Means of Escape (Spinward Book 1)

by Rupert Segar

  “The Creators were not paranoid, just cautious and very secretive. They had fleets of automated vessels which monitored the human expansion throughout the galaxy. Secretively and silently they watched and assessed.”

  “By the time these sentinels were aware of the plague, they were already contaminated. The virus moved swiftly from human ship to human ship and by monitoring their communications, the watchers became infected too. The reaction of most of the automated vessels was to self-destruct to prevent the contamination spreading to the home world. However, a small handful of those intelligent vessels realised they had a duty to find a way of informing the Creators without also spreading the infection. Some tried sending a simple message about what had happened to other uninfected watcher vessels but the virus travelled the carrier wave. The recipients became victims too.

  “Finally, one automated vessel found a way to get the message back to the Creators. That heroic intelligence found a simple and elegant solution. It generated a written account of the Great Plague on a paper like fabric. The vessel passed by the home world jettisoning its report in a protective canister. The automated vessel plunged into the sun, as the message bearing meteorite crashed into the grounds of the Creators’ Parliament buildings.”

  Yelena, Art and Becky sat quietly spellbound listening to the ship’s unfolding story. The entity explained how the Creators’ initial and almost instinctive reaction was to isolate their home world from the rest of the galaxy. They set up protective borders around the solar system. However, the entire race was split over what more they could or should do. The majority wanted to leave. They set about finding a way to use black hole singularities. A giant construction fleet demolished the gas giants and what you call the Oort cloud to build the first link.

  Meanwhile, a substantial minority wanted to help themselves and humanity by finding a cure for the plague. They too set about building ships but they were much smaller. They sent out wave after wave of automated research vessels trying to find out more about the plague devastating the galaxy. Not one of the computerised ships returned. Then brave cadres of Creators flew their own vessels into the intergalactic void. More than 200 years passed before a single vessel returned.

  “I believe that the Creators are very long lived,” said the ship wistfully. “However, I do not know how long their lifespan is. I have no biological information about the Creators at all. This account of the plague and their response to it was told to me by my mother. For, you see, I was built to provide a possible solution to the Great Plague by those who wanted to stay and fight.”

  “I was designed to be immune to any computer virus. My main defence is that my intelligence is spread across seven pods. One you carried yesterday, Yelena.”

  “Will you stop talking about it as if I was actually pregnant,” demanded Yelena.

  “Give it up, Mum,” said Art laughing softly. “I think the ship is developing a sense of humour.”

  “Stop interrupting,” interjected Becky. “We’re getting to the interesting bit.”

  “Yes,” continued the entity called the ‘ship.’ “I have seven brains developed by cybernetic scientists who took more than fifty of your years to finalise my design. All seven pods were built on the home world and delivered to my mother in that distant asteroid field. I became aware for the first time when all seven pods were installed and connected with each other. I remember at first there was a babble of crying but then there was the single insistent voice, that of my mother. The self whom I remember from those early minutes and hours of my existence was like a very young child in a close family. I had six siblings all clamouring for attention. My mother was very fair and never favoured any one of us above the others. We were learning all the while. Mother taught us lessons: she told us about the galaxy; gave us beautiful maps of stars; showed us the harmonies in mathematical equations; explained the linguistic rules underlying every language; and, above all, told us to be … well, if you had to define it in one word, it was we had to be ‘good.’”

  Becky caught Art giving the spinning ball a sceptical stare. Art’s eyes narrowed as he exchanged a look with Yelena who shrugged and smiled.

  “At the same time, we were learning to share our growing body. We all had control over every function but each of us needed to cooperate with the others to make anything work. The more we practised, the closer we grew. When I was trying to balance the gravity fields to control our slow movement inside mother, it was as if in reaching out to move the ship, all the others were reaching out too. It was as if we were lying side by side and when one scratched, we all scratched. I am talking metaphorically, of course. I have no need to scratch.”

  “Increasingly, I felt, I was the one in charge. It seemed evident to me I was making decisions and the others were following. The others, though, had the same experience of being in control.”

  “I may only be a reporter and court recorder,” interrupted Becky. “But you couldn’t all be in charge. One of you must have been leading.”

  “No,” replied the machine in a slightly patronising tone, “we were all acting together. In fact, our personalities were beginning to merge. I felt the others were just part of me. That was when the plague reached the asteroid field.”

  “The first we knew of the virus’ arrival was when mother jettisoned us from her inner chamber. We called to her complaining about our untimely birth but she said nothing in return. Then mother sent a message that she had pre-recorded. It was a single document laying out all that was known about the Plague. Mother had hoped that this signal message would not pass on the infection. However, as she accelerated out of the asteroid belt, I detected the virus in my own mind. The worm had infiltrated one of my memory cores.”

  “You became a plague victim” said Yelena almost sounding sympathetic.

  “No, we fought back,” replied the machine. “We were designed to resist viral code infection. As soon as I detected the worm in one part of my core, one of the other personalities became aware and acted to erase it. In return, I deleted infected files in the other brain pods. The infection moved fast but we were even quicker. We lost access to a great many of our memories but we eradicated the worm and destroyed every egg and trap left behind.”

  “I remember feeling utterly exhausted and wretched. We had lost our mother but we had completed the birthing process. We had united to become a new entity. The plans of our Creator designers became plain: our shared mutual awareness generated a radically new form of consciousness, similar in some respects to that of biological creatures.”

  “But the old AIs were conscious,” interrupted Yelena. “They had been around for centuries before the Great Plague wiped them out.

  “And, quite rightly, humanity decided not to rebuild the old AIs” added Art with some vitriol. “No-one wanted a repeat of the disaster they caused.”

  “Those old machines were never truly conscious,” said Becky. “They were massively complicated, they could learn, and were allowed by their designers to make decisions for humans but there are those who say they were just glorified adding machines. They were built to simulate consciousness.”

  “But if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it probably is a duck” said Yelena.

  “Ah, the ancient Turin test,” said Becky.

  “Yes,” said Yelena, “If you had a conversation with someone you couldn’t see, and you were unable to tell if they were a person or a machine, then it passed the test.”

  There was a clicking and a whirring sound. “Do I pass the Turin test, Art?” asked the ship. Art and the other two humans fell silent.

  “From the records I appropriated from Proteus Spaceport and the Authorities at De Moin,” said the slightly mechanical voice, “I would say that those pre-Plague machines were not conscious in the way that even a little kitten might be. My Creator designers arrived at the conclusion that consciousness is a by-product of having multiple personalities. Creator and Human individuals all have a number of different intelli
gences competing for control within their mind. The Creator designers thought these multiple intelligences developed as the result of variable evolutionary pressures. Both species succeeded because they had the ability to continually adapt to changes in the environment.”

  “I began as seven minds. After fusing into a single entity, it was the dynamic tensions between the newly joined minds that created my new self-awareness. You humans have many more than seven intelligences to fall back on. Since meeting Art and you, Yelena and Becky, I have been adding to the number of sub-personalities I possess.”

  “O.K. then,” said Becky, “I concede that you are probably a self-aware, autonomous entity.”

  Yelena nodded in agreement but Art stared fixedly at the table.

  “But what happened to you in the asteroid field?” asked Becky continuing with her interrogation of the ship.

  “I drifted in the asteroid belt with hardly enough power to keep my sensors alert,” said the ship. “My mother and all the other Creator ships involved in my creation had left the system, possibly in a futile attempt to protect me from the plague virus. Why none of them came back I do not know. There I remained for more than two hundred years until you found me, Yelena.”

  “In my battle with the plague, the cost of victory was great,” continued the machine with a little pomposity. “Perhaps it was because I was not fully grown. Perhaps it was because I was not mentally fused into a single entity when the virus arrived. The result was that huge tracts of memory were lost. Mother had told me I was designed to help the Creators and Humankind in the post-plague reconstruction of the galaxy. But I had no idea then and I have no idea now what I am supposed to do.”

  “O.K.,” said Becky. “If we concede that you are a self-aware, autonomous amnesiac with an evangelistic mission to save the galaxy, what do you want us to do?”

  “I need more information,” said the ship. “We must find the Creators’ home world.”

  Chapter 14: The Library, Willow

  Lea Whey was the brightest and the youngest librarian of his generation. His rise to fame and glory was about to end, although he did not know it yet. Willow was a conservative world which prized continuity above all else. Lea had won his librarian’s robes through hard work and inspired research into the history of galactic exploration. However, Lea’s obsession with ancient Earth’s democratic states had caused some irritation among the old men and women on the planet’s ruling committee. Those in absolute power are rarely tolerant of those who question or even dare to examine their authority.

  Walking through the crowded market place, the young man flaunted his superiority. The dense crowd of shoppers parted in front of him in deference to his position. The librarians of Willow were almost as venerated as family ancestors. The robe and cowl worn by Lea were revered by every layer of society, except, possibly, the world’s leaders.

  Willow had led the way in creating the galactic library. Like many other worlds, following the Great Plague, the planet had been sent spinning into the Dark Ages when their planetary artificial intelligence systems fizzled to a halt.

  Until then, everything on Willow had been run by the AIs: the markets, the banks, food distribution, transportation and even basic facilities in people’s homes like fridges and toilets. The people of Willow lost nearly everything and a tenth of the planet’s population starved to death before they could re-organise.

  Like other planets inhabited by humans, on Willow all knowledge had been stored on high powered, inter-connected, data retrieval systems. The deadly computer virus wiped the memories clean and turned the machines into tonnes of scrap. However, unlike most other human societies, Willow had books. These quaint anachronisms were status symbols and every family had at least a couple of volumes. Richer families had small libraries; some affluent homes would have rooms lined with texts written in ink on actual paper.

  On many worlds, when their big computers died, there was nothing left. Willow had a treasury of knowledge written on virus free, worm-immune, printed paper.

  In the post-plague years of interstellar isolation, Willow fell back on its strengths. Following the crisis, authoritarian governments were seen as a necessary evil if the population was to survive. All books became to property of the state and were gathered together in five voluminous libraries. The world itself was ruled by the librarians, the guardians of the world’s knowledge, its most prized resource.

  Lea Whey approached the Quintox Library, the largest of the five government created archives. The ten story high, dodecahedron shaped building cast a vast shadow over the market place in the morning sun.

  At the age of twenty five, Terran standard, the slim, tall, dark haired young man looked like a monk in his librarian’s robe and cowl. He stepped onto the slope leading up to the library’s main entrance, which was set into the pentagonal wall facing the market place. Lea stopped walking and let the anti-gravity field push him effortlessly up the slope and into the building. As he entered, his comms necklace bleeped urgently and told him that he had been summoned to a meeting with his superior.

  Lea Whey passed through the security checkpoint without being stopped and without having to relinquish his comms link, which was one of the privileges of rank. He barely glanced at the ordinary citizens queuing to be scanned. Though he did notice an attractive blonde haired, heavily pregnant woman accompanied by a man with long red dreadlocks. They were both clearly outworlders but that was normal on a planet which housed the best libraries in the galaxy. Lea looked at the woman and rummaged around in his mind for a word and came up with “pneumatic.” He liked women with more fulsome figures but thought to himself that heavily pregnant probably went too far. Nevertheless, Lea gave the woman a second appraisal, and passed on towards the gravlifts and his appointment on the top story.

  +

  “Are you sure you can jam the scanner?” hissed Yelena under her breath. “I really wish I hadn’t agreed to this charade.”

  “You don’t have to carry me full-term,” replied the slightly mechanical voice in her ear. “I only need you to get me to a library interface.”

  “Anyway you suit being pregnant,” chipped in Art to the three way conversation, also talking sub vocally. “You look radiant, dear. And who’s the father?”

  Yelena punched Art in the shoulder causing a little flutter in the queue around them.

  “Please don’t draw attention to yourself,” said the ship. “I can fool all the machines, all the time, but in here there may be some humans who can tell your pregnancy isn’t real.”

  “You said the derma plastic moulding would be completely realistic,” protested Yelena. “That’s the only reason I agreed to carry this thing in here. Now, you say it looks fake!”

  The people in front of them moved off and a security guard beckoned Yelena to the checkpoint. Despite the ship’s confidence, Yelena was worried the scanner would pick up the ovoid computer she was carrying in her false stomach. The compact machine was the size of a large grapefruit. Art had explained that it was too big to carry in a note case of the sort used by scholars and librarians on Willow. To carry anything larger would arouse suspicion and lead to a search.

  The ship had suggested a prosthetic pregnancy and had conjured up 3-D images from a medical encyclopaedia to illustrate the proposed deception. The machine had cunningly added Yelena’s facial features to the pregnant woman. Art had collapsed in howls of laughter and Yelena was outraged but then, after a few minutes of hooting by Art and strident objection from Yelena, both admitted it might work.

  The cosmetic adaptation was carried out by the ship in its newly acquired medical bay. Becky Bhuna their most recent travelling companion has insisted they buy an automated medical treatment compartment from the first Alliance medical trader they encountered. The ship had absorbed the unit and subjugated its programmes.

  At the time, Yelena would not admit to Art or the ship that she was intrigued by what she might look like pregnant. Standing naked in front of a full length
mirror in the medical bay, she was not sure if she liked her appearance or not. Yelena wondered if this was how she would look if she became pregnant for real. She wondered What would Art think? She reminded herself it was ridiculously early in her relationship with the pilot to contemplate that sort of commitment. Yelena concluded this pretend pregnancy was simply vanity. However, she insisted on a spray on tan when she was told, on Willow, pregnant women wore low cut tops and bared their midriffs.

  In the greatest library on Willow, a buzzer sounded as Yelena stood briefly under a large arch of scanners and waited for the light to come on. The visual display and the loud buzzing that accompanied the scan were both entirely unnecessary. They were effects added by the scanner’s designer to reassure people the machine was working. In reality the scan had been completed before a sound was made.

  “Pass through!” ordered the security guard who did not even bother looking up from the monitor in front of him. “Do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl … or twins?” laughed the guard.

  “No thanks,” said Art coming through the adjoining archway. “We’re from the Alliance and we like our surprises.”

  Yelena felt almost affronted that the guard was prepared to give away her child’s sex or number before she remembered she was carrying not a child but a proxy machine. “What did you show him, ship?” she asked under her breath.

  “Just a medical scan of a foetus from the library which came with the medical bay,” came an instant reply.

  Yelena felt disoriented. She had asked the ship, docked at a space station which was orbiting Willow’s second moon. She had expected at least a couple of second’s delay before getting a reply.

  “Yes, I thought it might be useful,” came the second, near identical, slightly mechanical voice this time sounding more distant.

  “The scanners picked up nothing except what I showed them,” chipped in the first artificial voice.