you won’t need it, and if you’re not, I don’t want you to have it. So enjoy the race, fella-me-boy!”

  Lex walked past the mildly disturbing contingent of simulacra. His heart should have been pounding, but it wasn’t. Part of it was the fact that three solid days of trying to persuade an AI to back down had, arguably, only made things worse. Now, at least, he was back to doing something he was good at. It was also awfully difficul
t to comprehend this as reality when the crowd was chanting the words to a song that didn’t exist and the guy attempting to psyche him out in the next hoversled over was himself with a race uniform that included a bowtie.

  At this point, winning a race was the only normal thing left to do.

  He slipped into the hoversled and strapped himself in. With one race already in the books with this custom vehicle, he was familiar with its idiosyncrasies. All he had to do was do what he did best. It wouldn’t be easy, but for once he felt like he was the right man for the job.

  The green light flashed and the sleds slowly ramped up to speed, holding formation all the while.

  #

  “How are we looking on network utilization, Ma?” Silo said, eyes focused on the visualization.

  “It is high. Higher than we’ve seen so far,” Ma said. “Approximately eighty-five percent of the central processing cluster has been engaged. We can speculate that the overwhelming majority of the processing is due to the high-fidelity simulation. Lex’s prescribed introduction of hundreds of thousands of fully realized simulated spectators has increased the overhead significantly. The additional racers similarly have increased the processing load, presumably. And as the speed of the race increases, the processing load is increasing as well. It is already over ninety-five percent. When it reaches one hundred percent, we will begin to see command lag on the far side of the swarm. It is exceedingly unlikely that this race will prove sufficient to give us the opening we need for a likely penetration.”

  “Seems like the ship sailed on ‘likely’ a long time ago. Do we have a shot?”

  “The central processing cluster has drawn in the next ring of the swarm. Command latency up seven percent. I have the probe in place. An ideal increase in command latency would be one hundred percent. I would deem the mission a worthy risk if it crosses the forty percent delay threshold.”

  Silo keyed up the secure communications channel. “Lex, I’m not sure what you can do to really complicate that simulation, but it’s going to have to get a lot more complex to give Ma the opening she needs.”

  With the message delivered, she turned to Karter, who was leaning back with his eyes on the simulation. If he was nervous, it wasn’t showing on his face. All he was doing was gnawing on one of his meat sticks.

  “Thoughts, Dee?” Silo said. “We’re about an hour from do or die.”

  “The plan’s the plan. We wait until the moment the processor load spikes the highest. We inject malware into the command codes in the portion of the cluster with the greatest command delay. If it works, we’ve got some poison in the system. If it fails, EHRIc knows something’s up and the whole malware plan doesn’t work anymore.”

  “The malware plan was the only plan that didn’t involve a strategic retreat and a pitched battle.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t seem overly concerned about that.”

  “I’m very drunk right now. And I’m also intrigued. This thing is pumping out some serious tech. The simulation is inefficient, but impressive. And we’ve seen it manifest means to do injection attacks on signal nodes that would require faster-than-light communication. If it wasn’t as likely to kill us all as keep innovating, I’d suggest we just leave this thing running and solve some more intractable problems. But the main thing I’m interested in is the fact that EHRIc has been casually talking about just sending Lex back in time. And I don’t care if it’s got our time-travel design or if it’s cooking up its own, but there are a few pretty immutable facts about time travel, and the one I think might make for an interesting situation is the power issue.”

  “It’s absorbing most of the power from that star. You don’t think it’ll have enough for a time jump? Doesn’t this space station have the power for a time jump?”

  “Oh, it’s got the juice. But it’s not a matter of getting it, it’s a matter of storing it. I ran some numbers and took some readings. Those energy beams, cooking the fake lasers on the top of my fake facility? They’re precisely matching the power requirements of the facility. What’s that mean? No energy storage. Or not much, anyway. This whole swarm is fully distributed. Decentralized. Works great to make it resilient, but when you need a whole lot of anything in one spot, you’re going to run into throughput problems. Pile that on top of what we’ve already seen about this thing not fixing it if it ain’t broke, and you’ve got a real question mark when it comes to what happens when you do a time shift. Should be good. That said, Ma, warm up the Carpinelli Field generator. Let’s be ready to get out of here if we don’t like how this looks.”

  #

  Lex watched the starting line approaching ahead of him. He always preferred the rolling starts. It took the most annoying part of a race out of the equation. Got it started basically at maximum speed. Who wants to spend the first few minutes of a race watching people try to accelerate? In this case, he was extra pleased to have the pace lap before things got started, because it gave Silo the opportunity to give one final update before he was racing for his life, and it gave him the chance to observe these other Lexes and how they would behave.

  In short, they were not behaving.

  Evidently that first race had given EHRIc some ideas. Even in the portion of the race where they weren’t technically competing. The other racers were being far more aggressive. Hugging turns tighter. Accelerating earlier and breaking later on turns. When they whipped past the line and the race started in earnest, it was like dumping chum into shark-infested waters. The pack tightened up to within centimeters of each other. Every racer fought for the best line, and none of them was willing to back down. Lex was boxed in tight. Duplicates of himself on all sides. Those behind were trying to squeeze their way into his spot. Those ahead were attempting to simultaneously wall him off and find a gap for themselves in the wall ahead.

  He wasn’t worried too much about the lack of openings. There was a lot of race ahead. What he was more concerned about was how he could ramp up the complexity of the simulation as Silo had requested. Presumably they’d let him know when he hit the mark, and their silence meant he wasn’t there yet.

  Lex wracked his brain. He’d gone to college. He should know something about how this sort of thing worked. Of course, college was basically just a formality, and he’d wasted most of his time playing games.

  His eyes narrowed. He grinned. Time well spent. After all, he was playing a game right now, wasn’t he? Presumably some of the same rules applied. And one thing he keenly remembered, back when he didn’t quite have the money to put a full gaming rig together, was that most games ran fine until you started smashing into stuff. Give the physics a workout and suddenly the frame rate drops. Racing for ORIC had taught Lex a few things in that department. The other racers in the league were incredibly cutthroat. Even with the feisty versions of himself throwing caution to the winds, the overall skill and composure on display meant things were more like meatball surgery than the free-for-all on the Operlo tracks. Sleds went off the track in every race, and if not for the enhanced safety features that were included, there would probably be a body count for some of the harsher races. In his last official race, he’d held back on making contact with the other sleds for the first few laps just to ensure that he didn’t damage himself too badly to finish the race. Circumstances may require a bit less care in this case.

  “Time to swap some paint,” he grumbled.

  He took a heartbeat or two to decide which move would work best against him if he was in not just one but both of the sleds blocking his way, then made his move. A flip of the throttle here, an unbalanced thruster burst there, and he was teetering at a forty-five degree angle. He edged forward, balancing the sled on the very fringes of the repulsor pattern. His opponents tried to close in and scare him back into his place. He didn’t take the bait. This wasn’t a game of chicken. After all, if it was even a moderately accurate simulation of him, the pilot of any one of those sleds would gladly accept a few dings and dents
to keep someone from passing. They smashed in on either side, clamping his sled between theirs.

  For the length of the straightaway, he was dragged along between two other sleds without any real way to control his vehicle. He was effectively riding on the shoulders of two other racers. But a keen eye might have noticed that his out-of-control tilt was just about right for someone leaning into a turn. When the moment was right, he blasted the repulsors. The sled on the outside of the turn was blown off course, smashing into the sleds beside it. Lex’s own sled smashed into the sled on the inside of the turn, shoving it hard into the others. And he dropped down into the gap between them.

  Chaos descended on the hoversleds toward the back of the pack. Some cut their acceleration to avoid slamming into racers ahead. Others surged forward to try to take advantage of the openings the collisions had created. The field spread out. Lex, as the orchestrator of the madness, got himself under control and took full advantage. When the dust cleared, he was in third place, up from eighth, and had some breathing room as the nearby racers gave him a wide berth.

  The maneuver wasn’t without consequence. His sled had developed a bit of a drift, and the deflection shield that augmented the windscreen of the sled was flickering. But his speed was solid.

  “I don’t know what you just did, but keep doing it,” Silo said. “Ma said we spiked almost halfway to where we needed to be.”

  “Keep up the pressure, Lex,” he said. “Keep it up. Only an hour and a half or so left.”

  #

  Garotte gazed at the holoscreen of his ship. He and Silo had been cycling among the various duties. One shift in station, one shift on patrol, and then as much rest and they could get in the interim. He’d pulled the short straw on being on patrol during Lex’s racing gambit. His ship had no windows. It was designed for maximum security and maximum stealth, so his view of space was filtered through sensors, but this at least gave him a selectable display without having to change the orientation of his ship.

  He looked over his navigation panel. The FTL jump for his retreat was already punched in. One tap of a button and he’d be screaming through space ahead of a wall of self-replicating death. But somehow, that looming Armageddon wasn’t what troubled him. It was that all he could do was watch and listen. Garotte, more than most people, was well aware that even a single individual in the right place at the right time could shift the course of nations, of worlds, of whole coalitions. He was unaccustomed to feeling helpless. It didn’t suit him.