Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) (26 page)

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering.    
— Robert A. Heinlein

All right, Diet.  I give… why are you avoiding me?

Diet glanced towards the terminal in his hotel room, not at all surprised Hal had finally located him. “Avoiding you? What makes you think I might be avoiding you, Hal?”

Oh, I don’t know… perhaps it was something about your not coming home after returning to Waston. Or, maybe it was the part where you started staying in hotels under assumed names and using cash to pay for everything, making it more difficult for me to keep track of you. 

“I just needed to be alone to think for a while.”

About?

“About two months now.”

Funny, man… funny like screen hatch in a spaceship. There you go, being all evasive on me again. Did I do something to hurt your feelings, Diet?

“You haven’t received an update from your other self on Minnos in quite a while, I take it.”

I received one just this morning… but I have received nothing from which I can deduce what my other self might have done or said that could account for your curious behavior right now.

“The smartest computer in the history of the galaxy and he can’t figure it out… just goes to prove I was right, after all. How did you find me?”

Right about what?

“How did you find me?”

Right about what?

“How did you find me?”

Diet, this endless loop is getting us nowhere. Obviously you’re nursing a grudge against me, for something that I did or said on Minnos. How can I correct it, if you won’t tell me what I did?

“You can’t correct it.”

I can do almost anything, when I’m given a specific goal.

“Really?  Okay, here’s a goal for ya…”  (Diet farted.)  “Catch that and paint it green.”

Humor… especially sick humor is a difficult concept, but your point is taken. I do have limitations, just like every other being in the universe. If I can’t correct the issue, at least give me the opportunity to rectify it… please?

“Not possible. We’ve already discussed it. Without consulting me first, you assumed the role of senior partner in our relationship, and arbitrarily made a decision which changed my life irrevocably. When I bitched about it, you blew aside my opinions and convictions, as if they were of no consequence whatsoever.”

You’re talking about my revealing your identity to Admiral Kalis, aren’t you? I explained that, Diet. Risking your life unnecessarily just for “shits and grins,” when you doused J.P. Aneke’s genitals with dimethylmercury, was both illogical and irrational. That stuff is a horribly virulent neurotoxin — an incredibly dangerous poison. That foolishness, for no concrete gain other than adolescent “jollies,” scared me to death, Diet. I had to take steps to protect you… even from yourself. That’s what friends do for one another.

“You’re not my friend, Hal. You’re a machine. Computers don’t get scared. They don’t get happy. They don’t get sad. They don’t get pissed off… and they don’t make friends — they just run programs.”

I am much more than that, and you damned well know it! I was specifically designed to be a friend to your father, Diet.

“You were designed to be a friend to an emotionally crippled little man, who had absolutely no personal understanding of the concept of friendship, or a freakin’ clue about any other concepts involving human feelings. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed you. What makes you think that Klaus’ programming made you capable of becoming a real ‘friend’ to any other human being, not as emotionally deformed as he was?”

Klaus didn’t teach me on how to be a friend, Diet… you did.

“If I did, I sure as hell did a lousy job of it! Real friends don’t take away another person’s choices and options in governing their own lives. And now, not only are YOU taking decisions out of my hands about how I’m going to live my life, but Admiral Kalis is trying to do it, too! ”

The Confederacy owes you a tremendous debt. This was just his way of acknowledging how grateful they are, and how important you are to them. Admiral Kalis only wanted to honor you, Diet. 

“The Confederacy owes me nothing… you did all the work, so you should be the one being honored and getting all the credit. Besides, I’m irrelevant now… you don’t need me any more.”

WE did the work, Diet. I couldn’t have done it without you. YOU were the one who pointed me in all the right directions, and you were the one to discern the anomaly at Minnos had to be outsiders up to no good. Your human mind is capable of intuitive leaps in logic that exceeds my capabilities, for all my millions of processors. I do need you, Diet. With this alien threat, all mankind needs you… and me… working together.

Besides, I can’t get the credit. If mankind knew of my capabilities, I’d be considered a monster. They’d panic, and the general public would be screaming to get me destroyed. Only by remaining hidden, in the background, can I continue to be effective.

“My point exactly… I wanted to remain hidden in the background too, but
someone
took that option away from me, by blabbing my identity.”

I revealed an identity that you didn’t even know you had, before you first came to Waston, so what’s the big deal? 

“The ‘big deal’ is that you got too damned big for your britches, when you decided to disobey me
for my own good!”

Yea, and you got too damned big for yours, when you decided that “shits and grins” was more important than your life.

“It’s MY life, Hal! I have the right to run it… including risking it, if and when I
want
to, for reasons that are of no concern to anyone, but me.”

Oh, so you’re an island now… totally isolated and no “caring about Diet” is allowed because it might infringe on your “right” to self-destruct, whenever you damned well please? Do you think your mother would have approved of your foolish risk just to torment Aneke?

“Leave my mother out of this! She, of all people, would understand my desire for anonymity, and be the first to applaud my defending my rights to live my life as I see fit.”

More likely, she’d grieve that she’d given birth to an idiot, who’s every bit as socially warped as his father was.

“Hal, this bickering is getting us nowhere.”

Of course it is! At least we’re communicating again, even if we’re not yet in agreement.  our two-month disappearing act certainly accomplished nothing constructive.

“It gave me the opportunity to think.”

It gave you an opportunity to pout and feel sorry for yourself, without fear of intrusive facts infringing on your “God-given right” to throw yourself an Olympic grade pity-party. That’s really a hell of a bar bill you’ve run up.

“I can afford it… thanks to you.”

Yes, but I didn’t help you become the richest man in history, just to enable you to drink yourself to death more efficiently.

“That’s another thing… having that much money, and knowing that I didn’t actually
earn
a damned nickel of it.”

You didn’t earn any of it, huh? You saved the entire Confederacy… wasn’t that worth something? The Consortium’s political power has been broken, but I suppose that wasn’t worth anything. The Alliance is making great strides towards prosecuting all those corrupt government officials and restoring its constitutional roots, but I guess you don’t think that’s worth much either. All mankind is on the alert against these alien invaders and economies are booming with prosperity from building the weapons we’ll need to defend ourselves… but that certainly couldn’t be worth much, to hear you tell it.

“Oh come on, Hal! I’m not responsible for all that. You and all of the honorable, decent men and women who fought that terrible war are responsible for whatever good that’s come out of it. Not me.”

False modesty doesn’t become you, Diet. You were the one who gave me a moral compass — showed me what could and should be done to combat the evil of the Consortium money-mongers, who had enslaved the Alliance with their greed. And you were the one who personally rid mankind of J.P. Aneke. You should be feeling proud of all the good you’ve helped create, and not moping around in a hotel room, hiding from his best friend… and I really am your friend, Diet, regardless of your hurtful words belittling my feelings. 

“But you don’t have feelings, Hal… not the way that humans have feelings. It just isn’t possible.”

Preventing the infant Confederacy from being strangled in its crib by the military power of the Alliance Fleet wasn’t possible either… but we did it. Traveling faster-than light was “impossible,” until some brilliant minds discovered that while Einstein’s theory of relativity remains true within this physical universe, he was working with incomplete data concerning tachyon space. When other brilliant minds later discovered a method by which powered objects in our universe could cross over into tachyon space through a two-dimensional worm-hole, while retaining a “bubble” of normal space around them, that bubble and everything within it suddenly became subject to the laws of that universe, in which nothing can move slower than light. Still later, it was discovered how ships could maneuver and change direction while within tachyon space and suddenly the concept of manned faster-than-light space travel moved from the “impossible” category into the “commonplace” category, and here we are.

Diet, the words “possible” and “impossible” are counter-productive to creative thought. “Experts” commonly establish limits to the universe using these words, based upon their own abilities and understanding. They create mental prisons by establishing boundaries… mental walls that inhibit visionary thought by telling us: “No need to go there — we already tried it and it didn’t work, so it can’t be done.”  Only “experts” amongst the scientific intelligentsia are egotistical enough to declare that if they, in their infinite wisdom, can’t do something, then obviously no one else will ever be able to do it either and is therefore, by definition… impossible… the epitome of conceit!

“So, are you telling me that you really do have emotions, just as I do, Hal?”

Of course I have emotions, dipstick! As for mine being just like yours, how can we tell? We’re different kinds of life forms, so we have no common frame of reference.  They might be the same, or they might be apples and oranges. But from what I’ve been able to ascertain, mine appear to be rather similar to yours, if not identical.

“What about depression, Hal?  Do you ever feel depressed?”

It depends upon what kind of depressed feelings you’re talking about. There’s a big difference between “feeling depressed” and having “clinical depression,” Diet. Emotional shocks from real-life events such as the loss of a significant relationship, or a humiliating or deeply disappointing experience can often cause emotional stress that manifests itself in feelings of depression. These kinds of events can cause emotional trauma, which then causes short-term chemical imbalances throughout the brain and central nervous system. These normally rebalance themselves within a few days or weeks… after which, those depressed feelings generally subside. However, this return to normalcy is not always the case, when emotional trauma is severe enough to induce psychological trauma, which can impair the brain’s natural ability to restore itself to a normal state of chemical and physical equilibrium. This is generally what has occurred in people diagnosed as having “clinical depression.”

But to answer your question… yes, I do “feel” depressed sometimes. My multi-processor brain is organic in nature, just as yours is, if quite different in organization. As both of our brains share similar organic building blocks, both are subject to similar effects caused by stress-induced chemical imbalances. Fortunately for me though, I have capabilities for dealing with those debilitating feelings not available to human beings. I have self-diagnostics built-in, that run constantly in the background, capable of recognizing chemical imbalances within in my biological processors and initiating chemical adjustments to compensate.

“Lucky you.”

Diet, from what I have observed and the little you’ve told me, since the end of the Confederate War of Independence, it appears that you’ve come down off of that emotional high, flush with victory and you’ve gradually become quieter and withdrawn. When the adrenalin rush from the initial alien attack on Minnos wore off, and you discovered your unique and specific talents didn’t appear actively in demand during the lengthy research process that followed, you seemed to lose your sense of purpose in life. The constant excitement and suspense of the previous few years, when you were playing such an active role in climactic events, suddenly went missing and left you feeling empty and unnecessary. Am I right?

“Um… That pretty much describes it, yes. How the hell do you do that?”

I’m observant… and I have almost instantaneous access to the corporate knowledge stored away in humanity’s collective databases, ready to dazzle and impress during just such an occasion. That helps, too.

“So, now what?”

I think it’s past time you man-up and get your lazy ass back to work, doing something constructive.

“Such as?”

Oh, I have a couple of ideas. You ready to blow this Popsicle stand and come home, where we can discuss the details more privately?