Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 5 / Chapter 7 –>

The loading bay’s interior airlock sealed with a hiss. A green light blinked on above the blast door to indicate that the seal was intact. The high whine of the industrial blowers forced a wall of air into the vast cavern of the sublevel, sending a skirl of loose paper and debris flying. The heavy Mobile Utility Transport edged forward under the negative pressure. The driver, a young scout tech named Vernon, idled the massive solar-converted diesel engines into life, and crawled the MUT forward. A second blast door, visible through the polarized windscreen, ground to the left. Behind it was a ramp which angled sharply toward ground level.

Vernon punched an amber toggle on the dash display and the vehicle’s overhead halogens burst into hot white luminescence. Another bay door loomed at the far end of the incline and he inched toward it. The second door thumped closed behind them, jarring the entire ramp with its finality. A green status light blinked just above and to the left of the headlamps, and at once the final bay door grated open with a screech of metal on metal.

Vernon said, “Who’s ready for a day at the beach? Fun and sun and frolic in the sand. Here we go!”

He stomped his foot on the accelerator. The engines belched a plume of black smoke like a toxic mushroom cloud and the transport lumbered, then groaned up the remaining meters and burst out into the morning.

The vehicle’s massive industrial tread tires shredded the soft sand piled against the exterior door. It plowed furrows through the dunes, flattening their gentle curves against the steel undercarriage. Vernon continued to accelerate, spuming fine sand and small rocks from all six wheels.

“Solar cells at eighty percent,” Ilam reported from the cockpit passenger seat.

Vernon nodded. “Batteries on full. Fuel cells holding at 23.9 Celsius. Diesel is liquid and clean, filters are performing normally. Switching to solar.”

He slapped at a whole bank of switches. The growl of full-throated combustion engines abruptly ceased. In its place was the hum and vibration of the electric motors. Vernon backed off the pedals, and held them at a steady, if not sedate pace.

“Solar two is only charging at seventy-five percent.” Ilam stared at a series of on-board displays fluttering across the passenger side status screen. “Cell six is at forty. Not critical, but we’ll put a note in the maintenance log. Internal atmosphere is normalized. Seals all check as good. Transport status is five by five.”

He made a half turn in his seat, and peered down the narrow gangway between the conical cockpit and the equipment and personnel hold. He gave the thumbs up signal, smiling through his faceplate.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may pop your stops at your discretion. However, the captain would like to remind you that he is not liable for accidents, lost and stolen items or sudden, catastrophic cabin depressurization. He would most specifically like to remind all passengers that the external ambient air quality is very bad, the atmospheric pressure is holding at a steady six-one-four millibars and the planet temperature this morning is a chilly one hundred and seventy two Kelvins with highs only expected in the two hundred teen Kelvin range. Bundle up out there, double check your toe warmers and your e-suit heat exchange, and thank you for flying with Archae Airways.”

Vernon laughed, then couldn’t resist adding his own humor. “Now, if you’ll look out the windows to your left, you’ll see sand. Or to the right, sand again! Everywhere it’s sand! The good news is that it probably won’t rain today.”

Brett stopped listening to them. He released the seals below his helmet, ratcheted the connection to the left and pulled his head clear. He shook his head back and forth vigorously, trying to clear the stuffiness in his ears. The pop was almost painful.

To his left, Djen was doing the same. Her helmet came free and she brushed her gloved hands through her mop of curls.

Brett turned away first, before she met his eyes, and he focused his attention out the windows. Archae Stoddard’s dunes and low hills and occasional jutting stone spire wheeled around them. The sand had blown away in places, revealing solid crust like bedrock, a slate colored stone gouged by years and wind. There were mountains away off to the left, directly ahead of Brett as he peered at them. These were tall, he knew from global surveys, or at least tall in Archae Stoddard relative terms. The highest peak was perhaps one and a half thousand meters; the range in general averaged nearly a thousand. In the brittle morning light, those rocks were black, distant. Rills and valleys carved by weather and time itself branched off from their path. Most were shallow, wouldn’t even hide a man from view unless he stooped. A few opened into narrow chasm-like canyons deep with settled sand and fierce, gusting winds which would come from seemingly nowhere, grab that latent sand in a wicked vortex and hurl it up the canyon walls in blinding spumes. Some of those freak blasts had been known to pit plastisheen.

He switched his gaze toward the horizon. Early morning, the sun just climbing the horizon, the usual phlegm-yellow sky was stained with streaks of tangerine and crimson. It was like staring up into a vast Tequila Sunrise.

Except for that bit of clouds off to the west, of course. Those were gray and ugly, and he imagined they probably smelled bad, though he couldn’t have said why. The latest weather extrapolations put this bank of thunderheads no more than three hours away. If they could get out to Nine and back in good time, they might miss the worst of the weather.

“I would have left without you,” Djen said. “It was Ilam who made us wait. He couldn’t find his gloves. And him I couldn’t do without. When I said forty-five minutes, I meant it.”

Brett nodded vaguely. “And I believed you.”

“You were fifteen minutes late.”

“I had last minute station business.” Though it would mean nothing to her, or at least not the correct things, he added, “I had to visit the primary system interface this morning before we left.”

She shuddered visibly, and he imagined something more than sympathy in her expression. “That must have been unpleasant.”

“I don’t mind so much. Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know why you subject yourself to it.”

Users had an automatic visceral reaction to the primary interface, never pleasant, but Bett had textbook answers with which he could explain himself. Or defend himself. “When I leave the station in someone else’s hands, I want to make certain Cassandra comprehends. The primary interface offers improved precision of understanding.”

“She understands typewritten orders, Markus.”

“I’m not always so sure. Not of her ability, of course, but of my own clarity. I’m not much of a programmer. For important commands, I prefer the verbal interface. I’ve set up a number of profiles for maximum comprehension.”

Djen seemed willing to let it go at that, and Brett settled back against the hard passenger bench. The unforgiving terrain jostled them mercilessly, slamming the axle’s over thrusts of rock, uneven tracks and the occasional rolling gully. He set his feet against the metal cleats in the middle of the floor and tried to hold himself in place against the transport’s curved interior wall. Then it was only his bones that thumped and vibrated with each impact.

“Why would they do something like that?” Djen asked him. The question lurched at him like a blow from the dark.

“Do what?”

“Don’t be stupid, Markus. You know what I mean.”

He shrugged his shoulders, realizing he should not have expected her to let him off easily. “The primary interface allows the machine to act intuitively when the need to program efficiently under sever time constraints arises. It’s better equipped to understand the human thought process than a cognate programming language can mimic. It successfully gives us applications built on what we mean rather than what we say. Most of the time, I mean.”

Djen curled her lip, not buying it at all. “It doesn’t fill in the gaps left by our own failure to reason.”

That isn’t enough of a justification, is what she did not say. She didn’t have to. Brett could read it in the outraged flush of her skin.

“But it does interpret input data less rigidly. It understands nuances. Cassandra senses when the data doesn’t match the expectation or the reality it’s supposed to reflect. She keeps you from stumbling over stupid syntax errors that would cost us hours of debugging. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t code a complex application using the primary interface, but she’s a whiz at debugging and fine-tuning once the framework is in place.”

She squinted at him, harboring suspicions or judgments he couldn’t guess. “That data is filtered through some poor soul’s humanity. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“The self-definitional cortices have been suppressed. Cassandra is only partially human, and that only in the strictest biological sense.” He wanted to shudder just as she had. Instead, he was wooden, harsh. “The Cassandra system harnesses the vast computational, intuitive, visual-aural understanding mechanisms of the human brain.”

“Anyone can quote the operations manual, Markus.”

“If it’s in the manual, it must be true.” He smiled weakly. The manual went on to state: The Cassandra System Primary Interface is a radical breakthrough in intuitive-logical compatibility. The organic component is capable of assimilating and processing aural and visual stimuli at a rate of seventy-eight billion LOC units per second. Fiber sensors utilizing stored grids of the organic synaptic patterns are able to instantly convert non-logical and metalingual comprehension into program coding on an instantaneous basis. The Cassandra System, by virtue of its seamless joining of the best of human intuitive reasoning and electronic rapid processing and rigid logic interpretational matrices, creates a practically limitless functional and adaptive computing environment.

“Bullshit. You know there are other issues. Moral issues. You’re not going to see a Cassandra system in Earthside use. Only in deep space where we’re supposed to be immune from outrage.”

“What do you want me to say?” There was nothing that could express what he did feel without also exposing the truth. Not even trying to make Djen understand was worth that risk. “I’ve used the primary interface in our Cassandra system for better than five years. She’s never once acted in any way that was inconsistent with the standard.”

He knew this as an immutable fact. He’d looked from every possible angle. He’d hoped and begged and vigorously challenged the cortical repression system. Brett could, should it be necessary, take the entire machine apart and put it together again from the ground up. He had studied the system’s specifications in complete detail. He was certain of the things he said.

Because of his bitter certainty, he couldn’t leave it there.

“She’s never once said she was hungry when her sustenance tubes clogged. She’s never complained of cold or heat. Never said she was lonely. Never told me stories about her childhood or made dynamic associations between one event outside the parameters of her programming and another. She’s never noticed when I cut my hair. She’s a machine, Djen, that’s all Cassandra is.”

He was not shouting, but he could sense the intensity he lashed toward her. Brett sucked his anger, his frustration–everything that ached inside him–back into the hard, dark place inside him where it belonged. Djen studied him for a few uncomfortable moments. If anything, she seemed reassured by his basic human feeling.

She placed her gloved hand on his arm. “I’m not attacking you. You didn’t create the machine.”

Not all of it, he thought. Not all of it. I only contributed my fair share.

#

Sperling Engine Nine, located some thirty-five kilometers south by southeast of Persia station, sat in a wide cleft between two winding juts of native rock. The sharp-spined ridges angled together like a pair of legs, the body of which was buried in the sand, and formed a protective barrier from the wind and the elements and the screaming projectiles the storms of Archae Stoddard frequently produced.

As a structure, Nine looked exactly like the eight which proceeded it and the three which followed, all under Persia’s maintenance geas. It was squat at the base and square, just short of three meters tall and fashioned out of military grade radiation shielding. The second level was identical in shape, but smaller on a ratio of 1:1.5, meaning that its height was just two meters and its floor area roughly two hundred square. Instead of a scraped steel exterior, this level had louvered vent slats which could be opened to a complete horizontal angle or closed and sealed to approximate air-tightness. The uppermost level was smaller still along the same ratio and it housed only the tremendous bladed fans which propelled up and out the chemical product the engine continually manufactured. Viewed from the exterior, the Sperling Engine resembled a diminutive steel ziggurat spewing offerings of incense to nameless solar gods.

Vernon wheeled the transport in a ponderous arc until the loading hatch faced the circular entry port in Nine’s front side. Brett checked his seals a final time, twisted his helmet in his hands to assure himself he was locked and dialed his heat exchange to the maximum setting. The generator strapped to his back growled as the circulator fans kicked in and a flush of hot air circled about his midsection. He began to sweat. The mechanical lurch of his generator seemed to push him from behind toward the door, toward Nine and the problems presented there.

He crouched forward, moving bent at the waist, crab-like, so as not to damage his equipment against the flat metal roof. He cleared his throat to activate the vocal pick-ups which pressed against his larynx.

“Exit check. I’m ready to breach the hatch.”

“I’m coming,” Ilam said. “With you in a moment.”

“Locked for depressurization,” Vernon confirmed.

Djen said nothing, but she shifted the insulated satchel with her portable computer from the right hand to her left. She nodded her readiness. Brett grasped the handle on the inside of the door and gave it a hearty tug. The seal broke and a rush of air nearly pulled him from his feet as the internal pressure spumed through the crack. Immediately, he pushed up with his shoulder and down with his legs, expanding the hatch like a pair of jaws. He stepped down from the transport and stood for the first time in weeks among the shifting sands of Archae Stoddard. Once Djen and Ilam had stumbled after him, he re-sealed the hatch and slapped his hand against the side of the transport.

“Keep her idling, Vernon. We shouldn’t be but a couple of hours.”

“Of course, Commander,” he said, laughing. “Can’t listen to the radio unless she’s idling.”

“Right. Keep that volume down and give us regular check-ins at quarter hours. Hold an eye out, if not an ear, for the weather extrapolations. Is that understood?”

“Aye, sir.”

He turned toward the port entry to Nine and flexed his hands. In the frigid air, the condensation which had gathered on his e-suit during the transition from the MUT’s internal atmosphere to the outside had frozen. Brett shook his arms, bent his knees and the crystalline ice fell from him like localized hail.

Ilam had the engine’s access port open a moment later, and Brett jogged to join them inside. As Djen keyed the internal generator and brought the lights sputtering to life, Ilam sealed the outer airlock, normalized the pressure and went to work on the inner seal. Within a few seconds, the lights flashed green and the second lock door hissed open.

Ilam checked the numbers on the display just inside. “Atmospheric mix is good. Air temperature is balmy. Internal pressure is a bit low, but if you don’t mind a pop or two in the ears, you may decloak at your leisure.”

“You make that sound so sexy,” Djen said as she set her satchel on a workbench in front of them.

“Don’t be fooled,” Brett said. “The accent is the only charm he’s got. The rest of him is just as Irish, and I mean that only in the ethnic slurring sense.”

“That is a pernicious generalization, Commander, and an outright lie as well. I resent it on behalf of my entire homeland and heritage.”

Brett removed his helmet. He offered Djen a wink. “You know, of course, that he was born in Boston. His mother’s an Afghan woman. His father’s lineage is–ah–questionable.”

“Deception!”

Djen laughed prettily, fogging the inside of her faceplate. “Lesson to you, Ilam. Never cross a man who has intimate access to your personnel file.”

Ilam continued to grumble, though most of it was good natured enough. The three of them sat on the bench and shed their suits. Brett oriented himself rapidly. A narrow corridor ran the length of wall, then turned at the corner and disappeared. His memory of the generic Engine construction plans said it circumscribed the entire level. The center of level one was an orderly design of supply closets, access hatches and workstation alcoves. On the other side of the wall at his back was a vast bank of electronics mounted on skeletal wire racks which reached all the way to the ceiling. And not the precise and delicate silicon-hybrid chips of modern processing, but older, heavier components. More reliable, he was told, less susceptible to fluctuations in temperature and air pressure. Toward the left rear corner would be the environmental controls, the generators, the atmospheric surpluses which supplied the engine’s biosphere. The right rear section housed the communications hub, linked by hand-strewn underground cable to the comm array at Persia. Programming arrived by cable as a batch of instruction signals from Persia, was translated and applied via the local computing network, then relayed upstairs to the second level, where the real work of the Sperling Engine occurred.

Brett said, “What do you want me to do?”

Djen arched a critical eyebrow at him. “Well. Let’s see, Commander. Vernon drove. Ilam is going to check the mechanicals on the blower. I’m going up to two to directly upload the latest command sequence. You can feel free to sit on your thumbs if you want.”

“Certainly,” Ilam agreed. “Sit and twiddle. With all due respect, of course.”

Brett stared him down. “If it’s all the same, I think I’ll assist in the upload. It’s a good excuse to check the screen integrity. Ilam, bring the production cycle down, will you? Make sure you get a good seal on those vents.”

“Aye. Feel free to take my word for it when I say it’s all clear. Don’t bother to check your environmentals. I’m imminently trustworthy.” He wandered off toward the programming station around the corner to the left.

Brett started down the corridor the other direction, and Djen quickly fell in beside him. They turned into a small doorway a few meters from the corner and clanged up the iron staircase to the second level. Here was another pressure door, and Brett waited for the click of release and green light on its panel before turning the latch. The door was uncomfortably chilly to his touch.

Djen took his other hand, wrestled in her satchel and came out with a heavy flashlight. She thrust it into his grip.

“Be useful,” she said. “Point that where I tell you.”

Brett switched on the light, soaking their feet in a pool of illumination, then pushed open the door. He immediately tripped over the raised frame and nearly fell flat on his face.

“Lights would have been a good idea,” he groused.

“The nanos don’t need them. It’s a waste of resources,” she responded. Her breath came out in a plume of white steam.

“I’m going to check the environmentals,” Brett said.

“Don’t do that. As long as it’s above freezing, the equipment functions without problems. It’s probably still a good two eighty to three hundred K in here. Only chilly to the non-mechanized.” She strode past him. “I’m going to need that light.”

Djen shimmied past him into the low ceilinged room and pressed her back against the exterior wall. She squirmed around the maze of ducts and pipework which hung at irregular intervals in her path. This second level was split into quarters, each square housing a metal cabinet which stretched nearly from floor to ceiling. A pair of narrow perpendicular paths ran between the uninspiring production units.

The Sperling Engine inhaled atmospheric components from the louvered hatches through a complex network of ducts and filtered them through a stunning and intricate series of micromesh screens enclosed within the four cabinet components. Each screen consisted of billions of nanomech units strung head to tail along interlaced silicon-fiber wires.

The result was a faintly iridescent panel of nano-impregnated mesh several thousand layers thick. The nanomech units grasped the particles which whizzed down the gullet of the ducts, analyzed the chemical and molecular components of their catch, and recrafted carbon dioxide to ozone, ammonia to nitrogen. They then released the newly formed compound–identified and scanned by a thousand additional lines of quality control–up through a central outflow pipe, into the third level blowers, and out again into the atmosphere.

The whir and clangor of the fans which drew the air in through the louvers and into the cabinets was normally a physically impressive experience–they could vibrate a man’s teeth even through his e-suit. But the level was silent now except for the sound of their breathing and the clump of their bootheels. Which was good, Brett thought, given the fact that the engine had been disabled and anything he might have heard otherwise would have indicated something akin to a catastrophic failure of the seals that currently kept the toxic atmosphere outside.

Djen had reached the machine in the far corner by crawling under the gamut of intake pipes, and seated herself at the master control unit’s workstation. Here there was a flatscreen monitor embedded in the cabinet’s front panel and a retractable shelf for the keyboard. “Come hold my portable,” Djen said. Her voice quavered in the shadows, as though her lips trembled. “And the flashlight. Let’s get this done.”

Brett made his way with some difficulty and shortly stood next to her with the portable propped on his forearms and the flashlight cocked so it illuminated the keyboard. Djen fished a data cord out of her satchel. She plugged one end into the output jack in the rear of the portable and the other into one of the cabinet’s several upload ports. A series of icons, graphs and textual displays rattled across the monitor and Djen leaned in, studying the spill of data.

Brett couldn’t see what she did when she began to tap rapidly on the portable’s keypad. It took both of his hands just to hold the unit steady. He did notice that she was breathing hard, and that seemed to be a less than positive sign.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“These numbers are all wrong. They’ve got to be.” Djen chewed the inside of her lip.

“Details, please.”

She slapped a few more keys, cursed under her breath. “Take a look at that graph.”

Brett turned the display so he could read it. “What is this? A decreasing productivity curve. . .um. That’s a sharp decline at the end. Okay, that’s a total system outage.” He peered uncertainly at the small text. “What’s the timeline on these numbers.”

“Twelve hours.”

He raised his head sharply. “What?”

“That curve is the productivity drop in the last twelve hours. The top of the line is the unit reading last night, about an hour after the daily reports. The bottom of the line is the census at the end of the last hour. They’re not making the wrong thing anymore–they’re not making anything at all.”

“So this doesn’t reflect that we just shut down the engine ourselves.”

“No. Nine was just over seven percent functional when we arrived. You’ll notice the big spikes, up and down, over the last few hours before the final drop–that’s the system stuttering, trying to maintain production and encountering critical errors.”

“This doesn’t look like a programming error.”

Djen chewed her lip, clearly unhappy. “I’d say not. It’s more like a complete engine failure. Nine would have been dead in another fifteen minutes if we hadn’t shut it down ourselves.”

He snapped the portable closed. “Where do we start?”

“Might as well look as the screens first, since we’re here, though this is a pretty radical meltdown for screen failure. They wouldn’t all fail at once. Then we’ll check communications, see if the station got a bad batch command or misinterpreted one of last night’s attempts at reprogramming. Then transistors and processors, fuses and electronics, power surge and maintenance records. Top to bottom, as they say.”

“Is there anything Vernon can do to help?” He was thinking about the weather.

“Can he drive back to Persia and get me half a dozen technicians?”

Brett scowled. “Funny. Can he help with any of the mechanicals?”

“Only if Ilam thinks it won’t slow down his diagnostics. First, let’s get Ilam up here to help scrub the screens. We’ll have a better idea after that of the steps which need to be taken, and how much we might need Vernon.”

“I’ll help with your diagnostics.”

“You can hold the flashlight, lackey.”

“Right.”

#

“And what the fuck is that?” Ilam asked, scratching at his chin in bewilderment. He had joined them on the second level when Djen summoned him. He had spent the requisite several moments complaining about the cold, threatening to retrieve his e-suit, then finally settling in alongside Brett to wrestle the access panel off the first of the four Sperling components.

Brett didn’t have an immediate answer to his question. They had rolled out the first bank of screens along its rigid guidewheel. The spool was a wire-frame bracket consisting of a series of distinct bars along the top from which the screens were suspended. Along the bottom of the spool mechanism ran four parallel troughs into which the screen frames snapped.

The cumulative effect was a bank of screens four across and four deep per spool. The top bars were dotted at regular intervals with amber-golden electrical studs which matched parallel contact ports inside the acces panel when the mechanism was in its locked position.

Each cabinet held four lower access panels housing additional spools. A separate panel placed roughly at chin height held a fifth spool rotated ninety degrees so that it sat perpindicular to the lower spools. This was known as the Control Spool, and its primary function was analysis of the molecular packets produced by the spools below. Passed units exited the Control Spool and were sucked directly into the output chamber, which blew them as ejecta into the blower canals on the third level.

The first spool did not take minute examination, even under the poor illumination of the flashlight. A long, rapier thin slice had penetrated the entire bank of screens, both frame to frame and all the way through the four sets of screens, severing the silicon-fiber cables. Brett drew on a pair of gloves offered to him from Djen out of her satchel and tugged at the edges of the faintly iridescent micromesh fabric.

Djen said, “That explains the system failure, at least. The Engine is programmed to shutdown and periodically attempt a cold reboot when its production capacity falls below ten percent of the target. It assumes there’s a mechanical problem.”

“Good guess on its part,” Ilam said.

“It certainly explains the production graph we saw earlier. About the only thing working efficiently was the intake fans.”

“A rock?” Brett suggested. Without precision magnification goggles, he wasn’t able to closely analyze the contours of the tear line for more details. “Something that slipped through the vent filters and whanged around inside the component?”

But Djen shook her head. “The vents are double filtered with titanium micromesh only slightly larger than the screen fabric. They snag anything above a certain atomic diameter, including most dust particles. Even assuming something slipped through a hole in the first filter, the intake fans couldn’t have propelled it with enough velocity to get it through the second bank of filters, let alone enough to ricochet inside the production component quickly enough to do that much damage.”

Ilam reached his hand out, nearly touched the screen himself, then drew back and pointed at the tear from a distance. “Those are fairly regular breaches, more of a slash pattern. A rock would produce more of a ragged punch, don’t you think?”

“What about stress breaks?” Brett asked. “That would explain the uniformity of damage.”

Again, Djen disagreed. “Spontaneous stress breaks might–very rarely–snap a whole screen like that, but it doesn’t explain the damage to the entire spool.”

“Unless the whole component was under stress. At least in theory.”

“Then we would’ve received automated notification. The mechanical functioning of the engine was all within normal parameters on last check. The fan rotations were uniform. The blower was laboring, yes, but that’s a separate electrical system. It wouldn’t have stressed the production components.”

“Except the engine kept shutting down and attempting a restart.” That made a reasonable amount of sense. Brett added, “What are the surge capacities of the fiber lines?”

“It’s a computer system reboot, Markus, not like turning the power on and off.”

“But worst case scenario? Let’s assume an unrelated but simultaneous set of circumstances.”

“The components are monitored constantly both internally and remotely. We specifically track electrical surges as part of our maintenance logs. If there were surges, we would have known about them yesterday at the latest.”

Brett cursed aimlessly. “What are the other options?”

Ilam grinned. “Rowdy kid with a sharp stick and poor parental guidance?”

Djen crossed her arms over her chest, and tapped her lip. “It could be some kind of radical programming error. Interpretative error, I should say. The nanomech groups attacked the silicon-fiber threads.”

“They’re not independently aggressive.” Brett pointed out.

“Unless programmed that way. And they’re not intentionally aggressive, either. I don’t mean ‘attack’ in that way. If they misunderstood the last instruction batch, they might have mistaken the cable as a viable source of raw material. Understand, they’re grappling with resources at a molecular level, and they’re doing it extremely rapidly. Density of matter between the air and the cable isn’t going to register as noticeably inconsistent. They’re not designed to compile task difficulty as a criteria for performance.”

“Can you prove that was a factor with any precision?” It wasn’t an explanation for engine failure Brett had ever encountered. The idea that the mechs could sabotage their own environment was not one he liked to consider. Definitely not one he could report without certain evidence.

“It will take a few days, and a couple of the programmers away from other projects. We’ll have to take the screens with us for analysis.”

Markus calculated the potential waste of man-hours and sighed. “Does it seem to explain the symptoms Nine has manifested to this point? The diminished production issue?”

Djen nodded, but slowly. She sounded distant, as though she was working out the logic even as she spoke. “The diminished production we’ve seen fits with a hypothesis of increased processing time to convert the micro-fibers to atmospheric components. The nanomechs would burn more than a few extra cycles trying to complete the job before realizing it was impossible.”

Brett continued, “Does this explanation account for the original problem?”

“After the initial failure to convert the cables, the component as a whole would have assigned fault to the new batch commands and would have reverted to the last viable programming.”

“But it kept at the fibers,” Ilam pointed out.

Djen shrugged at his objection. “The units are designed to produce–to produce anything that fits the mission’s definition of valuable–not to care about the consistency of its raw materials. Why it specifically went after the silicon fibers isn’t clear yet.”

“Then how does our hypothesis explain the screen integrity failure?” Brett asked.

“Also known as the big gaping holes,” Ilam said.

“Basically, the main component manager wouldn’t have reverted to old programming in all cases. If we assume the component begins to figure out that this assigned job isn’t working, meaning that the materials used in the conversion aren’t correct or the conversion itself is taking too long, it rethinks the received logic. If it can’t solve that problem, it doesn’t ask for our help, it just reverts to something it does know works. We get paid to notice the problem and fix it.

“My guess is that the component went partially with what it perceived as sound instructions and partially with the troublesome instructions. We noticed last night that the working spools were producing the wrong chemicals, because the spools which are broken right now were trying like hell to make the right stuff, but not making enough headway for their production to register.”

“Bottom line is that the component did what it’s designed to do. It doesn’t have the sensors to register that it’s in the middle of devouring its own screens, so it just plugs ahead until it’s too late to pull back. Then it just shuts down, as we’ve seen. Similarly, given that each nanomech unit has essentially the same processing capacities and the programming pulse emits consistently from the top of the screen to the bottom, it’s reasonable that corresponding units on each line are going to snap the fiber cable at approximately the same place. So that probably explains your slash pattern, too.”

Ilam glanced up at Brett and shrugged. “Don’t look at me, Commander. I’m just a mechanical. If it can’t be fixed with a screwdriver or a torque wrench, I’m out of my element. Simple enough supposition to test, though, if you just want my opinion.”

Brett shoved the damaged spool back along its guidewheel track. “Let’s access the other side. If the explanation holds, those spools are on different production sequences and should be fine.”

Except they weren’t. Similar tears, some straight, some ragged, marred the remaining spools. They expanded their investigation, opening each component and extracting its complete set of spools. Without fail, each was damaged. Any hope Brett harbored that there wasn’t something critically–and expensively–wrong with Nine vanished.

Ilam frowned at the last segment of evidence, still protruding from the machine like a sick child’s tongue under a doctor’s examination.

“I’d like to repeat the bit about the rowdy nipper with the stick,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” Brett said.

Djen rubbed her hands over her shoulders, working at kinks. “I’m starting to agree with Ilam. If I didn’t know it was absolutely impossible, I’d say this looked like willful sabotage. There’s no other ready explanation.”

“There has to be another explanation.”

“Not that I can offer without better facilities and an intensive investigation.”

Brett started to answer, but he was interrupted by the double tocking click in his earpiece which indicated in incoming message. He held up his hand to Djen and Ilam.

“This is Brett.”

“Boss, this is Vernon. Are you hearing me?”

“Very minor static on this end. Go ahead.”

“I just got a weather update from Persia. Latest projections have a fast moving bank of wall clouds sweeping in our direction. I don’t want to alarm you or make any suggestions which might seem out of line for my rank, but it’s starting to look a bit ugly out here. I wouldn’t mind too much if you all decided to hurry up so we can get the fuck out.”

Brett chewed his lip. “What’s the current wind speed?”

“Twenty knots and climbing. It’s the climbing part I’m worried about.” Vernon forced a chuckle at the end.

“We’re on our way. Brett out.” He turned on Djen and Ilam. “Grab what you need. The weather’s bearing down on us and Vernon says we need to relocate.”

Djen peered at him in the dark. “Vernon is getting worried?”

“Shit,” Ilam said.

“What’s the matter?”

Ilam and Djen exchanged a look of concern. She said, “If you waited for his assessment that the conditions are bad, we’re probably already in serious trouble. He has something less than a sane standard of acceptable risk.”

The three of them began to move.

<– Chapter 5 / Chapter 7 –>