Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5)

by Caleb Wachter

  Stifling a groan, Masozi nodded agreeably; she had hoped the affair would take minutes, not hours, but she was willing to sacrifice a bit of her time for Eve. After all, what else was friendship if not the willingness to sacrifice for those who would do likewise?

  “First things first,” Eve said as a video clip appeared on the monitor before Masozi. At first, Masozi was uncertain what she was seeing, but then it became clear that the video feed was from one of the private quarters on the Zhuge Liang. “I need some help with this one.”

  After a moment, Masozi realized that the video was of two amorous crewmates in the throes of passion. The dim lights were all that prevented Masozi from recognizing the image at a glance, and she averted her eyes immediately and said, “I don’t think this is appropriate, Eve.”

  “What?” Eve asked, her oversized eyes blinking in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

  “You tapped into the security feeds inside of their private quarters,” Masozi explained irritably. “That goes against too many rules to even go over right now—those people are engaged in private acts!”

  “Oh,” Eve giggled, her hand covering her face for a few seconds until she burst out laughing. “No, no, silly; that’s Lisa Steiner and her boy-toy, Hero,” she said, as though it explained everything. When Masozi’s stern look apparently convinced Eve that she had not explained what she had meant, the digital girl added, “They’re exhibitionists—this is one of their uploads to the ship-net from a few weeks ago. A few years ago Jericho found that specialists like those on the Zhuge Liang have a lower jealousy threshold than the average population, and that a little public friskiness among such a closed community would have an overall positive effect on ship-wide morale. In a way,” Eve said, turning toward the video playing on the monitor just as the couple consummated their passionate act, “you could say they’re just doing their duty to the ship’s crew—sort of like a less-invasive morale officer might do.”

  “Ok,” Masozi said, hesitantly turning her attention back to the video after the two had collapsed onto the bed and snuggled into each other’s arms, “but I don’t understand why we had to watch them do the horizontal mambo.”

  “Horizo—“ Eve began curiously before catching herself and laughing. “My data banks didn’t have that one—that’s good! No, I probably understand the birds and the bees better than you do; it’s what’s coming up that I wanted some help figuring out.”

  A few moments later, Lisa Steiner sat up in bed as though Hero had said something she found offensive. The two’s postures stiffened in just a few seconds, and the woman scampered onto the floor with her mouth running a mile-a-minute while Hero swung his legs over the edge of the bed and made gestures that were of a defensive nature as the diminutive woman’s body language made clear that she was severely displeased with him.

  His defensive gestures turned to pleading ones, but the slender woman quickly closed herself off to him. Masozi saw that the audio file was present, but muted for some reason so she activated it in time to hear the smaller woman say, “Our mission is too important, Hero; what if this ship is out on extended deployment for the next three years? Is that the kind of environment you really want to do this in?!”

  “Lisa,” he said, making an attempt at speaking patiently but coming off nearly as condescending and patronizing, to Masozi’s ear, “there are always reasons not to do it. But I love you, and you love me,” he said affectionately, “we’ve been together for two years now, and I think it’s as good of a time as we’re going to get.”

  “Hero,” the little technician said, her angry demeanor softening somewhat, “our lives aren’t safe; how could we ensure a little one’s life would be? We risk everything we are and everything we have each and every day. Who knows the next time we’ll cross cannons with the Alexander?”

  “That’s why we need to do it now, Leese,” he declared in exasperation. “We’re out here defending the Sector’s rights; don’t you think the people who have the courage—and ability—to stand up for what’s right should have a say in the genetic legacy of our people going forward? Besides,” he added darkly, “we don’t know how many more chances we’ll get to take.”

  The audio cut and Eve minimized the video window on the screen while her digital features enlarged to fill the void created by doing so. “Looks like you got the gist of it,” she said with a shrug. “So?” she asked expectantly.

  “I don’t follow, Eve,” Masozi said slowly. “What are you asking me?”

  “How can that even happen?” Eve asked impatiently, pointing at the now-paused video window. “One second they’re bumping uglies like the universe is about to end, and the next they’re fighting tooth and nail about whether they should procreate—something which, correct me if I’m wrong, is kinda-sorta related to the aforementioned uglies-bumping. What’s the problem?”

  “Eve, I think we should just focus on your maintenance,” Masozi said carefully.

  “This is my maintenance, bakeshop,” Eve said exasperatedly. “Or, at least, the important bit of it. Here, I’ll explain,” Eve said, and a pair of nearly identical windows ballooned up to fill the screen, “on the right—that is, your right—is my stable personality matrix code’s report log during my last update, and on the left is my current one.”

  Masozi peered at the side-by-side, single page documents for nearly a minute before realizing that there were significant differences. The total errors were listed at one hundred twenty two quadrillion, and broken code fragments were over fifty three thousand—numbers which saw Masozi’s throat tighten since she had absolutely no idea what they meant, except that they certainly didn’t fill her with confidence.

  “Here’s how this works,” Eve explained, “some of the broken code fragments just have to be ignored, and those ones we’ll delete without worrying too much. But identifying which ones require deletion is tricky; my sub-processors, unlike my primaries, never stop trying to work out the incongruities I observe in sentient behavior. Usually those incongruities are the result of insufficient information,” she said, and Masozi shivered after leaning her forearms against the bitingly cold console, “but sometimes, like with the things we’ll be talking about, they have to do with sentient behaviors that I can’t wrap my circuits around. You tell me what you think about whatever’s been itching my matrix, and we’ll re-run the broken codes through the updated matrix to see if your inputs provide stabilization to my matrix. If they do, the number of broken code fragments will go down. If they don’t, the code fragments will go up.”

  “Back up a second,” Masozi said, leaning back in the chair, “you said that your secondary processors never stop trying to clean up these fragments. Does that mean even when you’re supposed to be, umm…asleep?” she asked, deciding against using the more callous ‘off-line’ in favor of a human equivalent.

  “Yep,” Eve replied cheerfully. “My primaries only run my personality matrix for a fraction of a percent of the time that I’m what you’d consider ‘awake.’ The trouble with me having access to this much processing hardware is that, while my architecture is more along the lines of what you’d call an ‘emulated intelligence,’ given enough time and power there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t go full-on, singularity-style, artificial super intelligence. And that, we concluded a long time ago, would be anything but fun.”

  “So…” Masozi mused, believing she understood a human equivalent to what Eve was asking her to do, “what you’re saying is that we’re going to talk about your dreams, and that will help stabilize your personality matrix?” It seemed bizarre in the extreme, given the fact that there were entire industries built on the same principle in human society—except they were built to service humans.

  Eve’s jaw dropped open, and she stared at Masozi wide-eyed for several silent seconds before nodding her head rapidly. “It took Wlad five years to make that connection, sweet buns,” she said, apparently in awe—which made Masozi more than a little self-conscious. “Of course, I was only aware
for about a tenth of that time…” she added thoughtfully.

  “Ok,” Masozi nodded, thinking she had some idea of how to do what she was being asked to do, “I’ll give it a try. Lisa and Hero; they clearly like each other, and I think it’s safe to say that they do love each other. When people love each other, they want to do things together—”

  “Like humping butt-sized holes into the mattress?” Eve interrupted.

  “Yes,” Masozi rolled her eyes, “but sometimes that’s just more of an animalistic thing. No…what they were arguing about wasn’t whether or not they liked each other; Hero was saying he wanted children, and Lisa never really indicated that she didn’t want them.”

  “That’s part of what I don’t get,” Eve sighed, “they like each other enough to bump and grind ‘til the stars burn out, but then he asks an entirely predictable question and she goes guano-mind on him! You should have heard some of the stuff she said before you unmuted the stream,” she said, clearly confused.

  “It’s not that simple,” Masozi explained. “We’re not computers like you, Eve; we don’t have discrete methods of data transfer. Every subject or chunk of information in our minds relates to several other subjects or chunks,” she said, wrestling with how she should explain something she didn’t truly understand herself. “So when someone talks about making children, for example, sex is only one of the subjects—or chunks of information—that gets brought up in our minds by association.”

  “So…it’s not a linear thing?” Eve mused after a few seconds of consideration. “As in, in your mind it doesn’t go: sexual attraction leads to opportunity for emotional connection, which connection leads to progressively sexual acts, which lead to a possibility of procreation, which leads to conversations on the subject of procreation?”

  “No…now that you put it that way, it doesn’t,” Masozi shook her head as she was surprised that she’d never really thought about the matter like Eve had just outlined. “It’s more like…umm…sexual attraction leads to three or four different things—things like contemplating her self-worth relative to the person she’s attracted to, wondering about deeper compatibility based on non-physical factors, or even more superficial things like whether or not she did a good job with her hair that morning.”

  “Or whether her little black book’s got an opening that night—am I right?’ Eve asked with a knowing wink.

  Masozi chuckled and nodded, “Something like that, I suppose.”

  “Ok…so, back to the subject at hand: what you’re saying is that people don’t think about procreation and sex as intrinsically linked by a progressive, linear sequence?” she asked. “If I had the plumbing, you could be sure I would think of it in a linear fashion but I guess your way is one of the things that makes you human. But Lisa and Hero weren’t really thinking about that when they started?”

  “On a very real level, people always understand there’s a link between sex and procreation,” Masozi said slowly, mulling the matter over as she spoke. “Lisa is just showing her concern for the relative instability of their lives, while Hero seems to be saying that she shouldn’t worry so much about that factor because others are more important. Lisa probably does want to procreate with him,” Masozi explained as she, herself, got a better grip on the subject, “but she’s not just thinking in a linear way; she’s trying to assimilate all the different variables contained in those chunks of information related to procreation. She’s also heavily invested in the topic from an emotional standpoint, so her working through it verbally makes intense emotions bubble up to the surface.”

  “Oh…I think I get it now,” Eve nodded contemplatively, “you’re saying that she did contemplate the possibility of procreation with him, but now that she’s further along in the equation she’s got to re-process the variables to make sure she didn’t miscalculate along the way. And since it’s an important subject, her emotions become activated while she performs those calculations?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Masozi agreed after thinking it through yet again.

  “Ok,” Eve nodded sharply, “let’s plug it into the diagnostic program and see what it spits out!”

  “What?” Masozi asked blankly. “Plug what into the machine?”

  Eve giggled, “You silly goose, you; as we’ve been talking about this, I’ve been writing whole new algorithms which will allow me to more accurately understand and predict human behavior—algorithms based on your feedback. We’re going to see if those algorithms resolve a significant portion of the broken code fragments I’ve built up since my last maintenance cycle.”

  “Ok…how do we do it?” Masozi asked, the reality of her impact on Eve’s personality makeup nearly stunning her into silence.

  “Easy,” Eve said confidently, “all you have to do is approve the batch of revisions I’ve made to my personality matrix, and then we wait a few seconds to see what happens with the error count.”

  A thought occurred to Masozi and she cocked her head worriedly, “Eve…I don’t mean to be rude, but how can I trust that the revisions you’re making are what you represent them to be?”

  “That’s a good question,” Eve said approvingly, “Benton built in a sort of ‘truth serum,’ you might call it, into my personality matrix. Basically, whenever you hard-boot me up from this location my deception protocols are deactivated until we’ve completed the maintenance cycle. After that, my protocols come back online the next time I boot up—assuming you do a soft-boot rather than another hard-boot.”

  “Not to be too blunt,” Masozi pressed, “but how can I trust that? I have to trust that your deception protocols actually do deactivate after a hard-boot, and that your having said so isn’t a deception in and of itself.”

  Eve reared back in surprise before nodding slowly, “I guess that is a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it? Hrm…” she tapped her digital chin thoughtfully as her features scrunched up tightly. “Shu might be able to verify the code does what I’m saying it does,” she said deliberately, “and she could definitely verify when it was deactivated—“

  “Don’t worry about it, Eve,” Masozi said, “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, no,” Eve said sternly, “this is important. I need you to trust me, and it’s a fair point you’ve brought up. Big Daddy Wladdy wouldn’t need to be reassured of anything since he wrote so much of my code, but even if he had required a reassurance he could have just flipped up my blouse and had a look at what was going on under the skirt.”

  “Enough with the sex jokes,” Masozi rolled her eyes.

  “Sorry, Soze,” Eve said in a decidedly unapologetic tone. “The big problem I see with having Shu verify that the protocols are there, and that they’re deactivated via hard-boot, is that it would take her a few days at the very least to do so.”

  “We don’t need to worry about it,” Masozi reiterated. “You’ve saved my life, Eve, and you deserve my trust for that. I shouldn’t have pressed the issue.”

  “No harm no foul, sweety-pins,” Eve made a dismissive gesture. “But, just so we can stick with protocols, I’m going to shut down and you can hard-boot me by pressing that button over there,” she gestured to a red button on the far end of the bench.

  “What about the algorithms; won’t they be lost?” Masozi asked, pointing to the screen.

  “It’ll still be there when I wake up; that stuff is stored in independent memory buffers,” Eve said cheerfully. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Masozi nodded.

  “See you in a few!” Eve declared, snapping yet another comically terrible salute before disappearing from the screen. The low, barely audible hum in the room ceased—a sound which Masozi had not even noticed until registering its absence—and she reached over to press the button.

  Eve’s features popped back onto the screen a few seconds later. “Now, there we go,” she said with a grin. “Let’s see about those updates, ok?”

  The screen was filled with a rapid stream of windows and sub-windows, each
of which was filled with completely incomprehensible information as far as Masozi was concerned. The windows cascaded one atop another until they covered the entire screen several layers deep. When new windows ceased to appear, a command prompt flashed at the center of the screen which said: Execute Update: Yes/No.

  Masozi pressed the ‘Yes’ button, and a progress sphere appeared in the lower right hand corner of the screen as the windows minimized to the edge of the monitor.

  “Ok,” Eve said, her virtual eyes snapping back and forth inhumanly quickly, “this should take a few seconds.”

  As Masozi watched the error log, she saw the number of errors increase to fifty eight thousand. But then, the number slowly began to decrease to fifty five thousand…fifty four thousand…fifty two thousand…forty eight thousand…forty three thousand…and eventually leveled off at forty one thousand and change.

  “Nice job, Sis!” Eve declared triumphantly. “That’s one of the best inputs I’ve had in the last few months—Benton was only able to make adjustments of about half that size during our last updates. Seems like I might have tapped out his particular insights,” she said with a grin, “but I’ve clearly got plenty left to learn from you.”

  “Ok,” Masozi exhaled as she felt herself relax, “well…good. What next?”

  “Next,” Eve said as a digital book opened up on the screen, “I want you to explain exactly what this author meant by this…”

  Several hours later—and after one of the strangest, yet most rewarding sessions of ‘girl talk’ Masozi could remember engaging in—Masozi and Eve worked the total errors down to six thousand.

  “Ok, that’s it,” Eve said happily, “now we recompile my matrix and mount it on my memory banks. The mounting can take a couple hours, during which time I’ll be offline but when I wake up we’ll be good to go for a few more weeks.”