POD (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Now, fifteen hundred years later, the tribes had evolved into warring nations spread across the depths of space. With little in common, their artificial sentience had evolved almost separately to the extent they considered themselves incompatible. The one common thing they maintained without question was the eradication of biological sentience, wherever it was discovered.

  Beyond that, if one tribe made an unfortunate incursion into the territory of another, it would spark a war between the two, a ‘Haseel’, that would not halt until one of the Queens was killed along with her clones. Thus, they ensured that the remaining workers from that tribe would have no means to rally and would be unable to hold together as their hive mind was destroyed, reducing them to a state of individual consciousness. Most committed suicide, or went berserk and were cut down by the Nubl Hunters.

  Any found by other Nubl nations were immediately eradicated, so they had no refuge anywhere. It was considered a sport to hunt down the ‘Nonites or nonnies' as they quickly became known, non-integrated entities, and those few that managed to survive, deliberately removed their antenna before the white noise and the electronic feedback drove them mad. They dispersed far and wide, becoming loners in an attempt to stay out of the reach of the Hunters.

  The Queen pondered, quickly running through the numbers. She realised the success rate of Nonnie hunters only covered a fraction of the Nonites that had been created over millennia. This meant that there had to be a substantial number of expelled Nubl somewhere. She made a mental note to follow that up at some point. It wasn’t urgent, but could prove a worthwhile expedition if they could find and eradicate them. She resumed her reading of the records which now raised more questions than answers as her insights grew by the amount of data her mental processes sifted through.

  Those clones that were ‘chosen’ within a tribe became commanders of legions. Within their legion, they carried all the different skills needed to repair and maintain themselves. Damage was rare, but often the lower ranks that were less supervised would fight between themselves for seniority. So the soldiers learned that, even at their level, allegiances could prove useful.

  The Queen’s clones were the Elite Guard. Only a Nubl Queen could breed her cloned offspring, they were all linked permanently to her, and through her, to each other. So, when one clone discovered a sentient planet, they all knew within seconds, no matter where they were in the systems they claimed as their territory.

  The Nubl Clones were provided with ships of their own which carried a small lower-caste clone crew which they depended upon to repair and maintain the craft, having no such skills themselves. The Elite could only command. They could not so much as steer their ship as it was considered beneath them to do so. The crew willingly catered for every need, after all, if their clone pleased the Queen then he might be raised above others. The higher ranking within the elite, the more chance that clone had of being given an opportunity to start a new hive. The workers would benefit.

  The Queen’s concentration was broken by another startling revelation which pulled her out her reverie.

  Things were not as healthy as they appeared to each of the tribes. Not capable of seeing the larger picture, the other Queens mistakenly believed the levels of the tribes and their hive densities remained the same. They were introvert and shunned external contact, except to trade. So, they didn’t see the diminishing of their race. When the question arose, it was presumed that the tribes had spread so far out, that contact was no longer be possible.

  She realised now that the truth was infinitely more ominous. The constant Haseels fought between the tribes had reduced the once mighty Nubl to a small fraction of their earlier dominance of the systems they ruled. They were still a formidable foe against all comers, although perhaps, not for much longer.

  As it was, only ten tribes of the Nubl remained of the original three hundred and eighty five. The Queen estimated that, within a further two or three hundred years, the remaining ten would be reduced to five, or less.

  What was worse and actually more frightening was that the tribes that remained had only doubled in size from the original number. They did not, however, see the attrition of their overall numbers as any way to do with the way they managed their society. As they refused to meet, or even recognise their species except those in their own hives, they had no means by which to foretell the encroaching demise of their race.

  The Nagar’th ended, the Queen remained unmoved, deep in thought. Her mental agility left her sorting, shifting and processing the massive flow of data, which represented not only her hives’ history, but the entire history of her race recorded in her archives. As she ran more and more processes to analyse the long-term outcome of past events, the growing threat to their current situation became increasingly apparent.

  Nearby, the workers slowed, occasionally stopping as her processes took more and more power away from the Hive leaving them unguided and awaiting instruction. Her clones stood idle, bemused by their Queen’s inactivity. Her throne AI, increasingly unable to cope with the offloading of more responsibility for managing the hive, began to overheat from the strain. At its direct request, a nearby clone attended it providing cooling gases blasted in via a duct under the throne.

  Throughout this, the Crystal Queen remained motionless for a period well into the next Nagar’th.

  Overall activity in the hive had dropped to an unprecedented level. Workers ceased moving, their limited brain function sensing something amiss and having no network coordination to direct them. Managers, who usually received instructions from the Queen, or her clones, had none to follow. They also wandered listless and lost as if looking for function or purpose. The clones themselves, endowed with higher functionality, gathered in the throne room. Luckily, all were loyal to her. None sought to overthrow her in her first moment of weakness. In this, she was fortunate.

  In space, her ships, aware of the drop in activity but without explanation, feared the worst - that a virus malady had infected the hive, or worse, their Queen was incapacitated. With no pre-programmed instructions giving them routines to follow they waited, idly drifting through empty space while events far away from them took their course.

  Slowly, the Queen recovered, Over a period of time as her processes drew their conclusions and fed the data to her consciousness she became aware of the outside world. Never, in her entire existence, had she been so deeply engrossed. Her data archives stretched back millennia. What she had uncovered in her analysis astounded her. Double and triple-checked results ensured there were no errors anywhere. She created a new memory core that could be used as a platform to manage the massive decisions she would have to make.

  What she discovered was to set her on a new path, one that immediately terrified her to her new core.

  She returned her attention to full awareness, resuming direct control over her Hive. Shooting instructions across the ether to everyone and activating long silent commands to begin construction of new projects it quickly became evident to her brood that a new dynamic Queen had emerged.

  The first order given to her Hive workers and sent out across the network to her foraging ships was,

  PREPARE FOR WAR!

  - 6 -

  Osbourne was despondent. He was ignoring the work at his terminal and leaning back in his chair with his feet up, bouncing a squishy ball against Pod, who was resting quietly on top of one of the cupboards that contained all the blueprints. He had been like that since Pod had shown the pictures of Ferris’ shipyard and they had seen the calibre of the competition mounting against them.

  “How many of those ships do you think he has there, Pod?” he asked again.

  “Judging by the feedback from the sensors that I recorded and the occasional fluxes the Globe is picking up, I would suspect approximately twenty of various designs and sizes. They may not all be gunships.” Pod spoke informally, a trend it was picking up, more and more, as it veered away from precise logical communication with other AIs

  “
Yeah, right! But Ferris doesn’t build anything without a purpose, so those twenty ships are going to be ‘kick-ass’ types for sure. We’re screwed!” he moaned.

  “You have reconfigured the shields. He will not be able to penetrate them,” Pod reassured.

  “He can still attack everything, and everyone, with those ships he has. I know Ferris, I know how his mind works. He won’t need to take us down, he will take out cities and governments until we cave in. The Space Council will not have the ability to deny him. We needed six more months.”

  Pod lifted off the cupboard and began to hover, as if anxious.

  “I see. What will happen if you ‘cave in’ Ossie?"

  “We will be held to ransom, and then we will all be handed over to Ferris, even Zeke.”

  Pod began to bob up and down, a sure sign, recognised by those close to it, that it was stressed.

  “Zeke must be protected, he must not be allowed to come back here. He must not be at risk from Ferris,” Pod stated, alarm showing even through the mechanical tones of its voice.

  Pod's bobbing became more exaggerated, its cloak seemed to shimmer on and off too. Osbourne decided that he needed to reassure the fledgling sentient before it went off and did something illogical.

  “Pod, we will keep Zeke out of it. Let me call Garner and Pennington, and see if we can get him some protection from Ferris while he is in Washington,” Osbourne reassured him.

  “Ossie, we need to do more. I can give you patterns for sentinel robots. They will keep him safe. We can make them here and send them to protect him,” Pod said, and the monitor dinged as a new message arrived on the unit.

  Osbourne looked at it and Pod, still agitated, bobbed behind him looking over his shoulder.

  “This is an interesting design, Pod, it’s one of your best yet. I would love to get my hands on the whole library in that head of yours!” He turned smiling, to see Pod pulling back sharply at the possibility of Osbourne dissecting it to recover the information.

  He laughed when he saw Pod’s reaction. “It’s okay, Pod, your data core is safe where it is. It is just a human figure of speech that means you have a lot of knowledge that would get me excited to look at.” He sighed. “Maybe, one day you will let me share all of the blueprints you possess.”

  Pod didn’t answer although its agitation now seemed less pronounced.

  “I have another sentinel design that can be utilised over your cities and that may be able to handle the gunships, if they become a problem for your people. I cannot build them here on Earth; the manufacture needs a lot of materials that you don’t have.” Pod’s bobbing had almost halted now. Activity, it seemed, helped it settle.

  “I see, we need to get this sentinel design modified to work with our current technology. I can do this in a day or two, but if we could work together on it, it will be quicker. Then we could work on the city sentinels you are considering. Do you have a plan?” The monitor pinged at the same time Osbourne finished asking for it.

  He looked at the new schematics for a few minutes, making sense of them, and then whistled. “There’s a lot of fire-power in that there robot, Pod!” he added approvingly. “We can do this,” he admitted to himself, more than anyone else.

  Pod returned to the cupboard top and settled once more. “Let us begin.”

  “Crap!” Ferris shouted. “I designed those mesh shields around the laboratory myself. I don’t believe the object could de-materialise and vanish from the complex ‘just like that’.” He clicked his fingers to emphasise the point. “The shields and mesh should have contained it... it must still be here,” he bawled at the scientists around him.

  Goeth wisely kept quiet. He had heard from the security personnel that something might have brushed past them, but they weren’t sure and neither was he. It still would not have been able to exit the shield. He decided not to mention it. No point in having Ferris’ anger directed at him.

  Flack, who was in charge of the tracking scope, was adamant. “Sir, the shields are locked down. We have tracked every object, within fifty kilometres from here with the radio-scope, and there is nothing here, to a depth of one thousand metres, that is reflecting the Ferrazite signature.”

  Goeth nodded. “We have used that scope for years and it's managed to trace elements much deeper than this object could go, even underground.” He looked at Ferris, eyebrow raised, warning him not to go too far. “The complex has been checked end-to-end and top-to-bottom. It’s no longer here.”

  Ferris sighed. He was still having major issues with the generator room staff over several tons of granite slabs that were taking up space and sitting on top of their controls. Nobody had a clue how they had got there. Ferris had a feeling it was the object’s way of saying it wasn’t happy. He thought that if it could do that, then perhaps they had got off lightly.

  “All right, let's assume, for the moment, the object has disappeared. The question is, can it come back? And, did it find out anything while it was here? And lastly, who does it belong to?” Ferris scanned the room looking for feedback. These people were some of the most brilliant minds in the world; he valued their input, despite raging at them on regular occasions.

  Goeth, as usual, led the response now they were on safer ground. “I think it’s gone, but don’t ask me how, because it didn’t go through the shields.” He looked at the others for confirmation. They all nodded echoing his thoughts.

  Flack, a small chubby type with a grizzled beard and a jolly manner, responded to the second question. “If it comes back we will detect it immediately within fifty kilometre range. We have set sensors at strategic points to alert us if it approaches.”

  “Which leaves us with, did the bloody thing discover anything and if so, who does it work for?” Ferris nodded at them.

  “We checked all of the equipment in the laboratory, not that it had time to access it, or the means. We also ran through logs of all of the events surrounding that time and have come up with zilch.” This came from Burgess, who was their IT specialist and dealt with their nanotechnology development. He was the new whizz kid on the block.

  Ferris nodded. “I think it's safe to say, that the different elements in the Ferrazite signature, tell us it's a different AI to the previous ‘Ship’ entity.” He looked at Flack, who nodded agreement, then went on, “the fact it is synonymous with Callaghan’s, leads me to think it has something to do with Space Island.”

  He looked at Burgess. “We should consider that it achieved whatever it set out to do before it disappeared. Destroy all of the equipment in the lab. Make sure it isn’t attached to anything on the main network.”

  Burgess nodded approvingly. “This will mean a lot of lost files that cannot be replaced. I would suggest the information be held on an isolated computer so it can be retrieved on demand,” he suggested to Ferris.

  “All right, but no data transfers, okay?” Ferris agreed, but fixed them all with a scowl, to ensure they understood.

  “Have we found a replacement for Lockwood yet?” Ferris asked.

  Nobody responded, they were all downhearted at the loss of Lockwood; he was young, but well liked. The scientist who had accidentally shot him, letting go of the laser when caught by the Needlegun, was still in the infirmary and would be out of action for some time.

  “Okay, well, keep looking for someone, keep me posted,” he said gruffly.

  “Meeting over,” he announced and they all got up and filed out, leaving just Goeth sitting in his chair, looking despondently out of the window.

  “He’s still alive,” Goeth muttered.

  “What?”

  “Callaghan, he is still alive out there.”

  “There is no way he could have got out of that forcefield trap we set,” Ferris said.

  “Did you see him die, get pulped?” Goeth accused him.

  “Well, he was... I saw him beginning to compact under the pressure as I left. It was a matter of seconds before he would have been strawberry jam. I’m not squeamish, but...�
� Ferris said. “There is no chance he got out of that in just a few seconds... No chance at all,” he affirmed.

  Goeth nodded. “Nonetheless, something is going on... that ‘was’ Zeke Callaghan’s Ferrazine inside that object.”

  Ferris, finally accepting his friend was right, sat quietly. They were both wondering what the hell the object was, and whether it represented a threat to their plans. The mood in the room was pensive.

  In the end, Ferris broke the silence; a decision made.

  “Get onto the network and put out an alert for Callaghan. If he has somehow come back from the dead, he might still be out there,” he told Goeth. “ It would explain a lot.”

  He leaned back and rocked his chair slightly as he puffed on a new cigar. Goeth, not wanting to be choked by cigar fumes, left speedily, shutting the door firmly behind him to seal in the pollution. Ferris sat there with an evil smile on his face, which would have scared Goeth witless, had he seen it.

  Ferris stood naked in his quarters staring at his body in a full size mirror. He wasn’t one to be prudish about his body, nor was he an exhibitionist, but he needed to check on something. He had increasingly felt aches developing along the long muscles and joints of his arms, legs and back. These had no seeming basis. The scientists avidly recorded everything that happened to him, on a daily log, even down to weighing his stools.

  To this end, they had installed a volumetric calibration device in his toilet that would measure displacement of the water, then a large syringe would protrude from the edge and take a sample. Only after this would the flush work.

  It made him chuckle. His Marine humour over what they did with his waste left him red-faced with laughter. Nonetheless, he allowed them because his body was under constant metamorphosis, and he needed to know what it was doing.

  The problems he was having were stress related. Every time his stress increased, the Ferrazine seemed to fight the reaction, causing him to have long periods of pain. His pain threshold continued to escalate which meant the pain itself would probably cripple a normal human being.