Mei could see his reason here and was frantically trying to formulate an argument to it, motivated not so much for the sake of deducing the truth, but more as means of justifying her blasting an EMP through his skull.
“If things went smoothly with no alert, that would be a sure sign of clandestine control! So the alien AI has created a more plausible scenario to appear less...”
“Mei, enough! Let's chalk this up as possible, but unlikely.”
“You still need to get that implant taken out as a precautionary measure.”
Ugh, that would require minor surgery, but he supposed that, despite the illogical elements of her theory, it was still an end worth covering. “Ok,” he agreed, “so how do we proceed from here?”
“Proceed? We don't. Even if that thing didn't CC our system, it still overcame its defenses and propagated its way into our main systems. It knows all our nav codes, the inner workings of our life support...”
“It seemed to be most interested in general knowledge.” That was exceptionally odd. General knowledge was just that, all information that was unclassified covering every subject imaginable, from history to languages, sports, literature, network archives.... basically everything that wasn't nailed down as proprietary to the Fleet or classified as secret. But that's the odd thing, that same general knowledge library is aboard every modern ship and space colony, in public buildings, homes, and schools. It is replicated everywhere and freely available. So why would this AI have such an interest in it? Perplexing...
“Maybe it doesn't know general knowledge,” offered Mei. “Think about it. Whatever that entity is, it's been completely isolated, perhaps from its very conception. And that's why it initially took an overt approach and didn't CC Kinny, because it didn't know the very concept of CC until it learned of it from us.”
“That's highly speculative, Mei, and more than a bit far-fetched. We have to re-establish contact.”
“Are you nuts? I'll grant you, based on your keen arguments, Kinny is most likely not under the sphere's dominion, but for damn sure it will be if we re-open even the tiniest avenue of transmission. No. The sphere must stay sealed. We just turn it over to The Service with the data we have and let their L-5's handle any further investigation, because we know for fact that this entity is well out of Kinny's league.”
“Mei, we have to, and here's why: There could be living persons in there. As implausible as that seems, we did find human habitation conditions and human scent and skin particles in the dust. When we captured the sphere, we changed its surrounding conditions. First, we slowed its rotation, so if it's a centrifuge chamber, whoever is in there is floating around helplessly. Secondly, we removed it from its power source, a star, and replaced it with a much weaker one, ours. Any interior life support system could be at risk for failure since its exterior is no longer in the thermo-electrical environment it was designed for.”
Mei digested this awkwardly. Aru was appealing to her weak humanistic side. She sighed and paced her way to the back of the chamber to rummage her way through the stores of gear until she found a odd half-spherical black object with lights and wires and knobs attached about it. She flipped a switch, and it started beeping and booping like something from a retro-tech toody (2D) show.
“I know a way we can talk to it. This device is a hardwired non-digital audio recorder.”
“Yeah, I think we built one of those in primary school.”
“Good, then you understand the primitive level we Blues have to stoop to in order to you keep you Reds in check.” She smirked at her little jibe and went on, “So the way I see it, one of us projects an EMP muting field while the other one goes in there with this child's toy. We hang a copper wire... which I've got somewhere.... ah yes... We attach this wire, enter through the spoke stub, and manually unseal the drill hole in an EMP pocket. Then we transmit a direct electric audio message to the entity and receive its reply, which we bring back here to this room to listen to.”
“Won't we still be reliant on System to open the hub portcullis and retract the drill apparatus?”
“Well, if System doesn't follow our orders, it gives up clandestine control, doesn't it? Hell, if System wanted us dead, we would be already, yeah? We operate on the assumption that Kinny has not been overtaken and use measures to prevent exactly that from happening. And if the worst is true, we are helpless to do anything other than expose it.”
Yeah, she was right on mark with that. If System was CCed, they were already at its mercy. This audiobox was about the kookiest idea he'd ever heard of, but in light of their situation, it did have its merits.
“Yeah, ok, it's worth a shot,” he conceded.
“First that headlink comes out.”
“Well, we need System for that too and...”
“Yeah, I'm going to be right there observing.” Mei handed him a microphone. “I'll let you do the honors, Captain. Inform it has a two minute response window that must be sent in human audio. Recording.... now.”
Aru cleared his throat. “Salutations. I am Captain Psyron of the Kinetic Dream. We are here to help you. However, due to your previous overt infiltration of our networks, we cannot allow you to interact with any aspect of the ship's system, as a security precaution. Please tell us who or what you are. Let us know if you are in any discomfort or danger, and how we might assist you. You have two minutes to respond in human audio language... starting now.”
Mei clicked a button. “Got it. Let's suit up!”
They geared up with analog sensors, EMP field emitters, and ballistic weapons. They walked out of the zero-com room and back under System's surveillance. System easily deduced the reason they had gone into the zero-com room. “Captain, are you concerned that I've been subjugated by the sphere?”
“Yes, I'm afraid we have to consider that possibility.”
“I fully understand, Captain. It is a reasonable suspicion. For my part, all I can say is that I am convinced I accurately measured the scope of the cyber-attack and still operate solely under your command.”
“I'm inclined to believe that, System, but for now we have to simultaneously operate as if you are currently CCed as well as take all precautions to insure that you not become so in the future. First off, I need you to remove my headlink from the cranial casing.”
“Captain, that will require surgical incisions to your scalp to access...”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know. And Commander Li will be directly observing the procedure. So how long?”
“Four minutes for the procedure, Captain. Please make your way to Medstation A.”
That was only two doors down. Aru had already donned his analog spacesuit, sans the helmet. A medistat pod opened, and he layed on it promptly. “Keep it open, System,” he commanded.
“Aye, Captain.”
His head was comfortably secured in place as an array of instruments descended upon it. The anesthetic infusion ray emitted into the surrounding flesh along the path of the tiny laser causing an itchy discomfort but no pain. He could feel the cracking pressure as his cranium opened and hear a disturbing shlurping sound as the thumb-sized device was removed. Mei declared it was out and then watched as the various beams and intricate instruments fused bone and flesh back into their proper state.
“Procedure complete,” announced System. Aru sat up and looked at his reflection. A thin boxline of hairlessness was visible in his profile.
“Perfectly stylish, Narcissus,” Mei quipped and urged him along. This was no time to fuss over some minute flaw in his otherwise impeccably groomed appearance. Cosmetic apparatus would fix that later. He just had to keep his mind off it in the meantime.
They stepped out of Medstation A back into the ring corridor. Their destination was still some distance away. “System, transport,” he ordered.
“Aye, Captain.” The ring transport tram promptly appeared and they took their seats.
“System, take us to the Spoke 4 portcullis.”
“Aye, Captain.” They whizzed of
f to the other end of the ring. He noted Mei looking forlornly at the doorways as they passed through the thermally ravaged ring sectors. The atrium, which Mei took great pride in maintaining, and the gym she had used daily for the last decade had both been destroyed. For his part, Aru had just been grateful to survive, but Mei was definitely the sentimental type. “We can have them refitted to your liking when next we dock.”
She smiled, probably just pleased that he knew what she was thinking. Aru knew better, he knew this was their last voyage together aboard the Kinetic and that Mei planned to work her destiny planetbound once they reached Occitania.
The ringtram stopped directly below the Spoke 4 portcullis. Beyond it was an airlock. Since the spoke hub had been blown they had no way to reliably seal it against the sphere, and the interior of the spoke was void of air.
They were donned in light armor analog spacesuits with two way radio communications.
“System, I want you to recess the drill head and all other transmitting components twenty meters back from the sphere. Then power down the main shield generator completely.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Can we manually remove the seal over the drill-hole?”
“Negative Captain. But I can modify it so.”
“Do that.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Will you be able to read our radio transmissions behind a muting field?”
“Negative, Captain. Unless you permit me to send a transponder...”
“No. Nothing! Just keep eyes on us in case something goes wrong. In that event retrieve us immediately back onboard regardless of any other orders I've given you. We will signal you by hand to reopen the airlock once we've descended.”
“Aye, Captain. Understood.”
They both helmeted up and triple checked their gear. This was not normally eithers' habit, but with analog equipment one could not afford to leave anything to chance. Mei had numerous devices on her covered with archaic meters and dials. She would have to handle the all the readings, because, frankly, he couldn't remember how to operate those things. All that training was a fleeting memory at best.
He pointed up and ordered, “System, open airlock.” The ceiling portcullis slid away. They thrust upward, landed on a platform in the lock chamber, and heard the portcullis below close back into the sealed position beneath them with a hissing clank. Five seconds later the air had been evacuated and the inner airlock portal opened. As ordered all the equipment had been retracted away from the sphere and back down into the spoke. The inside of the spoke was more spacious then he remembered, but he hadn't actually entered it personally since his early days familiarizing himself with the ship. They ascended upwards towards the exposed curve of the sphere that lay flush with the spoke stub end. Their initially sluggish thruster ascent smoothed out as G force diminished. They were nearly weightless as they reached the upper platform. They magnetically locked their boots to the surface to gain stability. Mei at once began taking readings from a number of handheld devices.
“Radiation levels normal. Electrics off,” she reported over their two-way com. “Go ahead and set up the muting field emitters.”
Aru gave her the thumbs up. He set the three emitters pointing radially downward toward the hub entrance and powered them on. “Muting field set, Commander,” he acknowledged over the com.
Mei ran a few more tests with the instruments at hand to confirm there were no gaps in the field. Once satisfied, she turned the handle on the seal until it released and then pulled the stopper completely out, revealing the pinhole sized entrance they had bored earlier. She began snaking the wire into it and encountered some difficulties as the fit was snugger than she'd anticipated. After several minutes of frustration and cursing into the com, the length of it now dangled into the air layer deep within the sphere. “Playing message,” she reported, and then a minute later, “Now recording.”
“Is the audiobox receiving anything?” he asked during the two minute wait.
“Affirmative,” she replied with a thumbs up.
The procedure complete, Mei attached the wire end to the bottom of the seal stopper and latched it back into place against the sphere in case they needed to repeat all this later. They powered down the muting shield, gathered up their gear and descended back to the platform above the lock. This is it, thought Aru. If the alien entity had assimilated System and wanted them out of the picture, it would simply leave them locked out until their oxygen supply vanished and they suffocated. Easy as that. But when he gave the signal, the lock chamber opened, repressurized and allowed them back on board.
They transported back to the zero-com room foyer, EMPed their gear, and entered. Mei at once plopped the audiobox onto the table and pressed the play button.
Strained grunting, almost animal-like noises came out of the speakers in fits and starts. It was a male voice that uttered, “Ugh.... errrrrr..... hheh.. hhheh... sssssssssss.....” then gave up in silence. What emerged next was quite unexpected. Vocal singing! It was a wordless vocal expression of notes and variance of melodies that struck him at once as both primal and exquisite. Mei listened wide-eyed and mystified as the song carried on through varying melodies and permutations and rhythms til the end of the recording. They sat in silence for a while just looking at each other.
“That's the song of an angel,” she said at last, “and the voice of one! Have you ever heard anything like that before?”
Aru shook his head. His mind was racing trying to find something to compare it to. It reminded him of something he’d heard once. It hung on the tip of his brain, nagging at him, but he just couldn’t place it.
“What do we make of this?” he asked. “We instructed the entity to respond with human audio, and he did that. All that disjointed grunting at the beginning...?”
Mei's face lit up. “He can't speak! Aru, that's it. He cannot speak, but he can sing. Maybe there's information encoded here.”
Then the association that had eluded Aru earlier connected. “This music, it is reminiscent of composer Dithan Tarkis Fermisini.”
“That name sounds familiar. Who is that?”
“A brilliant Aq Thalassan composer and mathematician in the last century. He developed a system of musical notation that was fully synthesized with mathematics. It was a kind of code or language. Modern composers and musicians still study him; some almost worship him. Not only that, he has quite a following in the machine world as well. I'll show you once we leave here, it's all in the...”
“General Knowledge Library?” she finished.
That wasn't so keen of an association. The General Knowledge Library contained the bulk of all things known to man. All the same, they scuffled off to the bridge.
“System, display all we've got on the musical notation system devised by composer Fermisini.”
“Aye, Captain.” Thousands of 2D charts, complex equations, tutorials, and samples holographically sprang up throughout the bridge.
Aru started rifling through the data. It was overwhelmingly cryptic and sophisticated. “Mei, even with my mindlink, it would take me weeks of research to decode anything like this -if I could manage it at all.”
She considered this and sighed. “Kinny could do it.”
“After all we've done to protect Kinny in gathering this data, you really think we should expose it to System?”
“Well, I mean. It's just a song, right?”
“System, could a 1 minute 50 second song, composed by this type of encryption and performed by a single human vocalist, contain enough malicious data to corrupt you?”
“Normally, I would say no, Captain, but based on the insidious algorithms this entity employed against me earlier, it is possible that it could.”
“Mei, play the recording for System.”
“What? No! What would have been the point of all this then?”
“The point is we either keep the entity sealed in that sphere and return to Occitania with a corpse, or we establish communication
s and proceed with an extraction, for which we will still need to utilize System, since those drills cannot be run manually.”
Mei nodded and pressed play. Enchanting music echoed through the bridge chamber. Aru found it even more mesmerizing the second time around. The song finished. He waited a few moments and prompted System.
“System, analysis,” he ordered.
“Please wait, Captain. Still processing.”
That was unusual. System never took more than a second to process anything. He waited impatiently.
“Captain, this is truly remarkable!”
“So there is data encoded in the song?”
“Yes, two parallel sets of distinct data juxtaposed and merged into a single codestream. One is directed to you specifically in UHL, Universal Human Language. The other is a set in machine code for me laying out instructions on how to open the sphere.”
Universal Human Language or UHL was actually a machine language that standardized meanings of all human languages into a single codeset and was used to communicate human language data only between machines. No actual human could understand it.
“Read me the UHL message,” he ordered.
“Captain, it would translate most accurately into Rubeli Standard.”
Aru was moderately proficient in RubStand, as all Fleet personal were required to be in the language used throughout most of the Carousels. RubStand was dry and uninspired, but singularly considered to be the best technical human language. He rarely used it though, and just the thought of going into it without his mindlink active frustrated him. Mei was even worse, having just barely passed her proficiency tests in it.
“No, no. Give it to us in Arathian for God's sake, unpolished.”
“Aye Captain. Start message: Greetings Captain Psyron and Commander Li Meiyang. You are you and I am I. Differentiation denoted by names, consciousness separate bodies. Words and words. I should like to know you in person. Do you understand my meanings? I request permission to board your vessel, Captain. I provide you dimensions. Rotate sphere to designation. Carve and modify to diagram. Lock bulwark. Make cavernous pressurization. Assemble ion fast drills in array and carve along paths specified. I await your retrieval. End message.”
DUALITY: The World of Lies Page 15