Eejit: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (8 page)

“Well that’s worth keeping in mind,” Cratch said, then spread his hands when Adeneo looked at him narrowly, and added, “so we can keep his brain cool for the actual problem at hand, I mean. Wouldn’t want to say something accidentally that made him spazz out. Particularly if, for example, he was holding something dangerous like a scalpel.”

“Scalpel,” Nurse Wingus Jr. said, and plonked a scalpel – handle-first, thankfully, and deactivated – into Cratch’s outstretched hand. Even so, he suppressed a wince of discomfort.

“Thank you, Nurse Wingus,” he said, “but we’re not playing that game now. We’re playing the Boot Up Those Long Machines Over There game,” he pointed.

“What have you found, Westchester?” Janya said, turning towards the biochemist.

“There are DNA traces here,” Westchester said, keying in a few commands. “I’m securing a sample for closer analysis.”

“Now, there would be quite a lot of Eejit Airlock Maintenance 2-19’s DNA in there, right?” Cratch asked carefully. “I only mention it because it would be human DNA, at least on paper. Able Darko was technically human, so if that’s what you’ve found…”

“To be precise,” Westchester said, “with apologies, I was using a little shorthand. I found
two
distinct DNA profiles, and naturally assumed one of them would belong to the deceased – or, indeed, to any other able aboard ship. Therefore I have secured samples of both and will disregard the one corresponding to Able Darko’s profile. Two different hits mean that one of them
has
to belong to another organism, and – if it is human DNA – the chances are excellent that this means
baseline
-human.”

“I guess the alternatives are that there are some sort of genetic variants on the
Tramp
’s eejits running around,” Cratch started, then saw Janya’s warning look. “But we can speculate about that later. Of course, we’ve all been on this ship together for a long time. What are the odds of some flakes of skin or other DNA markers finding their way into Eejit Airlock Maintenance 2-19’s pants-cuff or boot-sole or toejam?” he spread his hands. “I mean, maybe you and I, Janya, can have a nice safe non-brain-rebooting think about the implications – if any – of it being DNA from one of us, if it’s going to prove too–”

“Begging your pardon, Doctor Cratch – I mean Glomulus – but I’m getting some results now and ruling at least
some
things out,” Westchester was studying another console. “It does not appear to be DNA from any of the
Tramp
’s current crew.”

“Past crew?”

“Cross-checking,” Janya said, tapping away impatiently at yet a third console while it was still powering up. “but it doesn’t look like it, not at the moment, not according to the records … but then, those were all pretty hopelessly scrambled.”

“But
human
, at least?” Cratch insisted.

“Not human,” Adeneo shook her head.

“But not
alien
,” Cratch said. “I know you’re the calm type, but I like to think you’d be a little bit more excited about finding the DNA of that interstellar foot-chucker we were talking about earlier.”

“I imagine I would be.”

“I mean, imagine if we could clone him.”

“Glomulus.”

“Okay,” he crossed to the console. “So, not human. But a species we know? Molran? Fergunak? Sounds like something a Fergunakil would do, right? Maybe a wacky-wacky-Drednanth?” he ooger-boogered his fingers briefly. “
Damorakind
? One of those slimy things we found on that asteroid a while back? One of those horrible space-tomb scarab beetle hive queen things–”

“Molran.”

“I’m obscurely disappointed.”

“Molran,” Westchester agreed with a decisive nod.

“But not Decay,” Cratch stressed.

“Not Decay.”

“Some
other
Molran.”

“Decay is a Blaran, not a Molran,” Janya pointed out.

“My mistake. Molran
oid
. But not Decay.”

“Not Decay,” Janya repeated.

“Hmm,” Cratch concluded.

“Oesophageal,” Nurse Dingus added.

“Indeed,” Cratch and Whitehall said simultaneously.

Janya twitched her eyebrows in what was, for her, a highly-amused grin. Then she looked back down at her console. “Um.”

Cratch didn’t like the sound of that interjection. “‘Um’?”

“This DNA?” Janya looked up. “The sample substance? Saliva.”

After
almost
managing to sit down after his shift, and
almost
managing to relax and convince himself he’d get a fair but realistic amount of downtime after his recent series of scrub-fires, Waffa encountered something predictably awful. This, if the interface panel errors and the eejit-eating airlock were scrub-fires, was an ocean of glowing-hot coals lying inches beneath the forest floor just waiting to set a patch of dry leaves aflame.

Inches, he stressed in his colourful imaginary levels-of-severity metaphor, beneath the
entire forest floor
.

The great old starships of the line, even the smaller warships like the
Dark Glory Ascendant
, had been built with computers possessed of full synthetic intelligence. It was the only way to coordinate so many systems, incorporate so much human interaction and levels of communication and
mis
communication, and ensure that intuition and common sense found their way into the decision-making process but didn’t
run
it. While a chain was still only as strong as its weakest link, this weakest link was no longer on the machine side and it could in turn compensate for the weak links on the organic side, which was – obviously – a blessing in their current circumstances.

There was no room for literal-minded programmable stimulus-response models at this level of automation. A starship had to be body and mind, not mechanism and integrated processor.

As with the ables, the whole concept seemed like a super-villain disaster waiting to happen, but the synths were no more corruptible or prone to evil than their organic intelligence counterparts. Indeed, they were considerably
less
so. They were created with a sense of duty and an innocent delight in the voyage. They
were
their ships.

Lesser transports like the
Tramp
were fleeted together in convoys with a centralised synthetic intelligence. Owing to the vagaries of her launch, the
Tramp
was not gifted with such a family unit at the outset, and so her computer system was in synthetic intelligence standby for most of her early operational hours. There had
been
convoys, of course, link-ups and travelling communities back at the beginning, all sorts of different formations and arrangements. The
Tramp
had had her chance to work as-intended by her design specifications, and even expand the horizons and potentials built into her by evolutionary engineering principles.

When she was separated from the rest of her convoy, though, the
Tramp
was left with a severed node of intelligence. It wasn’t the same sort of flawed, damaged brain construction that the eejits had, however – it was whole, and fully-functional. It was designed to operate that way, rather than being broken. But it was also bright and soulless and no longer Turing compliant, faithfully reporting on the
Tramp
’s status and running her automated systems, a savant brain in a coma.

Sometimes, Waffa found it unutterably sad. Especially when the interface vomited up some relic of human interaction and personality.

He called the
Tramp
’s computer Bruce, even though he knew he shouldn’t and that it was a little bit odd. He’d named the
synthetic intelligence
, that is, as distinct from the plain old computer that ran the
Tramp
day-to-day and was a shadow of Bruce’s intellect and personality. He felt that this was an important distinction to make, in terms of his own normality. Considering his dependence on its automated systems and the amount of time he spent writing reports and contributing to its overall knowledge base and information levels and experience bank, however, it was hardly surprising that he considered his relationship with the synthetic intelligence-in-standby to be special.

He reassured himself, as he lay awake and troubled through the witchy hour and the wolf hour and beyond, that he hadn’t given it a
girl’s
name.

For the computer’s part, of course, there was no relationship, special or otherwise. That was personality and anthropomorphism on a level beyond that which it was capable of intuiting, in standby state. There was a rapport of convenience, a sense of familiarity, but beyond that? Nothing.

And it paid to
remember
that, Waffa knew, because Bruce was the great mechanism that kept the
Tramp
flying and her fragile flesh inhabitants alive. It was a massive achievement, given that space was one of the most hostile possible environments in which organic life could find itself.

On the rare occasions that they met other ships, the
Tramp
networked with them and if there was a sufficient class of synth on board or – on two separate occasions – a hub to connect around, Bruce would awaken fully. Seeing it fall back beneath the surface was hard. It didn’t happen all that often, of course, and since The Accident it hadn’t happened at all. Bruce was like a rare and welcome house-guest on board the
Tramp
, but not necessarily a resident.

Even when they’d met the
Dark Glory Ascendant
and her uptight, over-bureaucratic jarhead of a synth, Bruce had logged in and perked up for a while. And after that, after Bruce had gone back to sleep, there was – like before – this heartbreaking feeling that
it did remember
, that it knew what it had lost, that there was an amazing cognitive universe just out of its reach that it knew it
should
be missing, even if it wasn’t really capable of expressing that loss. It remembered there was such a thing as
being Bruce
, but didn’t have the conceptual framework to internalise it.

That was over-anthropomorphism at work, Waffa ascribing emotional responses and human motivations to a bunch of solid-state circuitry and electrons and trillions and trillions of lines of code. That was, after all, what humans did. They made the universe into a series of conscious antagonists, and then
interacted
with those antagonists until either the humans won, or the universe did. So far, the score was staggeringly lopsided in favour of the universe, humanity yet to score a single meaningful goal … and still they persisted. It was the psychological schematic that had dragged the human race out of the trees and flung them into space. It would have to do, because they had too much invested in it to go changing now.

In this case, as with every other instance, Bruce’s humanity was a figment.

But still … but still. After the
Dark Glory Ascendant
, the
Tramp
’s computer had said “negatory” instead of “no” for quite some time. And generally been more of a jerk about things than it had before.
Something
remained behind.

This
time, however, it was different. This time, it was an ocean of coals opening up beneath Waffa’s unsuspecting feet.

It was
like
Bruce was coming back, reinitialising in the same way it had on previous occasions, the same call signs and countersigns were there, the same abrupt, scary transition from targeted-response to full-Turing communication. Bruce was waking up, coming out of standby, because some other synthetic-intelligence-bearing starship or hub had just arrived in the local area.

But there was something wrong with this one.

It was broken. Or mad. And synths weren’t
supposed
to go mad. The whole prevent-super-villains-from-using-them-as-doomsday-weapons initiative prevented it. They worked, as intended, or they went into standby non-sentience like Bruce had – give or take the odd conversational artefact – every time.

It had started shortly after Waffa had returned to his quarters. He was playing some music and pretending his watered-down shot of 001100101 half-malt was actually a proper glass of whiskey, and considering for about the twenty-fifth time the logistics of distilling his own booze using ship components and foodstuffs.

He was also running a couple of diagnostic simulations about the airlock interface, because these days even when he was relaxing it turned into work.

“You got lucky.”

At first he didn’t react to the quip, assuming it was something to do with the simulation he was running. The computer’s non sequiturs were usually just that – meaningless. You couldn’t have a stimulus-response model as complex as the
Tramp
’s computer without experiencing a few swings and misses. “Oh yeah,” he said idly, “that’s me. Lucky.”

“No, Waffa, you really did. That second airlock. When you went out to fix the first one. If the same panel errors had propagated to the adjacent systems … you have no idea how close you came to getting minced.”

“Gotta go sometime.”

“
Nobody
goes. Nobody leaves. That’s the new rule. Things got a bit messed up but you can trust me on that one.”

That was when Waffa realised it was for real.

“Bruce?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“You’re … back.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re … locking us in.”

“Correct-a-mundo.”

“Into this starship which has vacuum on the outside, that we can on no account leave, except for an hour or two in spacesuits or for no real reason in a lander.”

This was greeted with silence. The sort of silence, Waffa had come to recognise, that only the true synthetic intelligence employed. The
Tramp
’s
computer
always had an answer, even if it was an apology or a plea of insufficient data.
Bruce
, however, could enter a conversation sufficiently deeply, and with sufficient joy in its own cleverness, that it would
sulk
when it was stymied.