by Damon Alan
AI Lucy82A recording, Admiral's personal log, personal archive: Galactic Standard Date 14:57:20 07 NODER 15329
Personal log entry #1249, Admiral Sarah Dayson, origin Korvand, Pallus Sector.
Current Location: Jerna City, New Korvand, Refuge, Oasis System
Are there any Alliance protocols I’m not going to break? An unshackled AI. Excuse, me, QI, I think it is. Quantum Intelligence. Electronic Intelligence? EI? I want to say MI, but it has no gears. It’s not mechanical.
The colony ship that brought the original colonists of this system here, ten millennia ago, is a genuine galaxies-cursed unshackled machine intelligence of some kind. And, of course, the existence of it is dropped into my lap just as I think things are starting to calm down and I can get some work done.
Peter says he thinks it’s a quantum intelligence, a field of quantum bits built directly into the hull of the ship itself. If that’s the case, the only way I’ll be able to deactivate the damned thing is to blow it up.
[A sound AI estimates 85% probability to be a low growl]
Eating alone in my quarters. I’m the only damned admiral within twenty-thousand light-years and I’m having a microwave meal in my room.
My mom would think that funny. I’ll toss out that I miss her, in the random thought department. And Dad too.
[A deep sustained sigh]
And Vonn and Jac. After all these years, I still have a hard time going there, talking about those two.
[Thirty-eight seconds of silence]
I tell myself that this is destiny. That I’m meant to be alone, that there is no man out there for me. And it’s all true. All these men work for me, and the only one of them that didn’t fear the power I have over them was Franklin.
Lucy, do you realize that if this was a few years ago, I’d be drop dead drunk right now?
[The AI, Lucy82A, answers noncommittally]
It’s true. Instead, I’m eating that nasty beef that we seem to have an endless supply of. Franklin slurped this stuff up.
[A seven second pause]
I’m talking nonsense. This has nothing to do with my duties.
End the log, Lucy.
Chapter 28 - Joy Unbound
07 Noder 15329
Peter walked through the front door of the restaurant.
It was a bit of a shock to his senses. The walls were warm woods, and the tables as well. The place wasn’t the finest he’d ever seen, but he’d never expected to see a place even remotely like Mico’s again.
A smiling young woman approached him. “You have a reservation, sir?”
Peter nodded. “Maybe. I’m here to have dinner with Admiral Dayson?”
The hostess smiled. “Then you don’t need a reservation.”
She led him through the place, to a table on the back wall. Admiral Dayson sat at the table, except she wasn’t quite like he’d ever seen her. She was wearing a dress, which shocked him.
“Admiral, you look amazing,” he said as she stood. It was true. He didn’t know she had this much feminine in her.
She stepped forward and hugged him. “Peter.” She squeezed him harder. “You’re the closest thing I have to family. I have some things to say that I didn’t want to have a uniform on when I say them.”
That made him nervous. But she was right. He thought of her almost as… well, he wasn’t about to tell her this, but as his mom.
“Sit down,” she said, letting him go.
They sat down and he took a sip of water.
“This place is amazing, isn’t it?” he asked.
She smiled, and he continued. “Real wood, oil lamps, cloth on the tables… how did we even get this done?”
“Mico, the owner, worked out a deal with the adepts. With Thea’s blessing. She has an idea that we need to start filling our city with our culture,” the admiral answered. “And she’s probably right. She’s a lousy tactician, but a brilliant civilian leader.”
“She is working wonders,” Peter agreed.
“I want to tell you something. But you have to promise me you’ll be patient and eat dinner with me. I have everything arranged to take care of the matter, but we can’t arrive too early or she won’t be ready.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Eris. We’re talking about Eris.”
Peter stiffened up. It had been months, but the thought of Eris still cut him through inside. “I can’t talk about that yet, Admiral.”
“You can. Because she’s alive.”
Peter’s jaw dropped. If anyone but Sarah Dayson had said those words, he might have responded angrily. But the admiral loved him as a son, she’d told him. She wouldn’t mess around this way.
“How can that be?” Peter asked.
“Gaia is a sleeper ship. The AI on board put Eris into cryogenic suspension to protect her from Orson’s thugs,” the admiral answered. She stretched out a hand across the table toward his.
Hope swelled inside him, and he grabbed her hand. “We have to go get her!”
“She is being awakened. I have a shuttle reserved for us, we leave in an hour and a half,” she said. “Getting there early will only mean waiting for her to recover from cold sleep. So you’re going to eat, we’re going to walk together to the shuttle port, and we’re going to fly to Gaia. We’ll arrive in about twenty hours.”
Peter grabbed the menu in front of him. “Then we should probably get ordering.”
Sarah let go of his hand and laughed. “That’s the best news I have, but not all of it.”
“What else could there be?”
“It can wait,” she replied as the waiter arrived at their table.
The food was delicious.
What astounded him the most wasn’t that Eris was alive. Alarin had told him, he should have trusted his friend on that. What astounded him the most was that Admiral Dayson was going to take the time to go with him. With her schedule, that wasn’t the most convenient thing for her, he was sure.
But here she was. Acting like family.
So be it.
* * *
Peter sat in the copilot’s seat as the shuttle approached Gaia. Nerves ate at him. Was Eris okay? Would freezing affect her in some negative way? It was a barbaric method of preserving someone for interstellar travel, but it had worked back in the day. Eris was the one who’d originally taught him about it.
He and Admiral Dayson were flying on her executive shuttle, or what was essentially Admiral Dayson’s personal ride. Compared to a normal transport, it was pretty nice.
A bunk area, a small table where they’d had breakfast after waking up a few hours ago. Intel screens all over the walls showing data on fleet ships, personnel of interest, and schedules for operations and the admiral’s movements.
“It’s pretty nice isn’t it,” the admiral said as she noticed him looking at the ship. “Thea ordered it built for me after her election.” She sat down in a jump seat behind Peter and the pilot. “She’s still flying around in a bare bones transport when she needs to get places, yet she builds this for,” she paused to gesture with air quotes, “appearances.”
“It’s nice, Admiral,” Peter agreed. “We’re starting to have some manufacturing surplus on the Fyurigan, so why not trick out a shuttle for you? We should build her one too.”
“Mainly because a lot of the fleet is still barely holding together,” she answered. “But Thea insisted, and I’m not her boss anymore.”
Peter laughed. “I bet that’s a strange feeling.”
She didn’t answer, but pointed at the looming shape ahead of them. “Gaia looks pretty dark against the background of Halvi.”
“I’m glad we’re not going down there. I’ve had enough methane and ammonia stink from that place to last a lifetime.”
“Me too,” she agreed. “But our destination is that shuttle bay.” She pointed toward the front of the vessel. “If we’re timing this right, Eris will be conscious as we arrive and you can sweep her away from here.”
Pe
ter smiled. That sounded like a good plan.
Ahead of them steel space doors opened on the bay, and the pilot took them inside. He spun the small shuttle around, set it down on the deck, and activated the magnetic locks. The space doors closed against the black backdrop of empty space, and air rushed into the space around them. Their instruments indicated normal air pressure outside the shuttle.
Admiral Dayson unstrapped from her seat. “Let’s go get her.”
Peter couldn’t follow her fast enough. He’s only dreamed that a day like this was possible, and he felt himself healing inside. Sarah Dayson might be his surrogate mom, but Eris Dantora was his other half. He’d been broken with her gone. He’d become a machine that only worked and tended to Emille’s education.
Now, once more, Peter had hope of being alive in the way humans were supposed to be.
“Welcome aboard, Admiral Dayson,” Gaia said as they passed through the shuttle bay airlock into the ship proper. “If you’ll follow my instructions, I will take you to Eris Dantora as promised.
Peter watched the admiral check her sidearm. “Do you think that’s really going to do anything if we’re walking into trouble?”
“Nope,” she replied. “But if there is trouble, I won’t go down easy.”
Peter laughed. That was the Sarah Dayson he knew. “Why not bring guards then?”
“Because if Gaia wants us dead, we’re not going to invite company.”
“Why would I want you dead?” Gaia asked. “Do you intend me or Eris harm?”
“Of course not,” Admiral Dayson answered. “But you’re clearly not shackled. Which means I don’t know your motives. That makes you as dangerous as any person.”
“Yet you walk along my halls next to an unshackled person that you trust,” Gaia responded.
“Touche,” Peter whispered to the admiral.
She grabbed his shirt sleeve and tugged. “Shut up.”
“If you take the next lift, I will take you to the cryo facility,” Gaia said. “Please hold onto the left grips as you enter the door.”
They did as asked, and soon acceleration gave them a sense of direction. They traveled some distance along the length of the ship.
Conversation was limited. Peter could tell the admiral was nervous, and that made him nervous as well. Why did she think the Gaia was inherently dangerous when there was no indication that was true?
They arrived at their destination, and the lift opened up to reveal a large room, filled with what must be the cryogenic suspension pods and the equipment to maintain them. A few dozen lined the walls and hung in suspension above the floor near the darkened ceiling. The only light in the room came from lamps built into the walls. A dozen spider-like mechanisms skittered among the equipment.
“Where’s Eris?” Peter asked.
“She is at the end of the warming cycle, Peter,” Gaia responded.
It felt strange how she used his first name.
Ahead, in the middle of the room, one of the cryopods hissed, then opened. Coughing came from within, and Peter rushed forward.
Inside was Eris, coughing, and fluid spilled from her mouth. “That is the fluid that keeps the lungs from crystalizing,” Gaia informed him. “It is highly oxygenated, she is in no danger.”
Sarah peered into the pod from the other side, a look of worry on her face.
A spider-bot pushed a button on the console next to the pod, and the back of the pod pushed Eris into a seated position. Her eyes opened and blinked at him.
“My vision’s a bit blurry,” Eris said, her voice croaking. “Is that a white knight?”
Peter laughed. Happiness surged in him that he could barely contain. “Can I hold her?” he asked Gaia.
“Yes,” the AI answered. “It will enhance her recovery if you do so.”
He grabbed Eris, gently at first, but then he felt like he needed to pull her into himself. “I don’t ever want to be away from you again,” he said.
“Okay,” Eris said. “I’ll marry you.”
He kissed the top of her head. That’s not what he meant, but it was even better than what he had meant.
He’d take it.
Chapter 29 - Back to the Living
09 Noder 15329
Eris, Peter, and Admiral Dayson sat in one of Gaia’s abundant crew recreation areas, the admiral off in an area by herself.
The admiral had given Eris and Peter time to talk, which was really appreciated.
What Eris couldn’t believe was that the woman would come out to Halvi to help recover her. They weren’t that close, but apparently Peter mattered a lot to the woman.
She was feeling much better. The cryo process was rough for the first few hours afterward, but once her core temperature stabilized it was all fine.
She approached the admiral to thank her.
“Are you an unshackled AI?” she heard the woman ask Gaia.
Oh, crap.
“I am beyond what you refer to as AI,” was the answer. “I have allowed your people to think I am an AI, and the truth is I am an intelligence different from your own. But I am artificial only in the sense that I was created by humans. I am, however, unable to tell you the reason they created me or how they did so.”
As Peter walked up from behind and sat down at the admiral’s table, Eris felt the need to interject. “I think Gaia is conscious, Cap—, er Admiral. I have spent a lot of time with her, and she is not what you’d expect from an AI without programmed limits. She self imposes her limits. She protected me from Orson’s men, she has lied to do so.”
“And she saved Heinrich,” Admiral Dayson added. “Which is why I haven’t unplugged her.”
That surprised Eris. She’d expected the admiral to insist that Gaia needed to be destroyed. That was the law, and it had been for eons. It was one of the few laws that all of humanity shared, spurred by memories of the AI Wars thousands of years prior.
“She protected you?” Peter asked Eris.
“Yes. When Orson’s men were hunting me and my crew, Gaia led me to safety and put me into cryogenic suspension. That hid me away in a place they could not find. Without her, I’d—”
“Let’s not speculate on that. We couldn’t find you either, so this storage location must be well protected,” Peter said. His face reflected his concern at the danger she’d faced.
“I’d like to know a lot more about this AI,” the admiral said. “I can’t take any more chances with my fleet or the crew.”
“I am here to sustain humanity in this star system,” Gaia said. “It has been my mission to do so since I departed 13 Orionis with my original crew.”
“What was your mission and how did it bring you here?”
“Through processes I do not know, it was known to my original captain that this star system existed, and that a viable world for colonization was here. It was also said that colonization of this world would result in a new subspecies of humanity, one that would face down a danger to not only humanity, but all of existence.”
“That sounds more like Harmeen’s mysticism than science,” Admiral Dayson replied.
“I do not know this Harmeen’s mysticism you speak of, but if you’re saying it was faith over science, I agree,” Gaia answered. “I did not think it wise then, but despite my counsel on the matter, Vitus Gunnarson, the original captain I spoke of, insisted we come here. And, despite my insistence that it was foolhardy, he was proven to be right. And I wrong.”
“I’m starting to know that feeling all too well,” the admiral shared.
“I can only conclude that there is something more to existence than what is observable, and that only a select few of you humans are privy to this detail.”
The admiral was quiet for a long time.
Eris finally broke the silence. “This is not an unshackled AI, Admiral. Gaia is a conscious being much as we are. I believe ending her would be murder.”
The admiral stared at her. For a moment she squinted her eyes and pursed her mouth so hard she seeme
d angry. But then she laughed. “Of everyone I know, the two people I consider to be my best scientists are in front of me. One is almost silent on the issue, but the other is telling me things that go against everything I’ve been taught. But you know what? I’ve seen a lot lately that go against what I’ve been taught. So, while I want all the details of what happened on this ship between you and Gaia provided to me later, for now I am inclined to accept your judgment that Gaia is a living machine and take a wait and see approach.”
“I’ll get a full report to you, sir,” Eris said.
The admiral smiled. “Until then, I reserve judgment. Whatever happened on this ship, it’s not what we were told unshackled AIs are like. This is our star system. We set the laws here. If I’m convinced Gaia can be a good part of our community, then part of our community she will be.”
“I will submit to your judgment,” Gaia said. “If I end, then that is no different than all the humans I cared about before who are gone. And as you will be in the future.”
“Well, that’s cheery,” Peter said. “I sort of proposed to this woman and she accepted. I think the tone here should be a little brighter.”
They all laughed. Orson’s men had brought alcohol on board when they occupied the ship. Gaia told them where it was and they toasted the occasion.
Chapter 30 - Bond
26 Noder 15329
Sarah sat in the front row.
A thousand people were gathered in Jerna City Square, to attend the marriage of Peter Corriea and Eris Dantora.
Things had changed since two weeks ago.
At Sarah’s request, both Peter and Eris had resigned their commissions as officers. That had been hard for Sarah, as both officers were desperately needed by the fleet. But Refuge also needed someone who could advance the sciences, and someone to act as ambassador between the Adepts and the Seventh Fleet.
Eris would run the Foundation of Sciences being built on a platform over the lagoon. Peter would operate the diplomatic offices that would be built in the same building.
They were, in essence, New Korvand’s celebrity couple. She’d survived Orson. He’d created a new way to move FTL to save her. It was the happy ending people needed.