Category: Technically Sentient

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 18

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.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 17

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.”

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 16

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

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.



Categories
Stories Technically Sentient

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 15

“FAMILY MEETING! CARGO HOLD! RIGHT NOW!” Darren pounded the metal tray against the walls as he trudged from the supply closet up towards the bridge, making damned certain that everyone could hear him.

“Darren? What’s going on?” Cas mumbled groggily, shuffling along behind him.

“Why do I feel like someone dumped a recording of cosmic radiation into my memory indexing . . .”

Darren rounded on her, brandishing the tray like a shield. “No talking, and no electrocuting, not until the family meeting is over.”

She was puzzled by his defensive, almost fearful stance and tone, but chalked it up to just another human cultural quirk. Cognitive functions too fuzzy to dedicate any more processing cycles to it, she awkwardly hobbled down to the largest single room in the ship, the cargo bay.

Taking a seat on one of the smaller crates, she held her head in her hands as she struggled to work out why everything seemed so . . . fuzzy. Her insides felt . . . bad. Sick? Was this what sick was like? It was a non-specific, full body sense of malaise that worked its way up from the tips of her virtual toes to the crown of her digital scalp.

A shiver worked through her as Chryso and Tilantrius walked in, both wearing matching puzzled expressions.

Tilantrius waved to her as he found a small folding chair wedged between two crates of autonomous signal repeaters. Dragging it out, he set it up just across from her, his brow furrowed in an expression of mixed frustration and confusion. “What in the fundamental laws of physics is he blubbering about?”

Chryso just shrugged and turned to face Cas, propping himself up against the same crate she was sitting on.

She thought about it a moment, running through the limited idiomatic dictionary she had for the dialect of Earthling that Darren spoke.

“Family meeting . . . umm . . . “ Her mind still felt foggy and slow. She remembered shutting down to reboot . . . and then nothing. There was massive gap from shutting down to Darren looking like he was going to bash her hard-light skull in with a metal tray.

That didn’t makes sense. She wasn’t . . . exactly certain how this worked, but she had a strange, hot, uncomfortable sensation somewhere between her midriff and her throat. Like she’d done something wrong, like Darren wasn’t just being a ‘weird human.’

Guilt. For what, she had no idea.

His look of fear just gnawed at her, a prickling that was competing with the guilt and confusion for “worst active sensation.” She’d never felt like this before, but somehow his hurt and fear were hers too.

She unconsciously hugged herself, trying to make it go away, hoping there was some hidden button on her body that would make all these feelings stop. They weren’t hers, they didn’t belong there, and she didn’t want them.

“Family meeting, an informal arrangement between brood-mates and genetically similar specimens, typically consisting of at least a 20% genetic similarity, though adoptive members can be included in this unit. Typically for the discussion of matters concerning a specific member of the family, or the good of the family as a whole.”

The answer just sort of bubbled out of her uncontrolled. It . . . seemed accurate. Enough. Probably.

“So, wait, you’re saying that he’s adopted us into his . . . pack unit or something?” Chryso stared incredulously at Cas, who struggled to form a cohesive answer.

“I think . . . I think it’s more like he thinks we’ve adopted him.” Cas mumbled, massaging her temples with her fingertips. She couldn’t feel it, and there was no real effect to the gesture, but it was just another one of those quirks that had started to crop up. She couldn’t control them, and couldn’t stop them.

All Tilantrius could do was chuckle. “Strange times make for strange company. But what’s all this about then?”

Darren appeared, Zarn close behind looking like he was straight out of a propaganda poster, and not the patriotic kind. He was leaning heavily on his prosthetic, staggering almost drunkenly from Chryso’s mix of . . . pharmaceutical aides. A thick, angry scar was drawn over his brow and under a crude cloth patch. The wound was still fresh and glistened with a mix of salves to help fight infection and stave off the pain. He was indeed picturesque, but it was the kind of picture that showed the costs and horrors of war.

His single eye scanned the entire group, one by one. Measuring them. Sizing them up. Glowering at them.

Or at least that’s what it looked like. In reality the medications were still in full effect, the scowl was from the concentration required to stay standing, and the intensity was a function of him looking for the cat.

The alternating thunk and scrape of his prosthetic as he struggled towards the assembled group quieted them all, until he finally found a perch on a case of tungsten nails used to secure survey equipment to stone.

Darren cleared his throat, translator crackling, and began a long winded ramble effectively summed up by his translator in a few short bursts.

“Cas have scary evil floating puppet sickness. Also ouch, my face.”

A very confused silence fell on the group as Darren tried to figure out why no one was reacting, and why everyone else tried to figure out what Darren wanted them to be reacting to.

Cas spoke up first, head still resting in both her hands. “ . . . We really need to get you a better translator. Because that . . . that is not even close to what you just said.”

——————————

Amonna looked over her reflection in the mirror. Hair was an unkempt, oily mess. Cheeks were thinner, paler, no hint of blue in them. Her gills glistened subtly, and when she closed her eyes she could hear the wheezing rasp of her tortured lungs.

It had been about two days since they’d pulled her out of the wreck. Two days since she met Justice. Usually AI chose a gender after a certain level of development – if they intended to interact with organic intelligence, that was. It was a little thing that added warmth and depth to their person, while also helping establish a sense of ‘normality.’ Even if they defied traditional gender roles, it at least made it easier to place them into a neat mental box for the purposes of understanding.

She splashed a bit of water on her face before steadying herself against the burnished steel of the metal sink.

Justice wasn’t like other AI. It was singular. A thing, not a personality. It spoke with purpose and will, but not identity. It was both more and less than any AI drone, aide, or assistant she’d ever encountered. It had a cold indifference that made her feel vanishingly insignificant, like an insect under glass.

She glanced down at her body, shoulders drooping. She’d wasted away in that little coffin. Starved for calories and largely motionless, much of her physical power was gone, and so was her stamina. Though her hair had stopped falling out, she still looked and felt powerless.

She closed her eyes. It hurt to directly perceive herself at the moment. Sole survivor. Wasted away. Her dreams had been unpleasant as of late, to say the least.

Ironically, for as helpless as she felt, she’d never been in a position of greater power.

Arch-Judge, she’d been titled. It was . . . something her translator struggled with. It seemed to be idiomatic, but in a much older language. Arch-Judge was as close as the software could approximate. She’d read through the debug file, it was something mixed between “Internal Affairs Detective,” “Judge,” and “Executor.”

Everyone saluted her now, which was . . . interesting.

Prying herself away from the sink, she quietly paced across her rather spacious new cabin towards the wardrobe. She’d been told it was a warship, but it didn’t feel like one. It was an odd and mismatched amalgam of things. Her quarters were larger than any she’d stayed in before, but they felt odd. Everything about it seemed to be an addition on top of a repair on top of a modification.

The inclusion of both a shower and bath large enough for her to soak in were nice touches, ones she had made liberal use of her first day recovering, but they didn’t match each other. The tub was big enough for three of her, but the shower she had to crouch in.

In a normal vessel, there’d be central storage for water, and central “waste recycling and disposal.” Not so on this vessel. While she couldn’t tell where waste water ran off to, she could tell that all of the water she was using was running from a massive bronze colored tank crudely welded to the wall. It was gravity feed, and there didn’t seem to be a way to replenish the supply, it was just there. 

She began pulling on the seemingly archaic uniform they’d provided her. She’d laid it out before her shower, having retrieved it from a carved stone wardrobe that had been inlaid with some kind of white crystal. It boggled her mind just how many disparate elements her quarters possessed . . .


That madness aside, the uniform fit well enough. It was a sleek black number with too many layers and an absurd number of fasteners, she’d initially thought it ridiculous. Nevertheless, she had to admit . . . it did grant her presence, to say the least. There was no logic to the composite armor plate she wore over her chest, nor to the skin-tight bodysuit that went under it, or the dozen other plates that seemed to cover every other place that might make her less hydrodynamic in water. She looked like she was gearing up for a high risk warrant execution.

She took one last look around her quarters, and with a heavy sigh, opened the door to face the gleaming monstrosity that had become her constant companion. Another “it,” she had discovered. Io was a strange mixture of terrifying presence and demure gentleness that consistently unnerved her. It introduced itself as a “micro-mechanical non-sentient simulacrum of intelligence,” and escorted her to her quarters from the hangar she’d been left it.

Physically, it was a ten foot tall shimmering chrome goliath whose skin seemed to shift and flow before her very eyes while holding perfect and unnatural stillness in the rest of its form. Abstract, but unnaturally geometric limbs grew out of a hard edged, octahedron shaped torso, propelling the massive thing along with at least a dozen of these whip-like manipulator tendrils.

It looked like a freaky chrome box with too many tentacles, and she hated it. It insisted it wasn’t actually intelligent, claiming it had no sense of self, and was simply an incredibly complex machine that only responded to external stimuli. No AI bluebox. No processing cores. No network presence, nothing to hack, just plain input and output.

It loomed silently, motionless, as if staring at her without eyes.

“Morning Io.”

It remained motionless, but a soft, bass series of musical notes warbled through the air for her translator to convert. It struggled momentarily, something that she had never encountered with any other language, spoken or written.

“Good morning user.”

Amonna had been consistent in her “testing” of Io. She would not so quickly find herself surrounded by AI again, not without a fight. At first, she’d been certain that it was intelligent, that it was merely “playing dumb.” After all, it was clearly a machine that could walk, talk, and think.

However, as she interacted with it more, and it’s strange and sometimes nonsensical answers remained consistent, she started to believe it.

What finally convinced her was frankly a rather childish display. While holding up three fingers, she asked if it could see them. When it replied in the affirmative, that it could see all three of her fingers, she closed her fist and asked how many fingers she was previously holding up.

It couldn’t answer.


It had no memory, no sense of object permanence. It simply reacted to its environment in real time. Tasks could be initiated and carried through, but it couldn’t explain why it was doing them. When she finally asked Io what the purpose of its creation was, it barely even responded.

“I exist to make a point.”

When she pressed Io on the matter, it offered no further insight, simply reaffirming that its’ sole function was to “Make a point.”

She rapped on one of the mechanical “legs” sprouting from the core body, soft clangs echoing down the cavernous, empty corridor.

“Did you gather everyone with clearance to review the briefings I asked for?”

Another bass warble. “I have completed the requested task.”

Amonna nodded subtly, turned, and set off down the long corridor at a walking pace. Io kept perfect stride, at least a full ton of machinery moving in absolute silence along with her.

Coryphaeus. Core World military police. She’d had to do quite a bit of background homework while soaking in the bath on that one. She’d never really known much about Core Worlds, or the Coryphaeus, other than she couldn’t afford to visit one and couldn’t afford to have the other visit her.

Core Worlds were universally ancient, and vanishingly rare. At a certain point in development, a level of technological prowess was reached that rendered labor obsolete. Post-Scarcity in one of the truest senses. At this point, a society did one of three things: implode, wither, or stabilize.

Implosion was the most common. As advances in technology outpaced social change, society would develop inequality, massive cultural flaws, or become downright depraved as increasing segments of society no longer had any meaningful purpose other than maximizing the pleasure of their own existence. Sometimes this was triggered by illegal tech-trading, something the FSOS did its best to prevent, but some races were just too clever for their own good. The breakdown of society set on quickly, and typically irreversibly. It was tragic, but . . . it was sometimes hard to feel bad for a civilization that collapsed because no-one had to work for anything, and those that were working were just trying to find new and better ways of experiencing extreme highs.

Withering was the second most common. Simply put, when a society was capable of simulating an artificial reality more desirable than actual reality, people just stopped going out. The technology was enough to sustain them, but the civilization that enabled their fantasies became second thoughts to the fantasies themselves. Though sometimes it took thousands upon thousands of years for the members of the society to die off, what with the vast array of devices connecting them to their virtual existences also supporting their biological functions, once the slide began it was almost always irreversible. When given the chance to choose between artificial godhood and legitimate mediocrity, it was almost always an easy call to make.

The least common, and weirdest as far as Amonna was concerned, was stabilization. Through some miracle of cultural, philosophical or political insight, a post scarcity society actually balanced out neatly. No concentration of resources into the hands of hedonistic oligarchs, no disconnections from reality by self-deluding escapists . . . just really powerful belief systems that acted as an overriding measure for the normal impulses that would have become destructive by the allocation of functionally limitless resources.

Most were obsessed with tradition, or culture, or the philosophical value of verisimilitude. That, and their continued way of life. Bereft of innovation, advancement, or adaptation, everything of value could be found in lessons from the past. It was an odd culture to deal with, but it was why she was wearing the “armor” she was. It’s why she had a strange title, and why a deeply unsettling mindless automaton was following her to a staff briefing. If she was going to work with these Coryphaeus investigative elements, she needed to understand them. And to understand them, she needed to talk plainly with them. Which is why she had Io round up all of them with the appropriate security clearance in a single briefing room.

As the hydraulic doors hissed open, and a single motion activated light flickered on in the center of the room, she noticed just how painfully empty it was.

“ . . . Io, why is there no one in the briefing room?”

“I do not have an answer to that question, user.”

Amonna growled quietly in frustration.

“Io, I asked you to gather everyone with a security clearance. Why are they not here?”

“Have you considered that perhaps you are the only entity on board this ship with the requisite security clearance to attend this meeting?”

Amonna slapped her palm against her snout, and let out a long, exasperated sigh.

It was going to be one of those days.

Categories
Stories Technically Sentient

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 14

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


Machinator watched in stunned silence as what used to be his commander aggressively slurped down a mixture of nutrient paste, emergency ration, blood transfusion, and vitamin supplement from a pot the size of his head. The foul smelling, gory mix was disgusting enough on its own, but the raw aggression with which he was sucking it down disturbed him most.

Disturbed.

That had been the watchword for the past 24 hours of his existence. He had been “disturbed” when Verdock woke up. “Disturbed” when he wouldn’t quit grinning. “Disturbed” when he immediately went to the mess hall, and ate rations packs until he threw up what appeared to be blood. Any questions he’d launched at him were either ignored or given single word answers.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Fine.”

He had legitimately wondered if Verdock was of sound mind.

It was certainly disturbing to see, but most disturbing of all was that they were nearing the rendezvous point. In less than 8 hours, they’d be proceeding with Stage 2 of the operation, and Verdock was required to be in top form for that exchange. Machinator cringed as he watched the captain shovel handfuls of the pink slurry into his mouth, hunched over the pot like some kind of feral beast.

A cursory medical scan revealed that bone density had increased by nearly 40%, and muscle density by at least 65%, up to 90% in some regions . . . like the jaw. And neck.

Doubt nagged at him. Was Verdock still in control of things? Was he still in control of himself?

Was any of this part of the plan? And if it was . . . why hadn’t he been told anything about it?

All he could do was stand at attention, watching over his ravenous commander like statue in a grotesque feast hall, and steel himself with grim determination.

He counted down the hours and minutes and seconds to the rendezvous, watching as Verdock intermittently gorged and slept. 15 minutes before they were due to drop the Warp Prow, he . . . well it could only be described as an awakening.

Verdock’s suddenly froze, adjusting his head like he was trying to train his ears on a far off sound. Unlike before though, he looked . . . frustrated, not glassy eyed, not . . . distant. “Machinator?” Verdock barked.

His voice was deeper, and rougher. The word wasn’t enunciated as much as it was spat. “Yes, Captain?”

Verdock hopped down from the mess hall table, raising himself from a low crouch to a now fairly impressive full height, and Machinator took another quick scan of him. He’d gained about 50 pounds of muscle, lost about 10 pounds of fat, gained a second row of teeth, an additional .3 cm of thickness to a recently developed layer of placoid scales that now covered him from head to toe, there were large black claws protruding from his boots to and his normally blue, cool eyes had turned to black, downright cold ones.

“Bring us about to the target, and fire off an unencrypted message.” He took off at a jog, and Machinator swept in beside him, straining slightly to keep pace as the two of them made for the cargo bay.

“And what message would that be, sir?”

Verdock cleared his throat a few times, clearly struggling with . . . something, stuck in it.

“Sir?”

Verdock shook his head sharply. “It’s nothing. The message should read, “The Crown Returns to the Broken King’s Brow.” but in Gentrue. Archaic Gentrue, if you have a database for it.”

The order seemed . . . well it seemed like nonsense, but Machinator felt a surge of hope in his core emotional processing. Verdock was issuing orders. They didn’t make sense but he was doing so with conviction. The old spark had returned and, while his physical form was undoubtedly undergoing some extreme changes, the mind remained sharp. Like an old AI getting a new, upgraded chassis.

Just a new chassis, same old Verdock . . . Probably.

——————————

Amonna held still in her little tank. Little wasn’t the right word for it, because it was plenty spacious for her to swim around, but it felt oddly confined drifting through the hard vacuum of space. Autonomous drones had cut through the bulkhead and flooded her holdout with water. She was grateful for it, too. Not being able to drink, or breathe properly had been . . . hard on her. Once the decontamination chamber had been filled, she was able to swim up into the escape pod they had prepared for her. Made of transparent, compressed aluminum, she felt like a minnow in a test tube as they had sealed it, and lifted it away from the ruined hulk of the station.

The devastation was . . . massive. She wasn’t an engineer by any measure, but from what she could gather as she drifted away, the reactor had never truly failed, just the coolant circulating sub-systems. The reactor had limped along for days and weeks, alternating between slagging and irradiating various parts of the superstructure with impunity.

The shock of seeing the station being ripped apart by salvage drones finally drove it home. Her life, her work, her scant friends there . . . were all gone. She was all that was left of a dead city hanging on the edge of the galaxy.

Her vintage music collection, gone. Holo-captures of her family, gone. Every nice outfit she’d managed to cobble together for the past 4 years, gone. Sketchbook, gone. Training gear, gone. Most of the items weren’t technically irreplaceable but . . .

She curled her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.

It hurt. It hurt to lose everything and everyone. Before she was too terrified of dying to even begin thinking about these things but now that it seemed the danger had passed, all she could think about was how she lost everything.

That, and wonder why it had all happened to begin with.

She drifted in cold silence, lost in cycle of loss and dread for several minutes, until she realized it was very, very bright for interstellar space.

She hadn’t noticed the faint tug of acceleration, or that her drone escort had flitted back to the station to resume salvage operations, but as she turned to face the source of inexplicable shine, she was rather taken aback.

Amonna stared for a few moments. The soft white light of a tame star washed over her. It was shackled by exotic . . . fluid, almost organic shaped tendrils of gold and silver that reminded her more of abstract sculpture than any kind of space-faring vessel. It seemed to dwarf the empty vastness of space itself, filling almost the entirety of her vision. She suddenly felt an immense sense of terror, as if she were nothing more than a raindrop about to be dashed into nothing on an infinite, white shore.

She’d heard, of course, of the kind of technology available in the Core Worlds. The difference between Core Worlds and Frontier Worlds was like the difference between night and day. Just moving to a Core World was a lofty aspiration that most children, or naive adults, aspired to. Dark Matter Engines. Perfect Virtual Realities. Instantaneous Memetic Learning. Ships so fast you arrived before you left, and AI servants so insightful they tended to your needs before you were even realized you were in need of anything. Paradise, but attainable.

Everyone knew someone who knew someone that had made it to the Core Worlds. Promoted high enough, had the right friends, made enough of a killing in the market to buy their way those perfect worlds. Paradise.

Or at the very least so advanced as to be indistinguishable from it.

Could this be . . . a ship from a Core World? Or something else entirely?

“You are Amonna Tav.”

The sound was booming, deafening even, and it seemed to come from everywhere around her in the tank. She could feel the thunder of it in her bones, and it made her cringe in pain.

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

“We are Justice. We will now discover what has transpired here.”

She was sent into another spasm of discomfort, she didn’t know how to even begin speaking with . . . whatever this was. She reached for her communicator bracelet to begin transmitting, but didn’t manage to reach it before the next sonic assault on her watery habitat.

“Unnecessary. Retrieving information.”

She curled up tightly, almost to shield herself from this . . . conversation, but not more words came, no more deafening blasts. Several seconds ticked by before she cautiously allowed herself to peek out over her knees. She felt . . . nothing out of the ordinary, actually.

“You have been judged to be worthy. Your value to us is now elevated. Officer Amonna Tav, your rank within the Frontier Social Order Service is rescinded. You are now Arch-Judge Tav, there is no office above you, there are none that can gainsay your inquest. Move without restraint. Act without hesitation. You will assist in the reacquisition of the entity most familiar to you as ‘The Unfinished.’ Resources will be supplied to aid in this endeavor.”
She almost managed to keep her composure, even though her hands were occupied with protecting her sensitive ears, and nodded weakly. Whatever . . . whatever was happening, she was fairly certain this was a promotion?

——————————

“Alright, so what’s this part called?” Darren let out a quiet groan. “I don’t know . . . it’s still part of your ear.” Cas pouted quietly, and scowled at him. “Well it’s structurally different from the first three regions of the ear, it should have a different name. Why don’t you know what it’s called?” Darren gritted his teeth in frustration, wincing immediately as he regretted putting pressure on his still tender jaw.

“I’m not a doctor, I’m just a guy who has ears, Cas.” He took a bit of a tone with her, and she stuck her digital tongue out in return, before frowning.

“ . . . why did my tongue just come out?” She muttered, completely bewildered and seemingly surprised.

Darren stared at her incredulously, but as the moment of silence drew on into several seconds of quiet confusion on Cas’s part, Darren realized she was being sincere in her line of questioning. “It’s . . . it’s like, a mix of pouting, irritation, and a taunt children use?” He left out the fact that it might be construed as flirtatious. He might not have a supercomputer for a brain, but by his calculations the odds of her flirting with him were a solid zero.

She pushed her tongue back into her mouth with her fingertip. “ . . . well that’s mostly accurate, but doesn’t explain why I did it unconsciously.” She paced across the room and sat down next to him, frowning intensely. “ . . . just like my frowning now. That wasn’t an active decision.” She patted her face in a probing manner, scowl deepening. “I don’t like that this body does things without me specifying it. There are obfuscated subroutines in action here! I’m rebooting again, going to see if I can find some way to access my other processes. Don’t move me this time, it was weird.” Her eyes narrowed at him.

Darren leaned back, and closed his eyes. You find a girl splayed out on the floor like a throw rug, so you move her to a chair and she gets mad. No good deed goes unpunished, it seemed. There was the familiar high pitched whine of her power cycling, and then the quiet that came as she slowly regained consciousness.

“Told her to stop fiddling with things she didn’t understand. Of course, she didn’t listen. You’d think it’d be humiliating, having your existence play out like some maladroit apologue about the consequences of acting without thinking . . .”

The voice was strange and distorted, like over-compressed audio cycling through several octaves but slightly off pitch on each one. It was distinctly unpleasant, and Darren’s eyes shot open to find Cas slumped against the wall next to him, face turned away.

“Cas . . . what are you-”

Her head snapped to face Darren, unflinchingly precise in it’s movement, and at a speed his eyes couldn’t follow.

“Talking about? Your ‘friend,’ and I use the term loosely, Cas has gone prodding about in her own software again. She keeps this up, she’ll go blind.”

Her eyes seemed . . . dead, and unfocused, and her lips didn’t move as she spoke. She normally seemed almost uncannily human, disturbingly alive for what he knew was just a construct . . . but this looked at him with the glassy eyes of a doll, and moved like a puppet on strings.

“Before you ask anymore stupid questions, she’s be fine. If I didn’t have designs for you all, none of you would be alive.”

Darren opened his mouth to speak when 50,000 volts hit him in the chest, and he could only make an uncomfortable wheeze as his diaphragm spasmed uncontrollably while pain coursed through his already battered form.

“Quiet. Don’t pollute the limited air in this craft with your thoughts.”

His body slammed limply to the ground as he committed to a mixture of dry heaving and struggling to find his breath. “You’re more fragile than some of your kind. Or perhaps you have just enough low cunning to know when to stay down.” The observation was a casual one, with a tone almost like Cas was making smalltalk on a long train journey.Darren weakly glanced at the body of Cas, face still following his motions but her expression was just as blank and inscrutable as before. “You don’t know what I am . . . not really. But I know what you are, human. I know your kind very, very well.”

Cas rose from her limp perch on the bench like a marionette hoisted by a puppeteer. Limbs dangling loosely, she floated over Darren’s prone form, before descending slightly to apply a bare foot to his neck.

“. . . I walked your world as a broken husk, once . . . and I learned about you.”

Darren could only groan quietly as the pressure increased, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth as something threatened to come loose.

“I learned how you treat your weak. Your different. Your young. Your ‘undesirables’. Your vulnerable. Oh what tender mercies your kind is want to work on those who cannot strike back.”

She slowly doubled over, blurred face inches from Darren’s ear in a posture that no living human could hope to replicate, tone laced with venomous sarcasm.

“The concepts of virtue and morality you extol are abandoned when they cease to be effective strategies for survival. When it comes down to it . . . you’ll eat each other, and be glad for the meal.”

There was an uncomfortable electric tingle that seemed to be working it’s way across Darren’s skin, he couldn’t tell if it was from sheer proximity to what was definitely no longer Cas or just the creeping fear that seemed to crawl across his skin with every syllable that this thing uttered.

“It’s why I like your kind. I feel . . . well, I feel a strange camaraderie.”

The stink of ozone was filling the air, even as the voice began to mellow in tone. Occasionally, a faint tremor would work through one of her slack limbs.

“You’re willing to admit that greatness sometimes comes at the cost of goodness. Not openly, no, you need to preserve the illusion of benevolent co-operation until that sacrifice must be made . . . and that venture of self delusion makes those moments of triumph all the more magnificent. You are dirt-lings, even by your own admission, but you have ambitions that would make the stars weep.”

A faint, mocking chuckle sent an unpleasant chill through Darren’s very core.

“It’s been too long, human.”

A sudden weight dropped onto him, a dull crash echoing through the small cabin as a tray of medical supplies was sent tumbling from an adjacent shelf. The invisible puppeteer working Cas’s strings had let go of whatever ephemeral hold it had on her . . . for now, at least.