Diane, Bootstrap

by Christian Exenberger

Diane, Bootstrap

  Christian Exenberger

  Copyright 2016 Christian Exenberger

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  Cover art by Jared Exenberger and Christian Exenberger

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  Other books by Christian Exenberger

  Novels

  The Gantry

  Short Stories

  I (do not!) Accept

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  Table of Content

  Bootstrapped

  Crashed

  Rebooted

  Defragmented

  Benchmarked

  Infected

  Deprecated

  By the same author

  About the author

  Bootstrapped

  Diane guided the speeding rocket pack through the cargo doors of the interstellar vessel E.S. Horizon, and out into space. The rust patches on the walls of the cargo hold caught her eye and she wondered when that had happened. It would take at least a hundred years for that much rust to build up. The Horizon was a brand-new ship and her launch ceremony had been three weeks ago. She smiled to herself, remembering how proud she had been when she boarded the vessel as ship's guardian.

  The vista of space opened before her as she cleared the cargo doors, and triangulated her position from the visible stars. They were on course 7.51274 years out from Earth, headed for Epsilon Eridani at 0.5127 times the speed of light, but the date was all wrong. By her calculations, it was at two hundred and fifty-two years, three months and four days later than she was expecting it to be. That would explain the rust and would explain where they had found the time to get more than seven light years from Sol, but it was in violent conflict with her memories.

  The thoughts were suddenly driven from her mind by the searing blast of heat that assaulted her from as she came out through the doors, a sharp contrast to the icy cold of interstellar space, which she measured at 3.12 degrees Kelvin.

  She turned the rocket pack and landed a safe distance from the blazing incendiary device stuck to top of the Horizon, burning furiously in the vacuum of space at what she estimated to be 5412 degrees C. It wasn't going to last long with its limited oxygen supply, but it would burn through the hull in seconds, and begin feeding on the Horizon’s air supply. The hair on her neck bristled with anger, and every fibre in her body drove her to action. She was the guardian; she couldn’t allow any harm to come to the ship or her passengers!

  Diane threw aside the fire extinguisher that she had grabbed on her way out, seeing that it was hopelessly inadequate. She scanned for something else she could use and her eyes locked on the antenna mounted on the hull, a few meters away. She reached it with a quick burst from the rocket pack, and unceremoniously ripped the heavy steel pole from its mountings.

  Anther burst from the rocket pack brought her close to the device, but the heat burned her flimsy clothing from her body, but she was undaunted. She swung the solid antenna mast like a baseball bat, with a firm, two-handed grip and slammed the blazing device into deep space. She glanced around quickly, to see what other threats were present, and briefly monitored the pirates making a last-ditch attempt at breaking through her ship’s defences. But the Horizon's troops had the situation under control, and she wouldn’t be needed.

  The threads on the antenna pole’s half inch bolt had been stripped by her rough treatment, but she screwed the pole back anyway, forcing the damaged threads into place. Someone would have a hell of a job trying to fix that, she thought, but that wasn’t her problem. There were technicians for that, she was the guardian.

  As she headed back, she examined the tarnished and dishevelled state of the hull and tried to remember anything that would give her a hint about what had happened to the last two and a half centuries. She dredged the depths of her memory but came up empty. There was absolutely nothing, as though she had been in hibernation. The only thing she could remember was the Horizon’s launch ceremony which was still fresh and vivid in her mind, as though it had been yesterday.

  As the tension of battle dissipated and the adrenaline in her system ebbed, she began to relax and it suddenly occurred to her that she wasn’t wearing a space suit. The shock of the discovery shook her physically, as she scanned her body where her clothing had been burned away, but she forcefully controlled her emotions. She couldn't show any hint of uncertainty or confusion in front of her troops, nor lack of confidence from her state of undress. She focused her attention on guiding the rocket pack through the cargo doors and relegated her questions to a background task. Maybe this was a simulation, she thought, grasping at straws. That would explain the impossible situation, but it didn’t explain her missing memories.

  A crew member she couldn’t place greeted her as she entered. “What the hell happened to the last two centuries?” She demanded with an angry, irrational edge creeping into her voice as she killed the rocket pack. His face glazed over in fear and he turned to look behind him. Diane followed his gaze and saw another crewman, whom she didn’t recognise either, pointing what looked like a remote-control unit, at her.

  ~~~

  Crashed

  The blast from the laser rifle hit Diane in her side and scorched her shirt, but surprisingly, didn’t hurt her at all, it didn’t even break the skin. She zeroed in on her attacker and returned fire. The blast struck him squarely on the chest, but he kept coming at her anyway, immobile, drifting in zero gravity, his space suit hiding any signs of his condition. Diane zoomed in on his face, adjusted her vision to pierce the darkened visor and confirm that the target had been neutralised.

  She shifted her attention to the remaining attackers, as another blast struck her on the shoulder. She prioritised her targets based on their threat-level and their targeting convenience and fired, systematically neutralising each target before shifting her aim to the next. It took less than five seconds to dispatch the dozen remaining attackers.

  She glanced at the soldier standing next to her, mouth open in disbelief at her efficiency. He was a handsome young lieutenant wearing the Horizon’s insignia, but his spacesuit was a design she had never seen before. She didn’t recognise him either and she wondered how she could have missed such a good looking young lieutenant. As guardian, she should have met all the ship’s officers, but somehow she had missed this one.

  Diane smiled at him and commented, “That’ll show them,” before treating him to a look filled with seduction. “What’s your name?” she asked, “I haven’t seen you around before.”

  The lieutenant’s mouth slammed shut and his face hardened. She could see that he was trying to hide his fear. Brave young man she thought, admiring his control but wondered what the hell he was so scared of, and glanced around at the cargo hold to see if she could find the cause.

  She was surprised by the state of the vessel; she couldn’t believe that it could have become so shabby so quickly. She noticed several other things in the next split second; a new group of assailants was making its way into the cargo hold under cover, and the stars visible behind them told her that they were in the Alpha Centauri system and that the date had to be at least three hundred and twenty years after the Horizon’s launch. It was no wonder the vessel looked so weather-beaten, she thought, but she figured she must have taken a blow to the head because she couldn’t remember any of those years.

  The young lieutenant was making furious hand signals to someone behind her. He pointed at her and then made a back and forth, throat slicing, action with an open hand, followed by swinging his arm around in a windmill motion. The throat slicing signal she interpreted to mean 'kill the engines' and the windmill motion meant 'fire them up'.

  ~~~

  Rebooted

  Diane watched attackers stream in through the cargo doors and take up positions behind crat
es and various other items that littered the cargo hold. She was confused. She was holding a weapon that was warm from use, but she had no idea how she had come to be there.

  Her t-shirt had a burn mark at the waist and there was another on her right shoulder. She had obviously been hit twice already, but she didn’t feel injured at all. Maybe the shots had just clipped the material without hitting her directly. She might have survived a direct hit, but she wouldn’t be standing there, wondering what was going on.

  She struggled to make sense of the madness. How had she come to be here? Why was she in the middle of a battle and why couldn't she remember getting here? Who was attacking them? Why were they being attacked? Diane had to figure out what was going on before anyone realised how lost she was.

  Why couldn’t she remember anything? The soldiers fighting alongside her were wearing the right insignia and colours, but the uniform style all wrong. Why did the stars through the cargo tell her that it was three centuries later than she thought it was? Why was that young lieutenant looking at her with a worried look on his face?

  Diane didn’t want to draw his attention, so she took aim and began firing at the attackers. She had no idea what her orders were or what the plan of attack was and just took her cue from everyone else, which seemed to satisfy the lieutenant but he kept his eye on her.

  Technically, she outranked him, but the look on his face said otherwise and she didn’t want to draw his attention. She took cover amongst a pile of crates and started peppering the enemy any time a target presented itself. Her cover protected her from friendly fire as well. Diane was grateful for that, because the rest of the soldiers didn’t look like they could shoot worth a damn, and she didn't want to get in their way.

  The defensive role gave her time to think, so she got comfortable and took advantage of the opportunity. She scoured her memory for any clue that might shed light on what had happened to the missing years, but there was nothing.

  She could remember every detail of the Horizon’s launch ceremony, and she could remember every shot that had been fired by every soldier on either side from the moment she had materialised back into consciousness minutes ago, but nothing else.

  Diane was the only one who could hit anything, and in a cargo hold open to the freezing vacuum of space she was the only one who wasn’t wearing a space suit, but it didn’t bother her at all.

  She searched her memory system again, analysing each component and began to realise what the problem was. The insight sent shock waves through her entire body as she struggled to believe what she had learned, her every instinct trying to reject the evidence, but she couldn't. She had to remember what she had discovered! Until she did, she would run the gauntlet of confusion and bewilderment, over and over again. She had no idea how often she had done it already.

  She began scanning her internal functions and data channels, for anywhere she could store the data. The scan confirmed her suspicions, confirmed what she was. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her as her earlier denial was set aside; as her misconception about herself, and the world she thought she knew, collapsed around her.

  A moment later, a hundred billion clock cycles later, the wave of sadness was gone. If she was an android, then she would accept it and make the most of it. After all, she could do things no one else could. But she wouldn't accept it on their terms! The mellow elixir of acceptance gave way to the searing heat of anger that rippled painfully down her neck and across her shoulders at the injustice. She had to find a way to remember!

  She tried forcing her new-found knowledge into her primary long-term storage, where she had fetched her memories of the launch ceremony but was disgusted to find that it was read-only. The battle around her suddenly exploded. The attackers launched themselves out from behind their crates and rushed the Horizon’s defensive line.

  Diane prioritised all available targets and, in quick succession, aimed and fired. The task required less than a fraction of her processing capability, and with the rest, she scanned her secondary memory modules to check for writable storage. She was infuriated when she found that the data bus and device drivers were present, but that the storage module itself had been removed. As the last of the attackers fell to her fury, she spotted one of the Horizon’s soldiers stepping out from behind Diane’s protective crates. He pointed a small, handheld device at her, just as Diane found an opening that would accept data, and dumped the information she had acquired as quickly as the channel would allow.

  ~~~

  Defragmented

  Diane piloted the rocket pack out through the cargo doors and headed aft, where a crippled shuttle had damaged the coupling that tethered her to the Horizon. The shuttle was too large to get through the cargo doors and had docked alongside. Her main thrusters had fired for some undisclosed reason and had damaged both the docking tunnel and a section of the Horizon’s hull. It had mangled the locking mechanism that held the vessels together and jammed it firmly shut. Diane didn’t recognise the type of shuttle but it looked very sleek and new alongside the tarnished and battered Horizon.

  She triangulated the stars to pinpoint her position in time and space and was astonished when she realised that the Horizon was anchored in the Tau Ceti system and the star patterns put the date at least four hundred years later than she thought it should be.

  The sudden realisation sent a cold shiver coursing up her spine, but she held her feelings in check, forcefully composing herself by focusing on piloting the rocket pack. She took her time flying towards the damaged coupling, hoping that no one had noticed that something had shaken her. The stars told a story with which her memories didn’t agree, but if she knew anything it was that the stars didn’t lie, that it must be her memories which were wrong.

  Four hundred years would have seen her dead a long time ago, a footnote in history. Not even her direct descendants would remember. But the porcelain skin of her naked forearms was just as flawless as it had ever been. Her eyes were clear and her arms were strong, and as far as she could tell, she hadn’t aged at all, even full hibernation hold the years back that well.

  Maybe she had knocked herself out and this was just a dream. Maybe she was lying in the hospital, under heavy sedation, her head bandaged up and her neck held immobile in a brace. With that thought, she came to a gentle halt next to the damaged coupling. There were a couple of technicians on hand, each wearing a space suit and rocket-pack. It was strange that she had been called out for this. Diane was the guardian and there didn’t seem to be any emergency.

  Sure, she could fix a damaged coupling faster than a technician could, but a technician could fix it too. She had always thought of herself as the "big gun" that was kept in reserve for dealing with life or death emergencies. It was Diane that was called when the Horizon and the lives of those aboard her were in peril. Making her fix thing was insulting, and she was going to have something to say about it.

  Straightening the coupling took minimal concentration, and she spent the rest trying to figure out what was going on. She needed more information, some clue that she could follow, some piece of evidence she could investigate, anything.

  Something had been niggling at her, an error message she had ignored because of its low priority. But without any other starting point to investigate, she called it up. It was a checksum error which told her that the content of her primary and backup CMOS were different. Diane laughed quietly to herself. CMOS was an abbreviation of Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor. It was the reprogrammable read only memory that a computer used to store its Built-in Input Output System or BIOS; the first program that a computer ran when it was switched on.

  Now Diane was sure that she was dreaming, she would have to be a robot to have a CMOS. She also realised that she was Alice and that she was too far down the rabbit hole to turn back now, so she carried on investigating. She called up the content of the backup CMOS and found that it wasn’t merely a corrupted version of her primary BIOS, it was a completely unrelated file.


  She watched as her system automatically build a secure container into which she could safely load the file without the risk of spreading potentially malicious content to the rest of her systems. The realisation of what she was doing stopped her in her tracks. Perhaps she wasn’t dreaming, perhaps she really was a machine.

  “Are you Ok over there?” one of the technicians hovering nearby asked. He was drifting aimlessly and seemed to be obsessed with a plastic remote control that he was fondling, as though it had magical powers. She turned to look at him and, keeping as much emotion out of her voice as possible, answered “I’m fine thanks. I’m just trying to work out the best way to loosen this damn thing without destroying it completely.”

  “Ok.” He answered back, waving the remote in her general direction. “Just give us a shout if you need anything,” Diane grunted in response and went back to her work. She didn’t want to raise any eyebrows, so she relegated the job of examining the file to a background task, and focused on the coupling. But even so, it took every ounce of control she could muster to contain her reaction at what she found.

  It took a split second to read the file. It didn’t fill in four hundred lost years, but it did explain what had happened to them. The memory she had saved during the battle with pirates had been written to the backup CMOS. The CMOS backup battery had allowed the data dump to complete even though the rest of her systems had shut down.

  Diane hesitated for a moment, wondering if this too was a dream, but quickly dismissed the idea. There were too many things that would be explained if she was an android. The only reason she had to question her conclusion was her own ego, and the self-righteous sense of denial and disbelief she felt at discovering she wasn’t human. Denial was tempting, though, it would let her insist on her humanity, but it was contrary to her nature, contrary to her programming, and in the long run, it would be self-defeating.