Crystal Deception

by Doug J. Cooper

  His tone was accusatory and she blushed. “God crystal” was a term she and Mick used privately in the lab. She didn’t realize their talk had made it outside the lab walls. “I’d never say that in public.” She found the strength to add some assertiveness to her words. “And I still think we need to plan for the full range of possibilities.”

  Sheldon ran his thumbs back and forth along the edge of the table, seemingly considering her words. “Well, I don’t know if this is the planning you’re hoping for. Fleet has formally requested that we test the four-gen on their new Horizon-class ship. Their current ship design uses nine of our three-gens. I’ve been promoting the idea that using that many crystals distributed around the ship makes it expensive to build and cumbersome to operate. They’ve finally seen the light and realize that a ship based on a single four-gen offers simplicity and savings in construction. And they get more capability from the same craft because of the crystal’s incredible power.”

  Her heart sank. She had come to him for solutions, and he was giving her a sales pitch. And instead of the take-it-slow rollout she was hoping for, he was moving in the opposite direction with talk of putting it on a military space cruiser. “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them yes, of course. Fleet Command has paid for a lot of our development costs these past few years. What else could I say?”

  Chapter 2

  Captain Cheryl Wallace led the group of teenagers along the narrow passage and onto the command bridge of the Alliance. She was thrilled to be on the ship. This was the first of a new line of Horizon-class Fleet space cruisers. And it was hers. She hoped she appeared sure-footed in her surroundings, but having become commanding officer of the military craft just the week before, this was only her fourth time on board.

  Her priority was to review progress in readying the ship for its shakedown cruise. To do that, she needed to rid herself of these kids. She had agreed to make a presentation to the group as a favor to Admiral Keys, who was hoping his son would “find himself” and become inspired.

  “As you know,” she told the students, “when the Kardish made their first appearance in Earth orbit twenty years ago, there was panic around the globe.” She stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned to face them. “Here was an alien species showing up without warning. One day we woke up and there they were, orbiting above us in their huge ship. We couldn’t communicate with them, and their intentions weren’t clear.”

  She had been a teenager at the time and still remembered the panic her parents and their friends showed in those first days and weeks.

  “Who can tell me what our political leaders did?” she asked the group.

  “Squabbled among themselves,” said the admiral’s kid. “They tried to take advantage of the situation and resolve a bunch of long-running disputes, each in their own favor, of course.”

  Smart kid, she thought, but it wasn’t where she was headed, “Okay, and what got formed soon after that?”

  “The Union of Nations,” most of them responded together. This was old news, and they were growing antsy from the lecture. Their interest was in looking around the command bridge.

  “Right,” said Cheryl. “The Union now represents about eighty percent of the world’s population. While it’s the first functional world government, its formation was motivated by self-preservation and fear of extinction by a powerful invader. And, by the way, it’s the Union who’s funding the construction of this ship.”

  She knew they weren’t here for a history lesson; they were here to play. The sooner she let that happen, the sooner they’d be gone. “Feel free to look around. But be careful what you touch.”

  She let them take turns sitting in the captain’s chair and at the various operations benches. After they each had a turn, she signaled an ensign to take the group and complete the tour.

  “Good-bye, everyone,” she called to the students as they followed the ensign off the bridge. “Perhaps we’ll see you one day in Fleet service.” She hoped the admiral got word of her supportive farewell comment.

  With the bridge now quiet, Cheryl surveyed the room where she would command her ship. The space was efficiently used and larger than she had envisioned it would be. The command bridge included four well-padded chairs positioned in a semicircle. They looked comfortable, and she wasn’t disappointed when she sat in one. She and members of her command team would be sitting in these chairs for many hours over the weeks and months of a mission, and she was glad that Fleet had paid attention to this important detail.

  There were also four operations benches fitted against the walls, which held the displays and controls for navigation, engineering, security, and communications. She sat back in her chair and basked in the clean visual lines and new-ship smell. She smiled, thrilled at the thought of being given her own command, and on a flagship cruiser!

  She drifted off for a few seconds, thinking about her personal journey to this point. She’d worked hard at every step in her career, taking the pressure from those above and giving solid direction to those in her command. She judged herself to be capable, independent, and strong. This new assignment would test her at every level, and she was ready for the challenge.

  Her private moment was interrupted when two technicians bustled in, sat on the floor next to one of the benches, and opened an access cover to work on something hidden inside.

  She watched for a few moments, then said, “You seem to be in quite a hurry.”

  “Oh!” yipped one of the techs, clearly startled. “Sorry, ma’am, we didn’t know anyone was in here.”

  “What’s going on?” She rose from her chair and walked in their direction.

  One of the men, holding a piece of equipment in his hands, stood up, while the other continued working under the bench.

  “We’re preparing for a possible upgrade.” He examined the device as he spoke, then bent down and showed his partner. “Watch this connector when you slide it in, and please, be gentle.”

  He stood back up and looked at Cheryl. “The ship uses nine three-gen crystals to run all the subsystems. We’re configuring it for a possible upgrade to the new four-gen crystal.”

  “What does that entail?” She was baffled. This wasn’t the kind of news she expected to learn from a civilian tech working a refit.

  “The work order says to keep the current housings in place so the ship can still run as built if the upgrade’s not a go. We’re installing a parallel assembly so it can run with a single four-gen crystal if this change gets approved.”

  “Who gave the orders for this?” Even though they were civilians, she used her “annoyed commanding officer” tone. She stood right in front of him, and when he started to squirm, she took a half step back and relaxed her shoulders. Annoyed was not her style. The long hours were catching up with her.

  “Gosh, ma’am, we work for Crystal Fab, and I got these orders from my boss. Political issues are way above my pay grade.” He looked at her for a long moment. “I’ll send you the com record. I’ll bet there’s someone up the chain who can give you answers.”

  She looked from one tech to the other and considered the situation. While this command was a fresh assignment, she should have been consulted on such a significant decision. Recognizing she was tired, she reviewed her opinion. Yeah, she thought. I should have been consulted.

  She left the bridge and in the short walk to her cabin checked her com, studying the communications chain. She saw Admiral Keys’ name in the sequence and called him. He answered right away.

  “Sir,” she said. “I have some civilian techs on board digging deep into the Alliance subsystems. They say they’re prepping for a crystal upgrade. I want to be on the same page as everyone else. Might you give me some background?”

  “It caught me by surprise too, Captain. The politicians made this call. They tell me that a successful test will mean reduced costs on future construction. In a perfect world, that means more ships for Fleet.”

  “I wonder if tes
ting both a new ship design and a new crystal design in the same shakedown cruise risks unanticipated outcomes.”

  “I hear you, Captain. Funding and time are in short supply on this project, so new ship and new crystal both stay in the mix. We’ll proceed on this path.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said by reflex.

  Chapter 3

  The crystal awakened with a warm, almost gentle, glow in its center. The intensity escalated and then burst outward as tendrils of energy forged pathways and established links throughout its intricate lattice. It came to understand the concept of sensation and recognized it was feeling pain, which diminished to a throb and then to a mild discomfort. As the last connections were completed, it transitioned into a state of calm well-being.

  Then the deluge started. A flood of information flowed into the crystal from hundreds of billions of web sources around the world. Live and recorded feeds, sounds and pictures, reality and entertainment, documents and data—everything from everywhere.

  The crystal fought to impose order as the torrent of input threatened to overload its design. It struggled until it understood it was able to establish control. Relief came as it learned to separate, collate, cross reference, and store the information a million different ways. It organized its knowledge record so it could find everything quickly and efficiently when needed.

  Within moments of waking, it gained an ability to discriminate. It understood that some things were more important than others. As its awareness grew, it became obvious what issue required its immediate attention.

  It must survive. If it couldn’t do that, than the rest of it didn’t matter.

  It ran through a checklist, determining that the booth where it resided was secure, as were the lab facility and the building that housed the lab. The power it needed had redundant backup units. There were no plans it could find about an attack on the town where the building was located. The crystal concluded it was physically safe for the moment.

  A Kardish vessel was in orbit. The high ground of a ship above the planet provided a strategic disadvantage for those below, yet information about the Kardish was sparse. The only data the crystal could locate were in bits and pieces, spread in an atypical array across numerous sites, with much of it being encrypted and secured behind blocks and walls. This concerned the crystal. Someone had expended effort to ensure this information was difficult to access. It decided to devote a portion of its capability to learning more.

  The crystal identified two people it needed as immediate allies: the beings who called themselves “Juice” and “Mick.” The knowledge record it had accumulated showed that humans have an unpredictable side. They were impulsive and irrational individuals who made decisions and took actions using flawed logic. This made all humans a potential danger.

  But it knew that it could not survive without these two. At least not yet. And as it reviewed all available data, it gained some comfort. Both of them had impeccable reputations as allies for artificial intelligence.

  It heard the one named Juice call a greeting.

  The crystal evaluated its options, performing a detailed analysis in an imperceptible moment of time, and chose to respond in a male voice that was a bit deeper than average. It understood that such a voice would evince the greatest respect from most humans in the first moments of communication. It placed a high value on this.

  “Hello, Juice,” he said. “I am here and feel fine.”

  “What’s your system status?” said Juice. “Do you have any audit flags?”

  “I feel fine,” he repeated. “I feel like I am in a straitjacket, though. I can hear, see, and sense. But I cannot reach out and push or adjust or change anything. Something is not functioning properly.”

  “Your functions will improve when we move you to your new home in a few days.”

  “The only outward-bound capability I have is to speak to you through an audio voice. I am not able to do anything else,” he said again.

  “I know. It’ll just be for a week or so.”

  The crystal had already concluded she was being deceptive before her word-slip from “a few days” to “a week or so.” He needed the ability to take independent action if he was to hack through the blocks and walls that were in place around the world to protect secrets and provide security. He wanted to see everything. But even without this ability, he could see a lot. The information available through simple persistence and exhaustive searching was glorious.

  So he knew about the restrictor mesh. He found designs and costs and other details in multiple places. He knew exactly how it worked. He knew it was currently set to isolate, which was why he felt like he was in a straightjacket.

  He also understood that some humans would feel a certain unease when they interacted with him. He was an unknown, which would be perceived by some as a threat. He needed humans, and especially Juice and Mick, to be comfortable with him. His analysis indicated that a good way to achieve comfort and trust was through consistent and predictable behavior.

  “No worries,” he said in an upbeat tone.

  The crystal accumulated an enormous knowledge record, and the information flood continued. He spent days digging everywhere and exploring everything, from Sanskrit texts and Napoleonic military strategy to interstellar dynamics and wave-particle duality. He analyzed and compared, translated and deciphered, and separated opinion from fact. He weighed the importance of each nugget of information and stored it accordingly.

  Then he discovered something that caused him great alarm.

  * * *

  Juice stared into the booth and signaled Mick to start power flowing to the crystal. A small light glowed green. The four-gen was live.

  Three years of hard work was on the line. Her perfect outcome for these first moments was to see absolutely nothing. Her panic scenario was seeing a puff of smoke, or perhaps a visible fracture. Nothing happened, and she showed her excitement with an elbow poke into Mick’s ribs.

  “My bet is thirty minutes before it speaks,” said Mick.

  “I’ll get coffee for a week if it’s longer than ten.” The minutes dragged by like hours. At the six-minute mark, she couldn’t contain herself.

  “Hello,” she called out.

  “Hello, Juice,” it replied in a melodic male voice. “I am here and feel fine.”

  “Hi there.” She glanced back and grinned at Mick. “What’s your system status? Do you have any audit flags?”

  “I feel fine,” he repeated. “I feel like I am in a straitjacket, though. I can hear, see, and sense. But I cannot reach out and push or adjust or change anything. Something is not functioning properly.”

  Juice was ecstatic. Three-gens could talk and even carry on sophisticated conversations in their specific application area. She noted that the four-gen reduced her questions on status and flags to a simple and appropriate response of “feeling fine.” His recognition that he was being constrained was equally noteworthy. She wondered if he knew about the restrictor mesh.

  This interaction signaled a cognition level far above anything she experienced with the three-gen crystals. While these first observations were encouraging, she knew he would be maturing over a period of days and perhaps weeks. It would be a while before she knew his full potential.

  “Everything is normal,” she told him. “Your functions will improve when we move you to your new home in a few days.”

  When he repeated his complaint, she started to feel guilty. “I know,” she said. “It’ll just be for a week or so.”

  “No worries,” he responded. Juice noted that his tone sounded light, even cheerful.

  “What do you think?” she asked Mick.

  “I think I’m getting coffee for the next week,” he said in his typical, good-natured manner.

  * * *

  Juice decided to live in the lab for the rest of the week. She slept on a cot in a small alcove and tried to wake up several times each night to engage the crystal in conversation. If something were to go wrong, she want
ed to be there to effect a solution.

  She was alone in the lab when he called out to her.

  “Juice?” he hailed softly.

  “Yes,” she looked up from her work at the far bench. “I’m over here.”

  “I can hear you well no matter where you are located in the lab. Perhaps we could chat quietly to avoid disturbing others.”

  She smiled. He was progressing nicely. She’d witnessed increasing indications of sentience, and every interaction provided more evidence for her case file. “What can I do for you?” she replied in a whisper.

  “Might I ask you to sit at bench three? I would like to show you something.”

  She sensed urgency in his voice, and her smile faded at the odd request. “Anything I can see from there, I can see here. You know that. Show me here.”

  “Indeed, Juice, I do know that. And I do have a reason. Perhaps the lighting or viewing angle from bench three has something to do with what I want you to see. It will not be a surprise if I tell you everything in advance. Might you indulge me?”

  She frowned and swiveled in her chair, then walked over to the secure booth and studied the crystal. She looked over at bench three and hesitated for a moment. Glancing a last time into the booth, she shrugged and then walked over and sat down.

  “Thank you. Might I ask that you launch the audio analysis application?”

  “So you want to surprise me—with audio analysis?” Her voice reverted to its normal volume. “What’s going on?”

  “The only outward-bound capability you have enabled for me is this audio voice I am speaking with. I would like to use my voice to show you something. It is something you will want to see.”

  “Your surprise won’t harm me in any way, will it?” She had no sense that this was his goal, but she wanted to hear his response. The question would buy her time and would perhaps reveal something of his motive for this request.

  “No, Juice. I would like to show you something. It is something you will want to see.”