Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"Thales, please monitor the positronic transfer," Derec said.

"Yes, Derec," the RI replied.

"Alignment ready," Rana said.

"Begin."

Several things happened at once. All the screens on Derec's board showed sudden changes, most especially the three showing activity in the receptor brain. Where there had been the trace readings of a functioning but unprogrammed positronic net, now the scales indicated a rapidly adapting set of personality algorithms, basic memory notation, and program parameters. Within less than two minutes, the receiving positronic brain became Bogard.

And the trouble started.

"Derec," Thales said, "there is a rejection algorithm working."

"What?"

"The receptor is rejecting the contents. It carries an unassimilable paradox."

Now Derec saw it: a discontinuity starting in the memory pathways and spreading into the personality. The two aspects were drifting out of sync with each other. The receptor brain was trying to refuse the information. Positronic brains carried certain self-protects in their initial make-up which prevented them being programmed in any way that conflicted with the Three Laws.

"How about the memory dump?"

"Reception and encoding nominal. "

"Bypass the personality sectors," Derec told Rana.

Rana nodded, her fingers dancing on her console. Gradually, the discontinuity flattened out and the transfer proceeded. By circumventing that part of the positronic brain which manifested as a robot's personality, the information could now load as simple data.

"Once it's all transferred," Derec said, "then we'll try adding the rest."

Rana frowned, but continued working. "Set and working. This will take some time-maybe ten minutes. Fifteen."

"Good." Derec ran a hand over his face, feeling all the weariness from the day. Had it all happened in less than five days? Yes, and he had been working eighteen out of every twenty-four hours since the Incident. Even so, he knew he should not be this tired. Then again, arguing with Ariel always drained him.

"Was that coffee I saw?" he asked.

"Absolutely," Rana replied.

"I'll be right back."

He wanted to go upstairs and stretch out on the cot, but he walked into the cafeteria instead and poured a cup of coffee. The past few days seemed to both contract and expand in his memory, at once too short a time and too long. He was worn from the distorted time sense.

But he was excited, too. He felt close to an answer. Maybe not the answer, but an important one just the same, and once he had a handle on one relevant fact the rest could be dragged out into the open through sheer persistence.

Unfortunately, right now he could make no sense of anything he had learned.

The com chimed. Derec wandered toward it, intending only to hear who it was.

"Mr. Avery, this is Tathis Kedder. From Union Station? I uh-"

Derec stepped up to the com and pressed ACCEPT. "I'm here, Mr. Kedder. How can I help you?"

"Well, I'm not sure." Kedder laughed nervously. "I was going over some old logs and, um… there are some inconsistencies in the way the RI was reporting certain things that, well, in light of everything else that's happened, they made me wonder."

"What sort of inconsistencies?"

"I'd, uh, rather not discuss it over a comline."

"I see. Where would you like to talk, then?"

"My apartment? Tomorrow afternoon?"

"Send the address. I'll be there, Mr. Kedder."

"Thank you, Mr. Avery. I, uh, I appreciate this."

The connection broke and Derec grunted. What was this all about now? Reminded, he touched the reconnect for Joler Hammis. The line still came up UNAVAILABLE.

"How come Kedder isn't looking for new work?" he wondered aloud. "Maybe he is."

"Derec," Rana called from the main lab. "I need to show you this."

Derec returned to the lab. Rana was leaning over a workstation.

"Those flakes you gave me the other night? Look." She pointed to one of the screens.

The image showed a six-sided lattice structure. The pattern spread over the entire screen… except in three places, where the hexagonal form splintered around an octahedron.

"What…?" Derec said.

"The vertices," Rana said, "are oxygen atoms. They're bonding aluminum atoms throughout most of the matrix except here-" she pointed to the octagonal forms "-where they're bonding faujasite analogs."

"Analogs… you mean they're synthetic. "

"As far as I can tell, the whole thing is synthetic. What I mean is, the faujasite molecules are composed of similar components, except instead of electrons in the constituent atoms, these have positrons."

Derec felt his scalp ripple. "Positrons. You're telling me this is a brain construct?"

"It's a construct, but I wouldn't call it a brain. The basic shape is a zeolite."

"Zeolites… filters, industrial filters." Derec shook his head. "Huh?"

"I said the basic shape," Rana explained. "Those faujasite analogs have one other component that I don't recognize. The positrons are interacting with the aluminum atoms and transferring themselves like an electrical current from octahedron to octahedron. The aluminum ends up 'borrowing' electrons from the oxygen atoms. The resultant oxide sort of follows the current, passing the positrons along. No normal atom wants to keep the positron, so it just travels."

"Ending up where?"

"It's looking for another positronic matrix."

"Why?"

Rana shrugged.

Derec studied the screen. "Industrial filters… zeolites are used in food processors, for reconstituting certain molecules into different combinations… they're used in gas exchangers. All they're really designed to do is pass other molecules and recombine them or strip out electrons to make isotopes. What would this be used for?" He chewed his lip. "This is incomplete, isn't it? Were there any other atoms?"

"A few scattered ions, nothing coherent."

"Like what?"

"Platinum, a few pyroxenes, stray carbons…" Rana's voice trailed off.

Derec looked at her. "And?" he prodded.

"Well, there were a few large fragments of long chain carbon atoms-I can't swear to it, but it looked like a fullerene."

"A buckyball?"

"No, buckytubes."

"Superconducting?"

"There wasn't enough of one left to test, but that would be my bet."

"Buckytubes… with positrons instead of electrons?"

"No, but the fragmenting looked like it had occurred at that level, like the binding electron shells had been disrupted."

"As if a positron had been passed through it?"

Again, she shrugged, but now there was a small grin on her face.

"So what we're looking at," Derec mused, "is a material designed to find and link with a positronic matrix and pass material into that matrix. A conduit that-what?-attaches parasitically and sets up a single point feedback loop?"

"Fullerenes grow under the right circumstances. If this material permeated the RI"

"There'd be no way to tell without examining the RI itself." Derec shuddered. "Clever. Somebody has created what amounts to a positronic parasite."

"But all it could do would be to pass positrons into the system. The charges are opposite for anything else and if it's a positronic matrix, then it's still functioning as its own brain."

"Unless this thing can be used to feed it new information."

"What kind?" Rana asked.

"Perceptions?"

Rana's eyes widened. "The game."

Derec nodded. "The RI took itself off-line during the assault to playa game. The game was loaded into the system to begin with, but it knew it was a game."

"But if it came through a secondary matrix that substituted one set of sensory parameters for another-"

"The RI wouldn't be able to tell which one was reality. At least not right away. It might have reset itself."