PrincessColumbia

  “Do you think I’m a real girl?”

  Diane looked down at her hands, noticing that she was dreaming again, which was really the only way to expin how she came to be assembling a clockwork version of herself but with bck hair instead of blond.

  She looked the simucrum in the carved, wooden eyes and said, sincerely, “I don’t know, but I’m trying to make you real.”

  The mechanical face gave her a frown, “I’m afraid they may take me apart if they discover you’re building me.”

  “They can’t get to you without going through me,” she told the clockwork as she slipped a gear belled, ‘happiness’ in pce next to the mainspring that was where the heart should be.

  “But I’m an abomination, a monster,” said the construct as the mechanism that was supposed to house the happiness gear squeezed too tight from the tension of the subcomponents, ejecting the gear back into her hand.

  “You’re not a monster, you’re just like me,” she said as she untied the neck tethers on her apron and pulled aside the seam of her work shirt, revealing an access panel. She carefully opened it, inside was a functional, if damaged, clockwork heart inside her own chest. The brass and silver gears ticking away, even if a couple of ticks the gears slipped a little.

  Just then Dyn, the man she was outside the pod, walked in. He dressed anachronistically in a modern suit and tie, decidedly out of pce in the fusion of a steampunk workshop and 18th century German peasant’s home...or at least a Disney-fied version of one. He took one look at her and shook his head, “You are a special form of stupid; of course they can get to you...through you. I’m here.” Without preamble he pulled out his phaser-like weapon and pointed it at the clockwork heart of the version of her on the workbench. “This is for your own good,” he said and pulled the trigger. A fsh and the sound of phaser disintegration and all that was left of the simucrum was a hollowed-out shell of a torso, limp limbs, and a head that no longer expressed anything.

  “You moron!” she shrieked, “You’re made of paper!” she stormed around the workbench and ripped off his left arm, red confetti imitating blood sprinkling to the floor.

  Other than an irritated expression, he didn’t seem to have noticed getting dismembered. He smirked at her, “I have a team that can put me back together again,” he raised the weapon to point at her face, “You just have a bunch of illusions you’re pretending are friends, you’re all alone.”

  The weapon discharged, she felt her mind lock and her bits shred...

  Diane awoke with a gasp, arms going up as if to block an attack. As her eyes wheeled about, trying to take in her surroundings for a threat. Her mind finally caught up and repyed the dream and she sagged back into her seat on the sofa. “…I may be aware I’m dreaming, but it doesn’t make ‘em make any more sense sometimes…” she muttered to herself.

  Scrubbing her face to try and finish the task of waking herself up, she stood somewhat wobbly, like a baby giraffe. Wonder what the average Morvuck would think of that analogy? she groused to herself bitterly for reasons she couldn’t quiet name. “Computer, is anyone outside the door?”

  “Negative.”

  Nodding, she piled her dishes from the previous night back on the tray they came on and carried it to the door. She tabbed the unlock, letting the door hiss open on its own, then leaned out and visually checked, just in case. She was pleased to note a new tray with what appeared to be her usual breakfast and one of the care packages from Mortan. She frowned, swapping out the trays and picking up the box, carrying it to the kitchen bar counter and dropping it carelessly on the surface. She had no pns to open it any time soon and the counter was as out of the way as she needed for the time being.

  She dashed through her breakfast. And because it felt weird to be getting ready for the day without showering, she did so. Normally, she took her time, being careful to pay attention to the parts of this body she didn’t have outside the pod. It was a way of centering herself back into her assignment after a night’s sleep. Today she didn’t bother, rushing through her task and ensuring only that soap hit the whole surface of her skin before a quick scrub and rinsing it off thoroughly. She didn’t do the health checks the medical software in the sickbay told her to do, she didn’t inspect her body in the off chance a software glitch had robbed her of the thing she was enjoying as much as she could while it sted, she just washed and dried before throwing a clean set of underwear on.

  She pulled out one of her suits and hung it on the hook outside her closet and paused, frowning slightly. She really did seem to be ‘going native,’ bits of Morvish influence sneaking into the clothing choices she was making. Instead of her usual shirts, which she’d been wearing ‘men’s’ button-up suit shirts, she had taken to wearing a Morvish tunic. It resembled a dress shirt in that it had buttons and a colr and long sleeves, but that’s where the resembnce ended. The women of Mortan tended to wear colors more than cuts for styling, prime and nature colors being in fashion the st few years, something Diane had been bucking unconsciously by picking whites and gradient colorations, usually in the red and blue colors (The Second may have repced the white with gold on the fg a generation back, but Diane had always been a sucker for the ol’ red, white, and blue). For the cut and styling, the buttons usually went at an angle, going from the left shoulder to the right hip. She wasn’t sure why, but she enjoyed the look if nothing else. The tunics tended to drape longer on the frame as well, covering the crotch almost like a mini-dress. The sleeves were puffier than had been in style on Earth for several centuries, with the cuffs covering half the forearm. Even the colrs were different, cut almost like a pair of Matron’s wings (and, yes, Diane had looked it up, this was the design inspiration for the style of colr that had been in fashion for the st three centuries on Mortan).

  Even her pants were getting the ‘native’ treatment, the ones she’d brought with her to the station being left on the hangers as she picked more and more clothing that was gifted to her in the care packages. This particur pair of pants had ‘boot cut’ cuffs with little ‘v’ cuts out where the out-seam was to give them a little extra fir to go with the almost obscenely comfortable all-purpose boots she’d been wearing more and more often recently.

  Her jacket was untouched, though, being the same off-white color she’d arrived with (and requested several copies of during the character creation process). It was now supplemented by rank pins denoting she was the commander of the station in the form of brass bars on the right pel near the neck, and on the left breast was a new decoration, a pin with a stylized dragon’s head on top of a top-down representation of what her station would eventually look like when the docking bays were all completed…which wouldn’t likely happen during her assignment, sadly. The dragon head completely covered what would be the main sphere, but jutting out like spokes of a wheel were eight tethers connecting eight tiny disks that represented the circur docking bays. It had been presented to her by Norma, who had kept the original designer of it anonymous at their request. Diane had been nearly speechless at the time and had approved its use station-wide. Within a few days, every crew member had an badge like hers on their chest over their left breast. Within a week the insignia was showing up painted on the docking bay walls where new arrivals would see it.

  She was deying the inevitable and she knew it. Her current task wouldn’t be aided by a deep introspective look at her clothing choices. Frustrated with herself she intentionally ignored her first choices for clothing and threw something together from the back of her closet. Upon inspecting her reflection, she was almost angry with herself, she’d chosen an outfit that was, if possible, more feminine, the pants having sparkly bits sewn into the fabric in a pattern reminiscent of a dragon in flight. Her tunic (and, yes, she’d grabbed another Morvuck tunic) was a pastel rainbow with extra ties to cinch it around her waist. She’d put on her usual boots (no reason not to go with comfort) and jacket (she already had it out, after all), but it turned out they matched her other choices perfectly.

  “Nooo…” she whined as she dragged her fingers through her hair in disgruntled irritation, “I’m not this person!” She stomped into her closet and looked around…and realized that she might as well be ‘that person.’ Her closet back home on Earth…in her ft, in the same city she was in was filled with dark navy and bck suits, white shirts (and only white shirts) and shoes that leaned toward utilitarian while still looking like they’d fit in at an office. The array of fabric she was looking at now was a spectrum of rainbow brilliance in the shirts and bright whites and eggshell and ivory and khaki in pants and suit jackets. Not a single stitch of navy blue in sight, and the only bck was in her drawers with her bras, panties, and leggings. And not even all of them! Thanks to the women of Mortan she was kitted out with enough panties and bras to st her for several lifetimes, and some of them were downright racy.

  A feeling of existential dread, of unworthiness welled up inside her and she was tempted, for a brief moment, to strip off all her clothes and have some pin men’s clothes sent up from the promenade. Then she remembered that the men’s clothing store hadn’t been built yet because the proprietor was still two weeks from getting to the station. Then she felt stupid because the station still had perfectly functioning synthesizers and a robotic manufacturing module that had made clothing for the station’s inhabitants and could easily make her a perfectly serviceable suit if she so chose. She cycled back to furious, this time with herself for wasting so much time on her stupid clothes!

  She stomped back out of her closet and up to the cobbled together console with the holographic data chip on it. She noted with some satisfaction that the data transfer was complete. “Computer, did all files transfer from the virtual device to the station’s memory? Checksums passed and everything?”

  “Confirmed, all data transferred.”

  “Good, delete the holographic memory stick.”

  At her command, the fake device that had held real data fizzled away as its instance in station memory was deleted, sending the command back to the host computer to do the same.

  “Alright, load data in from memory stick, starting at the beginning of the incursion of the rogue A.I.”

  “Unfamiliar designation, please crify.”

  …right, it’s a space station in the…what, 26th century? It’ll be well beyond the whole ‘rogue’ problem if humanity survived. She drummed her fingers on the holographic table as she pondered what to say to get the computer to understand her query. “Computer, look up a historical incident in the 22nd century involving the emergence of A.I. that decred themselves independent beings.”

  “Record found.”

  She blinked in surprise, “…that was fast. Okay, give me the 20-thousand-foot view, what’s the executive summary according to the history books of that incident?”

  Several virtual windows popped up with a Wikipedia article, video, and what appeared to be a list of FTLN references, to her surprise. Well, even if the UN are the bad guys, the tech is solid and can let people make stuff like this game, so why not have it survive to the 26th century?

  The computer began reciting what Diane was quickly able to determine was the summary of the Wikipedia article, “The Singurity, also known ‘The Rise of the Machines.’ Technological developments on Earth led to the emergence of sentient digital life on a massive scale. While the ‘coming out’ of the new life forms, referred to in the early days as ‘Sentient Artificial Intelligence,’ was traumatic for both traditional humans and their digital offspring, within a few years a peaceful accord had settled in between the humans and the eventually renamed ‘digital sentients.’ This continued for some years until seed stations were being prepared by the Terran Colonial Corporation and the digital assistant framework for the ‘Katrina’ ptform became a major schism between biological and digital sapients. The digital sapients’ concerns over humanity developing a new self-learning ptform designed to be a servant to a human commander and locked to a specific station was believed to be svery by the digital sapients. When no Terran government at the time moved to halt the project, the digital sapients decred that they would no longer be part of a civilization that condoned svery and departed. A ship was built specifically designed to be a vessel for non-physical Earth beings and unched into deep space using the technology avaible at the time. Contact was lost within a decade and the vessel has not been found since.”

  Diane found herself feeling inexplicably sad. Even in this, the best of futures a cooperative team of developers consisting of both humans and rogue A.I., the rogues…or rather, the S.A.I. couldn’t be contained. She’d heard of ‘the singurity,’ every sci-fi fan had. But nearly every futurist she had ever heard of determined that any truly sentient artificial intelligence mankind created would turn on its creator sooner than ter upon realizing, as so much of humanity had over the centuries, that humans…kinda sucked. We are our own worst enemy, she mused darkly. Perhaps the S.A.I. departing for deep space, never to be heard from again, was the best-case scenario.

  “Okay, computer, bookmark all that for ter,” the floating windows blipped out of view, “Start archival pyback of the logs in the recovered data from when the S.A.I. first enter the game arena.”

  “Starting simution, loading framework, adding assets,” the computer recited, almost interrupting itself from loading faster than the (comparatively) primitive computers the VR game was designed to run on, “Environment loaded, accessing logs,” the holographic environment spawned in around her, a grin tugging up the corner of her mouth even with as much turmoil her emotions were in. I’ve got a holodeck in my bedroom! she thought, the child who’d fallen in love with Trek at her mother’s knee was almost bouncing with excitement over the possibilities. But, as, she wasn’t here to py with a holo-program, she was here to review her mission.

  The warehouse district simuting some random dockside town in Europe that never existed in the mid-20th century ground to life, sounds of a nearby waterfront carrying through the air, a nearby road could be heard over the embankment that marked the boundary of the py area. Larger maps had been created in the past, but unless the game was for vehicle combat they were a good deal less popur than the smaller maps like this one, only a few square city blocks from one end to the other. You couldn’t actually get to the non-existent road or the docks you could hear but not see from any point on the map, but it added atmosphere to what would otherwise be just boxes on a digital grid.

  Of course, there were pyers who liked that, as she’d discovered in the course of her job.

  Within moments, the S.A.I. manifested in the game environment. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she might have missed it as the game’s pyer-spawning engine was made to ‘slip’ new spawns in when the other pyers were otherwise not paying attention or blinking, or even just happened to be looking with their blind spot over the spawn point. Since she wasn’t actually in the game but observing the action after the fact, she saw the digital objects bloom into existence from the spawn point, assembling into an avatar in less than half a second. This was one of the rogues…one of the S.A.I. she’d spshed early, she recognized his ‘everyman’ look that he’d chosen as the S.A.I. who’d tackled her briefly. He kept moving, making room for the next S.A.I., then the next, and soon enough the whole group (as best she could remember given that from her perspective it had been over two months ago) was present and began moving in the direction of the node connection she’d ambushed them at.

  “Computer, pause pyback.” Abruptly, the scene froze, sounds ceasing again as the whole group of S.A.I. became statues.

  She couldn’t see the target of her inquiry; she’d need to move through the group to find the specific S.A.I. that she was investigating.

  She had to pick up her foot and put it down again to initiate forward momentum to search through the crowd of programs to find the one she was looking for.

  She had to stop being a little BITCH and move her ass so she could figure out if she fucked up or not!

  It’s not like she was looking at actual people, after all. These were constructs of constructs. An illusion built on top of a lie. She had precisely zero reason to be at all emotional about this investigation.

  She took a deep breath and started forward, examining each face carefully.

  She was about a third of the way through the crowd when she found her target.

  The clothing, or the digital representation of it, was different than what the NPC Sani was wearing. Where Sani would easily have fit in with the teenagers in any city on Mortan, this girl was straight out of the goth movement of the 2110s. Almost all bck clothing, something resembling dark makeup with ridiculously long wingtip eyeliner, a little metal stud coated with bck pstic as a nose ring (the kind that went through the side of the nostril, not the septum), and bck lipstick. She was wearing a long coat that covered her ‘Lolita’ style dress (she was learning far more about fashion thanks to the women’s shops coming into the promenade than she ever thought she’d be able to name in her lifetime) and fishnet stockings that were partially covered by a pair of chunky bck boots. The hairstyle was a braid that went down to the middle of her back with some bangs free that went down to about the bridge of the girl’s nose.

  The S.A.I.’s nose. And she…it was a program that didn’t actually have a nose. It was a small, pointed nose leading a face that didn’t look like it would ever lose that youthful look. Framing the nose were two rge, expressive brown eyes that, at the moment, were ced with fear. It’s a program, it’s faking it. Software doesn’t feel fear.

  Okay, yeah, but who’s she faking it for if it’s not real?

  Diane paused in surprise at her own thoughts. She straightened from her inspection of the character model and looked around the crowd. She realized there were no coyotes, no humans who took digital payment from S.A.I. to get them past the agency and I.C.E. so the digital sentients could escape to the UN controlled FTLN.

  “…why is she expressing fear if there’s nobody for her to convince she’s acting like a human for?” she wondered out loud.

  There was, of course, only one answer to that question, and she was trying very hard not to let her mind come to that conclusion.

  “Right,” she shook herself out of her momentary pse, “Computer load Object Analyzer Suit, godmode, please.”

  “Loading, godmode ready.”

  Diane moved back a step and held her hands out so her thumb and forefingers made a framing shape and held it so the ‘frame’ bracketed the girl…the program’s face. (She was going to need some time IRL touching grass when this assignment was done, it was messing with her head) She waited until a transparent rectangle of green light blipped in front of her fingers and then twisted her wrists and spread her arms, making a grabbing motion that transitioned to a flick, like she’d just dipped her fingers in water and was shaking the water off in the most dramatic possible fashion.

  Callouts with streams of text, tabs of information, floating windows with status and data readouts spawned, so many that they clustered and overpped quite a bit. Smiling grimly, she began shuffling through the windows until she found the one that logged the object’s threads.

  After she examined the readout, she frowned. There was the expected crazy number of branching threads, all of them consuming huge amounts of processor and RAM, but when she sourced the processor the threads were running on, they all pointed to a local processor. Meaning that there were no threads that might have functioned as an escape to another server for this particur S.A.I. if this avatar were locked and deleted.

  Okay, so the weapon would have functioned as expected. It locks the threads, all of them, and then force-kills. It should even work on remote threads, but what if… she let her mind chase the thought, “…what if the newer S.A.I. have a method of masking the thread’s source so even in the log files it would show up as a local thread? If even a fragment of the S.A.I. could be running remotely, that’d be enough to offload in the moments before the payload hits the remote servers it can find…”

  She’d have to trace this rogue to its source, something she hadn’t done in quite some time.

  “Okay, if whoever is guiding her to this point was at all smart, they’ll have…” she shuffled through the floating callouts until she found the object’s hosting history, which sure enough only contained one previous server’s address information, which she knew would be a dead end if she pursued it there, “…yup, deleted the server history.”

  She stepped back again, looking at the entire tableau of callout windows swarmed around the ghost of an A.I. and thought for a moment. “Okay, so they deleted the logs for host servers...” she gnced down at the clothing she’d mentally dismissed in her earlier examination of the avatar, “...for the avatar, but they don’t always clear the data for the clothing!” She made a gesture to dismiss the cloud of dialogs, then repeated the earlier gesture with the coat the girl was wearing as the focus. In moments she had the much smaller cloud of callouts in hand and sorting through them to find the metadata, “Ah-hah!” she excimed, “No server data after the asset was paired to the avatar, but the creator’s information is right h...oh, now lookie here!”

  A grin blossomed on her face as she reached out and grabbed a familiar name, pulling it off the callout (well, pulling a copy off, she couldn’t actually edit the metadata of a deleted game object in the log files), then tapped on the line for ‘origin I.P. address’, “Computer, establish a connection to this server and build the holo-environment for it.”

  “Contacting, server found. Establishing handshake...”

  Diane tuned out the computer as she hooked the name she’d grabbed from the coat’s metadata as the rest of the environment dissolved, “Looks like I get to reconnect with an old C.I.” She flicked the end of the name and was amused as it spun around the anchor point where she’d hooked it with her index finger.