by Ginger Booth
“Not now, Sock,” Nico attempted. “I’m sorry, sir. But he does help me with collapsing predicate trees.”
Sinclair blinked, then hunkered forward on his desk. “He does what? Wait. You’re a high school student. Where do you have access to an AI decision tree?”
“Not here,” Nico allowed. “But back home in Schuyler I worked for the loading docks. Maintenance on the goods distribution code? I’ve got a job here now, but it’s baby stuff.”
“Goods distribution?”
“Yeah, an AI calculates demand and routing. But no one’s understood it in decades.” Proud of his work at the docks, Nico’s intimidation vanished and he leaned forward on the desk, too. “So they’ve heaped a bazillion heuristics on top of the original coding, adding special cases. I’m analyzing and collapsing all that to clean it up. Or I was. Now I try to stay awake in Earth History in high school.”
“And how does your little brother help you?” Sinclair prompted.
“Oh! I isolate a system of related directives with minimal relations crossing outside the cut? A min-cut. Then I generate a graphical tree with edges between the statements. Like a giant knot. Sock is good at untangling graphs. It’s a game we play. He helped me program the tree generator.” Well, Sock made color and user interface requests, and Nico coded them.
Sock beamed with pride.
“I would love to see this,” Sinclair mused.
“Um, may I?” With permission, Nico accessed the desk to bring up two graphs. Both featured colored rectangles and a rat’s nest of lines connecting them. One was significantly more orderly. A legend at the side glossed the colors. Nico demonstrated that clicking a rectangle provided what that chunk of logic actually did.
But Sock’s job was to untangle the knot. The child demonstrated how he teased it apart on the more tangled diagram.
Sinclair asked the younger brother, “And what does all this logic do?”
“I don’t know,” Sock admitted. “But I can’t break it. See? No matter how I drag this box, it stays connected the same as before. I’m just organizing.”
Nico nodded. “The whole tangle decides where to refuel a truck. They gave up on it. The drivers figure that out themselves. But the AI still routes them as though this logic gave good answers. And we tracked down which heuristics made bad decisions. My boss was really happy.”
Sock nodded sharply. “Dad said we did good. Nico even paid me.”
The teen ruffled his brother’s hair with an encouraging grin. “Cheap labor. I only worked ten hours a week. But they paid me enough to live on. And I averaged clearing out more than one heuristic per hour. Well, suggested my boss remove them.”
“May I keep these?” Sinclair asked, bemused.
Nico shook his head, and regretfully removed them from the desk surface. “They belong to Schuyler Docks. Do you want me to ask?”
“Yes, please.”
Nico set himself a reminder to do that after supper. “Sir? After we figure out new advice for this Shiva. How do we get her to take it? I thought that was why Dad wanted the god password.”
“Well, to extend our analogy,” Sinclair began. Sock’s chin drooped, so he simplified for him. “How does your Dad add advice to your big brother?”
“Guilt trip,” Sock supplied.
“Excellent example!” Sinclair praised him. “Nico, your father probably links his new suggestion to something that makes you feel guilty, or something you really want. For instance, you love your little brother, don’t you? You wouldn’t want to make him cry.”
“No.” Nico grimaced in reflex, then smoothed his face into a more polite and pleasant expression. And yes, Dad used this on him all the time. To the point Nico suspected he should have stayed in Schuyler. Frazzie and Sock weren’t his job. But they were pretty fun. Usually.
“But what motivates an AI?” Nico asked, following through Sinclair’s suggestion. Dad had his number, that was true. But what yanked Shiva’s strings? The teen couldn’t imagine.
“Ah, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Sinclair encouraged. “Let’s see if we can find some answers.”
“I’ll begin,” Cope announced, to his warp team in the Prosper galley, Ben very much included. “Teke and I settled on a probe design. This is where we convert the micro-warp drive into a warp gate generator, then push a probe through.”
“Building it is hard,” Elise warned. “Ben, based on what you told us, I studied our warp antlers more carefully, and my data from previous jumps. You’re right. Their emissions don’t quite match. I need to rebuild them at Mahina Orbital’s facilities.”
Teke added, “Plus the instrumentation for the probe. Did you find help for that, Cope?”
The president nodded, trying to mask his emotion. “I asked my old Spaceways engineering team for volunteers. All of them jumped at the chance. Hell, half offered to quit their new jobs and work for expenses.”
Ben winced sympathetically. “It’s not your fault the economy tanked, Cope. Every leading company had to lay off employees. Who had nowhere else to go.”
“Yeah. Anyway. Hunter, Kassidy, and Abel have lined up some funding. We’ll still work on a shoestring for a while. But Mahina is expediting corporate restitution claims. Abel’s managed to convince our stockholders to approve a configuration to restore.” He grimaced to Ben. “We work for Abel again.”
Ben chuckled. “Bound to happen.”
“Yeah, rub it in. Most of that funding is sketchy credit lines and contingencies. But the whole world demands Yang-Yang be restored ASAP. And Kassidy’s video special about Sass and Sanctuary won a nice pile of cash donations. We still can’t pay salary. Only Abel could understand the IOU house of cards he’s set up to resume operations –”
“Abel isn’t paying salaries?” Ben asked, dubious.
“Oh, he has to,” Cope confirmed. “He’s just not offering them to Spaceways, not yet.” He shrugged. “Nathan and the kids are fine. And we live on a nice spaceship. Point is, Yang-Yang is setting up facilities on Mahina Orbital. They too can’t pay salaries yet either, so Kassidy offered us use of their new cubic. So we drop off Elise at MO to build us some new warp antlers.”
Elise smiled. “Kassidy and I set up housing for our engineers. Really Yang-Yang’s HQ, but we’ll use it first.”
“Ben, then we go down to MA and Schuyler. Visit the kids, pick up our tech crew and fuel, parts and tools. Return to MO and build the new machine. Teke, are you staying on MO? Sock would love to see you.”
Teke and Elise shared glances, Elise’s expression steely. “Yeah. I’d like to see my son. Set up a seminar or two at the university to drum up support. Cope, you should do that, too. Every engineer on Mahina will flock to hear it.”
Cope dropped his head, chagrined. “A lecture? We have all this to do, and you want me to prepare a lecture?”
The physicist laughed. “How about I prepare the lecture, and we present together? C’mon, Cope, the university pays us salary. Their community support is valuable. Look at Nico. We got the top AI guy in the Aloha system to drop everything and collaborate with a 16-year-old. Gotta pay back favors like that. Make the faculty feel included, and they help us for the fun of it.”
Cope held up his hands in surrender. “You’re right! Fine. Outline the thing and set up the event.”
Teke consoled him, “Most of it’ll be Q&A.”
“So did Nico find anything?” Ben asked.
“A lot,” Cope replied. “This Sinclair dude is still reconstructing Shiva’s original directives. I’m not sure what use it’ll be. Without a god password, we don’t know how to, um, change Shiva’s mind. And I don’t know that Sass has permission to reprogram Sanctuary’s AI. She may have to negotiate with the AI on its own terms.”
“We don’t have any way to send data to Sanctuary, anyway,” Ben mused.
“No, that part Nico can fix,” Cope countered. “He has this scheme to send data packed in the video stream. Pretty simple encode, decode system. Slow, but.”
>
Teke grinned. “I’m impressed with your kid.”
“Me, too. So that’s our status.”
“But I was going to show you the fractal pattern,” Ben argued.
“No need. We believe you. In fact, Elise found the cause of what you described. Short funding means we need to limit our fuel burn until we get our new probe built.”
“And Sass?”
“It’ll keep until the weekly update.” Cope nodded to himself. “Hopefully by then she’ll understand what the Sanctuary locals want. That’s not up to us. It’s not up to Sass, either, no matter what she thinks.”
121
“Morning, Remi.” Blearily, Sass slipped into the pilot’s seat. The third officer called her to the bridge slightly after 06:30, after she talked with Prosper into the wee hours after an exciting arrival day. “What’s up?”
“Ship status is asleep. Except me,” Remi growled. “But at 06:00, the locals started calling. Rosie the AI demands we release our hostages –”
“Hostages?” Sass sat bolt upright. Dammit! No matter how wonderful it felt to talk to her friends on Prosper last night – this morning – she’d just arrived on a strange planet. Nothing about her ship’s situation was in order.
After three years of excruciating boredom, now far too much hit her all at once. She needed to step up her game, and fast.
Remi continued sourly, “Next Alexandria. She asks for our databases. Return to the spaceport for their data slurping convenience.” He displayed a video freeze-frame of Alexandria, a young-faced person with shock white short hair, in Loonie navy blue. “And then there’s Loki.”
He played Loki’s video rather than explain. An older middle-aged guy sat back from the camera, boots on the table. Sass’s lips parted as she took him in. An Earthling. He wore jeans, a grey T-shirt, and green plaid flannel overshirt, unbuttoned. His face could’ve stepped straight off the streets of a refugee tent city. Nose, chin, ear, and half his face hid behind an ivory plastic mask. That eye looked like glass, not tracking his lively blue one. The hair on his good side, not destroyed by the yeast leprosy, was a greying light brown. Unruly tufts of white hair edged the mask.
“Captain Collier! Loki Greenwald, wildcatter on the Beagle. Was, anyway.” His accent was American Southern. Sass hadn’t heard a real drawl in decades, only old movies. “I hear tell you remember Earth! I know you just got here. Bet you’re busy. But soon as you get a chance, I’m hoping you’d like to reminisce. Call me.”
Sass stared at his final image. Her hand drifted toward the reply button.
But no.
“Captain, do I stand relieved?” Remi prodded. “I wish to sleep before I fix crew quarters. Maybe you should name a comms officer. I don’t know what to say to these people.”
“Right.” Sass scrubbed her face. “You didn’t answer them, did you?”
“I tell Rosie she looks lovely today, and we have honored guests. They will call when they wake up.”
“Shiva,” Sass corrected absently. “Rosie is Shiva’s avatar. Good job, Remi. How much work is left on the pressure bulkhead?”
“Weeks. Yesterday, no progress. Today also looks bad. At this rate, never.” With that, he took his leave.
Sass played the video of Rosie, Shiva, or Sanctuary Control as she called herself, and reviewed Remi’s response. He was fine, even managed not to wink while delivering the compliment.
Then she viewed Alexandria. The words and request were reasonable enough, but something was off about her. “Computer, is this video computer-generated?”
“Probability 60 percent.”
“Why?” The smooth young face with white hair was an attractive choice, and her expressions natural if muted, her head shifting with her words.
The computer replied, “The facial expressions and blink patterns are normal, and the voice more husky. However the speech cadence is identical to that of Sanctuary Control.”
Sass considered this. Was it was possible for the AI to take control of an actual person, speaking the AI’s lines? Or did Shiva create a more convincing avatar? She had no idea.
She didn’t know a damned thing about this place. And she needed to fix that ASAP.
Much as she longed to talk to Loki Greenwald, he could wait. She clicked the record button. “Hello, this is Captain Sass Collier of the starship Thrive. We are very busy at this time. Please leave a message.” When in Sanctuary, do as the…Sancts?
Then she headed to the galley to grab some desperately needed coffee.
She needed to reach amicable terms with this AI. She barely poured her caffeine before the computer pinged her again. A Nanomage-class courier ship was approaching the planet.
Hell. Hostages might not be a bad idea.
Sass’s first stop was coffee. There she enlisted the housekeeper Corky to entertain their guests until breakfast. This bought her time to check up on her chipping-injured, and debrief Clay on what he’d learned overnight.
She caught up with him in their cabin, where he changed into fresh clothes after his night out camping with Tharsis and Silva. They – and the horses – slept in the same sort of pressurized geodesic tent the settlers used while they built Mahina’s atmosphere. Like Mahina, the sun cycle didn’t match human biology. Early morning by Sass’s clock was high noon outdoors.
Knowing Clay, he’d far rather be out there than in their luxurious master’s suite, designed by Clay. Sass sat on his desk, beautiful woodwork artfully placed askew to the corner behind it, surrounded by plants.
Sass felt more comfortable in the grungy cabin she used before combining two into this fancy one. She propped a boot on the support beam which once limited her to a twin bed.
While he stripped off yesterday’s clothes, Clay told her Hugo Silva had traveled on one of the courier ships Sanctuary dispatched to check on the other colonies. His assigned system seemed well, though they observed from a distance. Its worlds were the European-settled Cantons and the Russians’ Steppe. Another team found the Gandhi moon alive but failing. That system’s other world, Mubarak, had already failed.
They never heard back from their scouts to the African colony of Kuzaliwa, presumed dead. But then, the same was true of Aloha.
The remaining human colonies survived, more or less, as of 30 years ago. But for security, Sanctuary chose not to send a courier to check on Earth.
Only two wildcatter crews ever reached Sanctuary. One arrived 30 years ago. They abandoned their mission due to an accident, having found no real estate superior to what humanity already occupied. The crew that returned 9 years ago located a world better than Denali, with living biome and plenty of water, mostly frozen but temperate near the equator. They named it Sylvan.
The news precipitated a crisis here. The majority wished to abandon Sanctuary. Some wanted to relocate to Sylvan. Others revived a stalled movement to join Cantons colony.
The Japanese Nozomu colony was in better shape, but xenophobic. They rejected that possibility a generation ago.
Shiva instituted her mind control system to halt the conflict when it grew violent. Tharsis was one of the Cantons advocates, a rocky world. The two co-administrators, the late Ganny Kurt Kallias and Petunia Ling, championed the Sylvan and stay-home Sanctuary options respectively.
They saw these choices as all-or-nothing. An advance team to prepare distant Sylvan only made sense if they could trust the rest of Sanctuary to appear 30 years later. Losing a contingent to Cantons would bring Sanctuary or Sylvan beneath a viable population level.
They hadn’t gotten as far as asking Cantons for permission to resettle there. So far as Tharsis knew, remaining at Sanctuary was the AI’s decision.
Sass felt the Aloha worlds were a superior option – for Aloha.
Or were they? It was difficult to gauge what use these people could be on Mahina. Despite their superior tech base, their younger workers appeared to be mostly trained in spectator sports.
But Clay insisted the question was what was best for the people of
Sanctuary. We owe them.
Sass held a hand up to stop her lover’s flow of words, and hopped off the desk to pace a few laps. “We don’t owe them. Firstly, I owe Mahina, not the Colony Corps.”
“Both –”
Sass warded him off again. “My turn. Thank you. Clay, these people aren’t the ones who saved us from Earth. Oh, one or two might be. But even then, their loyalty was to the Colony Corps, not us. We were a delivery job.”
Clay rocked his head so-so. The damned man was born to wealth and privilege, and naturally identified with authority’s side – the Gannies on Vitality, the urbs on Mahina. Condescending. Though in fairness he didn’t think much of the authorities on Sagamore or Denali. The jury was still out on Sanctuary.
To Sass, whatever heroes they sprang from, the current residents of Sanctuary weren’t born yet when she left Earth. She now had the biggest answer she came here for – which worlds survived. Good to know! “You’ll get more data on what we know of these other worlds, yes?”
“Of course. Already have, but we’re pressed for time.”
She nodded. “How are they today, mentally?”
“Better,” Clay judged. “Once I got him out of range, Tharsis could think straight again. But he has a lot of memories to process. Hugo Silva always knew how to thwart Shiva. But he’s starting to relax. Feeling alone against the machine had to be awful.”
“Shiva didn’t control them until 9 years ago?” If not, then the natives might just be rusty. Skilled, rather than untrained layabouts under a nanny AI. “Hugo told me something like that.”
“That’s the story,” Clay confirmed. “But I suspect Shiva developed the technology in the creches.”
“They’re no good at parenting,” Sass concurred sadly. “Alright, time to negotiate.”
122
Sass beamed a broad smile as she and Clay joined the breakfast table.
“The hats came out nice, Corky!” the captain encouraged, taking her seat. Tharsis and Hugo Silva looked pretty foolish in their new head-gear. Remi programmed a shielding fabric for Corky, printed in metallic brick, silver, and blue to match the Martian, Ganny, and Loonie colors. Corky sewed hoods reminiscent of medieval chainmail, fastening snug around the face and jaw, and draping down the neck onto the shoulders.