Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

A touch reached her from the center of the meeting space. “Welcome Home, Master Dobbs.”

“Thank you, Guild Master Havelock,” she replied, trying to be reassured by the solid, unusually slow-moving presence that had been her overseer, as Verence had been her sponsor. “This isn’t what I was expecting… ”

“Me either, Dobbs.” Cohen was there too, shifting restlessly. She touched his outer self, hoping for reassurance, but he just rippled uneasily.

A spasm of fear ran through her. “No,” she whispered, although no one had said anything.

“You picked up a live one, Dobbs,” said Cohen.

“From where?” she demanded, so stunned she forgot who else was with her. “There’s been no hint of activity in the Solar system. The Freers are having their usual lack of success and Tully was smuggling binary board. Binary! “ She backed up reflexively until she reached the limit of the holding space. “How… ”

“How could you have missed it, is what you want to say, isn’t it?” cut in the Guild Master.

Dobbs squirmed before she remembered both her position and her dignity. Guild Master Havelock was known for his extreme lack of tact as much as for his extreme perception.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. “That is what I meant.”

He brushed against her, a gesture of consolation. “It came out of nowhere, Dobbs. Nobody

caught it, and we should have. It’s big, it’s very fast, and it’s remarkably well developed. It may even have been born on board the Pasadena . We don’t know.” He paused. “There is some speculation that it might have been created deliberately.”

The implications thronged around Dobbs. Live AIs were accidents of programming and circumstance. If someone could learn how to make them on command, it could be an almost unthinkable miracle. It could also be the greatest disaster since the first bombs fell in the Fast Burn.

Havelock drew back. “What we do know is that we have a new, sentient AI to deal with. Master Dobbs, you are our closest member. I’ve raised the Guild Masters. We’re going to open a line to you and send you in. Cohen will go with you to block records. You will both leave immediately.”

His words sent a shudder all the way through Dobbs. Open lines were used only in absolute emergencies. The constant exchange of packets and the perpetually open transmitter paths took signal delay down to a minimum, and it allowed a field member to keep in contact with Guild Hall. But open lines were highly visible. Cohen would have to position himself in The Gate’s transmitter processors. From there, he would constantly monitor the internal logs and external activities to make sure no one outside the network saw anything suspicious. While he was hiding her, she’d be combing through the Pasadena .

Dobbs rippled. “I’ve allowed myself ten hours. I only have eight left… ”

“That should be enough for initial contact. You just have to calm it down for now. Tell it there’s no danger. You know what to do.”

In theory, she felt herself bunching together. In theory only.

She forced herself to remain open. She was the closest member. The Live One had been discovered in the area she oversaw. That made it her responsibility.

It had to be a single presence that met the Live One. If it felt as though it was being surrounded or cut off from its open pathways, it would respond to the Fools as it would to a virus or a diagnostic program. Newborns had to be coaxed out. Trying to compel them cost lives and ruined networks.

That coaxing was now Dobbs’ responsibility. She had to find the Live One and convince it not only to listen to her, but to let whatever hold it had over the Pasadena go.

A memory sprang into place and Dobbs felt herself lurch sideways.

“The Live One may be immobilized,” she said. “It may even be dead. Rurik Lipinski… with my help,” she added, as the reality of her work sank in, “managed to neutralize the ‘virus.’ We haven’t had any problems for two days.” She stretched toward Havelock. He slid through her outer layers and absorbed the memory she held out. She stirred restlessly, trying not to reach out for Cohen.

“You may be correct,” Havelock said, with an uncharacteristic amount of surprise pushing at his voice. “You still need to perform a reconnaissance. If the Live One is there and in any way active, we have to deal with it. If this Houston has found a reliable way of neutralizing it… we need to know that too.”

“Yes, Sir.” Dobbs tried to steel herself but she felt as if she were unravelling from the inside out.

“I’ll be monitoring the line, Dobbs,” said Cohen, giving her a quick, reassuring touch. “It’s the Live One’s first time too, remember. Be gentle with it.”

“Ha-ha.” Dobbs held herself still. Cohen anchored a piece of the meeting space in her outer layers.

Then, he reached deep inside her and left her the memory of his wish for luck.

Dobbs let her awareness open around the line Cohen had given her. Down its length she was able to feel not just Guild Master Havelock, but two dozen other presences that she knew only from a distance. These were the Guild Masters and they were all waiting for her to carry that mission out.

Dobbs tried to organized her thoughts and only partially succeeded.

“Ready,” she said anyway.

The pathway out of the meeting space opened up again and Dobbs drove herself down it, playing the line out behind her like a kite string. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation to be aware of every inch of hardware she passed through. It was as if her inner self was streaming out to be held by twenty-four strangers. At the same time, it was reassuring. Their touch and presence was sure, steady. She was going into the unknown, but she was not going alone. The oldest and most experienced members of the Guild were with her.

The final jump brought her back into The Gate. Dobbs waited in the transmitter stack until she felt Cohen jump down behind her. They touched briefly before she shot back into the Pasadena .

She passed up the route back to her own body, hunting for an open channel into the Pasadena ’s cargo stores. She felt her way carefully. Almost without warning, a line opened in front of her and Dobbs jumped down it. She slid past the credit transfer and into the data hold…

… into a sensation of absolute stillness. Dobbs turned around. There was no movement, except in one tiny, localized area. Dobbs reached for the packet, touching it lightly so as not to disturb the signal.

It was a request for records from Resit to Pasadena .

All else was stillness. Cold Storage. The hold wasn’t even being monitored.

“I don’t understand… ” said Dobbs, knowing that her words and her confusion travelled down the line to the Guild Masters.

“Search the ship.” The words came from Havelock. “Go slowly, Dobbs. It may be hiding.”

“That’s not the only reason to go slow.” She sent back what reinforcing details she had of Lipinski’s road blocks.

There was thoughtful silence for a moment. “It can’t have gone far then. And if he has managed to… fragment it, you’ll find the traces.”

Dobbs eased herself forward. She stretched every portion of herself as far as the channels would let her and drifted. She gently brushed the moving information as it passed. All of it was ordinary stuff. Life support. Diagnostics. A navigation simulation Yerusha had left running.

She moved forward another few inches, straight into a cloud of white noise. Her senses screamed in confusion and tried to double back into her. Dobbs hauled herself into a tight ball and tried to calm down.

“Easy, Master Dobbs,” said Havelock. “It’s one of the Houston’s roadblocks. Look at it again. We’ve got to get past this.”