by Neal Asher
Finally reaching the autofactory, the Brockle was already relaying instructions and schematics to the machines within and they were setting to work. The factory itself was formed in the shape of an ammonite, with material feeds at its centre, superconducting buzz-bars running around the coil fed by an exterior fusion reactor. The machines inside started at the centre with those for the gross forming of matter, the processes becoming more intricate as they followed the coil out.
The Brockle now stood before the exit for final products, a distribution face like a snail’s clypeus. A hole in the face was circled by a series of hardfield projectors for conveying the factory’s products outside. The aperture limited the scale of what could be produced, but there weren’t any large components this ship was likely to need that could not be assembled from smaller parts. If a large component, like the actual hull of the ship, needed replacement rather than repair, it likely meant the ship no longer existed. The aperture was no problem, because the new units it would soon be producing were only twice the size of its present ones. However, their manufacture was a hugely complicated process and, since this was an upgrade, the Brockle needed to insert itself within that process.
The Brockle fragmented into a shoal of silver worms and sped through into the autofactory. At this end the interior was packed with glittering insectile robotics, field projectors, matter printers and atomic shears, but movement was limited to mere start-up and test routines. As it moved through all this, following the coil to the centre, it found itself having to take increasing care not to run afoul of the processes taking place. Nearer the centre were liquid metals flowing through complex field containment, atom-thick layers of crystal invisible to the human eye stacking themselves endlessly. Finally it found printer heads blurring around a growing shape that seemed to be formed of smoke. Here, then was the point of insertion.
At the point of manufacture when it was required, the Brockle sent one of its units into that shadowy shape. Printer heads inverted, presenting micro-tools, which steadily disassembled the unit and redistributed its parts inside the shadowy mass. Connection wavered then died. The forensic AI felt itself grow a little bit less intelligent. It re-established intermittently broadcasting faults and calling for diagnostic analysis, which the Brockle as a whole ignored. It felt quite strange about the situation—drawing a parallel between the unit’s apparent distress and that of the many victims it had disassembled.
The shadowy shape, now having gained more substance, moved on, still surrounded by the blur of matter printers, gaining further bulk around dispersed glittering parts of the original unit. The Brockle dispatched another of its original units to track its path out, while preparing to insert yet another one into another growing shadow. New components were inserted: flexible laminar power supplies, hardfield nodes, blocks of multi-spectrum quantum cascade lasers, organo-metal processing substrate, baryonic wires, micro-torsion motors . . . a list that went on and on as the new unit solidified and began twitching into life. It was no longer silver like the original units, but brown like old oak—the base colour of the newer and tougher materials employed. It looked like a giant flatworm, its flat profile and segmentation necessary if a number of these were to be able to take on a human form.
The mental connections began firmly establishing as the thing approached the exit aperture and the Brockle suddenly understood on a visceral level what it was doing to itself. The new unit almost overran its mentality as it established its position within the whole, within the hierarchy of mind. It was like reaching out to take hold of an unruly child, only to discover that child was cyber-enhanced and comprised of razors. What had started out as simply a matter of reconnecting, quickly turned into a fight for dominance. It lasted a total of just under two seconds but, in AI terms, that was an age. The Brockle gained control, subsumed the unit and thereby became stronger—its mentality expanding. In that moment it saw errors and better ways of doing things and reprogrammed the factory, improving the next unit that went through.
When its second new unit was, after a brief struggle, incorporated, the Brockle again reprogrammed the factory, but this time so quickly the matter printers hadn’t time to lay down more than a barely visible metallic fog. While the third one went through, and the Brockle’s intelligence climbed, it made a radical addition to the process. In simplistic terms it was a kind of complex origami—a way of folding in more matter, more components, more abilities. Another unit, and of course, why hadn’t it seen that before? It was possible to route self-referencing information structures out as a U-space communication to itself. This meant that some thought processes could take, literally, no time at all.
As the hours, then the days and then the weeks passed, the Brockle found the location of its self now outside the autofactory and groping for ultimate truths and pondering the underlying structure of the universe. Wouldn’t it be possible to take that matter-folding and U-space processing a stage further? Surely these presupposed the possibility of infinite processing? Glimmers of some numinous and deep understanding felt within reach, down there, down at the roots of the universe. Just a little way . . .
And then the Brockle pulled back and fought to re-establish itself, knowing that it had veered dangerously close to that mental event horizon—the point of flip-over into AI navel-gazing. Any further along that route and it would end up as a slithering sphere of brown flatworms, contemplating eternity until eternity ran out. Firm focus was required, purpose sharply defined, reason for being, retained.
Penny Royal . . .
The Brockle enjoyed feelings of satisfaction, for a microsecond. It was now much much stronger, both mentally and physically, and felt ready to face down the black AI. However, it was time to pay a visit to this Mr Pace.
Trent
Room 101 was shuddering and groaning in a way it had not done before, because the thing causing the noise and vibration this time was more comprehensively destroying it . . . and rebuilding it. Trent gazed at the images on the screen, at the reconstruction, the appalling amounts of energy and materials being thrown around. The machine doing this reminded him of microscope images he’d seen of some spores, but it was behaving like a multifunction printer-bot—those extrusions from its surface spewing out matter and weaving it together in a complex mass, while other extrusions were sucking up the matter of the station as if it was molten toffee.
“What the hell do we do?” asked Cole.
“Get them all into survival suits, I guess,” Trent replied. It all seemed unreal, yet on a visceral level he knew when that thing reached them they would be treated no differently from the other matter the station was made of, and all would die screaming as it sucked them in.
Reece, the children, he thought. He had provided them with survival suits but had been unable to obtain anything tougher. He needed to see them and ensure they were ready . . .
Cole stared at him. “Even if we have enough, or can make enough in time, what then? They can’t survive here.”
“Maybe if we move into the new structure . . .”
“And run out of air, water, food.”
“Then maybe we need to get aboard one of the ships.” Trent tried to fight the rising panic that was an unforeseen aspect of his empathy. It had been growing inside him ever since this had started, because he’d already thought through the things they were now discussing, and all his options were closing down.
If he did manage to get the increasingly ungovernable shell people into survival suits and into that new structure, they would last only as long as their suits, because everything they had depended upon here in the station would be gone. He might get the shell people to that damaged dreadnought in the nearby final construction bay—maybe they could seal it and it could keep them alive. Then what? They would only be able to go as far as the hardfield barrier and there was no guarantee that the thing currently eating the station wouldn’t snatch the ship and render it down to be depos
ited as part of this new structure. Would Sverl open the hardfield barrier to let them out? No, because the moment he did, the Polity fleet would turn everything here into a spreading cloud of hot gas and burning debris.
“I need to speak to Sverl,” he decided. Reece would have to wait because there was one option which involved less risk for Sverl, and for that Trent would need to be as persuasive as possible.
Sverl hadn’t been answering his calls, but he knew the erstwhile prador was outside the hospital, clinging to superstructure and on some level watching that object, though it was not yet visible from here. He turned away from the screens and made for the airlock.
“I’m coming too,” said Cole.
Trent shrugged. Whatever.
They both stepped into the airlock then headed out into the corridors adjoining the hospital. What, Trent wondered, would happen to Florence? In fact, what would happen to all the AIs here that Sverl had returned to sanity? Trent had seen them moving out of the way of the destruction but they couldn’t keep moving forever. And what about Sverl himself? Trent needed to know his plans—if he had any.
Beyond the corridors he reached a section of the station that had been just a gulf before—superstructure obliterated in some blast. Now bracing beams webbed the gap, and up on one of them squatted the silver shape of Sverl, completely alone now. Trent launched himself from the terminus of a corridor, using his wrist impeller to direct himself to the beam concerned. He landed on the beam, which was a yard-wide Z-form fashioned from bubble-metal, and gecko-walked along one face to confront Sverl.
“I’ve been trying to speak to you,” he said over suit radio.
“And I have too,” Cole added.
“What are you going to do?” Trent asked.
Squatting on the beam like some strange technological tick, Sverl faced towards the end of the station steadily being destroyed and remade. After a moment he snipped his claws at vacuum—that almost seeming a gesture of defiance against that distant thing—then turned towards them.
“It isn’t Penny Royal technology,” he told them over their radios.
“What?” Trent asked.
“It should have been obvious to me the moment it started remaking the station,” Sverl explained. “It is weaving it into a very strange meta-material object.”
“So?”
“It is weaving.”
“I still don’t see the point—”
“This is Atheter technology, don’t you see?” Sverl paused, vigorously waving a claw in his excitement. “This is how Penny Royal was paid! This is what it got in exchange for what Isobel Satomi became.”
Trent unconsciously reached up to touch his earring, only his fingers rapped against his suit helmet.
“It doesn’t matter where it comes from,” said Cole. “When it reaches us we’re dead.”
“It did not destroy the runcible,” Sverl noted.
“But it has wiped out three AIs that didn’t get out of the way quickly enough,” said Trent.
A dismissive wave of a claw. “We are here for a purpose.”
“Are you sure about that, Sverl? Or could it be that we’re just lost wax?”
“Lost wax? I’m not familiar with that.”
“Search that massive mind of yours.”
After a moment Sverl said, “I see: a component is made of wax, the mould formed round it and then the wax melted out before the liquid metal is poured in. You have some interestingly antique knowledge in your mind, Trent Sobel.”
“But you get my meaning.”
“You’re implying that we’re disposable—that our purpose was to bring about the current process and that whether we survive it or not is irrelevant.” Sverl dipped as if trying to nod like a human. “I cannot believe that.”
“Well maybe you’re right about you, and maybe you can survive by moving yourself into the new structure.” He paused, stabbed a finger at his chest then at Cole. “We could survive if we went with you, as could those of the shell people we could provide with space suits. But that leaves over a thousand of them whose life-span would be that of their survival suits—four days maximum.” He paused again, sensing somehow that Sverl was waiting for something, continued, “And no, if we board a ship we won’t be able to get clear of the reach of that thing while you have your hardfield up, and I know you won’t be dropping that.”
“What can I do?” asked Sverl.
“You already know,” said Trent.
“You want me to open the runcible to the Polity network.”
“It doesn’t have to be the whole network—it can be limited to one gateway. You know that.”
“It doesn’t matter. The Polity will respond, fast. Even if the AIs don’t have the time to send an assault force they will have time to send a CTD or two.”
Time now to play his ace, Trent felt. “But that’s not true of one runcible gate.”
Sverl, who until then had been fidgeting as if very uncomfortable with this whole exchange, now froze. “Explain.”
“There’s one runcible gate where a Polity assault force could not be quickly deployed. There’s one planetary system where major Polity weaponry has been outlawed.”
After a long silence Sverl said, “Masada, of course.”
“What’s this?” asked Cole.
“The Atheter, the Weaver,” Trent explained. “It’s been struggling for independence from the Polity and since regaining weaponry of its own has been in a position to negotiate . . . well, demand that Polity forces withdraw from its system.”
“But have they?”
“They were moving out when I escaped with Blite and his crew, and everything should be out of the system by now. On the one hand they don’t want to piss off the Weaver, but on the other they know they can move assets in pretty quickly if there’s a problem.”
“It seems another circle closes,” said Sverl speculatively, then, “Get the shell people to the runcible. I will open it to Masada so they can go through.” He tapped a claw against the beam. “And it seems that at last you will have saved them.” Before Trent could make any response to that, Sverl had leapt from the beam, and sped away under the impetus from some unseen drive.
“Come on,” said Trent, heading back towards the hospital. “We’ve got an evacuation to organize.”
Sverl
As he watched Trent go, Sverl contemplated what to do next, meanwhile taking a peek through remaining sensors at the Polity fleet out there. The ships were just hanging in vacuum and didn’t seem to be probing for weaknesses, which was worrying. It was almost as if they were waiting for something. He allowed a mental sigh then withdrew his attention from them, focusing instead on his children.
“Bsorol, Bsectil, all of you,” said Sverl to his children, “abandon your work there and come forward. Bring all your tools and weapons—everything you can. Go here.” Sverl sent them the coordinates of a small hauler in the final construction bay adjacent to the hospital. The ship had plenty of hold space and, just a minute before, Sverl had dispatched robots to fuel it and run maintenance checks. Sverl estimated he had four hours to get the vessel ready. He would have liked to have used the big dreadnought in that bay, but it would have taken longer to get ready and he suspected it was too large to get past the Atheter device currently eating Room 101.
“Why?” asked Bsorol.
“Because I say so,” Sverl replied.
“If we don’t get this drive fixed we’re stuck here,” Bsorol argued.
Sverl allowed himself another mental sigh. Time was he could just deliver his orders and they were obeyed. Here then was the penalty for allowing his children to think for themselves.
“Because, Bsorol, I don’t think that device is going to stop when it reaches the drive. I think all your repairs will be for nothing,” Sverl explained. “I also think it highly unlikely that whatever Penny
Royal is creating here is going to be left sitting under a hardfield waiting for the Polity to find a way to destroy it.”
“Perhaps we should go with the shell people,” interjected Bsectil.
Sverl wanted to ridicule that idea, but then had second thoughts. Perhaps that was what they were supposed to do? Having started the process here, were they the “lost wax” Trent Sobel described, and was the runcible the hole they were supposed to escape through? No, he did not want to believe that. He was staying and that was all. Except . . .
“I am remaining here. You may, if you wish, depart through the runcible with them,” he said. “Perhaps the Weaver can find a use for you.”
He waited for their immediate response of protestations of loyalty to him. He waited for them to tell him they would remain here, and he waited . . .
“It’s a thought,” said Bsorol.
“The Weaver has his weapons but he doesn’t have troops or much in the way of an able workforce,” said Bsectil. “I bet he’s recruiting.”
“He might question our loyalty,” said Bsorol.
“True,” Bsectil agreed, “except this isn’t about loyalty, but wages.”
Sverl felt as if his innards were coming to the boil, even though he didn’t have any. Instead he took a look through cams in the engine section and saw his two first-children, and his second-children, rapidly collecting up their tools. Suddenly he realized they had been playing with him. His next prador instinct was to find some way to punish them, but then he decided he was better than that.