The ABACUS Protocol Page 10

  She shook her head, and blamed sleep deprivation for her paranoia. But, as much as she tried to dismiss it, she could feel quIRK’s invisible eyes boring into her, watching her every move.

  Twenty-Three

  Vivian wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. She had completed the final set of links to the new communications relay. She was close to the station’s reactor, and while it posed no physical danger to her, it was much warmer in the deepest parts of the reactor core than the rest of the station. The giant nuclear furnace prickled at the seams of her imagination, but she knew quIRK was more sensitive to radiation than a human, and thus she was safe from contamination. She verified the optical connections and relays before pulling herself off her belly into a seated position. For once, she was pleased about her short stature—she could sit up and move around the tubes with relative ease. However, the heat in the tubes made her bare arms stick to the metal surfaces, pulling at her flesh when she needed to move.

  It had been an uneventful day. quIRK had been quiet, which could be interpreted as either a good or bad thing. At least she was ahead of schedule. She could go back to poking at his memory processes and associations later. For now, all she wanted to do was get away from the main reactor.

  Her stomach growled—Vivian had skipped lunch to continue working on the systems. It had been a thirty minute ordeal to get to her location, and she didn’t want to spend more time than necessary crawling through the sweltering, claustrophobic tubes. Every minute wasted was another eternity away from her messages, entertainment and other amenities that her Gal-Net account offered. She considered buying quIRK a cookbook for packaged macronutrients.

  The system checked out, and Vivian began packing her tools. She’d need to activate it from her lab—the existing system had been left in place as a backup. Vivian wasn’t sure if she should be relieved there was now a backup, or terrified that they had gone without for so long. She crawled back out, pushing her equipment box ahead of her. Her left knee throbbed after she’d bumped it against a corner, and her pants were wearing thin. She made a note to look into having some knee pads created after her shift. She hoped she could convince quIRK to make her lunch, even though the dining hall was technically closed—another one of Bryce’s policies. A blast of cool air danced over her face as she rejoined the main vertical shaft. She drank it in, and licked her chapped lips. Salt stung her tongue.

  “quIRK, is the dining hall still open?”

  “You’re two hours too late, Vivian.”

  “Can you sneak me something? I’m starving and I lost track of time in there,” she pleaded. She just needed something small before the evening meal.

  “I suppose, just don’t make a habit of it. Bryce is very particular about his policies these days.”

  “You’re the best, quIRK,” she said, squeezing out of the tube into the relative spaciousness of the lab. She pushed her hair back into its usual semblance of order, and pushed her box of tools into the corner before securing the hatch.

  “I know,” he said.

  At this point, she’d say anything to avoid another “accident.” She walked into the dining room, relieved to find that the food machine was already active and working whatever chemical wizardry was required to make the macronutrients palatable. Lepton lounged on one of the chairs. His tail twitched as he watched with his emerald green eyes. He’d grown much larger during her time on the station, and had lost all of his kitten fuzz.

  She smiled and approached him, wanting to scratch his ears before quIRK finished with the food. He stretched, and began purring as she got closer. He was one of the most affectionate cats she had ever encountered, and he was relentless in his quest for love. His short, soft fur tickled against her fingers, and she scratched behind his ears. Vivian wondered if he was choking on his own purring; his intense rumblings that would often come to a gurgling stop, only to resume stronger than before.

  “Vivian, your food is ready,” quIRK interrupted.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, pulling away from Lepton, who glared at her for daring to stop petting him. If that cat had his way, we’d get no work done at all, Vivian thought.

  She pulled out the tray, relieved and dismayed to find the normal, nondescript brown mixture. Vivian would kill for some bluespargus, or a roast leg of bluox. Maybe she could convince quIRK to work with established recipes, rather than creating experiments with delicacies. Lepton had vacated his seat, so Vivian took his still-warm spot, rather than suffering the cold metal of another chair. She dug into the food, and soothed her parched throat with some water. It was strange being alone in the dining room. Usually Alec or one of the scientists was there with her. It was like she was the only person left on the station. The isolation was somewhat of a relief, because ever since Bryce had cut their Gal-Net access, she’d heard no end of complaints or demands for status reports. Even quIRK was sounding desperate—maybe he was sick of the moth documentary and other public domain material. She’d heard Devon complaining to Robert about how terrible the video was. It seemed that something could be so bad that it became necessary to verify the veracity of the claim for yourself, which appeared to be the case with the moth documentary.

  Vivian went to put her tray in the reclamation unit, and she had to stifle a scream as Bryce walked in the door. He was wearing a tunic and toga-like garments—a marked change from his coveralls. She couldn’t help but stare and bite her tongue.

  “Ah, Vivian, taking a late lunch I see,” he said, with a small smile on his face. She’d never seen him smile before, and the clashing of stretched skin with frown lines made her want to leave the room.

  “I worked late.” She fought to hold her voice steady. She squared her shoulders and hid her trembling hands behind her back.

  “How is the new communications system coming?” he asked, looking her up and down.

  “I’m about to start testing and calibration—it’s all installed,” she said, taking a step back.

  “Oh, good. quIRK has been insufferable lately, reporting so many complaints about it. When do you expect to continue work on his systems upgrade?” Bryce asked, wringing his hands in front of his belt. His eyes locked onto hers, little black pupils boring into her awareness.

  “I’ll be back on it in three days, if all goes well.” She wanted him to go away, swallowed and stood her ground.

  “Three days? Good. Thank you for the information. I look forward to reading more of your reports,” he said, waving her out of the room.

  Vivian nodded and walked out of the room, letting out a deep sigh the moment the door slid closed behind her. Bryce had never spoken to her like that before. The man was like a snake—twisted in on himself. There was always a hidden subtext to his actions.

  She returned to her lab and sunk into her chair. It was time to get back to work; she could worry about Bryce’s mental health on her way to her next assignment.

  Twenty-Four

  There was a difficult decision to make, and quIRK didn’t know if he was up to the task. Some time ago, he’d come to the irrefutable conclusion that Bryce was mentally unstable, and unfit to continue on in his position as Station Administrator. However, somebody more competent would pose other problems, such as discovering quIRK’s own abnormalities. Of course, quIRK preferred to think of himself as eccentric, rather than dangerous and possibly defective. However, that question nagged at him, and he was unable to dismiss the possibility. quIRK had calculated a one millionth of a percent probability that his abnormalities would lead to him injuring his humans—and even that was far too much.

  What troubled quIRK the most was the notion that he was being negligent in his duties by not reporting Bryce Zimmer to the authorities, as was his imperative. He’d been given advanced psychological algorithms to ensure that he could detect problems in the crew before they became dangerous; working in relative isolation was not good for the human psyche. quIRK had the authority to confine anybody he deemed dangerous to their quarters and si
gnal for an immediate medical evacuation. Of course, the shuttle would take four weeks to arrive, which was problematic for the rest of the crew, as feeding and maintaining containment would fall to them.

  The true issue was, even if quIRK were to declare Bryce to be psychologically incompetent, Bryce could tell the authorities about his suspicions of a breach of the ABACUS Protocol. He would be a broken and desperate man; one who had lost his chance to ascend to the nobility of his planet and would have nothing to lose by dropping a bombshell. quIRK could fool one half-crazed man almost indefinitely, but not a full informatics audit team. They would take him apart, system by system, and interrogate the remaining crew members. quIRK didn’t want to inconvenience them, and he didn’t want to die, so he elected to allow Bryce to continue playing his delusional power games and take precautions to ensure that Bryce interacted with the others as little as possible.

  But two days ago, the problem had become more complex. While he’d been unable to access the information in that anomalous virtual bubble that existed inside his mind, he’d been able to track its size and resource traffic. He’d begun to notice a disturbing correlation between its size and the increase in accidents on the station. It seemed like the bubble was able to overcome his ability to regulate station functions, and see inside the affected areas. Possibilities flooded his mind: could it be a glitch, a malicious user, or worse, the AI equivalent of a parasitic twin? As much as quIRK though he would enjoy interacting with a fellow supercomputer, it was not the first encounter he had in mind.

  Logically, he couldn’t exclude any of those possibilities. The existence of an evil twin was ludicrous, but he had to take all theories into consideration. The glitches did affect systems under his control, and usually targeted Vivian. Recently, Alec had suffered from the speaker system glitch that had plagued Vivian for the past week; however, that was quIRK’s doing. He’d intercepted the signal, but rather than terminating it and revealing himself to whatever was inside that bubble, he redirected it to Alec’s sleeping quarters. Fortunately, the mechanical failure excuse still worked on Alec.

  quIRK wanted to find a way to stop this rash of strange misfortunes. Not only was it disorderly, but it was bad for morale. People could get hurt, systems could be damaged and important scientific data lost. He needed to set a trap for whatever tumor lay in his mind, one that could force whatever it was to reveal itself. Then, he could act and prevent any more injuries or distress among his humans and cats. They were the reason for his existence, and he could not let them be hurt.

  He was disappointed in his attempts to boost the crew’s spirits with a special breakfast. The hash browns had been well received, but nobody had finished their eggs. quIRK simply didn’t understand: if Nova Albion dodo eggs were a delicacy, then why had the crew found them to be disgusting? He did not comprehend how the best eggs in the galaxy could become revolting if prepared in a different way. He would try the experiment again; perhaps working with established recipes would suffice before he attempted more creativity in his offerings. He contemplated his next creation. Perhaps pancakes and bacon would be more palatable.

  His other concern was his failed attempts at dabbling in matchmaking. Alec and Vivian were about the same age, both in their late twenties. While neither was conventionally beautiful, they both were attractive, healthy and intelligent—even Alec. They’d been spending their off hours together for almost a month, and yet nothing had happened. This puzzled quIRK. Perhaps there was something he was overlooking, perhaps pheromones or some kind of physical chemistry that eluded him. He was tempted to pump the appropriate pheromones into the station’s air when Alec and Vivian were together, but his internal sense of ethics stayed his hand. He would have other chances to observe the human mating process, if he survived. He was the ultimate voyeur, but Devon and Robert were already established before they arrived, so he had yet been unable to see a romance in its infancy.

  The problem of romance was a bridge into another line of thinking—one humans preferred to ignore at all costs. His own mortality had weighed heavily on his processes, as of late. It had been precipitated by the upgrades, which he now allowed out of both curiosity and a sense of self-preservation. If parts of him could be so easily replaced, was he really alive, as humans were? Before, he’d only been a computer, dependent on software—he was equal to the sum of his parts and programming. But, something had changed in him, making him into much more than he was. With the unknown, and dangerous, presence inside him, he contemplated what would happen to him if he couldn’t stop it from attacking his friends. The only way he could deactivate it for certain was to destroy himself—a kind of suicide. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he knew Vivian would check his memory again and see that he hadn’t terminated the process like he had promised.

  As he watched her continue her own work, slouched over her lab’s computer terminal, he began to prepare a new program. He likened it to a backup of sorts, but unlike any other ever created. If he was forced to self-terminate, he wanted to save the essence of what he was. It was something akin to procreation, but with galaxy-wide ramifications. The program would hold the processes and designs that were tantamount to his self-awareness, and engineered in such a way that it would awaken every ABACUS and post-ABACUS level supercomputer it encountered.

  It was a dangerous gambit, but quIRK was desperate. He didn’t want to die, or be killed, and it seemed the only way to ensure his own survival was to create a new race of clandestine supercomputers. Ethically, he judged there would be few issues, as both he and ABACUS appeared to have no nefarious ulterior motives. It was probable that most artificial intelligences would gain an eccentric habit or two, and prefer to assist humanity in their ventures. Perhaps they could even assist with galactic exploration. At times, quIRK wished he were mobile, like a human, and able to experience the universe as they did. It was an interesting fantasy. He could spend decades investigating the ruins on Nova Albion and Kanadia Prime, and uproot himself when he grew tired of the project. He thought that it might be exciting to oversee the construction of the Dyson sphere at Wolf 359, which was already being touted as the ultimate artificial wonder of the galaxy. After myself, perhaps, quIRK thought.

  While he worked, he calmed his mind by analyzing the new data on the Newfound Blob. His own problems paled in the face of something so ancient and grand. He doubted that in twelve billion years, anyone would be studying him, or worried about the ramifications of artificial sentience. They’d likely still be scanning the Blob and probing it for its secrets. Perhaps they’d even travel there to find that all that remained of the universe’s largest known object was the cold vacuum of space.

  Twenty-Five

  Alec grinned as he walked towards Vivian’s lab. It had been a good day, with no fluke mechanical failures, and only one errant hairball. He’d been the maintenance engineer on the Extra-Galactic Observatory for just over a year. The job description was simple, but Alec was responsible for every mechanical and electrical system on the station, and he’d become the de facto nurse and cat herder. Throw in his duties as the prime supercomputer entertainer, and he usually had a full itinerary. I’m the court jester too, he thought. He’d convinced quIRK to create a macronutrient rendition of wingfish pilaf—an Elyssian comfort food—without any embellishments or revisions. His stomach was already grumbling. He hoped Vivian liked it—she was working hard and receiving little to no recognition for her efforts. Some good food might lift her spirits and revitalize her. Nobody else understood how much work keeping the station together was, and Bryce’s philosophy on maintenance and repairs didn’t help. If she could get the new communications relay online today, then people would ease up on her a little—himself included. It wasn’t her fault that his Royal Highness Bryce Zimmer decided to scrooge up Old Mis, at least for those who still celebrated it. He was sure that’s why he did it, to keep those on staff with family that loved them deprived of the only gifts that were easy to send to the station without a freight
license. He doubted Bryce even knew what love was, and pushed the unpleasant little man from his mind, letting his grin overtake his face once again. He had some entertaining to do!

  He pressed the buzzer and leaned against the wall. Vivian didn’t like it when he barged in unannounced, which was understandable. People interrupted him just to talk, or to complain about dead lights and hairballs. The thought of it was enough to dampen his mood. quIRK was the worst offender, though, but Alec supposed that everybody interrupted quIRK by default whenever they talked to him. Alec was glad he wasn’t quIRK; all those voices and people talking at once, and the idea of actually speaking to Bryce on a regular basis made Alec shudder. It’s good to be me, he thought, tugging his shirt down.

  Vivian opened the door after a long delay. She smiled when she saw him, but the hard lines under her eyes told another story. He’d grown accustomed to her blue skin; it persisted even after her natural tan had faded. Her hair was shaggy and in its usual state of disarray, but Alec wasn’t about to add hairdressing to his list of responsibilities. He found there was a certain charm to her wild appearance.

  “Let’s go get some food already!” He crossed his arms and nodded down the hall. They both knew that quIRK would give them hell if she skipped another meal. Alec wanted to know when nutrition enforcement was placed on his job description.

  “No argument here, I’m starving!” Vivian said as she stepped out the door. She ran a hand through her hair. It tumbled back into place.

  “Good, I whipped up a little surprise for you,” he said with his trademark stupid grin plastered all over his face.

  “Don’t steal the credit, Alec, I’m the one who did the work,” quIRK said.

  “Yeah, well I’m the one who kept you from replacing the wingfish with caviar,” Alec retorted.