Элизабет Бир - Machine

What concerned me the most were the places where boughs had cracked under the mass of all that silicon. Some big branches had already snapped, and either hung suspended by shreds of bark or lay scattered on the crystal underfoot.

I was wearing an ayatana for Starlight’s species. It was probably the most pleasant one I’ve ever worn, to be honest, although my body felt weird and squishy, respiration was extremely odd, and I was self-conscious of the whorfling noises I kept making with every breath in or out. I also had an overwhelming urge to wave my limbs in time with the breeze. Even though there wasn’t any.

I didn’t need the ayatana to tell me that the administrator was desperately ill.

The outer windows seemed to be holding up so far: no cracks or chips evident. They were durable, but I have lived as long as I have lived in part by never trusting the integrity of a damaged structure too far.

I triggered my hardsuit, except for the helmet, and waited while it grew around me. If the pressure dropped, it would finish the seal on its own. If another limb dropped from the tree and crushed me… well, my problems would be over. I decided to worry about that some other time. And if I died before I got around to worrying, there was already more important unfinished business on that to-do list anyway.

After a few moments, the administrator had not acknowledged me. Maybe it would help if I yelled.

Does it ever help if one yells?

“Starlight,” I said. “Are you there?”

The translated voice in my head, when it came, seemed creaky and slow. [Dr. Jens. How may we assist you?]

“It’s how I can help you,” I said. “I came to tell you that we’ve developed a treatment for afflicted AIs. Dr. Zhiruo was our test case, and she’s responding well. We are treating Afar and Linden next. If all goes well, you should have Linden back very soon.”

[Well done,] the tree chimed. [Please be aware that it is not yet safe to lift the quarantine….]

Fine dust drifted over my head. I put my hand over my mouth and nose. Silicosis would be a quick way to needing a pair of vat-grown lungs my own self.

I knew that. I couldn’t lift the quarantine while this was going on. So now we had to cure this. But first, there was something I needed to report on.

Better done than danced around. “I know about the clones.”

A great sigh rustled over me. [Have you told anyone?]

“A Judiciary AI. The shipmind of I Rise From Ancestral Night. And put him in touch with Sally and with Dr. Zhiruo. I also told O’Mara. Steps will be taken. I imagine Dr. Zhiruo will be investigated and reassigned.”

And probably have her programming adjusted after an intensive course with an AI psychologist. I couldn’t imagine the Judiciary just… turning her loose to wreak similar havoc elsewhere.

[Good,] Starlight said. [And the saboteurs?]

“I found them,” I said. “Some of them. Not the entire… Look, I think there’s a pretty large cabal. I interviewed the ones I located. They did not threaten me. Their plans got… a little out of hand.” My gesture took in the cracked branches, the downed limbs.

Starlight found a chuckle somewhere. [We’re glad to hear it wasn’t intentional. The problems will be resolved? There will be consequences?]

“Judiciary is following up on the rest of the conspirators. There will be consequences. I believe they will all be located,” I said. “You guessed that they were trying to draw attention to Zhiruo’s private protocols?”

[The incidents were localized in a suggestive way. Draw attention… no. We assumed they were attacking the protocols.]

“They didn’t realize that you and O’Mara were already—” I stopped. In on it wasn’t exactly correct. “They didn’t realize that you already knew what was going on and couldn’t stop it.”

[Their faith in the system is touching.]

I sighed. “As near as I can reconstruct, when Big Rock Candy Mountain ’s crew contracted a pandemic, the captain ordered them all into cold storage. He got… a little strange, all alone. And altered the program on the ship’s AI in order to create a kind of guardian bot that first bullied his incapacitated crew into the pods, and then… guarded them. This worked out as well as mad science usually does. Time passed. That bot came in contact with the virus the saboteurs had set up as a trap for Dr. Zhiruo, to overwrite her protocols and force her to confess her sins—”

[Ambitious.]

“A little too ambitious,” I agreed. “The infection of the machine must have been intentional, because they needed the machine to make sure we took the right cryo casket.”

[It was an overcomplicated plan, and it went horribly wrong.]

“It was. It did. The conspirators that I interviewed have, however, surrendered. They are cooperating with the treatment of the affected AIs.”

[Good. Then we can rest.]

“Don’t you dare.”

A pause. Then, [Excuse me?]

“Don’t you dare give up on me,” I said.

[Llyn,] the tree said gently. [We’re dying.]

“And I’m a fucking doctor,” I said. “Don’t you dare give up on me. I will put this place to rights if it kills me.” I took a deep breath. “Anyway, Helen has been through this before. And Helen and I have a plan.”

It was a terrible plan, but that’s par for the course around here. We didn’t have a better one, and with the meme eating Core General from the inside out, our options were either to put off acting until we either starved or the hull cracked open or we thought of something less radical… or to take a risk and maybe have time to try something else if it failed and we weren’t dead after.

I sent for Helen. She must have been waiting outside the broken door, because in less than a minute, she was beside me. She plopped herself on the crystal of the hull immediately, as if she sat down on the bodiless depths of space every dia.

Although, come to think of it, she was a space ship. Even if she was a differently embodied space ship for the time being.

I reached into the ayatana—only one ayatana, thank the space goblins—for a better sense of Starlight’s anatomy. I reached out and took Helen’s hand. It still felt weird, but given who I was sharing my brain with, no weirder than my own body.

I looked up at Starlight. “It’s not just you, you know. The whole hospital is in danger.”

A rustle that was not words answered. And then words. [What about… the crew of Afar?]

“The first one to undergo surgery is awake,” I said. “With limited deficits. It’s going to be—”

I couldn’t say it was going to be all right.

“The prognosis is good,” I finished.

Starlight laughed. [Our prognosis is not good, Dr. Jens.]

“I am,” I said definitively, “a rescue specialist . I am also the only person we know of, other than Helen, who has managed to come into direct contact with this thing and find a way out again. We have the skills, Starlight.”

[We do not doubt your capabilities.] They sighed, wind through leaves, with a strange crystal edge to it. [We are tired and in a lot of pain.]

“Sibling,” I said, “I feel you.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Helen said. “We have to take on the meme, and the machine the meme is building, and disentangle it from your cellular structure. And once we learn how to do it here, we can apply that knowledge to getting it out of my own ship.”

[And how do you propose to accomplish that? If we could access its processing pathways—if we could even find them—we think we could fight it. But it’s building its own parallel infrastructure through ours, and in fact disassembling ours to accomplish this.]