by Tobias Roote
Pod being trapped in the control centre meant she watched silently as Zeke escaped his cabin, through the door which opened onto the CC. Using the main console, he locked out the automated control system using an override password she hadn’t even been aware of. As Zeke worked at lightning speed, he changed the status of her control systems from active to inactive taking 90% of her systems offline and securing them from further tampering. A good move, even though it left her incapable of managing the ship.
Pod realised there was much more to these humans than she currently understood. They were truly multilevelled and infinitely devious in their thinking and planning. Pod knew this wasn’t a lack of trust in her, but paranoia of the humans against involvement with each other. One more aspect to consider, she thought, as Zeke rushed out of the CC to the rear of the ship, an area she still couldn’t go.
Wondering where he had gone, she checked her accessible sensors to see what Zeke had changed, establishing that the ship was now moving back towards Earth on a wide-angled trajectory.
Seeing its possible escape route being blocked, the enemy wrongly assumed Pod was responsible, so redoubled its efforts to gain control, fiercely attacking her. Pod, under increasing pressure and fighting for her existence, felt herself losing ground. Mutating code and viruses erupted in every part of her systems, pushing her into a corner with nowhere to escape the army of bots that were tearing her world apart. Despite her superior abilities, she was fighting something that knew how to press an attack home and she was outmatched and losing badly. She sensed failure was imminent.
Then everything changed. The intruder was suddenly gone from her systems – totally! Its malign code still ran amok all over the place causing major control issues, but at last Pod made real progress through her systems, keeping it all locked down tightly in case anything crept past her defences again. More than once, dormant or dead snips of alien code suddenly came back to life, forcing her to retreat. She methodically destroyed all of the alien code she found while unaware of anything else going on outside of her own personal war zone. Pod was completely oblivious to any other battles being fought elsewhere within the confines of her ship.
Still believing there to be an intruder in her systems working to free the communication channels that she had locked down, Pod was unaware that it was Arty on the other side pincering the code between the two of them, so continued to block it whilst at the same time driving the pernicious alien code from her system’s buffers.
While in the process of halting yet another attack, a message burst through her defences. It was a single word, ‘Arty’.
Immediately Pod realised who the other intruder was and working out the location, realised she had been fighting her friend when all Arty had been trying to do was open communication between them. Rectifying her mistake, Pod opened a channel and after comparing results on the full nature of the alien infestation, they joined forces.
Arty showed Pod a retrieved image of Zeke fighting the Nubl prisoner in the cargo bay. For Pod, in that split second, the whole issue clarified - the AI had also forgotten about the Nubl captive from the Shadowship which had somehow freed itself, and was attempting to take over the ship and fighting Zeke, who she could see from the image, was having a hard time of it. Neither she or Arty were able to help him while there was still lurking danger within the ship’s systems. She hoped he would prevail, but a sense of panic set in.
Arty reassured her that Zeke could manage until they cleared the ship’s systems and between them they compiled bug-hunters, stripping out the now identifiable trojan code until finally, they reached the rear of the ship, and the point of origin of the code. It was also where the Nubl warrior now lay dead, alongside Zeke, covered in blood from a major chest wound, who appeared to be in the same condition.
Pod’s immediate belief that Zeke was lost caused the emotional floodgates, that had been building up inside the tiny AI, to open. Whilst the command sections of the ship were still closed off to her via the manual over-rides, the communication channels were now connected, fully parsing Pod’s anguished screamed across all channels and far out into open space. Across space, ships’ speakers all howled in sympathy as her grief erupted.
Arty could do nothing for Pod. The ship was still too far out to jump it back to Alpha Station. Instead, he checked that he could now completely access the cargo bay, then D- jumped Zeke directly to the station’s medical unit.
When Arty and Zeke disappeared, Pod’s grief turned to anger, her reaction burned out conduits and sensors all over the ship. She felt alone and exposed. The very fact that the little AI had spent so much of her time trying to understand what was happening to herself, had contributed directly to her failure to keep the ship and her Maker safe from harm. Yes, she could re-constitute him, but she had again failed to protect him as programmed.
Unlike the original artificial intelligence that had arrived in the system so long ago, that had protected the Maker, the patterns and their pod from harm, Pod now felt lost and so far removed from that originally programmed AI, that she no longer understood her place in the scheme of things. Pod was having an identity crisis and whilst she understood what it was, she had no idea how to cope - she needed time to sort herself out. She knew that if she went back now, she would never achieve anything with all of the questions and second guessing by everyone of what might have occurred. She couldn’t face all of that, so with a feeling of desperation, seeing that the dematz field hadn’t been interfered with, but unable to set any coordinates, Pod set the field to full power, and D-jumped.
In the time it took Arty to transfer Zeke and reconnect with the ship, Pod had gone - leaving behind no clue of her destination. He scanned space as far as he could for any sign of the AI’s presence, worried that she was struggling with so little help from the outside. He felt that for Pod at least, this had proved to be what humans referred to as ‘the final straw’ and wondered if he would ever see her again.
Shelving his sad thoughts of what the loss of Pod would mean to Zeke, Arty began the job of sorting through the logs he had pulled from the ship. He realised there needed to be some extensive overhauling of AI security everywhere as a result of the attack on Pod.
Reluctantly, knowing it would anger some of the humans unreasonably, he notified the control centre and Pennington back on Earth; leaving it to them to analyse the threat of an alien takeover. Arty then restricted himself to monitoring Zeke’s very feeble life signs while the human and AI surgeons worked tirelessly to laser and glue his toughened flesh back together, injecting advanced medical nanites to repair the extensive internal carnage he had suffered.
Luckily for Zeke his Alacite enhanced body didn’t just mean he had great powers of recovery, but also greater resilience to infections. He would pull through, but it would take some time to heal the horrific injuries he had sustained.
For something to take his mind off Zeke and Pod, Arty re-ran the logs from the last few minutes of the alien attack, in preparation for the day he would have to explain to Zeke exactly how the incident had occurred.
Whilst checking for the intruders code fragments, Arty noted an extensive section of Pod’s programming was now so complex as to defy his own ability to decode it. He could see from her logs, that this was largely what had held back the alien’s attack. It had been unable to overcome the complex operating algorithms that were now Pod’s personality. When did all that happen, he wondered, then remembered that Pod had been having problems with daydreaming and introspection lately. They had all put it down to the lack of Jenari contact and difficulty assimilating with humans.
After completing his analysis, Arty realised that had Pod been fully aware of her own abilities, the outcome of the battle might well have been very different - she was a very powerful and advanced AI. So developed that Arty had no idea how Pod had even recognised the intrusion. It was so amazingly well camouflaged as native code that even Arty would have missed it.
Arty wondered where Pod was, and if
she was even aware of her unique abilities.
- 11 -
Startling News
Zeke remained unconscious while the nanites went about their work. Every time his fever reached a peak and they thought he would burn up, the Alacite advanced further into his brain and his temperature would stabilise. Kelly monitored his bio readings and brainwaves. They were behaving strangely and despite her and Arty’s attempt to understand them, there were no records of these types of rhythms anywhere in the human databases.
Neither of them knew what exactly had been done to Zeke when he had first met the alien, Zirkos, and Pod wasn’t around to clarify anything. So, whilst the resultant tests on him and Ferris, who had died from the excess of Alacite in his body, were available to them, neither could attribute anything in the notes to Zeke’s current comatic condition.
“It’s as if the Alacite is taking over his body, Arty,” Kelly said after extensive analysis of the continued relocation of the metallic alloy to Zeke’s head. She saw no evidence of a reduction elsewhere, so it must be multiplying somehow. She had read the the detailed records of Ferris’ voluntary, but fatal exposure and worried that Zeke was heading the same way. So she spent much of her time trying to analyse the Alacite’s continuing effects on Zeke’s biology.
Arty came back after a detailed examination of all of the test results, past and current. “He’s not being harmed by the changes, it’s as if something is attracting the molecules to Zeke’s implant, and whatever is occurring is actually stabilising his condition. The implant seems to be undamaged and the connections seemingly are unharmed by the molecular build up, on the contrary they seem to be improved.”
Kelly silently agreed. She had watched him stabilize over the last twenty four hours and realized the worst might well be over. It amazed her that such a simple thing as continued exposure to minuscule amounts of Alacite in his system could create such a change in his biological make-up.
More interesting was the increasing amount of concentration of the alien metal compound lodging in his brain. She had no idea of the future effects of that, but she attributed at least part of his current condition to its relocation within the specific areas of his brain that dealt with long-term memory.
***
Zeke had already decided he was either hallucinating or dreaming, but he seemed to have little control over where he went. In his ‘dream’ he was looking out through someone else’s eyes, and the more he tried to understand what was happening, the less he believed what he was seeing.
While his body lay deep in a coma, cared for by machines and medical nanite, mentally he was completely aware, but trapped inside a mind that wasn’t his. The situation was alien, but at the same time familiar - although he had no idea why. He was somewhere - not on Earth or Alpha Station.
Despite his attempt to keep hold of reality, his curious mind was winning him over. Eventually, when nothing bad happened he pushed back the worry and temporarily accepted this new state and opened himself to where he was. In doing so, he completed the invasion of the other’s mind and was astonished at its depth. He tried to delve into where he was, so it would give him some bearings, but the mind he was in wouldn’t let him go there, his only way was deeper in where the mind’s owner was less active or in control.
There was so much in there he could live a lifetime and not know its full extent.
When he tried to communicate with the mind that he was busily stomping all over, he was met with a wall of resistance. Whoever they were, they weren’t prepared to entertain any thoughts that ran contrary to their own. It wasn’t that it ignored him, it just seemed to be totally unaware on a conscious level that he existed. He was left as a bystander to events that, to Zeke, had no sense, or purpose he could perceive.
The language in the mind was nothing that Zeke could understand so communicating at any level was currently impossible, he thought.
He watched an event which recorded through a pair of very precise and sharp-focused eyes, as a bird-like android was chopped into pieces by other androids. Its wing-like arms were spidery and thin, but with a tensile strength denoting advanced metals and synthetics being used in their make-up. The images of the androids looked hauntingly familiar. He thought he might have an idea of where he was, and it scared the hell out of him.
It was as the wafers of memory were extracted and wiped, that Zeke began to have his suspicions confirmed - not precisely, but a glimmering of comprehension pervaded his senses. These memory wafers bore a strong resemblance to those that Ship and Pod produced and which all AIs being constructed now, used in their make-up. Of Jenari design, these were, therefore, Jenari-origin androids, or something similar. The images in the other mind suddenly switched to ships massing for flight.
Lots of black ships.
Ships that Zeke instantly recognised.
Shadowships.
Crap! He was inside the mind of a Nubl?
How it had occurred, that he ended up inside the mind of Earth’s mortal enemy, Zeke had no idea, but an opportunity to understand the driving force behind their hatred of biological sentience was not to be missed.
Were the Nubl telepathic?
How was he connected to this entity?
Who was he connected to?
Zeke thought of the battle with the Nubl captive in his cargo bay. He wondered if he had been infected with something on the end of the alien’s spear and this was causing him to have these hallucinations. He belatedly realised that any infection would have been halted by his medical nanites as well as the Alacite altered biology. He was never ill, wounded yes, but he had never caught diseases or viruses.
Had he been captured and was now in the hands of the enemy? He switched to thinking in high analysis mode. Free of any physical encumbrances while he was de-facto comatose, he extrapolated everything that he could from his situation.
It took a while, he didn’t do this sort of thing often. When he realised his body was exhausting itself visibly through his activities, he remembered why. He would need to restore his energy levels, or go into starvation-mode, and that posed its own problem. He wasn’t wherever he was voluntarily. He might have a problem if he wasn’t in a medical cubicle somewhere and being nourished by tubes.
Despite the risk, he resumed his analysis until he had followed the many thoughts into a few, and from there, into a single commanding conclusion - which drew a very frightening scenario. Somehow, the Alacite was acting as a conduit between him and the Nubl.
Pheson Alacite was used by the Jenari, and seemingly the Nubl too, as a memory-grade compound because it increased power and speed of processors by an almost immeasurable amount. Zeke calculated that if there were multiple incidents of reference between two points, that there existed a possibility of quantum entanglement, effectively partnering the individual sources. He believed he had just discovered a new use for the Alacite - as a communication device.
None of this helped Zeke much right now. He was still unconscious, his mind remained highly active with one foot in the alien’s brain. He decided to find out what he could. That meant he had to learn the language of the Nubl, which as he progressed through the brain of the Nubl he was partnered with, he realised was similar to the Jenari language. As he picked up more and more he saw the same style of software coding floating through the other’s mind. The evidence was overwhelmingly obvious. The Nubl were android versions of Jenari. The records from Ship that Pod had passed over were completely true. These were the historical TransJen, those of the Jenari that had surrendered a biological existence for that of an artificial one, ultimately bringing about the destruction of their own society.
***
Zeke felt the itching around his wound telling him that it was being healed at a fast pace by nanites. He could feel the concentration of their numbers as they swarmed around the damaged area knitting his flesh and bone with hot little pincers that lasered the bits together. They had already completed the major portion of his repair. There was no pain, never
much of an issue for him anyway, but it meant that there was nothing impairing his ability to get up and find out what was going on. He knew they didn’t have much time to prepare, the Nubl were preparing their massive fleet - he had seen it.
He clearly remembered the dreams, and without a doubt whatever he had seen was really happening out there somewhere in space. He realised he had, for a short while, been connected to another being and felt the connection was still there, a tenuous link to another place, another world. It was odd and somewhat scary - did the link work the other way round? Was ‘it’ even now looking through his memories of recent events? Had ‘it’ seen him defeat the warrior in his ship?
He opened his eyes and saw a blurry image sitting beside him. As his vision cleared, he saw it was Kelly, distracted, not yet realising he was conscious. He watched for a moment, enjoying the unguarded presence of her. He felt drawn like none before and wondered what it was that attracted him. She was clever, one of the brightest the academy had ever taught. She had breezed through every course and exam and achieved a 95.4% pass rate, fully 8% higher than any previous candidate. Yet, she was modest, not even remotely interested in using her intelligence in any other way than helping the other scientists achieve success with the ongoing projects at Alpha Station.
His hand twitched as a particularly enthusiastic bunch of nanites repaired a nerve in his shoulder causing a reaction to travel down his arm to his index finger.
”Ah, you’re awake, then Mr Lazee,” Kelly smiled down at him, her green eyes, a match for his, as she gazed at him with a hint of mischief.