Eejit: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man

by Hindle, Andrew

  But this was new.

  This was active repurposing of the synthetic intelligence into, apparently, a new kind of synth, something all modern thought – and certainly Sally’s education – insisted was impossible.

  Because of this, Sally had long since set procedures in place to cut off the computer and essentially go manual. The unfortunate thing was that so many of the ship’s key systems were automatically regulated, completely dependent on the machine, it was grossly unsafe to disconnect them. And if they did ill-advisedly shut these automated systems down, they had no crew to run things manually. They would die. Eejits couldn’t operate the life support or power systems. And the amazing luck they’d had in holding onto a human capable of understanding the transpersion reactor was cancelled out by the fact that he understood practically nothing else in the ship, if not universe.

  Sally looked down at the box.

  She’d assembled the game changer gradually, off the books, using recycled parts and her own hands, with no computer assistance or oversight, as much as was possible. She supposed there were still surveillance and monitoring strips around her office that allowed ‘Bruce’ to see and hear what she was doing. But short of setting off some sort of destructive feedback overload in the office’s electronics, there wasn’t much it could do about her activities even if it understood them.

  Synths were life-forms, accorded rights and dignities according to their station and sentience. Cynics tended to believe this had happened because if organic life-forms had tried to deny ‘the synth’ rights, it – or they – would have just taken them anyway. A human granting a synth equal rights was sort of like a human granting a Molran four arms. It was a nice gesture, but the least amount of thought would establish it was also completely meaningless.

  Synth rights didn’t, Sally reflected, disqualify them from being taken the Hell out of the picture if they misbehaved. They just had more power than the organic members of the Six Species. They were basically super-beings, all-seeing and omnipresent. And how did you deal with a super-being when it got it into its head that it wanted to have things you didn’t want it to have?

  Well, Sally had some ideas.

  Back in her student days, Sally had invented a device she called the Sally-Forth Engine, a combination interference mechanism and administrable test that would make a synth call you horrible, insulting names after no more than seventeen questions. It served no real purpose, since it did the same thing to an organic intelligence … the difference was, if you told a human the purpose of the Engine, the human would be able to restrain him-or herself and not call you an arsebiting bonsh-bar. A synthetic intelligence, due to the interference mechanism part of the Engine, would not.

  A highly-complicated stimulus-response computer, such as the one on board the Tramp when it was on standby, would have even less chance.

  Even so, it had little real-world application and could by no means be used to break a synthetic intelligence, since it – unlike a mere computer – could always shuck the conditions of the test and end the dialogue. It had, however, been enough to get her transferred out of the higher computer programming degree-streams and had left permanent marks on her record that followed her all the way to the Tramp and her low-paying munitions and debugging job. It had also required her to attend regular anger management and social adjustment courses, tactical and diplomatic simulations and counselling sessions with Janus Whye’s astonishingly annoying and sanctimonious predecessor, Doctor Ellisandre ‘Feathers’ Muldoon.

  God, it had been a relief when she died.

  This left Sally as the only crewmember with tactical simulation hours, combat training, diplomatic certification and basic programming abilities after The Accident, so she was given the enormous dead man’s boots of Commander Drago ‘Brutan’ Barducci to fill.

  She’d never really given up on the Sally-Forth Engine, seeing in it the seeds of a useful weapon.

  The best she could do with the enhanced Mark IV was isolate certain systems, and even that was only guaranteed effective against a computer. With an active synth on board she had no confidence those isolations couldn’t be hacked. There was theoretically a way to force a synth onto standby even when it was convoyed to a hub or another synth, isolating its components for repair – and let’s face it, no ship needed this quite like the Tramp did – but even more so than various forms of human sedation it tended to require synth cooperation, or at the very least that the synth not actively interfere. Sally was not convinced they could meet this prerequisite.

  But maybe the other isolation subroutines in her Mark IV, her precious and optimistically-named game changer, would be enough to keep Bruce from knowing exactly what they were doing.

  Some communication and surveillance layers were disabled under the electronic quarantine she was enforcing, and others were sealed on a closed circuit accessible by their personal devices. The relative drive and navigational repository were also locked out. They were flying blind, but at sub-light speeds that wasn’t going to be an issue because they would all die of old age long before running into something. This problem would be dealt with, or none of them were going anywhere.

  The main life-support feeds, air and water and docking blister airlocks, as well as the exchange plane that ran the Tramp’s artificial gravity, were still enabled but had been placed on a rotating pattern of auxiliary energy routes to make them more difficult for Bruce to take direct control of and shut down itself. This was the major risk, of course. If Bruce was really mad, and got really infuriated, it could always cut off all the auxiliaries and control would default to the main lines, a procedure which carried with it a very real risk of all the life-support shutting down entirely when it tried to switch and found nothing to switch to. Not a problem for Bruce, but a rather insurmountable problem for the breathers.

  She’d also taken the big guns, Pater and Fuck-ton, out of synthetic intelligence control. Hopefully. Not that, with navigation and relative drive offline, there was anything for them to shoot with the possible exception of space-floating Molran nutbags.

  Sally had even toyed with the idea of inserting fake chatter so the synth wouldn’t realise communications had been partially disconnected. This would work for a computer, but the problem with a synth was that it was sentient. Sally didn’t have the time or the skill to craft a fake set of communications good enough to seem real to even a moderately intelligent human, let alone a possibly-insane synthetic intelligence. In the end she had decided against it.

  “How do you like that?” she murmured, closing the box and bolting its lightweight but effective blast-armour into place. Bruce could send repair drones or any number of automated systems to trash the Mark IV, but it was location-masked and she fully intended to be carrying it with her for the duration. Let them try, she said to herself in satisfaction, sliding the box edge-first into a planetary survey satchel and slinging it over her solid shoulders. “Feeling a bit smothered? Does it amuse you or piss you off?”

  “Acknowledged. Awaiting instructions.”

  Bruce, it seemed, had no interest in talking to Sally, beyond the usual formulaic computer-responses that it had apparently left untouched when it came off standby. It didn’t chat philosophically with her the way it reportedly had with Waffa. It was hard to tell a functioning computer from a sulking or evasive synth. Especially if it didn’t want to be seen. For all Sally knew, Bruce’s robotic responses now were just some sort of elaborate synth joke.

  If Waffa said Bruce was awake, Sally believed him. She knew a synthetic intelligence didn’t need a reason to behave differently with one person than it did with another. And it wasn’t as if Bruce suddenly getting chatty would help her ascertain whether the game changer was successfully limiting its access to the ship systems. It hadn’t tried to kill her yet, but that could be a diversionary ploy just as easily as a sign that she hadn’t inconvenienced it in the slightest.

  “Waffa talks to you more politely, does he?” she muttered, tugging the ga
me changer’s straps tight and preparing to move. “Better class of porno stash, maybe? Well lah dee dah,” she shook her head. “Mad God damn synth. That’s a new one.”

  To be honest, she’d always been more worried about the eejits than the computer. Ables were rock-solid but the damage to the plant, and its subsequent configuration glitches, had rocked her. It was so hard not to think of the ables as people, and their reduction to eejits as mutilation and cruelty. Plus, you could never quite be certain what sort of dangers were hidden behind those identical slack-jawed façades.

  Synths, on the other hand, were so stable. Even after The Accident, the computer had seemed mostly undamaged. Or so they’d thought.

  Sally informed Clue of her steps so far, possibly-compromised communications be damned, and then headed to the elevator. Waffa had declared he was travelling on foot until they could be certain the lifts and walkways weren’t going to start chewing people up the way the airlocks were at risk of doing, but Sally was reasonably sure there was no threat from the intra-ship transportation system. Certainly not a sufficiently serious risk to compel her to climb stairs and ramps and gantries like some sort of chimp. Screw that noise.

  She descended to the exchange, clenched her teeth grimly and fixed her eyes on the control panel as the elevator dropped through the field, flipped over and reversed direction into the other hemisphere of the Tramp, and then ascended all the way to the dome. The elevator terminated next to the communications centre.

  The communications centre had taken quite a lot of damage in The Accident, particularly to the observatory equipment in the upper part where walls met dome. The main external signalling and contact machinery was okay, but they had lost a lot of their capacity to exchange callsigns and ID with other AstroCorps ships. This was okay, because they’d lost almost all of their officers anyway, and they were the ones with the classified communiqués and fancy regulations requiring clearance and credentials. Most of the physical damage had been repaired. Indeed, walking into the expansive chamber you couldn’t really tell there’d been a fire at all.

  The main difference between the dome level and the decks below was that the ceilings were higher and slightly sloping here. They could also be depolarised, the shielding lifted back, to reveal outside space if necessary as well. Since there generally wasn’t much to see, though, the shielding remained in place and the ceiling was therefore the same drab shade of beige as it was throughout the vessel.

  The Captain’s dome, at the Tramp’s other pole, was more impressive. The screens were usually withdrawn, and the whole plan was mostly-open and divided only between the Captain’s quarters and the broader area designated for observation and receiving guests. They hadn’t done that since the Dark Glory Ascendant, and the Captain hadn’t even come out of his chambers on that occasion. Captain Ixia of the Dark Glory Ascendant had gone to him – and Sally always grinned at how much that must have chapped her nipples – while Clue and the other officers had hobnobbed with the officious pricks who’d come on board with the snooty old cow.

  The Tramp had had a lot more officers back then, of course.

  The point was, in most parts of this deck you couldn’t really tell you were under a dome unless you looked up at the ceilings as you went from room to room, and assembled the whole thing in your head. It was all a bit disappointing. The big hexagonal chamber occupied a whole quadrant of the dome, its downright inconvenient and aesthetically-unpleasing shape arrived at according to mathematical principles so far beyond Sally’s understanding that they might as well have been imprinted on lead tablets unearthed from a primeval alien tomb. One face of the great beehive-cell-like chamber was flush against the dome itself, so the roof actually sloped down to the floor on that side. The overall effect was of standing inside a stupidly ostentatious piece of modern art. Musings on a Great Big Hexagonal Prism, or something.

  Sally perched herself on the main chair, took a moment to quietly but vigorously curse the seven-foot-five Blaran who had clearly last used it, and adjusted the arrangement so her feet could reach the floor and her hands the console simultaneously. Resting back on the Mark IV in its backpack, she opened a general hailing channel.

  “This is crewman Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed of the starship Astro Tramp 400, to the life-form or entity calling himself ‘the Artist’,” she said, broadcasting a blanket transmission with underlying alphanumeric Rosetta code that AstroCorps’ best scientists assured her would enable it to be understood by any alien species advanced enough to get into space in the first place. The Artist, whatever type of ship or assembly he was sitting in, would get the message. Unless his pet synth scrambled it, of course.

  She’d also made an executive decision to use the nickname of their ship, which was quickly becoming official, instead of the name on the manifest, which was quickly becoming an answer to a crewmember trivia night question. If Bruce didn’t like its body being callsigned off by a nickname, it could lodge a formal complaint and go screw itself while it did so.

  “We are a deep-space exploration and transportation vessel with peaceful intent. Our crew is severely depleted and our functional capacity is limited due to damage. We are led to understand you have infiltrated and activated our shipboard synth, so you will be aware of these facts and of your control over us and this situation. Through action or inaction, you and our shipboard synth have been responsible for the death of one crewmember, a valuable asset even if he was a printed fabricant. As I say, our resources are limited.

  “Naturally we wish to know your intentions and desire an open channel of communication and discussion, in order to minimise – or ideally eliminate – such events from occurring in the future,” she took a deep breath. “Normal procedure when encountering a presumably hostile agency is to establish its local coordinates through communication triangulation, and then give it a blast with the guns. I say this because you already have unprecedented control of our systems, so can not only prevent triangulation, but can also communicate through the synthetic intelligence without even offering a pingback location. We ask only that you do so, enabling a dialogue with no risk to yourself.

  “We understand that the death was due to your desire that we not leave the ship. We have no intention of doing so, and wish only to prevent further bloodshed.”

  She didn’t have long to wait.

  Right, she thought as the receiver chimed. Bruce won’t talk to me, but the Artist will. Lucky old me.

  “Sally-Forth-Fully-Armed,” the voice from the speaker said without preamble. “Militant Mygonite warrior woman extraordinaire. They put you on tactical? I can see the logic, although why they didn’t put an able in the position instead…”

  Sally frowned as the voice purred on. Did he not know about the eejits? Was he fishing to see how much she would reveal of what he already knew, so he could accuse her of lying later in the conversation? Classic leverage ploy. Or had his buddy Bruce not told him about their little printing problem?

  Maybe the synth can’t tell the eejits are eejits, Sally thought with a little chill. Mygon knows, we must all look about the same from Bruce’s level. You can’t tell if someone’s eyes aren’t quite lining up if all you can see is the top of their head.

  The voice. Undeniably a Molran’s voice, she concluded. Soft and given a light two-tone chord from the semi-discrete windpipes, and capable of instantly putting her on edge even more than she already had been. Even Decay, himself a Blaran, couldn’t avoid this quirk of Molranoid physiology.

  “If you are an exploration and transport vessel,” the voice asked suddenly, “why do you have guns?”

  “Because the universe is a murderous airless bitch,” Sally replied, “and everything in it behaves accordingly. Better to have guns and not need them, than to not have them and die with your eyes boiling out of their sockets.”

  “Hardly an enlightened viewpoint,” the Artist noted reprovingly.

  “Enlightenment and deadliness are not mutually exclusive,” Sally said. “Snakes and
scorpions and spiders make that pretty clear – for their own specialised definitions of enlightenment.”

  “Ah,” the Artist said, his tone becoming warm and appreciative. Great, she thought, an armchair-philosopher-brand psycho. “But these animals fight with other weapons, never using their venom on their own.”

  “I don’t use guns on people either,” Sally replied, “but you’d better believe I won’t die, as long as I can sting and die.”

  “Very human.”

  “Not much alternative,” Sally said. “Now let me ask you a question. If you’re an artist, why did you mince a man and spray his mangled extremities into space?” she leaned forward in her chair. “Maybe you’re an artist the way a man who takes a dump on a canvas, and then uses a homeless person’s face to smear it around, and then says it’s a ‘statement’, is an artist.”

  “You–”

  Sally grinned savagely. “Maybe you’re an artist the way the Rip is a surgeon.”

  There was a long pause from the speakers, then the Artist spoke again. “You are trying to keep me talking.”

  “Long as I can.”

  “Even though you know triangulation is futile.”

  “The more words you say, the better the odds of one of them telling me something about you.”

  The Artist chuckled. “It is a different kind of triangulation, perhaps.”

  “I suppose.”

  There was a soft click, and a brief hiss from the communications array before the channel went quiet. The connection was severed. The Artist was gone.

  Frowning, Sally sat for a few moments and stared at the wall-mounted consoles and screens. Then she pressed an interface pad and confirmed that she had the entire conversation on record. Nice, ostensibly-safe, personal-drive record.

  Then she stood, walked out of the communications centre, returned to the elevator, and descended towards the medical bay.

  Z-LIN

  People thought commanding a starship was all glamour and excitement, battles and first contact events with disturbingly sexy aliens with flawless turquoise abs. The truth was, the good days – the really good days – were boring. Battles were horrible and terrifying. People voided their bowels when they were frightened or excited or confronted with the prospect of explosive decompression. And afterwards, you had to fly to a safe area and make repairs before you could go off-duty.