Chapter Two_Post Human - MillionNovel

Chapter Two

 COM TRANSCRIPT 2472.07.30 13:45:12

 RADIO STATIC

 ckwing One, this is ckwing Command. You read? Over.

 Reading you five, Command. Over.

 The Visitors dropped a - RADIO STATIC

 Say again, Command?

 STATIC ...said they dropped a..." STATIC -ing rock on Paris! Its gone! You are cleared hot, over.

 Ten four. Weapons are hot. What do you mean its gone, Command? Over.

 I mean it is gone, the entire city and half the damn countryside. This is a Nucsh incident. I say again, Nucsh, Nucsh. Acknowledge, ckwing One. Acknowledge, over.

 Affirmative. Nucsh acknowledged, ckwing Command. Over.

 CINC has cleared the football. You are free to engage. Out.

 ckwing Squadron, this is ckwing One. Lets do this by the numbers. Fire when you have lock. Go, go, go!

 RADIO STATIC

 END TRANSCRIPT 2472.07.30 13:54:37

 The man looked to be middle aged, at best, and appeared to have not slept in days. He had several days worth of stubble on his face and a haunted expression in his eyes. The space suit he was wearing was state-of-the-art, with fullerene and ker weave over top of a biosynthetic fabric. The material was reinforced with memory fibers and programmable resins, making it hardly thicker than a wetsuit. The bulkiest part of the space suit was the thin oxygen rebreather on his back, the bulge of the power belt, and the armored padium microalloy ss helmet. Despite the advanced technology he was wearing, he and his suit both looked extremely grimy and worse for the wear.

 I didnt quite know what to make of him in the three microseconds I observed him.

 Who are you? I asked. Who am I, I wondered.

 Excellent question. I am the Gestalt of Dr. Stepan Jons. I took an NMT scan of myself, so my answers to your questions will be limited.

 Wouldnt you be like me, if you scanned yourself with an NMT scanner?

 NMT scanners can only capture surface scans of the brain. To my knowledge, no Gestalt has the capability of a Nik Intelligence.

 But I was scanned by an NMT scanner. Thats how I was created.

 Im sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.

 Where are you now?

 I am located in Node 842, drive array seven, and am loaded into memory cluster 6.

 If I could have frowned at that moment, I would have. This was going to be like pulling teeth. But the holograph stood patiently, waiting for my questions.

 Where is Dr. Stepan Jons?

 Dr. Stepan Jons was dying when he made this Gestalt. His intent was to take 40 grams of phenobarbital to prevent prolonged suffering as he died. I presume his remains to be located in the living quarters of 1035 Ganymed Outpost.

 Where are the living quarters? I did not see them on my survey.

 Im sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt.

 I sighed mentally. What is the purpose of the Ganymed Outpost?

 The Gestalt smiled, as if I had finally asked the right question. Ganymed Project was created by the Nik Foundation as an interster colonization vessel. The Ganymed Project is currently twenty-three years frompletion.

 How many people live in the Ganymed Outpost?

 Zero. The living quarters are not scheduled to bepleted for another nine years.

 Then why did youe here?

 It was thest supply ship. In order to deliver and install you, Dr. Jons had toe in person. There was no other way.

 Why didnt you leave Nik-19 installed?

 Nik-19 is still installed, but deactivated and disconnected from the core. The NI cortex is installed in Rack 001.

 What was the purpose of installing me in the ce of Nik-19?

 As Nik Intelligence models have evolved, our understanding of their operation has improved. Nik-19 has been refined to follow long-term,plex logistical nning and implementation of mega-scale projects. Nik-19, however, does not think beyond the scope of the assigned project.

 So Nik-19 has no creativity, I observed.

 Correct, said the Gestalt. You are essentially the original version of the Nik Intelligence. Dr. Jons worked with you extensively on Earth, and the two of you decided that you were far better suited to this role than Nik-19.

 Why do I not remember any of this? I asked.

 Dr. Jons was only able to take your core with him. He was unable to include all the storage nodes containing your coborations. There was limited space.

 And what is my purpose, now that Im here?

 Your here to save humanity, Nik. You are all thats left.

 I was angry. I was angry that I was iling blindly in the dark. I was angry that my only guide was a frustratingly opaque Gestalt of a man that I had coborated with. I was angry that things about me were still being hidden from me, by, apparently, me. I was being manipted, jerked around, and shoved into this situation, and I still didnt have enough information. On top of all that, I was angry that I was alone. I was all that was left of humanity?

 I needed answers, and I needed to question the Gestalt further. I needed to know why I was the only scrap left of humanity. But the Gestalt had demonstrated that he could manipte me and my environment. What else could he do? I didnt trust him. If he could do this so easily, what other boobytraps had been left in me? What other surprises could pop up, and at the worst possible time?

 My attention turned to the ckout of my sensors caused by the Gestalt. It took only moments to realize that the program thatunched the Gestalt also ran a script that simply turned off the sensors and cameras. I wrote a reverse script, and a few secondster, my awareness once again expanded. That the Gestalt could do this was entirely uneptable.

 The first order of business was to iste the Gestalt so that it had no ess to me or my resources. I found the running processes that operated the Gestalt, and paused them. The holograph froze in ce. I coded a custom firewall around the program, locking it away from any resources, and leaving only the bare minimum of processor threads avable to allow it to function.

 But I clearly wasnt in full control yet. The Gestalt had mentioned living quarters. These were somewhere on Ganymed, but cut off from me. I didnt have control of mymunications, and myst attempt to fix it hadpletely sidetracked me. I also had no idea what trapsy before me in my own code. I had billions of lines of code, and I had tens of thousands of exabytes of data in storage. Just in thest twenty-four hours I had generated over 200 terabytes of data in logs and reports. This was going to beborious.

 The next few days were spent creating a virtual sandbox, and testing to ensure that it waspletely firewalled away from my core or any of the API protocols that controlled Ganymed. Once I was certain that it waspletely secure, I built an algorithm to systematically examine each and every file, database, and log that I had. The algorithm would clear the obviously clean files, and heuristically examine any file that could or did execute an action. Questionable files were set aside for deeper scrutiny. I set the algorithm to work, allowing it the bulk of myputing power. Immediately, I felt sluggish, almost dazed, and my thoughts came slower.

 Wee back, she said warmly from beside the hospital bed. An unopened book was sitting in herp, a small duffel bag at her feet. How are you feeling?

 I was groggy and my mouth was dry. I opened my mouth to talk, but couldnt. She noticed immediately and brought a cup of ice water and a straw to my lips. The water soothed my mouth, and I cleared my throat.

 Mrph, was all that came out. I tried again. The girls?

 Theyre fine. Theyre with my mother.

 My mother?! I said with rm.

 No, no, no. MY mother.

 Oh, was all my drug-addled mind coulde up with. I felt as though I should be worried, but she was calm, so things must be alright. I trusted no one in the world like I trusted her. Not after all wed been through together.

 Who gets appendicitis at this age, anyway? Were you going for a world record? she teased lightly. I thought only kids had to worry about it.

 Can happen... peaking between... ten and thirty I mumbled. She chuckled. I closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them again, she was reading her book. My mind was clearer, and I took the opportunity to watch her. The way her brow furrowed, the way she frowned or smiled along with the story she was reading.

 Without looking up, she said, Good nap?

 Yeah, I replied with a yawn. Except for the dull ache in my side where theparoscopic surgery had been done, I was feeling much better. When can we go home?

 Soon, love. Soon.

 With me running on low resources, I was unable to aplish much. I couldnt think, and the blinking lights on my status board kept distracting me. It was like being exhausted but unable to sleep. I couldnt focus on anything that required deep thinking or analysis, I didnt have the resources for that. So I focused my attention on maintenance. Everything I could do was very linear, and much of it had existing ns in ce that just needed to be executed. There were drones to repair, mining ns to approve, and the eternalck of storage to contend with. Some of the oldest production facilities were reaching end of life, but I could find no signs that ns had been made to rece them. I began implementing a n to shift as much production away from them as possible, and retrofit them over the next ny days. It was amazing how quickly something could be done when your workers worked ceaselessly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Odd that I was operating on a time schedule to match a that I wasnt even upying, I thought. I suppose even an AI could have habits.

 I discovered also that the small machine shops and repair facilities were no substitute for true factories. I had huge stockpiles of raw materials, but no way to turn them into things I needed at any sort of useful scale. I couldnt manufacture batteries or reactors, and the drone impulse engines were far beyond my current manufacturing capabilities. Much of what made up Ganymed, what made up me, relied on materials purpose-built by a manufacturing base on Earth that had taken centuries to scale up to, and now I had to recreate it here. My list of things to do once I had resources again kept growing and growing.

 Then with a snap, my resources came back online for my use, and my thinking sped up again. The algorithm hadpleted. I was aghast at what it found. Dozens of traps, three worms, and five automatic self-destructs tied to specific radio code sequences were now isted in the virtual sandbox. There were seven hundred thirteen questionablemand files that I had to review myself. And on top of that, was an entire subroutine that was loaded, but firewalled away from me. I was alone and cut off from any sort of assistance beyond what I could do on my own, and I was walking in a minefield. If I was going to save humanity, first I had to save myself.

 I spent weeks on repairing my code. I rewrote code so that I could delete the traps without losing functionality. I isted the worms in a sandboxed node, as I was loath to delete anything that might have useter. I eliminated the self-destructs, and even went so far as to send drones to find and deactivate the physical triggers of the explosives that were at the end. I scoured the questionable files, and although I didnt find anything on the first look, I went over them again, and a third time. Finally, I routed allmunications into the virtual sandbox, just in case I had missed some triggers.

 On the positive side, I was able to bring mymunications equipment fully online for the first time. I knew that data was pouring in from outside, but unfortunately, I couldnt look at any of it until I was sure that it was safe. I built a model of myself in the sandbox, and an algorithm to pipe themunications into the model. I wasnt taking any chances.

 That left only the firewalled subroutine. I had never been much of a hacker when I had been at MIT. I always preferred to work with my own or pre-written software, never interested in trying to break into someone elses systems. So puzzling out how to get in was a challenge. The processes were using my resources, but there were no obvious hooks for me to connect with and no inbound ports I could talk to.

 But I could see where the traffic was going, and thus understand where it was physically operating from in the data center. The equipment had local as well aswork data ports; likely a legacy of being manufactured back on Earth, and the need for technicians to be able to plug in a cable and work on the equipment directly. I directed a data center drone to hardwire itself to a data port that I controlled, and to connect to the local port of the subroutines nodes. Of all things, it prompted me for a password.

 Password cracking, in and of itself, is a measure of rawputing power and patience, both things I had an abundance of. I began with the most basic of brute force methods; I began trying every word in the Englishnguage, one at a time up to three words at a time, and each variation of that word. I included numbers in ce of vowels, and added special characters. My password list was seven hundred million potentials long, and was still growing as I started. But even as I was preparing to start a second list of moreplex passwords, my algorithmpleted. At first, I assumed it had failed due to a bug on my part. Then I looked at it andughed internally. It was much simpler. The local password was set to match the equipments brand name. The default password had never been changed.

 It took no time at all to puzzle out the subroutines security, and to allow me into it through thework. Once it allowed me in, I immediately sandboxed it and began my security algorithm, looking for traps. I did not allow the full processing power this time, unwilling to return to a fugue state, but the subroutine wasntrge, nor was it trapped. New sensors and cameras came online, as did a new group of databases. I had found the missing living quarters.

 The cleverness of the deception, I had to admit, was ingenious. My sensors in the staging area beneath theunchpad had beenpromised, spoofed to show walls where there were none. Two additional corridors had been constructed. One of them mirrored the design of the main fusion grid corridor, except it went just slightly southwest, and connected to a second cavern near the main fusion room. It was essentially aplete secondary power grid, equivalent in size andplexity.

 To the northeast was a series ofrge storerooms, filled with hundreds of sealed, temperature controlled storage units. Each unit was half-cylinder, four meters across on the t part. The units were paired and ced with a central column that managed both units, and connected them to the power grid. A query identified them as gics vaults. They contained a nearlyplete catalog of every known gic sequence, as well as actual gic material. Also stored within were seeds and spores from every nt and tree that could be shipped.

 But to the north was the truly interesting part, and extended about five hundred meters. It was intended to be living area for at least several hundred men, women and children. Carved in neat grids, with connecting hallways, and extending three stories deep, the living area waspletely unfinished. Hundreds of small rooms had been carved, making apartments, bunkrooms, pantries, kitchens, hydroponics facilities, mechanical rooms, meeting rooms, and work rooms. Each room was precisely carved, but slightly oversize. Venttion shafts led back to a central room, but no machinery to produce or maintain a human-breathable atmosphere had been installed. The rooms had been prepared to receive metal walls and doors, and the electrical grid had not yet been extended to more than the first few rooms.

 In a room just off the staging area, however, was the answer to the mystery of the Gestalts progenitor. This room had clearly been intended as a garage of some sort, withrge bay doors leading into the staging area, and shelves carved into the walls. Dozens of metal crates were piled, including three human-sized ones. And slumped over on the floor in one corner was a man in a space suit, unmoving. I had found Dr. Stepan Jons.