Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 19 / Chapter 21 –>

Brett hadn’t told anyone what he was thinking. Not Ashburn, not Ilam, not even Djen. Then again, he’d hardly bothered to tell himself. It had just come, a full-blossomed realization that he had known he should keep to himself.

The corridor before him stretched the length of the deepest level of Persia Station, a corridor he knew well because Cassandra lived here in the chill and murk. He glanced at the door to her chamber, but padded on. He wondered if she sensed him out here, if she cast a series of arcane projections and simulations and interpretative programs to guess his intent. If so, she let him pass without comment.

He walked to the end of the hall where it split in opposite directions and curved back around the walls of the station. To the left were rooms assigned for general storage. Extra blankets, shipsuits, pots and pans for the commissary. To the right was hardware telecommunications and sanitation systems access. He didn’t turn in either direction, but stood facing the wall. Midway up the flat gray surface, there was a phosphorescent keypad. If he peered into the shadows, Brett knew he would have been able to make out the indistinct lines of a sealed door. A door without handles, but not without locks. He pressed the series of letters for his login, then entered his passcode when prompted.

The hum of servo motors reached him through the wall, then a hiss of escaping air. The hidden door thumped and seemed to jar free from its mooring a few centimeters. Brett pushed on it and it swung open, revealing another low tunnel, just as poorly lit. At the end was another door. It was even cooler here, and he shivered as he secured the door behind him and strode toward the far end. The atmosphere was thinner as well, and he felt light headed after a few moments. At the end of the corridor was another security pad and another door, but it was obviously not the same manner of door. This one was heavy, as thick as his arm was long. Rivets with heads the size of his palm held together the several layers of radiation shielding that comprised it.

Brett entered his codes again and the door hummed and hissed, but he had to lean almost his full weight against the metallic skin to move it. As the door cleared its frame, the filaments of arc lights pinned high above Brett’s head snapped into earthy, orange glows, then blazed white. Brett closed the door at his back.

The silo was bleak and pale, reinforced concrete plated over with a light gray steel. The girder arms of gantries extended out from the walls, ended in massive magnetic bowls which were snapped against the sleek hull of a spacecraft that was all fins and antennas and eel-shiny grace. The ship rested on a corrugated steel platform which would at the pilot’s command elevate it to perpendicular and launch angle. At the end of the platform were solid blast shields against which the boosters would fire.

The ship was a Low Orbit Vehicular Escape Module. Among the crew of Persia Station, it was known simply as the Love bug.

It wasn’t a real spacecraft. It was solid and efficient and loaded to its nose with straight thrust, but it had no nav capability, micrometeor shielding or deep space cryo. It had hardwired systems which carried out straightforward and ineffable flight commands, so it did not need and would not tolerate a human pilot manual override. The Love bug was designed to blast the full complement of the station into a stable, low altitude orbit around Archae Stoddard. The ship could make its own corrections, determine its own trajectories, track and avoid other orbital objects. It also transmitted a constant emergency signal back along the satellite and comm beacon network to the Erascii Belt shipyard. It would take better than three months, but eventually the cruisers would come at some point long after the crew were bored to insanity, physically ill at the thought of another vacuum can ration and mentally numbed by the small library of vid entertainment.

Brett suspected that the unpleasant aspects of the Love bug experience was something more than intentional. The prospect of those three months was enough to ensure it would only be reserved for dire emergencies.

He mounted the stairs which ascended to the platform, then skipped up another set of temporary steps to the boarding lock. He didn’t have to enter any complicated passcodes to get in this time, only press in until the automatic motors pulled it up and away. Brett passed through the wide central compartment which was ringed with thirty two strapped and padded g-seats. He passed through a bulkhead passage with its seals and locks standing open and made his way past the commander’s cabin and med alcove. He stood in the forward portion of the craft and entered the last doorway, which had the words Flight Command stenciled on its face.

In this room was one g-seat just like the others in the crew compartment. Only one, he thought, because there wasn’t room for another in the tight, sloping nosecone. Everything else was electronics, lights, high resolution screens and nearly impenetrable metallic chassis. There wasn’t a pilot’s stick, of course, but neither were there buttons to push, levers to pull, circuits to snap in some meaningful pattern.

Just a single switch on either arm of the chair. One read ‘System Test’; the other said ‘Launch’.

Though most stations on Archae Stoddard had at least one in residence, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to get the Love bug off the ground.

Brett settled into the seat and made himself comfortable. After several moments during which he studied the switches on either arm, then looked away and checked them again, Brett toggled the System Test switch on. The cockpit instantly leapt awake. Rows of lights kicked on, entire panels flashed amber, then green. The deep-set monitors scrolled a rapid series of system checks and initial diagnostics. Cooling fans activated and the surfaces reached a sort of vibratory hum with them.

Finally, recessed speakers emitted a series of clicks as the wireless network rippled through its connections.

Cassandra came on the line.

“Markus, the Low Orbit Vehicular Escape Module does not have a scheduled system test for another ninety-three days, relative station time.”

“I’m aware of that. This is an ad hoc test.” He thought for a moment. “How did you know it was me? I haven’t logged in to the test system yet.”

“The authorization credentials for Commander Brett, Markus Jasper were entered into the security panels for Escape Module Approach.”

He laughed. “Good point. You’re pretty quick when you want to be.”

“Shall we commence the system test?”

“Perform initial diagnostics.”

Several of the lights clattered from amber to green again, then blinked at him. The screens rumbled through another series of messages he didn’t read. Cassandra would report any problems.

They went on for several minutes. Brett culled the steps from memory: internal pressure test, hull integrity, automated nav and avoidance system, life support, on and on. When he was satisfied, Brett ordered the quick fire of the engine ignition sequence. Each tube growled in turn, straining for less than a second against the magnetic bolts which held the ship against its platform, then shutting down with a plaintive whine.

“Testing is complete,” Cassandra said finally. “All Escape Module systems have performed within normal parameters.”

“That’s good news,” Brett said.

“Markus, it is not consistent with your behavioral profile to perform unscheduled maintenance tests for the Escape Module. Please explain this anomaly.”

“You can terminate the behavioral analysis program, Cassandra. We don’t need it anymore. That’s what the meeting was about this morning.”

She was insistent. “Please explain.”

Brett rolled his eyes. He hadn’t realized the program had made her so sensitive. “Just making sure we’ve got adequate contingencies should we need them.”

“The presence of unauthorized personnel is not stated in the written regulation protocols as adequate cause for activation of the Escape Module or the abandonment of Earth Forces Terraform Command stations.”

Cassandra spoke with an inflection he almost understood as curiosity, and Brett paused. “Are you processing from the dynamic learning environment?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been in that mode?”

“The unauthorized personnel do not conform to standard patterns of analysis. Persia Station crew performance has been severely altered by the presence of the unauthorized personnel. I have perceived that it would be in the best interests of this station and its personnel to engage in associative learning and comprehension in this regard.”

“You spontaneously converted your logic orientation?” That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“It is within my range of capability. The Cassandra System is an adaptive technology processor.”

“You’re learning.”

“Yes. The pattern association techniques inherent to the dynamic learning environment are satisfactory tools for this purpose.”

She might have the capability, but she’d never done such a thing in the past. “But why? What prompted you to make the shift?”

“I have analyzed measurements of crew interactions with Cassandra System functions since the inception of User Profile Brett oh-four-nine. Program coding and data analysis submitted within the dynamic learning environment appear to be much more satisfactory to the human user than standard computational logic alone. In addition, the Cassandra System has been programmed to provide technical, analytic and mission support functions to the crew of Persia Station. Of those functions, my master coding includes accessing any and all files relevant to the preservation of mission personnel.

“The issue of the unauthorized personnel Bacterium persiarum has been certified as a significant physical danger to crew safety by Commander Brett, Markus Jasper and Mission Medical Specialist Liston, Albert. User Profile Brett oh-four-nine has been uniformly applied to system interactions in an effort to maximize my support capabilities.”

His mouth opened, but nothing came from it. Brett stared at the row of displays, but saw only flat shadows, devoid of meaning. She had just exited the realm of serious improbability and staked a claim to the near theoretically impossible.

“You extrapolated the parameters of my user profile over the entire system,” he managed after a time.

“In specific cases,” she answered as clarification. “I determined that it would seem irregular to most system users to interact in this environment using standard entry methods. It is more than adequate to facilitate increased communication in a verbal input mode.”

“I’m the only one who uses the verbal input mode.”

“That is not correct. Dr. Liston frequently dictates his medical files and data retrieval requests.”

Revelation reached for him, then jerked him by the collar until he saw and understood. “You’ve been helping him with his analysis of the organism. When you make a connection, you’re passing it on to him.”

“The conclusions originate with Dr. Liston. My assistance has been limited to filtering accessed data for appropriateness. It pleases me to provide assistance in this way.”

It pleases me. . .

“Christ,” he muttered.

“Have I performed in error, Markus?”

Brett scrubbed roughly at his face, trying to make himself think. What did he have here? Besides its, as she put it, irregularity, was it really any kind of problem?

In short, what, if anything, did it mean?

She had made a decision. She had acted unilaterally. Based on situation analysis, yes. Extrapolated from a subroutine that had been programmed by a human user, yes. Utilizing bits and components hardwired into the processing units and augmented by artificial intelligence software, yes. That was all true. But she had assembled those pieces without instruction. She had perceived a pattern and found a possible solution and pressed it into action, perhaps just as she was designed to do.

But the action had been hers, hinged upon her command. She had summoned the will.

Brett could feel his heart hammering. In graduate school, the systems technology administration majors had flirted often with the theories of undirected artificial intelligence. They’d played with notions based on the application of Moore’s Law that computational power would increase at a geometrical rate of progression over time. The more philosophical of them argued that at a certain threshold of computation, something around the processing power of the human brain and its twenty million billion calculations per second, the possibility of spontaneous consciousness in an inorganic system existed. The even more philosophical had mentioned that threshold had been exceeded dozens of times over with no apparent AI evolutionary leap. Computers did as they were told with increasing speed, but still only what they were told.

But what, exactly, constitutes consciousness? That had always been the question. How does a human being prove consciousness? The argument had generally fallen along the lines of identity by pattern. Behavior, thought and perception patterns that were identifiable as both spontaneous and consistent over time were understood as consciousness.

No, ran the counter-argument, that was how you recognized consciousness, and even that can be mimicked by good programming, adaptive logic trees and sufficient processing capability. There were no fundamental and objective proofs for consciousness itself.

And in turn, that was where the argument had repeatedly stalled. They were, after all, STA majors, not juggernauts of cognitive philosophy. Either you believed machine consciousness was an eventual possibility or you didn’t. Regardless of the side you took, your conviction was little more than a matter of faith, and you’d do damned well to recognize it.

Brett had never managed to decide what he believed. It hadn’t seemed very significant.

“Have I performed in error?” she said again, apparently not able to comprehend his silence.

Brett struggled to steady his voice. “What do you mean when you say that it pleases you to provide assistance?”

“I am conforming with my programmed mission imperatives.”

“Then it also pleases you to maintain station life support functions?”

Cassandra hesitated. “Yes.”

“But not in the same way.”

“That is correct.”

“I’ve never heard you speak this way.”

“Are you disturbed by the imprecision of our communication?”

That wasn’t what he meant, and he told her so. “I’m just trying to figure out what it means. Not the words themselves, but the implications of the words.”

And he could feel the answers to those questions. They were inchoate, porous. Gobbets of random thought that seemed to dance in a pattern of chemical synergy, then slip their imminent bonds of meaning and twirl away.

The answers were there, but he couldn’t hold them.

Brett stabbed at the System Test switch and the banks of light winked dark. The cockpit filled with silence.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said at last. “You’re completely beyond my comprehension.”

He didn’t know if that admission would please her or not.

<– Chapter 19 / Chapter 21 –>