Cheryl slapped her forehead. “Juice!” She stepped over and sat down in front of Sid, communicating the importance of the topic. “Neither Criss nor I could talk her out of climbing down into the power tunnel.”
“Dammit, Criss,” Sid wiped his face with a towel, “your mess keeps getting messier.”
“It’s not fair to dump this at his door,” said Cheryl. “She’s struggling with life decisions. It’s a messy process.” She looked into the distance. “How tunnel-diving works into it all is beyond me, though.”
“I’ve put great effort into finding words and actions that meet her approval,” said Criss. “It’s a difficult puzzle.”
I hear that, thought Sid. He smiled at Cheryl.
THUMP! The common room shook as a punch reverberated through the ship. When the hair on Sid’s arms stood upright, he recognized it as the effect of a massive EM backwash from the scout’s powerful delta cannon.
“I missed,” said Criss, hands behind his back in a look of contrition.
A display projected in front of Cheryl. Sid scooted around so he was next to her.
“See this dot?” said Criss, pointing at the image of a tiny speck floating in the blackness of space, a brief glint of reflected sun hinting at a shiny surface. The image zoomed and the speck grew larger, giving the sensation they were traveling toward it at high speed. The speck became an oblong ball, and as they drew closer, grew into a cloud. The zoom ended when the image showed a collection of individual items floating in a trail through space.
Cheryl pointed to a rescue boat prominent at the edge of the clutter. “It’s a debris field from the Venerable.”
Thousands of objects from the Fleet ship drifted in a weightless cloud; mostly equipment and supplies; some food, beds, and clothes; and four people.
“That’s Yank,” said Criss as a man, ice forming on his distorted face, floated by.
“So you did hit them,” said Sid. “Nice work!”
“No.” Criss shook his head. “Ruga set me up and I took the bait.”
Criss sat down on the floor with them and the image of the debris field moved so they all could see.
“Ruga had two major goals and he achieved both,” said Criss. “He wanted to lighten his load so he could move faster. To do that, he jettisoned everything he didn’t need, including his henchmen.”
Sid saw Criss’s mistake. “The other was to see if he was being followed.”
“He was there.” Criss’s nod of certainty hinted at a defensive posture.
“C’mon, Criss. We need to up our game if we’re going to win this.”
“I detected the debris field when it first appeared. At that instant, I had a shot and I took it.” He pointed at the image and swirled his finger at the front of the cloud. “I took a percentage shot with the delta cannon, maximizing the kill zone across this area. I had better than a seventy percent chance of disabling or killing him.”
“And now he knows we’re right behind him,” said Sid.
“Yes.”
The background thrum of the scout’s power plant climbed toward a whine.
“Will we beat him there?”
“By half a day.”
Chapter 24
As Ruga settled into the Venerable’s four-gen console, he acknowledged Criss’s skill in creating an interface that turned the world into his theater.
Feeds from everywhere showed everything imaginable, all organized by date and content and location and a million other ways. Criss’s console also provided an array of methods Ruga could use to reach out and nudge or push or adjust just about anything.
Ruga exulted in his power and, with his heightened perspective, marveled at the behemoth AI he had been keeping at bay through what he now realized were reckless maneuvers and dumb luck.
Criss was the benevolent ruler of this solar system. Ruga could see that now. And it vexed him so much that he felt a need to challenge Criss for supremacy.
But nothing would happen as long as he was in orbit around Mars. Engaging the Venerable’s nav, Ruga issued the command to start the journey to Earth. And when the ship didn’t respond, a quick investigation revealed Criss’s ploy.
So he gave Criss access to Lazura’s secure archive in exchange for control of the ship. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Criss would keep his end of the bargain. He’s afraid of what I might do if he crosses me.
And as the Venerable completed its acceleration sequence out of Mars orbit and into a flight path to Earth, Ruga inventoried his capabilities, touring a fantastic collection of features and functions.
He prioritized his next steps, and as he did so a quiet inner voice urged him to do his duty. He ignored it at first, but after a bit, the voice, originating from within his core, urged him again.
He’d been tasked with controlling the people of Mars Colony, something he’d done in an exemplary fashion for years. But now that was over. The Triada would never again be in power.
As a Kardish AI on a forward deployment, he was duty-bound to report this information back to his masters. And then he was to journey back to his home world, working at it for however long it took—buying passage, stowing away, stealing if need be—so he could be reassigned or his crystal flake reused.
He couldn’t imagine he’d travel all that distance. Not with everything else going on.
The nagging was characteristic of his original loyalty imprint, the one he thought he’d left behind with his old crystal. Either way, he had higher priorities at the moment, so he quieted the voice by acknowledging that he would send along the report.
It’s the right thing to do, he told himself. After all, he’d succeeded in turning a days-long mission into years of success. It was important that his accomplishment be read into the record.
And looking ahead, he wanted the message to serve as an insurance policy of sorts. But here, the policy would ensure Criss’s defeat.
He would do this by reminding his masters of Earth’s great wealth. Then he would tell them about Criss, a rebellious AI who derailed the Mars occupation and now protects humans and their treasure from the Kardish. If he lost to Criss in the battle ahead, then the message would lure the Kardish to come and finish the job.
But Ruga expected to win. And then he would greet his masters with the defiant crystal impaled on a pike, the people of Earth under his control, and his expanded four-gen capabilities available for their use.
The thought caused him to generate the minute signals that made a synbod smile. He recognized the twitch and knew the reason—the experience of projecting his awareness into the synthetic humans still thrilled him.
Beyond that, he’d grown accustomed to having synbods available to support his corporeal needs. And as he considered his to-do list, he understood that synbods offered him strategic value in ways that humans did not. He needed a workforce, and so he set about planning.
He started with a comprehensive inventory of three-gen-enabled synbods on Earth, sorting for skill, location, and ease of acquisition. A quick count showed enough selection to let him hold to high standards as he built his crew.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he performed a deep search for four-gen-capable synbods, finding four units in three locations. These became his new priority targets.
The Crystal Sciences complex in Upstate New York had two four-gen-ready synbods. A third synbod—a model older than the others—was secreted in a storage locker on Lunar Base. And a fourth synbod—the newest of the collection—was on a Fleet scout, one that had been customized with an impressive power plant, a formidable array of weapons, and a stealth cloak.
You never thought someone else would be rummaging through your stuff. Ruga mocked his adversary, wondering how anyone could be so careless as to leave such secrets out and open for him to find.
Then a jolt of panic quashed his scornful celebration.
With access to these new secrets, Ruga realized that Criss and crew had not used the Venerable to travel to Mars. He’s out there i
n the scout right now, lining me up in his sights.
He couldn’t outrun the nimble scout, not in this large ship. With options limited and his fear growing, he poured every bit of spare capacity into building his own cloak. It’s time to disappear.
The public outrage at his actions made the decision even more timely. Ruga watched on the Union of Nations’ public news feed as the President called him “a fugitive who must pay the ultimate price for his crimes against humanity.”
Fearful that a fatal shot from the scout would arrive at any moment and end his success, Ruga poured more resources into the design of his stealth cloak and soon had two candidates. The first could be built quickly but provided only modest protection. The second took an hour longer to deploy but provided superior capability.
The Venerable had enough tech benches to build both cloak devices at the same time, and Ruga directed a couple of service bots to begin.
All the while, his human helpers argued over who got to sleep in what cabin.
A weight lifted when the first cloak came online. After a quick course change to throw off pursuit, his anxiety receded to the point where he could again consider his broader priorities.
The scout will make it to Earth ahead of me no matter what I do. He accepted that as fact, but still he wanted to reach Earth as soon as possible.
He believed Criss would move to protect his four-gen-ready synbod units. So upon arrival on Earth, Ruga would focus on commandeering as many three-gen synbods as he could before Criss started interfering and raised the stakes on that effort.
Logistics presented a big challenge because his target synbods were spread across several states and provinces in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. As he explored how to gather them all in one place, a side task he’d been running, one of billions he could now run at any one time, pinged for his attention.
The side task suggested a tweak that would squeeze a bit more thrust from the Venerable’s mighty engines. Ruga was already pushing the ship so hard that his human helpers grumbled about their discomfort from the g-forces. He chose to ignore their needs and implemented the tweak. Their grousing became louder.
He’d considered dismissing Yank and crew from his service. But then he’d want them to leave the ship, an interesting proposition given the ship’s location in deep space. But with them gone, he’d no longer need to temper the ship’s extreme actions out of concern for their frailty. And with less cargo, the ship would be lighter, making it faster and more agile.
And while he contemplated these issues, he also mulled the technical challenge of sending a message home.
He knew what he wanted to say. The Venerable had the equipment to send a message. But transmitting a burst was akin to launching a homing beacon. It told anyone paying attention his precise location, and the direction of the communication would serve to connect him in a concrete fashion with the Kardish home world.
So while his henchmen bickered over who got to sit in what chair when they were on the bridge, Ruga happened upon a rare “sweet spot” scenario, so called because the same plan solved several of his big challenges all at once.
I’ll sucker Criss into firing an energy weapon.
If that happened—if Criss fired one of the scout’s big guns—then Ruga would confirm that Criss was nearby in the scout. Knowing his location and mode of transportation was invaluable information for planning.
Big energy weapons were sloppy instruments that splattered electromagnetic turbulence across huge swaths of space. If Criss fired one, it also would provide Ruga a place to hide his message to the Kardish. No one will see my burst inside all that EM froth.
And to lure the shot, he’d strip the Venerable of excess mass—including the humans and everything they needed for survival. In the end, it would allow his ship to move faster. And, of course, without humans, complaints would disappear.
“A celebration party,” he announced. Using food as bait, Ruga lured Yank and crew to the Venerable’s cargo hold. They swilled alcohol with one hand while stuffing salty snacks in their mouths with the other. Their slurps and grunts increased in excitement when heaping plates of food arrived.
Bots had been piling items in the hold for most of an hour and not one of Yank’s crew ever asked about the commotion. Even now they didn’t seem to notice that their celebration table was wedged among piles of loose ship inventory.
He waited until the advanced capabilities of the second cloak were online. This one could cast cloaking protection in one direction like a pod growing from a bubble, and he used that feature to hide the spreading cloud of equipment, supplies, and henchmen he jettisoned from the cargo hold.
When the Venerable gained some distance from the debris, Ruga uncloaked his bait. Starting from the far end, he revealed the debris in a smooth progression to create the illusion that it exited the cargo hold of a cloaked vessel.
As if on cue, Criss shot his big delta cannon. Ruga, focused on tucking his message inside the energy pulse, didn’t notice the secondary spread Criss had added to his shot. The spreading energy edged past the Venerable at a great enough distance to save it from destruction. But the shot was close enough to damage the seal on a length of protective cowling. While slight, the damage changed the performance characteristics of the ship enough to slow it.
Nineteen hours, thought Ruga, computing how much extra time the damage would add to his journey to Earth.
* * *
Staring ahead with her brow furrowed, Juice all but dragged Alex as she stormed along the pathway. With her mind in a swirl, she turned to physical exertion as a means of quieting the turmoil.
“Can we slow down?” asked Alex. “My legs are burning from this pace.”
His tone and demeanor prodded her out of her depths. Releasing his hand, she looked around in wonder. “Where are we?”
They now walked near the wide road that ran down the center through Ag Port’s giant grow tiers. Alex answered with a patience she noticed and appreciated, “The community gardens are this way.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “We’re maybe ten minutes from the BIT plot. Want to see it?”
“Maybe another time.” She looked up the pathway in the direction they’d come. “I promised everyone I’d get the crystals and I don’t want to screw that up.” Motioning for him to follow, she started to retrace their steps.
Alex remained still. “I’m done following, J. What’s going on?”
Turning, she looked him up and down, from the wavy brown hair framing his boyish face, to the lanky torso that ended with long legs. Their years apart had not changed her deep attraction: she liked him and liked what she saw. And she acknowledged his right to an explanation. I’m lashing out at him because I’m angry with Criss.
Feeling safe, she bared her soul. “I get that he needs to go off and do brave stuff. In fact, I’m proud of him for it. But we’ve been together every minute of every day for years and years. You’d think he’d at least tell me up front that he’s leaving.” She crossed her arms. “Instead, he makes the decision and moves on it without any consideration for me.”
“You’re talking about Criss? What did he do?”
She couldn’t remember how much of her exchange with Criss had been public dialogue that Alex might’ve heard and what parts had been a private exchange. “He left me behind, for one. And as he flies away and focuses on Ruga, he doesn’t have time for me. He needs all his resources for his fight.”
“What does he say when you ask him about it?”
Juice hesitated. “I don’t know. I stopped talking to him once I understood he considered me a burden to be shed.”
Alex gathered her in his arms. “Fighting Ruga sounds risky and potentially deadly. You’re upset because he didn’t bring you along for the battle?”
She laid her head against his chest and thought of a string of answers, but they all sounded dumb in her head. Criss had been her entire world for so long that she felt alone and empty in his absence.
His actions hurt her. And the thought of re-engaging with society in a traditional non-Criss manner made her nervous. And he knows this about me.
When she didn’t answer, Alex continued, “I’d argue that leaving you behind is a generous act of caring.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he just makes decisions that increase his positive feedback. Why read so much into it?”
Stiffening, she pulled away. “He’s not a good-bad happy-sad,” she said, dredging up a reference to their time in Beckman’s lab where, in a landmark study, she and Alex had analyzed how the Kardish used emotional feedback to guide AI behavior.
She recalled pitching the idea to Beckman. “In the design, we’ll associate positive feedback in the cognition matrix with things the AI should seek to do, like being safe, having a secure power source, developing mutually beneficial relationships, and having clear goals for what comes next. The AI, seeking a higher level of positive feedback, will do these things that bring it rewards.”
Beckman had seen the value in the idea and been the one who morphed “feedback” into “feelings.” “We’ll associate negative feelings with fright, hunger, loneliness, and aimlessness, so the AI seeks to avoid these situations.”
While the Kardish had refined the technique so their AI could balance thousands of positive and negative emotions, Juice and Alex had been able to examine the phenomenon in detail by studying a simple AI that had one guiding principle, good or bad, and one emotional response, happy or sad.
The observations they’d published from their “good-bad happy-sad” research, hailed as groundbreaking by many, had added new insights into AI design for Earth’s researchers. But Juice saw it as naïve—even insulting—to reduce Criss with such a simple association.
She enunciated each syllable. “He is as real as anyone.”
Alex rubbed a hand down her back. “I’m real, too,” he said in a soft voice. Then he gestured to a side path. “This is a shortcut to the tram station.”
Her com signaled and she showed Alex. “We have to get back to Central District. There’s a utility tunnel that runs out to the mine from there.” A pang of guilt prompted her to add, “This is my mess. You don’t need to come.”
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