As the images sped by on the screen and then on the 3d holograms hovering over the tablet, Kale began to notice frustration creeping in. At one point Gheno set the pad down, hissed through his teeth, then picked it back up again and kept flipping through the images. Kale reached out and grabbed the wire Gheno took a picture of. It had what appeared to be a five prong connection with a middle prong larger than the others, and two metal clamps on either side.
“This the one?” he asked. He could not remember which wire he cut or pulled when he wanted to leave the destroyed ship in a hurry.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” he said, clearly frustrated.
“Is there any way we can test the cables? Trial and error?”
“We could, but how do we know that wouldn’t fry anything on the inside,” Gheno pointed out.
As always, he was further ahead with thinking things through than Kale was.
“So how do we find the right plug? Or how do we plug in?” Kale asked. He was simply trying to offer a different perspective. He knew he really had very little to offer to the situation.
Gheno set the tablet down. “You're right. This is a waste of time. I think I just panicked.”
“That’s not...,” Kale started, then thought about what was said. “Ok.”
Kale stood up and motioned Gheno to follow him. Kale glanced back at the girl who was graciously devouring everything that Ayia was providing for her. For the first time since he rescued her, he noticed a relaxed smile on Ayia’s face. The lines on her face calmed, even more than when he delivered her to her father. This was something else.
Gheno followed Kale into the pilot’s cabin where the captain motioned him to sit down.
“Ok, tell me what you think,” Kale asked the boy as he sat down.
Gheno looked at Kale then looked around.
“What do I think about what?”
“Everything, let me hear what you're thinking.”
Gheno took a deep breath. “I know what I saw. It was code, software, designed like an AI. What I see in there is a girl. Oh, and look, were at just over two thousand stars scanned and nothing yet.” He slumped in his chair.
Kale sat in the pilots chair and swung the chair around to face Gheno. “Tell me what you know about AI’s in flesh.”
Gheno explained what he learned in school and from the research he was doing. Most biological AI’s needed a human brain. Although test was done on other animals, the most successful results came from human brains. For nearly a century, some results were achieved by using donated brains, but that process involved a microscopic breakdown of one specific brain, and then developing a specific code that could make use of the existing pathways in the brain. It was incredibly time consuming. It usually took five to seven years to write the code for one brain and then any little mistake could throw the whole program off for years to come. The results, while groundbreaking, simply couldn’t compare to a completely non biological AI.
Nearly three hundred years ago, when organ replacement via vestigial cloning started becoming mainstream, growing a human brain from scratch became a possibility. A grown brain served no function whatsoever to someone who might need a brain because each brain was too unique and essentially suited to its bearer to be simply grown. Each brain was a set of patterns and waves grown from the experiences of each individual over the years, while a grown brain had none of these. Researchers quickly jumped over this clean slate brain option, and began writing the AI code before the brain, and then in a process of a year or two, began to feed this newborn brain the software code and let the brain develop according to the software. The results were stunning: super computers run by biology. The downside was that the software was too limited, and this resulted in brains that became hard coded to code that was too simple for a complex host. With the expansion of crystal memory and then gravity stored memory, non-biological AIs quickly outpaces their biological counterparts and there was no more money to be had in the flesh AI.
Gheno explained that the only way to overcome the biological barrier would be to create software code that was flexible, almost biological in its nature, but that required a study of the human body that even this this modern age had not been achieved. It required an understanding of human consciousness that could be translated into zeroes and ones, something that had yet to be done in any successful fashion.
“Has the Dominion come across any of these advances?” Kale asked.
“A few, here and there, but their thing is all the genetics. I mean, it would seem they have the edge when it comes to building up brains, but in their case, they just wanted bigger CPUs for their own heads, not for computers. They wanted to BE the AI, not create one.”
“Ok, but we have something here. We really need to get back to Oganno. I'm sure he knows the right people to find out what she is. In the meantime, you're sure you saw an AI?”
Gheno nodded his head. “Like I said, the code was different, old almost, but it was code, and it was reacting to you.”
Kale was still a bit spooked over his interaction with whatever it was he had spoken with on the bridge of the Magyo.
“Here is something else we need to consider. You know what the Magyo was doing out here?”
Gheno cocked his head to the side. “No?”
“Did you ask me no? Ok, well, they were out here exploring for the Dominion. Their mission was to claim everything and anything for the Dominion.”
Gheno kept his head at that angle, but also raised his eyebrow.
“Well, what if they found something? What’s the greatest find for mankind while exploring?”
Gheno’s eyes widened. “Life!”
“More importantly, life that’s not us. AND…More importantly beyond that, intelligent life.”
Gheno and Kale both instinctively turned to look back down the short corridor from the cabin’s pilot to ‘Hall’. They could hear the voices of Ayia and the girl talking. Gheno looked back at Kale.
“Alien?”
“All options on the table my young man,” Kale started, standing up, “Doesn’t look it, but…”
Kale didn’t finish the statement because he heard Ayia calling him from down the corridor. Kale motioned with his head for the boy to follow him. When they entered the ‘Hall’, the young girl was holding the tablet up in her hand, pointing at Gheno with it. Ayia was standing behind her with a startled look. Gheno walked up to her and took the tablet. Hovering over it was a 3d hologram of a plug that looked exactly like the one he had scanned last. In stunned silence, he looked at her.
“How did you find that?”
“It’s the one you need?”
Gheno nodded.
“She just got up, took the tablet, and started scanning,” Ayia began, pulling closer to Kale, “Then it started going really fast, the pictures, I couldn’t keep up.” Ayia was almost whispering.
“Well?” he asked Gheno.
“It’s a perfect match. Everything lines up, and it’s got all the wiring info I need. I think I can make something to power it up.” Gheno kept looking at Kale, a disturbed look on his face.
“What else?”
“Well, the plug, this design, its ancient. This specific design is from a power and data transmission cable and it’s dated to old drones and robotic assemblies from around 2235. This plug was a common in assembly robotics of the time.” Gheno breezed through the data on the screen of his tablet.
“Can you make it work?”
“Yeah, give me ten minutes.”
Kale turned to look at the girl, expecting to see something, a look, something alien. Instead, he saw a girl who looked like she had genuinely helped someone; a simple smile. Kale wasn’t sure if he was more perturbed by how normal she looked or by the fact that he was surprised that it was normal.
“Get it working. I really want to get out of here.”
For three days, the only real activity was watching the star count slowly rise. It was an activity without excitement though, and
one that was beginning to create dread since no star was identified that could be used to make a jump back to the known part of the galaxy. By that third day they had still not reached half of the stars scanned, so there was still hope, but the waiting created boredom, and the boredom elevated the dread.
The girl still had no name for herself and they had all found themselves trying to think up names for her, but none ever seemed to fit. To her credit, the young girl was adapting quickly to, as Kale pointed out, what was a real human life. The first night, at least by the ship’s clock, the girl had woken up screaming. When everyone came rushing to her, she was not crying or scared. She was completely overjoyed with what she had just experienced. She explained the vivid images she had seen: random scenes and sounds. It was an experience unlike any she had ever had or could remember. Kale smiled as he saw the girl had just had, as it would have appeared to be, a dream for the first time ever.
Her language improved. She clearly had a wide range of vocabulary, but within a day the way she spoke became more fluid, more normal. Her mechanical sense in words vanished and was replaced with normal grammar and better usage of words. She learned very quickly in all aspects. She observed everyone on the ship. To Ayia she was a child, a toddler almost. Kale though, was continuously suspicious of her and related his thoughts to Gheno every time he could. Gheno on the other hand, had very few comments about her as his time was focused on the cylinder.
The girl was entirely correct on the cable schematic she found and Gheno wasted no time hooking up the pod to the ships computer and power. The boy was just as quickly disappointed when he was unable to find any hint of the AI. He was able to power the pod but the data connection was dead. There was nothing there. As he and Kale discussed this, they came to the consensus that either the girl was the AI or that she had manipulated them. Whatever she was eluded them.
Kale had no real tests he could use on board the ship to test her humanity if even such things existed. There were many hints to it as time passed in those three days. She was entirely surprised, much to Kale’s disgust, when she urinated herself. Gheno laughed, but Ayia explained to her how her body would, or was supposed to work. The accident never happened again. She was eating, sleeping, laughing and talking. She breathed air and when she attempted dancing to what appeared to be first music she ever heard, she began to sweat. Everything about her pointed out the humanity in her, except for the eyes.
Kale finally grew the courage to ask to take a picture of her eyes, and tried to compare them to any other eye type in the ships database. He found nothing, no other people or even animal found anywhere compared to them. He found himself the first two nights, sitting in his pilot’s seat, staring at the pair of electric blue eyes, a twinge of silver, or black, intertwined in the iris. Kale had never liked the unknown, especially aboard his ship. Now, more than ever, he was really hoping for the other computer screen to stop counting and find one of the stars her could use.
Ayia took to the big sister role immediately. She was able to find clothes that, while they didn’t fit her perfectly, worked just fine. She talked for hours with the girl, mostly answering her questions she had. And the girl certainly had questions. Kale initially was further suspect, but the questions seemed entirely innocent. She asked about animals and plants and watched in awe as Ayia showed her pictures and virtuavids on the screens. She would ask about how one animal acted, its environment, its habitat and how it interacted with other animals. She began reading almost as soon as she could see the words and figured out the thirty seven letter alphabet. She began devouring digital books at an incredible rate, reading one in a few minutes and then asking Ayia all about it. Ayia answered as best as she could, but quickly found herself being outpaced by the girl.
But the girl’s biggest discovery was music. Kale admitted to himself that he had softened up to her considerably after that night. He was sitting in the pilot’s chair again when he heard music coming from the ‘Hall’. He got up to go see what it was and saw them dancing. Gheno was sitting on one of the chairs, clapping to the music, which was some kind of folk music from Aplacka. Ayia was holding hands with the girl and they were dancing and just moving to the lively fiddles and strings. They were both laughing as they spun and jumped. Kale leaned against the wall as he watched. He had seen a similar reaction once, in a deaf child that was deaf from birth. He had received replacement ear drums, biological replacements, and was hearing music for the first time. It was sheer ecstasy. As the song came to an end, Kale looked at her face, and saw tears streaming down her face.
Like most people, Kale loved music. His love of music was intimate, personal. It moved him and inspired him. Anything spiritual he felt in his life could be found in music. As he watched the girl’s reaction to the music, the joy and love, the way the music moved her, he couldn’t help but think that there was no more proof of humanity than this. It bothered him greatly because he just couldn’t shake the notion that something was very wrong with what they had found.
He never gave up on his suspicions. Within ten minutes of her waking up from the pod, Kale set a program on the ship to continuously scan the girl and keep track of her movements at all time. He programmed an arm band to notify him, whether awake or asleep, to her actions. As those days progressed, he became continually conflicted. On the second night, he watched in amazement but also hidden suspicion as Ayia taught the girl some simple math and then watched that grow into an incredible display of mathematics. She began calculating difficult formulas. Gheno quickly jumped in and even he could not keep up. Ayia pulled down one of the larger interactive screens and allowed the girl to continued writing. Gheno attempted to describe what he was seeing but eventually gave up.
“I'm not even sure what she’s doing at this point,” he stated in defeat.
After that display that night, her only reaction was to tell everyone she was ready to go to sleep. She informed them the next day she dreamed of numbers.
Kale sat in the pilot’s seat on the third night. On a screen above him, just on the upper left, a running tally continued for the stars. The computer had scanned nearly eight thousand stars, and no match was found. He had fallen asleep on the chair for a few hours when he shifted and woke up suddenly to the girl standing over the screen, moving her hand over the data on the scanned stars. He stood up quickly.
“What are you doing?” he nearly shouted. He looked down at his armband in disgust, wondering how he had programmed it wrong. The lights in the cabin, which was dimmed, came on immediately.
“You're trying to find a star. I know stars.” She continued looking at the data.
“You need to stop that right now,” Kale began looking around for one of the few hand weapons he had, a small fire arm he knew he had in the cabin. In the panic, his memories misfired and he couldn’t recollect where it was.
“You can’t look for it one by one, you could miss it that way as well,” she continued looking at the screen, dragging two of the screens superimposed on each other. She began typing quickly into the screen.
Kale was focused on trying to remember where the firearm was that he didn’t notice her typing. His ears heard the sound of the typing but it took a few seconds to register what it actually was. He spun around quickly and dashed to the screen in time to see her hit the command button and whatever she had typed be inputted into the computer.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” he shouted.
She jumped back, alarmed. Kale was about to grab her by the arms when the entire window screen lit up. Kale stopped in his tracks. It was 3d image of the scanned stars, mapped out in a sphere around the ship. The stars continued to fill into the screen and lines began to connect each star to the ship in the center of the sphere. A new set of data began filling the screen. Kale vaguely recognized it as gravity data, typical of a jump drive. The data began translating into a swirling line that began at the ship and spun out towards the edge of the sphere.
“What is this?” he asked.
The gi
rl cowered into the corner next to the pilot’s seat and wasn’t moving. Kale looked at her and then back at the screen as it continued to fill out.
“What is this? What did you do?” he said pointing at it.
“It’s the way you came in. If you just follow it out, you can look closer at the stars in that area.”
Kale looked closely at the image.
“How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she replied sheepishly.
“You're telling me you snuck in on me while I was sleeping, and figured out a way for us to find the star we’re looking for?” He didn’t mean to sound threatening. He was genuinely curious, but was equally furious.
“I came in here, and you were sleeping. I saw the numbers and I wanted to see what it was about. I saw what it was doing, and it just made sense to show the stars this way.”
“It made sense? You just wrote a complex program into my ships computer. Just two days ago you were pissing yourself. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.”
Gheno came stumbling in.
“Did I hear something,” he started when he saw the 3d image, “Kale? You have a stellarium program? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t. She just created it,” Kale said, indicating at the girl, now more afraid of the two men in the room. She showed a small smile as Ayia walked in after Gheno. She ran out and into her arms. Ayia looked accusingly towards Kale.
“Don’t start. The girl just did something to my computer,” he said, showing the 3d image, still filling out with stars. “Gheno, she says that trail thing coming from the middle, which is us I guess, is our jump trail. Does that make sense?”
“With the right data, sure. Hey, we can use that to scan stars in a much smaller section of our sky,” Gheno said excitedly.
“That’s what she said,” Kale replied.
Gheno began recalculating the area of the sky to scan while Kale just stared the image of the sphere and the stars imprinted against the outer sphere. The girl had just written a very complex software program. This kind of program might take a year or more for a group of developers to write, and the girl had done it in the time she had snuck into the cabin and Kale had woken up. There was nothing human in that.
The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1) Page 19