DUALITY: The World of Lies (22 page)

“General Knowledge Library?” she
finished.

That wasn't so keen of an association. The
General Knowledge Library contained the bulk of all things known to
man. All the same, they scuffled off to the bridge.

“System, display all we've got on the musical
notation system devised by composer Fermisini.”

“Aye, Captain.” Thousands of 2D charts,
complex equations, tutorials, and samples holographically sprang up
throughout the bridge.

Aru started rifling through the data. It was
overwhelmingly cryptic and sophisticated. “Mei, even with my
mindlink, it would take me weeks of research to decode anything
like this -if I could manage it at all.”

She considered this and sighed. “Kinny could
do it.”

“After all we've done to protect Kinny in
gathering this data, you really think we should expose it to
System?”

“Well, I mean. It's just a song,
right?”

“System, could a 1 minute 50 second song,
composed by this type of encryption and performed by a single human
vocalist, contain enough malicious data to corrupt you?”

“Normally, I would say no, Captain, but based
on the insidious algorithms this entity employed against me
earlier, it is possible that it could.”

“Mei, play the recording for
System.”

“What? No! What would have been the point of
all this then?”

“The point is we either keep the entity sealed
in that sphere and return to Occitania with a corpse, or we
establish communications and proceed with an extraction, for which
we will still need to utilize System, since those drills cannot be
run manually.”

Mei nodded and pressed play. Enchanting music
echoed through the bridge chamber. Aru found it even more
mesmerizing the second time around. The song finished. He waited a
few moments and prompted System.

“System, analysis,” he
ordered.

“Please wait, Captain. Still
processing.”

That was unusual. System never took more than
a second to process anything. He waited impatiently.

“Captain, this is truly
remarkable!”

“So there is data encoded in the
song?”

“Yes, two parallel sets of distinct data
juxtaposed and merged into a single codestream. One is directed to
you specifically in UHL, Universal Human Language. The other is a
set in machine code for me laying out instructions on how to open
the sphere.”

Universal Human Language or UHL was actually a
machine language that standardized meanings of all human languages
into a single codeset and was used to communicate human language
data only between machines. No actual human could understand
it.

“Read me the UHL message,” he
ordered.

“Captain, it would translate most accurately
into Rubeli Standard.”

Aru was moderately proficient in RubStand, as
all Fleet personal were required to be in the language used
throughout most of the Carousels. RubStand was dry and uninspired,
but singularly considered to be the best technical human language.
He rarely used it though, and just the thought of going into it
without his mindlink active frustrated him. Mei was even worse,
having just barely passed her proficiency tests in it.

“No, no. Give it to us in Arathian for God's
sake, unpolished.”

“Aye Captain. Start
message: 
Greetings Captain Psyron and
Commander Li Meiyang. You are you and I am I. Differentiation
denoted by names, consciousness separate bodies. Words
and words. I should like to know you in person. Do you understand
my meanings? I request permission to board your vessel, Captain. I
provide you dimensions. Rotate sphere to designation. Carve and
modify to diagram. Lock bulwark. Make cavernous pressurization.
Assemble ion fast drills in array and carve along paths specified.
I await your retrieval. 
End
message.”

“You are you and I am I?” repeated Mei. “What
kind of gibberish is that?”

“He is unfamiliar with human language, and
doing all he can to communicate with us. It's not gibberish. It
sounds like he wants to be extracted and has some plan as to
how we should go about it, right System?”

“Yes, Captain. These are the diagrams and
instructions he encoded into the message.” The displays filled with
sophisticated diagrams of the ship's spoke hubs, the sphere,
and another diagram of all five ion drills attached to a
rotating array. “His worded message is confusing, but his machine
instructions are flawless and highly specific. He lays out a plan
to interlock the spoke stub flush to the sphere that should allow
us to pressurize the spoke with no chance of leakage. Next, he
recommends assembling the drill heads in a circular array, as
pictured, and using it to cut out a two meter diameter hole at a
specified point on the sphere, from which you are to
extract him and bring him aboard.”

“And what do you think of this plan, System?
Is it how you would go about this extraction?”

“Aye Captain. These plans are better
engineered than anything I could generate. If you decide to
extract the entity from the sphere, I recommend following this
strategy to the letter.”

“So you do believe this is a higher level
machine intelligence than yourself?”

“Without a doubt, Captain.”

“Why then can he barely phrase a coherent
sentence in human language?”

“Unknown, Captain. I would suspect that we are
dealing with a machine intelligence that is somehow unfamiliar with
human language. The diagrams were communicated to me in encrypted
hexadecimal binary machine code flawlessly.”

“But that's a very low level machine language,
isn't it?” Aru commented. “It's only one step up from binary. Has
he exhibited any communication at all in a higher level machine
language?”

“Beyond his use of UHL, no Captain. The entity
carried out the cyberattack in pure binary number sequences that do
not backwards compile into any known machine language.”

Everything about this was extremely curious.
On the one hand they were dealing with a machine intelligence that
was by System's own admission far more advanced that itself, an
AI-8. On the other, they were dealing with a helpless human who
barely knew how to speak. One thing for sure, if this entity was
already in control of System, it was putting on a hell of show to
becloud that fact. It could just as easily kill or imprison him and
Mei, extract itself from the sphere, and do, well, whatever it
wanted with the ship. And surely with such control, it would not
risk exposing itself to them at all! Aru was ever more convinced
they were still in control of the ship, and what they had to do was
find a way to perform this extraction that ensured System came into
no contact with the entity.

“May I make a suggestion,
Captain?” voiced System.

“Yes, go ahead.”

“The first phase of the plan is to use the
drills in their existing positions to bore into the surface coating
of the sphere at all five contact points with the spoke hubs in
order to fashion a joining structure between them, and lock
everything permanently and airtight into place. This could all be
accomplished without ever coming into signal contact with the
entity. It would be well worth doing just from the perspective of
solidifying ship structural integrity.”

And give them time to plan out phase two.
“Commander?” he asked.

“Makes sense to me, Captain.” said
Mei.

“Ok, System. You are duly authorized to
proceed with phase one.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Aru sat down and Mei followed suit. She picked
up her vaporizer, closed her eyes and inhaled slowly.

“Would you stop doing that please?” he
asked in annoyance.

“It's fine, dear, nothing too potent. Just a
little something to keep my mind focused.”

Yeah, and that's always how it starts. Then a
week or two of slippery slopes later she would be off the rails
sewing chaos. At least his drinking was managed and scheduled with
clockwork consistency of eight day cycles, always the same, week
after week and year after year. She, on the other hand, was prone
to losing self-control for drawn out periods. He damn well didn't
need that, especially now. He half-considered grabbing her
vaporizer and chucking it into the waste disposal.

“Yeah, don't even think about it, Captain
Brandywine,” Mei warned him with a martial hand gesture,
reading his mind. She took another hit then veered the discourse
away from her personal issues and back to more immediate matters.
“I think there's a way we can perform the extraction without
exposing Kinny.”

“All right?”

“The drill array will need to be connected to
the accelerated ion beam, but that's a one way stream,
yeah?”

“Yes.”

“So we do like before. We establish a muting
wall and bring the drill array through it, pre-programmed to the
task and with no connections back to Kinny.”

“It's still run by modern digital circuitry,
so when all is done, the drill array has to be considered
potentially corrupted.”

“Yeah, well, that's what I'm thinking. Have
Kinny program the drill array to enter the sphere and seal itself
in after we've extracted the target. We isolate the target in an
analog isolation pod and transport him back to the zero-com
chamber, where he stays locked up as our prisoner for the remainder
of the voyage.”

Aru thought about it. “System, is the
Commander's plan viable?”

“Affirmative, Captain. I would concur that is
the optimal method by which to extract the entity from
the sphere and transport it the zero-com chamber which most
effectively minimizes my risk of exposure to it.”

“Ok Commander, we do it that way. Good
thinking.”

“Oh don't praise me. Thank the
vaporizer.”

Aru refused to take the bait. They got a meal
in while System affixed the spoke hubs to the Sphere. Once
finished, they watched on holograph as the web of tethers released
and retracted back into the ship's hull. There was the familiar
wheel shape of his beautiful ship and a large shining ball of gold
affixed at its hub.

“Now that looks downright proper,”
said Mei. Aru agreed. It was like that sphere
just 
belonged
there. And really it did. They now had triple
their previous shield force and thus a huge advantage over every
other craft out there.

They suited up once again and
stuffed all the analog gear into an isolation pod, which they
upgraded with a mini-thruster array. The rest of the equipment they
moved to the hallway and had system take it to storage leaving the
zero-com room bare except for basic furnishings. Mei insisted on
cleaning the dusty room -by hand. This was something Aru had
virtually no experience with, and she had a good laugh when she
handed Aru a strange pole tool with soft soggy bits at the end of
it and he asked what it was. “It's called
a 
mop
, you
over-privileged twit!” she exclaimed, and continued to mock him
over it between uncontrolled fits of laughter. What could he say?
He had never used one before.

Once the chores were speedily concluded, they
took the ring tram once more to the Spoke 4 portcullis. It and the
lock chamber beyond were already wide open, as the entire spoke
passage now had atmosphere. It looked different now, the way the
wall lighting dispersed in the air. The new rotating five-headed
hydra of a drill array had been assembled, programed, and sent to
the sphere-end of the passage, ready to initiate its assigned tasks
upon his order.

They thrust up to the work platform and
reestablished the muting wall. Again Mei triple checked its
integrity. With everything in order, they put on their helmets to
protect themselves from the smoke and dust that would soon cloud
the air, and ordered to drill array to begin its work.

The whole thing was incredibly loud, and
sparks flew in every direction until a clean circle of the surface
layer had been completely cut through. Then the operation went
silent, sucking out thick billows of dust as the drill array
finished boring its way through the softer interior
layers.

“Operation complete, Captain,” reported
the drill array.

“Remove the cutting.”

“Aye Captain,” confirmed the drill
array.

They could hear the stony layer grating
against itself along the hairline cut as the drill array slowly
backed its way down the spoke. They waited for the dust cloud to
clear. By the time it did, the drill array had already reversed its
position to the opposite inner side of the cutting, ready to entomb
itself into the sphere. Looking up, they saw the inside of the
sphere was mostly dark with dimly glowing red and blue veins of
unknown function visible against the interior walls. They thrust
themselves up and over the threshold into the interior. Mei shined
a spotlight up the center, and there they saw him: An angelic
image, hovering above them with arms outstretched, white robe and
long light flowing hair, bathed in the brightness of the
searchlight. He stared vacantly back down upon them and
sang.