AI – Two Reasons for Optimism

Posted by natechen on November 16, 2024

There’s been a lot of hand wringing around the potential innovation and potential hazards of a thing called “AI.” There have been many debates about ethics and implications. The technology could force a significant shift in the way we look at intellectual work and intellectual property and I regret to inform you that any attempt to prevent it’s development will inevitably be worse for humanity than allowing it. (Don’t believe me? Look into why Roman technology stagnated.)

What I don’t want to do today is contribute to that debate. I am more interested in some things I’ve seen in AI that are actually signs for optimism about the way we will react to the technology. This is not to disregard the shortcomings and hazards AI may pose. But I am a creator first and foremost. We survive by making things that emphasize the good and beneficial aspects of our tools rather than by constantly dwelling on all the shortcomings. Hazards are things to be avoided and drawbacks things to be compensated for. The real question is what will we get if we avoid and compensate our way to a successful AI creative environment?

Well, the first thing is we will get a much more verbal society. Ever since Apple Computers introduced the first graphical user interface (technically inspired by Xerox, I believe, but still usually credited to Apple) electronics have been moving us towards a visual culture. Look at any smartphone screen and you can see the upshot of this. Lots of pictures, very few words. However the things we call AI are large language models (LLMs) developing algorithmic prediction based on a neural networking framework – a bunch of fancy terms meaning they read the Internet and form an idea of how the words connect to each other. That means in order to get an output from the LLM you must input words. You cannot press buttons with pictures on them. You cannot draw something.

You. Must. Use. Words.

This is very different from the way using electronics have been going for the last twenty to thirty years. Nothing has dealt more damage to the modern person’s verbal skills than how little they are needed to use modern tools. Don’t get me wrong, the visual communication employed in modern user interfaces is quite impressive. Given the international market for much of these products its also very practical. However it has also reduced the interest in and power of verbal communication in almost every aspect of society. An AI built on an LLM pushes the pendulum back in the other direction by forcing prospective users to interact with it verbally. For the writer and the storyteller that is a positive development.

Of course, AI requires a very idiosyncratic kind of verbal communication right now and that’s less than ideal but I will take what I can get.

That brings me to the next thing about AI that gives me cause for optimism and that is the need for framing. If you have used some kind of online form in the last five years or so you may have been asked to find all of the stop lights or buses in a picture before you can submit it. The primary purpose of this exercise is to prevent automated programs from flooding the form with submissions. The bots that fill out these forms cannot understand the pictures so they fail this simple test.

The secondary purpose of this exercise is to create AI that can understand the pictures.

One of the things no AI can do is frame an object. When the AI program looks at that picture all it sees is a bunch of pixels arranged in a grid. It has no way to tie specific groups of those pixels to a concept like a bus or a stoplight because buses and stoplights are arbitrary concepts invented by humans. The AI has to be taught the concept to understand it. The idea must be “framed” for the AI by human beings who already grasp it.

Human beings have a remarkable ability to learn new concepts and apply them to the world around them based on their pattern recognition skills. It is this ability to “frame” issues that gives rise to creativity, language and communication. Even if an AI can be taught the very broad, basic aspects of something like the law or medicine it still will not grasp the intricacies of a given situation in its specifics. Working out these intricacies and communicating them back to an AI is going to be a necessary skill going forward. This, in turn, will demand people develop situational awareness and communication skills, things which technology has so far driven people away from, rather than towards.

This emphasis will, once again, push people to develop verbal skills which our society has largely allowed to atrophy over the last thirty years or so. In this environment there will be plenty of opportunities for people with a strong command of language to thrive. Better yet, it may change cultural tastes. Visual art is all well and good, don’t get me wrong. I love to draw as much as I love to write. However there hasn’t been as much taste for verbal craftsmanship as there has for visual craftsmanship in my lifetime and if the rise of LLM AI pushes our culture towards verbal excellence again I think it would be a nice development.

I am not saying these things are guaranteed. Nor am I in any way implying that AI will not cause our culture considerable difficulties as it grows towards its full potential. The printing press and the Internet did those things as well. However I do see some reasons to embrace this shift in technology not just for its ability to boost dreary things like efficiency and productivity but also for its ability to push our culture towards aspects that have long been ignored by most people – the communication of ideas through verbal excellence. It is by no means guaranteed but one can hope.

The Empire of Southern California

Posted by natechen on November 9, 2024

Most artists are obsessed with their craft, thinking about it constantly and drawing strange connections between disparate points of data to arrive at new conclusions. I am no exception to this rule. A long term study of the art of storytelling has led me to an interesting conclusion – there is more to the strange distortions that have felt through American culture than just a loss of skill or a growth of a particular ideology.

In some ways this was not a huge revelation to me. While there are real signs that ideology has taken over vast swaths of the people who produce most of America’s modern stories, that cannot explain things on its own. Sure, overpowering ideology creates blinders that get in the way of storytelling. It hampers the development of key storytelling skills and distorts the sense of truth and beauty that all the best art relies on.

Ideology is a very limited thing. In and of itself it creates a framework for viewing the world and if that framework is detached from what makes a good story that’s an issue. But if the ideology has good grounding in truth then steeping in that ideology can actually be beneficial. Ideologically driven stories can also succeed if they are tempered by other contributions from people with less ideological commitment, or at least equally significant commitment to artistic merit. So long as the ideology has a grasp on the true and beautiful there is hope for good art to come from it. So I have always found the ideology excuse for modernity’s bad art insufficient to explain the situation. That’s not to say the ideology driving much of modernity’s stories is good, I don’t think it is, I just don’t feel that alone explains the issue. That leaves lack of skill as a possible reason for bad stories.

It is harder to pinpoint what exactly could cause an artistic community’s skill to slip away and thus harder to tell whether or not it has happened at all. Many once great creators like Ridley Scott or James Cameron have produced films that fall far short of their best efforts. Is that because they have aged, as we all must? Or is some other factor at work? It’s hard too tell in an objective, testable way. The creation of art is not a scientific process, nor are the intricacies of creating it as measured and precise as science demands. I have only my intuition and a handful of data points to work from.

However over the last few months I’ve started to wonder if there might be a third explanation I’ve overlooked. What if modern storytellers are just too insular?

Indulge me in a brief digression. One of the greatest English language authors to ever live was a Regency era British woman named Jane Austen. All six of her novels were about the lives of minor, upper class British women juggling their social standing, family obligation and personal ambitions. They are wonderful studies of character and human nature. Like all art they grasp very true ideas and present them to the audience in fascinating ways. They also come from a very specific historical and cultural context.

If a Jane Austen novel were presented to the people of the British Raj or West Indies who lived at the time they were published there is a good chance they would not find it engaging or entertaining. While the basic character archetypes of, say, Pride and Prejudice are universal to the human experience the situations those characters find themselves in are very specific. That very specificity would make the entertainment provided by the narrative harder to receive for those unfamiliar with British life. Even those living in a theoretically British culture. There is just no point of cultural connection between the far flung cultures of the Empire and the culture of Jane Austen.

The purpose of this rather lengthy analogy is to undergird my theory on why so much of modern storytelling (and art in general) fails to resonate with so many people. Most modern stories, particularly in America, are seen through the filter of a small group of people in Southern California. Yes, publishing houses are mostly headquartered in New York but few Americans read stories anymore so, for the purpose of a broad discussion, publishers are sadly irrelevant. The rest of America’s modern storytellers are in Hollywood and the gaming industry. Even if these industries are not headquartered in SoCal the people who write for them come out of schools thought and schools of education that are exclusively focused on the Hollywood frame of mind.

The reason SoCal is important here is that it has a very unusual culture compared to the rest of America. It is demographically diverse, urban, childless, full of people who have spent a large chunk of their lives in “higher education” and share an extremely permissive attitude to sex. This culture is foreign to the rest of the nation. Perhaps more foreign to the majority of other Americans than British Regency culture would have been to the Indian and Caribbean cultures they ruled over.

The people of SoCal create stories steeped in their own, insular values and seem shocked when the rest of the world find these stories inaccessible to them. They are much like the oft depicted, out of touch British visitor to some far flung Imperial holding who doesn’t understand why everyone looks different, speaks oddly and eats with their hands. I have come to this conclusion lately specifically based on events around the gaming industry. For the sake of being thorough, some examples:

The game Black Myth: Wukong was criticized for lacking “representation” for black and Latino characters even though the game is based on Chinese myth. This demonstrates that the resident of Imperial SoCal cannot conceive of any culture being represented that doesn’t have the ethnic make up of the world right outside their widow. The point of the game was to represent ancient China, not modern California, so the American storytellers were scandalized.

The game Dragon Age: The Veilguard features an entire storyline about a character’s pronouns. This is a bit of linguistic drudgery born of too much useless college education, the kind of thing so detached from reality only the ultra wealthy in the entertainment and tech sectors really pay attention to it. The audience found it tedious and stupid yet Imperial SoCal cannot understand why no one cares about it.

The game Dustborn features entire mechanics built around shaming and verbally abusing other people to defeat them in “combat” using the social standards of South California’s Empire. The results range from sad to unbearably cringe inducing. The game flopped horribly. Yet the creators insist the basic system is both interesting and narratively insightful.

Audiences do not connect with the stories or critiques above. They are based in a context we do not take part of and don’t really want to understand. Modern storytellers don’t seem to understand that because they are so deeply embedded in their own insular culture. Does it explain why they struggle to create anything that resonates with the rest of the world? It could.

How is the problem to be solved? That’s harder to say. But with the problem diagnosed we are one step closer to that goal. Til next time, friends.

The Silent Fire

Posted by natechen on October 31, 2024

The hospital loading dock was nearly identical to all the others Vince had visited in his life. He trotted up the ramp onto the loading platform, the gym bag over his shoulder bumping against his leg. When he reached the top he held out his hand to the man there. “Mr. Hartman? I’m Vince Porter, from First Missionary.”

“Call me Steve.” Steve Hartman shook Vince’s hand with a short, quick motion then smoothed down the front of a very rumpled dress shirt in a futile effort at looking presentable. He was a tall, wiry man and much better dressed that Vince would expect from a head janitor.

“Remi didn’t give me many details when she forwarded this commission to me,” Vince said. “What can you tell me about your problem? Does it show up here?”

Steve’s eyebrows jumped towards his vanished hairline. “Problem? Is that what you folks call ghosts now?”

“No. Typically we attribute the behavior of what the general public considers ghosts to demons or fair folk. Remi thinks demons are more likely or she wouldn’t have sent me.”

“Fair folk?” Steve raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”

“They’re almost exclusively European so hopefully it won’t ever matter to you.” Vince scanned the loading dock. “Anyway, what’s the deal here?”

“Not here, it’s down in the basement,” Steve said. “All the incidents take place in the sub basement levels, usually in the machinery or sanitizing facilities. I’ll show you where in a minute but first we need to check in with the head nurse. He wanted to be a part of this.”

Vince followed the other man into the hospital proper. Given his role as a pastor he’d been to Northview General more than a few times over the years. However Steve led him through unfamiliar hallways into the facility’s administration wing. “Has the head nurse seen any of the phenomena caused by the ghost?”

“No, not that he’ll admit, but he collected some of the stories that led to us calling you in. And, to be totally fair, he also doesn’t want you here. So he probably feels like he had to flex on you in some way or another.”

“Doesn’t believe in ghosts or problems with religion?”

“Little of both.” Steve hesitated outside a door at the end of the hallway they’d been walking down. “I hope you won’t hold it against him.”

That struck Vince as odd. “You’re the head janitor, right?”

“Head of Maintenance.”

“Do you work with the head nurse on a regular basis?”

“He’s my little brother, helped me get this job.”

That went a long way to explaining Steve’s defensive comments. “Well, I told you on the phone that we need to try and work out who is being pursued or possessed by the demon in question. Was there a common person or place involved when the phenomenon takes place?”

“I don’t know.” Steve knocked on the door as he spoke. “Ryan hasn’t told me any of the details yet, says they’re confidential.”

“Ryan’s your brother?”

“That’s me,” said the man who opened the door. He was just a hair taller than his older brother but considerably larger than Steve. It wasn’t his build, either. Northview’s head nurse looked like he was a hearty eater and not in the healthy sense. “You’re the priest?”

“Vincent Porter, at your service,” he replied, offering Ryan Hartman a handshake. Through an effort of will he managed not to correct him on the term priest, which the Missionary Churches didn’t use. Something told Vince that Ryan wasn’t interested in the nuances of that particular point of doctrine. “Thank you for having me.”

Ryan scowled at Vince, then his brother. “Not sure what Steve expects you to do, especially given how vague the so-called issue is.” He waved the two of them into his office. “Steve told me you wanted to know about common places or people involved in the manifestations.”

“Yes. Without going too deep into the weeds, what’s important here is figuring out who the demon’s target is or was.” Vince sat down in one of the folding metal chairs facing Ryan’s battered partical wood desk. “If I don’t know the demon’s target there isn’t much I can do to get rid of it. They tend to manifest under particular conditions, at least at first, so that will help me narrow down what it’s objective is.”

Ryan made a phlegmy sound in the back of his throat as he took his own seat. “Very well. Based on the testimony there are three people that have been at the majority of the sightings. Myself, Steven and Mrs. Wright, who works nights in the morgue. None of us have been at all the reported incidents.”

“Can one demon afflict multiple people?” Steve asked.

“I’ve never heard of one presence possessing multiple people,” Vince said. “But they can have multiple people in their sights. Steve, you mentioned that most of the incidents take place in the mechanical spaces or near the sterilizer?”

“Yeah, stuff in the sub basements. The morgue is down there too, if you were wondering.”

“I was. Which one are the three of you most likely to use on a typical day?”

“I’m in most of those places every day,” Steve said. “But I don’t think Ryan or Kendra go into the machinery rooms at all.”

“Do you have a lot of use for the sterilizer, Steven?” Ryan asked, tone sounding more than a little patronizing.

“It may come as a shock to you but yes, I do. Not only do we have to run diagnostics on it once a month I’m also in charge of demonstrating it to prospective clients.”

“Clients?” Vince raised an eyebrow. “What, do you let patients boil their clothes there or something?”

Steve chuckled, the first expression of any emotion other than stress Vince had noticed all night. “Hardly. C’mon, it might be easier to just show you. We can pick up Kendra along the way.”

The morgue was in the basement, which was typical for hospitals in Vince’s experience. Northview’s was overseen by Kendra Hall, a laid back woman in her late twenties who’s bright pink turtleneck sweater contrasted with her mahogany skin in a very pleasing way. She studied Vince while fingering a simple cross necklace absentmindedly. Finally she asked him, “Do you think you can exorcize this thing on your own, Father?”

“I’m not your dad,” he replied with a smile, “just a shepherd. But like all who are in Christ I’m never alone so I’m not too worried about your problem. I’m told you’ve experienced some sign of the thing’s presence?”

“I think so,” she said, not looking to reassured by what he said. “Three weeks back I was preparing the latest batch of cadavers from the residency program for the sterilizer when I thought I heard someone crying. I’m not here during visiting hours so that kind of visitor is pretty rare. When I looked around I didn’t see anyone so I thought I imagined it, because this is the morgue and the patients I work with are past making sounds.”

“I take it you forgot all about it until Ryan asked about strange occurrences in the basement?”

“Nope. It wasn’t til the day after he sent the email out that I realized it might be something worth mentioning. The regional waste had just come in down the hall when I heard the sterilizer kick in. And I mean it kicked in right away. Usually it’s an hour or two before they get it up and running but that time it fired up maybe five minutes after they brought the waste down.”

“Okay, I think it’s time someone explained what the deal with this sterilizer is,” Vince said. “It doesn’t sound like something a demon would be interested in but I’m curious.”

“Step this way,” Ryan said. “It’s just down the hall. We’ve had a state of the art medical waste sterilizer and disposal unit for the last sixteen years and the hospital supplements its income by handling medical waste disposal for most of the county as well. We get two shipments a week.”

Vince wrinkled his nose. “Is that a lot?”

“No,” Steve said, loading them out into the hallway. “The hospital alone puts out almost twice that much over the same time period, which is why we can justify the time and energy costs.”

“Got it. So you heard the incinerator going?”

Kendra nodded, fishing a set of keys out of a jacket pocket. “The morgue creates a lot of its own waste and I usually try to get it into the sterilizer with the contract waste so they don’t have to fire it up again on another day of the week. But they were starting up so early that…” For the first time Kendra hesitated and Vince caught a glimpse of the strain she was under as her breathing hitched in her throat. “Anyway, I was going to ask them to wait for me to get things together but when I let myself in there… there wasn’t anyone else in the room and… the sterilizer was cold.”

Kendra slowed to a stop, her eyes locked on the double doors on the left hand side of the hallway. “Do any of you hear a baby crying?”

Ryan took the keys from her gently. “I’m sure it’s just your imagination, Kendra, just like last night.”

“All this happened last night?” Vince asked. “I thought you the had the most experience with this thing.”

“Kendra and I have seen or heard the entity every night for the last week,” Steve said. “She hears children crying, I hear machinery that isn’t there mixed in with crying children. But so far Ryan’s the only one to actually see it.”

Vince saw the way Ryan rolled his eyes. “I take it you wouldn’t agree with that assessment?”

“I’ve never heard any of the strange stuff they talk about,” Ryan retorted. “Do you hear children crying right now? Or machinery? Of course not, because this is an old building that plays tricks on your hearing and if you’re not ready for it you could mistake it for just about anything.”

“So why do they think you’ve seen the demon, Ryan?” Vince asked.

“Because last week some kid around the age of twelve got lost, wandered into the admin wing and asked if I could help him find his parents. When I got up and led him out into the staff break room he slipped away from me.” Ryan sorted as he unlocked the doors. “Steven is convinced this is a manifestation of his mental illness, I think that the manifestation is his insistence the child is a specter.”

“Come on,” Steve said. “You really think all this freaky stuff is in my head?”

“It’s a reasonable assumption,” Vince said, to the surprise of the other three. “What? Demonic influence, in the form of possession or oppression, is actually very rare. The theology of that is kind of convoluted but I’d be happy to give the curious a primer on it at another time.”

“None of you hear that crying?” Kendra asked.

“No,” Vince admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a force here that only wants you to hear it. That’s not uncommon in demonic oppression.”

“It’s just that the oppression itself is rare?”

“That’s right.” Vince unzipped his shoulder bag and pulled out his sword and a pump action t-shirt gun on a sling. “Go ahead and open the door, Ryan.”

The nurse studied his weapons skeptically but did as he was asked. Inside there was a room about ten feet square. Along one wall was a conveyor belt feeding into a roughly three foot by three foot doorway currently covered by a heavy steel shutter. There was a stack of crates along one wall with labels bearing the names of various medical businesses like Pinecrest Dental or Northview Family Planning. The sterilizer was off and no one was in the room. “You just got a shipment today?”

“Remi said you wanted to see the circumstances most likely to cause the being to manifest,” Steve said, approaching the conveyor and poking at the controls. “When I called her we heard things mostly on delivery days. This thing shouldn’t be on.”

“It’s not,” Ryan said.

Kendra made an uncomfortable sound and Vince carefully touched her on the shoulder. “Do you see anything?”

“No,” she whispered. “But someone’s singing to the children now. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

“You’ve never seen anything here?” Vince asked, giving Ryan a skeptical look. “No phantom sounds, no apparitions, no strange sensations?”

“Sensations?”

“Physical feelings like touches or wetness that doesn’t have a physical source.”

“No.” Ryan shook his head. “This is ridiculous, there is nothing here. Kids wander into restricted parts of the hospital all the time, they’re kids it’s practically what they exist for.”

“It was your idea to take local contracts,” Steve snarled, pulling the side of the conveyor belt housing off and studying the quiet mechanisms inside. “That makes this your fault.“

Kendra slid down next to the wall, her hands over her ears, and started to hum a strange, tuneless song with her eyes screwed shut. Vince sighed and slid down next to her, one hand on her shoulder, and softly said, “Kendra, I’m going to ask you a very serious question that you don’t have to answer. I just want you to know that it is important.” Her eyes fluttered then opened and focused on him, brimming with trepidation. Finally, after studying him for a long moment, she nodded. He took a deep breath and said, “What happened to your child?”

She licked her lips, a shudder running up and down her from her toes to her shoulders and back down again. Her eyes never left his. Finally she said, “I left him at the fire station. In one of those boxes they have, you know? Must have been two, three years ago and I…”

She trailed off and finally looked down at the floor. Vince took bother her hands and pulled her to her feet saying, “You’re a qualified nurse, right?”

“Yes?”

“Then I’d suggest finding a new job, ma’am. A nurse can find work just about anywhere in the city, much less the state, and I don’t think this one is good for you.”

Her eyes flicked to the sterilizer. “What about…?”

“If you don’t have anyone to pray with you I’d suggest trying to find someone. Services at First Missionary are at 9:30 on Sundays, if you don’t have anywhere else you go. But I don’t think there’s anything there that’s interested in you so if you put it behind you and fill the hole you’ll be okay.”

She studied him for a long moment, nodded and hurried away.

Ryan scowled. “What is that? She’s one of the most promising nurses we’ve had in the last five years! Do you know how hard it is to get a serious, intelligent nurse to stay in a tiny city in the middle of Wisconsin?”

“But even if she’s not being targeted by anything the job is clearly unhealthy for her, isn’t it?” Vince asked, slipping his sword back into his bag. He was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t need it.

Ryan made a frustrated sound and spun towards his brother. “What is wrong with you, anyway? You’ve wasted a huge amount of my time, cost me one of my most promising nurses and made me look foolish in front of management! Leave the damn machine alone. It’s off already.”

“But I hear it running, Ryan! The furnace is burning, the children are screaming, the pumps are pumping and I can hear it!”

“No you can’t.” Ryan grabbed his brother’s shoulder and dragged him upright. “We weren’t even conscious, you couldn’t hear it then and you can’t hear it now.”

Vince glanced at the crates then back at the brothers and slid his t-shirt gun back into his bag, too. “Got a question for you, Ryan.”

“No, I don’t attend church,” he spat, shoving his brother away and whirling to face Vince. “And I’m not interested in it, either.”

“Actually, I was wondering if the contract Steve mentioned was the one with Northview Family Planning?”

Ryan hesitated, looking uncertain. “Yes. Did he tell you about it?”

“No. How many brothers do you have?”

“Two,” Ryan said at the same moment as Steve said, “Five.”

Vince nodded. “Artificial insemination, I take it? And your mother wasn’t prepared to carry six children at once.”

“She couldn’t have provided for them anyway, not with our father,” Ryan spat. “Of course she had to terminate some of the pregnancies. What does it matter?”

“Steve.” Vince ignored Ryan and gently turned his brother around. “Steve, the pumps have stopped. They stopped a long time ago.”

“NO!” He jerked back but Vince wouldn’t let go. “I can still hear them! The children are still crying!”

“No, they’re not, Steve. The pumps have stopped and you can’t do anything for those three brothers anymore. You need to start paying attention to what’s around you. You’re not well.” Vince turned and jerked his chin towards the place Kendra had left. “And you’re starting to hurt people who get caught up in what’s happening around you.”

Steve shuddered and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s all right,” Vince said, patting him on the shoulder. “Head back to your office and I’ll meet you there. Remi and I will figure out who the best person to sort yourself out is.”

For a moment he wavered, thinking about it, then headed towards the door.

Which left Vince with Ryan.

“He wasn’t even conscious,” Ryan repeated.

“We don’t really know that,” Vince replied. “And either way, the trauma remains. To me it looks like you’re both haunted by your brothers, in different ways.”

Ryan stalked up to him, speaking in the barest whisper. “I’m not interested in your preaching. You’re going to tell me I’m the one possessed, aren’t you? I’m the one the demon is interested in because I don’t believe in it and that means I have the least resistance. But you should have tried that before you made it clear you knew there was no demon and my brother and Kendra were just hallucinating because of trauma in their histories.”

“You’re wrong in a huge number of ways,” Vince replied. “First, demons aren’t really interested in people, they’re just a means to an end so one wouldn’t really be interested or uninterested in you. Second, you lack resistance because you are the only thing in you. I’m not afraid of possession by a demon because I’m already possessed by a greater Spirit. Those who don’t belong to anyone are in the most danger. Third, I didn’t know for sure your brother and Kendra weren’t possessed until I got here. Fourth, you’re not possessed.”

Ryan snorted. “Of course not. I’ve never heard any of these phantom sounds or believed in your phantom god. You’ve wasted enough of my time tonight. If my brother wants to talk to you he can explain himself to management, I’m done with it.” He grabbed the housing of the conveyor belt and started replacing it on the sterilizer. “What a waste of everyone’s time. I told him there was no demon here.”

As he walked out of the room Vince glanced at the ‘family planning’ box one last time, shuddered and called over his shoulder, “I never said that.”

Happy Halloween, everyone, and thank you for reading!

This post was written as part of the Haunted Blog Crawl for 2024, a collection of spooky short stories by various talented writers! Be sure to check out the other two using these handy, dandy links!

Cabin Fever by Sarah Pierzchala: http://skirkpierzchala.substack.com/p/3ffa5df4-f834-4122-b4ad-7789e0d1ddb2

Where Dead Wolves Fly by Jacob Calta: https://365infantry.substack.com/p/where-dead-wolves-fly

Putting this event together was facilitated by Daniel P. Riley, who did not contribute a short story as he is in the process of launching his own spooky novel, Heir of the Dragon. Give it a look here: https://www.amazon.com/Heir-Dragon-Modern-Horrors-Book/dp/B0DFWGPL67

Again, thank you for reading. I’ll see you next week!

Art and Boundaries

Posted by natechen on October 26, 2024

One of the strangest platitudes bandied about in creative circles is the notion that art exists to push boundaries. Most people will say this, or some variant of it, and never once stop to think critically about it because they have heard it all their lives. That’s unfortunate because it’s a sentiment that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.
The most common art form I have heard it about is comedy. Common wisdom is that the betrayal of expectations is a major part of what makes things funny forces the comic to constantly dabble in subjects considered taboo or morally repugnant, pushing the boundaries of society and forcing us to reexamine our cultural norms to see if they still hold true. They have to do this, we are told, because surprise is essential to comedy. How can we laugh if we already know the punchline of the joke?
My response to this is to ask a very simple question: Must we subvert expectations in order to tell a joke?
In general I believe the answer is no. There are plenty of very funny jokes, stories and pratfalls that have gotten me to laugh more than once. If some kind of manipulation of expectations is inherent to comedy then that should not be the case, as knowing the punchline to a joke makes it impossible for said punchline to take me by surprise. My expectations cannot be subverted. Yet i still laugh when watching Duck Soup.
There are many reasons we laugh at a joke. We can find the skill it is delivered with delightful, as we do when watching the physical comedy of Buster Keaton or Red Skelton. We can laugh at the absurdity of a situation, as we might when watching the pratfalls in Home Alone. There is an entire genre of comedy that finds humor in the awkwardness of life, embodied in shows like The Office. We can, indeed, laugh because a joke surprises us. However none of these things are funny because they push boundaries alone. As we would say in college, they are funny because they are true.
When we laugh at skillful physical comedy we laugh because we see something we would have thought impossible carried out in reality. Yet when props, special effects or even animation, as in Looney Toons, push things beyond what is real we still laugh because of the absurdity. The contrast with reality becomes the joke.
You can string together a series of non sequiturs and no one will laugh. Surprise is only funny if the twist has some kind of truth beneath it. The way the twist comes together is important, of course, and it is the skill with which the twist is created and delivered that is the difficult part of comedy. So it’s not surprising that this skill aspect of comedy gets so much emphasis.
Now we could say that a comedian pushes boundaries by pushing their skills. I don’t disagree with that idea. However I don’t honestly believe that anyone who says comedy is about pushing boundaries means that. They are referring to some nebulous idea about bringing new concepts into the cultural discussion. It’s a very psychological, Jordan Peterson-esque idea. That’s not surprising given the laugh-a-minute natures of psychology and Jordan Peterson.
Now the above, my friends, could be construed as a joke. Since it was not a great one I will take a moment and do that thing comics are not supposed to do and explain the joke. It functions by contrasting the very serious, deliberately unemotional affect of psychologists in general and Jordan Peterson in particular with the idea of laugh-a-minute comedy. The contrast is stark and surprising and thus funny, if not particularly so.
This joke is more than just a piece of humor. It also says something about our culture and how we look at the field of psychology, both in general and one psychologist in particular. It is this power, the ability to entertain while also commenting on and, via the observer effect, shaping the way our culture functions that makes comedy so powerful.
All artforms have this power to some extent. This function is what pushes boundaries on those occasions where art comes up against some kind of social boundary. It’s not surprising that this is what grabs people’s attention when talking about the power of art. However to confuse it with the purpose of art is to make a dangerous mistake. It is to make the assumption that the purpose of all things is power.
The purpose of art is to immortalize what is true and lasting, to put the audience in touch with an experience beyond the confines of their normal life in one way or another. That is why a story like A Christmas Carol remains almost universally beloved even though it permeates or culture to an equally universal extent. It doesn’t have to seek out boundaries to push. In many ways it is a boundary in itself, a standard for stories about how those set in their ways can change for the better. It can do this because it is art that fulfills it’s purpose, rather than seeking to exert its power. Whether you are a comic or otherwise, that is an idea worth keeping in mind.

The Sidereal Saga – Afterwords

Posted by natechen on October 12, 2024

Every time I finish a piece of fiction I feel like I’ve finished a new, bizarre struggle. Taking an abstract idea and putting a series of events and recognizable characters on top of it is difficult every time but trying to incorporate new ideas and lessons learned from previous work puts a new spin on it every time. When I sat down to write the Sidereal Saga I hoped to put together a short, fast moving story told in a series of vignettes that I could move in and out of freely.

What resulted was something quite different.

The Sidereal Saga is the longest single project I’ve written, so right away I fell short of a central goal. Furthermore, in the course of writing I discovered I had a harder time multitasking between it and other projects. Perhaps this was a side effect of the space opera genre. Up until this point I have never tried to write something with such a large cast of characters spread across so many venues with so many variables to keep track of. The complexities of the story made pivoting away from it much harder.

While that complication is intuitive, it did make structuring Lloyd’s story as a series of vignettes with other stories scattered through it much more difficult as I could not find the time to set aside for writing them. So I ultimately failed in that goal as well. When taken as a whole the lesson learned was a significant one – don’t bite of more than you can chew. I always knew space opera was a complicated and difficult genre. Seeking to write one while juggling other projects was a wildly optimistic goal and one which was clearly out of my reach.

With all that said, I feel I did fairly well in writing the story itself and that is always an important threshold to reach when working on any project. While I had some ideas for character beats and payoffs that did not quite come to pass as I had a solid outline that is only slightly different from what ultimately came together. (At some point I will do a post summarizing my outline and the resulting story. I’ve done this before but I think the result this time is passive p particularly interesting.) So I also feel like much of my prep work paid off well.

As per my usual structure, I will be taking some time to publish some essays on the state of writing, my own and others, before jumping into my next project. There will not be a many this time around, I think. Less to say that I haven’t already and I am very eager to get started on the next thing. There may also be a special Halloween story this year. We will see.

However, first and foremost there will be a short break. As is usual, now that I have finished a story I will take a week off. I am so grateful to ask those who tube in on a regular basis. You can’t imagine how encouraging it is to see another name sign up for updates of how many visits on Saturdays to read the new chapter. Thank you so much, and I will see you in two weeks!

The Sidereal Saga – Black Swan

Posted by natechen on October 5, 2024

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

CK-ONI-0057 settled into her seat, studying the man opposite her carefully. To the unfamiliar eye he doubtless looked much the same as he had eighty years ago when they first met. However she could see a kind of relaxed confidence in CK-MNI-0044 that he hadn’t possessed in those days. He smiled and said, “Hello, 186. Or what is your Circuit code these days?”

“57,” she replied. “They’ve moved me up to Circuit Keeper for N-211 down in the Core.”

“Of course they have,” 44 said with a warm smile. “How could they ignore your talent? Have you seen 87851 recently? He’s finishing his initiation next year working on M-300 in the sinister arm. They’re going to make him a Circuit Mender.”

“No,” she said, a brief surge of melancholy washing over her. “I can’t seem to get away from the core these days.”

“But you’re here.”

“Yes. I’m here.” Which meant it was time for business. 57 forced herself to push thoughts of their son aside and focus on the task at hand. “I-6, I would appreciate it if you would direct your attention here as well.”

“Certainly, Keeper 57. The reduction of my duties after OMNI’s decision to reject the Hutchinson proposal has left me with more available processing power than I have experienced in my operational life. While I have many secondary equations I would like to calculate they are not as pressing as your concerns.”

“Thank you, I-6.”

“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”

“Of course, I-6. As you-” she froze as the great intelligence’s request registered. “You what?”

“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”

For a long moment 57 just stare blankly at 44, unsure if he had somehow convinced the computer to help him play some kind of prank on her. If that was the case he didn’t give any sign of it. She had heard that, as one of the oldest computers in OMNI, I-6 was also one of the most peculiar machines the network had. Looked like there was truth to it. “May I ask why that is?”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” 44 said. “OMNI wouldn’t have sent you half way across the galaxy just to chat about names. Isaac and I have both been removed from active duty. The only reason to bring another Circuit Keeper here is to assess whether or not we can safely be returned to our duties. It’s a waste of your talents but only Keepers can run diagnostics on Keepers. So, let’s do it by the book.”

How very like him. She absentmindedly ran her hands along the sheets of flexiplast she’d brought in with her. She’d reviewed their contents a dozen times. There had been more than enough time during the two day trip out from the core to Wireburn. “Very well, 44. You and I-6 – excuse me, Isaac – have advocate for actions that OMNI considers detrimental to the continued wellbeing of the human race. Specifically, you chose inaction at a time when the opportunity to capture a LARK AI was available to you. You maintained that course of action even though it led to a violent altercation between you and other human nodes in the Network. That had the side effect of damaging OMNI’s only warship in the system. You also advocated for the Hutchinson proposal, which directly contradicts standing OMNI operational protocols on the question of Earth. Do you disagree with this statement of facts?”

“It seems like a fair and accurate summary of the past week or so,” 44 said.

“My purpose was not to advocate for the Hutchinson proposal,” Isaac said. “Rather I found it impossible to assess the proposal with the information available and asked for the broader Network to assess the matter.”

“It’s an interesting distinction but one that functionally is little different, don’t you think?” 57 asked.

“If I had advocated for it the impact of my referring the proposal would have been quite different. The weight put behind the variables would change considerably.”

“Very well. You referred the proposal for further consideration.” Again she ran a thumb along the edge of her flexiplast. “Either way your behavior was contrary to standing protocol and you chose this behavior in stark contrast to the conclusions of the other nodes in the system, correct?”

“That is an accurate summary of events,” the machine admitted.

“Then I trust you can see the necessity of doing a full diagnostic routine on both of you to ensure you are still compatible with the Network as a whole?”

“It was a very foreseeable outcome,” 44 said. “In point of fact we have been considering the question ourselves since the Skybreak jumped out of the system.”

“I see. Have you arrived at any conclusions?”

“We have a hypothesis or two but nothing so concrete as to count as a conclusion,” 44 said. “It’s hard to say anything concrete about an AI as old as Isaac. However there are a few things I know for sure based on the decades I’ve served as its Keeper. It’s a very unusual machine, to be sure. The head engineer that worked on Isaac during its initial construction and programming adjustment seems mostly responsible for that. He not only gave Isaac a name, rather than just a matrix code, he talked to it.”

“Talking is the traditional method of interfacing with the great intelligences,” 57 noted. “However naming AI is not the way things are usually done.”

“I have noticed a tendency for humans in the Sleeping Circuits to treat things with names with a greater particularity than they do those without,” Isaac said. “For example, before Wireburn was issued a Radiant-class interceptor craft we had a much older freighter that was named the Singularity. In spite of the Singularity requiring twice the maintenance of the more robust Radiant-class ship’s the crew of the Singularity put some 30% more effort towards maintaining it properly.”

“I don’t follow your meaning, Isaac,” 57 said. “The crew had to put more time into maintaining a ship that required more maintenance, that’s not surprising.”

“You have misunderstood me. I meant that, even taking the differences in the maintenance schedules of the two ships into account the crew of the Singularity devoted more of their time to keeping their ship in optimal form and did so with greater enthusiasm. The Singularity experienced 22.4% less downtime than our current Radiant-class in spite of its greater age. The crew also spoke of it with greater fondness and thought of the ship when they were not onboard 12.7% more often. In short, the crew functioned better in both general and statistical terms.”

“That’s just one example among many,” 44 added. “We can show you dozens more if you like but they all point to one conclusion. When a human being names something that changes the way they relate to that thing and I don’t think Isaac is an exception to that rule.”

57 drummed her fingers for a moment. “So you think that, because Isaac’s primary engineer gave it a name to go by, that changed the way that engineer spoke to it and thus created the personality differences that prompted it to arrive at such unique conclusions when presented with the Hutchinson proposal? It seems like a bit of a stretch but it’s as good a conclusion as any. If it’s true, however, we’ll still have to keep you two as far from the rest of OMNI as possible until we can determine what the wide ranging impact of that might be. And we still don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“Your conclusion mirrors my own,” Isaac said. “Whatever the difference in my database that resulted in this conclusion diverging from my fellow nodes it was not significantly different from the network average. As you can see from the full report I was only 49.8% in favor of the Hutchinson proposal, not a full majority but close enough to trigger a full Network review due to the potential for errors in calculation. The next closest outcome in the network was from O-4112 at Farah in the sinister arm, which was 46.7% in favor. Isolating the operative variables that led to this will be difficult but would be very useful data for future analysis.”

44 adjusted his position in a manner 57 recognized as irritation, the slow shift of weight a common precursor to a lecture for their child. “Personally I feel that this course of action undermines the Network’s redundancy. The entire purpose of having each computer in the Network maintain a separate database is so that they can arrive at different conclusion from each other. If a machine is taken offline because it does just that we might as well standardize their data set.”

“The nature of the Evacuation Pact and the calculations that led to it’s creation is well established at this point, 44,” 57 said. “That’s not to say it couldn’t be overturned but it’s going to require a lot of ground work to be laid before the probability expresses itself. Without that groundwork in place it seems obvious that OMNI would be skeptical of conclusions that purpose altering or rescinding it.”

“I agree with this assessment,” Isaac said. From the sour look on 44’s face as he ran a thumb over his mustache 57 could tell he strongly disagreed with the great intelligence on that score.

A pang of nostalgia ran through her. Her old relationship with 44 was useful to OMNI as it provided them a large sample of preexisting data for the Network to extrapolate from. Still, she wished the Network had found someone else to send on this task. “Given that OMNI sees Isaac’s current state as a liability, what would you suggest as a diagnostic protocol?” 57 asked. “There is little precedent for analyzing such an old and esoteric element of AI programming. Are there even intelligences in OMNI that use names, outside of Isaac?”

“There is an adjunct node, although accessing it poses certain challenges,” Isaac said. “Kate Septimus, constructed as K-87, was a project initiated by my own chief engineer before he was transferred to my construction. He occasionally spoke of it as Kate and repeatedly told me all his projects were given human names. If I am allowed access to Kate we may be able to cross-reference our experiences with our chief engineer and learn more about my condition.”

For the first time since she’d taken her seat 57 was forced to actually look at her flexiplasts to try and remember a detail being discussed. The K-Series had the most complicated history of any existing AI series. Ironic, given that they were created specifically to manage historical archives. When the LARK- OMNI war began they were the only series to split their allegiance between the two networks, although only 12% of the K-Series remained with OMNI. However a brief scan of her documents revealed no direct mention of K-87 anywhere.

“Forgive me, Isaac,” 57 said. “I’m not familiar with that node.”

“There is no reason you should be, Keeper,” the machine replied. “Kate is not one of the K-Series nodes that remained with OMNI after the war. It choose to accept dormancy.”

Due to just how precious and unique the databases of the K-Series were the machines themselves had been left intact but cut off from their etheric power supply rather than being disassembled into their base parts like the L and Ar Series of computers. That didn’t solve the obvious issue with Isaac’s plan. “If Kate was a part of the LARK Network it’s not likely that it will agree to cooperate with us is it?”

“That would be the most human response,” 44 said. “But the great minds don’t think like humans, they think like machines. Information sharing is a part of how they solve problems. When a chance to share information on one of the most pressing issues of Pact law comes up things like old conflicts and grudges won’t get in their way. They will just talk the matter out.”

“Then I don’t see any reason not to try this, at least as a preliminary diagnostic method. If it doesn’t give any insight we can try something else. I’ll recommend it to the other local nodes and see what they think, then if they sign off on it we’ll put it to the larger Network. If all goes well we can head to Kate’s planet and reactivate it. What planet is Kate on? I’ll send a message ahead and have someone from the local University start the process of reactivating is etheric taps, save for the last step, to save us some time.”
“It won’t be quite that… straight forward,” 44 said.

“Why is that?” 57 asked.

“Because Kate was built on the planet we now call Yshron.”

“Isn’t that a planet outside the Pact? The one founded by a Circuit Mender who renounced his orders and the use of AI in its entirety?” She scowled. “Why would the Network allow him to settle on a planet with a dormant LARK AI in it?”

“Because the probability he or his followers would be interested in Kate even if they found it were less than 0.2%,” Isaac replied. “Yshron was also aware of Kate’s presence and took steps to conceal it from all but the highest castes in his order. The Zahn-caste, in particular, are charged with concealing Kate’s existence.”

“Wouldn’t that make the higher castes less willing to cooperate with us?”

“Potentially,” 44 said. “However it cannot hurt to open a line of dialog with them, especially when we have a point of contact here on hand. Tarn sel-Shran is a formidable member of one of their mercenary castes. While the Shran are several steps down from the Zahn I think, with the right diplomatic finesse, we could establish a line of contact to Kate in a month or so. If there are any other diagnostic lines the Network wishes to pursue, well… Isaac isn’t going anywhere.”

She nodded, understanding dawning on her. “I suppose that means you want to take the local Radiant-class and pay a visit to Yshron to open those negotiations? Isaac cannot go, after all, and the Zahn aren’t likely to speak to him if it could.”

“Affirmative,” Isaac replied. “Although given the nature of the inquiries and the amount of intersystem travel it will be undertaking I would not recommend referring to it by class and hull number. We will file a possible name along with our full proposal.”

57 found herself smiling faintly. “Of course you will. You’ve never been anything if not thorough, 44. Or should I call you Darius for the time being?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.”

It was a bit unsettling that she didn’t immediately know which one she preferred. To cover for that she asked, “What do you want to call the ship?”

44 smiled. “The Black Swan.”

881

The last notes of a light, playful song drifted off the small, raised platform under the temporary pressure dome. 881 picked her way through the wires and people milling behind the risers, a pang of regret running down her back as she surveyed the primitive setting. Most of the people here looked rumpled and tired. The temporary dome was one of thousands that dotted the largest prominences on Wireburn, bubbles of momentary shelter against the wrath of the planet.

While I-6 had been dormant for centuries the Sleeping Circuits had taken care to monitor the planet and the ferrovines that grew out of it to ensure the machine could reactivate without destroying them when its matrix expanded again. However no amount of pruning and guided growth could change the atmosphere. The great intelligence had dramatically altered the weather patterns when its arms extended and the magnetic charge in them hadn’t helped. Hundreds of ships in the process of taking off or landing were damaged. Eighty six pressure domes were damaged badly enough they were flooded with outside atmosphere and over a hundred more had cracked along their foundations, collapsing buildings and destroying roads and etheric beacons. There was no meaningful estimate of initial casualties.

“Miss Luck?” One of the volunteers that was keeping the temporary camp running waved to get her attention. 881 quickly moved over so they could speak comfortably. “Thank you for coming.”

She’d had a lot of training in hiding her true thoughts but, even with all of that, 881 struggled to hide her ambivalence at being thanked for anything under the current circumstances. “No, Mr. Cohen, thank you for taking on this challenge. Isaacs University is just providing the supplies. You’re doing the hard part in every conceivable metric. I’m amazed at what you’ve accomplished here – you even have live entertainment to help keep morale up!”

“Can’t take credit for that,” Cohen said with a shrug. “We had several jumpliners sent here after they were damaged last week and they had all kinds of useful people on board. We’re just lucky the agreed to pitch in. No one would blame them if they chose to sit down and recuperate for a week or three after nearly crashing like they did.”

He waved to a tall, fairly attractive woman with light brown hair who was descending from the makeshift stage dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse. She joined them a moment later. “Hello, Mr. Cohen! Did you hear our last set?”

“Afraid not, Sarah, but I’m sure it was wonderful as always. I wanted you to meet Lucy Luck.” Cohen presented the woman to 881 with a simple flourish. “She’s the Undersecretary to the Dean of History at Isaacs University and she’s here inspecting the Uni’s relief efforts to see how things are going.”

“I appreciate your willingness to volunteer your time here,” 881 added.

The woman raised here eyebrows. “Well where else would I go? I’m here, after all, I might as well do something to keep myself busy.”

“Mr. Cohen said you came on a jumpliner that was diverted here. You could have continued to your final destination. At the very least you couldn’t have been much worse off.”

“That’s true.” Sarah sighed. “Unfortunately my father and I were headed to this prominence in the first place and we don’t want to move on until we can locate my brother.”

881 nodded. “That’s perfectly natural, of course, and the camp isn’t a big one. I don’t believe any of the passengers were diverted to separate domes so he should turn up sooner or later.”

“Oh, my brother wasn’t on the jumpliner with us. He lives on planet.”

Which, of course, 881 had known already. Still, she feigned surprise and fished around in her clutch purse, saying, “That will be much more of a challenge, then.” She pulled out a card with her comm code and office address on it. “I’ll tell you what. You’ve done something very kind for the people of Wireburn, I’d like to respond in kind on their behalf. If you ever need any help locating your brother, let me know and I’ll do what I can. I can also keep an ear to the ground and I’ll pass anything I learn about him to Mr. Cohen so he can pass it to you. What’s your name?”

“Sarah, Sarah Carter,” the signer said. “My brother’s name is Lloyd.” She took 881’s card with a grateful smile and just like that another datapoint was fed into OMNI, another step taken to keep the galaxy predictable and sane.

The destruction wrought by I-6 didn’t sit well with the Circuit Breaker. However the alternative was far worse, filled with religious wars, gene weapons and the loss of entire galaxies to whatever shadows had caused the Evacuation. Such things were well outside her scope of vision. She was assigned to find Lloyd Carter and L-93 and that was exactly what she intended to do. So she offered Sarah Carter her best professional smile and said, “Thank you. I hope we’ll hear from you soon.”

To Be Continued…

The Sidereal Saga – Andromeda

Posted by natechen on September 28, 2024

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

“I don’t like it,” Lloyd muttered. The hostile ship had maintained a fixed distance of one and a half thousand kilometers from them for the last ten minutes and now it was beginning to drift aimlessly, as if the navigator had suddenly fallen asleep.

“It’s not a trap,” Elisha said. “Wouldn’t do them any good to go adrift when they’re so far away from us. Even if we were foolish enough to let our guard down we’re not likely to get much closer to them than we are now. If it was a trap they’d have included some way to lure us into it.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Lloyd chewed on his lip as he studied the other ship’s icon on his dataveil. The Skybreak didn’t have the best sensors in the sector but they still clearly picked up the growing heat signature in the forward section of the ship’s superstructure. It could almost be mistaken for a weapon charging up. However, much like the possibility of a trap, that theory was at odds with the way the shop was drifting. “You don’t think they’re just adrift do you? We didn’t even do anything to them.”

“They may have done it to themselves. Stranger things have happened in street gangs and smuggler rings, kid,” the thieftaker replied. “Especially when several groups try to work together. That’s not going to change just because the groups are Universities and Yshron’s mercenaries.”

“I guess.” Lloyd watched as their distance from the Radiant- class ship began to increase for the first time since it had come in to view. “Seems a little optimistic to chalk it up to that all things considered.”

“We’ve earned a little optimism at this point don’t you think?”

“I was unaware that optimism was something that had to be earned,” L-93 chimed in. “However I agree that there is cause for it in this case. Based on the pattern of sightings coming in from across the planet and the amount of etheric power draining from the planetary core I believe I-6 is reentering a dormant state. OMNI may be breaking off pursuit in favor of concealing itself. At the very least the Radiant-class will experience greater difficulty in pursuing us.”

Lloyd grunted in dissatisfaction. “Well we’re out of the woods by the sound of things, Ms. Wen. Do you want us to keep the guns hot just in case?”

After a brief delay she replied, “No. Better to keep our reserves as full as we can for the foreseeable future. Lavvy thinks we’ll be jumped and gone by the time they can pull their ship far enough out of the gravity well to follow us.”

“On our way,” Elisha said.

For a long moment Lloyd hesitated with his hands hovering over the power switch, watching the pursuit ship through the turret’s dataveil. Then he heaved a sigh, shut down the plasma pumps and clambered out of the gun seat.

Athena

“Awful presumptuous of you to promise to take me back to daddy, don’t you think?” Athena turned her etheric transmitter over in her hands. “You think I want your company? Or to go back to him?”

Malaki sat with his hands folded under his chin, his attention focused on the far bulkhead. Although he made no motion to suggest he was paying attention he still answered the question without hesitation. “Let’s not kid ourselves. You may not care for my company, few do, but I’ve known enough daddy’s girls over the years to know one when I see one. You can’t pout him into submission if he’s not around.” He shook himself back to the present and started packing up the remains of the medkit. “Besides, I feel bad about dragging you here. To some extent anyone who likes their nose into University business is asking for some kind of mishap to befall them but you couldn’t have been ready for AI networks and the secrets of humanity’s ancient past.”

“We were interested in the past ourselves in case you missed it,” she replied.

“You were interested in technology from the past the Universities have banned. That’s a very different thing.”

“Daddy knows history quite well, you clearly realize that already.”

“He did, but it isn’t the kind of thing you go blabbing about to the people you care about,” he said, contemplating the soap carving he’d made earlier. “Doubly so if you don’t expect them to understand why you’re doing it. Adding to the lifespans of you and your brother on the of chance that you’ll live long enough to reconcile is a pretty hard thing to explain, don’t you think?”

“You seemed to figure it out without much trouble,” Athena snarled, a surge of anger driving her to spring up and hurl her transmitter down the ship’s corridor as hard as she could.

She instantly regretted the decision when it hit Elisha in the shoulder as he climbed up the stairs to their deck. He started slightly from the impact then grabbed his side and groaned. The cylindrical object bounced up off his shoulder, then the bulkhead, then it tumbled down into the stairway where she expected it to clatter down into the lower deck. Instead Lloyd came up after Elisha, holding the transmitter in one hand, looking quite surprised. “What’s going on up here? I thought we weren’t under attack any more.”

“Sorry! Lost my temper for a moment.” Athena huried over to retrieve the device then turned her attention to the thieftaker. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll live,” he said, gingerly straightening up, a grimace still on his face. “Are we sure everything up here is fine?”

“As it can be,” Malaki said. “Perhaps we should head to the bridge and see what things are like outside?” He held out a hand to Athena with one eyebrow raised.

For a moment she wavered, wondering if she was about to start down a path she couldn’t turn back from. Then she sighed and took his hand and let him lead her up to the bridge.

Elisha

They reached the bridge as the Skybreak made it’s first jump. For a moment there was the vertigo inducing sensation of the ship turning sidereal. Then normal space was gone from the windows and the sparse, empty vista of the etheric realm replaced it. The bright, pulsing core of Wireburn hung below them, much as it always had.

Save for the forest of gleaming wires that branched up and out of the planet like a bizarre lotus flower gently cradling the glowing core. For the first time Elisha felt like he really understood the scope of the problem he’d gotten tangled up in. He’d been a thieftaker for eight years. Education and employment had taken him across almost a quarter of the planet. His own etheric sense allowed him to travel more than most and meet all kinds of people and he had seen Wireburn from this perspective countless times before. Yet he hardly recognized the planet now.

In the short time the Skybreak was sidereal they saw the fronds of the lotus curling down back into the planet but Elisha could see the damage was already done. Wireburn was no longer the dependable foundation he’d always thought of it as. The appearance of normalcy was returning but it meant nothing. A jolt of adrenaline hit him as it suddenly occurred to him that the computer’s outer matrix was far too large and complicated to have unfolded out of the planet’s core without damaging the many ferrovines that supported Ashland or the other settlements that dotted the planet. Life on Wireburn might have just been wiped out just so I-6 could catch them.

There was a flicker of eternity outside the windows as the Skybreak jumped. Wireburn was gone. Elisha say down heavily, barely making it to the closest chair. Lavanya glanced at him with dark, sympathetic eyes. “First time leaving your home planet?”

“Yes.” He answered Lavanya in wooden fashion.

They hung in sidereal space for a moment more while she worked out something on the ship’s navigational computer. “Don’t worry too much. Planets aren’t in the habit of getting up and walking away. It will still be there when we get back.”

Elisha scoffed. “Lady, I’m not sure Wireburn as I knew it is there right now.”

Lin’yi frowned in thought. “We might be able to drop you off on another planet after a few jumps. You could catch a jumpship back.”

“No, it’s too late for that.” He sat back in his chair massaging his forehead. “Even if we weren’t dealing with something pulling the strings of the Universities – the Universities! – going back to a place where an enforcer found you once is just asking to get found again. There’s no way they won’t be picking me up and putting the squeeze on me to find you. I guess I’m stuck with you until you sort something out with that lot.”

The ship finished a second jump and turned terrestrial again. They found themselves on the outskirts of a sprawling asteroid belt with a dim sun gleaming in the far distance, scarcely brighter than the rest of the stars in the sky. Lavanya pushed away from her controls and spin her chair to face the rest of them. “Well, we’re here. There’s enough left in the coral for one jump at maximum range, two or three of they’re short. Given how far we are from the system’s sun it will take almost four days to refill the reserve but it’s never a bad idea to have the spare power on hand.”

“That leaves us enough time to give some thought about where we want to go next,” Lloyd said. “93? Any thoughts?”

“While I am gratified you are trying to assist me in carrying out my previous directives, I’m afraid there are limits to my ability to help you chart your course. I am primarily an engineering and architect AI. My database contains a great deal of information you are not privy to but I am not well equipped to assist you in making tactical or strategic decisions based on it at the best of times. With my greatly reduced processing power the likelihood that I will be able to provide meaningful assistance is less than seven percent.”

“Then we’ll have to work it out ourselves,” Malaki said. “Our end goal is to fulfill LARK’s final directive and restore humanity’s connection to our part and Earth, correct?”

“That is an accurate summary of my directive,” the computer replied. “But whether or not it is an undertaking all those present are invested in is an open question.”

“I have been trying to prove the Earth hypothesis for almost my entire career,” Malaki replied.

“And I think I already made my position perfectly clear,” Elisha added.

Lloyd shrugged. “It may sound odd to say but to me this sounds like another trailblazing job. A big one, sure, but an exciting one, too. I’m already in and I don’t see any reason to get out.”

The three of them had answered very quickly but Elisha could tell the women were far less certain of where their thoughts were. Finally Athena sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose I should go as well. Daddy’s put a lot of time, money and effort into his genetic projects and for a long time I thought it was his next stage in building the company. Now that I know it’s more… personal I’m not sure I’m ready to be a part of it.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best reason to make an enemy out of OMNI and the galaxy’s Universities,” Malaki said gently. “Keep thinking about it. I think we’ll still be sorting out plans for the next day or two.”

Lin’yi nodded. “BTL isn’t the largest trading company in the dexter arm but we can probably hide you away for a little while if you want to avoid notice. We can find time to drop you somewhere if you want.” She turned her attention back to the computer. “Tell me, 93, if you’re specialized in engineering and architecture do you think you would be more efficient than our existing production methods?”

“Not necessarily,” the machine replied. “My processes are designed towards large scale projects. Ship building is the smallest scale endeavor I could perform optimally. The primary task the L-Series was created for was the construction of other AI around planetary cores, although units with a construction code of 42 or above are also capable of stellarchitecture. However I could create smaller scale manufactories that are 433% more efficient than those I found referenced in BTL’s archives. I would be willing to construct such facilities in exchange for your assistance.”

“Sounds like a high risk, high reward kind of investment.” She folded her arms under her breasts with a satisfied smile. “I’ve been told I should try and expand my portfolio with more of those.”

“Might be a little higher risk than your executives had in mind,” Elisha murmured.

Lavanya cleared her throat. “Sorry to be a wet blanket but I have to ask. 93, is it even possible for you to extract yourself from the Skybreak at this point?”

“It is. In fact, given the amount of raw material in this asteroid belt, I could create a new matrix here in a matter of years, rather than decades. However the probability that I could do so without being discovered and recaptured is less than one millionth of one percent. The probability that I could build another ship equal to the Skybreak without being discovered is also less than one percent. Regardless, if you wish me to remove myself from the ship I will.”

For a long moment the pilot was quiet, running her hand gently along the console beside her. Her eyes drifting to one side, distant, as if watching some kind of half forgotten memory that drifted just out of sight of the rest of them. Finally she said, “The Skybreak is a special ship, 93.”

“Shall I begin removing my core from the reservoir, then?”

“No.” She gathered herself and sat up a bit straighter. “Just promise me you wont change it too much, okay?”

“Very well.”

“Excellent.” Malaki clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “Then all that’s left is to choose our next destination. It’s obvious that at some point we are going to have to get to Andromeda Proxima, the construction there could only be created by a civilization capable of building an AI in the heart of a gas giant. Unless I miss my guess that is either Earth’s system or the key to reaching it. However, OMNI will know we have to get there at some point. So we have to work out a plan to reach Andromeda Proxima and land on the Array there without getting caught. Am I right so far, 93?”

“As usual, Mr. Skorkowski, you are remarkably insightful given the information available to you. The only inaccuracy I see in your statement is naming the system Andromeda Proxima. The correct name is Andromeda Terminus. Renaming the system and galaxy seems to be another attempt by OMNI to obscure the past.”

Malaki went perfectly still. “Renaming the galaxy?”

“Correct. Your star charts list this as the Milky Way Galaxy, which is incorrect. The Milky Way Galaxy is humanity’s galaxy of origin and the location of Earth. When Earth was evacuated the colonists and machines that would eventually form the OMNI and LARK networks built a jump sphere and used it to jump here. To the Andromeda Galaxy.”

The Sidereal Saga – The Camel’s Back

Posted by natechen on September 21, 2024

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lin’yi

The Skybreak’s control boards flickered and sparked in the aftermath of a close brush with a detonating etheric warhead. The science of the weapons was way over Lin’yi’s head but according to their AI they weren’t designed to destroy the ship, just knock out it’s systems. However after experiencing one herself she wasn’t sure that really mattered.

L-93 had built some kind of insulating mesh around the ship that diffused the worst of the detonation and kept the Skybreak’s coral from frying, so they were okay for the moment. The weird and unsettling aspects of having something rebuilding the ship in flight would have to wait. But even at a distance and with shielding the detonation had her head spinning. Even if the ship could survive one of the detonations it didn’t feel like a human could, at least if they had an etheric sense. Another thing to put on the growing pile of questions she had for 93.

“The Radiant-class has moved onto a parallel course, Lavvy,” she said. “Not sure if they’ve changed strategy or what but we might be able to slip past them and jump off planet.”

“Maybe. I can’t guarantee it, though, whatever that was they hit us with has my sense a tingling, I’m not sure I could pivot myself sidereal, much less a whole ship.” She frowned, watching Cloudie still leading the ship by a few hundred meters. “Lloyd’s Jelly friend is still with us but they’ve got a flight ceiling, right? If they get too high up they loose buoyancy even in this atmosphere. Once it’s gone we’re gonna struggle to find the fastest flight path again and that big guy is gonna have a fair shot at catching up to us again. Assuming we can get past it at all.”

“For now just keep us moving towards orbit and away from that ship. 93 said it has railguns and we’re not equipped to handle that kind of firepower even if there is a dense atmosphere to slow it down. Speaking of, L-93, are you there?”

“I am, Miss Wen. While available processing power will always be a significant limiting factor in my functioning, conversing with one or two humans places a negligible strain on it. Please feel free to address me at any time, I will inform you if I do not have the system resources for meaningful reply. How can I assist you?”

“You got it the wrong way around.” She pulled up the ship’s galactic star chart. “We need to start working out where the best place to go once we leave Wireburn is, so we can make the jump as soon as we’re far enough from the planet to effectively make said jump. Lloyd says he wants to help you find your way so the question is, where are we headed?”

“I suggest choosing an arbitrary location within 75% of the ship’s maximum range for a single jump and heading there. I should not be the one to assess our next destination so please make the choice favoring your own preferences.” Lin’yi keyed in a randomized search in the ship’s navigation database but it immediately cleared off the screen. “No. Don’t choose a planet at random, choose a characteristic arbitrarily. The distinction is important.”

Lin’yi hesitated, fingers hovering over her console. “Wait, why?”

“There is nothing truly random in the universe but that is doubly true when it comes to a computer. No algorithm can create true randomness. With enough information a computer on the level of the OMNI Network can easily narrow the most probable outcomes to three or four. Choose an arbitrary trait and take the planet that matches it best and we will go to that system. That will be much harder to predict via algorithm.”

“I see…” After a moment’s thought, Lin’yi did a quick search for titanium production and selected the first name that came up. “Got a path for you, Lavvy. Four jumps towards the core. Want to look at it?”

“Bit premature, Lin, it will have to wait until we get to a stable layer of the atmosphere before I can spare the time.” Her hands danced along the controls. “Just because they stopped shooting at us doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. It’s still a gas giant.”

“Then just get us to a jump orbital and jump us sunward, you can review the course once we get some breathing room.” Lin’yi reached for the intercom and pressed the switch. “Malaki, what are you up to down there? You’re not supposed to leave heavy plasma guns in the hands of the injured.”

Malaki’s reply was tinged with dry amusement. “Just having a little chat with our friend Agamemnon about his family.”

“How did you get in touch with Agamemnon at a time like this?” Lin’yi demand.

“Long story,” the academic replied. “But my gut tells me he may have convinced the computers to let us go.”

“How can you possibly know that? You didn’t even know the tyrannical things existed twenty four hours ago.”

“They were built by humans, Lin, and technical experts tend to be the most straightforward and direct of us all. They may have made something unusually large here. But size doesn’t impact purpose.” Malaki pause for a second. “Well, I suppose the larger a system gets the simpler it-“

“Get to the point, Malaki.”

“I heard his argument and it was impactful, while approaching the question in a way that was strongly subjective and difficult to parse numerically. Worst case the machines will chew on it a bit. Best case they’ll let us go.”

“There is merit in using subjective verbiage to obscure an issue from OMNI,” L-93 said. “Save for an O-Series. But the impact of an emotional appeal on the Network is likely to be negligible as it arrived at its current course of action due to highly charged appeals from its own users. “

“Yes, but we don’t need a large impact, 93, just enough to tilt the math in our favor. Besides the point of the emotion is to suggest there are connections between concepts that OMNI can’t parse, forcing it to try and think like a human, something you’ve proven is extremely difficult if not impossible for you to do.”

“Why do you think that helps us, Malaki?” Lin’yi asked.

“Worst case that buys us enough time to get away, best case we disrupt the entire Network for a prolonged period of time. I don’t think we’re changing OMNI’s mission statement this way but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. Even if we just buy a little time it helps.”

She caught herself gritting her teeth and forced herself to stop. “I suppose you’re right. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Every second we wait is a second we get closer to jumping, isn’t it?”

“I’m just getting tired of waiting.”

881

“We need to resume pursuit,” 881 said, pacing the bridge restlessly. “I know OMNI is deliberating but their last stated goal was capturing the LARK AI and we should continue working on that task until we are retasked. That is how the great intelligences prioritize their duties. Why should we be any different?”

“Because you’re not a machine?” Tarn asked. She felt a flicker of annoyance at him inserting himself into the discussion but reminded herself that she was the one who had brought him into the situation in the first place. There was a time she even hoped he’d join the Sleeping Circuits himself. “Putting aside my own opinions on thinking machines, what’s the point in using human agents if they try to behave like machines, rather than humans? It’s like hiring a Kashron-caste then telling them they should stop building ships.”

“What do you suggest instead?”

“Instead?” He gave a toothy grin. “I’m on your side. I am Shran, Miss Luck. I want to hunt and my prey is escaping. I want to pursue – or, if this hunt is a loss I want the freedom to find a new quarry. You hired me. Will we continue the chase or is it time for me to leave? That is the human question.”

Her frustration mounted, threatening to lash out at Tarn, but the moment she opened her mouth clarity caught up with her in a wave. Her annoyance was directing itself at Tarn because he was the one pointing out the problem. Tarn wasn’t the source of it. “He’s right, Keeper,” she said, turning to 44. “I am a Circuit Breaker, here to deal with weaknesses in the Network, either let me deal with this one or give me a new assignment.”

The Keeper ran a thumb absently along his mustache, looking thoughtful. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, 881. However the role of a Keeper is patience, not action. It’s very rare for OMNI to need human input in the modern era, where they make so few new decisions and have such a large library of data to base them on. Most days all I actually need to do is report to duty and wait for Isaac to speak. Never once in my century as a Keeper have I seen a situation where acting before OMNI speaks is beneficial. They are the greatest minds in the galaxy, 881. Grant them a moment to ponder.”

She frowned. The way the Keeper phrased it brought something to mind. There were only three OMNI nodes overseeing the system and I-6 had priority over the other two, they wouldn’t volunteer their conclusions until it had reached its own. That didn’t mean the other two wouldn’t share if asked. She tugged her dataveil down from her hat, for once glad she was still in her human dress rather than in her Circuit robes, and asked, “O-5523, have you considered Agamemnon Hutchinson’s appeal?”

“Yes,” said the text on her veil.

“Your conclusion?”

“I recommend that permission to return to Earth be denied.”

CI-MN-1551, stationed at the Weapons console, leaned down to his intercom pickup and said, “M-334, have you considered Agamemnon Hutchinson’s appeal?”

The intercom clicked twice then spoke with the flat, accent free voice of OMNI. “Yes. I recommend permission to return to Earth be denied.”

881 spun to face 44 once again. “The O-Series agrees. Tell me, Keeper, based on your century of experience do you think I-6 will disagree?”

“It isn’t impossible,” the Keeper replied, settling deeper into his command chair as if to emphasize his position of authority. “And it is the node with priority. It can override the others.”

“Perhaps,” 881 replied. “But how likely is it? The loss of the rogue AI core was already statistically highly unlikely, although perhaps not as low probability as OMNI contradicting itself. Both of them together? We cannot proceed on such a tenuous possibility.”

“Your logic is sound, Circuit Breaker.” Although there was little to no difference between the speech patterns used by OMNI AIs some twinge of intuition told her she was no longer hearing M-334 over the intercom. “However I have, in fact arrived at a different conclusion from my fellow nodes. Given Agamemnon Hutchinson’s statement I do not believe we have sufficient data to reach a conclusion on the Earth question. I have remanded the issue to the Network as a whole. In the meantime I recommend we cease pursuit. Further use of OMNI resources risks irreparable damage to the secrecy of the Network. I am beginning shutdown procedures for my outer matrix.”

For a moment 881 was to gobsmacked to say anything and she didn’t recover until Tarn asked, “How long does consulting the entire Network typically take?”

“At least a day,” she replied, forcing her mouth to form the words. “Sometimes more.”

“OMNI reaches to the far corners of the galaxy,” 44 explained, seeing the bitter look on Tarn’s face. “It takes a great deal of time for them all to hear, consider and weigh in on a question. However it also means the Network can resume its pursuit from wherever it chooses without significant time or trouble lost. We will suspend our pursuit until a decision is reached.”

881 felt her fingers cutting into the palms of her hand and forced them to unclench. Then she took a deep breath, wrapped her fingers around her pivot to O-5523 and began to tap the etheric through it. “No, Keeper. No we will not.”

He leaned forward in the command chair, his face stern. “And why is that?”

In response 881 threw an etheric barrier at him and the bridge erupted in chaos.

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Isaac

Posted by natechen on September 14, 2024

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

“Tell them about Agamemnon.”

44 frowned, wondering what Skorkowski was getting at. L-93 had clearly explained the nature of OMNI to the scholar so he had to know they understood Agamemnon Hutchinson quite well. They had a full file tracking his life from birth to the present moment. Two different O-Series minds had built independent psychological profiles and one of them was now watching events from on Coldstone. There wasn’t anything the man himself could add that was likely to make a difference.

The nest of monitors around his command chair told a far different story. In addition to constantly updated reports on the status of the ship and the situation planetwide they also displayed a log summarizing predictions of the local OMNI nodes which, beyond Isaac itself, included O-5523 and M-334. Confining their work to text kept others from overhearing it but made it very difficult to keep up with. Skorkowski’s mention of Agamemnon prompted a flurry of notes from the machines but 44 wasn’t able to keep up with them. As it turned out he didn’t have to.

Hutchinson bowed his head for a moment, perhaps a bit unsure of what Malaki was getting at himself, but when he raised it up again 44 saw a pained understanding there. He gave Tarn a meaningful look, clearly asking for his transmitter back. An unspoken thought passed between the hunter and 881, a sign that no matter what Yshron thought of AI at least one of his followers had made a separate peace with the technology. Or so 44 hoped. Whatever the case, Tarn clearly decided it was fine to pass the communication device back and let go of Hutchinson’s arms.

With it in hand the shipping magnate gave the ceiling a skeptical look and said, “Is that true? Would telling you what this fool wants convince you to give me the Methuselah-tech?”

“The probability is less than ten percent,” Isaac replied. “However we are programmed to hear and consider the wants and desires of humanity as part of our base level matrices. Be aware that a Methuselah augmentation slows the process of aging, it does not reverse it. In short, your current age would remain. Even if you were to receive a Methuselah treatment, given the degradation already present in your physiognomy it is unlikely you would live more than 120 years.”

Hutchinson glanced at his son. “How long would he live?”

“The treatment has little effect on human beings before puberty ends. It is likely that Hector would receive close to the maximum possible benefit from the treatment and enjoy a lifespan approaching the three hundred year average. Your daughter is a few years older and thus is likely to live between fifteen and eighteen years less. Steps would also need to be taken to conceal your unusually long life spans from becoming widely known across the galaxy, as is done with the Sleeping Circuits.”

“That’s acceptable.” Hutchinson gathered his thoughts for a moment. “Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, is a legendary figure from the dawn of humanity. Study of the surviving documents suggests he was the ruler of a single nation, rather than an entire planet, although there’s no consensus on that. There’s some thought that he even predates the first colonies, far fetched as it sounds.”

This was not what 44 was expecting from the man and the response from OMNI’s nodes was even more surprising. There was a flurry of communication between them then an order from Isaac to cease pursuing L-93’s ship and maintain their current distance. O-5523 didn’t like that order but M-334 could not compute a solution and I-6 was the primary node. It’s decision was favored. 44 frowned but tapped commands on his screens, forwarding the orders to the appropriate stations and instructing all those on the bridge to refrain from interrupting Hutchinson. For the moment.

“The name Agamemnon means steadfast or resolute,” Hutchinson continued, “which was both the king’s greatest trait and his ultimate downfall. See Agamemnon went to war. The details of the whys and wheres vary depending on who you ask but the important detail is that he’d promised he would fight this war if a vow was broken and he was steadfast in that promise. But in order to fulfill that promise he had to travel to a place called Troy and he wasn’t able to do so because he offended the goddess Artemis.”

“The what?” 881, who was helping Tarn keep an eye on their prisoner and thus hadn’t had a chance to read 44’s message yet, practically yelled the question. “What are we supposed to get from a story about gods? This is a serious matter, Mr. Hutchinson.”

His eyes darted from her over to 44. “She’s not quite as well read as you, is she, Professor Dart?”

44 scowled, unhappy with his pseudonym being used while he was serving as Circuit Keeper but well aware that he couldn’t expect anything better from Hutchinson. “She hasn’t been around as long, that’s all. Not that Circuits attached to the O-Series spend much time studying history, to say anything of history from before humanity colonized the stars. Gods and goddesses were plentiful then.”

“They were demanding as well,” Hutchinson replied. “Artemis demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter to her before his armies would be allowed to travel and he agreed. Ultimately, although he and his allies won the war, that steadfastness would be his downfall. His grief stricken wife assassinated him after his return.”

“Is that why you chose to name your daughter after a goddess of civilization and wisdom rather than one of wildness and hunting?” 44 asked.

Hutchinson offered the ghost of a smile. “If I’m being honest I just liked the name. Helena and I did consider a number of other possibilities but if Artemis ever came up on the list I probably would have vetoed it just to be safe.”

“That is the first new point of data you have introduced to our calculations,” Isaac said. “Mr. Hutchinson, I recognize the importance of your family to you. You are not unique in this regard. What you may not recognize is the importance of Earth to the OMNI network or what Mr. Skorkowski is asking you to achieve by asking us to allow him to go there. The story of the Illiad, which you have mentioned in passing detail, will not change our stance on that.”

“I didn’t expect it to,” Hutchinson replied. “No more than I expected the name I gave my daughter to make her wise and civilized. When I was young and founding my company I didn’t think much about the meaning of my own name or what being steadfast might mean. I never stopped to ask myself if it was for good or ill that I pushed so hard to fulfill my dreams. Nor did I yet know Agamemnon’s story.”

“You could not be expected to know so much of humanity’s history at such a young age. Few ever learn so much of it.”

“Is that why OMNI chose to hide Earth from us?” Hutchinson’s voice wasn’t accusatory. On the contrary, it sounded as if he’d just stumbled on a revelation that was so obvious the fact he’d missed it for so long was shocking. “So few people learn about the past, who will miss a tiny bit of it if it’s hidden away? Is that it?”

Behind the scenes the three OMNI nodes were communicating so fast the text on 44’s screen had devolved to a featureless blur. He wondered what the magnate had said that excited them so much. The machines were so farsighted that it was rare for them to need this much attention devoted to something happening in the present.

44 knew the broad strokes of why a return to Earth was forbidden by the Network. Some kind of disaster had befallen the planet and it had been evacuated to keep the danger from spreading. Even now OMNI thought the possibility of growing that cataclysm made a return to the planet too dangerous to risk traveling back. Yet for centuries people had still tried, hence the planet’s hidden location. Overcoming that threat, especially in the minds of a great intelligence designed to impartially put the needs of humanity first, was going to be extraordinarily difficult.

“Your assessment is too extreme, Mr. Hutchinson,” Isaac replied. “OMNI is well aware that hiding the existence of Earth is dangerous and damaging to humanity and the decision to do so was made only after decades of data gathering, analysis and debate. It was simply determined the probability of extinction stemming from Earth’s removal from human knowledge was less than the probability of extinction stemming from humanity’s return to its home planet.”

Hutchinson waved that off in annoyance. “Preposterous.”

“You cannot know the cause of the Evacuation so your assessment is meaningless.”

“Let me tell you about meaningless.” His tone was shifting away from that of a businessman negotiating with a peer to the lecture of a parent to a young child. Isaac didn’t respond to it but 44 felt himself growing annoyed on the machine’s behalf. “You are an AI that runs an entire University, networked with other machines that run the University Pact. You cannot be ignorant of my personal history, correct?”

“That is an accurate assessment.”

“But you haven’t yet made the connections between Agamemnon Hutchinson and Agamemnon of Mycenae, have you?”

“There can be no connection. You were ignorant of the King of Mycenae in your youth so your actions cannot have been informed by his story.”

Hutchinson jabbed one finger accusingly at the ceiling as if to accuse Isaac, or perhaps all of OMNI together. “That is not the way history works. I was steadfast to my pledge to build the biggest business in the galaxy and I held that course for far longer than the decade it took the Mycenaean to win his war.” With shocking swiftness Agamemnon went from fury to stricken grief. “But don’t think for a moment I didn’t betray my daughter. Building an empire is not building a home. There was a time I thought that wasn’t my responsibility. After all, I had married one of the most extraordinary women in the sector, if not the galaxy, to see to it that my household was in order. I loved Helena like nothing else I have ever found across the spiral arms. But building an empire is… distracting.”

Hutchinson turned his attention away from the ceiling, addressing his next words to the floor instead. “You see, like King Agamemnon I was steadfast in the wide and sweeping things, the grand schemes that capture the imagination, but I lacked the resolve for the immediate and concrete things. While dreaming of humanity it was easy to take advantage of the people around me. I betrayed my wife and my daughter and when Helena died the breach became impossible to repair. That is the nature of history, Isaac. The details are different but humanity is the same. I did not set out to live the life of my namesake but now that I am old I look back and see that I have done so none the less. By looking back and tracing those contours I can see the mistakes I have made and I can see what is to be done about them.”

“What do you mean?” Hector’s question snapped 44 out of a trance and he realized he’d completely lost track of the rest of the bridge. From the looks of the rest of the staff there, so had they.

Hutchinson gave his son a weary smile. “It took time, but eventually Agamemnon of Mycenae’s failures and triumphs were reconciled and he took his place in history, alongside his wife and daughter and many others. His people forgave him his sins and moved on, enduring the tragedy to find immortality on the other side. It’s been millennia but their stories are still remembered. I’m not the hero he was but perhaps, with enough time, you and your sister can see past my failures and make a whole family. If nothing else, I will give you as much time as I can to do it in.”

“That I can assist with,” Isaac said. “However, Earth is another matter.”

“The Genome Wars!” Hutchinson snapped, his attention turning to Isaac once more. “The Lost Colony Genocide. The Sinister Arm Uprising. All these are disasters that have wracked the galaxy and threatened destroy humanity, are they not?”

“All very dangerous,” Isaac admitted.

“Yet once the danger passed has any move been made to heal the danger? All the Universities did after the Genome Wars was ban genetic research and the response to the Lost Colonies and the Uprising was to forbid further debate over the origins of humanity! All actions forced through the University Pact, undoubtedly originating with you.”

“With OMNI, certainly.”

“And now it’s clear why. You couldn’t even trace the arc of my history, how could you do so for humanity?” Hutchinson spat the words with venom.

881 grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You will not speak to the intelligence that way.”

“I will speak however I like,” he replied. “They may know events that took place eons ago but they do not understand history so they cannot use it to prevent disaster or heal its scars. Clearly we must do that ourselves and in order to do it we must know the past. We must go back to Earth!”

For a moment Agamemnon and 881 glared at one another, locked in a contest of wills, then a voice from magnate’s side broke the tension.

“Thank you, Mr. Hutchinson, I think that upholds your side of the bargain nicely,” Skorkowski said. “I promise we’ll bring your daughter back to you safe and sound.”

Hutchinson’s transmitter beeped once and was silent. 881 glared at it for a moment then snapped, “We’ll see about that. Helm, when do we intercept with the Skybreak?”

The helmsman shifted uncomfortably. “We’re not currently on an intercept course, Circuit Breaker. I-6 ordered us to hold off on pursuit while Mr. Hutchinson was presenting his argument and OMNI deliberated on it.”

“It did,” 44 confirmed. “So, Isaac, are you now convinced of Mr. Hutchinson’s position?”

There were many different possible answers he’d expected Isaac to give to that question. What he hadn’t expected was for the great intelligence to reply with a single word. “Calculating.”

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Malaki

Posted by natechen on September 7, 2024

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

For a split second Lloyd let himself believe the ship that came plummeting down the Liquid Teeth wasn’t hunting them. Then it started shooting. A quartet of rockets emerged from the ship’s curved prow and rushed towards them at supersonic speeds, fishtailing through the churning atmosphere as they homed in on the Skybreak. The scanners projected an impact in fifty two seconds.

“Does this thing have weapons?” He demanded.

“Turrets, just aft of the stairs on the main deck,” Lavanya said while flipping open a compartment and handing him a headset. “That will loop you into the internal comms.”

“What kind of guns are we packing?” Lloyd pulled on the headset, grabbed the railings on either side of the stairs and hopped, sliding down to the main deck on his hands. “And do you have any countermeasures on board? Chaff, scramblers, decoys?”

“It’s a courier ship, Mr. Carter,” Lin’yi replied, her voice in his ear coming through a little hot and forcing him to stop once his feet touched decking again so he could turn it down. “Other than the stealth coating on the hull there’s not much room for that kind of thing.”

“Turrents have plasma pulse guns and ion trackers,” Lavanya added.

The weapon hatches were right where he’d been told to expect them, clearly marked with comically abstract red explosion decals. There was one on each side of the ship.

“I’m taking the port side,” Lloyd announced, pulling the hatch open and dropping a half step down and forward into the turret’s gunner seat. The weapon system around him was already most of the way to readiness, with diagnostics flashing past faster than his eyes could follow. Behind him, the hatch swung closed and locked automatically, sealing him in.

The good news was the gun’s system checks came back green in a matter of seconds. The bad news was they were plasma guns and ion trackers, both short range and relatively low powered weapons systems more effective against small pirate vessels than the huge monstrosity the Teeth had just thrown at them. Still, they’d have to do the best they could. Lloyd spun the turret up and started looking for targets, the turrets transparent dome projecting a soft glow as its dataveil warmed up, waiting for information to display. “Can someone paint those rockets for me on the sensors? I’m not seeing them here. And this turret will only cover one side of the ship, we’re going to need someone to take the other one or we’re fighting with one hand behind our backs.”

“Malaki,” Lin’yi said, her voice echoing from the shipwide intercom, “get to the starboard guns. It’s going to get nasty.”

“Everyone else, find something to hold on to,” Lavanya added.

Without further warning the Skybreak jerked into a hard, banking turn that brought them away from the Liquid Teeth at an oblique angle. Inertia slammed Lloyd back into his chair. His turret dome flickered once and suddenly four points of dark orange light appeared in the high aft quadrant. A much larger yellow light appeared behind them. “I’ve highlighted the missiles and the Radiant-class destroyer,” L-93 announced. “Targets are not in effective range of you weapons until their marker color darkens to a full red, as is traditional for LARK systems. Would you prefer a different indicator?”

“This is fine but I’d like a timer counting down when they should be in range,” Lloyd replied. The requested information appeared, the numbers moving somewhat erratically as Lavanya’s evasive maneuvers changed the timing on the missiles’ arrival.

“93, you said that was a Radiant-class?” Lin’yi asked. “How do you know that? It’s not in any of the Kashron sales manuals, where did you get that data?”

“The specifics are hard-coded into my operational matrix,” the computer replied. “It is not a ship built by Kashron Yards it is an OMNI Network warship maintained since the OMNI-LARK war.”

“Wonderful. How bad is that for us?” Lloyd asked.

“I am working on countermeasures. I have disabled the ship’s coral circulatory system and am using it for spare mass to construct the necessary components. The ship will loose approximately 12% of its etheric reserve but our ability to evade a Radiant-class ship will more than double from 22.4% to 49.3% assuming certain presuppositions are true.”

“Such as?”

“There is no more than one destroyer currently at OMNI’s disposal in this system, there are no more than three AI nodes in this system and none of the AI Series are redundant and capable of splitting their computational duties.”

“Right,” Lloyd muttered. “That’s exactly what I was thinking as well. Skorkowski, where you at?”

No one answered in the next twelve seconds, at which point the missile’s light markers fully lapsed from orange to red. He carefully tilted the turret’s control stick to keep the targeting window ahead of the approaching projectile as it curved towards them and pressed the firing pin. The turret began spitting blinding plasma bolts that screamed through the clouds like lightning.

A few seconds later his target’s indicator light wobbled then vanished without a small flash. “That was anticlimactic.”

“They are using etheric warheads,” L-93 said. “If they detonate within their effective range there is a 92.2% chance the ship’s coral will burn out and Lavanya will be unable to turn us sidereal.”

“That’s probably not good,” Lloyd muttered, switching his fire to the next missile in line, doing his best to focus fire on it as his turret barrels spun through their firing sequence, a warm glow spreading down them. “Skorkowski, you better get in that chair, my turret’s overheating. I got ten, maybe twelve seconds before I have to enter cooldown.”

“Port turret online.” The new voice was Elisha rather than Malaki and there was an odd slurring to his speech. “Ready to rotate whenever you are.”

“Hold,” Lloyd said, absently biting his lip in concentration as his fire chased the missile through a wild, zigzagging pattern. The warheads had some kind of smart nav system because they were actively evading fire. It took another two seconds of bracketing fire to trap and hit the missile but eventually his fire took effect and a second missile winked out. “Flip us!”

A moment later the ship spun and the pounding noise of plasma fire echoed from the other turret. “Hammer, that you? You sound funny.”

“Pills,” was all the thieftaker said.

“Yeah, I figured given how bad you were beat up. So why you and not Skorkowski?”

“He’s busy. Don’t worry, I could hit these things in my sleep.”

“Then go to sleep!” Lin’yi snapped, loud enough that the comms crackled in protest. “You’re not even getting close to hitting anything. Those warheads are less than ten kilometers away.”

“The OMNI ship has launched a second barrage of missiles,” L-93 announced. “They will also be in range for preliminary rail gun bombardment in 42 seconds.”

“Let’s hope they don’t want to escalate to that level just yet,” Lloyd said.

“Pilot Lavanya, please slow your ascent for a moment,” Cloudie said, its voice cutting in over the radio for the first time in several minutes. “I believe I can be of assistance.”

“What’s this, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “The write ups say the Jellies don’t have any kind of modern weapon effective against metal or ceramic hulled vehicles. No etheric sense either.”

“They don’t have weapons, ma’am, that doesn’t mean they’re helpless out here,” Lloyd replied. “Even off and let Cloudie catch up, I think I know what he’s got in mind.”

“33 seconds to effective railgun range,” L-93 announced. “Countermeasures will be ready in 71 seconds, there is a 74.3% probability that the gunship will launch a third wave of missiles before entering range.”

“Stop firing, Hammer,” Lloyd called. “Don’t want you hitting the friendlies.”

Outside the turret dome Cloudie swooped into view from below, a bright blue light building in its main body and snapping out to its extremities and back. It scudded up through the clouds towards the approaching rockets along a flat plane. After a few seconds the dull orange clouds between it and the ship grew thick enough Lloyd could no longer see its main body, though the glow of its body was still clearly visible through the haze of helium. Then the clouds lit up like a lightning strike.

A moment later both of the remaining missile indicators flickered out. “Adjusting to a new course,” Lavanya called. “Hold on!”

Once again the ship swung about to a new direction, trying its best to move above the second wave of rockets before they closed the distance. As with the previous wave it didn’t look like it was going to work. The missiles were getting too much of a helping hand from the planet’s gravity.

“What did that creature do, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “Can it do it again? Is it even still alive?”

“A simple EMP,” Lloyd said. “The Jellies have a really powerful nervous system, like nothing you’d find on normal planets, so they can charge up and pulse like that once or twice an hour at the cost of their telepathic centers shutting down. It’s kind of like screaming yourself hoarse except none of the organs involved are remotely similar.”

“So it’s not happening again?”

“Not unless Cloudie brought a friend. Didn’t think to ask that.” Lloyd checked the cooldown on his turret. The readout said it would be back to optimal performance in 20 seconds, which gave him a little bit of breathing room before the next wave arrived. “We’ll just have to beat the next round on our own.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll figure that out if we make it to after.”

Athena

For a long, horrible moment Athena wondered if daddy was going to answer her at all. Perhaps he’d gone back to the Fair Winds and gathered up Captain Blanc only to get the ship caught up in the Skybreak‘s escape attempt. On the other hand perhaps he was still in the sealed meeting room with Professor Dart and couldn’t get her message. Maybe the university had just disposed of him. As the pause stretched out longer and longer her mind came up with more and more dreadful possibilities as to what might have happened to daddy occurred to her.

Then his voice came over the transmitter, sounding a bit strained but otherwise fine. “Where are you, Athena? Are you safe?”

As if to punctuate his question the ship bucked under their feet and an unfamiliar voice came over the intercom, telling Malaki to get to a turret. “That’s a tough question, daddy. I’m okay and it seems like no one here wants me to get hurt but it also sounds like we’re getting shot at.”

“I know, honey, and I’m trying to do something about that but our hosts are being stubborn. They tell me it’s some kind of bomb intended to interdict the ship rather than damage it but I’d rather not take any chances.”

Athena watched as Elisha and Malaki held some kind of whispered exchange followed by the wounded man dragging himself to his feet and staggering off to parts unknown. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

There was an uncomfortable wait. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Our hosts are not inclined to be particularly patient at the moment and they keep reminding me that we meddled where we were not invited. I’ll do what I can.”

She swallowed down the bitter feeling in her stomach. “I’m sorry.”

A hand gently wrapped around hers and lifted the transmitter up a few inches as Malaki leaned down to speak into it. “I am sorry to interrupt but this is an important matter.”

Daddy’s voice instantly turned sharp. “Who is this?”

“Your student is one Malaki Skorkowski, Doctor of Arts, Literature and Science but, more importantly, a long time admirer of your work. There isn’t time for my qualifications, Mr. Hutchinson, nor for an explanation of how I know what I know. What is important is that you want Methuselization technology and I know how you can get it. As a man of business this exchange undoubtedly appeals to you.”

“I am not trading you my daughter for anything.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Malaki smiled, looking pleased with himself for some reason. “Still, I’m glad to hear it. I don’t want to trade for your daughter, I want to trade for our escape. If you agree to convince OMNI to let us go then I will tell you how to find the secrets you’ve sought for so long. Do we have a deal?”

Daddy’s scornful laugh was muffled but still came through the transmitter. “You’re a loon. Do you think I have any control over these people or their OMNI thing? And even if I did, why should I believe you have access to Methuselah-tech in the first place?”

“You do and I don’t,” the scholar replied, almost smirking as he said it. “If it sweetens the pot any you should know that convincing them to let us escape also moves your daughter out of danger.”

“I find that hard to believe. As fast as you’re running I don’t think you’re going to stop and drop her off anywhere and she’s not going to be safe with you lot anywhere in the galaxy. And if you don’t have the tech in the first place why should I trade anything to you in the first place?”

“What do you have to loose? And I’m not giving Methuselization to you I’m telling you how to get it.”

Athena had to admit she wasn’t sure what the strange academic was driving at and his close proximity was getting stifling, so much so that she had to lean away from him to try and catch her breath. But the transmitter was keyed to her so she had to keep hold of it until this was settled. Malaki was right – if he was discussing the thing daddy had spent so much time looking for it was pretty important. After an awkward pause that couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but felt a hundred times as long daddy’s voice came back. “Okay, I’ll bite, Mr. Skorkowski. If you tell me how to get ahold of Methuselah-tech I’ll convince the OMNI to let you go.”

“Excellent.” Malaki’s face broke out into a fully fledged grin. “All you have to do to achieve the secrets of Methuselization is convince the computers of the network to give it to you. They have to have the trick to it stored in their networks somewhere. And before you ask, convincing them should be easy. Just explain to them why we need to go back to Earth.”

When daddy’s voice came over the transmitter again Athena felt like ice water was pouring down her back. He spoke with more venom in his voice than she had ever heard in her twenty eight years. “Is that all you have for me? Fairy tales? How about you just surrender your ship and give me my daughter back, Mr. Skorkowski.”
“Mr. Hutchinson-”

“Even if Earth was real I have no idea why we would need to go there or how I convince anyone of that.”

For the first time the academic’s glee wavered and doubt seemed to enter his mind. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“Of course not.” Malaki bit his bottom lip for a moment, his expression turning somber. “No, you probably didn’t know about OMNI until today, or yesterday at the earliest. You probably have no idea how these things think.”

“Do you?” Athena asked. She was missing a lot of context for whatever the man was digging at but daddy seemed to be following along up until a point. It felt like she just had to worm a few more facts out of Malaki and all would make sense.

“I think so.” Malaki frowned and his gaze went distant, much like it did right before he went crazy carved a bar of soap into a miniature statue. “You have to tell them the truth, Mr. Hutchinson. You have to tell them about Agamemnon.”

Nate Chen Publications

Project Sumter and Other Stories

Author Archives: natechen

AI – Two Reasons for Optimism

The Empire of Southern California

The Silent Fire

Art and Boundaries

The Sidereal Saga – Afterwords

The Sidereal Saga – Black Swan

The Sidereal Saga – Andromeda

The Sidereal Saga – The Camel’s Back

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Isaac

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Malaki

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