Марта Уэллс: Artificial Condition

I used the tools to open a port on the energy weapon in my right forearm. Doing it one-handed was tricky, but I’ve had to do worse. I used a patch cord to connect me to the console’s emergency power access and then the station hummed as it powered up. I couldn’t open the feed to control it directly, but I reached into the glittering projection and fished out the access for the Security Systems recorded storage. It had been wiped, but I’d been expecting that.

I started to check all the other storage, just in case it hadn’t been the company techs who had wiped SecSystem. The company wants everything recorded, work done in the feed, conversations, everything, so they can data mine it. A lot of that information is useless and gets deleted, but SecSystem has to hold on to it until the data mining bots can go over it, and so SecSystem often steals unused temporary storage space from other systems.

And there they were, files tucked into the MedSystem’s storage space for non-standard procedure downloads. (Presumably if MedSystem suddenly needed to download an emergency procedure for a patient, SecSystem would have whisked the files out and put them somewhere else, but sometimes it couldn’t act in time and chunks of recorded data would be lost. If you’re a SecUnit and you like your clients and want to keep something they’ve said or done (or that you’ve said or done) away from the company, this is one of the many ways you can make files accidentally disappear.)

SecSystem must have shifted files over right before the power failure. There was a lot of material and I skipped past random conversations and mining operations data to the end, then scrolled back a little. In the feed, two human techs had discussed an anomaly, some code that didn’t seem to be associated with any system, that had been uploaded on-site. They were trying to figure out where it had come from, and speculating, with a lot of profanity, that the installation had been bombed with malware. One tech said she was going to notify the supervisor, that they needed to sequester SecSystem, and the conversation ended there, in mid-word.

That was … not what I was expecting. I’d assumed a malfunction of my governor module had caused the massacre the company euphemistically referred to as an “incident.” But had I really taken out nine other SecUnits, plus all the bots and any armed humans who might have tried to stop me? I didn’t like my chances. If the other SecUnits had experienced the same malfunction, it had to come from an outside source.

I saved the conversation to my own storage, checked the other systems for stray files but found nothing, and unhooked myself from the console.

The security ready room had been stripped to the bone. But there were other places I could check. I pushed away from the console.

As I went through the other door, I noticed the impact points in the wall opposite, the stains on the floor. Someone—something capable of taking a high degree of injury had made a last stand here, trying to defend the control center. Maybe not all the SecUnits had been affected.

In the corridor near the living quarters, I found the other ready room, the one for the ComfortUnits.

Inside were four shapes that were clearly cubicles, but smaller. Their doors stood open, the plastic beds inside empty. In the corner there was space for a recycler, but no weapons lockers, and the storage cabinets were all different.

I stood in the center of the room. The cubicles for the murderbots had been closed, not in use. Which meant none of the SecUnits had been damaged and all had been either out on patrol, on guard, or in the ready room, probably standing around pretending not to stare at each other. But the cubicles for the sexbots were open, which meant they had been inside when the emergency occurred and the power shut off. If the power is off, you can manually open a cubicle from the inside, but it won’t shut again.

It meant they had deployed during the “incident.”

I used the energy weapon in my arm again to power the first cubicle’s emergency data storage. I didn’t have anywhere near the energy needed to get the whole thing powered up, but the data storage box is for holding error and shutdown information if something goes wrong during a repair. (There are a lot of other things you can do with it if you’ve hacked your governor module, like use it to temporarily store your media so the human techs won’t find it.) SecSystem might have used it before its catastrophic failure.

It had been used. But by the ComfortUnits, to download their data during the incident.

It was patchy and hard to put together, until I realized the ComfortUnits had been communicating with each other.

I stood there for five hours and twenty-three minutes, putting the data fragments together.

There had been a code download from another mining installation for the ComfortUnits, supposedly a patch purchased from a third party ComfortUnit supplier. The ComfortUnits had all flagged it as non-standard and needing review by SecSystem and the human systems analyst, but the techs who had downloaded it ordered them to apply it. It turned out to be well-disguised malware. It hadn’t affected the ComfortUnits, but had used their feeds to jump to SecSystem and infect it. SecSystem had infected the SecUnits, bots, and drones, and everything capable of independent motion in the installation had lost its mind.

In between the running and shooting and the humans screaming in the background, the ComfortUnits had managed to analyze the malware and discover it was supposed to jump from them to the hauler bots and shut them down. This would disrupt operations so the other mining installation could get their shipment to the cargo transport first. This had been a sabotage attempt, not a mass murder. But a mass murder was what was happening.

The humans had managed to get an alert out to the port, but it was clear help would not arrive in time. The ComfortUnits noted that the SecUnits were not acting in concert, and were also attacking each other, while the bots randomly smashed into anything that moved. The ComfortUnits had decided that taking SecSystem back to factory default via its manual interface was their best option.

ComfortUnits are more physically powerful than a human, but not a SecUnit or bot. They had no inbuilt weapons, and while they could pick up a projectile or energy weapon and use it, they had no education modules on how the weapons worked. They could pick one up, try to aim it, pull the trigger, and hope the safety wasn’t engaged.

One by one the file downloads had stopped. One had signaled that it would try to decoy SecUnit attention away from the others, and three acknowledged. One had heard screams from the control center and diverted there to try to save the humans trapped inside, and two acknowledged. One had stayed at the entrance to a corridor to try to buy time to reach SecSystem, and one acknowledged. One reported reaching SecSystem, then nothing.

I caught a low power warning from my own system and realized how long I had been here. I unhooked myself from the cubicle and left the room. I bumped into the edge of the doorway and the wall.

There must have been some off-the-books arrangement, maybe the installation who supplied the malware paid for the damages and the bonds, which might have been such a large amount that the installation had then failed and ceased operation. Maybe the company thought that was punishment enough.

I made my way back to the tube, climbed inside, and started a recharge cycle. Once I had enough capacity, I went back to episode 206 of Sanctuary Moon .

The tube ran out of power and died short of the access, but fortunately I was back up to 97 percent capacity by that time. I got out and ran the rest of the way. Running isn’t tiring for me the way it is for a human, but I reached the sealed access fifty-eight minutes later than I would have on the tube.