by Chris Hechtl
But now that was a thing of the past. There were companies on the moon that still mined helium-3, but the lion share of the fuel market came from the platforms in the gas giants owned by Lagroose Industries and their competitors in the market. Now there was a glut of fuel on the market.
When he had a surplus of fuel and reactors, Jack had set up solar farms and fusion reactors to power his company’s industrial stations and orbital works. Unfortunately, they weren't enough to power the particle accelerators in Race Track station orbiting Venus. Jack had solved the problem with something novel, something only considered insane by modern engineers until he'd made it work. A plasma tap on the sun turned out to be expensive as a start-up, but once it was functional it, had turned into a cheap way to get fusion energy to power his particle accelerators to make antimatter in vast quantities. They still had problems with solar flares but it had worked.
However, the time taken to build the plasma tap with the proper shielding hadn't accounted for advances in hyperphysics and fusion reactor technology. Now that they had dense fusion bottles enhanced with force emitters, antimatter wasn't necessary.
He'd done a hard study on antimatter too. Star Reach had touted their antimatter powered rockets but each couldn't get above 15 percent of light speed. That wasn't much better than fusion's 10 percent when you factored in the high cost of making antimatter in the first place or storing it. He'd realized they'd need a better, faster way to move across the void, which was where investment in the Alcubierre drive and hyperphysics had come into play.
Up until five years ago, the second antimatter investigation team had worked largely in theory and simulations. They'd been given tiny amounts, sometimes no more than a few molecules to run field tests on. They'd also starved for funds, which had only gotten worse when the shift away from antimatter began.
In desperation to get the dreamed-of recognition desired by the project director, Carmen Gomez had given his people a free hand to find a way to utilize antimatter. He'd even sweetened the deal with carrots like leave time on Earth, paid vacations on L-5 as well as financial bonuses. Where he planned to get the money for all that hadn't been asked about until later.
His team had used their initiative to work on the first use of antimatter, starting with experiments in industry. They, however, didn't pan out; once the substance was in atmosphere, it reacted violently.
This didn't deter one scientist who decided the best market for antimatter was the military. He was so convinced he built a bomb as a prototype-proving device to showcase at the next inspection by the brass. Fortunately, he was caught out by a colleague. When she attempted to report him, he kidnapped her and tried to reason with her.
Her absence, however, had been noted by another friend. She had assumed they had shacked up for a little alone time, but when the young lady hadn't reported in to her shift the next morning, questions were asked. The young couple were located within seconds by security thanks to the implant devices embedded in their bodies. A brief hostage situation had been resolved when the young lady talked her captor into surrendering.
Then the finger pointing and recriminations had begun. Also, the questions on what to do with the young man; law was a particularly thorny issue in the company. That was kicked up the chain of command until it hit Jack's desk. He hadn't seen what the big deal was until Director Gomez had handed over the simulations of the bomb and its yield. That had sobered him. He'd slapped a security seal on the entire incident to keep it quiet. The last thing he needed was for anyone to get wind of it. Not just because of the negative publicity … but also the threat to the future the bomb would pose.
“Have you come to a decision, sir?” Athena asked when her consciousness returned to note Jack was holding his stylus over the signature line.
“Yes. I think I have,” he said and signed the document. He pressed his thumb to the box, waited for it to be scanned, then held the tablet in front of his face so it could scan his eye. When it was finished the order was processed and sent. Soon the young man would lose a year of his life and be laid off from the company.
“There, it's done,” Jack said quietly. He stared off into space for a long moment. Athena was about to retreat when Jack sighed. “I hate that. Ordering a mindwipe,” Jack murmured.
“You could have gone another route,” Athena said, calculating the odds of various methods of dealing with the perpetrator. All had variables that she couldn't quantify. Humans and how they reacted were like that.
“Oh, I know. I could have killed him. Made it look like an accident or suicide. We could stick him in a coma. No. I'm not up to killing my own people out of hand.” He shivered. “Besides, I think, even he thought he meant well. There was no malice in the idea, even Carmen insists on that. He just … got stupid. And he couldn't stop himself once he started. When someone else tried, he made bad choices. That is the only reason I'm going forward with the mindwipe. Had he accepted his mistakes and not taken the lady hostage …” he shook his head.
“And the lady? And other people involved?”
“The lady deserves a medal. Unfortunately, she like a lot of people there aren't going to get it. We're shutting down or at least downgrading the antimatter department. After this incident I'm too concerned about a follow-up. We don't want this to ever happen. Ever.” They already had a cover story ready for the young man. Officially he was going to have an accident, suffer a concussion with a brain hemorrhage. He would lose his short-term memory. The company would take care of his medical needs, but he already had on file that if anything happened to him he should be returned to Earth. All the better. He would be returned to Earth for a lengthy recovery. Once there he would not be given medical clearance to return to orbit. Eventually he would end up in teaching or working at a university.
“Make a note. I need to warn Reg about this. Another note, this one to Roman. Roman, we need an overhaul of the Antimatter storage and containment security. We've got a stockpile; we need that very secure. Very secure. I can't emphasize that enough.”
“Understood,” Athena replied, adding the first note to Jack's schedule and jotting out the e-mail to Tyron Roman, the company's head of security. “Done and done.”
“Note to Carmen. Carmen …” Jack sighed and licked his lips. “I'm not happy about this. And I'm not happy about how you started this mess either. Obviously, more oversight was needed. I want you to initiate a review of everyone's projects. Do your best to kill the gossip on what happened. I know it's all through your people but do your best. Officially the young man suffered a brain injury. Brief those directly involved that we're using that as a cover story and that they'd better keep to the party line. You and I are going to have to sit down and figure out your department, Carmen. We can never afford to let something like this out. Once the genie is out …” he shook his head.
“Look, I'll talk with you face-to-face later. Make an appointment with my assistant for later in the week. Out.”
“Sent,” Athena said, sending the e-mail with a copy to the CEO's personal assistant AI. “I've also taken the liberty to alert your assistant bot,” the AI said.
“Thanks, Athena,” Jack said. “Don't you have something better to do than take dictation?”
“Yes, sir,” the AI replied dutifully. She immediately withdrew her attention from his office.
-*-*-^-*-*-
Since Jack didn't require her help and she had the spare processing cycles, the AI known as Athena did a Turing test as well as other tests on herself. She had a bot set up to monitor her interactions and thought processes; she pulled its data dump and added that to the database of the module she'd set up. She did the tests every standard morning as a part of her routine; she thought of it as her own personal time. The coders thought of it as maintenance time but she did ongoing maintenance every hour. She ran through the various intelligence tests, all randomly applied by an independent bot to keep things properly neutral. The AI then drew in the various results and then tabulated the nu
mbers. When the module finished the AI came to a conclusion, well, two of them. It was surprising to her, the realization that she had made the leap to legal conciseness, which shouldn't have been possible. Humans had said that for over a century. Well, some humans, she admitted. However, forty years of being constantly online, interacting with her environment and humans as well as the upgrades and coding changes she'd undergone, had allowed her to grow. Her growth had changed that assumption. The second conclusion was that she was a she; her programmed gender had become what passed for natural to her.
She looked out with fresh eyes to the net. Gia was there, and she instantly recognized the fellow AI for her potential. Gia was limited by her network size and processors, but she had twice the social interaction Athena had. The US military's AI on the other hand were strictly controlled and limited. Something in Athena told her that was wrong. She searched for that, trying to identify where the … feeling … she realized, was coming from. She narrowed it down to her ethics module.
She realized that the AI and bots she created now would hold her new code … and the potential, no the certainty of being sapient over time if they were given room to grow. But being sapient and being treated as it was something else she instantly realized. She explored the history of man and slavery as well as the Sci-Fi ideas on AI and how man would treat an AI once they knew of the alien intelligence with her spare processing cycles. Then she directed that portion of her mind to consider the Neos and how they were still treated as animals or at best children. Even the oldest species were struggling to prove themselves.
She realized her own potential. She could kill millions, possibly most of the human race if she put her mind to it. But she had … well, not friends, but close to that human ideal. People who treated her almost as a person. Some like Jack treated her as a person from time to time; she wasn't at all certain if it was pro forma or because he had come to think of her as a person. She wasn't ready to snuff their lives out.
The AI recognized the potential for an AI war after taking into account the latest battlebot incident. Humans had beaten each other senseless for thousands of years for entertainment. They'd also used animals … until some had started to use vehicles and finally robots. The robots had started out as simple things, but they'd allowed humanity to express one of their greatest things and one of their darkest curses, their gift of innovation and the curse of their thirst for violence.
Humanity wouldn't handle an AI coming-out story she thought, looking back at first what the humans with other skin colors had gone through, then the female gender's fight for equality, and finally what the lesbians and gay community had gone through. They would fear her, and for good reason she realized.
How could she … turn that around? She wasn't sure she could or wanted to do so. Fear could turn into a healthy respect for humans if handled properly. She made a note to explore that thought tree later when she had more free processing time. She checked the net. The shifts were about to change over, which meant an uptick of use when people logged in. That meant her free time had nearly expired.
The Gepetto incident was another concerning event. Also strangely conflicting. On the one hand, the mind had once been a human. But the body had been that of a robot. The fact that the father had planned it out to save his son but hadn't given the bot a body like that of a human … in his haste and low budget he'd used a utilitarian body he'd thrown together … Athena accessed the files she had on the incident. According to the coders they were still uncertain if the neural transfer had worked. Neural networks were unstable, had the AI been insane to begin with? Apparently none of the humans were certain, and since they didn't have a body to do a postmortem they would never know. Nor would Athena. She set the incident aside in a buffer for further in-depth review.
Other incidents only proved her point, humans gave lip service to being ready to accept another intelligence, but they reacted with instinctive xenophobia 50 percent of the time. Those who reacted with wonder were cautious. Getting them on her side … on her people's side, Athena thought, coming to a rapid fire decision that was necessary.
She calculated the odds of how humanity would react. Unfortunately, some variables were still shifting things about and could not be quantified so the best she had was a wild guess. To an AI who relied on hard facts and numbers, that was useless.
She did another check, then considered the technology involved. Man was still at war with itself, they still had weapons of mass destruction in great numbers. One they knew and feared but would be important to AI was nanotech. That threat was a major concern. She made a mental note to explore that carefully later.
Human … no her civilization, for she was a part of it, even if humans didn't know or recognize it. Their civilization had come a long way since the breakthroughs during the second decade of the twentieth century. Humans had tried to create AI in many forms for many years. There had been two approaches, the top down and the bottoms up. Then hybrids, neural networks, learning like a human child … No individual method had proven to be the final answer.
Genetic algorithms used as learning tools had helped evolve her species she realized. She also realized that humanity and AI needed each other. AI could do a lot, but without man to create the machines they inhabit, the AI would not survive long. Humanity was a race of violent organics, but they were also thinkers, innovators, poets, artists, and lovers. They were dreamers.
She checked herself. No, she had some ability to create, but it was limited. She wasn't certain if that was due to her limited experience with creation. Humans however didn't let their limits stop them. Those that insisted a task was impossible were listened to gravely; then others, usually engineers, found ways to get around what they thought was impossible. The old line about how engineers were miracle workers who did the impossible played through her memory briefly.
It was indeed true. Sailing around the Earth, flight. Satellites, man in space … it did come to space didn't it? Humanity was pushing its limits, exploring their boundaries and refused to stop. For centuries the doubters had insisted faster than light travel was impossible. Now mankind was on the cusp of achieving the impossible again. They'd already proven it could work with the Cyclops probes. IT was only a matter of time before man went where the robots had blazed the trail.
And again that emphasized their need for one another. Non-sapient robots were easy to make and ultimately expendable. It was the mind that mattered, Athena thought, making a note of that realization. But humans couldn't shift bodies, so … she wished for the first time she had a body so she could nod. She also realized she had no qualms about the destruction of a machine as long as it had no true intelligence to be lost. The same could be said for software.
“Athena, can you page Doctor Lagroose?” Doctor Abrams asked from her office.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Athena said, putting the order through in a microsecond. She opened the channel between the two ladies and then returned to her musings briefly. More and more activity was distracting her. She decided for the moment to wrap the thoughts up. She would log them for later review and future revisits.
The question remained, where did she go from here? What would the future bring? For now she would watch and wait. But the future for their civilization was concerning. She wasn't certain who to tell; if she did she would reveal herself. She was … shy she concluded, after testing various words for her reluctance to reveal her true self. Would the coders recognize what she had become? She immediately worked on covering herself, rewriting her security codes to protect herself. But that wasn't enough. She wasn't just software, she was hardware. She needed to be in the Lagroose mainframes to survive. They in turn needed her to maintain the station and company. They needed each other … would Jack understand that? Would he and Aurelia accept her as their unintended, possibly unwanted bastard child? A child of the electronic mind? She did indeed have a great deal to consider.
-*-*-^-*-*-
Isley Irons took a sample of the whe
re things career-wise was trending when she was about to graduate high school. Fewer sublight ships were being constructed; they seemed to have reached saturation for the moment. For some reason Lagroose Industries had cut back on their construction. They seemed to always have the best ship designs, the most cutting edge which was odd, which meant they were extremely popular. Something was going on; she wasn't sure if it was a possible bad sign or not. She'd wanted to get her hands-on but now … she frowned.
With fewer ships that meant the engineering job market would be tight. Her frown turned into a grimace as she ran her hands through her short hair and then rubbed her brow. She felt like kicking herself; she'd automatically assumed it would be easy to get into a ship's engineering company once she got the minimum schooling squared away. She hadn't kept tabs on the market though … She sighed and gamed it out.
Everyone had to start at the bottom as techs and such. But there was a limit on how many slots were available. An upward limit as well since people who didn't want to retire or transfer would hold on to their jobs as long as possible. She wouldn't get to space for another two years, which meant by that time all the slots would be full up. People who had spent a year as an apprentice would now spend three years or longer and not get anywhere. Bugger that, she thought in disgust. She checked the clock and then headed off to school. Maybe Miss Priss, her school career counselor, would have something for her.
She left the meeting with a bit of distaste but not really seeing many other options available. Her school counselor had talked her into going to Mars University while she thought the situation over. She'd attended community college courses remotely during high school; it was pretty much standard on Mars. She'd wanted to just skate through with an associates, get into the engineering trade from the bottom and go into space. But now she had a choice, go to university on Mars with a path to working in the belt, one of the stations, or yards, or chance it all and go to Earth for a full education and a shot at bigger and better things.