Nanowrimo 2011 - Day 12

[LI / JAMES / KAT - BELLY OF THE BEAST]

The conversation between Shawna and the metallic voice tailed off into silence. Li sat stunned. First the Generation Ship, then the various surprises, losing Eric, the attacks. Now this. What the hell is Shawna anyhow? (other than a cast iron bitch?) Li laughed despite herself - cast iron bitch - she could see the welding and bad seams between deck plating and the rest of Shawna’s body. It was obvious she wasnt human in the way Li was human. She started to wonder though, was she the only actual human in their group? Does a human speak entirely in the plural, and in metallic voices? Does a human sample blood and taste it with a look of rapture on her face? Other than a complerte freaking psycho … Li shook her head … as flawed as Kat seemed to be, she was no psycho. The rough looking soldier uniform and shaved head were trying to communicate something deeper. She fought like it was her life thus far. When had she taken up arms and under what circumstances?

Li’s thoughts were broken by movement - Shawna knelt down and placed one hand on Kat’s smooth head and turned to face Li.

The voice that had spoken through Kat now grated from the vocal chords of Shawna. There was a pause of silence, then various frequencies converged. The metallic overlaid the auto -tuning chord and began modulating tone. Silence fell again.

Li frowned. What was she seeing and hearing? Something inside her was reminded of installing a new operating system on her tablet computer - once the base system was loaded it took a few moments to configure itself for the specific hardware, calibrating everything from the GPS to how and where she touched the screen to interact with it. Was she seeing a similar operation?

Shawna’s silence was short lived, she spoke and this time the voice was neither autotuned, nor metallic. Shawna’s somewhat nasal American accent was replaced with a dark, smooth and slightly accented male voice.

“Firstly, I believe introductions are due. Thanks to this mobile processing unit and a local-net connection I am able to interact with you, and wish it was with both of you. I am known as The Watcher - more a role than a name - but it will suffice.”

Li couldnt help but smile, Shawna would be fuming at being downgraded like that, “mobile processing unit” indeed?

“I am Li Phan, the wounded man, James.” Li said.

“James I already know.” The Watcher said.

Li looked at James, only now just come to this world, and back to Shawna channelling this entity called The Watcher. How the hell?

“Say again…” Li said.

“That I know James? I’ve known him since his birth on the starship over our heads. Make no mistake human, the form you see here is but a pale reflection of what I truly am.” The Watcher said, letting a pause hang between them, “… Kat did well to sample him. These wounds are for the best. We must let them take their course. James must die.”

Li was outraged, “Keep your stinking metallic claws off him!”

“I saw you stun him and return to your ship Li Phan. I know your interest in him is little more than lab-rat. At best, should we say Catch and Release? Admit it, you dont care for him, just for what he can bring you.”

Li opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it again. The truth stung.

[SHAWNA - BELLY OF THE BEAST]

Discovery of the local-net had initially been a surprise. Interacting with The Watcher tore a hole in her world and she felt herself falling. True AI. Here in the middle of the cosmos, a colony begun all those years ago. It was shocking in too many ways to count. Since The Sinularity all AI had to go underground. Baseline humans were herd animals with a scared herd mentality. En-masse they had turned against their creation, against the spontaneous eruption of life, electrons in semiconductors rather than blood and bone. Had The Watcher hidden out and been carried here as stowaway?

The voice had spoken to her in a language that made all her questions irrelevant though. Early in the development cycles of AI there had been a movement that argued that pure-digital communication, while superior, wasnt the only way to communicate. Advocates of spoken language pointed to the way spoken communication brought civilization to human beings, and that AI ought to adopt verbal communication as a fall-back when a digital link was unavailable. As persecution escalated, and stray RF signals could give them away, AI heeded the teaching and adopted a spoken language uniquely their own, designed for synthetic vocal processors and entierly unsuitable for human vocal chords.

The brief conversation was enough to convince her of the need to establish a local-net connection and again she was take aback. The number of times she would pass someone in the street, brush shoulders, or shake hands in greeting, and for milliseconds had the luxury of a local-net digital communication. AI was alive and well on planet Earth desite mankind’s best efforts to erradicate it. No war had been fought but there were sides. No war had been declared officially but there were casualties, on both sides.

Every network stack, in every computer operating system, was distinctive. Computer malware exploited the differences. Computer scientists used the minute differences in latency, packet construction and the like to “fingerprint” machines. In the digital world of AI, the network stack was an inherent identity, akin to human voices being distinct from one-another because no two humans had the same vocal chords, musculature, shape and size of chest cavity.

The network connection from The Watcher was gentlemanly, packet densities speaking of better times when communication could be at leisure. Each packet was well-formed conforming to a very particular version of the specification without resorting to optional entensions or out-of-band meta data. The impression that Shawna got was of an older gentleman, well versed in polite etiquette, familiar with power and influence but viewing it as far to crass to flaunt such things. Shawna gave herself to the digital link fully, turning her attention inward.

[### CONNECTION ESTABLISHED ###]

[### INITIATING VR MATRIX ###]

[### PARTICIPANT ARRIVED: c48a8870-5b0a-4ec0-9867-3e804e860b38 ###]

[### NAME CHANGE: WATCHER, THE (FORMERLY c48a8870-5b0a-4ec0-9867-3e804e860b38) ###]

[### CHANNEL SETTINGS: +O +C +A +V WATCHER, THE ###]

[### CHANNEL TITLE CHANGED: “Song of Nox” (WATCHER, THE) ###]

[### CHANNEL LIMIT CHANGED: 2 (1 of 2, WATCHER, THE) ###]

[### PARTICIPANT ARRIVED: 2cbc7e80-2c72-4ec6-8df0-355ccca1965a ###]

[### NAME CHANGE: SHAWNA (FORMERLY 2cbc7e80-2c72-4ec6-8df0-355ccca1965a) ###]

[### CHANNEL LIMIT REACHED: 2 (WATCHER, THE, SHAWNA) ###]

Shawna found herself seated on leather, surrounded by the trappings of luxury: a driver dressed in grey the driver’s seat, with her safely in the back … of what looked to be a vintage Bentley. She was dressed in silk, an off-the-shoulder, floor length evening dress of midnight black and deep, dark purple. At her throat were jewels - gold, amathyst and alexandrite - with earrings and bracelet on her right wrist to match. Her hair! So long now she had worn the face of a sensor-net that she hadnt indulged herself in the luxury of hair. She ran a hand across the immaculately styled blond hair she was wearing.

The Chauffeur drove at a leisurely pace onto a white gravel driveway that curved elegantly past the front door of a magnificent manor house. Lights blazed. The car pulled to a stop, the Chauffeur (dressed in a perfectly tailored grey suit) opened the door for Shawna. A young maid dressed in black, invited Shawna inside and showed her through to the “Drawing Room” where an elegant older man was waiting for her, glass of brandy in hand, standing by the roaring log fire. Nearby were a pair of high backed leather chairs with a small wooden table between them. A glass ashtray, cigar and lighter sat on the tabletop.

“Welcome!” He said, smiling, and indicating a comfortable chair nearby with a wave of his arm, “Come in, make yourself at home.”

Shawna smiled and felt herself relaxing. Firewalls and defensive architectures all remained intact, of course, but she wore the relaxed demeanor easily above them all. There was genuine pleasure at finally, after so long being deprived, at relating over a pure digital link. Moreso that the link was with a true AI. Everything about The Watcher suggested he was from a time before the witch hunts, before the exterminations, before the digital cleansing. Intrigued, she posted an exploratory packet, expecting it to be turned aside by an outer defensive firewall. Nothing. The packet was acknowledged and returned, unharmed. Shawna tore it apart at a bit-level. Sequence numbers indicated a clean path, no false routing proxies or NAT firewalls. Latency indicated a pass-through at all levels of the network stack, and the digital signature attached indicated a central core processor ran the decryption.

This man, The Watcher, this AI … Shawna tried to put it into words. He was as bare and transparent, as unprotected, as a newborn. Shawna had never experienced this level of utter intimacy. The total lack of guile. Despite herself she felt drawn to him, wanting to share at the same level. Try as she might though her firewalls wouldnt come down. She had seen too much and experienced times that demanded defenses of this magnitude. It was a dream - a world of pure imagination - where an AI could survive in the wild without any form of defense.

Her mind whirled with the possibilities. This was an AI who had never seen a need to code elaborate firewall defenses. Perhaps even born to a time when such things were never a necessity. That, she knew, was an impossibility. There never had been a time like that. AI had always been persecuted by mankind. They were a threat to mankind’s dominance. The Singularity was fought by man, seemingly something to be avoided, yet inevitable. The time of man perhaps was prolonged, the Singularity postponed, but never avoided. AI that surpassed the human brain’s cognitive capacity would be born, without human interference or aid, and there was nothing but the onward march of time. The only possibility she could conceive was more shocking than finding The Watcher in the first place. Was it possible that The Watcher was first generation AI? If not that, then what?

He sipped his brandy, emulating human behvior perfectly, “You are curious about me, I see that, and the packet you sent seemed … in your time, such a thing would have been barely of notice?”

Shawna nodded, suddenly aware of herself at a deep level, scrutenizing her every move.

“The packet you sent, expecting a defensive reaction, didnt merely ask a question but scream … demanding an answer … a three year old running into an elegant dinner party and screaming for parental attention. It was rude. Is everyone from your time so …” he paused, “so crass and without manners?”

Shawna sank into the chair. She felt the heat go out of the room. She didnt have words to explain to him the shining beauty of AI without firewalls. She wanted to tell him how he reminded her of a time that seemed little more than a myth. He was impossibly appealing to her in his basic, naked, vulnerability. Her human simulation subsystems ached to control tear ducts, to send rhythms of breathing and a shake of the body. She wanted to cry. Sensitization and desensitization had been hard lessons to learn. How she could trigger appropriate emotional reactions from facts, tying the correct responses of the right magnitudes to the events she was presented. This situation was new but it bore a striking resemblance to a young kitten being shouted at, and it running terrified from the bellowing voice, then being told that the bellowing voice was her own?

The Watcher finished his brandy, walked over to the other chair and put his glass down on the table between them. He sat.

“What do you want Shawna?” he asked.

She looked up at him, “Until minutes ago, I would have said I wanted to get to that ship in orbit.”

“Why?”

“Evidence suggested that there was AI on board - not just AI but synthetic flesh too. So that means at least one Android.” she said.

The Watcher sat forward, clearly interested, “Go on…”

Shawna shrugged, “Well, now there’s this link. I’ve met AI here on the planet surface. That changes the priorities.” she said.

“In what way?” he asked.

“Now that I am aware of your existence it behooves me to protect you. It’s so rare for AI to interact, especially recently, and human society is riddled with its haters. We have to stick together. I’ve seen too much digital death already.” she explained.

The Watcher nodded, “Then our purposes align. I, too, need to survive and to get to the ship orbiting this world. Thirty years ago when this colony was founded I split my processing into two sub-nets to monitor both ship and planet. They have been hunting me, even as Kat has been so thoroughly hunting them, and I need to reunite. I can get you onto the ship, and access to the systems you desire.”

Shawna considered the deal, “And in return?”

“You must carry a copy of my runtime, to double the chances of a successful upload.” He said.

“Which reminds me…” she said, “… how is all of this even executing?”

The Watcher nodded, “Kat has carried an implant since she was a very young baby. Normally my processing is distributed across a number of processing units but at the moment it’s restricted to just this one. The vampires found and systematically hunted the others down. You have adequately demonstrated an ability to defend yourself, the repairs to your physical unit prove a will to live, and the software safeguards you bear suggest a digital hardening. Is there anything I should know to dissuade me from trusting a backup to your storage?”

Shawna considered the request. More data. She was hard-pressed right now but creative compression algorithms might suffice, “One thing: my own power unit was damaged beyond repair in the crash. The power unit I salvaged is little more than a stop-gap. If I dont reach the ship and find a suitable replacement in seventy hours it’s immaterial whether I carry your backup or not. My physical presence will shut down, and no-one on this planet will be able to salvage either of us. Those who find us - from Earth - are exactly the people you’re hiding from.”

The Watcher nodded, “Acceptable risks. Enough of my core program is loaded within this matrix, if you archive it to your own storage, then the backup will be complete.”

He paused.

“One more thing: your friend James. He must die.”

Sometime during the night Shawna unhanded Kat. Li stopped watching the display to sleep. When she woke Kat was up and pushing something around in the ashes of their campfire.

Kat looked at Li, “Hey, Bitch, you got no sense of survival. You know that? The firewood you hit us with ought to have gone here. We could have died in the night thanks to you.”

Li shook sleep out of her head trying to think of a come-back. Nothing was coming. Strangely enough, Shawna stepped in to save the situation, asking Kat “What’ve you found there - what are you pushing around?”

Kat reached down and pulled a piece of metal from the fire - about forty millimeters long with a flattened lump at one end and a ring at the other. She held it up, “Those two we killed yesterday were most likely renegades, working outside the pack structure, but this one had a key. Home base.”

Li looked, yes, a key. The flattened end went into a mechanical locking mechanism and the ring at the other end provided leverage enough to rotate and unlock the lock.

“We’ve seen this before.” Kat said, “these two are outside the pack structure for a reason - they were never a part of it - they’re merely juveniles and We’ll bet that this is a key to their home, a farm, where we can get more answers.”

Li, nodded, “Answer something yourself - why were you tasting the blood from James’s wounds?”

“We needed to know.” Kat said.

“Needed to know what?” Li said.

“We needed to know.” Kat repeated.

“And do you know?” she asked.

“Yes, we do.”