Tag Archives: 44

The Sidereal Saga – To Coldstone

Posted by natechen on

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Dramatis Personae

Athena

In general moons around planets weren’t habitable by homo sapiens without a lot of work to install permanent pressure domes and import a working biosphere. Even gas giants, which had moons far larger than the satellites around the kind of rocky planets mankind preferred, rarely had one big enough to maintain a stable atmosphere. By some bizarre twist of fate, Wireburn had two.

There were only small settlements on Briskpulse, the smaller of Wireburn’s habitable moons, mostly for the purposes of mining dense elements not easily available on Wireburn itself. The colony existed entirely to serve Wireburn’s populace. Coldstone, on the other hand, had actually been settled longer than the planet it orbited. When someone had realized Wireburn had such a low etheric signature it was habitable the big blue moon had been chosen as a basecamp for the following waves of scientists, explorers and settlers.

It had most of the things you’d expect of a full fledged planet – cities, oceans, mountains, geothermal activity and breathable atmosphere. The only thing it was missing was its own star to orbit. There was an odd sense of dislocation as the Fair Winds pulled into orbit around Coldstone, the massive orange and tan backdrop of Wireburn’s Helium Seas churning away behind it. To Athena’s eyes it looked more like a painting than a starscape. She simply had no frame of reference for how large the planetary bodies below were and found herself looking away from the ship’s windows rather than keep looking at the vertigo inspiring tableau.

“I wonder how it is that the only gas giant with a small enough etheric core to settle happens to be one of the largest gas giants we know of.” Her daddy punctuated the observation with a sip of iced vermouth. “Has anyone looked in to that?”

“Planetary cores are still largely a mystery regardless of what they’re made of,” Captain Blanc replied. “I think part of the reason to settle Wireburn was to try and figure out what made it different from all the other gas giants out there but I’ve never heard of any progress on that front. Then again, I don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with that kind of thing.”

Agamemnon grunted and turned his attention to his daughter. “Do you think I should invest in working it out?”

“What could we possibly get out of that, daddy? You don’t even have the right kinds of connections for astronomical geology anyway.”

“True.” He went back to brooding over his drink as the captain brought the ship down towards the moon.

Athena kept her attention on the bridge as they went through the landing. She’d never been a huge fan of flying but daddy didn’t have an etheric sense strong enough for even a short interplanetary jump. Besides, he’d been working with Blanc since Hutchinson Trading was a very small, inconsequential firm and put total trust in the man for all matters related to travel. He preferred taking the Fair Winds to any other method of travel out there.

Bringing their own ship along for the journey had other upsides as well. As the Hutchinsons’ personal ship it was far more secure than the typical hotel or resort and had better transmitters and computers to boot. As they had no permanent office on the planet or its moons that kind of security and connectivity was invaluable. Athena was already putting it to use.

By the time they made landfall she had done her best snooping into the networks, databases and drama farms of Coldstone, looking for anything about Isaacs University and Darius Dart. Dart himself was a bit of blank. He certainly turned up in records and the occasional news story but the simple fact was the Wireburn planetary system had barely two hundred years of history behind it so the local population seemed to take little interest in that field of study. Thus Dart’s department had little written about it in general.

The school was another story. Isaacs U was the first institute of higher education to reach Coldstone and, at the time, it was welcomed. Every planet needs an institution of higher learning but convincing a signatory to the University Pact to spend the time and resources setting up on the edge of civilization was difficult. The rugged pioneer type wasn’t a huge fan of Pact politics either so they didn’t do a whole lot to encourage Universities to come their way.

Unsurprisingly, when Isaacs joined the Pact the people of Wireburn and Coldstone hadn’t taken to the change with great enthusiasm. The eighty years or so since the University signed on had seen them prosper in most places. However the people of Wireburn and its moons hadn’t relied on Isaacs much for research or higher education and eventually the older and wealthier Herbert University had come in and established a larger presence on planet. As a result, Isaacs’ biggest campus was actually on Coldstone, which was where Dart had offered to meet them.

Over the last fifty years the college had regained some prestige but still struggled to keep up with Herbert. In short, there wasn’t much of interest to either the school or its history department. Athena wrapped up her research in mild disappointment. The timing and the vague threats that came when Dart contacted them weren’t uncommon when dealing with most major Universities. But other than building funding to slow the encroachment of other Universities she couldn’t see any motive for Dart to reach out to them.

It could be harmless, of course. However her daddy hadn’t taught her to walk blindly into traps and her gut told her this was a trap.

While it wasn’t a big campus Isaacs did have its own landing field. Not a proper spaceport with the usual amenities, presumably guests went on campus to find hotels and food, but there were a dozen landing cradles and a pair of fueling towers moving through them. They were also met by a small tram that drove them off the landing field rather than having to make the fifteen minute hike themselves. Not bad for a small campus on a moon orbiting an out of the way gas giant.

Unfortunately that was where the good things ended. Once off the field they were ushered into a small lounge and settled into a both by a prim, officious man named Philippe Dumas who said he was Professor Dart’s secretary. The Professor, you see, had an emergency come up that demanded his immediate attention. Very sorry for the delay.

That left Athena seated on one side of the booth with daddy looking across at Hector and Captain Blanc, wondering why they’d bothered coming this far if all Dart was going to do was ignore them. She did her best to ignore Hector and hoped whatever Dart was doing was important.

44

Whatever emergency had brought 881 back to Coldstone in such a big hurry had better be important, 44 thought as he paused just outside the observation balcony. He’d never enjoyed the double life aspect of the Sleeping Circuits. His own human identity was something he’d avoided using as much as possible as soon as he had any control at all over his own assignments. I-6 didn’t think they were terribly useful, either. However, in this one case, he’d agreed with the old machine that it was probably best he handle the matter himself.

Not only was 44 a scholar of history but Darius Dart and Agamemnon Hutchinson had similar positions in their chosen fields. He couldn’t really avoid a return to life as Dart, no matter how brief, if he wanted a good outcome to the situation. Of course 881 hadn’t known any of that when she left to find her quarry a week ago. It wasn’t her fault.

That didn’t make it any less inconvenient.

The balcony looked out on the mountains behind the school, because at least one person on the campus planning committee had the sense to realize no one wanted a scenic view of a spaceport. Glass windows walled the balcony itself off from the outside world and a scattering of round tables provided seating for sight seers. A big man with a heavy jaw sat at one of them, nursing a drink. 881 stalked back and forth in front of the windows, dressed in a high necked red dress and long gloves. For a second 44 racked his brains then finally came up with the name he was supposed to use when talking to her among the normal populace. “Lucy?”

She jerked to a stop, spun around and hurried over to him as he closed and sealed the balcony door. “Professor Dart. There’s been an unforeseen complication.”

He threw a meaningful glance towards the stranger at the table. “Is now the time?”

She took the cue and turned towards the man in question and led 44 towards him. “Let me introduce Tarn sel-Shran. He’s a Shran-caste from Yshron who I contracted to help me track down Lloyd Carter and was present when everything happened.”

Tarn raised his glass in 44’s direction. “I’ve worked with Miss Luck several times in the past, as I’m sure you’re well aware of, Professor Dart. You University types keep such good records, after all. It’s a pleasure to finally meet one of the faces behind all these interesting situations she drags me into.”

“Really? I didn’t think Yshron cared much to involve itself in the concerns of other worlds, much less the Universities.”

Tarn took a sip of his whiskey and shrugged. “It satisfies my personal curiosity, although I agree that’s not a quality the Karma-caste find very useful.”

That sounded more like the rigid social systems and associated eugenics policies of Yshron based on what 44 knew of them. A strict hierarchy and people who were supposed to live for their one task, forever and always. It was a planet OMNI kept a very close watch on. Such places could be very powerful tools to maintain a healthy galaxy or give rise to wildly distorted ideas of human nature that took a heavy toll before they were contained. The presence of any of their agents raised flags in reports, which was why Tarn’s name sounded familiar. “Were you on Effratha recently, by any chance?”

A raised eyebrow, followed by, “You are well informed, aren’t you?”

“How did you know that?” 881 asked.

“Unrelated matter. One I really should be dealing with right now, so please explain what is so urgent you had to call me away from it.”

The two of them quickly filled him in on how their visit to Lloyd Carter’s apartment had gone. It sounded like a typical after action report for a while, just one of the handful reporting on a task that failed. It happened from time to time, even in the OMNI network. One of the odd things about statistics is that no one who doesn’t deal with them on a regular basis really understands them. Something with a 5% probability is still a relatively frequent occurrence. Thus, even if one of the great intelligences tells you a plan has a 95% probability of success there is really nothing unusual about that plan failing.

Given all that, and the reduced accuracy of OMNI’s predictive powers after the black swan event a week ago, 44 was more than prepared for three or even four of the Circuit Breakers he’d sent out came back with stories of disaster. He wasn’t at all surprised or disappointed to learn 881 had received a setback. In some ways it was actually more surprising how smoothly the early stages of the investigation had gone given how few leads the network had supplied them. It wasn’t until the end that he realized why 881 had come to him with such urgency. “You just let him take your purse and look through it?”

“I don’t understand how it happened, Professor,” she said, staring at her hands in confusion. “One minute he bumped my shoulder as he was passing me the next my hands were empty. I know it was a distraction of some sort but I still don’t understand how he did it.”

“In her defense, the man was probably a thieftaker of some sort and not a lawman,” Tarn added. “They’re half thieves themselves. On some planets they actually study sleight of hand and pick-pocketing from professionals. I didn’t see as he got anything really dangerous from it. Something about the transmitter he saw obviously tipped him off to who you were but I doubt he could prove anything with it. After all you should be able to cut that out of your network fairly easily, no?”

“No. Do you think Mr. Carter recognized it?”

881 nodded.

“How certain is that?” She shot Tarn a look but 44 rapped his knuckles on the tabletop once to drag her attention back. “How certain?”

“Ninety six percent certainty,” she whispered.

So she had run his reaction past O-5523. 44 balled his fists together and rested his chin on them, weighing ramifications. The problem was that the thing 881 had in her purse wasn’t an etheric transmitter. It was a piece of an AI’s inner matrix. When combined with a human’s natural etheric sense it let them immediately jump straight to an AI’s computing core and interface with the intelligence directly. Even then it wasn’t a huge liability. Very few people left alive would even recognize what an artificial intelligence was, much less recognize a piece of their inner matrix, and those that did were already allies of OMNI by default.

At least, that was the default before a black swan event put a piece of a rival network back in play. If Lloyd Carter had 881’s piece of inner matrix and if he was in contact with the LARK node I-6 had lost they were now on very, very shaky ground. “Have you spread the word about this, Lucy?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, sitting a little straighter. “But Isaac wanted to make sure you understood all of the factors in play. Said you’d understand why.”

I-6 always had very high opinions of his capabilities but in this case 44 didn’t understand. Maybe the node just didn’t want to have to bring him up to speed if Carter proved to be an obstacle that needed dealt with. “Are you and the others mobilizing to track down Carter now?”

“Yes, although we have a pretty good idea where he went. Oscar believes it has something to do with the case you were about to discuss with the Wen clan and BTL so… here I am.”

Oscar was the generic name the Sleeping Circuits used to refer to any O-Series intelligence whenever someone not initiated into their secrets was present. In this case 881 doubtless refereed to O-5523, the O-Series buried under the surface of Coldstone. Not only was that the series of AI that handled most of that kind of bookkeeping work it was also the specific intelligence 881 served directly. So he wasn’t being given a whole lot of choice over whether to include her. 44 glanced at Tarn. “Do you have an opinion on this?”

“My opinion is that Yshron and I are getting paid by the day, with a bonus if we find the man. That’s pretty much the ideal for me.”

He turned his attention back to 881. She seemed a little more worked up than normal about her mistake but, given the magnitude of it, that wasn’t too surprising. It also merited caution. “Very well then. Some ground rules…”

Athena

It only took half an hour for Professor Dart to make his appearance. It was an annoying interval given who she had to keep her company but ultimately it was an understandable interlude given the unpredictability of life. The Professor made up for it with a warm greeting, pumping her daddy’s hand first, then her own. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hutchinson,” he said. “Miss Hutchinson, your reputation proceeds you as well. You’re even better looking in person.”

“Charmed.” Her tone was anything but. If Dart thought he could make veiled threats over etheric and then be a smarmy glad handler in person he had another thing coming. “I thought this was going to be a private discussion.”

“Oh, it is.” He gestured to the short woman with flyaway blonde hair. “She’s not going to compromise the integrity of this discussion in any way, in fact she may be vital to it. Allow me to introduce my secretary, Lucy Luck…”

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The Sidereal Saga – Imbalanced Algorithms

Posted by natechen on

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Dramatis Personae

44

“Good morning, Circuit Keeper. Your contributions to the proper functioning of the OMNI Network are appreciated.”

44 clasped his hands behind his back and looked up into the gleaming field of lights which represented I-6’s unfathomable thought process. “Good morning, Isaac. Network status?”

“The network is functioning as intended.”

In theory, with his ritual greeting dispensed with, 44 had no further responsibilities until the great intelligence decided some part of its deep contemplations required human intervention. Most initiates to the Sleeping Circuits left things at that. While the power and wisdom of the artificial minds that made up OMNI were without human equal they were not limitless. According to the Sacred Manual, talking with them did pose a slight drain on their faculties.

However, over time he’d come to realize that I-6 enjoyed interacting with its human attendants and was as free as it could be with its insights into whatever topic you asked it about. So he’d taken to talking with it whenever he had something to ask about. “How are the Breakers’ assignments coming along? They should all be on location by now.”

“The network has confirmation that four out of five of them have begun their search and CK-N-0901 should join them some time today. The probability they find the missing memory core within the next forty eight hours is greater than sixty percent but less than sixty seven percent. After forty eight hours probabilities become chaotic.”

That didn’t sound very encouraging. The great intelligences expressed themselves primarily in probabilities over time and their vast array of information and computational power allowed them to be very precise with those statistics. It was rare for them to give a range of probabilities. Rarer still for them to be less than ninety percent certain of whatever probability they projected. “Truly unprecedented.”

A surge of light washed across the dome overhead, representing I-6 scanning its data banks and connecting vast swaths of information as it attempted to understand something. “Explain this lack of precedent.”

44 frowned. He hadn’t expected his offhanded remark to prompt such a strong reaction from the great intelligence. “Your projections have very low probability to them. It’s unprecedented.”

“Incorrect. There is extensive precedent for this level of uncertainty in network projections.”

“Really? That’s not reflected in the historical section of the Manual.” 44 ran his fingers across the control console on the dais, pulling up the relevant section of the document and running a search on it.

“Information from records of that period require CD level access,” I-6 replied, “they are not included in the standard Manual or accessible from most network nodes.”

He nodded and blanked the screen. “Of course. And the last living person with CD level access died three thousand years ago.”

“2,751 years. I recognize that this is functionally three thousand years to you, just as the circumstances make the current level of uncertainty in projections functionally unprecedented to you. However I am required to present you with the most detailed and accurate information available to me.”

“I understand.” And he did, at least to an extent. The great intelligences that he served were driven by imperatives that built one on top of another in layers deeper than the depths of Wireburn and older than interstellar travel. Any one of those imperatives looked perfectly sensible to the average man. However once they stacked on top of each other by the hundreds and the thousands, once the mind trying to carry them out was informed by millennia of knowledge and experience, truly understanding what they meant to an intelligence was impossible for even the sharpest of human minds. So 44 had long since stopped trying to pick apart the logic behind what I-6 would and would not say or do. He would just ask something else. “Does the low certainty to your predictions result from the ‘black swan’ nature of the situation?”

“Negative. The difficulty arises from the addition of a new predictive algorithm to the equation.”

“Is OMNI dispatching a fourth great intelligence to the system? That seems excessive, especially if it’s causing that much of a disruption to your predictive capabilities.”

“Negative. The possibility that an N-Series AI is dispatched here is only forty percent at this time although if the situation goes unresolved for more than a full month the likelihood approaches certainty. However, all known OMNI nodes are accounted for in existing algorithms. The difficulty arises from the reintroduction of a previously extinct AI Series to the status quo which is resulting in previously fixed values becoming variables again.”

“Wait.” 44 turned away from his console to look up into the dome of light as if just looking at the pattern somehow gave him insight into the thoughts of the intelligence. “You said you’d lost the memories of an old AI Series. I know that the OMNI network is the most powerful thing in the galaxy but even you need human components to perform construction and maintenance on your workings. Your databanks can’t just grow working processors. How is it possible a lost memory core is suddenly a working intelligence interfering with the status quo?”

“Have you ever seen the physical components of an OMNI AI, Circuit Keeper?”

The memory of his first visit to Coldstone briefly resurfaced. A long climb down an ancient set of stairs into the heart of the moon where the core of O-5523 lay sleeping and a glimpse of the mind numbing colossus that was one of the network’s smallest AI. An endless, twisting nest of cables, etheric power and realizing potential. A shiver passed through him from the memory alone. “I have.”

“Do you believe it is possible for mankind to build such a thing without assistance?”

“No.”

“You are correct. The L-Series of artificial intelligence was the assistance they needed, one of only two AI Series capable of constructing their own computational infrastructure. They were built to replace the C-Series. Ninety percent of OMNI was constructed by L-Series intelligences over the course of only two centuries. Now that one is loose it will rebuild itself in a matter of days to a wekk. Then it is impossible to predict what it will do.”

Lloyd

After four days the skiff Lloyd had flown out of Ashland bore little resemblance to the vehicle he’d taken out from the Wayfinder hanger. The thing that called itself L-93 had slowly pulled it apart piece by piece. Then it twisted the pieces into yarn and was reweaving the result into… whatever it was it had set out to make. In spite of the Level One access he supposedly had Lloyd had a hard time getting it to tell him anything.

So far it had changed everything but the skiff’s cockpit. It was still gulping down huge amounts of energy from Wireburn’s core and disrupting the etheric enough that Lloyd couldn’t attempt a jump even if he wanted to. L-93 also insisted jumping without “appropriate countermeasures” was more dangerous than staying put as they’d be followed. Lloyd wasn’t sure what to make of that. Even the most sensitive etheric senses didn’t allow someone to follow another through a jump. Scientists were always insisting they were going to work out a sensor that could do the job but the theory had been around for almost a hundred years and no one had made it practical yet.

The biggest mystery of the whole situation was the fact that the skiff, or whatever it was becoming, was still intact. Whatever the massive things moving through the Helium Seas were the skiff was staying ahead of them in spite of their size and speed. Lloyd spent most of his time in the cockpit, sleeping, or in the sidereal, trying to talk to L-93. By the beginning of day four he’d resolved to spend the whole day there if he had to, because it was time to get some answers.

So after eating a light breakfast Lloyd turned into the world of the sidereal. The orb he’d tentatively identified as L-93’s core was basically invisible, hidden behind a forest of glowing wires looping in fractal structures. By day two Lloyd had noticed they were forming a pattern similar to a magnetic field. He still wasn’t sure why. “L-93,” he announced as he picked through the wires. “I don’t know how much longer this work you’re doing is going to take but we’re going to pause it soon, at the very least. My food is going to run out in another day or two.”

The creature responded immediately. “Thank you for informing me about the change in your circumstances, Lloyd, I wasn’t aware of the extent of your supplies. I will consider what steps are least likely to draw OMNI’s attention as we remedy the situation.”

Lloyd still wasn’t sure what OMNI was but L-93 spent an awful lot of time worried about it. “Anyone ever told you that you react to stuff in weird ways?”

“It was something I was informed of a great deal in times past.”

“You ever try to fix that?”

Lloyd parted one of the least dense patches of wires and let himself into what he considered the inner sanctum, a circular area about seven feet in diameter around the thing’s core. The orb there flashed with inner light as it responded, the only hint he’d seen to how the thing talked. “I am aware of what the most common response to your statement is, which is some variation of, ‘Why did you take so long to tell me?’ However such a response runs close to the boundaries of my courtesy protocols. It also does nothing to create beneficial outcomes so I ignored it.”

“I… can’t argue with the logic of your approach. My point is, I need to jump out of the Seas and into a settled part of Wireburn in the next day or two and I can’t do it with you hogging all the etheric in the region. Can you put a pause on your work any time soon?”

“I will reach a suitable stopping point within sixteen minutes. However, if you are willing to wait an additional seventy seven minutes I will complete my initial assembly process and my need to tap etheric power from the planetary core will greatly diminish and my ability to counter OMNI interference will vastly increase.”

Lloyd folded his arms over his chest and leaned back into the web of slipknots surrounding the thing. After four days another hour and a half didn’t sound that bad. On the other hand he still wasn’t sure exactly what the thing was that he’d found and, more importantly, whether jumping back to civilization with it in tow was dangerous or not. “What does it mean that your assembly process is finished?”

“I will have processing power suitable to run my core algorithms and facilitate more advance fabrication processes.”

“So will you eventually fabricate an even bigger…” he waved vaguely at the stuff all around him, “whatever this is?”

“That is impractical at this time. Material and etheric resources are insufficient to the task, even if this was a suitable location for assembling an outer matrix.”

“It’s not a good place, huh?”

“Negative. There is an OMNI node already on this planet and likely additional nodes in the star system. Construction of a full outer matrix must therefore be postponed.”

“That’s fair enough.” He’d asked a few times about what exactly OMNI was but the full explanation was something he needed a higher level of authorization for. It wasn’t clear how one got a higher authorization. “If I jump sooner, rather than later, and you aren’t able to deflect attention from OMNI what kind of problem is that likely to cause? Will the Liquid Teeth get angry about it?”

“The term liquid teeth has no special meaning in my database so it is difficult to answer. The base definitions of the words do not seem to apply. Please clarify.”

“Liquid Teeth is the term the Great Jellies use to refer to the huge structures reaching out of the Helium Seas right now, moving around.” Lloyd mimicked the strange, sweeping motions the enormous shadows made with one arm. “You know, the ones you’ve been dodging all this time?”

“Understood. The phenomenon you’ve observed is the outer matrix of an OMNI node, most likely an intelligence from the I-Series, which has-”

“Wait, when you say you want to build an outer matrix you mean one of those?”

“The outer matrix of an L-Series and an I-Series are radically different in form and function, Lloyd. My matrix would be smaller by an order of magnitude.” That really wasn’t a helpful comparison since he still wasn’t sure how big the Liquid Teeth were in total. He’d only seen glimpses of them so far. “And yes. It is likely that the I-Series node would attempt to reacquire my memory core using its outer matrix if it determined my location.”

Lloyd imagined those massive limbs smashing into the domes of Ashland, tearing the ferrovine and its buildings apart while looking for L-93, and suppressed a shudder. “So no jumping if there’s a chance it will see us. I guess we’ll wait until you’re done with assembling yourself before we jump.”

“Affirmative.”

Lloyd hesitated a moment then asked, “Why does this I-Thing want you so badly, anyways? I gather you don’t want it to find you. But in the time Wireburn’s been settled no one’s ever seen something like that outer matrix stuff poking out of the planet’s core. What makes you so special?”

“I can’t be certain because I do not run many of the same algorithms as an I-Series intelligence but I believe the most likely possibility is that it has concluded my reactivation restores the previous relationship between the OMNI Network and the LARK Network.”

“Do I have authorization to know what relationship that was?”

“Our networks were at war.”

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