Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (28 page)

“Thank you, Chief. I imagine it’s certainly gonna feel a bit dull after what all we accomplished this past month.”

“Oh, I don’t know sir. Life often has a way of throwing the unexpected at you,” Manning replied. “Things are likely to crawl out of the woodwork, and suddenly life becomes a bit more exciting than you might rightly expect. In the meantime, nothing wrong with spending a little downtime, sucking suds and getting a few worms wet.”

Stillman laughed. “I do believe I’ll follow your advice, Chief.” Manning smiled as he turned an about-face and marched up the gangway towards the awaiting transport. Stillman closed and dogged down the hatch and initiated his end of the atmospheric transfer procedure. A few minutes later, he heard the magnetic grapples release and turned to head back to the station bridge. Sliding into the monitoring station chair himself, Stillman soon heard:

“Haven Control, transport USS
Edison
is ready for departure.”

“
Edison
, departure permission is granted,” Stillman replied. “Good luck and God’s speed.”

Stillman watched silently as the transport maneuvered away from the station and out towards the departure point. He felt a slight chill as he realized he was now the only living soul left aboard the entire facility
. Suddenly this place feels like a tomb.

Shaking off this unexpected case of the willies, Stillman turned to the computer station and inserted the data cube Chief Manning had given him and waited for Bozo Jr. to finish decrypting it. Instead of new orders, Stillman was surprised when a video file began playing with Vice Admiral Rawley addressing him from behind a desk:

“Hello, Ben,” said the video Rawley. “If you’re seeing this, it means our recent recovery operation has been completed successfully and I can’t tell you how relieved I will be to receive this news. I have another couple of surprises for you. First, the bad news. Do not... I repeat, do
not
recall your civil service personnel. For continuing security reasons, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to fly the station solo for a couple of weeks, at least. I know it will get damned lonely for you, but it can’t be helped. The larder in the galley has been restocked with some of your favorites and in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet of your office, you’ll find three bottles of the finest ‘medicine’ you’ll ever taste, so I hope the enforced solitude won’t be too onerous on you.

“Now for the good news. When I receive word this mission has been completed, I will immediately dispatch a fast scout to Haven to pick you up, authorization code: SHELL GAME. When it arrives, just set the station on full automatic and get aboard. You’ll be taken to where you need to be for the next step in our little sleight of hand. Don’t worry. We’ll still get you mustered out for your retirement...
if
you still want to take it by that time.

“There is a program file loading into your station computer as you’re watching this video. It will automatically generate all the necessary paperwork to keep your civil service crew receiving their paychecks and some updates for the automatics that will run the station after your departure.

“I’d like to offer you a big WELL DONE, old friend. Just hang in there for a while and we’ll get you pulled out of there ASAP. You’ve already made an invaluable contribution to this incredibly vital operation and, if you’re up for it, I’ll be recommending you for promotion to rear admiral so you can continue to contribute to it — should you decide to do so, instead of taking retirement. You’ll have a bit of time on your hands to think it over before the scout arrives. I think we made a pretty good team aboard the old
Defiant
so I’ll admit that I’d really like to have you with me for the next phase of this operation. But I will respect your decision, however you decide.

“For security reasons, this video will self-destruct at its conclusion. Think it over, Ben. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again, real soon.”

Stillman sat absolutely stunned.
Rear Admiral Benjamin F. Stillman.
He’d never believed he would ever have a chance to achieve flag-rank, and now... here it was, just hanging there in front of him like a ripe plum:
Rear Admiral.

Stillman was startled out of his reverie when the admiral’s data cube hissed and began spitting smoke out of its side. Not thinking, he grabbed for the cube and burned his fingers as it disgorged from the console. As the smoking cube went flying, Stillman yelled, “Shit!” About halfway through thinking that the admiral might have warned him, another thought intruded:
It’s your own fault, dumb-ass. The admiral didn’t say it would self-wipe — he said it would self-destruct… and damned if it didn’t.

Stillman stood up with his burned fingers in his mouth, but instead of reaching for the first-aid kit, he headed towards his office
. I’ve been injured. Need “medicine.”
Time to investigate that filing cabinet.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. --
Stephen Hawking

The Planetoid Discol, City of Waston

July, 3860

Alliance Press (AP): Waston – News Release (07/16/60)

A class-action suit was filed today in federal court by attorneys representing thousands of former Fleet officers and enlisted personnel, who are claiming unlawful termination and unlawful bias. Most were discharged from the Fleet after their ships were decommissioned as part of President Buchwald’s cost-cutting measure appear to have been recently transferred to those ships within 60 days of decommissioning. The Fleet sited the massive decommissioning of over 190 Fleet vessels ordered by President Buchwald in his role as
Commander-in-Chief,
as the primary justification for their discharge of “excess personnel” and stated the recent reassignments were merely part of normal Fleet duty rotations.

In accepting the class-action suit, Alliance Court of Federal Claims Judge Henry Hollingsworth rejected the Fleet’s motion for dismissal, citing that some of the “alleged” routine rotational transfers claimed by the Fleet occurred within a timeframe inconsistent with established length-of-tour durations, which gave a “disturbing appearance of impropriety.”

Fleet Admiral Roger Kalis, the nation’s only five-star admiral and only serving Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is quoted as saying, “The Fleet, as a matter of long-standing policy, regularly rotates personnel for a variety of reasons. Length-of-tour durations are generally set at approximately two years per duty station, but there is no established minimum in Fleet regulations. Many tours are rotated after one year, and occasionally even shorter durations, as established by the needs of, and at the convenience of, the Fleet.”

Fleet Admiral Kalis went on to state, “Actual rotational assignments are initiated without human direction by the Fleet’s Command, Logistics, Operations, Weapons, Navigation & Engineering Master System computer, which follows pre-established Fleet efficiency guidelines, taking costs and other logistical factors into consideration when determining ‘who goes where, when’… to maximize efficiency of Fleet operations.”

Admiral Kalis then added, “As for the ‘alleged’ unlawful discharges filed in the complaint, all Fleet personnel serve at the convenience of the Fleet so no one is guaranteed continued, uninterrupted service. No one within the Fleet knew of President Buchwald’s Fleet Reduction plans ahead of time — only
after
he actually ordered the reduction so I see no basis for the charge that these discharges were, in any way, unlawful. It was simply the ‘luck of the draw’ that events fell out exactly as they did.”

Kalis expressed his regrets at the hardship this Fleet reduction was causing to the crews and families affected by it, and also expressed his deep concern that the court would allow what he called, “a frivolous and distracting case against the Fleet” to go forward “during these dark days when our republic is in the midst of a Constitutional crisis.”

Kalis finished his statement to the press by saying, “I certainly wish the plaintiff’s attorneys good luck in trying to prove
bias
against a computer.”

“Well, gentlemen, what have we accomplished over the last five months?” asked Rear Admiral Enrico Melendez of his Fleet Counter-Intelligence team assembled in his office. “J.T.?”

“Admiral,” answered Capt. J.T. Turner, “as I told you in February, it’s virtually impossible to positively ‘prove’ something definitely did not happen. All I can say is, I have found absolutely no evidence that any Fleet computer system has been compromised or is functioning in any way outside of normal, expected parameters. I suspect that Al’s anomaly is actually nothing more than Bozo occasionally employing a little-used access code which, due to some mysterious hardware/software
gremlin
, as Bat called it, causes FALCON to go into a coma for a few milliseconds for some reason. Exactly ‘why’ this happens will probably never be known to anyone other than God and Bozo, but after exhaustive testing and examination, I have discovered absolutely no reason to suspect anything ominous exists that need concern us. I firmly believe that Al’s anomaly is totally innocuous.”

“Thank you, J.T.,” said Melendez. “Bat, do you have anything to add?”

“Without the access codes the brass and
heavenly powers above
have, in their infinite wisdom, determined that I don’t need, I have had absolutely no way of getting inside Bozo’s innards to investigate much of anything. But I’ve had this weird feeling about some things J.T. and Al said that day in the vault when this all started. It’s been niggling around in my head for months. Last night it finally came to the surface, when I was reading about something else entirely.”

“That
sixth-sense
kicking in again, Bat?” asked Melendez.

Bat laughed and said, “I don’t know why y’all are always going on about some weird
sixth-sense
y’all seem to think I have. I am just extremely methodical... slowly plodding through every logical step available to me, and sometimes the light bulb comes on. It’s my belief that when the conscious mind is presented with a problem it can’t seem to solve, the subconscious mind continues chewing on the problem while the conscious mind is off thinking about something else entirely — even while sleeping. Eventually, the subconscious mind finally puts all the pieces together and hands you the answer, seemingly out of thin air, when you least expect it... but always when you’re actively thinking about something else entirely. It’s not some mysterious intuitive leap. You’ve all experienced it. Everyone has.”

“Yes, but not nearly as often, nor leaped nearly as far as yours appears to,” quipped Melendez. “Nor with such remarkable regularity. So, what is this latest revelation about J.T. and Al’s comments back then, that you just figured out? ”

“It was what they said about not being able to make software changes, or even open a sealed memory container without Bozo’s direct assistance — and how Al’s people couldn’t actually implement any software changes themselves, but it was Bozo who actually implemented all software changes they wanted to make.”

“What about it?” asked J.T.

“Well, how does anyone know whether or not Bozo actually implements those specific changes? What if he merely substitutes other routines that mimic the desired function, without actually performing them? How would anyone know?”

“We wouldn’t,” replied Al. “Not if the counterfeit routines mimicked the expected function closely enough. We’d see exactly what we expected to see, and thus assume that the modification had been made exactly as we desired, because the visual evidence would seem to support that conclusion.

“But no computer ever made has even approached the level of consciousness necessary for independent, creative thought, which something like this would require,” continued Al.

“No computer ever made was specifically created to hold intelligent conversations with Klaus von Hemmel at his own level before either,” observed Melendez.

“What if that was what Klaus meant in that mysterious note he scrawled on that napkin as he died?” asked Bat. “What if he meant he’d succeeded in creating a truly sentient computer... capable of independent thought and action?”

“That would literally make Bozo a totally new, artificial life form,” said Al. “Has anyone ever seen any evidence whatsoever of Bozo having such capabilities? Other than occasionally suggesting alternatives to our proposed software changes, I’ve never seen any indication of creativity whatsoever.”

“That could merely be recognition of the desired end functions from an analysis of the code Al’s guys wrote, cross-checking for potential software/hardware incompatibilities, and making substitutions to perform the same functions while avoiding the incompatibility issues,” said J.T. “Nothing new about that. The AI comps aboard virtually every warship do that routinely.”

“Before Bozo came along, didn’t people routinely make changes to computer software themselves?” asked Admiral Melendez.

“Every day,” answered Al.

“So, exactly when was it that people lost the ability to program Fleet computers without Bozo
’s
direct assistance?” asked Melendez.

“Hold on, let me find out,” said Ligurri as he reached for his personal comm. Al punched in the access code for his exec over in Fleet Computer Security.

“Ike, this is Ligurri. Listen, I need you to query FALCON for the date of the last documented instance of a Fleet computer having its software installed or updates initiated manually, without being implemented by Bozo
.
Thanks.” Ligurri clicked off. “Ike will let me know as soon as he’s got it.”

“Anyone want to make a bet,” asked Bat, “it was sometime, not long after Klaus barricaded himself inside that lab?”

Melendez looked down into his lap and pursed his lips. Turner shook his head and glanced towards the ceiling. Neither took Bat’s bet.