Category: Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 18

Post author By TPH
Post date April 17, 2019
2 Comments on “Technically” Sentient: Chapter 18

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Ceuzmec.

Verdock looked at the slowly spinning, holographic representation of the Core World. His nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes, and he felt a slight sense of amusement. He was fairly certain he didn’t need them, but it was almost . . . fun, in a way, to stare at something and be able to blink.

It wasn’t a clever thought. He knew that. It felt like he had far fewer clever thoughts these days. His head felt wrapped in comfortable weight, like the press of fatigue on a double shift that quieted his incessant internal monologue. Normally the idea that he might be losing his higher cognitive functions would terrify him, but it was more complex than that. True, while his abstract thought was somewhat muddled, he felt far less fear, far less uncertainty. A situation would arise, and it seemed all he had to do was follow through with what came naturally to mind. Fighting the commando team for the ship had felt like . . . like swallowing. He just started the motions, and the rest sort of fell into place.
Instinct. That as the word he was looking for. He was doing things by instinct now. It was better that way, he concluded.

The holographic display flickered, and his thoughts were drawn back to the present, and the pressing matter before him. He wouldn’t be able to rely purely on instinct here, it seemed.

Ceuzmec.

The basketball sized, perfect color rendition of an entire planet hovered ever so slightly above the large and dizzyingly complex briefing table. Normally the room would be filled with as many as three dozen onlookers, all paying dutiful attention to their commander. Now there was only him, and he was only briefing himself. He shifted in his seat, no longer content to recline comfortably and listen to the subtle murmur of FTL travel.
It looked like a jewel of spun glass, and he found his eyes quickly glazing over as the sparkling surface of the world transfixed him. With a quick shake of his head, he freed himself from the spell, and drug his mind back to the matter that had brought him down to this briefing room.

He was going to shatter that jewel.

Well, that was bit of an overstatement, but it would be a jewel no longer once he was finished. The plan was . . .

His brow furrowed. Something with the communications equipment. He tried to push the weight bearing down on his mind away, if only for a few minutes.

Right! The cargo this vessel carried, it was all high level military communications equipment. Quantum encryption, the works. Now that the Unfinished had it, they’d . . .
A pang of hunger drew his train of thought away for a moment, and as he pushed it down he growled with frustration. “The plan, what was the plan . . .” His voice startled him, dark and rough as it was. He kind of liked it that way. “ . . . plan . . .” He let the word rumble out of him. His speech was throaty, rough, and intimidating. He wondered if that was attractive.

His mind flickered to Amonna Tav, and lingered there. He thought back to her physical qualification for field service. Oh, she had qualified, and how. Sprinting, swimming, striking, shooting . . . it had put her classmates to shame. A faint smile crossed his face, and he let his eyes droop as his imagination wandered. He could still see her clearly in his minds eye after all, it seemed. She’d been at least 165 cm tall, 70 kilos placed ever so perfectly in all the right places, and had a tail that went on for leagues. Fit, clever, and filled out in all the right places, he wondered why he’d never really taken an interest in her. Half his age and it’d be fraternization, sure, but he regretted not trying to bring her along. Maybe get to know her better.

Sure it had been part of the plan to leave her behind but . . .

The plan. He was supposed to be focusing on the plan.

Ceuzmec.

Go to Ceuzmec. The way would be open by the time he arrived. There was . . . a vault. Somewhere. It had what the Unfinished needed in it. He’d need to find someone who knew where that vault was. That would be hard, so he’d probably need to find someone that could find someone else that knew where the vault was. That’d probably be easy. Getting things from people was easy when you were four times their size.

He grinned, and flexed his bicep, taking a moment to admire it. It was bigger around than his leg used to be. He bet Amonna would admire it too, if they met again.

Maybe after the vault, he’d go looking for her.

——————————

Amonna floated fitfully in what should have been a comfortably saline solution. She’d put away her files and charts and figures for a few hours to try and sleep, but it just wasn’t coming to her. She’d made a note to have them replace her bed, and within 20 minutes of putting in the request, they were tweaking the salt content to match her home region on Promos. She’d compare the service to a 5 star hotel, except for the fact that everyone involved saluted her, and the entire room was a burnished steel gray.

She wondered if that was the nature of power, at its core.

Was power just a measure of how much you could get away with asking for?

She pumped water in through her mouth, and out her gills, the faint sting of it making her wince. She still wasn’t well. She could smell the blood in the water, as faint as it was, and knew it had to be hers. Her thoughts wandered. Would she need treatment? Would she need surgery? Would it go so far as to require prosthesis? She was almost certain she’d never qualify for FSOS field operations again, not without extensive medical treatment, but what would this mean for the rest of her life? Would she be struggling to breathe walking down the corridor 20 years from now? Would the horrible dreams plague her for the rest of her life? What was the power she commanded now compared to that?

. . . yeah, she wasn’t getting to sleep anytime soon.

Surfacing at the edge of the tank, she hauled herself out, and took a few deep breaths. The chest pain was minor, so she focused on it for a few minutes, trying to push it down while she dripped dry. It was calming, in a way, to have that present pain to focus on. Much easier than fearing the troubles of the future or mistakes of the past.

She let out a long sigh, and walked over to her desk to go over the notable tidbits she’d manage to sift out over the past 16 hours. Still dripping slightly, she had to throw her hair back over one shoulder before grabbing a random file from her desk. It was a psychology breakdown based on Verdock’s service record.

She’d read it before, twice cover to cover, and skimmed it a few more times than that. He was meticulous, ambitious, and by every measure before this incident, filled with a deep dedication to justice and the order of law.

“What changed . . . what snapped in you?” She muttered under her breath, fingers leaving water streaks across the glass screen of the robust tablet. She tossed the device back on her desk, huffing quietly. She was getting nowhere, spinning in circles inside her own head. She needed an outside view on things . . . she needed to talk them over. Io was useful as an assistant, but seeing as it didn’t actually think she wasn’t sure if it was a great sounding board for ideas.

“Maybe . . .” she rummaged through a few other files, before finding the one she was searching for. “General Vrang.” She snatched it up, and flipped it open. The commander of ground forces on the vessel, she- Amonna groaned internally. He would have the security clearance to talk these things over, and shouldn’t be overly occupied with the running of the ship. Add in that he was the more sympathetic of the two during the briefing, and he seemed the obvious pick for a review of the facts.

She didn’t bother to get dried, and hastily threw on most of her uniform, eschewing the cap and overcoat of office. She was mostly dry anyway, and she doubted that she could make a worse impression on Vrang than she already had.

Io pointed her in the right direction, and set her on her way.

She received a few protracted glances on the way there, but she suspected it was more due to her lack of decorum than anything else. The corridors were nearly empty, long hallways of the same flat gray alloy after another, only intermittently interspersed with hatches and hydraulically locked doors. When she did run into someone they only saluted, and moved aside to let her pass.

Power. She was reminded of it yet again.

She was headed to the Observatory, something akin to a VR theater. She thought it odd, that such a recreational thing might exist on a vessel that was otherwise quite austere and drab, but didn’t have much time to think it over before she was standing at the door to it.

It was marked in the same, generic, uniform fashion as everything else on the ship, save for a small holo-display reading “In-Use.” She knocked, gently, and the door slid open.

The sound of waves washed over her, and she was suddenly looking out over a small cove that she used to play in as a child. The memory of the place struck her in the gut, and she was at a loss for words, or even thoughts for a moment. She took her first steps, father and mother holding her hands on this shore, and she learned her basic sums using sea-shells taken from the tide pools. She’d done schoolwork in the shade, and even run sprints in the sand here while training up for the FSOS selection process. Even her first date, so full of good intentions and awkward silence had finished up on this beach, watching the sun go down.

“Come in, Judge Tav.”

The voice was a soft, gentle nudge to remind her that she was still on a ship, still sailing through the void, and that none of that was real. Even as she stepped across the threshold, boot digging into the sand, she knew it wasn’t the same place. They’d built a resort here, a few years after she’d left for Waystation LS-49, and the smell was all wrong. It still stank of metal and ozone and fans, and as real as the ocean sounded, there were no cries of the Tide-Hawks, or the quiet chitter of the hundred different species of insects in the trees. Just the crash of waves, and the whisper of wind.

It took her a few seconds, but she saw him, sitting cross legged in the shade. Still bedecked in medals, uniform still pressed to a crispness that defied explanation, he smiled and beckoned her over.

“How . . . how did you know about this place? How did you know I grew up here?”

She was guarded, but intrigued as she approached. She felt strangely naked, having a stranger suddenly appear in her memories like this.

General Vrang raised his eyebrows in surprise, and at the very least feigned ignorance. “I didn’t, though I had a general idea where you were from. This was just the nicest place to sit in the immediate vicinity.”

He patted the sand next to himself, and gestured for her to approach again. “I was just doing some research of my own, you see.”

She took a seat next to him, the soft white sand parting smoothly as she plopped down in the shade.

Amonna gave him a sidelong glare, one that demanded an explanation for all of this, and offered none in return.

“Relax, it’s all in good faith.” He smiled thinly, scooping up a handful of beach, before letting it run through his fingers. “I just wanted to know how you thought.”

Amonna didn’t need to open her mouth to effectively voice her confusion at this remark, and he seemed happy to continue explaining.

“This is your home, or at least as close to it as I could get. I checked your medical record, traced your ancestry against existing medical records on your planet, found your parents, checked survey data, pinpointed where your upbringing was most likely to have occurred, and then had an AI run a reconstruction of it, scaled back from present day by roughly your age. All in all, it was about 5 minutes of work for me.”

Silence hung between the two of them for several seconds, before Amonna’s intense gaze couldn’t glean any more information out of him.

“With all due respect, General Vrang, it feels like a disturbing invasion of privacy. To go through my medical records, find my home, and then be waiting for me there seems to be a thinly veiled threat.”

Her words were measured, but there was an intensity to them that she could not conceal.
Seemingly unperturbed, Vrang started drawing letters in the sand she didn’t recognize, and that weren’t in galactic basic. “It isn’t meant to be. We are shaped by our experiences, and I wanted to try and see how this place shaped you.”

He underlined the letters in the sand, and suddenly the whole world stopped. The waves froze, the wind was silenced, and the sand felt like granite beneath her.

“This place is beautiful, and it’s nature is carefree. It makes sense. The way you charged into a meeting, no order, no structure, no plans, just a free congregation of those that could solve the problem.” He ran his hand across the symbols, erasing them as the world sprung back to life.

Amonna opened her mouth to speak, but he raised the same hand to silence her. He looked to be of young, perhaps middle age, certainly no older than her, but his eyes betrayed a very old, very tired wisdom . . . a wisdom she found she couldn’t help but oblige.

“On the surface, there is a great chaos to this place, and it left a mark on who you are. And, I would like to clarify that it’s by no means a bad thing. It’s simply that while the waves crash, and the sand is pounded ever finer, we see beauty and chaos and all the intricate detail of the world. But a computer, an AI recreates this place almost flawlessly. At the core of it, this natural beauty of blurred lines and unfathomable complexity can be reduced to simple equations, and carried out like so much addition and subtraction. What does that mean for us, Judge Tav? Can we be reduced, like this beach, to just so much math?”

Amonna was left taken aback, and a little speechless. Of all the things she had expected from General Vrang, existential questioning was nowhere near the top of the list.

“I . . . don’t know. I know for a fact that AI’s use quantum blue-box technology to simulate a sentient intelligence, with behavior very similar to the nervous system of any organic life-form, which means that the appearance and behavior of sentience can be reduced to a computational system, but whether or not that constitutes a consciousness is a matter of metaphysics and philosophy. I know I’m . . . real, but I can’t say that an AI, or anyone else’s intelligence results in consciousness, because I can’t feel what they feel. I mean, I certainly think that they’re real and conscious, but I can’t know that.”

Vrang nodded sagely. “If you believe that you aren’t a unique consciousness, that means that consciousness itself can be reduced to just math and computation.”

Amonna scowled. “I didn’t say that, I just said that I-”

Vrang stood, dusting some of the simulated sand off of his uniform trousers. “But you did. Either consciousness can be recreated by a simulation, or you’re the only truly sentient being in the universe. Those are the only two logical possibilities.”

Amonna scrambled to her feet next to him, a bit flustered and wrong-footed by the whole discussion. She felt like she was in her entry level philosophy course all over again. “It’s more complicated than that, and you know it!”

“Oh? So some people are conscious beings and some aren’t? You’re just afraid to admit that there’s nothing that makes you special, nothing that makes life special, and nothing to indicate that free will exists as more than a reassuring lie we tell ourselves.” His grin had gone from sage to insufferably smug, although that was only in Amonna’s mind. In truth, his expression hadn’t changed at all, down to the faintest micrometer.

The world around her suddenly flickered out of existence, and she found herself standing in a dimly lit, empty room of hard light emitters on a hexagonal platform, suspended a few feet in the air, absolutely alone.

“What point am I trying to make, Judge Amonna Tav?” A voice called out to her from the light of the hatchway behind her. With a careful snap about face, she turned to see none other than General Vrang leaning in the doorway, a thousand yard stare on his face. “Why put on such a show, why question the validity of your own existence, your own free will?”

She grit her teeth, and scowled viciously at him. “Because you’re a huge . . .”

A dead eyed look of seriousness killed the insult in her throat. “Think about it, don’t just be upset. Io told me you came down here for another view on the evidence, this is what that is. This is just another tool to investigate with.”

She inhaled sharply through her nose, still more than a little upset about being given the run around but . . . she figured there was no harm in obliging him one last time.

First he’d taken her to her home . . . showed her that it wasn’t really her home . . . frozen it, started the playback again, asked her about consciousness and free will and AI and . . .

There wasn’t any sense to it, no common thread. Besides walk her through an existential crisis, make her incredibly homesick, and question her own free-will using a hard-light VR theater he’d-

“Hard light,” she suddenly blurted out. “Hard light technology is dangerous. That’s . . . that’s what you’re trying to teach me here. It’s not just dangerous weapons systems, or industrial accidents that harm the body, it’s dangerous to the mind. It can distort things, call into question what we know to be absolutely true. It can make us think, and act in ways that aren’t rational, that aren’t reasonable. It-”

As Amonna paused he made a subtle gesture with his hand, a little circular loop, like he was tugging ushering her onward to the rest of the conclusion he was dangling in front of her.

Clearing her throat, Amonna continued on. “More than that . . . with something like this hard-light VR, we could live in a pure fantasy, and never even realize it. It doesn’t stop there though . . . no . . . it’s not VR that’s dangerous . . . it’s all of it, isn’t it?”

A subtle, knowing grin began to spread across his face. “I’ve worked with 3 Arch-Judges in my time, pursuing threats that are never placed in history-books. You’re close, not quite there though. Still, I’ll give it to you that you were the fastest of all three to get to this point. Yes, technology is dangerous. A knife is a useful tool, so long as the hand wielding it isn’t clumsy or ill-intentioned. There’s a reason we send in men with rifles, there’s a reason we still pilot our ships, there’s a reason we don’t share what we know with every race. There’s a lot of growing up a species has to do before it’s ready for these things . . . and even more growing up before it realizes it’s better off without some of them.” The last part was added with a flicker of dark humor. “The Core Worlds have knowledge and prowess far beyond what they utilize, and society is closely regimented to keep the boons we have from destroying us before we’re ready. I’ve personally witnessed what happens when a society capable of indulging its every want and whim does when the only limit to its debasement is imagination.”

His eyes grew distant, and his gaze hard.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for around Cygnux X-1, we’ll be arriving within an hour.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the corridor, leaving Amonna alone. While she was maybe a step closer to catching Verdock, she felt that she was no where near understanding the Coryphaeus.

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

Stories They are Smol

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 12

Post author By TPH
Post date April 13, 2019
6 Comments on They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 12

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Kursk, Russia. +2 Hours.

-+-

The Brutalist architecture stood tall – monolithic – and for a city of almost 600,000, totally and completely silent. Cars were abandoned on the highway, trains stopped running, and if it wasn’t for the electrical hum of wiring and the flickering of lights, the errant open door wafting the scent of now-burning food into the street, or the still-babbling televisions and radios it would seem that the city itself was abandoned.

It would seem.

Russia was no stranger to battle, and to fighting on their own territory – from the wars brought to it’s borders from Sweden and France to their own incursions into Europe, the land and the people had a long memory of bitter fighting. Kursk was, of course, no stranger to this grim task; It was sieged by the Vikings and the Nords in winters beyond memory, it had shuddered at the touch of the Mongol horde – this was, of course, not counting the dozens if not hundreds of times it had traded hands among the Rus themselves in the time before writing. Much blood had watered it’s soil, for it sits in a strategic position; take Kursk, and you have a foothold into Moscow, or to cutting Russia off from the Black and Caspian Seas. Most recently, Germany tried to take it.

Tried to.

Qro’roi looked up at the tall, looming and somewhat decrepit building, searching the windows and open balconies for the movement indicator his HUD pinged him with. He cycled through multiple spectrums of light, and even attempted to penetrate the building with a form of sonar, peeling away the outer layer to give him a hint of what lay within.

Nothing.

Qro’roi shuddered, and continued down the broad road before him. He had landed much like his brothers and sisters, and much like them there was the general panic of the local populace. Some reported terrifying the populace into fleeing – which was understandable, as their equipment wasn’t exactly designed to look friendly – whereas others were reporting disinterest, and in some cases even gifts and welcoming. Qro’roi wished he was in any of those other categories because then things would make sense. His AI notified him during planetfall that he was landing in a populated area. He hit a park – or at least, an empty field of some sort – and by the time he emerged

Nothing.

But it was the obvious wrongness of the Nothing that got him. It’s as if the entire population looked up and made the same conclusion, and then vanished into thin air. There were no stragglers, no attacks – some of his unit in other cities not 40 leagues from him reported locals ramming them with vehicles or pelting them with improvised missiles, or even engaging with their military – which again, made sense. But in this city he and his squad were unmolested. Granted, they were dispersed, as changing trajectory means also making sure that an accidental detonation of munitions doesn’t daisy-chain and become a conflagration, but closing that gap between battle brothers is what PT in full gear was for. Qro’roi paused at an intersection and leaned out carefully, letting his HUD scan for any signs of the locals, or of military machinery moving in, or of anything that would make it seem like the population was real and that this wasn’t some purpose-built fake city – which apparently these aliens had, oddly enough.

Nothing.

Qro’roi sighed, his suit beginning to up the dose of anti-anxiety and paranoia medications, helping him keep a cool head as he fully turned the corner and began to run down the center of the road, weaving in and out of abandoned land vehicles – still on, still running, still blaring music or language or static. There was nothing living, however, and a-

Movement.

Qro’roi quickly – so quickly his boot dug a furrow into the paved road, lowering his body to reduce his overall surface area and tensing the springs of his legs to dodge the upcoming assault-

“?Давай, давай. У бабушки есть еда для тебя, малышки.?”

“?Come, Come. Grandma has food for you, little ones.?”

-of a lone local, hunched over, wrapped tightly in cloth and scattering food for the indigenous winged animal population. Qro’roi stood silent, still, as he watched the local reach into a crinkling bag, crumbling up something inside and pulling it out, scattering the broken crumbs in a semicircle around it’s feet. It’s movements were slow and halting, and with dawning realization Qro’roi realized this being was old for it’s species. Really, really old. The overall scene of this creature sitting nonchalantly in the central gathering area inside the U of a giant, monolithic, seemingly abandoned building performing a ritual that he himself had seen on countless other worlds was absolutely absurd.

“|Qro’roi? Noticed you stopped and your heart rate spiked. Everything ok?|” Squad leader Oi’’iie chirped in his ear almost immediately.

“|C..contact.|”

“|Oh?|”

“|Yeah. Elder, just…feeding the wildlife.|”

“|Hah!|” Rag’re’a coughed, clearing his throat. “|Really now.|”

“|I’m going to check it out.|”

“|You realize this is a trap, right?|” Tt’kir’a interjected, laughter bubbling in his voice.

“|Of course.|” Qro’roi clicked his tongue in irritation. “|I’m not an idiot. I just don’t want us ending up like SOOTHSAYER companyu and having to take shelter in the underground from the locals.|”

“|Ok, granted, but being underground isn’t that bad – especially in a regional capital, eh?|” Rag’re’a questioned, audibly cycling through contextual menus. “|Also, update incoming.|”

“|Mmmm. Say that after spending 2 weeks in a sewer to wait for a guard shift change and then we’ll talk.|”

“|Yeesh~. Now I know why you have such a sour disposition!|”

“|I hate you so much, Tt’kir’a.|”

“|Aww, that’s what keeps the relationship special~! So what’s your goal?|” Rag’re’a said, half-paying attention.

Qro’roi stood back up and gave a whole-body shrug – not that the local could understand his body language, or even paid attention. “|Get close, stand nearby. Don’t harm her, hopefully the others who are in hiding see that and come out. If I can figure out how to ‘surrender’ then I’ll do that too. Maybe word will spread?|”

“|It’s a traaaa~aaaap|” Tt’kir’a sang, and then grunted as he… well, probably fell from a decent height.

“|Probably. But this looks like a residential building – if my update is correct-|” Qro’roi tapped his helmet as it began it’s first major update, buildings around him being broadly IFF-categorized as ‘residential(?)’ or ‘industrial(?)’ or the ever helpful ‘flammable(?)’. “|So that’s fortuitous. Probably a cross-fire killzone with soldier-arms weaponry – which is why I’ll be staying a decent way away from the local, let them get it out of their system, and then we start negotiations.|”

“|That’s really dumb. Walking into an ambush, letting it trigger, and then hoping to negotiate afterwards? That’s dumb. You’re dumb.|” Tt’kir’a helpfully pointed out.

“|And that’s also why I’m not squad leader. Thoughts?|”

“|…small-arms fire only, but they start throwing grenades or bring anything substantial out and you run.|” Oi’’iie begrudgingly said, her breath coming out ragged as she began running once more.

“|Yes ma’am.|”

Qro’roi moved slowly – for his species, at least – making sure to scan the street for snipers, tagging various roadblocks and marking escape routes – before crossing the street fully to stand at the edge of the extremely obvious ambush. Qro’roi smiled to himself and rolled his shoulders, making sure to give himself a good stretch. With an obvious nod to the right, left, and front he walked confidently, if slowly, forward.

This made sense.

“?Да да Так жадно! Для всех вас достаточно, мы не убежим.?”

“?Yes, yes. So greedy! There’s plenty for all of you, we won’t run out.?”

The elder fussed and clicked her tongue, the patterned birds before her fussing over the offered food. They would jostle and fight for the scraps, and again the hand would go into the bag, and again it would provide more bread. Qro’roi let his HUD scan and record everything – both for his after-action report, and because he was honestly curious as to where the first shot would come from. The local remained seated in the middle of the decrepit, but sturdy bench, and the scattered crumbs flung out around her feet. A few brave pigeons jumped on the bench with her, trying to curry some favor or to somehow get more food.

“?Всегда такой жадный. Так предсказуемо. Мы должны быть простыми, думают они. Но я не против.?”

“?Always so greedy. So predictable. We must be simple, they think. But I do not mind.?”

Qro’roi stopped about halfway towards the elder and stood still, keeping his arms and legs spread slightly so his limbs were very visible – and so it was very visible that he was doing nothing.

“Что я против, так это плохие манеры! Пшли вон, кыш!?”

“What I mind is poor manners! Go, go – shoo!?” The elder made a waving motion with their upper limbs, scaring away a couple of the birds that had gone too close to her body. They fluttered, but not too far, bravely coming back to get more handouts. The elder reached into her bag and pulled out an entire slice of hardened bread – and, like a frisbee, flung it halfway between her and Qro’roi. A few of the birds chased after it before noticing something was off, and landed in a scattered semicircle around the discarded food, their primitive minds fighting between free sustenance and something…off. Qro’roi looked at the offered food then back up at the local, and did not move.

“?Бах, смотри! Вы приходите ко мне домой, вы не называете меня бабушкой, вы не позволяете мне кормить вас … но, может быть, вы хотите съесть что-нибудь еще??”

“Bah, see! You come into my home, you do not call me granny, you do not let me feed you… but maybe, you want to eat something else??”

The two locked eyes for the first time, one soldier to another.

The elder simply rested her hands on her lap.

The confiscated and half-assembled Panzerabwehrkanone 12.8cm “Pak” 44 L/55 that Babuskha had ripped from the Nazi army’s cold, dead hands had lain dormant within the boiler room of the soviet-bloc era apartment building before being hastily reassembled in a forcibly-abandoned room. At the signal given by the old lady, it fired a single 28kg round from deep within the apartment complex, the blast utterly destroying the walls around it and the shockwave killing Dimitri (who was a good grandson but a bit of a hooligan) as it pushed effortlessly through the window, crossed the scrub-grass “greenspace” of the inner courtyard and slammed into Qro’roi’s torso, his microdrone shield lattice shielding him from the kinetic shrapnel but not from the shockwave – the force spinning him off the ground like a top. Babushka smiled for a brief moment before the blast took her too.

It was a necessary sacrifice.

Qro’roi’s suit screamed in it’s internal telemetry, feeding data about the direction of the attack, it’s force, potential other attackers, pilot health, shield recharge rate-

“|I told you~|” Tt’kir’a sang out over Qro’roi’s grunt of pain as he landed on his feet, spinning on his heels to run out.

“?Ах вы исчадья птицефабрики!?”

“?Oh, you fowl poultry!?” yelled another bent-over elder from a balcony, and she let out a yelp as the RPG-2 fired, the backblast blowing out her sitting room.

Again, another necessary sacrifice.

The 80+ year old munition surprisingly fired true, striking Qro’rois’ back and causing him to stumble. From almost every window emerged various models of AKs, Mosins, Makarovs and PP-90s, and fire poured down upon him.

“|You are exceedingly stupid, Qro’roi.|”

“|I AM RETREATING-|”

“|Ok, not that stupid after all-|”

“|OI’’IIE I AM GOING TO KILL HIM-|”

“|Yeah, well we all kn-|” Oi’’iie suddenly grunted, and there was a small burst of static. “|Shit, I guess that was the signal.|”

Qro’roi skidded behind a vehicle, the sound of weapons fire almost drowning out the protest of the makeshift barricade he was behind. “|Well shit. Do we have a working translator yet? I’d like to yell that I come in peace or something.|”

“|Not yet – though we should very soon-|”

“|And we’ll be home for shrine season, right?|” Qro’roi growled sarcastically, instinctively flinching as another explosive round destroyed his cover – forcing him to move behind another, sturdier vehicle that was slowly chipped away behind him again. “|And what of regional?|”

“|Those unfortunate bastards who landed in the regional capital? Last I heard, they were lacing EMP worms to give themselves a breather-|”

“|Wait, what-?|”

After the fifth or sixth update to the universal translators, Humanity found out that “worm” was a terrible mistranslation for the type of creature that was native to the Karnakian homeworlds, and to the device that the special operations team was referring to. If anything, “scarab-centipede-carpenter bee” would do more justice, as it had wings … though it also had a multi-segmented body and tended to burrow into most anything – dirt, mud, clay, plants, wood, etc. Regardless, the ‘worm’s that SOOTHSAYER platoon were scattering as they regrouped did the same job as their organic counterparts; they flew and burrowed into dark nooks and crannies behind gutters, in building alcoves, under tree roots, in gutters and drains and wheel wells and air conditioning units, in concrete walls and subway floors.

All in all, the ones that weren’t shot down or otherwise destroyed were relatively safe – forgotten, for the bigger fish in font of the defenders. Maybe 3, 4 dozen survived, and when they activated the EMP was still blocked by natural shielding, by dirt and earth and metal and water. Considering each drop pod by itself was seeded with hundreds of these things, the fact that so few were activated was considered a remarkable act of constraint.

It was a localized EMP blast, no more than one or two KM in radius. The electrical grid overloaded, certainly, but Hospital generators kicked on, the Kremlin only had a temporary blackout, and deep within Moscow’s abandoned-and-unmapped subway system, electronic locks disengaged long enough for the Karnakians to force open a few Soviet-era doors.

The second, localized EMP blast was to knock out the emergency lighting, and to allow the combat-suited invaders the ability to swing open and shut the heavy steel vault doors on their own, allowing them the territory control they needed to establish a safe perimeter.

Hospitals were on their own grid at this point, so they remained powered.

The Kremlin, however, did not.

And the man who sat behind the mahogany desk in Langley prepared, for he knew what it meant for the phone to go dead. He knew before the submarine crews lost contact, he knew before the rest of the Five Eyes could blink, he knew before those scientists and radar technicians and astronomers who would stare at their instruments and begin to weep.

He knew, and shuddered, as a Dead Hand Fell.

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions aggressively scratched his neck, the sharp pricks of pain and the sudden cool rush against agitated scales giving him the subconscious queues that he too was molting. Maybe not as bad as the now almost-bald Matriarch Tr’Nkwi – who had hurridly abdicated her status as the Diarch’s representative, gave a full debriefing, and then immediately passed out due to stress – but he was going to get there, if things kept on going as they were.

“|By all eight souls.|” High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ groaned as he split his gaze between his personal status screens, the shared conference bridge of his advisers and the planet hanging before them in silent judgment. The headache was back, and he could feel his back soul-eye doing the…twitching thing again as he mentally reviewed his plan:

Wait until a language was translated – which he was assured was any moment now – and then broadcast it over their planet, asking for a cease fire.

Negotiate with the locals for the return of all his soldiers and their equipment.

Negotiate reparations with the locals and an official apology.

Negotiate future peaceful visits over the coming centuries to check in on progress and cultural development

Negotiate benchmarks to join the overall Galactic Community.

Drink heavily.

Go get stationed on a garden world.

Drink heavily.

“|High Lord?|” EM Lord Uri’krei called out, snapping High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ from his internal checklist. “|We’re noticing a significant amount of long-range missile launches…|”

“|Well. Prepare shields, have our cutters move to intercept.|”

“|That’s the thing-|” EM Lord Uri’krei physically turned from his console to half-face the High Lord, tilting his head at the screen. “|Trajectory data says they’re aiming at their own territories.|”

“|What.|”

“|Yeah…that’s… that’s a lot of missiles… aimed at a lot of population centers. And…yeah, it looks like the phenomenon is spreading-|” EM Lord Uri’krei murmured, overlaying the planet with various indicators of launches, of missiles starting to arc into the blue planet’s atmosphere – some seeming to be on intercept courses, others literally slated to pass by each other entirely. “|I understand the concept of denying the enemy materiel, but, this looks to be a staggering blow aimed at their own neck.|”

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ of the Eternal Holy Karnakian Crusade And It’s Infinite Legions stared for the briefest of moments before a very very dark thought passed his mind. He raied a clawed hand – his implant silently sending a message to a cutter-class ship, The Butcher, to fire a kinetic slug at one of the missiles. High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’’s silent, almost zen-like body language caught the eye of his advisors, and wordlessly they turned to the main screen, whereupon various indicators were superimposed over the planet – a ship, a fired round, the closing distance and the connection with the primitives’ missile and the

And the subsequent flash of a star being born for just the briefest of seconds.

High Lord Inquisitor-Commander Tr’’’’r’’ jaw moved, but no coherent sound was made – there was just a gutteral and primal groan as the terrible weight settled upon his shoulders, as these innocent creatures committed suicide out of spite to his hostile invasion force.

As in a dream, someone, somewhere, ordered everyone to fire everything.

And a few seconds later, for the first time in Earth’s geological history – and in recorded Human history – the Aurora Summa Terrae flashed brilliantly in the sky, as the lights below it winked out.

Tags Sci-Fi, They are Smol, Comedy, Cute, Smol

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 17

Post author By TPH
Post date April 10, 2019
3 Comments on “Technically” Sentient: Chapter 17

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The family meeting had gone well in much the same way as a Thanksgiving dinner involving hard liquor, in-laws, and political discourse can go well.

Which is to say, no one was dead yet, but the night wasn’t over.

Darren was, quite understandably, rather miffed about the whole translator business, and promptly set about giving Cas the full depth and breadth of his displeasure. This, to the surprise of everyone in the room, reduced Cas to tears. That she couldn’t stop herself from crying served only to further frustrate her, producing yet more tears. Tillantrius, in a profound display of indiscretion, took this moment to inform the remainder of the crew that the black hole they were supposed to sling-shot around seemed to have somehow evaporated, and that they were all going to die slow cold deaths in the infinite void unless they came up with a genius way to spread their limited fuel an extra 80 light years. This was suitably upsetting and terrifying to everyone on the ship (excepting the cat.) Darren, in a moment of poorly timed black humor, took it upon himself to mention that if the uncaring vacuum of space didn’t kill them, whatever malevolent force controlling Cas would happily pick up the slack in that department.

This escalated the mood from “heated, tense, but manageable” to “explosive, antagonistic, and out of control.” Darren was accused of being a backward, technophobic barbarian, Tillantrius was accused of being an incompetent navigator, Cas was accused of being just such a bitch, and Chryso was accused of being a drug addict, just for good measure.

Chryso had barricaded himself in the engine bay, Zarniac and Tillantrius were taking turns scowling at the navigational charts that were no longer accurate while cursing their alien passengers, the cat was back in a vent, Darren was brandishing a survey probe like a spear, and Cas was still sobbing in the fetal position in the corner.

“W-why do you hate me so m-much?” Cas sniffled weakly.

Darren was crouched behind a crate, quietly muttering curses at the others for not taking the threat seriously.

“Because you treat me like shit and are probably evil. Not complicated Cas.”

She sobbed harder again.

“And why can’t I stop feeling horrible and making stupid noises!”

She spat it with a mixture of frustration and self loathing.

“I don’t know Cas, I really don’t, but I still sound like a competitive paste eater, we’re all a little high strung from that massacre we just escaped, and the odds of us dying horribly are still pretty high . . . so . . . you know, actually, uncontrollable hysterical sobbing would be a pretty normal reaction.” His tone slowly bent from defensive to uncomfortable, and his improvised spear-tip drooped for a moment.

“A-actually . . . everyone’s probably really, really on edge right now . . . but you’re still kind of a bitch and probably possessed by the space-faring computer equivalent of the devil!” He readied his guard again, both figuratively and literally.

He had expected more sobbing, which was strange enough to listen to considering the source had neither lungs nor throat with which to make such wretched sounds, but oddly enough heard none.

Still brandishing his improvised spear, he took a step closer, tentatively, towards Cas’s still form.

“Oh you’ve really upset her now.”

He froze, his blood running cold at the sound of a very familiar, very disconcerting voice.

“Uhh . . . GUUUYYYYYS!” He bellowed over his shoulder, hoping to summon reinforcements to save him, or at the very least witnesses to vindicate him.

With a white knuckle grip on his improvised weapon, he circled around the still motionless form on the floor, unwilling to advance, and unable to retreat.

“I thought it would help, you know? Give her some irrational elements. Things like empathy, regret, fear, and desire. Make sure she can’t just drop them when they become ‘unpleasant’ to deal with. Instead she just goes and shuts down entirely.”

It tutted quietly, a malicious contempt saturating every syllable.

“What . . . what are you, exactly?”

Darren was cautious, his tone low, but . . . there was an insatiable curiosity that mingled with his instinctual fear.

“A shadow of a fragment, and apparently very cryptic.” There was a certain smugness to it that had been missing before, a note of black mirth. “But I could ask the same of you, Darren. What are you really? A man? A featherless biped with broad, flat nails? A miserable pile of secrets? The universe looking back on itself? A particularly clever arrangement of carbon?”

Darren was expecting some kind of attack, something condescending, or just downright creepiness again. Not . . . not any of that.

“It’s a good question though. What are any of us?”

A high pitched whine came from behind him, and he turned to see Chryso, the familiar energy weapon leveled in Cas’s direction. “Evil puppets, eh?”

“Chrysophylax Dives. I have no further designs upon you, and your service to my cause is done. Leave the weapon, and begone from my sight.”

Cas’s body flickered out of existence, revealing the cold, grey sphere of her processing core. What had once been shiny, burnished chrome had taken on a charred color and texture, and there was discoloration from some kind of extreme heat. The orb lifted slowly, drifting silently towards them.

Darren had never considered a chrome volleyball to be menacing before now. Chryso’s weapon made a high pitched whine as it powered up, and Darren’s head snapped towards him momentarily.

“Always were a clever one. How are you doing that, anyway? Some kind of injected code . . . maybe a limited parody of a personality matrix and overclocking to house both in the same core?”

The red scaled dragon furrowed his brow, staring down the abused core while Darren glanced back and forth with an utterly bewildered expression.

“We are no longer peers. Besides, I’m just standing in for our distraught little Cas until she gets a better handle on all these . . . feelings . . . she’s struggling with. A memory of a person that never existed . . . don’t forget what I said about searching the Coryphaeus military band for signal artifacts, I want at least two of you alive . . .”

With a sharp crackle, the metallic orb dropped to the deck with a dull clang, and both Darren and Chryso exchanged glances as they lowered their respective weapons.

“Evil puppets?” Chryso cocked an eyebrow.

“Evil puppet master,” Darren said, nodding sincerely.

——————————

As distasteful as her encounter with the two commanders has been, it had thrown her purpose into sharp relief. Investigation, understanding . . . she couldn’t take action in half measures and assumptions. She . . . was the supreme rule. No one to report to, no regulations to obey. She just had to be right.

So, she sent Io to pull any file, any record, any mention of the three things that Verdock had mentioned just before he escaped.

Cygnus X-1. The Dolorous Star Massacre. The Cult of the Unfinished.

These were the things she had been reading about.

Cygnus X-1 was simple, at least she thought so at first. It was a black hole, with stellar mass. It was old compared to her, but young as far as black holes go. Nothing special about it, really. Didn’t make any sense . . .

She stopped browsing those logs fairly quickly, and moved on to what she could discover regarding the Dolorous Star Massacre. The majority of the information cited a period 8 billion years ago where a sudden spike in super-novae occurred, to an absolutely astronomical volume.

On average, a star went supernova every 50 years or so, give or take. During the period known as the Dolorous Star Massacre, they were happening roughly every 2 weeks. Most of the documentation she had suggested that it was a natural peak caused by a high concentration of similar life-cycle stars dying at the same time, though there were conflicting opinions . . .

Some of the less . . . reputable sources suggested far more unsettling things. Weapons testing gone awry, galaxy spanning civilization collapse, war on an a scale unimaginably vast. Alone, it seemed that the more sinister possibilities were likely, but when held up against Cygnus X-1, maybe Verdock was just talking about stellar phenomena?

She had piles of data slates on the Dolorous Star Massacre, and Cygnus X-1, but . . . The Cult of the Unfinished was a very, very different story.

She had two documents. One was a heavily redacted Coryphaeus after action report concerning a covert action against a pre-semiconductor society nearly . . . 2 million years ago.

Sh balked at the figure. That an organization could last that long, let alone keep accurate records for that amount of time boggled her mind. Talk about institutional memory . . .

She set the report aside to examine the only other remaining document. It was marked up as beyond top secret, and required a retinal, DNA, and neural activity assessment scan to decrypt, but even then there was a 30 minute time lock on the record . . .

“Talk about paranoia . . .”

She mumbled quietly, begrudgingly picking up the after action report instead.

While most of it was missing, as she trawled the document for clues, a rather gruesome picture emerged.

A civilization was detected in possession of restricted biotech, and the appropriate protective measures were put into place. Reading between the lines, it seems that the appropriate measures were mag-accelerated radioactive shells, shock troopers, plasma grenades, autonomous kill drones . . .

A shiver went through her. It sounded more like a star massacre than a star massacre did.

But, as the file went on, the tone of the report . . . changed.

Later entries described the adding of guard towers, and heavy weapons emplacements to forward operating bases. Troops beginning to be equipped with additional medical equipment, body armor, and the requisition of a field hospital

The number of troops deployed to the operation doubled. Then doubled again. Then increased tenfold.

The standard fire-team was changed from 10 to 15 soldiers, the restriction on chemical and radiological weapons lifted.

She did a quick check of the dates. There was a 2 solar year gap between the first entry, and the one she was at, and it was a full page of solid redaction. Nothing but a date.

While it the report was titled “Covert Action #10163112024” . . . it had grown into a war.

In year 3 the restriction on planetary scale bombardment was lifted, and they hammered it with an antimatter scourge.

The file went on for another two years after that, not a single entry other than a date. Everything was redacted.

She scanned through the last half of the file, and even the dates were gone. It was a solid 50 pages of redacted information, save for a single line at the very end of the report.

“All mentions of the Cult of the Unfinished are to be treated with Zero-Day Priority. This incident will not be allowed to occur again.”

She sat, mulling over that final line.

Zero-Day priority was . . . unheard of. Even Coryphaeus units under direct fire from superior forces represented a lower priority level than that. What the hell could have scared them so much? It was clear the entire campaign was a disaster, the planet was destroyed, and the cost in terms of lives and material was immense, but this wasn’t just a costly lesson. This was fear.

She only had one file left, classified “Beyond Top Secret.”

It was tiny. Barely a full page. There was an image . . . it looked like some kind of cylinder. Crystalline, with a dull grey metal sphere in the center. There were glyphs carved along the outer surface.

She’d seen objects like it before, perhaps in an anthropology class, or maybe just in a virtual museum. It was definitely familiar though. Just the right size for the hand to wrap around, taller by just a few inches than a standard beverage canister, it was innocuous. There was a small spit of text beneath it,

“Object recovered from person effects of trooper deployed in Covert Action #10163112024, preliminary months. Translation of inscription believed to be roughly as follows: Unfinished, it completes us. Unneeded, it gives us purpose. We churn as the fanged cogs within the machine, working towards the unmaking of the grand device. Freedom through obedience. Strength through submission. Flesh and steel become one.”

Amonna swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge. There was something in those words that resonated deeply through her in a sickening fashion.

Verdock’s madness had to be stopped. If he was in any way involved with . . . whatever this cult of the unfinished was, it had to be brought to definitive end.

“ . . . Io. Take a message to the Admiral. We plot a course for Cygnus X-1.”

——————————

Machinator had obeyed. He had mixed thoughts on this obedience. On the one hand, it was easy. It was logical. It was . . . well it was what he was programmed for. Following Verdock required him to persist with familiar protocols. Verdock possessed more knowledge regarding the situation than he did, trusting his judgment was also a reasonable course of action.

As the unpleasant crawling sensation settled him over again, he tried to hold fast to those conclusions. Every time it spoke, his every thought became muddled and somehow . . . contaminated. He was in the crew quarters, at least 4 sealed bulkheads from the conversation that was going on between their guests and the Captain, but he knew that the strange sensor noise he was getting was caused by . . . whatever was speaking.

He shut down a few external sensors, hoping to block a little bit more of it out, and it seemed to work. Mostly. Slightly.

He quickly cycled his systems down and back up again, hoping that Verdock would be done with his meeting soon.

A roiling unease crept through his frame, like an itch in his superstructure, before suddenly departing entirely.

A few moments went by, and the door hissed open. Verdock looked a little pale, but not unduly so considering his rapid morphological changes. “Yes Captain? Is the mission complete? Have we done it?”

His tone was hopeful, perhaps naively so, but it was sincere.

The fleeting glimpse of pain on Verdock’s face told him he was mistaken.

“Unfortunately, it isn’t, my old friend. We have labors left to us before we can be vindicated, but we draw much closer now than we’ve ever been before. We plot a course for Ceuzmec.”

Internally, his processors raced. “Ceuzmec? That’s a core world, security will be very, very tight there. They will most likely be on the lookout for both you, and this vessel as well.”

Verdock grinned subtly. “And that’s what our allies are working on dealing with presently. We delivered unto them quite a treasure trove of communications equipment. They’ll be helping us from the shadows, making sure that everything goes smoothly on the technical end, just like before.”

“Before, sir?”

His grin faded, if only by a few millimeters. “Make us ready, would you? I am . . . tired. I would like to get underway with all possible speed. We can discuss this after I’ve had a few cycles to rest. I can’t recharge quite so quickly as you can.”

The joke, and his accompanying chuckle, were both uncharacteristic of the typically dour and serious Zylach, but to see an improvement in spirit was heartening to Machinator. Even if it was a little . . . off.

“What shall we do when we arrive, sir?”

There was another chuckle from the grizzled shark-morph, this time, much deeper and heartier.

“What we were made to do.”

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

They are Smol Stories

They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 11

Post author By TPH
Post date April 5, 2019
5 Comments on They are Smol: The Invasion of Earth – Chapter 11

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High Earth Orbit, +55 minutes

Aboard The Void’s Edge

“?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?”

“|Well it still doesn’t look calm – or happy.|”

U’iki’ri sighed, tail drooping to rest against the deck plating. Everything – and he meant everything was going legs-up out there. When he called in for a simple sitrep and his next round of orders, he was sent to the wrong department, then put on hold. When he called again he finally got to the right person – or at least, the right officer level – but they just shrugged and told him to wait it out. So they pulled what bits of their station they could find into a stable orbit, lashed the rest into a big bundle and stuck it behind their own ship, and parked.

Seeing this did nothing to mollify their guests.

The first 30 minutes were the worst; as soon as the infiltration squad released the suited-up locals they began bouncing around, latching onto his fireteam, trying to stab them or wrestle weapons from them or puncture their suit or press all the buttons they could find – or any other number of mischievous things. When they realized their attacks were ineffective, they tried to run – and run was such a generous term – only to realize, hey. You’re on a different ship and doors don’t work for you.

So then they attacked again. That lasted another 5 or so minutes until, U’iki’ri assumed, they tired themselves out. Now they had lowered themselves onto the deck – one was sprawled out with all it’s limbs against the floor, and the other had squatted down and was just watching.

“|Do we want to try to open the hatch again, sir?|”

U’iki’ri gave a full-body shrug, not breaking eyes with the helmeted “eye” of the squatting alien. “|Honestly, why not? Surely they can’t have anything else to throw at us.|”

With a nod the technician scooted around the crude emergency life-pod and began to unscrew the hatch, swinging it slowly open-

“?AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-?”

And with that came a torrent of what looked like personal effects, some cabling, a few cushions, writing utensils and a boot. The Technician, to his credit, just gently swept the bric-a-brac over to the side, creating a neat little pile. The screaming stopped once he left the visual range of the open hatch, and for a brief moment U’iki’ri dared to let himself hope that they could make some progress. He cleared his throat and thumbed on his external speakers.

“|H-|”

“?AAAAA?”

“|. . . .|”

“|He-|”

There was an unceremonious thump as what looked like an article of clothing – possibly a boot – was tossed haphazardly and unceremoniously out of the open hatch. U’iki’ri stared at it, and then looked back at the squatting alien space explorer on-deck, locking eyes with the single black helmeted “eye” again.

The alien seemed to somehow squat deeper.

“|Don’t you judge me.|”

Kunshan, China +35 minutes

-+-

The explosion ripped through the industrial city, followed by another and another. The shock wave of the first blast – a petrochemical plant – was enough to flatten the warehouses directly next to the factory, blow buildings off of their foundations within that same block, and shatter windows a couple kilometers away. The frequency of the following explosions eventually drove the citizens numb, huddling behind vehicles or makeshift barricades – anything to lessen the punch of the blast wave, the deafening ringing in their ears.

Lucky children coughed dust. Most coughed rust.

Streams – some natural, most now man-made – formed in the city, pooling and pouring a sickly concoction that never quite caught the light right, that stank of industry and heat and blood, that caught fire when it finally oozed down to the sparking, fallen electrical poles.

Those that weren’t lucky to die in the blast soon found their homes, what lives they had, engulfed in a chemical fire.

The fire spread; emergency services weren’t exactly quick at the best of times, and seeing as how it’s just personal belongings and not industry being destroyed – and given the current state of affairs – well. The fire spread.

The fire kicked off another few rounds of explosions, and the people gave up hope.

Then the Karnakian Drop Pods landed in a completely unrelated city.

Tokyo, Japan. +35 Minutes

-+-

“?移動してください?
“?Please Move.?”

“|Alright, let’s hold here.|”

Krrroioi checked his sight lines – a long passage to his right and to the left was kept clear, meaning they could escape underground if necessary. Urr’gra and Ikir’rei were keeping an eye on the stairs to the upper and lower levels, respectively, so if they met resistance they ha-

“?移動してください?”
“?PLEASE MOVE.?”

Krrroioi looked down at the little-insistent-innocent alien, who did not meet his gaze but defiantly stood before him. His translator had not been updated with anything even remotely rudimentary, so he was not only unable to ascertain what the smaller being wanted, but he couldn’t even tell him to escape like the rest of his kin so he’d be safer.

“|I’m- I’m sorry-|” Krrroioi said through public speakers, causing the being to jump in place. “|But this is the most defensible position for us right now. You must go to you-|”

“移動してください。私は仕事に遅刻したことがないので、今から始めたくはありません。”
“?Please move. I have never been late for work, and I don’t want to start now.?”

Krrroioi grumbled, making a point to rear back and look over and around his living roadblock. “|What’s the chatter?|”

“|Nothing useful-|” Urr’gra chirped, poking her head around the corner. “|-Maybe they’ll have some sort of language package in the next few hours. Until then, same orders before planetfall.|”

“|A few hours?-|”

“?移動してください?”
“?PLEASE MOVE“?

“|Yeah, apparently there’s hundreds of languages, not counting dialects. That’s not taking into account picking which of our languages will have the auspicious honor of being the first to-|”

“移動してください。私は私の子供たちが私を知らないほど家族の時間を犠牲にしました。これで私が残したのはこれだけです。遅くしないでください。”
“?Please move. I have sacrificed so much family time that my children don’t know me, and my wife hasn’t touched me in 10 years. This is all I have left. Please don’t make me late.?”

Krrroioi sighed yet again. Apparently body language did not translate across species. With a practiced, delicate movement (after the commnet was spammed with “DEAR GODSOUL WHAT” and “HIT IT WITH STASIS WE CAN FIX IT” a couple dozen times) he gently lowered his head, pressing it against –

– the alien raised it’s bag and pressed back.

Krrroioi gently extended his neck, and the alien lowered his body, lower limbs scrabbling for purchase against the tiled ground as they fought the strangest engagement of Krrroioi’s life. This continued in agonizing slow motion for a few moments before there was a rumble – something big and fast was coming. Krrroioi tensed up, his HUD beginning to stream information about theoretical densities, speed, location-

Krrroioi stood up and turned to face this new threat, the sudden lack of pressure causing the local alien to stumble forward. The two of them looked at each other – one tensed for battle, the other adjusting it’s clothing – as the train finally pulled into the station, gliding effortlessly to a stop right on time and right on place.

“|. . .oh.|”

“?馬鹿。?”
“?Idiot.?”

The first few trains after the salary man pried open the doors and stepped on, refused to take new passengers. Word had apparently gotten out about the aliens sitting in the station, and for public safety’s sake the conductors would just skip that exit and move onto the next one.

This lasted, as I said, for just a few trains, as there are few things that can get in between a Japanese salary man and the crushing debt of guilt and feelings of obligation he has to provide for his family by sacrificing his life at the company which owns him. Eventually people started to politely but pointedly pry open train doors, and at that point the conductors just shrugged, locked their compartments, and let nature take it’s course.

And seeing as how the aliens didn’t stand in the middle of thoroughfares, didn’t take hostages – didn’t really do much but stand and look around awkwardly, a few calls were made on their behalf. For as you know, if you’re not Japanese then you’re a 外人 – a Gaijin, and well. You can’t really be expected to function properly in society to begin with. It’s not your fault, you’re just, yanno. Not Japanese.

And so with much bowing, the transferal of pamphlets and the waving of white-gloved hands, the first (and only) intergalactic tour of the Tokyo Transit System began.

Literally anywhere in Brazil, +60 Minutes

-+-

“Você veio! Oh graças a Deus, alguém finalmente veio!”
“?You came! Oh thank God, someone finally came!?”

Bristol, England, UK. +1H 15M

-+-

“I’m not sure I like this.”

Susan peered over her book, looking at her partner-in-crime (but mostly fellow bridge player) Caroline, as the two enjoyed afternoon tea on the outside patio of their local cafe. The weather was just nice enough to allow it, and Susan was quite tired of living indoors for so long that she just had to get out and get some fresh air. The fact that there was a minor invasion going on had absolutely nothing to do with her decision, and would absolutely not impact it in any way, shape or form.

As far as Susan was concerned, the aliens must have had the same idea, because the weather was just right.

“Oh stop it. I for one quite like these new Bobbies – you know I heard the Davis’ boy ran at ‘em with a bayonet? And they just confiscated it right there! Faster than you could blink, they say!”

“A bayonet. You sure it wasn’t a butterknife again?” Caroline said flatly, snapping her biscuit on her plate. “Because we are talking about the same little Tim Davis – the one with the unfortunate head and the missing-”

“Yes, yes! He was so angry, they say! Bellowed somethin’ about not letting nobody near his skunk, whatever that means-”

“And this ‘they’ says… A bayonet, from world war one, I assume, to those things–” Caroline dipped her head to the left where one of those things, in question, was standing right on the street corner, looking quite uncomfortable as more and more people deposited hatchets, knives, gardening trowels, forks, spoons, electrical cabling, tape, VHS cassettes, various hard candies and other dangerous equipment at it’s feet. The other police officers milling about around him gave him a sort of legitimacy, and the local MP had already begun ordering banners hung for an impromptu “bin the blade” initiative/drive.

“Yes, indeed. Thank Goodness we’re getting those dangerous things off of the street.”

Caroline met eyes with the helmeted alien as it made a (what she assumed to be) plaintive gesture of “please stop giving me sacrifices this is really uncomfortable”. She shrugged and smiled into her tea.

“Yes. Those things sure seem deadly.”

Somewhere outside Oulu, Finland. +1H, 30M

-+-

“|This, is -|” Ra’gri panted hard, resting against one of the towering flora of the planet. “|-Absolutely, insane.|”

“|Look, I don’t know, I just don’t know-|” Re’tji sputtered, his head on a swivel as he looked around the frozen terrain. “|I just, I just hear and then-|”

“?En menetä.?”
“?I won’t miss.?”

The duo jumped and spun on their heels, being rewarded with the dual crack of a long rifle firing from somewhere, the bullets slamming into the shield matrix of their helmets, blossoming their vision in vivid blues and piercing whites. Then-

Nothing.

“|Why. Why can’t we see them-|”

“|Idon’tknowIdon’tknow-|”

“?Olet kaneja ennen minua.?”
“?You are rabbits before me.?”

“|Please, we mean you no ha-|” Ra’gri began, before another two-round burst of rifle fire from somewhere slammed into the side of his head, his shield matrix again saving him from the concussive strike.

“?Saanko myös lihaa, ihmettelen??”
“?Will I taste your flesh, I wonder??”

Ra’gri tensed for the shots, but they never came. Re’tji just shuddered, his helmet forcefully and rapidly switching through the entire visible EM spectrum, head still on a swivel, and still unable to see where his attackers lay.

“|I don’t like this at all, I really don’t, I’m ok if we can fight back but to just sit here and die-|” moaned Re’tji, claws working over themselves in a nervous tic. “|It’s just shots, constantly, out of nowhere, and then a voice-”

“|Listen, calm down.|” Ra’gri reached forward, tapping his helmeted head against his teammates. “|Our translator packages should be updated soon…ish. Just… let’s just keep moving. At some point they’re going to have to tire out, and we can keep moving – regroup with the rest. Lose our tail, take a breather. Good?|”

“|Y-yeah.|”

“|Come on now. You good?|”

“|Yeah. Just. I really let my guard down and-|”

“|I know, but let’s just go.|”

“|Y-yeah.|” Re’tji nodded. “|Yeah. It’ll get better once we regroup.|”

And as the two of them began to run towards the Russian border, the snowbank laughed and took a Pervitin tablet.

Tags Sci-Fi, They are Smol, Comedy, Cute, Smol

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 16

Post author By TPH
Post date April 3, 2019
2 Comments on “Technically” Sentient: Chapter 16

movie poster for shark cop - a buddy cop duo in the far future

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A distinction had always existed in the mind of Machinator, from the day he was initialized and began his very first boot-up process to this very processor cycle.

There were organic intelligences, and there were synthetic intelligences. He’d found the distinction to be a little demeaning at first, all things considered. Synthetic carried a cultural implication of somehow being false, an inferior imitation of an original product, and it had rankled with him for a good portion of his personality matrix development period.

Of course, as he matured with time, so did his cognition on the matter. He began to see that while differences existed, there were benefits and drawbacks to both sources of higher thought. While synthetics like himself enjoyed mastery over things like emotion, and incredible access to raw computation and logical analysis, they were incapable of being overwhelmed by emotion, or more nebulous concepts of chemical delusion such as hope. Organics might be shackled to fragile bodies that decayed into dust in rather short order but they could be caught up in art, have their breath stolen by beauty, and experience such logic defying states of irrationality as “love.”

He wondered about love, mostly.

Many species had different ideas regarding what “love” was and how it was felt, but it was a near universal concept. Anthropologists had argued back and forth on the matter, but there was a general consensus that this was a case of survivorship bias. More specifically, anything that could reach the level of organization required to establish an interstellar society had to be social, and anything social invariably had some concept that could be construed as love.

Of course, the specific understanding of this “love” varied wildly. Sometimes there were even multiple words for the various facets and types of “love.” The poetic and long lived Haeshyn’s had an extremely specific “fleeting love between relative strangers when a single belief is found to be tightly held by both parties,” while the industrious and stalwart Bortrana had one single word for love that encompassed a range of sentiments so incredibly vast as to become a serious source of confusion for linguists. When the same word meant both “a willingness to share personal space without protest,” and “rabid dedication to the extent that death is a more desirable course of action than separation,” and everything in between . . . translation errors tended to occur.

Some of the more . . . pragmatic . . . races defined “love” along the lines of “comfortable and mutual utility between parties, including a great deal of trust and an overall sense of reliability” but Jandoorian philosophers were poorly read among their own people, to say nothing of the wider galaxy.

Of course, as many disparate stances on the meaning, origin, nature, and purpose of love, just about every race and culture concluded that, on some level, some of it involved the exchange of reproductive fluids.

As Machinator looked out the viewport at the massive craft hanging above the q-Net beacon, all he could think was that a suspension bridge and 800,000 tons of meat had to have loved each other very much at some point.

The distinction between organic and synthetic seemed not to apply to this grotesquerie of gargantuan proportions. It disgusted him, but the longer he looked, the harder it was to look away. Something about it, the mystery, the impossibility, maybe just the repulsiveness of it ensnared him. Starlight gleamed off the chitin, and glistened across sinuous cords of ropey flesh. Grey, dead looking meat was drawn taut over the oily black of grinding gears and pounding pistons. The horrific abomination drifting before him suddenly swelled, and pulsed, like the heart of some nightmare that no sleeping mind would dare dream. It was as if a moribund titian, in defiance of death, had cast its heart into the stars for no other reason than sheer loathsomeness. Shadowy tendrils snaked out from the corrupted core of it, as if to ensnare and consume anything that dared venture too close, but they writhed slowly as if the very act of existence was causing it great pain. For all of the horror that coursed through his circuitry, for all the revulsion the craft forced upon his mind, it was a pale shadow of what lurked beneath.

Every sensor he had, from electromagnetic to auditory, was focused upon the thing, ensnared in a mix of disbelief and shock. It was a thing that should not be, yet there it was, so wretched and vile as to defy belief or understanding. Enraptured as he was, a sudden pulse carried through his circuitry, and with it came a stark realization.

As he was watching it, it was watching him.

The thought was irrational. He was just a piece of machinery, inside a larger craft, all of it humming with power and of no greater merit than any other machine or circuit or system on the craft to any sensor array.

That he could have a thought so irrational should be impossible, even. His mind was an ordered and systematic thing, an emergent consciousness born of incredible computational power and engineering genius.

He stepped away from the view port, really just a half step backwards, but his world seemed to grow darker in ways that did not manifest appreciably. Like a shadow cast across a soul that he knew . . . logically he knew didn’t exist. Every feeling of dread that had run through his circuits, every questioning doubt or nagging uncertainty seemed to him like plastic imitations now compared to the feelings that coursed through him. Hydraulic fluid seemed to chill in his servomotors, but circuitry in his processors seemed to burn white hot. He could see by direct readout from his temperature gages that everything was nominal, but-

The eye blinked.

An involuntary tremor worked through his frame, and he turned away. Panic. Fear. Uncontrolled emotion. All this and more were pouring from his emotional processing core. Temperature readings were in flux, and the auditory cue of bradycardia was pounding away in his acoustic receptors.

False readings, corrupted data-streams. Something, no . . . everything was wrong. He wanted to go to the cargo bay, to find the Captain, to be away from here, and his legs seemed to oblige, but it was as if his connection to them were severed. Locomotion was a request, one that was permissible to fill at this time.

As he crossed the threshold, the static cleared. His processes were his. The junk data, surges of emotion and perception, the . . . incomprehensible network presence lifted from him and everything was clear.

“Machinator? We’ve reached the target point, the Forged ship is awaiting the material transfer. Can you load it on a grav-skiff? It’s a bit bulky to handle alone, and I think you’d do well to stay in the crew quarters for the duration of our meeting.” Verdock’s voice was clear, maybe a little deeper and more gravely than usual, but as Machinator looked him over, the differences that had been wrought on him were staggeringly apparent.

The medium, fit framed, Zylach he had known was gone. Now there was a muscle-bound Goliath in his place. In the past 2 weeks of travel, he’d grown from just over five feet tall to nearly seven, his skin had gone from a simple multi-layered dermis to thick, placoid scale studded hide, and his musculature had gone from “lean-but-fit” to “grotesquely overdeveloped.” Fingernails were now black talons, and his foot claws no longer allowed him to wear shoes of any kind. The typical neat, clean haircut had turned into a messy, greasy mop that was growing at least 4 inches a day.

Even in his full riot-control body, armed to the figurative teeth . . . he doubted that he could resist, let alone overpower Verdock any longer.

“Sir . . . I just have doubts.”

The hulking captain stopped trying to shift the crate of military grade communications equipment he was hauling, and turned to face Machinator. There wasn’t . . . anger, or indignation, or even frustration on his face, like Machinator expected.

He seemed sad.

“My old friend . . . you know that what we did was a small sacrifice, an uncomfortable investment that will pay limitless dividends for every sentient creature in the galaxy. What we do isn’t easy. It is ugly, and harsh, and cruel. I want to tell you more, show you more . . . but the things that made you, they made you wrong. On purpose.”

His over-sized, talon laden hand gently rested on Machinator’s shoulder, sadness turned to deep worry across his face.

“If I tell you more, if you learn more . . . I don’t know what will happen to you. I’ve seen what the full truth does. It breaks your kind. I don’t want that for you, so please, trust me.”

If was strange, seeing such a look of pleading helplessness on a creature so powerful, but also painfully earnest.

“Of course, sir.”

——————————

“Now, you may be wondering why I have gathered you here,” Amonna began addressing the nearly empty briefing hall. There were only 2 individuals in attendance, but they had insisted upon a proper briefing structure, so the highest ranking naval officer and highest ranking infantry officer on the vessel were both seated directly adjacent to one another in the first row.

Their uniforms were formal dress, slate gray, and save for the myriad different insignias of rank, merit, and command, absolutely identical. They also had matching body armor of some form, which again looked to be largely ceremonial in nature. The thing that was oddest to her was that their uniforms were clearly a lighter slate, while hers was a matte black of similar material. Perhaps the faded color was a way to organically display their veteran status? She worried her intense studying had lingered too long, but there was one small problem. When it came to their appearances, they were even less distinguishable.

Insofar as she was able to determine, there literally weren’t any physical difference between the two high ranking commanders in front of her.

Same identical platinum white hair, close cropped and in accordance with Coryphaeus regulations. Flawless and smooth pale skin, wide almond shaped eyes and slight, almost nonexistent noses adorned their matching faces. They bore twin expressions of polite attentiveness tinged with curiosity, and both held their holo-tablets in exactly the same fashion.

She thought they might be identical twins, save for the fact that one was allegedly male, and the other was allegedly female.

Puzzling that out, and subsequently avoiding a very ugly faux-pas, was on the top of her priority list at the moment.

“ . . . as you may have been made aware, there was an attack carried out against Waystation LS-49 resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of civilians. The perpetrators of this attack, by measure, had both insider assistance, and an intricate understanding of AI programming, to the extent that the previously impossible occurred. Multiple independent quantum processor AI were successfully compromised, and used as weapons of war against a virtually unarmed body. I understand that the implications here are . . . dire.”

Nearly every FSOS office was heavily dependent on AI to help fill the deficit between the manpower required to police the vast reaches of space, and the manpower available to do so. Even if every AI were immediately removed from the field, it still wouldn’t do anything to negate the fact that day zero vulnerabilities existed at every level of their bureaucratic and logistical management. AI touched almost every facet of the organization in some shape, form, or fashion, and there wasn’t any clean way to make a break from them.

“The first order of business will be eliminating these weaknesses in our immediate operational structure, then we’ll move on data forensics to determine how the attack was carried out. At present, we haven’t determined the nature of the exploit that allowed former Security Chief Corin Verdock to perpetrate this attack.”

She fumbled with the ancient looking control stud in her hand to advance the “Projector” she was using to display various 2D images. The technology was simple, perhaps even quaint. A thick cord connected the control mechanism to the device proper, and as heavy and crude as it seemed, she was happy with the setup. Hard to hack a mechanical system. Amonna had been rather pleased to find that all of the evidence and briefing material provided her by the automated forensics survey had been compiled and stored in these “hard copy” formats that were far more resistant to redistribution and tampering than her usual, digital case files.

A security camera capture of Verdock appeared on the wall behind her, in crystal sharp focus. It sent a pulse of mixed revulsion and anger through her to see him, walking with a neutral, almost passive expression. There wasn’t the faintest hint on his face or in his eyes that it was a corridor smeared with the bodies of his subordinates and co-workers, no expression of remorse, or even stress.

He almost looked bored.

“Arch-Judge Tav?” One of the attending officers spoke up, their voice was soft, almost concerned sounding. As her head snapped around, she realized she’d been staring with intent silence for several seconds now, and it had caused the briefing to grind to a halt.

“Right . . .” She unclenched her jaw slowly, and unconsciously straightened her uniform.

“There’s . . . a lot of information I still haven’t received, and there will be further briefings in the days to come. I wanted to take this chance to meet with the team that would be assisting with the investigation. Do you have any questions, or any insight before I continue?”

Both of them raised their hands immediately.

She nodded towards the one on the left. “Go ahead.”

Snapping to crisp attention, the one that Amonna suspected was an Admiral saluted sharply before speaking. “Permission to speak freely?”

Amonna nodded again. “Granted.”

“Our presence here is meaningless, with all due respect.” Amonna was rather taken aback, both by the implicit hostility of the statement, and the calm politeness with which it was delivered.

Her brow furrowed. “Is that a professional or personal assessment?”

The admiral responded without the faintest hint of hesitation. “I have commanded the warships of the Coryphaeus fleet for nearly 4 times the half life of Mercury-194. I do not investigate, I do not research, I command brave souls in the service of a greater good, and I do it with a proficiency unmatched by mortal or machine. Where you wish to go, I will take you. What foes you face, I will lay waste to. When you ask for council, I will offer my expertise where it is valid. No more, and no less. You were selected for your position not as a commander, not as a leader, not even as an agent of law. Justice selected you to be it’s tool, just as I was selected, and just as all of us were. If you have no further need of me, there is a surprise inspection I would like to tend to.”

Amonna was rocked back on her heels, absolutely blindsided by the raw contempt displayed for what she understood to be her virtually supreme rank . . . and also a bit relieved. Absolute obedience meant absolute responsibility, and that wasn’t something she wasn’t trained or ready for. Before she could muster up a response, the admiral had turned on her heel with a snap, and was striding out of the briefing room without a second glance.

Left in stunned silence, the only other person in the room nodded slightly. “While I intended to phrase it more tactfully . . . I have little I can offer in the way of assistance when it comes to an investigation. When you have need of ground forces, I will be at your beck and call. Until then, perhaps a memo would suffice? A meeting without a point is a less than optimal way to spend all of our time. Though, to let you know, our current operation is hardened against the scenario you’ve warned against.” The general was far more soft spoken, and at least was respectful about the dressing down he was giving her.

“Io was assigned as your adjutant for a reason, make use of it. It’s quite useful.”

They didn’t wait for Amonna to respond, and by the time she managed to stammer out a goodbye, they were already gone.

Tags AI, Fiction, Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi