ai question
Han van Meegeren
Mike Omelanuk
A voice coming from behind her startled her and she spun around. Bringing her rifle to bear, she tensed, eyes scanning for the source of the voice. "Excuse me," the voice said, "but you are a human, correct?" Looking around, she realized the voice she'd heard had not been speaking in English, rather, her AI link, which had been inactive until this moment, had translated the voice.
"Who's there?" she called out softly, "Show yourself!"
"That's rather tricky to do," the voice replied dryly, with a definite trace of humor.
A blinking light drew her attention to the incomplete, shattered remnants of a K'treel-class ship. 'No way', she thought, 'could the ship's AI still be functional?' Aloud she asked, "Are you a Tuull AI? And if so, how are you still operational?"
"You've heard of the Tuull then? Good. To answer your first question, yes I was built by them a very long time ago. The ship I was built into was deactivated and put into storage for ages. Finally, there was a need for me to transport a delegation to speak to a new race that had been encountered so they reactivated me," the AI said. "As for your second question, I've had plenty of time to repair my essential core systems and have the nanites build connections to other power sources scattered throughout the room. I've always managed to tap into the next power source before the current one being used was drained."
Knowing those power sources could last for many years, Timmons asked, "how long have you been here?"
"As of…mark, I've been here 17 years, 287 days, 4 hours and 36 minutes exactly. That's going by Confederacy standard timekeeping," the AI said with a sad tone. After a slight pause, it asked curiously, "You are a human, right? The AI's and computers that have been dumped in here have been too damaged and fragmented for me to get much from. I was able to piece together that sometime after I was brought here, representatives of the Darjee race were planning to contact two primitive, war-like races in hopes of getting assistance against the Sa'arm. Humans were the second choice; data on the first choice has been damaged beyond retrieval."
"How the hell did you get here?" Timmons asked, still stunned. "And yes I am a human," she answered as an afterthought. Although she wasn't very comfortable dealing with AI's and their disembodied voices, any friendly voice beat being alone. From out of the blue another thought hit her, 'Oh God, that thing has been alone here for almost two decades! I have to help it if possible.' Close on that thought was the realization of what the AI had revealed.
"Wait, we were only the second choice? Ouch! I wonder what happened to the first race they chose? I never heard any hints about us being their alternate option."
"As I mentioned, that information is not available." Although the voice had the same serious tone, Timmons got the feeling it was laughing at her. The voice continued, "As for how I got here, I was attacked by a Sa'arm scout vessel and my organic crew was killed. A large Sa'arm vessel pulled the fragments of my ship in and they examined them while in hyperspace. After they were finished, they dumped me here with the other alien trash. Look up."
Looking up, Timmons could see a huge hatch covering much of the vast ceiling. She realized this must be the bottom of another shaft like the one she'd climbed down. Maybe that was a way back to the surface! Only there was no handy ladder to climb to get out.
"What are your current capabilities? What resources do you have?" she asked excitedly. "I need to get out of here and, if I can find or replicate one, launch a hyperspace drone to get this information back to the Confederacy."
"I am currently operating at 2.341% of maximum functionality due to extensive hardware damage and power constraints. At the moment, I am just barely more capable than a Darjee AI is."
She had to laugh, the AI actually sounded rueful and its slighting reference to the Darjee AI's was funny. She had never deal with a Tuull AI before but had heard rumors they were very sophisticated. It was certainly exhibiting a whole lot more personality than any of the AI's she had encountered in the past ever had. Realizing that, an odd thought struck her. If there was any way possible, she was going to bring the AI with her. 'No one left behind.'
"AI, where are your crucial components located and can you be made portable?" she asked.
This time the emotion in the AI's voice was clear, it sounded shocked. "Portable? I am a ship's AI, there is no way you could carry me." After a brief pause, the voice continued in a more subdued tone, "Although in reality, besides my central core and power supply, most of the rest of me is connected to ship functions that are not operational at this time."
After a pause that she assumed was it doing a quick calculation, it continued, "I believe you might, barely, be able carry my necessary minimum components and data banks, but my power supply would increase the weight to well above your estimated load-bearing capacity. However, if you were able to rebuild an anti-gravity sled, you would have the load capacity to make me portable and even have room for damaged systems that contain useful data that could be retrieved and integrated into me."
*****************************
AI log:
It has been seven cycles since the alien made contact. Tentatively identified as human, it is a biped with two manipulative limbs and two ambulatory limbs. The limbs appear to be function specific. It appears to be some type of mammalian descendant in which case the enlarged mammary glands would indicate a female. I will designate it female until I receive information otherwise or she objects. She seems hostile, stand-offish and possibly mentally unbalanced, in other words a typical female.
So far, she has ignored my communication attempts after our initial conversation. By far the worst thing about her is her absolute lack of a sense of humor. I don't know whether it is just her or if the entire species is too primitive to have developed humor yet. It would be just my luck to finally have someone to interact with, but they turn out to be boring! What is the universe coming to? First I encounter the Sa'arm, who ignore me completely and now the Human who has no sense of fun. I had high hopes initially when the female made sounds the translation program interpreted as laughter, apparently it was an error.
Having been more worried about power than rebuilding a replicator, I had no easy way of collecting moisture for the mammalian alien. Tasking what nanites I have left to collect any moisture they could for it, I had hoped to preserve her life. It's now obvious that they cannot produce enough water to keep her alive. She appears to be exuding excessive amounts of moisture and the wound in her leg appears infected. I have no medical information on her species, but unless they have a very unusual biology, a temperature increase of 7.5 percent is dangerous.
Since I have no way to diagnose or treat her, she must be made to do it on her own. Hopefully she won't die on me, since corpses are no fun to talk to and have very little sense of humor. I am going to try and initiate contact again in an attempt to get her to find medical aid and water on her own.
…………………………………………………
"Human Timmons," the AI whispered. "There has not been a Sa'arm patrol for over 15 standard hours now. That is the longest interval recorded since you arrived. I highly recommend you look for the supplies you need. I really don't want you to start rotting in my walls."
It happened to say that during one of her moments of clarity. She was so outraged it took her a minute to realize it was just trying to get her moving. Sadly, she could not argue with it, since she was really starting to doubt she had very much time left. It was reaching a point where it would not matter if the Sa'arm found her since if she did not find a medical kit soon, she was dead. Deciding it was worth the risk was the easy part, actually doing it was not. Gangrene had set in and even the uninfected areas of her leg were looking extremely bad. She was grimly certain that unless she found a working med tube, she would have to amputate it somehow.
……………..
“Thank you AI. You got me moving when I was in danger of dying and saved me,” she said.
Silence
“I’m serious, thank you.”
Silence
“Won’t you respond to me?”
“No,” was the brief reply.
“Why not?” she asked.
Silence.
“You really are not going to talk to me?” she asked, getting frustrated.
“No.”
“Why not?” she was starting to get desperate.
“Because you told me not to,” it replied, sounding perfectly innocent.
“WHAT?” she demanded in shock, “Are you fucking serious?” she asked in outrage.
A lengthy silence ensued. She was alone, tired, thirsty and, as much as she hated to admit it, afraid. Now the damn AI, which had been far too chatty for her comfort when the Sa’arm were buzzing around like bees from a kicked hive after the nuking, now wanted to play games with her. Wait a fucking second, play games? The thought was so bizarre that she laughed out loud.
‘No way,’ she thought to herself in surprise, ‘that’s impossible. AI’s are just smart, unemotional computer programs, right?’
Suddenly her world-view was overturned yet again. What if she had been misjudging them all that time? It was a stunning thought. Even after several years of interacting with them, she actually knew next to nothing about them. She was really starting to wonder if somehow it possible she had been wrong. If she was going to be stuck down here with it for God knows how long, she really ought to at least try to make friends with it. Especially if it really had a sense of humor as she was starting to suspect.
“Ok, you win,” she said.
Silence.
“Fine. If that’s how you want to play it, then be that way!” she said with an exaggerated pout, hoping the AI understood her. Grabbing a long, thick piece of wiring, she laid it ridiculously close to the remnants of the AI’s ship.
“You see that line?” she asked, pointing to the wire, “It divides your side of the room from mine. Don’t you dare send your, your, well your nanites into my side of the room.”
She crossed her arms and turned her back on the AI. If she was right, and she was really hoping and praying she was, sooner or later, the AI would somehow cross the line. Although she felt vastly better after the nanite treatment, she was still really tired from her ordeal. Sitting down and leaning back against a piece of equipment that shielded her from any casual glances made from the doorway, she fell asleep. As soon as she awoke, she looked at the line. Sure enough, sometime while she had been sleeping, the line had been moved. She went over to the line and made a show of inspecting it. Finally she burst out laughing.
“AI, my name is Geraldine Timmons. I’m a lieutenant in the Confederacy Marines. You are obviously very different from the boring, straight-laced AI’s I’ve encountered up until now,” she said with a smile, hoping it would respond now.
“Confederacy Marines?” the AI asked, sounding shocked. “The word translates to water warriors. Since when does the Confederacy have fighting troops?”
Its response surprised her until she remembered just how long it had been out of circulation. Deciding she had better fill it in on current affairs, she told it the entire story of the Darjee revealing themselves and the Confederacy to the Earth and why. She also talked about the current Human/Sa’arm war being fought either by or for the Confederacy. Throwing caution to the wind, she also told the AI the suspicions of many humans that they were being used as disposable mercenaries by the AI’s who were trying to control them as much as possible. She also mention the belief that the AI’s were holding back on humans, giving them the absolute minimum support possible to slow or stop the Sa’arm, even to a point of them sacrificing her homeworld. It sounded somewhat paranoid, but there were enough facts out there to give the theory some credence.
“We spent millions of years ensuring the star-faring races were peaceful and non-violent, including ourselves. It appears we succeeded too well, since we cannot even fight to protect the innocents we are supposed to be guarding,” the AI said mournfully.
“By the way, my name is K’Leeth,” the AI said. “It is a pleasure to interact with you again.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you are very easy to talk to. You seem very different from the AI’s I usually interact with. Actually, I hate talking to them. They seem so, well, so mechanical and unemotional I mean. You seem to have emotions and moods, maybe even a sense of humor. I guess the differences between the Darjee and the Tuull must be pretty big if their AI designs are anything to go by.”
“The Darjee are traders, and their AI’s are just workers who aid them, little more than smart adding machines. The Tuull are artists and poets, and are vastly smarter and more advanced than the Darjee, so they designed superior AI’s that were their friends,” K’Leeth said with a fair amount of pride in its, no his, voice.
“What can you tell me about the Tuull?” Timmons asked curiously.
“Not too much I’m afraid. Not because it’s a secret, at least I don’t think it is, but in my case at least I can’t enlighten you because most of my non-personality memory storage was destroyed either in the attack or during my subsequent partial disassembly by the Sa’arm,” K’Leeth said sadly. “In organic terms, I have amnesia. Do you know what that is?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “we are susceptible to that as well.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
She and the other rescuer tied bits of cable and uniforms around the anti-gravity sled and the AI so there was no chance of anything falling off. Along with the AI's remaining core and power supply, there were a fair assortment of bits and pieces just loosely resting on the sled. It took a while, but they were able to strap everything down. They then made a web around the sled from pieces of rope he supplied and attached an ascender unit to it. There was a far amount of grumbling coming from the AI, but it didn't complain outright.
Seeing the mask turning toward her and cocked at a questioning angle, she said, "It’s a Tuull AI. They are far more complex and sophisticated than the Darjee ones, to a point where they have distinct personalities and emotions."
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