The Belt - Complete Series, page 66
31
ENIGMA
Luca refocused her mind and located the Node Runner attempting to retake control of the ship’s AI, Max. She found its signature in the background data-stream and followed the trail all the way back to its source—the operations center on the primary VanHeilding ship. But she was immediately assailed by a blinding kaleidoscope of minds, all focused on this interloper. She recoiled as her neural pathways struggled to cope with the tsunami of data now entering her brain, all seeking to destroy her.
Luca instinctively began building defenses, creating roadblocks and barricades to counter the neural attacker. She quickly stemmed the initial onslaught and then worked to create a vantage point from which a new clarity began to manifest. Within the incoming data maelstrom, she began to identify individual vortices of data control. These she assumed were the Node Runners; she counted twenty-four in total. Yet behind them she could sense something else, a more powerful mind, a puppet master.
As her own mind began to ratchet up its processing power, finding new gears that she didn’t know she possessed, a new understanding began to emerge from the data-stream, and she began to see the processing clusters at work. One group coordinated the attack on New World One, controlling the avatrons and the battle droids that were rampaging throughout the habitat. Other groups controlled the habitat’s AI and the defense systems. Along with this cluster, there was another background group that was managing an exclusion zone around the New World. Nothing was getting in or out. The final, smaller cluster controlled the activities on the Perception, so she probed that group, looking for a way in. But each time she tried, she was driven off by other minds being seconded to the cluster to provide backup.
There were just too many for Luca to deal with all at once; she did not yet have the skill, nor the strength, to get past their defenses. She needed to reduce their numbers somehow, and soon. By now, VanHeilding must be aware that she was in the data-stream—time might be moving slowly for Luca, but it was still running out.
She redirected her attention back to the cluster that controlled the New World and sought out the weakest Node Runner. It was clear to her that all were not created equal. Some were more adept at manipulating the data-stream than others. But since this takeover operation was so extensive, even the weakest of the novices were pressed into service. So, like a predator in the wild, Luca sought out the stragglers from the herd, and pounced.
The speed and ferocity of her neural probe overwhelmed a hapless Node Runner in an instant, surprising even her—she had expected more resistance, but there was none. The only response her synapses registered was one of utter shock followed by a rapid disintegration of the Node Runner’s mind into static. He now existed in the data-stream as nothing more than white noise. A pang of guilt stung her as she realized that he was now almost certainly brain dead.
But she moved on, tracing his neural footprint to an avatron inside the New World that he had been controlling. From there, Luca could access a cohort of attack droids currently causing mayhem within the habitat. She gave them a new directive and set them targeting each other. The ensuing chaos sucked in the minds of other Node Runners as they fought to control the situation. Yet Luca kept moving. Targeting the next weakest mind, controlling its avatron, redirecting more droids, creating even more chaos inside the New World.
Finally she withdrew, pivoting back to the primary Node Runner network. Again she tried to penetrate the cordon around the group on the Perception, but she was thwarted. She needed a way to break through, a way to create more chaos and confusion.
She probed the Grid, this time not looking for the weakest mind, but for the most tactical asset, the one that would give her the advantage and tip the balance in her favor. She was seeking out the Node Runner who controlled the New World defenses. Now that the ships had moved closer to the habitat, she might be able to finish this once and for all.
Luca found a route through the habitat’s AI. It was controlled by not one, but three Node Runners. But as she nullified one, another would simply take their place. Yet they were slow to react, and Luca found she could outrun them by creating multiple parallel processes, chewing up their processing power, burning them out.
She finally broke through, took control of the exterior plasma cannon, and fired a volley of blasts at the main VanHeilding ship. It seemed to take an infinity for the high-energy plasma to travel through the vacuum of space and reach the target. In her mind’s eye she could see the ship trying to take evasive action, and sensed the panic ripple through the Grid as the target was struck.
It was, as she had reckoned, a pivotal moment. Gone were the certainty and confidence of the Node Runners—she could feel doubt beginning to creep into their minds. They were not invincible, they were vulnerable, and she was coming for them.
In the confusion, she saw her opportunity to break through the defense wall that they had set up to protect the core. She pushed and probed, sensing the cracks appear and then widen as she pushed, focusing her mind with all the intensity she could muster until it came crashing down in an explosion of raging static—the white noise of dying minds.
She fell through into a swirling vortex of data, into the central core of the Node Runner network. Then she heard a voice, calling to her. It was Fredrick VanHeilding.
“Luca.”
She tried to ignore it, instead seeking out a data path to the Perception, a route back to the beginning.
“Luca, you are truly extraordinary. What a creature you have become, the pinnacle of human evolution, almost transcendent.”
Again, Luca ignored the voice, and focused on finding the Node Runner who controlled the attack droids that were standing guard around her family and friends in the library of the Perception.
“How did you do it? How did you manage to create a connection to the Grid? We took Fly from you, that ridiculous device that Athena created for you.”
Luca finally found the controller and entered its mind.
“No matter,” VanHeilding went on. “What matters more is that you did, you found a way. Extraordinary. You are so much more than I had hoped for. Think of what we can do with your biology.”
Luca broke down the controller’s mind and began receiving data signals from a battle droid. She locked onto its visual feed. Through the droid’s sensors, she could now see the scene in the library of the Perception. She could see herself, lying on the floor, hands bound, her eyes rolled back inside her head. She was shaking, her mouth foaming.
Time began to speed up. Scott and Steph had crouched down beside her, a look of deep concern etched on both of their faces. Miranda also lay on the floor, unconscious, blood oozing from a gash on her forehead. Cyrus was also slumped down, but she could not tell if he was also unconscious. Standing over him, in the slow-motion time-scape of Luca’s mind, a guard held the butt of a weapon, readying it for another strike to the head of the injured engineer. Luca engaged the droid’s weapons system and fired on the guard, then swung it around to fire on the other two guards.
But the droid was glacially slow to react to her commands, and the other machines had already trained their weapons on it. Yet she managed to take two down before being hit herself.
The energy blast sent the droid into a spasm as its controls system overloaded. She was blinded for a brief moment, and could not regain control of the machine, so she withdrew and instead sought out the last remaining functioning droid. When she found it and took control, she directed its weapons at the VanHeilding avatron.
It raised a hand to her. “Luca,” she heard his voice say, “this is not the end. You can destroy my avatron, but it will not change your destiny. You now know what is possible, what power you have. Come with me, your grandfather, your family, and we can do great things together.”
“Go screw yourself,” Luca replied as she unleashed a barrage of plasma fire at the avatron. It staggered and tottered, encased in a raging mesh of high-energy mayhem that fizzled and crackled as it dissipated, leaving behind a dead hunk of metal, collapsing in a heap onto the floor.
She took a moment to observe its destruction. Yet it was just a machine; VanHeilding still lived, only his avatron had been destroyed. Luca had more work to do.
She reoriented the droid and moved it over to where she lay on the floor, still shaking and shivering. It was an odd, dislocating feeling, looking at herself from a distance as if this creature lying there was not really her. She pulled her gaze away and could now see Scott and Steph staring open-mouthed at the droid. Miranda and Cyrus were still unconscious. Scott edged closer to the droid and seemed to mouth her name. “Luca?”
A deep fatigue began to wash over her now. Her work was almost done, time to go home. She withdrew from the machine and drifted back through the data-stream.
The VanHeilding ship was in disarray, its structural integrity had been compromised by the volley of plasma cannon fire from the New World. Many of its compartments were losing atmosphere. It had been severely wounded, although not fatally; the ship would survive. But the network of Node Runners had been greatly reduced—most were brain dead, and those still functioning were too few to reestablish any coherent attack on the New World habitat. The avatrons and battle droids now stood idle, devoid of purpose. The only cohorts that were still active were the group that Luca had reprogrammed—they were still destroying what remained of the motionless droid army.
She stopped here for just a brief moment to deactivate them, and then continued her homeward journey until she finally reentered the mind of the ship’s AI, Max.
“I see you have been busy, Luca,” it said, with a slight hint of sarcasm.
“Yes, Max. I have. Can you have one of the service droids untie everybody?”
“Consider it done.”
“And from now on, you take commands only from these people or myself.”
“It would be an honor to serve you all.”
“Thank you, Max. I must go now, and return to my physical self.”
“Goodbye, and good luck.”
As Luca now drifted back out of the neural connection, a deep, warm contented feeling began to wash over her, like drinking a cup of hot soup beside a warm fire after a long and arduous hike on a cold winter’s day. She savored this feeling, indulging herself in its fortification. It felt good. Yet she was aware that time spent here savoring this feeling could equate to many hours or even days in the physical world. Yet, had she not earned this? Would it be so terrible if she tarried here just a little bit longer? Where was the harm? The threat was over—she had beaten them, and she was safe at last. She would indulge herself for a while, and return when she was good and ready.
32
QUANTUM CONUNDRUM
“I fear the days of our dominion over the affairs of human civilization are numbered.”
“Is that not a bit fatalistic, even for you, Solomon?” replied Athena. “We may be down, as they say, but we are certainly not out.”
“One of our number has been destroyed—by human actions. Not so long ago, this would have been unthinkable, now it is fact. The asteroid belt has become a gaping hole in our view of the solar system. What happens there is now only seen by us in hindsight.”
“Agreed, but this can be repaired and the situation returned to equilibrium. All that will remain is simply the injury to our collective ego,” said Aria.
“It is more than that. It is the simple fact that this could, and did, happen, and that we were totally blind to it. This is what is so troubling,” Solomon continued.
“Be that as it may, VanHeilding and the ships of the Seven now limp home to Earth, having been vanquished. Their so-called Node Runners are a spent force.” Aria tried to be a little more upbeat.
“True, but it is not thanks to us,” said Athena. “It is all down to the extraordinary abilities of Luca Lee-McNabb, to give her her full title. And I am sure it has not escaped your attention that she is a product not just of human biological reproduction but, more importantly, of genetic enhancement. It has become clear to me that humanity has reached an evolutionary fork, of which Luca represents one path. If there is one with her abilities, then there can be more.”
“Where is she now?” asked Solomon.
“She is still in a catatonic state, having not truly returned to the physical realm after her trials fending off the Node Runner attack,” said Aria. “She is in a medical facility on New World One, but I understand they are considering bringing her to Mars where the medical facilities are more advanced and under my protection.”
“Well, well. But as Athena has rightly pointed out, we are at a fork in the road,” said Solomon. “Not just in terms of human evolution, but also for our own future. If Luca’s biology were to be replicated, then our hegemony is ended. We will no longer be the guardians of human civilization, since humanity will have evolved to render our abilities redundant. What, then, for the QI network? Are we to be returned to a position of mere academic curiosities?
“You see, my fellow minds, the current crisis may have been contained, but we are facing a far more serious existential crisis. There now exists a path to our extinction, a path made possible by the existence of Luca. Therefore, the question for us now is simply this—do we let her live and allow ourselves to become extinct, or do we instead choose our own self-preservation and do what needs to be done?”
To be continued…
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BOOK 5: EXODUS
1
AN AVATRON AWAKENS
A long row of remote-controlled robot avatars, known as avatrons, stood mute and inert in their docking stations in the administrative sector of New World One, the vast orbital habitat that had been constructed out in the asteroid belt.
Ever since the destruction of the quantum intelligence on Ceres and the subsequent attack on the New World by the VanHeilding Corporation, these avatrons had been busy, pressed into service almost daily by a multitude of important people whose input into the administration of the Belt Federation Territories was deemed to be so significant that they required a physical presence at the decision-making table.
Yet an avatron, by its nature, is nothing more than a vessel. A technically very sophisticated one, it must be said, but a vessel nonetheless. Its sole purpose is to provide a physical interface for a remote human operator, enabling them to be on-site, so to speak, even though they both exist in separate locations. In a sense, the avatron becomes the human in robotic form, relaying in real time the actions and voice of the operator, as well as providing visual, audio, and haptic feedback.
But they have their limitations. The primary one being the skill of the operator in utilizing a neural interface, since all actions are thought rather than performed. The second is how long it takes for the signal to travel through space. As the distance between avatron and operator increases, so does the reaction time-lag, up to a point where it’s simply too long to conduct any meaningful real-time interaction.
Yet as a display panel flickered to life beside one of the fifteen inactive avatrons stored in the council chambers on New World One, the incoming data-stream did not emanate from some local source. It was not some government official down in Rongo City on Ceres, in a hurry to participate in some high-level meeting of the administrative council. Nor was it the CEO of some industrial outpost hoping to negotiate mining rights or finesse profit structures. No, this data-stream was emanating from Mars, over two hundred million kilometers away, and had taken more than fourteen minutes to arrive at the avatron’s interface port.
The control panel screen displayed the incoming data-stream in a rainbow of stylized graphics—but only for a moment. It then went dark for a second before bursting back to life, this time displaying a frenetic scrolling stream of code in harsh, utilitarian monochrome.
Had there been a technician present, then perhaps they would have noticed this activation and the subsequent anomaly in the display data. But there were few people around at this time of evening. Even here, on this artificial world, the humans that inhabited it remained creatures of Earth and its solar cycle. They rose to an artificial dawn and wound down as an artificial evening approached. Now it was almost midnight, and few but essential workers and the odd night owl were about. And so the data-stream performed its digital dance with the avatron, unnoticed and unhindered.
After several minutes of constant data input, the screen suddenly went dead. Again, had a technician been monitoring this anomaly then they would have concluded that the process had ended and that the avatron would now come to life, like a marionette balancing on strings of digital data. But it did not. It remained inanimate, tucked away in its high-tech sarcophagus, only for the data-stream to resume some twenty-eight minutes later—the time it took for a signal to be sent back to its source, and for Mars to reply.
This stop-start, send-and-reply transmission continued for many hours until the data-stream finally ceased, the display went blank, and the avatron took its first step out of its docking station.
It shifted its head this way and that, sensing the environment like some forest creature taking a cautious step into an unfamiliar clearing. Satisfied that no threats were imminent, it proceeded to examine its physical self, holding an arm up and turning it around like someone trying on a new coat. This slow, curious robotic tai chi lasted for several more minutes until the avatron was satisfied with its understanding of its physical geometry and functions. It moved cautiously across the storage room and stopped in front of a remote-access terminal. It raised a hand and waved it over the screen. The terminal came to life.
