NEW:Ghost in the Machine-VOY/TOS NC17 m/m 2/5
Killashdra
SEE DISCLAIMER IN PART 1.
I can't seem to stop thinking about the thing.
I should've destroyed it when Harry found it a week
ago. Instead I keep carrying it around with me,
transferring it from pocket to pocket, like some illicit
secret. Thinking about it makes me feel like a little kid
who's broken a lamp and swept the pieces under the rug.
We had a staff meeting today, and when I looked at the
captain, I caught myself thinking, 'What would she say if
she knew?'
I knew then I was in trouble.
The first hologram I ever wrote was this sweet thing
named Lisa. She was a collaboration with my roommate,
sophomore year. Before that I had done some set design,
and nonspeaking characters, but that was the first time I
ever wrote my own AI. After Lisa, I was hooked.
I think I would have gone into sims full time, but
Daddy wanted his boy to be a pilot. How many times I
wished I could just mess up, just prove I wasn't any good
at it. Problem was, I *was* good at it--and like I said,
I'm a terrible liar. So, a pilot I became. And in the end
I piloted myself right into a dishonorable discharge, and
eventually into a jail cell.
Well, that's irony for you. Stay tuned, folks. I've
got a million of 'em.
At the Academy I would hang out down at the sim lab
and work on any project they'd let me, even though it often
meant I didn't sleep. In my senior year I won a Lansing
award for character design. I never did tell my father
about that one.
Sandrine's has become a vital part of life on Voyager-
-but I know that if it were gone tomorrow, no one would
shed a tear. Except me, of course. In a way, those
'people' are my children.
There's something about writing a real AI that's
highly addictive, and highly personal. When you've written
a really good hologram, it breathes, it feels, it *lives.*
You put your soul into it and when it's done, it's a part
of you. The first time you run that sim, and interact with
it, it's like seeing your newborn child. I've been known
to get teary-eyed.
See, the problem is, I never ran this one.
It was probably the most intricate and difficult
programming job I ever did, and I never got to see the
results. That was part of the deal. I got paid a lot of
money to write it, and in return I put everything I had
into it, and kept my promises. I never breathed a word to
anyone. I coded the final runtime so only one person would
ever be able to view it; the man who had hired me to write
the thing. The temptation to keep a copy for myself was
almost overwhelming--but in the end, I couldn't bring
myself to do it. Maybe it was because I couldn't bear to
intrude on the man's pain.
It was that Lansing I'd won that brought him to my
door. He needed the best, he said. At the time, that was
me--though I was still a cadet, and not yet twenty. We sat
in my tiny living room and talked for three hours, while he
sized me up. At last, when I had passed some test of his,
he told me what he wanted.
Right away I knew I had to take a shot at it. Maybe
it was the way he sounded when he described the sim he
wanted me to write. He wouldn't look directly at me, but I
could hear the pain in his voice in spite of his control,
could see how hard it was for him. I think coming to me
was maybe the most difficult thing he'd ever done. I
didn't want to let him down.
He named a figure, and I said I'd do it. Even at that
age my vices tended to be expensive ones; I was forever
spending my living allowance on better computers, newer
extrapolation modules. But I'd have done it for less--
heck, I probably would've done it for nothing. It was the
challenge of a lifetime.
After that first time he didn't come in person any
more. I sent him progress reports, and he sent me the
things I asked for, usually without comment: video files,
log entries, medical records. He worked on the
determination matrices himself, and when he sent them back
to me, I knew that this AI would be like no other I had
ever seen. I took everything he gave me and built it into
my newest character generator, and when I ran the betas
they were everything I'd hoped for, and more.
I'll admit I had some doubts, then, about the morality
of what I was doing. It was the only time I ever wrote a
sim based on a real person--and I knew from the betas that
I had done my job very well. In the end I decided that I
would leave the philosophical considerations to the man who
had hired me, and try to put my conscience to rest.
I certainly wouldn't have done it for anyone else.
When it was finished the man came to me, saying
little, paying me in cash. He left with the disk and for
days afterward I couldn't stop thinking about him. I
wanted so badly to know that the work I'd done had brought
him some peace. But I had the most awful feeling of
premonition.
Then, about two weeks later, I got this package. It
was delivered to my box at the student union, and it had no
return address on it. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it
was.
I opened the thing up, but there was no note inside,
no explanation. Just the disk. I recognized the media
brand; it was the original.
He'd sent it back to me.
For a while I wondered about it, tried to figure out
what it meant. We'd worked on the thing for half a year.
He'd spend a small fortune on it. If he'd been unhappy
with my work, why wouldn't he say that? I might have been
able to fix the problem.
But the thing is, I knew that wasn't it. I *knew*
that sim was the best AI I'd ever written... maybe the best
ever written, period. I supposed it was possible that he'd
decided the whole thing was just a bad idea in the first
place. But then why send it back to me? I'd built three
hardcore copy protection safeties into the program--there
was no way anyone could make a reproduction. Why not just
destroy the thing?
The only thing I could think is that he'd had a change
of heart about the whole project, but that when push came
to shove, he couldn't bear to wipe the file entirely.
I toyed with the idea of destroying it myself. Or
playing it. God, I almost went crazy with curiosity,
wanting to see my creation with my own eyes. It wouldn't
hurt anyone, I told myself. No one would ever know.
But I guess I couldn't quite face that thought either,
because in the end I just sealed the disk in a protective
case and put it out of my mind. Until Harry dug it out of
that box last week, I hadn't laid eyes on it in years.
And now I can't stop thinking about it.
It's driving me crazy. I'm distracted all the time,
can't keep my mind on work. Today, skirting a tricky
little nebula, I forgot to set the compensators, and almost
flew us right into an ionized boralium cloud. Thank god I
recovered before the captain noticed; she would have reamed
me a new one for sure.
I really need to do something to get my mind off this
thing, and I guess there's only two choices. I could
destroy it, like I should have done years ago. Or... I
could run it.
Is it rationalization to think that maybe that's what
he wanted me to do? Maybe he sent it to me because, in
some strange way, he needed a witness for what he'd done?
Back then I didn't see that possibility, because back then
I didn't understand what guilt can do to a man. I didn't
realize how hard it is to bear one's crimes in secrecy.
Back then I didn't know firsthand how powerful the
need for confession can be.
Two choices. But I guess there's really only one
choice, because I'm honest enough to know that there's no
way I'll ever be able to destroy the thing without running
it first. No more than he could. I guess in a way we were
both possessed by the same demon.
And now, after all these years, it's demanding to be let
out.
(end part 2)