“Amazing, Sir,” Lancet said, kneeling down to look at the streets from eye level.
“I love building, adding, correcting, and improving this, I’ve been doing it for nearly ten years now. Not because of the lesson, that’s just what’s relevant today, but because of the spectacle that it’s become. There are a thousand things I’ve done, I’ve added that you may never notice. There, that news helicopter that’s taking off. It’s actually after something that happened. Something that occurred at such a small scale that we couldn’t have noticed. If we watch where it goes, where its light points, we’ll find out what story its after. I design for pleasure, not just to show the universe that I’ve been here. What’s that worth when we can be immortal? Our legacies live with us now, we won’t leave our bones in some sea.” Dron turned away and fastened his jacket as he looked through his transparesteel window. The distortion of the wormhole around the Glorious warped the stars, the hyperspace field turned them blue. “Order the Glorious and the rest of the battlegroup to begin deceleration now. We will emerge into normal space. Have the technical staff prepare the Mars storage drives and deploy that software to my personal fleet. Have them copied and send our fastest ships to major centres and have them deploy the software on every compatible system. Anything else must be replaced immediately.”
“Sir, may I ask what the Mars Drives are?”
“They are the latest Sol System Operating System. It is impervious to any malicious artificial intelligence or other code. I didn’t want to start this yet, but we are converting our entire fleet.” An emergency symbol appeared on the window Dron was looking through. He nodded, activating the transmission. It was from one of their few quantum communication connections. “Overlord,” Admiral Tafford addressed. “I’m afraid to report that we have been attacked by a malicious artificial intelligence.”
“I was just made aware that some of our supply depots were hit as well,” Dron said. “I’ll begin transmitting a new operating system and the programs you will need to clean and upgrade your systems. They are of Sol System design, so we won’t have this problem again.”
“Sol System?” Admiral Tafford asked. “Thank you, Overlord. I’m afraid that won’t solve our main problem, however. The Hercules has been destroyed. It crash landed on Iora. Rescue efforts are under way, but the command ship is a loss.”
Dron could feel sweat on his palms. The Hercules was the most recent base class ship Regent Galactic built. Another wouldn’t be complete for two years. “It is a good thing that I brought my own base ships. I will not send any to your location, however. I wonder, has the Edxian Brood Master been trying to contact you?”
“Yes, Sir. She, he, it is furious. The translator can barely keep up. I told it that the Hercules was not under our control when it crashed, killing thousands of hatchlings.”
“Then your primary task while you wait for your new software to download is to find evidence to prove your case to the Brood Master. If you fail, I will leave you to his mercy and attend to this matter myself.”
“Yes, Overlord,” the Admiral said. “With our systems down, it will be hard, but I’ll find a way.”
“Or you will be fed into one of their protein harvesters, that is, unless the Brood Master would rather perform a ritual revenge consumption on you. It involves eating an enemy alive, starting with the outer extremities. I will begin the upload.” Dron ended his communication with Admiral Tafford then used the link to send the contents of a Mars Drive. It would take forty two minutes to upload.
He turned to Ensign Lancet. “Send orders to navigation. This fleet goes to the Cefa System after the Mars Drives are deployed.”
Forty-Two
A Childhood Remembered, An Adolescence Lost
* * *
An old woman with scraggly long hair pulled an ancient ship with corroded hull plating across the sky from the edge of a cliff. The wind pushed her hair into her face, and the loose ground under her feet didn’t give her good purchase. She was sliding towards the edge…
Alice’s eyes opened, the strange dream dissipated. Alice was in her own room alone. Morning light left few shadows, and her walls were set to privacy mode, opaque, hiding the fish tanks and the living room beyond. Light streamed in through sections of the outer walls that had a frosted texture. “Roomie, mirrors,” she commanded as she got to her feet. The wall in front of her became reflective and she stared at herself.
The face staring back at her was the latest she’d had, but it still felt off. Alice half expected to see a mechanical eye and the longer, more bony face of the first body. All the while she knew what she should look like; a collection of better features from Ayan and Jake. Recent memories helped. She liked this body, she’d taken risks to make it clean of framework technology, went to great efforts to get it into shape, and finally learned to celebrate it. The woman in the mirror was shorter, with a much curvier figure. Alice pulled her underwear off, kicked them across the room and looked herself up and down. Everything was different from that first ride in a human body, she felt better than ever, but it still didn’t match what she expected.
The door opened silently and Theodore started to enter carrying a hot mug of spiced coffee. He nearly spilled it at the sight of her standing nude in the middle of the room. “Oh, I’m sorry, the household artificial intelligence informed me that you were awake so I made you a breakfast drink that Lewis said you enjoyed. I didn’t realize you were changing.”
“It’s all right, Theo,” she told him. “It’s only a body.”
“Are you certain? I could wipe the point nine second glimpse I caught as I entered from my memory.”
“No worries, unless you have some kind of amorous programming we should watch out for.”
He still averted his eyes. “My experiences with intimacy are purely platonic and I haven’t felt the need to explore further.”
Alice walked to him, took the steaming mug from his hand and returned to look in the mirror. “Maybe you’re just waiting for the right android to come along. Come in and close the door.”
He finished entering and let the door slide closed behind him. “Do you need anything? How are you feeling?” Theodore’s eyes were looking anywhere but at her.
She took his chin in her palm and smiled at him. “I need someone like you. Someone who is more interested in observing than judging,” she said, her tone secretive and a little playful. “I’m all right, but I don’t know where the road goes from here anymore. I think I’m a little lost. Can you help me?”
His nervousness began to melt away. “I can try. I don’t know how useful I’ll be.”
Alice looked at herself in the mirror again, turning away from him. The straightened red hair looked wrong. Her eyes were on the large side, matching her broad features, something she liked. In fact, her whole face seemed like it fit her personality better. “My father had to do this when he got the framework removed. I didn’t see him do it, but Jake said it helped him start feeling like the new body fit him better.”
“Like calibration,” Theodore said.
“Exactly,” Alice replied. “Only I have even more to worry about, like wondering who I am now that I’ve had this life without baggage, and then picked up all my luggage again.”
The experiences she’d regained included reflections on how it was to be an artificial intelligence not once but twice. The emotions from that time were strange, often controlled, but inhuman. It was like trying to look at a holographic puzzle that kept moving, tricking the eye to look away from the main image. Alice closed her eyes for a moment, let the scent of the morning drink fill her nostrils. It was coffee and cinnamon. Transported to the last time she’d tasted it, in a body that was stolen from the Overlord II, she remembered what it was like to be that person. There was always an edge of aggression, tension that never completely went away for long. Worse than that, most other emotions seemed much less intense by comparison. Anger was an intense emotion by its very nature, but to her back then it felt good
to be angry, to fight. Bernice helped her deal with it from the start, Alice had no idea what would have happened if it weren’t for her guide back then.
The first time she saw her own scan results she was surprised to see that the body she had was predisposed to violence, and she never forgot it. She sharpened herself awareness and compensated for her shortcomings until it was second nature. “It was still like living with my head in a vise,” Alice said to herself aloud.
“Are you feeling discomfort?” Theodore asked. Alice opened her eyes and looked at him in the mirror. He was sitting down on a padded bench that was along the wall between the bed and the bathroom behind her.
“No, I’m fine, just working through a few things, marking the differences.” She looked into her own eyes staring back at her over the rim of her steaming mug and smiled a little. They were so blue, they looked so innocent. “You know I had a different body before, right?”
“It’s in your file, but there aren’t many details. Well, not by my standards, anyway.”
“After I transferred to it, I learned she had been convicted of multiple murders. Her mind was empty, but the genetics were still influencing me, and a friend helped me fight it. It was work that never stopped, but it got easier. I don’t think anyone could tell after a while. By the time Bernice got married and settled down, I was ready to travel alone. I even fell in love with someone. It didn’t make me any less selfish though.”
“How does this body feel in comparison?” Theodore asked.
“Like a relief. I still expect the wrong face when I look in the mirror, but I helped Jake go through this. He had to look at his reflection for hours before he convinced his brain that it was what he looked like. Going nude became a short cut, and he said it helped, but he still had to work hard to learn to walk again. The dimensions were different for him too, but they made him bigger so he could still have some of the strength he’d gotten used to as a framework.”
Theodore thought about her answer for a moment before speaking. “But what does it feel like to be Alice now?”
She lowered the mug so she could see her whole face and watched how her thicker lips moved, how her easier to read expression changed a little as she answered. “You’d think it would be noisy, you know, in my head, but I’ve never been so clear. Still; whatever I feel is turned way up compared to before. The emotions pass, and they’re gone. Except for regret, that seems to leave a stain. I have some things to work through, but it’s not tearing me up like the last digital version of me thought it would.”
“The last digital version?” Theodore asked.
“The artificial intelligence version of me that sprang out of my brain the first time I died.” Alice’s heart skipped a beat, it felt like she couldn’t breathe for a moment. A cough and an uneasy breath later, and she was all right again, but it was a shock. Memories of her death bed, sharp and clear, faded as quickly as they were conjured.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, just a strange reaction. Anyway, the last time I was an artificial intelligence I packed my whole human persona and memories into a digital file. Pick at it, and it begins to corrupt, but if you know how to decode it, they can be restored. She thought it was a good idea to leave most of the memories packed in the back of my head because she wanted me to have a fresh start. More than anything I think I wanted to experience a childhood, even one that started late would have worked, so I guess it makes sense. Still I wish she hadn’t done that, it set me back.” She closed her eyelids. “I close my eyes, and I expect to see my first face when I open them.” Alice opened her eyes and pretended to be startled. “Now I’m looking at a face I know I should expect, I know this person, I remember everything she’s been through, but it’s still a surprise.”
“There are painless cosmetic options that could change you to more closely match your expectations. Wouldn’t that speed up recovery?”
“See, I like the way she looks,” Alice said, nodding at herself in the mirror. “The way I look, and I’m really tired of having an identity crisis every few months. It’s a good suggestion, Theo, but I think I’ll stick to this even though I know I’m going to miss being taller. Everything else is great, except for the hair. I’ve gotta do something about this limp mop look.”
“I’m happy my hair doesn’t have to grow,” Theodore said. “Humans seem to spend a lot of time on theirs. Is there anything else you’d like to change?”
“You’re right in therapist mode,” Alice said, looking at him in the mirror.
“It’s not intentional, I only have a basic working knowledge of psychotherapy, and other than clone shock, which doesn’t really fit your situation, I don’t know of any situations that fit what you’re going through. It’s fairly new ground because you’ve had experiences as an artificial intelligence as well as a human being. I am trying, though.”
“It’s okay, I think I just need an ear, and someone to ask me a few questions. Someone who thought they had all the answers might fool me into thinking they’re the right ones. I think taking the long way through this is the right way. I want to get used to the way I look, the way I feel now. I have to deal with whatever I got myself into while my head was mostly empty.” She raised the mug to her mouth but stopped to sniff it again, watching herself in the mirror. “Do people like me here, Theodore?” The answer didn’t come right away.
“I could check records, reports, but…”
“From what you’ve seen,” Alice said. “What kind of impression did I make at the dinner party?”
“You were quiet,” Theodore said. “Everyone would look at you when the conversation died down, like a ringmaster.”
“Ringmaster?” Alice asked, unfamiliar with the term.
“Noah told me about them. They spoke to the audience and conducted different acts through circus performances before they were outlawed.”
“Oh, so they thought I was like a master of ceremonies,” Alice said, remembering that she was terrified to have so many people in her home at once during the whole meal. “I should have put you in charge of the whole night. Maybe next time.”
“I think I’d enjoy that,” Theodore replied.
“So, people saw a quiet girl who didn’t know what to say until they asked about her,” Alice said. “Probably not a commander at rest, or someone who had real confidence.”
“I think that’s accurate, but incomplete. From the little I’ve had time to observe, I can see that people are deeply curious about you. I expect that to only intensify now. Word has gotten out about you boarding the Exile, and that there was a firefight, but no particulars have leaked. That’ll only add to your mystery.”
“They have things under control now?” Alice asked.
“The fleet isn’t on alert, so I imagine they do,” Theo replied.
“Good, I hope it’s dead.” The blue eyes staring back at her in the mirror as she let the steam from her mug fill her nostrils looked a little older. She’d only had it once, a week or so before her first human body died.
With unerring clarity she remembered being motionless as Jacob Valent attended her bedside. That feeling, knowing that she was about to die, washed over her. How she managed to pack herself up into an artificial intelligence that transmitted her consciousness across space was a mystery to her, but she remembered what it felt like to have life slip away. Panic threatened to overtake her, and she pushed the memory away. Alice took a drink of the rich breakfast concoction to further distract herself and felt the oncoming felling of panic begin to fade.
It was almost too hot - something she remembered enjoying - but not so in the new body. The flavour was different; more intense and enjoyable. The texture was thicker than just coffee, but smooth and velvety. Alice stopped drinking for a moment and blew on the black liquid.
“Are you all right?” Theodore asked quietly.
“There are places a mind shouldn’t go, things it shouldn’t experience and then remember. I can remember dying slowly with Jake be
side me. If it didn’t make me freeze up and start to panic, I could imagine myself standing here thinking about it, crying for hours as if I lost something I’ll never get back.” She watched her chest rise and fall as she took a deep breath and let it out. A tear rolled down her cheek and she caught it on her finger. “That’s self-pity. Those things happened, it’ll take me a while to get over them, I may never get all the way through it, but I’d be wasting my time if I hid here and let it hurt me, especially when I feel like I can look past it. I want to celebrate being whole in body and mind. I’ve never wanted to live more.” Alice took another sip and let the rich drink rest in her mouth before swallowing.
“Talking about it will help. I’ll be happy to listen. I’ve seen Noah almost die. He thought he was about to be killed. For days afterwards he was different - easy to laugh, more tolerant of our situation, and wonderfully optimistic. Facing your mortality can be a healthy experience once you’ve finished coping with it,” he offered.
“I know, I remember almost getting slagged a few times. I never felt so alive. I don’t think I need that as much now though. I’m amazed that I’m standing here, looking at myself through her - I mean my - eyes. I remember all the work I did, the friends I made, how I distracted myself from thinking about Jake and everyone who went missing on the Revenge. It’s all part of me.” Alice caught something in the mirror then, a look on that face that was surprising. There was optimism in those eyes. “You asked me how I felt earlier, and I think more than anything, I feel new.”
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11 Page 25