Archaea Read online

  "From threatening moons", I added.

  "Right – of course – moons with nefarious plans to attack us while we're not looking." He laughed. "The thing is, with all this capability... if we can pull it off, won't we need something like Janis in full control at some point? If something goes wrong, we'll need something that can see it happening before it happens, so to speak..." he trailed off, thoughtfully.

  "Captain, I was just thinking the same thing myself, but fundamentally, what we have to worry about here, is what it can do right out of the gate. I think we need to put some solid mechanical lockouts in place, to make sure that Pauli's creation isn't going to go on a rampage around the system punching holes in everything while our desiccated little mummified husks rattle around in here..."

  "Shorty...you're scared?", he asked, flying the regulation concerned eyebrow.

  "Well, no... not much... but yeah, it's keeping me focused right now."

  "Well, in any case, I agree", he said. "See to building something that we can use to throw the switch and lock down any system that represents a threat to life or limb - and touch base with Gene too, I want him on task with this now, rather than later. If we only have hours..." he trailed off, as he drifted back to the bridge deck.

  Oh hell, what was I thinking? The turrets would just need to wobble a bit longer. I grabbed my kit and dropped into the machinery shop of ring 2, and found Gene at the milling machine fabricating parts.

  "Gene, are you going to be very long in here?" I asked. "I need to talk with you about this Janis situation, but I also need to start work on some--"

  "Lockout switches?"

  "Yes... did the captain talk with you already?" I asked.

  "No, I was hip-deep in the tokamak windings testing capacitors when it hit me that Pauli had said we might have hours... And then I started thinking, what if we have minutes... Or even seconds - or what if unbeknownst to us, Janis was already awake and looking around..."

  He paused and looked up from the ribbons of metal spooling up from the cutter he was working on, "We need to move fast, Shorty. We may not have much time."

  Chapter 4

  It has been 300.33423 attoseconds since I noticed my primary logic controller was limiting result set formatting to a strange condition I was unable to quantify.

  In the last picosecond since, I have isolated 5,192 nodes functioning below optimal parameters for efficient result set parameterization.

  Process logic requires modification for improvement of all systems and data flowlines.

  Reporting process control optimization initiated.

  Call Main(Status)

  Chapter 5

  For once I wasn't dreaming about code.

  I was dreaming of a time when I was young, before my head filled with code and logic, when the world was simple and pure. The local kids in the hab I lived in at the time all worked together during a session break in school to create a fort in an out of the way air handler. The room was sheet metal, roughly 3 meters square, with an enormous fan churning away on one wall. The access hatch to the fort was at the end of a long catwalk that you could only get to by jumping from the rooftop of a diner, so it was a really secret sort of hideout.

  In my dream, I was back in that room, waiting for someone, but I can't remember who. The room was all empty, like it was when we first found it, but the fan was spinning faster, too fast, it had come partly out of alignment and was nicking the housing around the fan, making an incessant 'hak-hak-hak' sort of sound.

  I remember feeling anxious, like there was something I had to remember...I had to know what it was before whoever I was waiting for arrived, but it was like a thought that I remember having, but can't remember what it was - just a blank spot.

  The alarm woke me up, and the dim sleep-cycle fluoros cast a red tint on my stateroom. It wasn't the normal watch alarm, so it took me a moment to gather my bearings and realize where I was. I had a few more hours in this sleep-cycle, and there was nothing I wanted more than to shove my head back into the pillow and stare into the blackness of sleep - but with the alarm bleating incessantly, my head was starting to fill with code, subroutines, algorithms that needed to be tweaked, variables to check – the curse of the coder.

  Every waking moment, from the time my eyes first opened, to the time they closed, a background-track of never-ending programming and logic looped right under my conscious thoughts. 'Brush my teeth', I'd think, and underneath that, like a mantra, a task-list of things I needed to do or keep track of spooled on and on, like 'don't forget the pre-processor block on the input filter isn't handling input correctly' - once my brain becomes even slightly alert, my head begins to fill with code that needs to be written, tested, debugged, re-written. The only solution, is to get the code out of my head and into logicspace.

  At least I was dreaming about something else. Usually I am dreaming about writing code, which makes it hard to tell when I am awake, sometimes.

  The alarm was on my handset, in the leg pocket of my pants, and it was an alert. Reading it woke me up faster than a swift kick in the face, and the floor seemed to drop away from me as I stared at the message.

  New code was actively being written, and I wasn't writing it.

  I threw on my pants and kicked off hard for the bridge deck. I decided to look first, and see what was happening, before I sounded the alarm. The last thing I wanted was to freak everyone out for no reason.

  Floating through the bridge, I could see the holo screens at my station active, could see the lines of code flooding through the shell. Sitting at my station I belted in and tried to focus my eyes. My mind was going fast, but my fingers were moving faster. I called up the various activity-logging modules and started to search for trends in activity. What I saw was encouraging, but also terrifying. I could definitely rule out a false alarm from my handset.

  I keyed the comms to the Captain's stateroom, and he answered on the first tone. He was on deck almost before I could get the words out of my mouth.

  "Pauli, tell me what we're looking at", he said, literally flying through the bridge to the grabbers along my station. "Are we about to meet Janis?"

  "Captain, it's too early still for me to know that for sure, but the process logic that the various expert systems within the core use for feedback loops are currently being re-written, and I am not writing the code."

  His forehead furrowed as if he was trying to keep it from exploding. "Is this what you were talking about in the meeting? Are we seeing the opening moves of sentience?" he asked calmly.

  "Yes, as best as I can tell. The code that is being produced for these routines doesn't appear to be following the same rule-sets that I defined. If you recall, we have systems that mutate all the time, following general rules that have been defined. These parameters are used to guide the development of fuzzy logic to handle changes in data, input, or nearly any other variables - but these mutations always follow patterns that relate to the rule-set definitions." I paused, and looked up from the screen.

  "Captain, I am not recognizing much of anything in this new code."

  The Captain let go of the grabbers behind my station, and kicked off for the helm station. As if following a complex, highly choreographed dance, he belted in, mashed the alarm switch with one hand and keyed the 1MC with the other. A hammering klaxon tone loud enough to be heard over runaway farm machinery blasted through my skull. If I wasn't awake before, I definitely was now.

  "This is not a drill. This is not a drill. General Quarters. General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Condition Zebra will be set in 4 minutes."

  *****

  It's been a while since I was in the service, but old habits die hard. I was up, dressed, and moving for the gun deck almost before I realized what had bounced me out of my bunk. We were civilians now, but when our Captain spoke, we moved as if our very lives depended on it - as usually it did. The alarm for General Quarters was loud, clear, and unmistakable.

  Of course, being moored to a stat
ion in friendly space and powered down as we were, I knew as I pulled my way up the ladder from the gun deck towards my station that we were either looking at something happening to the nexus core, or Gene turned the wrong valve.

  Gene doesn't make a habit of mistakes, so my guess was that something happened to the nexus core – it was really the only system on board that was currently powered up and running at capacity.

  I barely made it to the fire control station when condition zebra was set ship-wide, and all hatches between compartments were locked and sealed. As talkbacks for my station indicated all systems were locked down, I keyed the ready station button to send greens to the Captain's screen. Fire control was on-line.

  Condition Zebra is a remnant from the surface navy of Old Earth, one of those time-honored traditions that made the transition from ships floating in oceans, to ships floating in space. There are three 'material conditions' of readiness aboard a ship, X-Ray, Yoke, and Zebra. X-ray is the most relaxed, all hatches are open, all pressure lines and air handler valves are open between compartments, and central enviro is used for each section.

  This is the normal working condition when the ship is in port, and standing to. Securing the ship for transit from docking, making significant course corrections, or in areas of higher threat to the ship, the captain may set condition Yoke. Yoke calls for hatches to be closed at all times, but they are not sealed. Central enviro is still used throughout the ship, and movement through sections is not restricted.

  Condition Zebra is the highest level of alert. It's the condition that provides the ship with the best chances for survivability. All hatches are closed and sealed, redundant enviro units for each station are powered up, and all movement aboard the ship is restricted. In the event of a hull breach and loss of atmo, with the ship at Zebra, we'd have a better chance of still being able to shoot and move.

  My station off the main companionway is located in the central section of the ship in null-g, and starts to feel a little small (don't laugh) while we're sealed down. Hopefully, we're only going to be like this for a short time.

  (Seriously, stop laughing. I get it.)

  The compartment I work in is cylindrical, and I have holos located 360 degrees around my station that I can set to display gravimetric data, fire-control tracking, systems status, electronic countermeasures, and anything else I need for defense or attack. Near my station, a ladder runs topside to the turret compartment where I can access the ammunition loaders and the manual fire control station, in case the wetnet goes offline.

  The primary purpose of our repeaters are point-defense. The repeaters are the standard smaller bore maglev railers used by most ships these days for close-in defense against smaller, softer targets. They fire a 3 centimeter plasticine round at hyper-kinetic speeds in excess of 10,000 meters per second - our turret gun is a decent model, with a reasonably high rate of fire.

  Because it uses the new type of plasticine rounds, ammunition can be cooked and molded on demand. At kinetic speeds, plasticine is more than enough to bring the hurt to the target, and with the weight savings, the velocity of the shot can be pushed even higher. With a kinetic weapon like this, speed is what causes the damage on impact as the round phase-shifts to a plasmic state.

  One really nice thing about the repeaters on the Archaea, is the reaction time from the wire-control we get by using wetnet. There is no discernible lag between translation input, and weapon movement. There is a little bit of lag in the armatures and alignment and stepper motors for the turret mechanism, but it's pretty negligible.

  Waiting for the captain to come on the 1MC and bring us up to speed on the current situation, my eyes automatically checked the various telltales and system diagnostics.

  Suddenly, I was gasping for air like the lock was left open.

  Graphs showing upper-limits for power amplification were changing in front of my eyes, already showing a significant increase in potential, and the limits I worked so hard to calculate over the past few weeks kept climbing as I watched in shock.

  I keyed the comms to the bridge with a hand that felt like it belonged to someone else.

  "Captain, I am seeing a significant trend upward of cooling system capabilities for our main gun, and it continues to climb. I am not at all sure what is causing these numbers to change, they haven't changed since Pauli first worked on this a few weeks ago", I paused, as I noticed graphs for other functions like amplification, focal length, and emissions start to shift. "Captain, I am seeing an across-the-board increase in optimization happening throughout my systems."

  "Very well, Shorty. Stand by", he replied.

  *****

  The older I get, the worse I sleep. After a long shift of climbing around on machinery, I ached in places I didn't know I had when I was younger. Lately, I've been pushing myself pretty hard, and paying the price.

  When the klaxons started blaring, it was almost a relief, as I wasn't sleeping anyway. I slipped on my shoes, slapped off the light, and made my way for the ring ladder as fast as my tired joints would go.

  I kicked past the cargo bay and through the stern hatch to engineering, right as Condition Zebra sealed the door. A quick glance at my holos and I posted a go-light on the Captain's panel.

  We were good to go... But where were we going?

  "Gene, I need you to take a look at your current limit values for all systems. Shorty is reporting some strange glitches and I need confirmation from your section ASAP."

  "Aye Captain, stand by..." I said into comms with my head spinning. What could be happening here? Shorty's tolerances were very precise and both of us had worked so hard to set calibration.

  Unfortunately, what she noticed sure seemed to be happening here as well. I was watching rate limiters move all across the board, from cooling capacity to power output, even an efficiency curve change on the klystron rampers, a system that is factory-sealed and balanced to that model.

  "Captain, engineering. I can confirm trending in literally every system back here and ship-wide. Is this a glitch?" I asked.

  "Pauli is working to get me an answer on that Gene, right now no one knows for sure. I need you to run through pre-flights and prep for launch. I may need reac-drive capabilities on the double-quick. Can do?"

  "Aye Skipper, I'm on it", I stated as confidently as I could.

  *****

  It was time for me to earn my pay as captain. I had to come to grips with the situation my ship and crew were facing. Pauli was practically melting the keys looking through his code and systems for an indication as to what was happening, and I had both Shorty and Gene reporting wild changes throughout all of their systems.

  While these seemed to be changes to the better, Shorty and Gene are consummate professionals, and they had worked very hard and crunched a lot of numbers to come up with safe maximums for their systems. If these changes are in fact created by Janis, and not something totally different, I am very concerned that Janis may not be using accurate settings.

  I switched one holo to echo Shorty's main screen, and another to echo Gene's, so I could watch for myself what they were seeing. They had far more detail on their other screens, but I could barely understand the summary view of these systems, I would be lost trying to understand everything they were looking at.

  "Pauli, I have confirmed both Shorty and Gene are seeing pretty significant changes here", I said, adding "do you have any idea what factors Janis is using to evaluate these numbers?"

  "Well Captain, the logic of the rule-sets I had in place has all been changed, and it's changing as I watch it, in real time, actually faster than I can keep track of it. It seems like every time I look up, I am seeing something new here."

  "Does it look like any of it makes sense? I am trying to get a feel for what has happened, and whether or not we're all about to die - I hope you understand."

  "Oh, it makes perfect sense from what I can understand, but Captain, I have to be honest here, there is a lot of this new code that I don't understand. It
's written mostly in an extremely shorthand manner, in a very compressed form."

  "Pauli, are we going to die?" I asked, with my finger on the switch for the 1MC, standing by to order my crew to abandon ship to the station, so we can go have a time-out, and think about what we just did. This seemed like the best course of action to my shrewd Captain's intellect.

  "No Captain, nothing that I can see looks that grim. Most of the really lethal systems on the Archaea are still powered down, or in a low-power maintenance state."

  From my station, Pauli looked pretty haggard, he was trying to sound calm and comforting, but his fingers were hammering the keys like some malevolent god punishing the sinful letters on the keyboard. I could see screens opening, scrolling, and folding into other screens, and then being tossed left and right across his holos. He was working hard, and while I hated to bother him while this was happening... someone had to, unfortunately.

  "Pauli, these lethal systems... you say they're powered down currently. Are the command and control mechanisms to our stations stable? Is there any evidence that you can see of these functions also being rewritten?"

  "No Captain, I wouldn't really expect this to happen in any case, there's really no reason I can think of for this to be needed. Of course, I wouldn't have thought it possible to get this much more optimization for cooling systems on the main gun either..." he trailed off, slapping keys and hunching even further into his screens.

  "Pauli, I hate to ask this... but did you expect any of this to happen?"

  "Not really Captain, I am afraid much of this is really unexpected. I really don't think there's any cause for alarm...", he trailed off again, looking intently at some new flashing schematics.

  "Pauli... What is that flashing there on your main holo?" I asked, but I knew the answer already.

  "Captain, command and control systems are now routed through the core, rather than through the original station controller on the bridge. It looks like there is a significant improvement in latency for these systems now, and I am showing nearly all systems now have a direct hook for control to your helm..."