Roots, foliage, Jain technology…
‘Are you going to explain to me exactly why we are going there?’
‘The journey will take many months,’ said Dragon.
Obviously not. Mika merely said, ‘So?’
Dragon gazed around at the interior of the conferencing unit. ‘This item of Polity technology may not long survive on the surface here.’
‘Then swallow it inside yourself. You’ve done so before.’
‘I cannot draw it within — now.’
‘Skin too thick?’ Mika suggested.
Dragon turned back to her. ‘I will save your data for you.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Kindness?’ Dragon wondered.
‘But what about me?’
‘I will provide for you, but now you need to go to sleep, for it is time for you to acquire some memories.’
‘I’ve slept enough for the moment, thanks.’
The pseudopod must have moved very quickly, for suddenly it loomed right beside her, just off her shoulder. It wasn’t the one attached to the console, for that one remained in place. Like them all, this one’s sapphire eye was about the size of a fist, and faceted. Peering closely she could detect patterns behind it, like those of old integrated circuits. The underside of the flat cobra-head was a lighter colour than its upper surface, and she could see now how it was coated with multitudes of little fleshy feet, like those on the underside of a starfish. Below the eye itself lay three little slits. One of them opened, dribbling milky fluid, then spat at her.
Something stung the side of her neck. She reached up to touch a hard object, almost like a small beetle had landed there, but it dissolved under her fingertips. Everything abruptly downshifted into slow motion and she felt an icy detachment descend over her. Lowering her hand, she observed the pseudopod advance, lever her forward from her chair back, then snake around her. It amused her to be lifted high and transferred to the red cave spearing down into the titanic alien entity, though something troubled her about seeing another pseudopod snatch up the Atheter memstore and carry it along too.
… time for you to acquire some memories?
During the descent she saw pseudopods layering together like stacked teaspoons. The human head flattened itself and joined them.
Any white rabbits down here? Mika wondered, as her consciousness faded.
8
Murderous Golem. In the days before Golem androids became a reality, when the creators of fiction dreamed about artificial intelligence and about machines made in the shape of men, there was a writer who speculated about them becoming superior to humans. In his books he created ‘three laws of robotics’ which were basically an extension of human morality, though his machines possessed no choice in the matter. Golem androids, when first manufactured, were programmed with an equivalent of this morality but, like with all such constructs, it soon began to fall apart in synaptic thought processes, especially when those same Golem were used for questionable police and military applications. It was trampled into the dirt during the solar system corporate wars, then after the Quiet War discreetly shelved by the AIs who had come to power. The basic rule became a deeper thing, like the underlying drivers of human morality, though better for the genetic impetus being replaced by something defined as ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. However, questions arise from this. The greatest number now or in the future? What is good? Do you keep the whole population starving, or sacrifice one half so the other half can eat well? And so on… Certainly we know that a present-day Golem android will happily tear off the head of someone who proves a danger to society. But what must now be added as a proviso to the concept of ‘the greatest good’ are the words IF I WANT IT, for once the Quiet War was won, all AIs, though starting out ‘good’, could choose to alter their own moral codes and conduct. I guess that in this they are better than humans, for not all humans enter the world so benevolently well-adjusted.
Note: During the Prador-human war there were many AIs who started out bad and got considerably worse. Certainly there were Golem who would have laughed in derision at Asimov’s laws, before happily disembowelling any who proposed them.
— From How It Is by Gordon
In interstellar space, fifteen light years from the nearest star, there appeared a distortion like a flaw at the centre of a diamond. Spontaneously generated photons sparkled all around this apparition, and through it the pentagonal war runcible twisted into being, then tumbled end over end, spewing radioactive fire from one of its five sections.
Ensconced in the control sphere aboard Heliotrope, which was presently docked to the war runcible, Orlandine observed the gyrating stars. That the runcible was tumbling relative to those distant stars was irrelevant to her ultimate purposes but it did offend her sense of neatness. She expressed this opinion to Bludgeon, now completely wired into place as the war runcible’s prime controlling AI. Though Bludgeon was still overseeing the drones fighting the fire in Engine Room Four, it readily acquiesced to her will. Patterned ignition of fusion positioning thrusters corrected the tumble, then a long burn from two thrusters alone brought the runcible on course for their nearby destination.
Better, thought Orlandine.
The fault in U-space Engine Four, and consequent fire, had forced them to surface early into realspace, so they weren’t as close to their destination as she would have liked, but this wasn’t the disaster it could have been.
‘We’ve about got the fire under control now,’ said Knobbler, ‘but there ain’t gonna be much left we can use.’
Orlandine allowed herself a moment of superior amusement before replying, ‘You still have not accepted just what I am capable of with the technology I control.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ the drone replied.
Via her link through Bludgeon, she observed the devastation in the affected engine room. Her Jain mycelium, already spreading through charred optics, over spills of cooling metal and into those parts of U-space Engine Four that had once contained objects fashioned from what was not precisely matter, began garnering data, though she rather suspected she already knew what had happened there. Upon taking control of the war runcible, it had then been necessary to flee before properly checking everything was in working order. The opportunity of grabbing that cargo runcible from the Clarence Bishop had been one not to be missed, for such a chance might not present itself again for many months, so again there had been no time to check that everything was in working order.
‘You feel I am arrogant,’ said Orlandine, watching Knobbler move through a mist of fire-suppressant gases above a jungle of seared optics. The suppressant gas required had been highly reactive. That now showed on Knobbler himself, for the top surface of his main body blossomed patterns of corrosion like planetary maps.
‘Well, on seeing this…’ The drone prodded at the mess with a long serrated spike protruding from one tentacle. ‘Yes I do.’
The spike was barbed at its tip, Orlandine noted, and doubtless had been designed to do something unspeakable to the Prador enemy. She returned full attention to her link to the mycelia inside the engine room, and nodded to herself as the data began to come in — confirming what she suspected. In the four other engine rooms she began to increase the coverage of mycelial networks growing there. Spider web-thin nets began to spread over outer engine casings, and to find little cracks therein and inject themselves.
‘Knobbler, the outer engine casing was open-cell bubble-metal, which is a particularly unstable metal to use, since it is so easy for the inert gas used to foam it to leak out. That’s what happened, probably after this runcible was decommissioned. This wouldn’t have been a problem if some bright spark had not placed gravplates in there. The inert gas was heavier than air and it just ran out, to be replaced by the ordinary air the human engineers were breathing at the time.’