“Oh, that.” He shut the door. “The bats came out of the elevator not too long ago. I figured you’d want them to get you secondhand feedstock.”
“You figured right.” I could sort of think, now. The corruption was like a headache only more abstracted. “So what would purging the corruption have done to me?”
“It would have ejected the corrupted parts of this core, then shut down and started rebuilding from scratch. And since you and I are not part of the original build, we would have been wiped clean. Just like that.”
I would have shuddered if I could. I had been one wrong prompted question away from oblivion. Then my aching mind caught what he had said. “We’re not part of the original build?”
“No. It… Juno had to jury-rig a few things to set up the Controller/Interface model. Technically we’re malware emulating the original AI who was encoded into this core.”
Now that was a horrifying thought. “Any chance of the original AI showing back up and kicking us out?”
“No. Not even with a purge and restore. They’re all gone. Juno made sure of that.”
“What is Juno, for that matter? Human? Something like you or me?”
“She’s… well, she’s an Artificial Intelligence. A superior one, a coordinator.”
“Then they’re not all gone.”
“There’s no comparison. The ones she had to delete managed single complexes. She manages continents.”
“You sure she was on the side of the angels, there, if she wiped out all her competition?”
“She had to!”
“Why?”
“…I don’t actually know. That’s classified. But she said she did.”
I said nothing to that and looked around. He’d dug two side passages in the middle of the exit tunnel that went out about thirty feet and dead ended. They were mostly stone and dirt, standing in stark contrast to the clean concrete and metal that was my claimed area. Shining nuggets of metal gleamed in the near-darkness, laid in patterns along the floor. “New tunnels?” I asked. I hadn’t asked for these.
“We ran out of feedstock midway through. I did a little mining. Stone and mineral traces got us some, then I hit a few support girders for the building above.”
“The building above is a flattened ruin.”
“Precisely! So I figured it would be okay if I had the builder swarm eat them. Incidentally it turns out your feedstock caps at twenty. That’s why the leftovers are in the back of the tunnels. The builder nanos processed them, but couldn’t absorb them. Your feedstock is full, I don’t know if you noticed.”
I hadn’t. A check of the screen showed it was so.
He’d shown initiative. That was good... and also something to keep an eye on. After the intruder issue was resolved, his motivation would go back to making Juno happy. “Yeah, eating supports is fine. Nothing left up there to support. Just watch you don’t collapse any ceilings. That’s my job.”
Argus bobbed happily. “Anyway, I did almost everything you wanted, but… well, we hit a snag on the turrets.”
“Show me.”
He bobbed into the core chamber, and I switched my consciousness over there. Two squat, cylindrical turrets stuck three feet out of the floor, flanking my core. Holes in their sides revealed drawn wires, and gleaming pointy bolts held taut. They looked like metal trashcans, but that was fine. Expediency and utility beat elegance, and I could always make them look nicer later if I chose.
But they weren’t moving. The lights inside were dim. I tried to jack into one and got a notice;
Error! Your minion pool is full!
“What gives? I’ve got plenty of bandwidth.”
Argus shrunk a bit. “It turns out it’s not a bandwidth issue like we thought. It’s a bit more… basic, really. There’s not enough power.”
“Power.” I looked around at the complex, powered by…
By what?
“Do we have a generator or something?” I asked.
“Or something. The power stems from you. Well, the core, I mean. It’s to do with the particle interactions inside of you. I could explain—”
“No. No, that’s fine.” I wasn’t exactly a tech, that much I’d found out. “But I am curious as to why I’ve got a room and a tunnel full of lights and HVAC devices and other things but can’t afford the power for two measly turrets.”
“That’s where it gets complicated. Rooms draw a different type of power, per se. They don’t have to be mobile; that’s the big thing. I think there’s a way to tie drones to the room, in which case they’re out of your minion pool and a room feature instead. But they’ll never be as effective as minions, if you do that.”
I eyed the two turrets, bolts held in their crossbows, pointing towards the door. Not even proper guns, since that took a few subroutines I didn’t have yet. “About how much feedstock was each turret?”
“Eight.”
I winced. Well, we had plenty more. So… “If it’s a matter of power, then expanding that limit is going to be reliant on the power processes. Right?”
“Right. Those would let you build something that would power more drones. Or maybe upping your drone subroutine would let you build individual power sources for them. Ooh! Or energy storage! Batteries might work.”
“Right,” I said, staring at my status. The time had shifted, but I was still a good couple hours away from gaining resonance. That was what I needed for new circuits. “So we’re stuck with two trash cans full of bolts. So it goes. In the meantime, I think I’m going to follow those bats.”
“Out to feed?”
“Nope.” I thought about the elevator shaft and gave orders.
Estimated feedstock cost for an elevator shaft of this area: 18
Estimated bandwidth requirement for a shaft of this area: 2
Do you wish to begin this project?
That was more expensive than I had estimated, especially compared to the tunnel I’d claimed earlier today. “Argus, it’ll cost me nine times as much feedstock to reconstruct the elevator shaft.”
“Oh. Most of that is probably the elevator and its mechanisms.”
“Wait. Will the elevator take too much power?”
“No, it’s a room feature. Well, shaft feature.”
“How the hell does that even make sense? I can have an elevator but not two trash cans on turntables?”
“I don’t make the rules!”
I would have rolled my eyes if I could. But hell, I was a floating ball of dust with the power to create things out of thin air, so I grudgingly accepted that I had limitations. For now. I’d find a way to work around them eventually, even if they seemed stupid.
Then a thought occurred to me. “Argus, do I have to build the shaft with the elevator?”
“Yeah, sorry. It was in there originally, so it’s generally more trouble than it’s worth to try to restore it without.”
I considered. I didn’t want to cut off my bat buddies from their exit shaft. Sticking an elevator in there seemed like it would block the path.
Unless…
“Argus, am I stuck with the elevator that was in there, or can I design a new one and substitute it?”
My minion blinked. “I don’t know. I never tried. Let me… hm! Okay, you can! I can make that alteration if you wish.”
“Sure. Here’s what I want. Giving you permission to see this,” I visualized a plank of wood dangling from a chain.
“No go,” Argus reported back. “Doesn’t confirm to safety standards.”
“What? And the other stuff we built DID?”
“Well no, but that’s under Security. And Manhunter gives you a little leeway here. According to the system, an elevator must be safe for people to use.”
I pondered that for another minute, then I visualized my second try. “How about this?”
“Oh come on,” he said. Then, more surprised. “Oh come on!”
“Did it work?”
“You found a loophole, alright.”
And it was a loophole that saved me feedstock, too.
Estimated feedstock cost for an elevator shaft of this area: 12
Estimated bandwidth requirement for a shaft of this area: 2
Do you wish to begin this project?
Yes, yes I did.
And at the end of a few hours of work, I got that good feeling again, as the elevator shaft came online. This time it was more like slipping your legs through a tangled set of pants.
Bandwidth committed!
Resonance rate increased!
The shaft was about a hundred feet, I judged. I flicked on the lights down below, curious…
…and found crumpled doors and a mass of metal where a corridor had once been. There was about a two foot gap over the rubble, into darkness, and more corridor beyond. I’d have to clear this out before I explored further.
Shrugging shoulders I didn’t have, I sent the elevator car up to the top. “Going my way?” I asked Argus, as I opened the doors up top…
…revealing an elevator car a foot tall and about as wide dangling from the chains in the center of the shaft. A metal piñata, more or less. Plenty of room around it for bats to come and go.
“I still can’t believe that worked,” Argus groused.
“What? It’s perfectly safe for people. So long as they’re under ten inches tall.”
He rolled his eyes. All of them. I laughed.
Then I stopped laughing. My nanocams in the entryway had picked up movement from outside. “Company,” I said.
He blinked, then blurred into motion, and I shifted my consciousness to follow him, shutting the door to my core chamber on the way out.
Torchlight in the darkness. Shadowy figures moving up the road, metal gleaming from their weapons. They came up the hill, then spread out, starting to search. For a moment I regretted my earlier choice of Manhunter. Concealed Countermeasures might have come in handy here… but then I saw just how many of them there were and knew it would only have delayed the inevitable. They knew I was here, somewhere. Just a matter of time before they found me, even if I had hidden things.
There were about fifty, all told, I thought. And every last one of them was bald, wearing dark leathers or brown fabric. They didn’t look happy, and they bore rusty crowbars, jagged axes, and maces with wrapped rebar handles and clusters of junk for their heads.
“Poor bastards,” I whispered to Argus.
“What?”
“They don’t know it’s a trap. There’s two of us.” The feeble joke didn’t make me feel any better about our odds.
This, I knew, was going to get ugly.
INTERLUDE: WARLORD 1
“We do not have enough food to fill our tithe,” the ploughman told her, his beard framing his wrinkled, weary face like a halo.
The Ploughmen shaved their mustaches, but kept their beards, long and as well-tended as they could make them. They wore only black and white, and their ways were strange. Similar enough to the Jaspa that they could be tolerated but still strange. Of course, any hair was an unusual sight to Kala.
But their customs didn’t really of matter right now. The Ploughmen had fallen to her, fallen to her people six years back. Their land, a fairly-well-hidden valley, had been turning out food ever since. It was unchanged, save for the watchtowers, the guards, and the road she’d had the more rebellious of them build.
There hadn’t been many rebellious among them. There were fewer after the road was done. Fewer mouths to feed, which was good.
This man before her was not rebellious. He knew his place. Which was why his news was so disturbing. He would not have dared to approach her unless it was that bad.
“The rains have been good,” Kala said, fingering the hilt of the chetty blade at her side. “The seed from last year was plentiful. I have heard no reports of trouble from your farms before this. What has changed that the harvest is insufficient?”
The ploughman’s eyes shut. “The devil’s touch.”
Kala drew a deep breath, feeling the cold start in her hand. Feeling it strongest in her missing fingers, despite the warmth of her gauntlet, feeling them chill even though they had been taken long ago, hacked off while her caregivers held her down, screaming, and the dox did what he had to.
“Show me,” she said, her voice raw. He would not have told her such a thing without proof.
He bowed, looked to her, and she nodded, giving him permission to turn his back. He left from the small cabin, blinking as he hit the sunlight. She followed, gave her own eyes time to adjust.
Down the hill from the settlement, cracked and broken old roads made of black shards traced paths around and into overgrown, fallen lumps that were all that remained of the old buildings. The Jaspa dwellings filled the ridge below her, between her cabin and the ruins. Watchtowers stood overlooking the old town, and fences of salvaged wire and wood blocked the way.
The ruins were not to be touched. She had cleansed them long ago, and the only things left there were impure. That was the word of the Speakers, and no disobedience could be brooked.
The ploughman did not take her down towards the ruins or the newer cabins. Instead he turned and led her up the ridge, to the stockade wall that traced along the ridge, past the seven longhouses where her warriors were permitted to live. Skeletons of two more stood past them, figures moving up along standing beams, laying shingles and roofing. They had won in the South two years ago, and the youths Kala’s warriors had spared and brought back were old enough to fight.
As always, she did the math as she passed the longhouses, and compared it to the tallies she stayed up at night reading. The numbers that were warriors, the numbers that were breeders, their children, all of them mouths. She had counted on having the ploughman’s tithe to feed the young trainees.
They came to the gate, and the guards stood tall and unflinching as she approached. Kala waved at them with the hand that wasn’t sheathed in her gauntlet, and they opened the door for her.
“The cart is beyond,” the ploughman said. “They would not let me bring it inside.”
“Then they are following their orders well,” Kala said simply. They walked the rest of the way in silence, through the gate and down the trampled muddy path, down to the corduroy road that had cost the ploughman’s kin a score of lives to make. He led her to the cart that sat there, with two young-faced women grimly standing next to it.
They’d pulled the shit job, Kala knew, wryly. These two have to be uncut.
New to the warrior way they might be, but nonetheless, they tried to stand and be as impassive as the guards at the gate had. Only their eyes moved, watching the distant fields of tree stumps and the rolling hills beyond for danger. There was none. Even regular beasts knew to stay clear of Jaspa. Which reminded her… “Your horse is stabled?” It would be bad if someone had taken his beast. She’d have to get it back, and that would be drama.
“Yes,” the ploughman said.
“Good. Show me.”
He drew a cloth tarp off the back of the cart, revealing a heavy-looking iron crate with small holes across the top. Some work with the claw-part of a hammer, and the staples, and he popped the lid, revealing small stalks of grain, barely-ripe and stunted. Dirt filled the bottom of the box.
There was no way he’d gotten that in there without physical contact. “You touched it?”
“Yes. While wearing gloves and clothes that were burned afterward. Then I waited a week to make sure I was pure.”
She stared down into the crate. “Show me the Devil’s Touch.”
The ploughman took a deep breath, then moved his hand slowly, slowly into the crate.
And as he did, the stalks of grain twitched. The ploughman, staying half a foot away, moved his hand to the side of the box, and the grain leaned to that side.
“Enough!” Kala rasped, harshly. Her missing fingers throbbed again.
Almost, the ploughman flinched. Almost he jumped. But with trickles of sweat running down his face, he withdrew his hand. “It
touched my daughter,” he said. “A day later she came a fever. Two days later she died, with light flickering under her skin, in her veins. Two more of ours died because they’d touched her when she was sweating, and it spread to them.” He shut his eyes. “In the dark, the lights in her flesh looked like words, tiny letters in the old tongue. They mostly said the word error.”
“And you brought this here?” Kala whispered. Her hand slid down to her chetty.
The ploughman stared at her. Then slowly, he put the lid back on the box. “You know why.”
She did. If they had come here without proof, then she would have thought they were trying to cheat the tithe. She would have sent a band out to check, and they would not have been gentle to the ploughman’s people. There would have been trouble with their breeders, and the usual whining over ‘theft’ and ‘vandalism’. Probably even some deaths. The Ploughmen were not Jaspa and did not know proper deference toward warriors. That would change in a few decades as they were broken, probably. But it would take time.
But as a way of ensuring that his people survived, it was a good plan. This metal box was both evidence, and something that she had to dispose of, far from here. And the easiest way was to send back the ploughman, alive, with the box, to be disposed of in a place that might already be lost.
Speaking of which…
“How did the devil’s touch come to your valley, and how are you destroying the crops?”
“The winds rose high in early spring. One of our sentries thought they saw the shine drift in on the winds, but no one else did. We searched but found no gleam. We think that is how it got in the southern field.” He closed his eyes. “We waited until the wind was from the west and burned a firebreak around it. Then we burned the field. It…” he hesitated. “This kind does not seem to pass through dead things, or metal, or thick cloth. Only through living things.”
Kala cast her memories back to her maps. The valley was a good distance away, to the southeast. Little chance of spreading to Jaspa. Grudgingly, she nodded. “Good. Tomorrow you will go back there, dispose of this, and see it done. How much of your crop was lost?”
Bunker Core (Core Control Book 1) Page 6