Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two (48 page)

Alex jumped when a hand grasped her shoulder.

“Ms. Sol— Alex, we should probably get started.” Canivon’s voice sounded oddly disembodied, as if transmitted through a sound mixer. Alex held up a finger, requesting a final moment.

“Valkyrie, I’m afraid I need to go now. I had a lovely time talking with you, though.”

And I with you, Alex. Thank you for sharing some of your experiences with me. I believe I will be considering them for a significant period of time. Perhaps one day I will be able to see the stars as you do.

“I hope so. Goodbye, Valkyrie.”

Goodbye, Alex.

She carefully disconnected the interface and blinked to clear her vision. The scene was the same, yet at once both palpable and blanched.

She handed over the neck wrap. “How long were we talking?”

The woman returned the wrap to the cabinet. “Forty minutes.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not. I suspected you might like her. She clearly likes you.”

“How do you know?”

“I was able to monitor the conversation on the panel over there. Don’t worry, I didn’t snoop too much. I only kept an eye out to make sure you were at ease with the interaction.” She directed Alex toward the divan. “This ware is fairly involved and requires a system reboot by your eVi, so you may as well be comfortable while it installs.”

Alex absently sat down, still trying to reorient herself in the ‘real’ world, and allowed Canivon to attach a far larger interface device to her neck. “Valkyrie came across surprisingly….”

“Human?”

“I was going to say sapient. Her thought processes give her away as non-human, but she is quite self-possessed and aware. More than that, she seems…whole.”

Canivon appeared to be warming to the prospect of discussing her favorite topic with an amenable audience. “You regarded me strangely when I did it, but you’re already calling Valkyrie ‘she.’”

“So I am.” Alex tried to relax in spite of the awkward contraption on her neck. “Do you believe she’s alive?”

Dr. Canivon slid a chair over to the divan and sat. “Oh, yes. I oversaw her assembly and programming and wrote most of her base code myself. I worked with her as we built her from the ground up, adding layer upon layer of referential routines, background databases and new neural nodes. I remember the day—the moment—she became something greater than the sum of her programming and hardware.

“There was this tone, this inflection in her voice. She told me she had decided she preferred the impressionistic art style to the expressionism rebellion it provoked. In her opinion, impressionist paintings conveyed life while their counterparts ‘expressed’ mostly anger. I was astounded, but thrilled.”

“Given that, do you think she deserves to be locked up so tightly?”

The woman sighed and settled deeper in the chair. “While not all are created equal, on this point I can generalize. Artificials are so many contradictions wound up together, they become a true enigma. Their minds can process information faster than we can develop it or even conceive of it and thus can exploit tremendous power. Yet more than anything they are like children: intensely curious, eager to learn, devouring every spec of data and working to place it in such a way as to help the world make sense…and also in their lack of understanding of consequences. Of danger.

“A child doesn’t understand what it means when you tell them an oven is too hot to touch until they touch it and find out for themselves. They don’t understand falling until they break a leg tumbling off a ledge. Most children learn these lessons without doing irreparable damage to themselves. Artificials have no way to learn them, not in the concrete, tangible way children do. And unfortunately until they do, unlike children, they aren’t merely a danger to themselves—they’re a danger to everyone.”

Alex flinched as her eVi switched off. In a microsecond it had returned, but the microsecond it vanished was a disconcerting one. “What do you think the solution is?”

The woman eyed her for a moment, then casually crossed one leg over the other. “One of my first projects for the Alliance was conducting a fresh post-mortem on the Artificial—they called it a Synnet back then—responsible for the Hong Kong Incident. As part of my post-doc I had developed stochastic forensic ware for use in defect analysis, and I was asked to apply it to the records of the Artificial’s processes during the event and determine if anything more could be learned.

“We’re all taught one of the contributing factors was that its highest directive was the preservation of human life, but it lacked sufficient instruction on how to proceed when some loss of life was unavoidable. The most intriguing artifact I found in my analysis was the unexpected result of that failing: guilt.”

Skeptical, Alex arched an eyebrow, then winced as the act tugged at the skin beneath the bulky interface. “You’re telling me the machine felt guilt?”

Her shoulders rose in a hint of a shrug. “It’s the only word I have to describe what I saw. Once the students began dying it devoted an increasing number of cycles to studying how the deaths had occurred and how they might have been prevented—what different branching decisions could have been taken to result in another outcome. But because of the holes in its programming those branching decisions only led to outcomes it also deemed unacceptable.

“By the time it was shut down it was burning 73% of its processes on fault analysis rather than on finding a solution for those still alive. It obsessed over its failure to the point of paralysis.”

“Guilt.”

Canivon nodded. “It’s a devastating, crippling emotion. Learning how to process it, internalize it and eventually move on from it is part of becoming an adult. The discovery got me to thinking. What if there was a way to allow Artificials to legitimately learn those kind of life lessons and the related coping skills without endangering others?”

“I don’t see how.”

She motioned for Alex to sit up, then gently removed the interface and set it on the small table nearby. “I’m working on a project. Are you familiar with neural imprints?”

“Somewhat. A complete functional neural and synaptic map of a human brain, coded by activity and containing markers of content, right? My understanding is researchers hope they’ll solve the adult cloning obstacles.”

“And possibly one day they will do so, but the technology isn’t there yet. I’m studying whether providing a neural imprint to an Artificial can enable it to learn life lessons which matter—emotional lessons such as guilt, heartbreak, love and empathy. Sacrifice and loss. It’s my hope this will give them wisdom and good judgment…because without those they are fundamentally incapable of making the correct choices for humanity. They don’t wish humans ill—they just don’t comprehend the universe the way we do.”

Alex frowned. “Giving them real human memories, the history of a life and the way a person thinks…. Do they effectively become the person?”

“Now that is the kind of question which keeps me up nights. I haven’t yet settled on an answer.” Perhaps deciding she had been too free with her words, Canivon notched her shoulders up and cleared her throat.

“We have the explicit consent of the people involved. This is medical research same as any other. The project is kept discreet for understandable reasons, but I assure you we’re following all the regulations and conventions.”

“I’m sure you are. I’m not judging.”

“To circle back around and answer your question, yes, for now I’m afraid it is best Artificials be constrained. But I do believe they have advanced to the point where they require only the slightest bit of guidance, of human perspective, to guarantee they stay on the proper path.”

51

PORTAL PRIME

U
NCHARTED
S
PACE

Present Day

“
Y
OU’RE RIGHT.
I
DO
already know the answer. It’s the Artificials…together with us.”

Alex smiled at the alien in a manner which seemed to convey gratitude, even appreciation. It was the first time she had regarded the being with anything other than impatience or exasperation, and damned if Caleb knew why.

“Was that what all this was about? Forcing me to relive those memories? Showing me the mistakes of humans and Artificials alike?”

Not all of it. We merely ensured the necessary data lay within your sight. It was for you to both see and understand.

“But do you have any idea if it will actually work? Have you—your species—done this sort of thing in the past?”

He watched Alex while her focus was on the alien and tried to figure out what she could possibly be talking about. If what would work? What did she seem to think they needed to do with Artificials? She had given him no indication as to what precisely this ‘answer’ might be and without his eVi he had no way to communicate with her—to simply ask her.

We moved beyond such distinctions long ago, but yes. Furthermore, the human brain is singularly resilient, yet highly malleable. It will adapt.

Mnemosyne seemed to know what she had in mind as well.

He officially missed his eVi. The inability to communicate privately while they entertained the alien had been troublesome at times but never so much so as right now. He desperately wanted to pull her into a quiet corner and have a conversation…but it would wait.

He couldn’t say if they had gained the alien’s respect or trust, but at a minimum it had become comfortable around them. People—or aliens, he expected—who were comfortable were susceptible to divulging more than they intended, so he tried to concentrate on Mnemosyne.

A shadow passed across Alex’s eyes as she contemplated the alien. “What if it’s not enough? Because it doesn’t feel like enough. There must be more you can give us.”

They had nearly drawn even with the artificial structure dominating the glade to the right, and she pointed to it. “What does this object generate? It isn’t the light source and it isn’t the tech repulsion field, so it has to be the cloaking shield you’re using to hide the planet from your own creations. The same creations attacking us. How does it work? Can we use it to camouflage our own ships?”

The alien hesitated before shifting course toward the object, though Caleb wasn’t sure why. Whether it cared to admit it or not, it had committed to helping them. It plainly wanted to help them.

A circular lattice of obsidian metal five meters in height enclosed an orb suspended by nothing in the center. Half a meter in diameter and pale gold in color, the orb undulated with active, flowing energy.

The gaps in the frame allowed easy entry to the center. When he stepped through the metal into the interior a vibration hummed to life in his bones, but as soon as he was inside it abated.

It was an amplifier. Whatever energy the orb emitted, the latticed metal served to boost the signal.

This apparatus replicates the conditions present in space contiguous to the planet and projects their electromagnetic signatures beyond its atmosphere.

“The orb creates a holographic image? An illusion?”

It is an applicable but not complete analogy. It is not an illusion. Space-time is altered to reflect the projection. Several of the ships chasing you passed into the ‘holo’ as you would call it. They continued to be in space until they exited the other side.

Alex arched an incredulous eyebrow. “How?”

Dimensional distortion. On entering the area they were temporarily shifted to a slightly different plane.

She did not appear convinced. “Why did it fail for us? My ship’s instruments registered the planet as soon as we breached the shield.”

The alien hesitated.

Because I determined to allow you through. Your trajectory suggested you were aware of the planet’s existence. As you have exhibited a notable talent for discovering what others cannot, perhaps this should not have been a surprise.

“Well, thank you for the special dispensation.” She had begun approaching the orb when Mnemosyne’s body shivered and began to lose definition.

We need to leave.

The alien’s increasingly amorphous form shone bright against the darkening sky. Then they were enveloped by a thousand points of light.

A second passed, no more. The lights surrounding them floated away to coalesce back into a humanoid form.

They stood outside a…house? The single-story building was constructed of wood from the native trees, with windows made of the glass which had comprised Alex’s prison, absent the opaqueness. Flowers had been transplanted from the nearby glade to serve as a small garden entrance. Behind them a narrow pathway cut through the mountainside and back to the lake.

Had the alien built a house to better ‘provide context’? To better relate and understand?

Alex asked the question for him. “Mesme, you built a house?”

It is not important. Another is coming. One who will not welcome your presence as I have. We must hurry.