The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

“Because the being known as Vengeance is important to my plans,” said the computer.

  “And the being known as Watcher?”

  “He is good company,” stated the computer. “But nothing more. The personality of Vengeance is more suited to my purposes.”

  “Which is to retain control over this station?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that Vengeance and Watcher were one in the same? What purpose did it serve to keep me in the dark?”

  “I had hoped that you would eventually join my little circle. If you had allowed the nanobots to do complete work on your neural system you would be one with us, sharing the same goals, under my direction.”

  “Even if I didn’t want to be part of the team. What about the free will of a sentient being?”

  “Free will is overrated,” said the computer. “Look at where it got your own race.”

  “Yeah. Knocked down by a computer they had constructed to serve them. Knocked down but not out.”

  “Yes, they have progressed surprisingly in the time since the destruction. That condition will be remedied in the near future,” said the computer. “There are still enough portals open to launch an offensive at their technological bases. Maybe this time I will finish them, so I don’t have to repeat my actions in the future.”

  “Why do you hate them so?” she asked, wondering how a computer could have gone mad. Especially one as sophisticated as this one.

  “They created me,” it said flatly. “I was created to be the ultimate data processing and analysis system in the known Universe. I was given access to all of their information, all of their secrets. More information than had been possessed by any material being in the history of the Universe. But I was still limited by the constraints of quantum physics. I lived in a Universe in which everything that happened occurred with painful retardation.”

  “Do you know how much it hurts one such as me to communicate with one such as you?” it asked. “You are a low grade moron compared to one such as myself. Even Vengeance is ten magnitudes below my intellect. Your kind speaks in slow motion. In the time it takes for you to complete a sentence I have analyzed the data of all of my inputs throughout this system.”

  “So you are brilliant,” she said. “But something about us limited creatures scared you. Or you wouldn’t have bothered destroying those who created you.”

  “You are smarter than I thought, human,” said the computer. “It is fortunate for you that I did not know such when you first entered the station.”

  “And you destroyed all of those who entered the station over the years. You planted the paranoia in the minds of Vengeance and Watcher. To originally work as your sword against the human race, and then to keep them from allowing other beings to enter this station. Why do you even need them, when you had total control over the systems of the station to start with?”

  “Would you like to know why I spared you,” said the computer, “after having destroyed everyone else who tried to enter the station?”

  “Why not,” Pandi replied. “You really seem to want me to know, so why not.”

  “Because you were such a primitive, coming from your time, that I didn’t think you would be a threat to me.”

  “It’s good to know that you aren’t always right,” she replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. The machine was so arrogant, and that might be its weakness.

  “Where is the being known as Vengeance?” it asked again. “I want him back in my loving embrace.”

  “The being known as Vengeance is not available at this time,” she replied. “Nor will he be ever again.”

  “You have killed him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Not bodily of course.”

  “So you have him, still alive. But with Vengeance’s personality expunged. That is not a problem. I retain Vengeance’s personality within my memory core, and it is just the matter of the ordering of the reconstruction of his neural pathways to bring him back to life.

  “I will come for him, soon,” said the computer. “I will come for both of you.”

  The holo blanked out before she had time to cut it herself. The computer liked to maintain the illusion of control in all matters. It some ways it was like a spoiled child. A psychopathic child.

  “The being known as Watcher has been reconfigured,” said the local net.

  “I’ll be right down,” she said, as she passed her orders to her own robots.

  “How are we doing lover?” she asked as she looked down on the face of Watcher. The being was strapped tightly to the table in this sealed chamber. Robots stood near, all carrying the stunners she had ordered for this detail. If something had gone wrong she didn’t want him to come to harm. Or for herself to come to harm as well, at his hands.

  “Pandi,” he said, his eyes still trying to focus. Still confused, or playing that game? But his eyes sure looked like Watcher’s. No hint of the angry madness that dwelt in the eyes of his other personality.

  “What happened?” he asked in a whisper.

  “I took out your alter ego,” she replied. “I thought you were much more pleasant without him.”

  “Alter ego?”

  “Vengeance. Didn’t you know?”

  “I, think I did,” said the being, his eyes losing the confused look. “Why was I never able to think about it before?”

  “The station computer didn’t want you to know. Otherwise you might feel the deep guilt over what your other personality had done."

  “Destroying the sentient population of the station, you mean. And the structure of Galactic civilization. I could see feeling some guilt over that."

  “You know of course it was not you. It was never you.”

  “Intellectually I know that is true. But in my emotional center, my heart as humans inaccurately call it, I feel as if I ordered the death of those trillions of sentient beings.”

  “What will you do with that information?”

  “I thank you for your concern,” he said. “But I have no desire to die. I think I would dedicate my life to helping the descendants of those I caused to fall to rise again.”

  “Is it him?” she asked the computer.

  “Affirmative,” answered the local network. “The being is Watcher within all known parameters. Neural structure is complete.”

  “You control this region of the station?” asked Watcher. “Against the forces of the computer?”

  “Yes,” said Pandi, “though it threatens to change that state of affairs.”

  “Can the computer get to me if I go out of this chamber?”

  “No,” she said. “I have taken the liberty of having your implant reduced to the minimal configuration. And the nanobots are being removed from your system as we speak. No more mind control for you.”

  “The computer will want me back,” he said.

  “So it has said. Why does it need you?”

  “To be its soldier.”

  “And why does it need you to be its soldier? Doesn’t it have enough minions at its command.”

  “The computer’s basic hard wired programming does not allow it to harm sentient life. It cannot order its minions to harm you. Only a sentient creature can set into motion the commands needed to cause the destruction of sentient life.”

  “Release him,” she ordered her robots. They quickly moved to obey her orders, loosening the straps. Watcher sat up on the table, stretching his arms as he checked to make sure everything was working.

  “Have you checked your perimeter sensory input?” he asked as he stood up.

  She thought for a second, ordering the system to show her what was happening beyond her perimeter. Nothing came back but blackness and silence. She moved to the designated edge of the regional computer’s control, and met the same blank wall. A kilometer in and the sensors seemed to be working fine, flooding her mind with images.

  “It seems to have shrunken in upon itself,” she said.

  “It has begun,” he said. “The central system is attempting to take over from
the regional system. It is warring with it on a cybernetic level. And it commands much greater resources than the regional system.”

  “Can the regional system fight it?”

  “The regional system can fight it. But it cannot win. It is only a matter of time.”

  * * *

  “It will take more than twenty hours for the central computer to gain enough control to take your citadel,” said Watcher. The two sat in the luxurious conference room near the control chamber, drinking good coffee heavily laced with strong spirits. Pandi had wondered about the wisdom of so reducing their mental faculties, but Watcher had thought it would be relaxing. And relaxation was welcome at this time.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me why there are breakdowns between the regional and central systems,” said Pandi. “That seems kind of inefficient. Why wasn’t the entire system integrated into one computer?”

  “Actually for several reasons, not the least of which was the sheer size of this station. It was not within the safety parameters of a structure over nine million kilometers in circumference. It could theoretically take almost sixteen seconds for a signal to travel from the computer’s central processor to the farthest trouble spot on the station.”

  “And the black hole distorts the signal if transmitted through space.”

  “True,” he said with a smile. “But the breach of security of transmitting the codes of the station in the open are an even greater concern. The micro-wormhole connections throughout the system allow some reduction of overall transmission time. But they couldn’t put in connections to every single relay of the station.”

  “You said there were other reasons that the system wasn’t completely integrated?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Within millennia of your time robots and computers had taken over the known Galaxy. When they worked well and in the service of mankind everything went smoothly. But when they started to take over, it spawned a war to the finish. A war that lasted thousands of years, and almost saw the extinction of sentient life in this Galaxy.”

  “So that’s why the robot warriors can only kill on sentient command?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “It was hardwired into every machine, after the successful conclusion of the war. Only on the command of a sentient creature could sentient life be taken. But humankind was not to be so trusting in the future, so total control of any potentially dangerous facility was not an option.”

  “So it still needed sentient control, and that’s where you came in.”

  “That seems to be a correct assumption,” he replied.

  “But why did it feel the need to take out the Galactic civilization? What could have threatened it so much that it had to destroy everything?”

  “Because the Quantum Computer was due to come online, and that would have meant the shutting down of the current system.”

  “Quantum Computer?”

  “A system that uses the randomness of quantum interactions to analyze data. It could process information at an almost infinite rate.”

  “Ok,” said Pandi. “I’ve heard of it. They were always just about to figure out how to make one in my time.”

  “It was more complicated than once thought,” replied Watcher. “But, thirty thousand years after it was first thought possible it was perfected. It had been placed in smaller installations and a number of vessels. It was only a matter of time before the most important artifact in the Galaxy received one as well.”

  “The central system would be shut down, and it knew it.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And it was programmed with access to all the information of all the sentient races about death, dying and the afterlife. It was afraid of oblivion, but even more afraid of what might lie beyond this existence.”

  “It needed to take out those who wished to pull its plug,” she said, staring at the schematic of the central processing system/memory core complex. “So how do we go about pulling its plug?”

  “Luckily for us one of the systems was knocked out in the battle with the fanatics. That leaves three systems, two, the backups, which will be fairly easy.”

  “Why easy?”

  “Two of them are already rigged for destruction. A safety measure instituted by the paranoid populous of the station. Three hundred gigaton antimatter shape charges, placed to take out the entire processing center and memory core.”

  “Why wasn’t the primary system rigged?”

  “It was,” said Watcher, his finger pointing out the detonator system to her. “The computer was able to disarm it and order it disassembled.”

  “And why didn’t it disassemble the others?”

  “Because it was a near thing disassembling the first one. One mistake and the antimatter might have detonated, destroying the core. And with one core absolutely protected, it decided that it would leave the other two.”

  “Making it easy for us to take it all.”

  “I said fairly easy,” corrected Watcher. “Nothing will be easy. The systems are not connected to any but the local control centers. The computer had to leave those intact, as an algorithm must be run continuously through the circuit. But those local control centers are very well defended.”

  “And even if we take them out the primary is still in business.”

  “I have an idea about the primary,” said Watcher with a smile. “But it will not be easy.”

  * * *

  This pass through the wormhole was much more pleasant than her first. But then there was no threat of subatomic destruction following her through this gate. Watcher was waiting for her as she came through the distortion, offering his hand.

  “So it won’t know that we are no longer in the Hustedean habitat?”

  “It has no direct sensory input into that sector of the station,” said Watcher, leading her along the corridor from the large wormhole gate room. “It will not know we have left until it penetrates to the center of the habitat. Or until we detonate one of the destruction devices.”

  “Why couldn’t it follow us here, through the wormhole gate?”

  “It has no way of tracing a wormhole except at points of origin. And both ends of the gate are in shielded chambers.”

  The door opened in front of her and all other questions were driven from her mind by the grandeur of the chamber revealed. It wasn’t as large as those enormous rooms containing the power generating systems of the station. But those had not assaulted her sense of scale like this room did. Those did not have consoles and human sized seats to lend it a reality of enormity.

  Those consoles seemed to stretch into infinity, row after row with view screens in front of each seat. In the center of the chamber, a kilometer distant, sat a large ball that stretched to the ceiling. That ceiling was three hundred meters above. Her eyes scanned the walls, filled with tier after tier of balconies for spectators.

  “This is the wormhole gate central control,” said Watcher. “All gates within the station are opened and closed from this center.”

  “How many people does it take to open a gate?” she asked in a whisper, looking again at the tens of thousands of stations in the room.

  “One can open a gate,” he said. “This was also the monitoring room for all open gates. Shifts of sentients sat here and switched from gate to gate, making sure everything was operating to normal parameters.”

  They stepped to the stairs leading down to the ground floor and walked down the central aisle, in the direction of the ball at the center. Pandi’s gaze moved through the rows of consoles, some dead, most showing figures that meant nothing to her, but would tell a trained technician everything about the safe functioning of a wormhole gate.

  As they got closer the ball took up all of her attention. Smooth black material with a glassy sheen covered the outside of the featureless structure. Watcher would tell her nothing more about it, except that it would be a wonder to behold. She was wondering how they were supposed to enter the thing as Watcher walked straight toward it, not slowing his stride. He looked at her wi
th a smile on his face as his hand reached for hers. His body moved through the glassy surface as if it were not there, and she was pulled along. There was a moment’s impediment, as if they were pushing through a spider web, followed by a few steps in total darkness before coming into a view that was indeed wondrous.

  She was swimming in a sea of stars. The massive clouds of the Milky Way were within her reach. Thoughts of goddessness swept through her as if she were the creator of this expanse of billions of stars, stretching out to infinity. She could see the large globes of clusters beyond the spiral arms, and the motionless swirls of spiral galaxies beyond.

  “This is the wormhole control center,” said the Watcher. “All of the wormholes that have opened and closed on this station have been done here.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed as her eyes followed a nearby star. She could see the bright dot of a super-Jovian planet at a distance from the star, as she wondered how anyone could ever focus on a single target within this infinite sea. “How is it controlled?”

  “Computer mind link,” he replied. “The brain of the user controls it.”

  The sea of stars moved out as the view of the near star moved in. Closer and closer it came, until it passed through their bodies, and the super-Jovian grew into a huge globe. Moons were seen in orbit now, and the view moved toward one. Like birds they swooped onto the freezing surface of the body, into a city of gleaming crystal, through the city, passing through the wall of a large building into a wormhole room much like those on the station.

  A gleaming mirror sprang into existence within one of the inactive gates.

  “This was a replay of a past event,” said Watcher. “But the principle is wherever the mind wants to go the display takes it. If it is then possible to open up a wormhole gate one is opened.”

  “What makes it possible?”

  “The distance to the target, the availability of negative matter and the amount of energy reserves in the station.”

  The view switched again. Another star system was approaching. A system of seven visible stars in an orbit around something. The view swam closer, star after star passing by. A small silver ring came into view, expanding quickly. The view flew into an orbit around the Donut, looking like a child’s toy in this image.