Titan

by Bova, Ben

  Pancho looked over at Wanamaker, who shrugged elaborately. “I got my hands full with this mission, Holly,” she said to the image on her screen. “Can’t this wait ’til we get back?”

  Holly kept on babbling.

  Wanamaker chuckled. “She won’t hear you for another six seconds or so, and even then I doubt that she’ll pay any attention.”

  “Damn,” Pancho muttered. “She’s spoutin’ like a runaway rocket.”

  “She’s got the bit between her teeth, that’s for certain,” Wanamaker said.

  “Since when are you talkin’ like a cowboy, Jake?”

  Eying the comm screen, Wanamaker said, “She reminds me of somebody.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “You,” he said.

  It took a bit of manipulation, but at last Gaeta saw Habib’s list of questions glowing on the left side of his visor. Feeling a trifle foolish about talking to a computer, he took a breath, then checked to make certain that his communications line was plugged into the computer’s comm receptacle. The controllers back in the habitat can hear me talk to the computer, he reasoned. They can eavesdrop. But he turned off the incoming audio on the channel that connected him to the control center. Let ’em listen, Gaeta said to himself, but I don’t want them yammering in my ear while I’m talking to the machine.

  Once he was properly connected to the central computer, Gaeta asked, “Is the uplink antenna functioning properly?”

  The computer’s synthesized voice answered flatly:

  Uplink antenna deactivated.

  “Deactivated?” Gaeta blurted. “Why?”

  No response from the computer.

  Gaeta grumbled under his breath and peered at Habib’s list of questions. They were arranged like a logic tree: if the computers says this your next question should be that. But there wasn’t any question about the uplink antenna being deactivated.

  “Was there a command to deactivate the uplink antenna?” he asked.

  No.

  He started to ask why again, but figured the computer wouldn’t answer that one. Instead, Gaeta thought for a few moments, trying to frame a question the coño computer would reply to.

  “For what reason was the uplink antenna deactivated?”

  Conflict of commands.

  Ah, Gaeta thought, now we’re getting somewhere. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the yellow comm light start blinking again. The guys at the comm center want to get into the chatter. He ignored it.

  “Display conflicting commands,” he said to the computer.

  He waited, but the computer stayed silent.

  Most of the controllers had left their consoles and were gathered around Habib. As he listened to Gaeta’s attempt to talk to the central computer, he could feel the heat of their bodies clustering around him.

  “He’s cut off his link with us,” said one of the controllers.

  “I can see that,” Habib muttered.

  “But he won’t hear any instruction we send to him.”

  With gritted teeth, Habib replied, “We’ll just have to wait until he sees fit to listen to us again.”

  “Display conflicting commands,” Gaeta’s voice came through his console speaker.

  Habib shook his head. “That’s too general,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “The program can’t handle that kind of input.”

  Sure enough, nothing but star-born static hissed through the speaker grill.

  Habib leaned on the communications switch. “Talk to me, Gaeta,” he urged. “Open your comm link and talk to me, dammit!”

  No one spoke, no one even breathed, it seemed to Habib. The speaker remained silent except for the faint background crackling of interference coming from the cold and distant stars.

  Timoshenko tapped out the access code on the security panel set into the bulkhead beside the airlock hatch. He knew that this would send a warning signal to the safety supervisor; no one was supposed to go outside by themselves. All outside excursions had to be cleared by the safety department beforehand.

  He grunted to himself as the airlock’s inner hatch swung open. Safety regulations are only as good as the people using them, he thought. I know all the rules and all the codes. And I know how to get around them.

  He fingered the remote controller he’d attached to the belt of his hard suit. I know all the commands for the radiation shielding system, too. I can shut the system down with the touch of a button.

  The inner hatch closed and sealed itself. Timoshenko stood inside the airlock and waited for it to pump down so that he could open the outer hatch and step into nothingness.

  28 MAY 2096: DIALOGUE

  Gaeta opened the comm channel to the control center. “You hear what’s going down?” he asked, feeling annoyed at the computer’s obtuseness, at his own inability to make the damned bucket of chips talk to him, at the fact that he was sitting on the roof of a dead rover in the middle of nowhere with a storm coming up while the rest of them were safe at their desks.

  And then there was the excruciating time lag between his questions and their responses.

  Habib’s voice at last said, “Your last question was too general for the master program to handle. We’re sending you a more specific set of questions.”

  “Okay,” Gaeta said, nodding inside his helmet. The storm of black snow was noticeably closer. Moving faster than the higher clouds, he saw.

  He realized it was getting cold. Can’t be, he told himself. The suit’s heating system could cook a rhinoceros. You’re letting your nerves get to you. Still, sitting on Alpha’s roof with nothing to do but look at the icy landscape around him, Gaeta felt chilled.

  At last a new list of questions flashed on his helmet display. Gaeta squinted at them. This is like talking to a two-year-old, he grumbled. Then he saw that, at the end of the list, they had written in boldface, IMPORTANT! DO NOT CUT OFF COMM LINK WITH CONTROL CENTER. IMPORTANT!

  “Got your questions,” he said. “And if you want me to keep the comm link open, don’t clutter it up with a lot of chatter. Right?”

  No use waiting for them to answer, Gaeta thought. I can put those twelve seconds to better work.

  “Computer, display all commands to the uplink antenna.”

  Date, 25 December 095057 hours: Activate uplink antenna.

  Date, 25 December 095109 hours: Abort data uplink.

  Date, 29 December 142819 hours: Deactivate telemetry uplink.

  Gaeta could hear muttering and people breathing back at the command center. But they stayed fairly silent as he scanned the new list of questions.

  “Display command to deactivate uplink antenna,” he read aloud.

  No response from the computer. Gaeta went to the next question.

  “Display decision tree for antenna deactivation.”

  A jabber of electronic noise burst from Gaeta’s helmet speakers. “Wait! Stop!” he hollered.

  The noise stopped, like turning off a light switch.

  Habib held his thumb down on the keypad that turned off the outgoing messages link. The engineers crowded behind him were all talking at once, all their suggestions and ideas frothing together into an incomprehensible babble.

  “Quiet!” Habib shouted. “He’ll cut us off again if we don’t stay quiet.”

  Von Helmholtz added calmly, “It is difficult enough for him down there without hearing all our voices in his ears. I suggest we allow Mr. Habib to do all the communicating with Gaeta.”

  One of the computer engineers said, “Tell him to have the program go through the decision tree at human-normal speed.”

  “That could take hours,” said Habib.

  “He could squirt the program’s response to us at compressed speed and we could go through it, line by line,” suggested another engineer.

  “That would take days,” Habib replied dourly.

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  Habib kept his thumb firmly on the OUTGOING key. “We will listen. And say nothing unless we come up wit
h a better idea.”

  Gaeta saw that the storm of black snow was inching closer all the time. Wonder what it’ll do to my comm link? he asked himself.

  Never mind that. You’ve got to get this stupid computer to talk to you in a language you can understand.

  He sat there, thinking hard, watching the sheet of black snow as it approached. It looked like a curtain of darkness. Better get out of here before it reaches me, he thought.

  From his briefings he remembered that Alpha went dead at the same time that it cut off the uplink antenna. Maybe the key to its decision is there, he said to himself.

  “Computer, display all the commands made when the uplink antenna was deactivated.”

  Date, 29 December 142819 hours: Deactivate downlink antennas. Deactivate tracking beacon. Deactivate telemetry uplink. Maintain sensor inputs. Store sensor inputs. Change course forty-five degrees. Maintain forward speed.

  “All sensor inputs are stored?” Gaeta asked, surprised.

  Yes.

  “Why was the telemetry uplink deactivated, then?”

  Conflict of commands.

  ¡Mierda! Gaeta said to himself. We’re back to that again.

  Habib’s voice came through, “All the sensor data is stored? We haven’t lost any data?”

  “That’s what the computer says,” Gaeta replied. “It’s all stashed away in its memory somewhere.”

  A jumble of voices in the background. Gaeta tuned them out and asked the computer, “Why store the data if you’re not uplinking it?”

  Conflict of commands.

  “Gesoo Christo,” he growled. “Is that all you can say?”

  Habib was almost shouting, “Ask it under what conditions it will uplink the data!”

  Gaeta took a breath, then rephrased, “Under what conditions can the stored data be uplinked?”

  Under no conditions.

  “Why not?”

  No response, although Gaeta heard a muted hubbub of voices from the command center.

  Think, he said to himself. This is like talking to a very smart two-year-old. You’ve got to get around him.

  “Computer, can you display the commands that are in conflict?”

  The computer remained silent.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Gaeta tried to concentrate. Maybe I oughtta shut off the command center again, he thought. They’re nothing but a distraction.

  Then Habib’s voice came through clearly, “Ask the computer to display each one of the commands that are in conflict individually.”

  Worth a shot, Gaeta agreed. “Computer, display the command that controls the sensor data uplink.”

  Immediately the computer’s flat, synthesized voice replied:

  Command: All sensor data to be uplinked in real time.

  “Okay, fine. Now, what command is in conflict with that one?”

  Insufficient information.

  “Insufficient?” Gaeta echoed. “What do you mean?”

  Your question contains insufficient information to produce a meaningful answer.

  Gaeta felt like pounding both fists on the vehicle’s roof. What the hell does he mean by that? What did I say that’s insufficient …? He thought about it for several moments, then decided to rephrase his question.

  “Okay, look. Tell me what command is in conflict with the command to uplink all sensor data in real time.”

  Primary restriction.

  “Primary restriction? What the hell’s that?”

  28 MAY 2096: MISSION CONTROL CENTER

  Primary restriction?” Habib echoed. “What primary restriction?”

  He looked up at the faces gathered around him. They all looked as puzzled as he.

  “I know the master program,” he said. Gesturing to the programmers in the group he went on, “We wrote it. Do any of you know of a primary restriction?”

  They glanced uneasily at each other, shaking their heads.

  Von Helmholtz, still sitting ramrod straight in the chair beside Habib’s, said, “The clock is running. We will have to extract Gaeta from down there in twenty-nine minutes or less. I don’t like the looks of that black storm.”

  Habib barely heard him. “A primary restriction. The master program believes it contains a primary restriction that is preventing it from uplinking data from the sensors.”

  “There isn’t any primary restriction,” said one of the women.

  “But the program believes there is,” Habib pointed out.

  “There are learning routines,” one of the other program engineers said slowly, as if piecing together his thoughts as he spoke. “Maybe the program has modified itself.”

  “What could make it do that?”

  Habib replied, “It could learn from the conditions it encountered once it was activated on Titan’s surface.”

  The woman said, “What could it possibly learn from Titan’s surface that would make it refuse to uplink data to us?”

  No one had an answer for that.

  Still sitting on Alpha’s roof, Gaeta listened to the engineers’ musings with growing discomfort. He checked the temperature inside his suit: it had dropped four degrees below optimal. Okay, he thought as he turned up the thermostat to bring the temperature up, it’s pretty damned cold out there. Heater must be working overtime with me just sitting here, not generating much body heat.

  The engineers were batting around ideas about why the stupid computer turned off the uplink antenna. It was like listening to a gaggle of high school class presidents trying to solve the problem of world hunger.

  I’ve got get out of here, Gaeta told himself. But he realized that he didn’t want to leave his job unfinished. I can’t let this pile of chips beat me. I’m smarter than a goddamned computer, no matter what kind of learning programs they put into it.

  “Computer,” he snapped, “what is this primary restriction?”

  No response.

  Grimacing, he rephrased, “Display the primary restriction.”

  A burst of electronic noise assailed his earphones. Before Gaeta could blink, it was over. But his ears started ringing again.

  Well, he thought, at least the guys in the control center have something to work on. Maybe in a week or two they’ll figure it out. But I can’t wait that long.

  The chingado computer won’t uplink data from the sensors because it thinks there’s some primary restriction that’s telling it not to. Gaeta pondered that for several moments, while the engineers’ arguing voices continued to clutter up his communications frequency.

  Something it’s learned while it’s been here on the surface of Titan, Gaeta thought. Maybe …

  “Computer, what is the single most important piece of data your sensors have detected?”

  Silence. Nothing but crackling static. Gaeta was about to give up in disgust when the computer’s inhuman voice replied:

  LIFE-FORMS EXIST IN THE GROUND.

  “But we knew that from earlier probes.”

  I HAVE NO INFORMATION OF EARLIER PROBES.

  I? Gaeta wondered. A computer that talks about itself? That recognizes itself?

  The engineers back at the control center jumped on the same concept. Gaeta heard their voices rise in pitch and intensity.

  Ignoring their chatter, he said to the computer, “You found life-forms in the ground.”

  YES.

  Gaeta started to ask his next question but hesitated. Watch it, he said to himself. Don’t let him fall back on that damned “conflict of commands” crap again.

  “Are the life-forms involved in the conflict of commands?”

  Gaeta waited, but the computer stayed silent.

  “Are the life-forms the cause of the conflict of commands?” he asked.

  YES.

  Holy shit! Gaeta exulted. Now we’re getting someplace. Aloud, he asked, “How do the life-forms cause a conflict of commands?”

  Again the computer went silent. Is it thinking over the question or is it just too friggin’ stupid to give me an answer? Gaeta asked himself. />
  “Gaeta! Listen to me! Now!” Habib’s voice called insistently. Even with the volume turned low Gaeta could hear the urgency in his voice.

  “What is it?” he replied wearily. He felt burdened, tired of this whole game. And then he waited, while the black snowstorm crept closer.

  “That burst of information the program sent a half-minute ago,” Habib said at last. “It’s all about decontamination procedures!”

  “Decontamination? You mean, like scrubbing the machine to make sure it doesn’t infect Titan with Earth germs?”

  Again the delay. Then, “Yes! When you asked it to display the primary restriction it displayed its file on decontamination procedures!”

  “That’s the primary restriction?”

  With nothing else to do, Gaeta sat inside his cumbersome suit and counted the seconds to Habib’s reply. Eight … nine … ten …

  “There isn’t any primary restriction. Nothing of that sort was written into the master program. But the computer has interpreted its decontamination procedures as a restriction of some sort.”

  Gaeta shook his head inside his helmet. “I don’t get it. You’ve got some housekeeping commands written into the master program and the dumbass computer won’t send any data because—”

  Suddenly it all became clear. Gaeta’s eyes snapped wide. He raised both gloved hands in a clenched-fist sign of victory.

  “Computer,” he called, “would uplinking sensor data cause a contamination danger to the life-forms in the ground?”

  YES, came the immediate reply.

  Habib, still nearly twelve seconds behind real time, was saying, “It must be something about preventing contamination. I think you’re—”

  “I’ve got it!” Gaeta yelled. “I’ve got it! Shut up and listen, all of you.”

  Habib and the other voices went quiet.

  “You built learning routines into this program, right? Okay, it’s learned. The computer found life-forms in the ground. It knows from your decontamination procedures that Earth organisms can contaminate the Titan organisms. So it interprets the decontamination procedures to mean that it shouldn’t send data back to you about the local life-forms.”