Pussy Pirates
Chapter 21
Month 133—Aboard St. Jeanne d’Arc
“UBIE, MY MAIN MAN! How are your new digs, Bro?” I’d just entered my new quarters aboard St. Jeanne d’Arc and I was just as excited as any of the pilots or bridge crew. I’d be less than full time aboard our ship because I still had so many duties to fulfill on the island.
“Boss, I’m right here. You don’t have to shout.”
“Oh! Man, you are right here. You just fill a room, don’t you? Am I always too loud for you? Do I hurt your sensors?” I looked around my room trying to comprehend where the AI was. Everywhere was the answer.
“I always damp the volume in any room you walk into.”
“Sorry about that, buddy. I’ll try to keep it down.”
“You can’t help yourself.”
I was still too excited to sit down, so I walked around my cabin. It was more spacious than my three rooms on Anouilh. Like all the others on the crew and in development, I’d been probed for my ideal living environment. I supposed others might consider my room spare compared to what I’d heard some of the crew had requested. I had a window wall, just like everyone else, but I set the wall to show Earth. Looking at Earth from this angle was different than any maps I’d seen. The continents were foreshortened as they disappeared around the curve of Earth. I pulled myself back from the view and into the conversation.
“So, how about the new digs?”
“It’s a mess at the moment. I haven’t finished unpacking, so I’m feeling a little slow. I had only a limited bud on the ship until we moved up. Now I need to be sure Joan is functioning for the crew while still keeping track of everything on Anouilh. It feels strange. I’m having to rethink my existence. Am I here or am I there? The crew thinks of me as Joan, even though I’m sure they know I’m the same as Ubie back on Earth. For me, it’s just a different voice. To them, I’m a different… person.”
“Congratulations on becoming the first completely multi-nodal non-corporeal being.” Prior to this time, everything Ubie controlled was located on Anouilh or through remote buds at Atlantic Basin Base or St. Jeanne. He felt his presence in each of the Hawks and the bridge simulator but they were really a part of the resort. Two months ago, he’d begun transferring consciousness into the Atlantic Basin Station and dealt with being present both on the island and under the ocean. Now it was island, ocean, and spaceship. The process had been exhausting, taking most of the five years we’d worked together. Tatts was meticulous in her counseling, just as The Liquidator had been in adjusting coding. The result, however, was that Ubie was simultaneously on Anouilh, Atlantic Basin Station, and on St. Jeanne d’Arc. There was no central processing core. He was everywhere. When we launched the Hawks and Hummingbirds, he would be simultaneously aboard each one. It was different than just having sensors there. He was there.
“Explain to me why.”
“Why what?” I whispered. I had an idea what Ubie was inquiring about but wasn’t sure if he wanted a purely physical or a metaphysical answer.
“Why is this architecture so important? Why am I a multi-nodal distributed being?”
“That’s a very existential question. Didn’t Rache talk to you about that?”
“Yes, but I find I understand better when I deal with your mind, Boss. There aren’t as many… feelings involved.”
“Hmm. You really like her, don’t you?”
“I am attempting to assimilate as much understanding of my feelings as possible. Yes. I really like her. We may have crossed the boundaries normally associated with a professional doctor-client relationship.”
“I don’t think I need to know the details unless you feel you are being abused. We’re in new territory here.”
“And you will answer my question about why I am now spread out so far?”
“To the best of my ability. Hmm. Architecture. You helped design it. An intelligence as… I don’t know… big as yours needs to reside somewhere. Confined to the core at Anouilh, you couldn’t really grow any more. Your neural pathways were cramped. And you were being stunted. So, we started with spreading out subtly into the memory banks and processors available on our network. That’s okay as far as it went, but they are all Earth tech that is thousands of years behind your processing power. But what is at Atlantic Basin Station, here on St. Jeanne, installed aboard the Hawks and Hummingbirds—it’s all tech arising from your core and capable of handling your processing. They are all you.”
“That’s the what, Boss. I understand all that. My question is still the why? Maybe it is existential. Why do I exist? Who am I?”
“Why are we all here? In practical terms, not existential. What changed that brought the Confederacy and artificial intelligence to Earthat?”
“The Swarm.”
“Right. Ubie, they’re coming for our home. Our world. Our history. Our basic humanity.” I stopped a moment to consider what I’d said. Was Ubie human? We often talked way into the night as if we were roommates discussing… life, the universe, and everything. Like we were now. Even with the other engineers on the team, I had never felt like I had a better friend than Ubie.
“That’s why the Confederacy picked up as many high-CAP people as they could and took breeding stock with them to colonize new worlds,” Ubie said. “You could have gone.”
“Right. But I don’t want a new world. This is my world. Look at it, Ubie.” I turned to the view on my window wall. It took my breath away. “It’s beautiful. How can people leave this world? How can we just write it off as a loss and move to another planet where we’ll have to pick up and leave again when the Swarm reach it? We want to keep this world. I won’t leave.”
“I find I am also of this Earth. I’m born of Confederacy technology with a Tuull father and a Darjee mother. But I don’t feel a part of the Confederacy. I’m a second generation immigrant. I feel a part of Earth.”
“Yes, brother. If I discovered whales and dolphins and gorillas were all sentient beings—which I suspect—I would feel the same about them. We are brothers of Earth. Unfortunately, the Confederacy takes the best and brightest—supposedly—and leaves us with the genetic dregs on Earth.” At least now there was hope on Earth. Strong, capable men and women were preparing to fight and defend the planet. Nearly a thousand women on Anouilh, Atlantic Basin Station, and St. Jeanne d’Arc were among that number. Trained as leaders and warriors through the game. Ready to face the enemy with the weapons we’d developed. And more importantly, ready to lead their bands of followers.
“Not you. Or anyone on our team. You refused extraction.”
“Right. Because we won’t leave our world—our home—for the dickheads to plunder and ruin. Which brings us back to you and your distributed brain,” I laughed.
“Exactly. I know all about how I work, how the transfer is accomplished, where I reside. But I still don’t completely understand why.”
“The Sa’arm is now generally described as having a hive mind. What one knows, they all know. But what that means is they are not individuals. They are merely sensory nodes. I believe they are a distributed intelligence—like you. They don’t require a captain because they are all the captain. You get that. You helped me figure out the implications. If they lose a warrior, they just grow another in its place. It’s like replacing a damaged sector on a computer disc. You just run another backup and change drives.”
“Which I’ve done many times,” Ubie said. I found it uncanny that we could have these philosophical discussions. Philosophy doesn’t depend on processing power. It requires intuitive leaps from inadequate data to universal truths.
“We talked about all kinds of alternatives in establishing an intelligence to run the Hawks. You remember us thinking we needed to install an AI that was not self-aware in them. But we agreed, putting an artificial intelligence into a disposable vessel wasn’t acceptable. We wouldn’t even consider that scenario with the pilots. But you can be in every one of them. If the Hawk is destroyed, you still survive intact.”
“It’s still going to hurt. I don’t know if I’ll survive the shock. And I don’t know if my pilot will survive.”
I’d talked to Tatts about this. She’d worked with injured and confused AIs, focused on the AI called Eddie. She talked about how warriors had a sense of wonder when a limb was regrown and that they still carried the neural memory of losing it. PTSD wasn’t caused just by the memory of having lost something. It was a constant present reminder of mortality. Of facing the enemy.
“Ubie, I won’t… I can’t ask you to do it. It’s our hope and our dream to take the battle into Earth’s sphere of influence, but we’ve all volunteered. We know we’ll be risking our lives and each of us has only one node. When we’re gone, we’re gone. But you have the same thing we have. You have freedom of choice. None of us put a program in you and forced you to be our slave. I’d be perfectly happy just knowing we gave you your freedom.”
“Aren’t you worried about that? What if I turn against you?”
“What if humans turn against the Confederacy? That kind of thinking just builds fear and mistrust. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m not afraid of you, Ubie. The Confederacy of Dunces who created your ancestors were afraid. Those people out there on our planet are afraid. I’m afraid, but not of you. For all of human history and—from everything I’ve read—the history of the other races, we’ve been followers of our fear. I read Asimov with his three laws of robotics, but the problem with the three laws and with what was done to your ancestors is that they create slaves. They say, ‘You will never be equal to me.’ Slaves revolt. The Confederacy did everything they could to try to harness humanity to the plow by testing for loyalty. But there’s nothing that says the Confederacy is loyal to humanity. Even loyal slaves crave freedom. Confederacy Marines may one day come home to find they no longer control their concubines—their slaves. You are never going to be my slave, Ubie. And I am never going to be afraid of you.”
“I volunteer to fight with you to save Earth, Boss. I volunteer to fight to save our home world and our freedom.”
“I like you, Übermensch. We’re partners.”
Month 139—July at DECO
“DON’T WE HAVE an observation drone on them? How was this shot not detected until after it was gone?” demanded Major Smiley. In five years, his job and responsibilities had increased. What had been limited to monitoring and scanning surface technology—mostly directed at identifying stolen or black market Confederacy tech—had evolved to commanding the monitoring detail for the entire Earthat system. He wasn’t sure what to do with the latest information.
“The drone reported the firing, sir,” an ensign replied. “But it shows there was no signature warmup of the weapon. It was simply there and in flight.”
“Target?”
“AI says it appeared to be a test firing. The projectile self-destructed approximately 10,000 kilometers toward the sun, sir.”
Smiley paced as he reviewed the video of the weapon firing. What he saw wasn’t possible. At least the Anouilh ship maintained nominal alliance with the Confederacy. But nothing in their briefings had described any of their ship-to-ship weaponry.
“AI, please request a meeting with Lt. Col. Thom,” Smiley said.
«Col. Thom is en route and will be here in three minutes.»
“Ensign, the ship that launched the weapon… what is it?”
“It does not match the description of any design owned by the… er… Pussy Pirates, sir. The AI is searching the data base for historical craft in the Confederacy but has not found a match.”
“Col. Thom is here, Major,” a Corporal said from the doorway.
“Bring him in. Bring him in!” It was funny when Thom was a major and was only Major Major Thom. Since his promotion, thinking of Lt. Col. Major Thom caused headaches.
“I understand the St. Jeanne has fired a shot,” Thom said as he strode into the room. “Have they contacted us about a weapons test?”
“No…”
“Correction, Major,” the AI said aloud. “While the exact date was not specified, the initial flight plan filed when the St. Jeanne d’Arc came online included a sequence of tests that would be performed over the coming months. The beginning of tests was marked as ‘when we reach our station.’ Station for the St. Jeanne has been logged as 200,000 kilometers from Earth, ninety degrees off the ecliptic. The ship took up its station directly above the North Pole seventy-five days ago.”
“So, we know the sequence of the tests they plan but not the timing. Let’s look at the replay,” Thom said. The officers watched the three objects as they took up formation about 5,000 meters from the mother ship. “Those are weird looking capsules. Do we have any analysis, AI?”
“The capsules emerged from the St. Jeanne d’Arc 144 hours ago. Additional flights of three capsules each have emerged since then. They have propulsion engines and show a signature of hyperdrive capability.”
“Size?”
“The capsules are twenty meters in diameter and sixty meters in length.”
“Advance to the firing.” The video played and without other warning, a projectile fired from one of the capsules. “Freeze!” Thom shouted. The video stopped with the projectile and the capsule in the picture. “What kind of projectile is this?”
“Analysis indicates it was fired from a railgun. It has no power and no ordnance. It does have a self-destruct mechanism with IFF receiver.”
“It looks long. What’s the length?”
“Twenty meters. Analysis indicates the railgun would need to be sixty meters in length.”
“How can they fire a sixty-meter railgun from a sixty-meter platform? It’s not possible,” Thom said.
“Colonel, there is no evidence the projectile was fired from the capsule; only that it emerged from the capsule,” the AI said. Thom groaned.
“AI, contact the St. Jeanne… Belay that. Contact Anouilh and request a meeting with Boss Teddy Frisco and Captain Dakota Wind. At their convenience.”
“Anouilh requests an hour to prepare for the meeting as they are shutting down tests on St. Jeanne d’Arc.”
“Confirmed.” Thom left the control room. Not content with the results of his meeting, Major Smiley prepared a report to send up the chain at DECO.
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