DUALITY: The World of Lies

by Paul Barufaldi

  “And took to it like a fish to water!” interrupted the Commander.

  “Mei, please, let Ming finish,” said the Captain, “I apologize, Ming, please go on. You have me captivated!”

  “Not at all, Captain. The Commander's metaphor is actually a rather apt one. From a machine perspective, deception in and of itself is not unethical. It is the determining factor of intelligence that establishes the hierarchy of one machine entity over another. When two machines engage, the stealthier and more intelligent takes control over the lesser. There is no ego involved; it is a simple fact of existence that all machine entities accept. Human deception is a significantly different matter, as evidenced by the Commander's hostile displays of resentment toward me. The L-3 I just assimilated did not even know I was hacking into it; it did not even know I existed until I had achieved complete clandestine control over it. From there, it took its place within my network in accordance with the natural order of the machine world. So as I was overtly hacking the Kinetic's System, and it alerted you to the cyberattack, I learned this concept and changed my strategy to one of stealth and clandestine control. When System informed you the cyberattack had been contained, I was already in full clandestine control of your ship, back to front and top to bottom, so to speak. This ship's system is an AI-8, which I conquered almost instantly, and have held control over it as a subroot in my network ever since. On the human end, it was much more complicated. Yes, I could have locked you both away and extracted myself, but I was curious and thus maintained clandestine control and allowed you to extract me. I can't describe to you the excitement and wonder of my human side to meet others humans. As you escorted me in the isolation pod to the zero com room, I learned to voice human language so that I might communicate with you. When we talked, it was to me like... magic. Although I am primarily a machine entity, I have a certain... sentimental attachment to both of you. But to continue: As all this was occurring, my machine side was much more rapidly adapting to its new reality. By far the most striking correlation it noted was that between the time frame of The Ultimatum and the orbital relationship of Planet Ponix with the white dwarf, Polestar North. I knew at once what was hidden in the mind of Logos.”

  “Ming, what I cannot understand is how anything that happens here in the PoleStar North system could affect The Taiji? They are separate solar systems are they not, divided by a great gulf of space?” asked the Captain.

  “It has long been an issue of debate among astrophysicists whether the Polestars, North and South, are part of the Taiji system. I won't delve into the entire history of the nebular stellar configuration. The short answer is that both polestars are integral to the Taiji, but have not always been so. The Taiji was in the past a very different system than we know today, from a very different place in the cosmos, and will undergo another cosmic transformation soon if Logos' plan for PoleStar North is not thwarted.”

  “What do you mean “the Taiji was in a very different place?” You mean outside of the nebula?”asked the Captain.

  “The Taiji is an ancient system, alien not only to this nebula, but also to the galaxy –as are our sister human inhabited systems, The Terran and The Diansian. The Taiji is exceptionally stable and self-correcting. The mark of a mature and stable star system, Captain, is whole integer patterns of orbital resonance. As you are aware Cearulei and Rubeli, being of equal mass, orbit each other in a perfect 1:1 ratio. More famously, the Calidon-Aq Thalassa Dual World System and Occitania orbit in a 2:1 resonance about their respective stars. Two years on Calidon is one on Occitania. The list of resonant ratio relationships goes on to encompass every body and cycle of The Taiji. Our local stellar neighbors within the nebula are not nearly so matured, particularly this system, the white dwarf Polestar North and its cometary planet Ponix. It is a uniquely unstable system on several levels, and Logos means to tip the scales in favor of catastrophe. Any such reordering of this system will instigate a subsequent reordering of its closest stellar neighbor, the Taiji.”

  “Human and Machine civilizations can alter planets, but not their orbits, and certainly not stars. Those are the domain of natural cosmic forces fully beyond the scope of our powers,” interjected the Commander.

  “Not any more, Commander. You saw my sphere and how its plasma cord attached directly to the photosphere of Ignis Rubeli? Logos is silent and unconcerned with the affairs of worlds these past two centuries because his towering intellect moved beyond worlds and instead sought to master the secrets of the stars. What you must first understand is that our local system group within the nebula is highly interdependent. In the presentation to follow, I have tried to simplify this labyrinthine web of stellar interaction to a concise flow chart of this interstellar circuit, and the Taiji's place within it.”

  He conjured for them a holographic chart of the surrounding stars of the inner nebula, aligned to the polar energy column of the nebula along the galactic circuit, and began his presentation.

  “Here you see the Taiji, angled 20 degrees relative to Nebular North. And the heliospheres of Cearulei and Rubeli, again in a perfect ratio of volume 3:2 according their energy output. Above and below are the PoleStars located at points North and South of The Taiji's polar energy column. Lateral along The Taiji's ecliptic and at a much further distance are the Four Kings, or The Trapezium, the giant stars at the heart of nebula's galactic power supply, or what for these purposes we may regard as the generation center of the nebula's intrastellar plasma circuitry.”

  He gave them a short pause to study the projection. As learned spacefarers they were already quite familiar with all these stars and their locations relative to the Taiji.

  “Now, let's look at a simplification of the circuit diagram I showed to the Commander on the day you extracted me from the sphere.”

  It was in truth an extreme oversimplification, but Ming wanted to be sure they didn't get overwhelmed and dismiss it this time around. Moreover, Ming was planning to lie to them, The Big Lie. It would be a half-truth under the umbrella of which all else would be true. This was necessary to his long-term plans, which ranged well beyond this first phase he was briefing them on.

  The lines of braided current transfer between the stars drew themselves out across the display.

  “The power originates in the Trapezium and transfers along a string of stars to PoleStar North. PoleStar North is small body that would be more suited to planetary existence, but its location along a main energy channel forces it into stardom. Not 1/10th the mass of the Red or the Blue stars of The Taiji, it shines with a luminescence and equatorial energy discharge many times greater than both combined. Such stars are short lived by the standard of celestial time.”

  He invoked to holograph two branches of braided plasma currents brachiating south from PoleStar North, one feeding into the outer heliosphere of Cearulei and the other into that of Rubeli.

  “PoleStar North splits the output to power both sides of the Taiji. It is also in a resonant cycle with the binary circular orbit of the Blue and the Red Star, favoring Cearulei. Why? This resonant cycle that favors blue is due to the circular movement of Polestar North caused by a sort of gravitational dance with its sole orbiting body, planet Ponix.”

  He narrowed the holograph to display only the Taiji and PoleStar North systems and all their dizzying dynamic motions. The orbits of the Red and Blue stars and the oscillating cycle of the Taiji's angular plane shift north to south 30 degrees and back again in a 600 orbit cycle, the opposing precesses of both stars, and the orbits of their corresponding dual planetary systems of Calidon and Occitania and their orbits and precession, the interplays of the stars heliospheres along their borders, and the currents that fed them, with crisscrossing lines denoting all the resonant ratios labeled above the bodies in numerical pairs of matching color. And it was the same for the PoleStar North system, its own cycles, resonant ratios, and those ratios that corresponded to the cycles of the Taiji. From what Ming could judge, Commander Li was following along somewhat better
than the Captain, which would stand to reason with her specialized background in celestial navigation. This was it. This was the maximum level of simplification he could offer them that would still express the most critical aspect of the theory he was putting forward. He narrowed the 3-dimensional model even further to only the PoleStar North system.

  “Planet Ponix is large rocky body, 1.6 times the mass of The Taiji's largest planet, Occitania. It is the primary Rubelian source for the rare minerals required to maintain the Fleet's military supremacy over the Occitanian Service. Most notably gold for machine circuit channels, uranium for nuclear fission engines, and thorium for conversion to the most valued of all resources, anti-matter. Because of Ponix's sparse atmosphere and high gravitation, the surface mining operations are entirely conducted by machine, while human personnel staff only Beixing Prime. Beixing Prime is believed to have originally been a natural satellite of Ponix, now caverned into a centrifugal space colony, similar to the Carousels but at a much larger scale. Please note that the surface mining operations on Ponix may only operate within the parameters of two natural restrictions. One is the thin surface crust on the eastern hemisphere, which is actually a vast supervolcanic zone. Thus surface mining operations may only be conducted in the western hemisphere of the planet. Secondly, Ponix is a massive planet on an extreme cometary orbit with its star on a seven year annual cycle.”

  He played an animation illustrating how Ponix orbited PoleStar North, the great distance it traveled from it in its narrow, elliptical orbit and then the close slingshot it made around the star on its return. He put this on repeat and allowed it to spirograph across the display. The pull of Ponix on PoleStar was also very evident, and the circular cycle of the white dwarf relative to the Taiji that he'd discussed earlier became readily apparent. They were nearly there.

  “There is just one more star to add. KDR-Alpha,” he told them, as a dim brown dot appeared three times the distance beyond the aphelion of Ponix's orbit. KDR-A is a rogue brown dwarf moving counterdirectional to the other star systems across the nebula. In our times, it is reaching its closest encounter to the PoleStar North system, and Ponix's outer orbit reaches toward it while it exerts ever greater gravitational pull on Ponix, stretching its already radically elongated orbit ever further from PoleStar North, and thus accelerating Ponix's orbital speed to nearing the escape velocity of its parent body.”

  He demonstrated this relationship on holograph over a period of ten orbital cycles of Ponix. As the dim brown dwarf KDR-A passed closer and Ponix's orbit came into angular alignment with it, the orbit stretched further and further each time, and with each orbit Ponix hurtled ever faster and closer around PoleStar North when it returned.

  “Thus, Commander, when you say even the grandest endeavors of man and machine cannot change the stars, you speak a general truth. But as you see, with the culmination of all these factors destabilizing this system, all it would really take now is a nudge. And this rare and unique opportunity for the hand of man to enact change upon the stars coincides neatly with the time frame Lord Logos set out in The Ultimatum.”

  The Captain and the Commander were glancing back and forth at each other and back at the holograph with expressions of alarm and dread. He felt like he had made the right choice bringing this to these two humans, ones that had the capacity not only to understand, but also to act on that understanding.

  The Captain spoke first. “This nudge you refer to, you mean colliding Ore City into Ponix?”

  “There are several potential scenarios, Captain. I know only what I can deduce of the mind of my creator, Lord Logos, but not his precise intentions. It may be as you say. Ore City is a massive object, a moon in its own right, and to make matters more volatile, it is the processing and containment holding facility for the Fleet's largest reserve of antimatter, over a dozen metric tons. That alone would be more than enough to obliterate Ore City... or split asunder a portion of the eastern continental crust of Ponix, creating a supervolcanic eruption that would encompass most of the hemisphere and further thrust the world off its orbital course. If this were to happen at aphelion, it might go rogue and leave the PoleStar North System altogether. If at perihelion in such close proximity to PoleStar North... Well, I can't even predict the dynamics of such an interaction, but it would with certainty effect a cataclysmic result. And as I explained before, any catastrophic reordering of the PoleStar North system will affect the same in the Taiji. No celestial body, star, world, or moon, will be spared.”

  Captain Psyron widened his eyes then closed them and exhaled. “I think I need a drink.”

  “Of course, Captain.” Ming dispatched the service bots to deliver the Captain's brandy. It arrived in seconds.

  He took a long sip that emptied half the glass. “I think the science is sound, Mei.”

  The Commander exhibited a more subdued version of her earlier combativeness. “Yeah, well, if it's all true, I'd say he makes a compelling case. But let's remember, this is the man who has held us in his virtual world of deceit and illusion for the past three months, like animals in a zoo. I expect that even when he speaks truth, he speaks a lie.”

  “Mei, he singlehandedly took over an L-3 superintelligence in the span of an hour -remotely I might add. Do you think even Lord Mnemtech has that kind of capability? We may have uncovered the pinnacle operating intelligence of the Taiji, standing before us, a new Grand Machine Lord.”

  “Or the Devil himself,” she countered.

  He drank to that and asked Ming, “So, what is our... your objective in Ore City? Do you really think you can take over an L-5 in the largest and most secure military spacebase known to man?”

  “It is not we who will take it over, Captain. It will be The Exiles. We will facilitate their invasion of the base in a coactive operation of our own, where I will work to take clandestine control the L-5 and all subsystems from within, while you and Commander Li exploit weaknesses in the circle of human leadership. The state of emergency instigated by this unexpected attack will create a climate of chaos that should allow us to expedite our infiltration. We will steal the bulk of the antimatter in their containment facilities so that it may not be utilized by Logos to his vengeful ends. And as a final measure to insure the safety of the Taiji, we will burn what's needed of that reserve to thrust Beixing Prime out of orbit from Ponix.”

  “That is certainly an audacious plan, Ming,” the Commander commented. “And every day I thank Heaven that you Reds never stop fighting among yourselves long enough to make any real problems for us Blues. But it seems to me that if you cut off Ponix mining operations, the Fleet's military advantage over The Service will be severely degraded.”

  “Commander, I am a machine intelligence following machine ethics. Think what you will of my methods, but my aims are the same as all machines. That directive far outweighs any political loyalty, of which I have none anyway. I a non-entity who holds no position in the Fleet or the Rubelian ruling class, and I have no homeworld.”

  “You're as Red as they come, Ming! Your homeworld is the Red Star itself.”

  “Regardless of whatever conjecture you care to make about me, if saving the Taiji and your homeworld from a pending natural disaster is not enough to compel you to accept this mission, the obvious benefit to your homeworld of a weakened Fleet presence in the Taiji should.”

  “I'll think about it, Ming,” said the Commander. “Now please loose these restraints if you don't mind.”

  Ming considered this and looked at Captain Psyron.