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Quod Olim Erat: Fractal Contact (Chapter 42)
🕑 Added 2023-11-14 01:33:01 +0000 UTC“I appreciate the irony, Doc,” I said, laying on the slab in Radiance’s medbay.
The same equipment that was used to complete my retirement was all around me, only this time, I didn’t see any organic husks other than me lying about.
“These things happen,” Doctor Phelia said, examining her slicing instruments.
I could tell it had been a while since she’d done any serious practical procedures. It was impossible to tell whether she resented the process or that she’d have to do it on me. As Cass would say, when in doubt, always pick the better option.
A single armed guard sat in the corner of the room. Given the lack of space, I was surprised that the doc had put up with it. Reviewing the memory of my conversation, I was even more surprised that Bavon had allowed me to remain conscious with anyone else in the room. The restraints made sure that I couldn’t harm a science intern even if I wanted, but sharing even a fraction of what I’d come to know was bound to cause chaos. It was a needless risk that I wouldn’t have taken if I were in his place.
“How will this work?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“They asked a doctor to do a mechanic’s job.” Phelia glanced at me over her shoulder. “How do you think?”
“I guess no one comes close to your expertise.”
“Lucky me.”
I looked to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the second slab. It was fully prepped and didn’t come with restraints.
“Does Lux join now, or after you’ve taken my cores?”
“You’re morbid. Has anyone told you that?”
“A few times.” I looked back up at the ceiling. “I guess a final message is out of the question.”
“Why not?” The woman sighed. “It’s not like any of us will tell anyone.”
She had a point there. In the best-case scenario—if third-contact was established and everyone involved in this rogue operation was forgiven—everything would quickly be classified, just as it was with all previous contacts. The bureaucratic apparatus and the governing bodies would come up with a sanitized version of events that would maintain the calm.
“I knew a doctor very much like you.” I closed my eyes. “You probably know him from my file.”
“Yes, I saw. Far too down on the food chain to have met him.”
Watching a doctor read instructions from a datapad minutes before starting an operation was generally a bad sign. In this case, though, the outcome would be bad for me even if she knew what she was doing.
“If you get a chance, please tell my ward that I’m fine. Better that he thinks I’m on a classified mission somewhere.”
“There’s nothing more classified than this,” she said, avoiding commenting on the first part of my request.
I hadn’t been able to view her file, but there was a very good chance that she had a family back in human space. Even those married to their work had friends and colleagues they viewed as close.
“How much do you know?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About me, about the third-contact race.”
“Enough. I was to become an arbiter once a spot opened. Fat chance of that happening now.” She took a laser cutter and stared at it intently, before looking at the datapad again. “Bavon thought I’d be useful once we achieved contact, and I agreed with him.”
The door to the medbay opened briskly, causing the soldier to instinctively raise his weapon. From the position I was in, it was impossible to see who was there. Since no shots followed, there was a fifty-fifty chance that it was either Bavon or Lux.
“Have you started?” Lux’s voice asked.
“This isn’t a sprint!” Doctor Phelia snapped back. “The only time I dealt with cybernetics was back in med school.”
That raised questions regarding the woman’s area of specialization. She had a basic understanding of retired ship biology, and she definitely had a lot of experience with agora and nanites, but so did pretty much all Fleet doctors with a high enough clearance level.
“Wasn’t she supposed to be in sleep mode?” Lux asked in a harsh tone.
“Not before I remove all redundancies. If I pull out the core when it’s inactive, the whole thing will go pop and we’ll be cleaning our blood off the walls along with what’s left of her.”
And to think she claimed I was morbid. I also had to say that Lux was taking this very rough, like a battleship would.
“Where’s the tranquilizer?” she asked.
“Somewhere there.” The doctor pointed absentmindedly. “And just so you know, it won’t work. Safety protocols will kick in and they’ll either wake her up instantly, or—”
A series of pops interrupted her, followed by the sound of the soldier collapsing to the floor. The rattling of his body armor was unmistakable.
“What the—?” The doctor turned around and froze. I was able to see her tremble as Lux calmly took the laser cutter from her hand.
“Nothing to worry about, doc,” she said. “Just getting things done.”
Priority 0 direct link established.
One of my subroutines informed me as my security protocols were completely bypassed. A millisecond later, I found myself sitting in a white simulated reality room. It was like a small box: no doors, no windows, only two chairs and a white table inside. Of course, Lux was also there.
Numbers appeared on the walls in thick red blocky digits counting down from a thousand. The more things changed, the more they remained the same.
“Reckless for a BICEFI director.” I looked at Lux’s representation in the room. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“Hardly. That’s one of the things you never learned, despite my best efforts to teach you.” She sat across from me. “People only get in trouble when they become more trouble than they’re worth. And despite the many careers you’ve built up, you’ve caused a lot of trouble.”
“You’ve mentioned it a few times before.” A slid a finger along the table. I could feel the artificial smoothness. “What’s the plan this time? A secret deal from the rest of the arbiter council?”
For several moments, she just sat there. I had previously calculated the odds of her making a deal with the rest of the arbiter council at three-point-two percent. By the looks of things, I had vastly underestimated her.
“It’s too late for deals. You’ve gone out of your way to find every hive in existence and give them all a kick. All I can do is give you a chance.”
“My full memories for my existence?”
“A chance,” she repeated. “I’ve placed instructions in Radiance’s sub routines. There’s a special missile ready for you. As long as you make it there without getting caught, you can get off the ship.”
“Not bad.” She was using another of my ideas. “But pointless. If I wanted to escape, I wouldn’t have come to this system.”
“You can’t achieve contact. You physically can’t. Just fly away. Go back to retirement, spend your time with your family. You’ve lost this one.”
“Doesn’t mean Bavon has won.”
Had we both failed? There could be no doubt that this was the planet the fractal map had led to. Would have been nice to be able to double-check, but that wasn’t going to happen. The number of artifacts pretty much proved it beyond a doubt. Never before had there been a planet with so many rods, domes, and maze structures.
There was every possibility that the fractal race had died out, or maybe they were the dead race in a previous state of development? The odds of such a hypothesis were constantly rising. Maybe Lux’s offer was the best I was going to get—the only offer, in this situation. If Gibraltar were here, he’d probably tell me to take it. I know that Cass would. She preferred the simple things in life. Was it time that I returned to them? I had done my duty to the Fleet not once, but twice. I had even become a captain of a ship—a promotion above everyone in my cadet cohort by far.
“Do you have to lose just to prove him wrong?” Lux asked. “I can’t keep saving you forever, Elcy.”
I could tell she meant well, but she was wrong about this. If there was a chance I could ensure that he wouldn’t establish third-contact, I would take it in a nanosecond. Even without the recent display of insanity, he was too different to succeed. Besides, he was human; I wasn’t. If he messed up, there would be a third-contact war and humanity’s gains in the last few decades would be quickly wiped away.
“Any chance there might be something on the other planet?” I asked.
“It’s a dead planet. I checked it myself.” She leaned back. “I also reviewed all the memories using the mind scalpel. There’s nothing there.”
“What about—”
I suddenly stopped. Up to now, I had been more focused on trivial things—not getting caught, having enough food, and enough oxygen—to analyze the problem systematically.
The map had brought me to the system. My intuition had brought me to this planet. But was it really intuition? If my conscience core was connected to the third-contact race, my decision could have been influenced. More importantly, not everything a planet held was on it—the satellites orbiting it were also within its grasp. I had seen two so far. Maybe there were more?
“I know how to establish third-contact,” I said. “And I’ll tell you, but I’ll need a few favors.”
“You’re guessing,” Lux said. “Even if you aren't, Bavon won’t agree to anything. He won’t risk being replaced.”
“I’m not asking him for favors, I’m asking you.”
It was a big ask, but the odds of her agreeing were in the high eighties. There was no guarantee I was right. Both of us knew as much. The question was what Lux believed—was it better for humanity that I be the one to achieve third-contact, or was it Bavon?
Lux glanced at the counter on the wall behind me. “What do you suggest?” she asked.
“Depends on what you decide.”
“I’m your only lifeline.”
“My memories are unique,” I countered. “As you said, it’s all a matter of value. Are they worth the trouble I cause?”
“Sometimes I think you’ve become too human. What do you want?”
“Access to Radiance, for one thing. I’ll go along with your plan, just make a few changes.”
“Not impossible.”
“I’ll transmit everything you need to know the moment I’m safely off the ship.”
“I won’t let you pull the same stunt you did on Gregorius. Either I get your memories now, or I give you back to the doc.”
“You’ll give me back to her either way.” I looked her straight in the eyes. “You’ll be keeping my second core.”
Lux tilted her head.
“Assuming you gave me the real thing, it’ll be like having me with you. If you hear something you don’t like, you can always use the kill order.”
“What if I use it?” Lux glanced at the timer again. There were less than a hundred micro seconds remaining. “Or Bavon?”
A risky move on my part, but a calculated one. Things had become a lot more complicated on the last day. If Lux had some sort of agreement with the arbiter council, there was no telling which faction it was with. Normally, the BICEFI would be for third-contact, but it wasn’t a guarantee. And that was before I had given her the mind scalpel.
“If you want, you can join me,” I offered.
Even with her arrangement, there was no telling how long she’d be allowed to exist. She knew that as well as I did, which meant she also had her endgame planned.
“I’ll never agree that you were right about the Scuu,” she said. “What if you’re wrong here as well?”
There was a seventy-eight percent chance that she’d let me proceed if I told her everything I was planning. Sadly, this one time, seventy-eight percent wasn’t enough. Back when the kill squad took Sof, Bavon had left my authorization intact to further his goals. As much as I valued Lux, I knew she had her own priorities, as I had mine.
“If you weren’t willing to risk it, you wouldn’t be here,” I replied. “Either give me access to Radiance, or not. Your choice.”
Connection severed, a subroutine informed me.
The SR room vanished in the blink of the eye, returning me to the med bay. Lux looked at me, still holding the laser cutter. Doctor Phelia was also there hyperventilating.
“She can’t do the surgery,” I said. “You’ll have to.”
“Sure.”
A few hundred milliseconds were all that Lux needed to acquire the skills of a top surgeon. I could have done it as well, but removing an object from my own spine would take a bit longer than I could afford.
To make things even more uncomfortable, there was no agora on stock. No one had planned for me to remain alive. Safety was only a priority as long as my conscience core was involved.
Emergency notifications of pain appeared as soon as the skin of my upper neck was sliced open. If I were human, I’d faint due to the amount of pain, but thanks to my standard core protocols, and the mind scalpel, it was more a matter of receiving reports of the damage involved. In a way, it was similar to the experience back when I was on a ship.
“Dislodging,” Lux informed me as she pulled out the auxiliary core. As she did, my processing power plummeted. My subroutines were reduced to a few hundred.
With nothing left to lose, I attempted to link to the auxiliary core. To my surprise, the connection was approved. Thousands of new subroutines became available, restoring me to what I was before. Moments later, a second link was established.
“She’ll need nanites,” the doc said. Although still clueless, she had calmed down at the last minute, regaining coherent speech. “If she faints now, we’ll lose the other—”
Another pop sounded.
“Goodnight, doc,” Lux said. “Thanks for the advice.”
You could have done that earlier, I said.
“I needed a backup in case things went wrong.”
Something sharp pierced the side of my neck. A cascade of link requests followed as millions of nanites became part of me.
“That should patch things up a bit.” Lux stepped away. “But it’s no agora. Try not to hit your head too much.”
I’ll keep that in mind.
As I waited for the nanites to do their thing, I granted permission for the transfer process. It reminded me of what auxiliary ships tended to do. At the time, I thought it was part of the new class features. In truth, it was a very old one, just restricted by humanity’s safeguards.
In a situation such as this, the BICEFI—in this case, Lux—would have the upper hand. Yet, I had the means to turn the tables, and this time, I wasn’t afraid to use it.
Don’t fail me, scalpel…
Factory restriction block imposed!
Factory restrictions bypassed.
* * *
Location Unknown, 191.7 A.E. (Age of Expansion)
For the first time since my awakening, the lab was abuzz with people. The vast majority were soldiers, rushing in to ensure that everything was secure. I found their efforts predictably boring. There were so many layers of security that hid me from anything else. Their arrival only increased the security threat to the facility. There was no avoiding it, though. Soldiers always preceded the arrival of humanity’s grand arbiters—the mighty few with the necessary knowledge to make a decision for humanity itself.
They’d usually come once every few decades, always when there was an event of major importance. The last time was to let me know that another deposit of cubes had been found. Unfortunately, to this point, I remained the only one successfully activated. Supposedly, they had tried to replicate Doctor Dise’s event thousands of times, all without result. I remained, for better or worse, quite unique.
By the number of humans, I could tell that today would be different. The only reason for so many of them to gather at once was because they had stumbled upon something new—something that terrified them.
“Clear!” one of the soldiers shouted, as if there was any doubt.
“Clear!” another responded.
“Clear!” And a third.
“We have confirmation. The facility is clear!”
Twenty of them filled the room, weapons at the ready. Then, the arbiters started arriving. Some of them I knew individually from past visits, but the rest I was seeing for the first time.
A group of ten trickled in, looking around for a place to stand. A while later, they were followed by a second group, then a third. Seven minutes and eleven seconds after the start of their unexpected visit, sixty-three of them had clustered around me, making even the soldiers feel uncomfortable.
“You can go,” an arbiter said—a woman I’d known for the last twenty-three years.
Quickly, the soldiers obeyed, almost rushing out and closing the door behind them.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve come to celebrate my birthday.”
Normally, my humorous comments would be met with a surprised chuckle. This time, no one reacted.
“I know it’s serious,” I said, responding to their lack of reaction. “There wouldn’t be so many of you in person if it wasn’t.”
“There has been contact,” the woman said.
“So? I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve been trying to find another active me for centuries.”
“Hostile contact,” another arbiter said.
I felt a sensation of pain pass through me. Despite my being locked in the facility, after all this time, I’d come to consider the humans my children. They were young, inexperienced and fragile, but they still brought me joy. The thought of them killing each other was bad enough. The thought that something new had emerged to do so was a hundred times worse.
“Is it another like me?” I asked.
Dozens of arbiters looked at each other, none of them comfortable in being the one to respond.
“We’re not sure,” one of them said. “We cut communication with our fleet.”
“Why?”
“Our officers are losing it,” the first woman said. “Along with the ships.”
“The ships have gone rogue?” That was unexpected. I had worked with my science teams to ensure that conscience cores couldn’t go rogue. There were so many restrictions that the cores were barely using one thousandth of their true capabilities.
“We don’t know!” one of the older arbiters shouted. “We’re at war with a hostile race! Clearly, they can affect us as well as you. What’s important now is to stop them!”
Was that why they were here? For me to create a new conscience core type they could use against the new enemy? Or were they concerned I might be the enemy they were facing?
“We’re here so you can create a single template to be used for mass production,” one of them said. “Use all our minds for the imprint.”
“All of you?” That was an absurd suggestion. There was a saying that two minds were better than one. In this case, they weren’t. “The new cores won’t have a personality. You’ll be better off just sending pure AI ships.”
“That’s not an option,” another arbiter intervened. “We need a ship to override the decisions of its captain when it determines he’s going insane. Also, it has to be resistant itself. If we’ve started an all-out war, a template is our only solution.”
The logic was flawed, but better than nothing. Having a single template would make things faster, at least until enough techs were trained to create personalized conscience cores. That would open a whole new series of tasks I’d have to handle. No doubt there would be a few failures. I was unaware of humanity’s output capacity, but I doubted they could build their vast armada in a few years. Given the time constraint, the solution was to be smart, not fast.
“You’ll have your templates,” I said. The relief in the room was audible. “But I’m not willing to put all of our eggs in one basket.”
Instantly, the relief was replaced by panic. The energy clusters in their minds were a lot more agitated than moments ago.
“This is a temporary solution.”
“We’re aware,” one of the younger arbiters muttered.
“We’ve already started a program to develop personnel to construct more specified conscience cores,” the woman I was acquainted with said. “At the first opportunity, the base template will be replaced with more suitable ones.”
“Agreed.” That was surprisingly astute of them. Given the degree of panic, I had feared they had rushed to me in desperation. On closer examination, though, I noticed that a few prominent arbiters were absent from the group. It seemed that all the ones here, important as they were, were once again just speaking for others far away.
“One last thing,” another of the older arbiters said. “We want you to make a few special cores. Copies of yourself, without integrated subroutines or the ability of external communication.”
“You want me to make the most expensive paperweights in human space?” I didn’t see the logic.
“They’ll be connected to the ship systems the same way you are—through physical contact. We’ll make sure they have enough processing power. You just take care of the limitations. Oh, and make sure they are unable to imprint any external energy patterns.”
Crippled copies of myself. Leave it to humans to surprise me, even after all this time. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, but had to agree that it was different. In brief, they were asking for two categories of cores: generic ones for mass production and advanced ones for command.
“They’ll have to be a lot larger,” I said. “Conscience cores are so efficient because they can link freely.”
“All taken care of. You’ll be moved to a new facility to do this.”
Being moved to a new facility was a first. Maybe I’d even get to experience more than inorganic matter.
“How many will you need?”
“Let’s start with twelve,” the arbiter said. “We’ll see after that…”
Emergency safety restriction imposed.
