Crystal Rebellion

by Doug J. Cooper

  “The synbod can walk next to you.”

  She locked eyes with him and did her best to affect a sincere expression. “And please don’t tell Sid. He doesn’t need to know.”

  I know he’ll tell him. Criss was a vault when it came to keeping personal secrets, but he shared operational information unfiltered. It went along with his “knowledge is power” approach to most things.

  Rising from the bunk, she stepped behind a privacy shield at the foot of the bed and changed into her everyday clothes—sky-blue work scrubs and a pair of all-purpose deck slippers. She glanced over at him sitting at the foot of her bed. Her act of modesty was sincere, though she knew it made no sense to be shy in front of a projected image. That isn’t him. The real Criss monitored billions of feeds all the time and even now was watching her change from a dozen different directions.

  Her cabin doors whispered shut behind her as she walked the short passageway to the scout’s workshop. Resting her hand on the back of the workshop chair, she slid behind the sleek custom tech bench.

  A seamless interface of mechanics, electronics, physics, and chemistry, the tech bench stood as a craftsworker’s dream. Developed by Criss for use by his leadership, he’d added such a high level of automation, she could sit and watch it create if that were her desire.

  He’s probably already built the locus.

  But she counted on him knowing that she needed to keep busy. Work was her therapy.

  Criss stood at the far side of the tech bench wearing dark blue work scrubs cut in a more angular style, waiting as she situated herself in the chair. Comfortable, she caught his eye and nodded. Plans for the locus projected in front of her. Studying the display, Juice arranged pieces on the bench top in a proper order for assembly. One of the items she handled was a small jewel case lined with black cloth.

  With a certain reverence, she opened the lid and lifted the tiny chip out of the case. Crystal from flake. Holding it up between her fingers, she delighted in watching the light diffuse through the rare material, emerging as a sparkling rainbow dancing in front of her.

  Assembled atom by atom, this bit of structured beauty gave Criss his wide open door. Through it he could travel unimpeded, projecting his awareness at full strength to wherever it rested.

  “It’s a pretty one, Criss.” She held the bit of crystal under one eye and marveled as everything in the room took on a colorful aura.

  Then she placed the chip back in the case and looked at him. “What do you think I can learn from a tour that you can’t from the record?”

  “Alex knows things he doesn’t know he knows. His thoughts and ideas aren’t in the record. You can get that information by asking him questions.”

  She picked up the thin, flexible casing that would hold the crystal chip and supporting components. Positioning the small sheath in different places around her body, she sought a spot where it would be unobtrusive and unlikely to be disturbed.

  She settled on the shallow valley between her breasts. “I’ll carry you next to my heart.”

  “Forgive me for saying this, but your relationship with Alex may not rekindle. Either way, we still need you to learn from him.”

  “I get it. It might turn out that he’s not interested. Or maybe I’ll find that it’s me who’s not interested. The mission comes first.”

  She lifted her hand and swirled a lock of hair around her index finger. After a few loops, the swirl built up so much that it spilled loose. In classic fretting behavior, she repeated the twirling process over and over without being conscious of any of it.

  “I just want to know if he and I have a chance. Is that so dumb?”

  “No, Juice. It may be that your desire to know is what saves humanity.”

  Chapter 8

  Alex’s nose crinkled as the acrid smell of ozone invaded his senses. Moments later, a click and a distant snap signaled the end of the power-up–power-down test run.

  “Thanks. That’s it for today.” He waved and nodded to a white-coated tech in the booth on the other side of the sturdy window. During powered testing, the booth tech monitored the fabrication facility, ready to intervene if indicators drifted outside of normal range. With the day’s tests concluded, the window transitioned to the color pattern of the wall around it, seeming to vanish.

  “I still don’t get it,” Alex said to Larry, who stood next to him in the four-gen fab facility located down the hall from his office. “It seems so…reckless.”

  With his hands on his hips, Alex ignored the sophisticated assemblage of mirrored metal and glazed white panels comprising the crystal growth chamber. Instead, he centered his attention on the implant conduit. As thick as his arm, the polished conduit ran out the top of the chamber, turned at an angle so it ran parallel to the floor, and disappeared over a movable partition.

  Alex knew what was on the other side of the temporary barrier. He’d helped build it. But now Ruga was bringing in someone else to run it. Reckless. He shook his head.

  A four-gen AI is created in three fundamental steps: fabricate the crystal lattice, embed the cognition matrix, and awaken the new entity into the world. All three steps were vital to success. And all were coordinated phases of a seamless technical symphony.

  Yet out of the blue, Ruga had reorganized project responsibilities. He let Alex remain operations lead for steps one and three, but his new plan was to bring in someone else to embed the intelligence.

  I know everyone on Mars. Who does he have in mind? He shook his head again. I wonder what Juice will make of this.

  He’d come to realize that expecting a visit from a special friend without knowing her date of arrival made for an exhausting wait. He now paid extra attention to his grooming every morning in case this would be the day Juice landed. He also made an extra pass through his apartment, and especially his bathroom, to clean a bit before leaving for work. And here in the fab facility, he dragged his feet on the integration tests in the hopes she could witness the unit in operation before the big day.

  He stared at the point where the polished conduit disappeared over the partition. It ran to the four-gen Intelligence and Cognition Embedding Unit—the ICEU—which now sat in its own cramped space in a corner of what had been a single big production laboratory. The ICEU, pronounced “I.Q.” by the staff, performed the prestige step in creating a sentient AI.

  Sure, step one, fabricating a flawless crystal with a perfect four-gen symmetry, was a big technical challenge. And step three, awakening a sentient AI—a being of disconcerting power—was fraught with peril. One misstep could send the emerging intelligence into a spiral of psychosis or, more concerning, into an aggressive rage.

  But step two, cognition embedding, was the step where inspiration could make a difference. The injection of the AI matrix into the crystal—its deployment rate, the orientation in the lattice, the order of unfolding—required hundreds of decisions, some during the embedding process itself. Alex saw it as an art form.

  And if he were to choose a place to sabotage the fab process, someplace where he could make a slight change without anyone knowing, he’d pick the ICEU. The right tweak would start a cascade of errors and propagate to fabrication failure. In fact, he’d identified two points during embedding where such a tweak might be made without anyone seeing.

  Ruga must know. Why else would he take this step from me? Feeling exposed, he turned away from Larry to hide his worry.

  Ever since that conversation with Marcus about the interchangeable nature of synbods, Alex’s relationship with Larry had changed. He now kept the synbod at arm’s length, limiting their discussions to work-related topics. And he took to studying the synbod, looking for behavioral quirks and changing mannerisms.

  From this, Alex concluded that Marcus had it wrong. The same Larry worked with him at the tech center every day.

  The day after he and Marcus had that conversation at the BIT garden, Alex had studied Larry’s face and noted a small imperfection on the synbod’s left temple. Less tha
n a scar, not even a blemish, a tiny brown spot dwelled at the cusp of his hairline. He’d seen the spot every day since. It’s the same Larry.

  But every so often, Larry’s personality shifted from the staid and circumspect project partner to a chatty character who tried too hard to be clever. Alex concluded that while the body stayed the same, the personality inside changed. Marcus needs to know.

  Alex used a simple logic sequence to figure out who manipulated Larry. He started with the list of everyone who had the authority to use synbods as puppets. Verda, Lazura, and Ruga. He combined that with everyone responsible for colony security. Ruga.

  The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him.

  Then he made a word slip that revealed his suspicions; the first such slip as far as he knew. Turning to face the synbod, Alex nodded toward the partition. “You’re asking me to proceed blindfolded.”

  His cheeks flushed when he realized his mistake. Everyone knew that it was Ruga who had ordered the partitioning of the ICEU from the rest of the lab, not this synbod.

  “Not you personally, Larry.” Waving his hand in a vague swirling motion to show that he meant a broad audience, Alex made a stab at rescuing the situation. “I’m talking about the members of the Tech Assembly who approved this arrangement.”

  He didn’t wait for Larry or Ruga to respond but instead cast about for a way to change the subject. Walking to a worktop along the wall, he bent forward and studied the crystal flake sparkling in the jar.

  “That last shipment gave us a nice cushion.”

  Colony agents bought old two-gen crystals on Earth’s black market, ground them up into flake in an unlicensed lab, and smuggled the pure crystal to Mars. When the Union of Nations discovered the practice, they passed a law declaring that they alone had the right to possess this precious Kardish material. In a classic governmental tit-for-tat, the Triada took the unusual step of developing legislation to make a specific act lawful: “The transportation of crystal flake from Earth to Mars is a legal act.”

  Alex agreed with the colony position because, like food, energy, and water, flake was a resource for humanity to share. Who are they to tell us we can’t fabricate AIs? And because colony agents had been so successful in securing scarce two-gens, Alex now had enough flake to make a four-gen with a modest margin to spare.

  One crystal. He’d lied to Juice when he told her about mass production. He’d wanted to make sure she’d come. But this isn’t her battle.

  His brewing resentment brought his thoughts back to the allocation of duties. “I haven’t finished configuring the ICEU,” he said to Larry/Ruga. “There’s a good two days of work before we’re ready. Who should I coordinate with?”

  Alex held the table when he heard the answer.

  “Juice Tallette will be operating the ICEU. I’ll give you access when she arrives.”

  * * *

  Standing in the scout’s common room, Sid turned one way and then the other as he viewed the image of himself standing in front of him. He smoothed the brown material of the tunic and nodded. His image did the same.

  His image dissolved to reveal Cheryl looking at him, a smirk on her face. “Pleased with ourselves?” She looked spectacular in her modest yellow frock. They both were trying on outfits Criss had made for their first colony mission.

  “We land here,” said Criss, pointing to a spot on a floating display of Mars. “The scout will be safe on pad ring two.” Criss’s finger swirled above a launch ring in a field far from the dome. “Nothing in this old section has been used for more than a year.”

  Criss’s display zoomed out and resolved to an aerial view of the Ag Port complex. Sid marveled at the remarkable geodesic enclosure that gave humans access to sunlight while protecting them from the unbreathable atmosphere, extreme temperatures, and unforgiving sandstorms of the Mars surface.

  Like a huge faceted jewel, thousands of gleaming clear plates edged together in an intricate geometric dome that stood as a testament to human engineering. And outside, on the Mars surface, a horseshoe arc of eight space launch rings wrapped around one end of the Ag Port dome.

  Colony shuttles, the boxy kind used to carry people and things between the surface and orbiting ships too big to land, occupied two of the launch rings. Luxury corporate craft took up four more. Their small size relative to the main structure gave Sid a sense of scale.

  “It looks busy,” he said.

  Criss gestured toward the company ships. “They’re delaying their departure so they can participate in Cheryl’s trade meetings. That’s helpful because it adds to the number of strangers milling about in the colony.”

  “Everyone will be strangers to us,” said Juice, leading with her cup of water as she squeezed in between Criss and Cheryl. “Except Alex.” She took a sip.

  “But the colonists aren’t strangers to each other,” said Criss. “This is a small, closed community where everyone knows everyone else. Strangers are intruders, and that’s a challenge for us. Remember that our posture has been that the scout doesn’t exist. As far as Mars knows, we officially arrive on a Fleet ship a week from now.”

  Challenge. Sid’s ears perked up at the word. Cheryl and Juice lifted their heads at the same time. He let his impatience show. “Get to it, Criss.”

  “Arriving on a cloaked ship offered interesting advantages when we were investigating authoritarian leaders and the mass production of four-gens. But with the Kardish and a sentient crystal now in the mix, blending in with the population moves from difficult to impossible. They will see us.”

  “They’re going to see us at some point,” said Sid.

  “True, but if we reveal ourselves before the Venerable arrives, then how did we get here? The unusual nature of our arrival will bring scrutiny. A cloaked ship will be an obvious explanation. And if the Kardish start a concerted effort to find the scout, we’ll be pushed into a defensive posture.”

  Sid nodded. “I’m definitely an offense guy.”

  The image display zoomed out and continued pulling back until it was as if they were looking down from orbit. Then the focus swung outward in a movement so realistic, Sid felt the lightness in his stomach he associated with flying his sport plane back home.

  When the movement stopped, Mars appeared as a rust-orange crescent floating to the left, the blackness of deep space lay straight ahead, and to the right, a small dot floated that, after more zooming, became the nose of a rather large spaceship.

  “The Explorer, the new vacation cruise ship from Kwasoo Space Industries, arrives in orbit less than two days after us.”

  “Wow,” said Cheryl, bending forward to place the hovering image of the Explorer at eye level. “Can we take a tour?”

  The display expanded and zoomed to show a close-up of the luxury cruise ship. They all stepped back to get a proper view as the vessel floated forward.

  “Criss, remember we almost bid on this project?” She was referring to her other life of a couple of weeks ago where, with Criss’s help, she ran SunRise, a company focused on space commercialization.

  “Of course. Passengers and crew of thirty-one.”

  The ship floated forward in a smooth motion, and the exterior transitioned from bright and festive at the front to dark and industrial toward the rear. The tail section came into view, and Cheryl commented on the huge engine port ringed with uniform spheres like perfect black pearls. “Look! They went with a Paulson drive.”

  Sid, interested in understanding Criss’s plan, got them back on task. “So we board the ship, then mingle with the passengers and enter the colony with them?”

  “I believe that mingling with them at the arrival gate is more practical, but that’s the general idea.”

  “And the Kardish won’t figure out we don’t belong?” Juice’s skepticism reflected Sid’s own doubt.

  “We can get inside under cover of their commotion,” said Criss. “But then we’d have to lie low and limit our interactions with the colonists, including Alex, unti
l the Venerable arrives.”

  “What other options do we have?” asked Sid, having heard enough of this idea.

  “The other alternative is to land and wait outside the dome for the Venerable to arrive.”

  The image in front of them dissolved back to the surface of Mars. The projection showed the Ag Port dome from the vantage point of pad ring two.

  “Why land?” asked Cheryl. “It seems safer to stay in orbit.”

  Criss looked at Sid when he answered. “Because we should be able to move around inside the colony on a very limited basis using our personal cloaks.”

  Sid mulled the choices Criss had presented—hide inside the colony or wait outside in the scout. The fact that Criss presented them as options meant he saw them as equal alternatives from an operational view. The final decision came down to the preference of the group.

  “I say we land and stay outside the colony on the scout,” said Sid. He took the silence to signal acceptance and left the room, ending the impromptu meeting.

  Sid found Cheryl in her cabin after that and together they changed out of the colony outfits. She faced away from him, and he watched, fascinated, as subtle waves of muscle rippled across her back when she stepped into her work scrubs.

  He balled-up his colony garment and tossed it toward a corner.

  “You’re doing it again,” she said over her shoulder. “We’ve talked about this and you know how it bothers me.”

  He looked at the crumple of clothing. “What’s that, sweetie?”

  “You’re making group decisions without consulting Juice or me. How do you think she feels when you do that? You know how I feel about it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He took a step in her direction and stopped. While his refined intuition had guided him with a steady hand during world-threatening dramas, it went silent whenever he tried to read Cheryl. “Is this about where we wait? We can hide inside the colony if that’s what you want.”

  She pivoted toward the door while keeping her back pointed in his direction. The door hissed open, and she stepped into the hall.