by Ginger Booth
Clay waited for the boys to depart hearing radius, toward the food. “Well, I died. That was the usual. Or…no, that’s not true. When I die, there’s that life flashing before your eyes thing you hear about. But this time, it feels like it went on forever. Mind you, it’s all hazy. But it’s like I picked through all my beliefs, conclusions, a century of relationships, tracing through how this decision when I was twenty was affecting me at eighty. Interminable.”
“Sass?” Cope called her over to join them. She admitted to much the same.
“What are you on about, Cope?” Ben asked in concern.
“Bear with me,” Cope stalled him. “Was Sass with you? Inside the AI?”
“That’s ludicrous,” Sass insisted. “I was never inside an AI. Just a copy of my memories.” She seemed deeply disturbed by the suggestion. “Why the inquisition? We were dead.”
“Humor me.”
Clay narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Remember, this is all like a dream. But, yeah, now that you mention it. I remember Sass. Like we sifted through dysfunctional belief systems side by side, comparing notes? That doesn’t make sense.”
Sass glowered at him, perturbed.
“Of course it doesn’t make sense,” Ben reasoned. “Cope, those were copies in the machine. Our Clay and Sass were in cryo bay. They bled out most of their nanites. So it was slow going to build back up again. And in retrospect, putting them in cold storage didn’t help.”
“Better than rotting bodies,” Sass argued. “But yeah, I have some odd…memories? Sledding on real snow. Reading dog books to Hunter as a boy. Maybe Dot injected me with Clay memories by mistake? And I was sifting through? Like, no this wasn’t me, it was him. While I was on the slab in cryo, of course. Clay, like you said, that took too long. It couldn’t have been a ‘life flashes before your eyes’ thing.”
“That could be,” Clay allowed, unconvinced. “That we lay in cryo rejecting each other’s memory shards while we reconstructed our identities. Stands to reason we wouldn’t recall that too clearly. Although… It was after that, I experienced this complete letting go in a flash of white light, and merged into the universal.”
“Sass?” Cope prompted. “The same?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Nothing like that. Just the usual irritating sort of dream. Need to do this, go there, talk to Cope, Ben, Clay. Chores. Most of my dreams are like that. Oh, and some kind of argument with Shiva. But I’ve been arguing with that damned AI since we warped in.”
Clay quirked a lip. “My beloved isn’t fond of introspection. What are you trying to figure out, Cope?”
“It’s… Hang on. That final message Sass sent us. ‘Clay is a rich Fed,’ ‘Clay is rich,’ ‘Clay is a Fed.’ That seemed really important to you, Sass. I mean, I could see a final message like who should inherit Thrive. What does that mean, ‘Clay is a rich Fed’?”
Sass sniffed derision. “He knows what it means. Excuse me.” She walked away.
“Hunter would inherit my half,” Clay clarified for the record. “I believe Sass’s will splits her half between you two.”
“Thank you. Good to know,” Ben acknowledged.
Focused as usual, Cope couldn’t care less who inherited Thrive. Clay wasn’t dying. “Clay is rich Fed?”
Clay chuckled. “That’s…bad news. Um, I am wealthy. And I was a Fed on Earth. That’s a higher authority cop, like the marshals from MA. Superior jurisdiction over a cop like Sass. She probably still resents me for that. But combine them, and a ‘rich Fed’ would be a dirty cop. Abuse his power to make big money. Like Kendra Oliver. Yeah, she was the epitome of a ‘rich Fed.’ If Sass saw me that way, well, that would be a problem. Huh.” In fact, if that was her base belief about him, even after all these years, that would explain much.
Not that he was tempted to elaborate to Cope. So he changed the subject. “Your turn. Why the questions?” Ben looked to his husband as well. Clay suspected Ben was concerned about Cope’s little obsession.
“This is going to sound weird,” Cope hedged. “I feel like I had a relationship with Sass-the-AI. I mean, my relationship with the real Sass,” he waved toward her, now chatting with Dot and Corky, “that follows our real-world timeline. But I had this other Sass friend inside the machine. She was scared and alone and hated being trapped there. After you self-destructed –”
“I what?”
“You were trying to overthrow Shiva. You had this scheme. You’d delete your identity directives and merge back into Shiva as a Trojan horse. Then Sass would pass you new directives to install. But your sacrifice didn’t work. You simply ceased to be. Then Sass tried again, with Loki for an ally.”
“And she told you all this?” Ben probed. “Calling herself Sass.”
Cope shook his head. “From the beginning, she insisted she was a copy of Sass, not Sass herself.”
Ben allowed, “Yeah, there was a…cockroach who told us the same. Floor robot. Two of them. I didn’t really buy it.”
“No, I talked to her,” Cope insisted. “She was Sass, a new Sass. And Shiva told us something odd, Clay. She was holding your ‘souls hostage.’”
Clay cocked an eyebrow. “What does ‘soul’ mean to an AI?”
“I don’t know,” Cope confessed tactfully. “But I’m not an AI. Even part-time. I’m just wondering… Nah, it’s crazy.”
Ben and Clay egged him on to express it. “It just seemed like you died. Then you were both inside Shiva. Then Clay, you died inside Shiva. I never talked to you there. But Sass lived on as an AI. And we shared a scary time. You know, the kind that advances your friendship. She would have said good-bye to me, I guess is what I’m saying. But instead, Loki passed me a cryptic message and said she was gone. And I checked your bodies in cryo. You were both dead as doornails when I got back here.”
Ben’s brow looked troubled. “She did say goodbye, Cope. And thanks for coming to save her crew. You know, when she was a cockroach at the end there by the elevator.” He worked his lip, clearly suppressing a grin.
Cope shot him a quick glare. “I think you existed in your bodies, then died. Then you lived inside the AI, then died there and returned to your bodies. Is what I’m saying. And Sass made sure you got fully deleted inside Loki, Clay. But Sass, I’m not so sure.”
“Interesting,” Clay allowed, disturbed by this theory. “I’ve just spent the past four days in bed with her. If her soul is missing, it doesn’t show. I have no idea what counts as the soul of an AI. Sorry, I don’t feel I’ve answered your question.”
Cope still looked sad. “I just mourn for her, I guess. The Sass in the machine. She was my friend. Even if this version of Sass is alive and well. And I sure hope Loki didn’t keep a copy of her. Minus her…soul. Or maybe I’m worried about nothing. Because you never existed out here, and in there, at the same time. Your souls transferred in, and then transferred out again? But how?”
Ben intervened gently. “Buddy, I have no idea what you’re on about. Sass is right there, alive and well. Clay’s standing right in front of us. If there are backup copies of their memories, well, who cares? They’re right here. Data on a server somewhere, it can’t diminish the real Sass and Clay.”
But Clay shook his head. “I think I get it. And thank you, Cope. I don’t know what risk that is either. But I’ll keep it in mind, for sure.”
And he’d think long and hard about what exactly his ‘soul’ was. Unfortunately, humans didn’t know that, and he and Sass were the only AIs of their kind in existence.
And as for being a ‘rich Fed,’ You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This explained much, Clay thought sourly. Not that it would be easy to dislodge one of Sass’s misconceptions. Stubborn creature.
58
“You’ll keep in touch?” Loki begged.
“Absolutely,” Sass vowed, from the pilot seat of a bridge. Loki’s wild face filled the ‘window’ screen before her. “And I’ll be back. Not sure when. That’s up to Cope and Tharsis. But when Thrive Spac
eways returns to ferry people away, I’ll be here. Count on it.”
“And they told you?” the AI pressed. “Clay is rich. Clay is a Fed. Not Clay is a rich Fed.”
“Uh, sure,” Sass acknowledged. Of course Clay was a rich Fed. She felt it in her bones.
“They’ll abandon me,” Loki worried. “Leave me here alone with no one to talk to. No one to care for.”
“You have time to figure that out,” she soothed. “But right now, I don’t. Gotta go! Love you, Loki! Be well!” She signed off and swiped his video off her bridge display. She’d taken Loki’s final call – of several final calls – while waiting for Ben’s signal.
This time out, Sass was second most experienced captain in their little flotilla – second! To young Ben Acosta! Every time she thought she’d gotten used to the time lapse, something like that tripped her up again. Ben was in overall command, and would operate the warp gate from Prosper. Abel stood as acting caption of Thrive again – or rather, he never stopped. She’d barely had time to get well. She still wasn’t up to speed on everything she’d missed.
Clay served as first mate on Thrive. Everyone from Aloha was returning today. Hugo Silva and his son Bron accompanied them as well, to visit Mahina. The plan called for Hugo to visit both Mahina and Cantons, and act as Sanctuary’s interface to Thrive Spaceways. Bron came along as student ambassador, to see his friend Nico’s homeworld and advise on how Sank creche kids could acclimate.
For their sake, Sass hoped the Silvas wouldn’t turn out the way their Denali envoys did, still waiting for a ride home 13 years later. Though by now most of their Denali wouldn’t return if they could.
And Sass was flying the new JO-3 back to Mahina Orbital. The ship was fully fashioned but never worked up before. It was sure to glitch at every inopportune moment. They installed its first-ever cots. The galley offered water, fridge, and Cope’s old Schuyler-style deep fryer from the back of a closet on Thrive. Cope and Jules considered this adequate cooking gear, even if Sass and Corky didn’t.
Not that she brought a cook with her.
Given how green the ship was, Sass cared more about the p-suits they wore in the sealed bridge, helmets at the ready. The trip out of the gravity well had been nerve-wracking.
“We name her Ingenuity,” Remi Roy suggested beside her. “Is bad luck to fly a ship with no name.”
“She isn’t ours to name,” Sass pointed out. This hull belonged to Spaceways. Sass was just the bus driver. Speaking of which, Ben sent coordinates, bearing, and velocity for where he wanted her.
She struggled with the controls to compensate for the thruster errors. “This thing steers like a cow.”
“Cow. This is good?” Remi asked, puzzled.
“No.”
“Unnamed JO-3, Prosper,” Ben hailed over the command channel. “Sass, it really matters that you hit your mark dead-on. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is experimental technology. If you don’t match formation, we really don’t know what happens. Confirm.”
“Aye, Prosper,” she gritted out, still wiggling at the control stick to compensate for her programmed course failing to execute within tolerance. “Doing the best I can.”
“Suggest you engage your AI on the problem,” Ben said dryly. “Better the computer learn to auto-correct than you do it.”
“Aye-aye, commodore,” Sass snarked back. “Computer, auto-correct helm to compensate for slippage in programmed course.”
“Yee-haw! I’d be delighted to!” Loki replied. “Isn’t this exciting?”
Sass and Remi exchanged a single glance. He unclasped himself from the seat. Sass called Ben. “Prosper, Unnamed JO-3. Abort. Repeat, abort. Cannot make rendezvous. Going black for a few minutes. Sass out.”
She exited the bridge and hurried after Remi. Between the two of them, they unplugged every comms cable to the ship’s computer compartment, then pulled the plug on the chamber’s power conduit, the crash-reboot approach. They let it revive itself this first time.
When its control panel blinked green, Sass asked sunnily, “Loki? You there?”
“Yeah, I am, but –”
Remi yanked the power again. “We have no media to reformat. If we did, would it be Loki? Shiva?”
Sass rubbed her forehead. “And do we want Loki to see what we’re doing? Can we reach Mahina Orbital without a ship’s computer?”
“No. She runs life support, navigation, guns. Even to fire thrusters, the ship use the computer.”
“Then we can’t even reach Prosper. Rego hell. And we can’t tell Prosper without letting the real Loki know we’re trying to kill him. Or a copy of him.” She sighed, and powered it up again, interrupting the reboot sequence. At this low level of the operating system, she ordered it to wipe all memory, and reformat all storage outside the core, then reinitialize all systems.
She practiced smiling at Remi. He returned a smarmy two-eye wink. “Loki, you there?” No response. “Computer, you there?”
“System initialized.” The voice was identical to Thrive’s. Success!
“Computer, report status,” Remi attempted, in an experimental mood.
“All systems offline. No processing queue. No programs to run.”
“Do we believe her?” Remi asked.
Good question. After a game of twenty questions, plus a rematch forty, they finally persuaded themselves that Loki was no longer in residence. Then for the moment of truth, Remi plugged in the communications cable again, linking the computer core to the ship.
This provided Sass a radio channel out. “Prosper, Unnamed. We seem to have suffered a catastrophic failure in our computer core. We’ll need to clone your AI memory banks. Unable to rendezvous.”
Ben chuckled. “Understood completely. I won that bet. I’ll dispatch the shuttle from Thrive. Give us a couple hours to cobble the data together. Do not approach us. We will not approach you.”
“Promise me we destroy the real Loki,” Remi grumbled after she cut the comms.
She felt guilty saying so. Because Loki truly thought the world of her and deeply treasured her friendship. But. “We should.” After a moment’s reflection, she added, “And wipe the Sank ship’s computer before we warp it to Cantons.” She made a note to bring that up with Ben and Cope once she was nowhere Loki could eavesdrop. She didn’t dare beam the message now, lest she hurt his feelings.
Sanctuary’s AI achievement was a gift that kept giving. They’d traded a homicidal control freak AI for a socially needy AI. Maybe she could talk Loki into cloning himself as his perfect mate.
But then he’d build his template on her likeness and personality. He’d build some AI analogue of an inflatable doll of her. She shuddered.
Sass and her small crew had time to appreciate the Schuyler deep fryer after all. The barren galley proved devoid of plates, but they found cooking utensils and a colander. Remi and Joey enjoyed her fried battered peaches. Joey made a mean batch of soy protein donuts. Sass expected she’d regret the missing coffee before she reached Mahina Orbital.
She didn’t feel this ship could survive the zinging rocks of the Pono rings without pausing to realign the thrusters. But Ben assured her he’d escorted worse, supplying gun cover for two.
In another ten hours or so, Unnamed – still wallowing with mushy helm control – proceeded to the starting gate, mostly on course. An absolutely amazing fractal light show suddenly unfurled around her.
“Wow, Ben. This is gorgeous! My compliments to Cope and Teke’s team on the pretty thing.”
Ben stuck to business. “Sass, continue on your present bearing. You won’t do anything to warp. I wait until you hit your mark, then I do it to you. Ready?”
“Ready and eager,” Sass confirmed, still struggling to correct the helm.
And in a few more seconds, suddenly the vivid light show and the Sanctuary system blinked away.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Sanctuary Thrive!
Here ends the series for now, though not for long. T
hrive Spaceways committed to help Sanctuary visit Cantons and choose a new home. Of course Sass and Clay are personally committed.
What’s to become of Sass’s new friend Loki? Has Sass-as-AI really been deleted?
To be notified, please follow me on Amazon or BookBub. Or join my reader group for an exclusive prequel about the caper that landed Copeland and baby Nico in the phosphate mines before book 1.
Best wishes,
Ginger Booth
P.S. If you enjoyed Thrive, won’t you please post a brief review?
P.P.S. If you’re curious about my other series, I suggest starting with Feral Recruit. Does that Earth become the world Sass left? Could be.
Also by Ginger Booth
Thrive Space Colony Adventures
Skyship Thrive
Spaceship Thrive
Interplanetary Thrive
Starship Thrive
Ringship Prosper
Sanctuary Thrive
Power to Thrive *
* mailing list exclusive prequel
Feral Starve: Frosty and Panic
Ebola Day (prequel)
Feral King
Feral Queen
Feral America: Ava Panic
Feral Recruit
Feral Agent
Feral Courier
Feral Carolina
Feral America Begins: Books 1-2 & Prequel
Short Prequels
Civilly Disobedient (Dee)
Dust of Kansas (Emmett)
Road to Humble Texas (Kayden)
Ebola Day (Ava & Cade)
Calm Act Genesis (box set)
Calm Act, Books 1-4 : Dee Baker
End Game
Project Reunion
Martial Lawless
Tsunami Wake
The Calm Act Books 1-3 (box set)