The A.I. War, Book One: The Big Boost (Tales of the Continuing Time)

by Moran, Daniel Keys

  “Oh, yes.” She squeezed his hand once, lightly, and let it go. “I’m going home. Good night, Gene.”

  “Want company?”

  She kicked off toward the door, caught herself at the doorway with one hand, and hung there with her back to him. “Sure,” she said finally, very quietly. “You can come home with me for a drink.”

  THEY SAT ON cushions on the floor in her living room, with the lights and gravity down low, sat close enough to kiss, and drank together.

  Melissa had served Trent a dry white wine, which Trent didn’t care for, but at least it was a good white. Melissa admitted that she hadn’t purchased it herself; she thought it had belonged to the house’s previous resident, Neil Corona.

  Trent had met Corona – had he given it a moment’s thought, he’d have guessed the man for better taste in alcohol. He finished his wine and was pleased, when he checked Corona’s alcohol cabinet, to find a nearly full bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, along with a few bottles of mixers. Clearly none of it had been touched since the TriCentennial Rebellion – a thin layer of dust covered all the bottles. Trent made two drinks – two shots of Bombay Sapphire with a shot of dry vermouth and a touch of lime juice, and put them into the SloMo to suck the heat out of them.

  “Try this,” he suggested.

  Melissa took a sip. Her eyes widened, and she took another. “Oh. That’s … very good.”

  Trent nodded. It was. They sat and sipped at their martinis.

  “Your hand was softer than I was expecting,” Trent said. “When I held it.”

  “I suppose you can thank Trent for that.”

  She refers to me a lot, Trent thought. “I don’t understand.”

  “I became an Elite in 2074. That was Trent’s fault. I was an Elite candidate in 2069; I should have been an Elite before the end of the year. Instead … Trent happened. And happened and happened. And it was 2074 before I finally went through the program.” She held her hand out to him. “You like my skin?”

  Trent held her hand again, for the second time. He stroked the skin of her forearm. “It’s brilliant. It’s not like…” Trent fell silent. “Brilliant,” he said again.

  In the dimness he could barely see her smile. “I know. We didn’t get this skin until 2072. Because of Trent I have a sex life.” She laughed a little. “Well, the potential for one. Because of Trent I can bear children – the skin around my stomach will swell and expand as the baby grows; the old skin didn’t do that. Female Elite created prior to ’72 had to have abortions if they got pregnant. I was prepared for the lack of a sex life. I was prepared to never have children. But,” she said softly, “I am very glad that I didn’t have to give those things up.”

  “I’m glad too.”

  It surprised Trent at least as much as it surprised Melissa when he found himself kissing her. Her lips were soft, the skin of her cheeks and neck –

  She pulled back. “No more,” she said, slightly breathless. “You can sit with me and we will finish our drinks, and then you have to go home.”

  “Of course,” said Trent, “I will leave when you ask me to. Finish your drink and don’t ask me to, just yet.”

  THEY HAD A second drink together, and a third. Melissa never finished her third. She lay in Trent’s arms, fully dressed. She’d refused to let him kiss her again, and after a while stopped answering when Trent spoke to her. He took the drink out of her hand, and put both hers and his on a low table beside them. The room was warm enough, and twenty percent gee was better than any bed. He laid down beside her, kissed her on the cheek, and went to sleep with Melissa du Bois in his arms.

  20

  “HU JINPING TOOK his brother’s rifle.” Melissa said. “His brother was a member of a threecell. Jinping took his brother’s rifle to go kill his girlfriend – he didn’t even know what it was.”

  “The cell members?”

  “We wrung them dry and executed them this morning. None of them had a downline in place yet, and their cell upline was in Hong Kong – I forwarded my report to the Hong Kong office. Unrelated to the Unity, so far as we can tell.”

  Mohammed Vance studied her. She was in her office aboard the Unity, and Vance’s holo, sitting across the desk from her, was life-sized and would have looked almost real to ordinary eyes, aside from a faint shininess – under bright lights even that would have disappeared. Of course, Melissa’s Elite eyes could see the grain in the image. Sometimes Melissa thought she could see encryption artifacts, as well.

  They spoke in French, with the comfort of two people who knew one another well.

  “What of M. Yovia?”

  “I think we can stop worrying about him.”

  “So?”

  She shrugged. “He is against the coming war, but he has done his duty admirably.”

  “One can say the same about you,” Vance observed. “I don’t doubt you identify with M. Yovia.”

  Melissa nodded. There were no secrets with Vance – the man was patient and irresistible, and she would not have lied to him if she’d been able. “Results are results. We’ve been on the lookout for sabotage; there’s been none. We’ve been on the lookout for slowdowns, for work done inadequately. There’s been none. Quite the contrary, Yovia’s work has been exceptional.”

  “Surprisingly so,” Vance suggested.

  Melissa smiled. “Everyone agrees that his work is better than it was – but not so much better that it is outside the bounds of his capabilities, were he properly focused. His former wife is no longer here to distract him; it’s agreed by all that she kept him off task when they worked here together.”

  “And now he has a relationship that keeps him on task.”

  Melissa was mostly incapable of blushing, since becoming an Elite; she’d have been surprised to learn that the tips of her ears still turned red when she was embarrassed. “We have held hands. We kissed once. He spent the night sleeping on the floor of my living room. Low gee; more comfortable than it sounds.”

  “Certainly.” Vance looked away from her, obviously uncomfortable himself with any more discussion along those lines. “The work with the fusion motors,” he said after a bit.

  “More Monitor than Yovia, so I’m told. Monitor identified a variety of possible causes for the problem with the fusion reaction. One of its suggestions identified hydrogen loss in the fuel lines as a potential problem.”

  “And Yovia came up with the historical reference to the upside down sleeves on solid rocket boosters of the United States Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded in 1987 –”

  “– ninety-three years ago. Yes.” Melissa shrugged. “The only reason he’s not a Player is fear of punishment. It’s true of half the programming staff. He has a huge universe of data at his call, and he integrates much more quickly than you or I would. Could we be describing Trent? In the sense that we are describing the traits that go into any great computerist. Again, this is at least half my programming staff.” She paused. “We can interrogate him again, but I am certain that the man I interviewed upon his arrival at this station is the same man I am working with today. If it’s not, he is not only a great computerist … he is the world’s greatest actor. Certainly much better than the man whose face he wears.”

  “Really? I thought Selstrom quite good in Death Valley.”

  Melissa forced herself not to smile. “I have not seen it.”

  “Well. I will come visit, I think, on the fifteenth.”

  Now she smiled. “I will look forward to it, sir.”

  “Perhaps you should give some thought,” Vance added, “to remaining aboard ship after it has been fully staffed.”

  Melissa’s heartbeat picked up. She said slowly, “This was not our original agreement.”

  Vance’s eyebrows raised fractionally. “I do not make agreements with my officers.”

  She ignored the implicit warning. “You know what I mean. I will follow any orders you give me, but if you are taking my concerns into account, as you took them into account when posting me
here in hopes that I would attract Trent’s attention –”

  “I did not –”

  Melissa overrode him, a little appalled at herself while doing so. “– then please take into consideration my wishes as we go forward.”

  “I did not post you here to attract Trent’s attention.”

  “Oh?”

  He sighed. “Very well, not solely or even principally to attract Trent’s attention. Your immediate predecessor, due to a lack of attentiveness, permitted … quite a large bomb to explode upon the Unity.”

  Melissa took a deep breath. She could feel Vance changing the subject – surely she did not need to remind him of her second tour of duty in Los Angeles. “I do not want to serve aboard this ship when it embarks upon its combat mission. In any capacity.”

  He studied her. “But you will follow your orders.”

  She could hear her voice sharpen. “When have I not?”

  He waved a hand in a dismissing motion. “Forgive me. I do not doubt your patriotism or your attention to duty.” He actually leaned forward – for Vance, tightly wound as he was, a moment of high demonstrativeness. “Do not doubt my determination to see this through. The longer we delay, the worse our probability of success becomes in any conflict with the forces arrayed against us. They know this as well as you do.”

  “I have never,” said Melissa du Bois, “doubted your determination.”

  He studied her a moment longer with those oldstyle black Elite eyes. “I will see you on the fifteenth, Sergeant. Excuse me – Chief.”

  “I will be happy to be an Elite Sergeant again, when this assignment is completed.”

  He nodded. “We’ll discuss your rank when I see you next. Good day, Chief.”

  ON THE MORNING of April the 4th, 2080, the first Thursday in April, Monitor’s dashboard came up green.

  Melissa du Bois was there when it happened. All of the programmers were present as well, every person from all three shifts, and the room was crowded as a result, even in free fall with all the cubic available for use. A dozen rings of champagne had been brought in for the occasion, and people clustered against the walls and up against what would be the ceiling when Unity finally boosted for the first time.

  The last person working was Ken, who chattered as he typed. “... stinking genetic algorithms, back in the day we wrote code like men, by hand, the way God and Grace Hopper intended, but can they link libraries themselves, they cannot, for this we require the fine touch of a human being, and no, not just any human being, but someone with decades of wisdom and a steady hand ...”

  “C’mon, Kenny,” Marie Kohl called out. “I’m getting older over here.”

  “... but not old enough for me, more’s the pity,” Ken continued. “You lack the experience to appreciate a gentleman of my capabilities, is what it is, because as they say, the older the violin, the sweeter the music. Why are we talking about violins? I need a drum roll.”

  Keith Daniels performed quite a credible drum roll with the palms of his hands, beating on a table top.

  “Who knew the kid had skills?” Ken asked. “Let’s count down. Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “I give you the wizards of graveyard. Navigation!”

  On the holo hanging before all of them, the bar with the label “Navigation” beneath it slowly turned green.

  “CSI,” Ken chanted, “Tac support, slipship remote, slipship launch, troop carriers, laser cannon, and missiles. Monitor, show us the green!”

  One by one the labels Ken had named went from gray to green.

  “A round of applause,” Ken yelled, “for the fine folk of graveyard! No, don’t interrupt me with your damn clapping. Day: Intership, remote instruments, security, PI, Library Management, and the Redundant department of Redundancy. Show us green!”

  Green lights flickered and came up in the holo.

  “And last and most, swing shift, most handsome of all the programmers, and with a rhythm all our own: Lifesystems! Farm! Damage control! Repair and trauma! Surgery and sick bay! The cracker and … this psycho bastard here killed a man for this one: ladies and germs, boys and girls, cyborg killing machine with the world’s greatest legs, I give you the largest fusion engines in the history of the human race, running at 104% of capacity as of this morning: show us the torches, Monitor!”

  Green across the board.

  “Pop the champagne,” said Trent. “We have –” Every programmer in the room chanted with him. “True wisdom, divine speed, and maximum justice!”

  “You have Thursday and Friday off,” Trent told the room when the applause and whistling and chatter quieted down enough for him to be heard. “Get drunk, get stoned. Don’t sleep with anyone you’ll be sorry to wake up next to.” Jean-Paul Troileac kissed Eloise Legut while Trent was saying it, and Trent was aware of Melissa looking at him. “Of course,” Trent said cheerfully, “that’s a judgment call if ever there was one. Ladies, gentlemen, those in between and out the other side, this is superb work. No one ever did what we do, any better than us. You’ve got 48 hours. Back to work with day shift Saturday morning.”

  “YOU’RE NOT DONE,” Melissa said after the room had cleared out and just the two of them were left.

  “No,” Trent admitted. “Green is nominal. It just means we’re within tolerances. We can do better. We will do better. We’re fueling up from the tenth through twelfth, we’re scheduled for initial boost in late April. By then we’ll be tighter on every metric. But don’t understate what those people did. We are, this fine diurnal period, kicking serious ass. Taking names. The system likes us a lot. And we are awful damn fond of it, too. We have Total Mutual Respect and Admiration.”

  She looked amused despite herself. “You computerists are such ... such ...”

  “Nerds,” Trent said. “I think that’s the word you’re looking for.”

  “You are not a nerd,” said Melissa.

  Trent laughed. “Of course I am. You think anyone spends the tens of thousands of hours I’ve spent doing work like this unless they love it?” Trent looked up at the board, green all the way across, and grinned again. “I’m a nerd and you bet I love what I do. I am so damn good at it.”

  She smiled at him, a little shyly. “Did you hear what Kenny said?”

  “Cyborg killing machine? Or world’s greatest legs? Go with the compliment,” Trent advised. “Kenny’s an odd bird, but there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight.”

  21

  IT WAS FRIDAY night, and they were at her house, watching Lawrence of Arabia.

  “I’ve killed seventeen people,” she said at one point, during Lawrence’s attack upon the defeated Turkish troops.

  Sitting beside her, holding her hand, Trent said nothing.

  “I don’t even remember the first four. They tell me I killed them, but – it’s like something that happened to someone else. But in Los Angeles, I killed twelve people in Los Angeles during the rebellion. God knows I remember that. I wish I didn’t. I killed one boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. But he brought the rifle around on me and I shot him. When I was thirteen,” said Melissa, “I saw Paris for the first time. On a school trip.”

  “Some things are too heavy to carry,” said Trent after a while. “It’s best you let them go, if you can.”

  Melissa nodded. “My father called me his little soldier, when I was growing up.” A while later, she said, “This was his favorite movie.”

  LATER THAT EVENING, she said, “Vance is never going to let me go.”

  22

  “PSYCHOMETRICS FOR EVERYONE,” said Ken. “Bad timing, is what it is.”

  They sat in the upper deck at Highland Grounds, drinking coffee and playing chess together. Trent hadn’t made a point of conversion to coffee, and Ken hadn’t mentioned it, though Trent was certain he’d made note of it.

  “Joined the Johnny Rebs since your last interview, have you.” Trent castled.

  “Nah,” said Ken. “Those dummies! Blowing people up like they do. It’s just I’m sche
duled for Thursday morning, and they’re going to start loading the hydrogen fuel bubbles on Wednesday, not finishing until Friday. I just thought it might be –” he paused. “Bad timing, as I was saying.”

  Ken castled.

  “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then don’t worry about it.”

  “Me?” The old man laughed loudly enough that people on the level beneath them looked up toward them. “No,” said Ken more quietly, in a voice devoid of humor, “I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ve passed every one of these things I’ve ever taken. I’ve got no political beliefs. Don’t care who’s in charge.”

  Trent advanced his bishop.

  “Two of my brothers,” Ken continued, “died during the Unification. Both Marines. I was angry about that. But … time passes. And the truth is, the Unification’s done all right. Killed the people who stood up and fought, but otherwise mostly let people be. The law is mostly honest. No more dishonest than in the U.S. before the Unification, anyway. Not many of us remember that far back any more, but it’s true. The money ran things then, the money runs things now.”

  Trent leaned back, watching Ken. “They killed the Speedfreaks.”

  “They did.”

  “Killed the telepaths.”

  Ken looked at him with obvious speculation. “They did that, too. I don’t know if they were wrong, either. What the telepaths did to New York at the end there –”

  “Killed one sixth of the population of Greater Los Angeles,” Trent said.

  Ken nodded a little jerkily. “Yeah. But we talked about that at my last psychometric. You can see why that happened.”

  Trent fed him the line. “So no worries, eh?”

  “No worries,” said Ken, “that’s an Aussie figure of speech. No Brit I ever met uses it. No worries, right enough. I won’t have any problems with the psychometric. But that part where they ask you about your coworkers, if you know anyone who you think is wrong? That’s my problem, friend –”

  At least it wasn’t a surprise. Trent had been pretty sure of Ken since the trip to the Halfway Relay Station.