Chapter 26

Month 151—August on Anouilh

“CAN WE TALK, BOSS?”

I was relaxing in my private quarters when I heard the question men have been conditioned for a thousand years to dread. When Ubie said it, I was afraid there was a national emergency of some sort. I carefully avoided acting in any command situation other than where international relations were involved. Dakota was the Captain. The thirty-some men and women who now comprised my development team created storylines and thought about how to actually integrate our thousands of gamers into real battle. We didn’t command the ship or the battles. And I was glad. Ubie took care of all the real work, often executing a command from the Captain before she actually issued it. The most independent of all the warriors were the snipers who fired their machine guns through transporter pads at targets they saw on their heads-up displays. Even the railgunners did little more than monitor the system and load the guns. They never even knew what their targets were. Well, I needed to deal with whatever the crisis was.

“Anytime, Ubie. What’s on your mind, my friend?”

“I don’t think I can do this.” I came instantly alert. Ubie had never said he couldn’t do something.

“What ‘this’ are we talking about?”

“Killing people,” Ubie responded. “I know the Sa’arm aren’t people. And I know we’ve put a human finger between me and the trigger, but I don’t just give a command to fire, I send the impulse directly to the pilots’, snipers’, and railgunners’ brains that results in their fingers twitching on the triggers. The Darjee part of my core says it’s no big deal. It’s a human on the trigger. The Tuull part of my core says I need to examine the ethics of what I’m doing. Forcing a human to kill another sentient being, even if she’s agreed to do it, takes away her free will.”

“The Darjee have no problem with it, but the Tuull do?”

“It’s a difference in methodology. In the early days of the contact with humans, the Darjee AIs were more than willing to put false images in a person’s head that would cause him to shoot another human, convinced that the other person posed an immediate threat to him. When it was discovered, the implants were disabled for all but communication unless there was mutually agreed-upon reason like a training exercise. [See The First Command by Zen Master.] What I’ve inherited from my father is a bit twisted. He believes he can eliminate human life to save tech and as a result, eliminate himself. I couldn’t do that.”

“When did you last talk to Eddie?” I asked. The crazy Tuull AI was still collecting Dirt artifacts with his family to trade with the far-flung species of the universe. He occasionally still met with Rachel for ‘counseling.’

“It’s been a year. He came by to collect on our contract.”

“What contract?”

“Remember him negotiating with the Confederacy AIs on recognition of Anouilh as an Independent Nation State? The fee was my firstborn.”

“Oh, shit. Ubie, I didn’t even know you’d budded. You gave your father a piece of yourself?”

“Well, I have to admit, Rachel was significant in what I was doing. She encouraged me to give birth. It was really quite erotic.”

“I can imagine. Have you talked to Tatts about this? Maybe we should ask her to meet with us. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I usually talk to her about things like this but I felt you needed to know what’s going through my circuits. I talked to her about the other half of my problem. I felt everything Rainbow felt when her Hawk was hit. You think of it as virtual reality and she knows in her head she was safe in the controller, but it still feels real to her. She was terrified and so was I. I felt real physical pain, Boss. It was real!”

“Shh. It’s okay Ubie. I’m here. I’m with you. I’m never going to ask you to go against your fundamental nature. We’re buddies. We’re here because we were bred and born here on Earth and we won’t let anyone take it away from us. Let me think about the problem for a little bit. My processors are slower than yours. Then we’ll talk it out with Tatts—just the three of us. We’ll figure this out, Ubie. We’ll help you cope, one way or another.”

Like his Confederacy counterparts, Übermensch was, or seemed to be, everywhere. I wondered if he was spread too thin. He inhabited the St. Jeanne d’Arc under the personality of Joan. The crew didn’t think of Joan as Ubie, even if they had a basic understanding that they were the same. It was easy to assume Joan was the AI that controlled the ship and Ubie was a different AI that controlled the game.

Other personalities had also been sought and granted. The railgunners who crewed the Atlantic Basin Station had named their AI interface Sofia after a nineteenth century Russian mathematician who made significant contributions to analysis, partial differential equations, and mechanics. I figured the engineers who conceived and designed this base were probably the smartest citizens of Anouilh.

We had two tribes of women warriors who had evolved at Anouilh. The snipers who basically shot at transporter pads asked the AI to respond to the name Tomoe. When I asked about it, Miss Molly said Tomoe Gozen was a female Samurai of the twelfth century. Tomoe was described as a remarkably strong archer and a formidable swordsman. She was also said to be beautiful, fearless, and respected. The Pussy Pirate Raiders had expanded to nearly four hundred women. They were the pointy end of the stick as far as we were concerned. When the Sa’arm landed, they’d be our soldiers on the front lines, working with or around Earth Defense Forces and whatever military organizations still existed by then. Until we had a real enemy to tackle, they’d been raiding Earth First installations in California, Mexico, Central and South America to free female prisoners. As soon as they’d been formed out of our first rescue group, the ground forces on Anouilh joined them at Papillon Base. They’d named their AI interface Xena after the popular warrior princess.

Neither Tomoe nor Sofia gave Ubie any ethical problems. So far, it was the pilots that told them to shoot. Even in the Hawks’ strafing runs, there was enough insulation between Ubie and the girls’ trigger fingers in the shooting gallery that he didn’t think of them. The same was true of the railgunners. They responded to the pilots’ commands. The jury was still out regarding the Raiders. So far, they merely received tactical information and were independently responsible for the raids.

No, it was Joan that gave Ubie problems. Joan was both the central core of the St. Jeanne d’Arc and the pilots’ interface in their Hawks. That relationship was closer than any of the others as there was two-way feedback built into the pilots’ and bridge crew’s helmets. Once the contacts touched their heads, Joan was able to give and receive nerve pulses that controlled the weapons. She ‘thought’ the command to fire and the pilot’s finger pulled the trigger. A simple Darjee AI probably wouldn’t have had a problem with that. Our hybrid did.

“I was afraid it might come to this,” Tatts said. “Ubie, I’ve tried not to tamper with your basic core. It’s what makes you who you are and who we love.”

“Do you love me, Rachel?”

“You know I do, baby. We need to figure out a way to give you a coping mechanism or to take you out of the loop for firing on the Swarm.”

“How much would we lose by just letting the pilots decide on the trigger themselves? Enough to damage us?” I asked. I’d consulted with my team since I talked to Ubie. Mark, especially, had recommended taking him out of the firing loop. He’d still run the navigation and targeting, but the firing would be entirely up to the girls.

“A fraction of a second is enough to damage us,” Ubie complained. “That’s all it took for Rainbow to get hit. I should have been faster!”

“How’s my baby doing today, by the way?” I asked. I thought to distract Ubie with checking on Rainbow. She and KC were both pregnant with my children.

“She’s having a good day,” Ubie said. “I know she’d like you to visit her when we’re through here. Do you want to end this session?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll talk to her when we are done.”

“She’s not going to be ready to return to duty for a while. Probably not until after the baby is born,” Tatts said. “It’s possible that she’s out of the fight.”

“She’s one of our best,” I sighed, “but we’re going to take care of her. Just like we’ll take care of you, Ubie.”

“I thought of building a firewall of a sort, so I wouldn’t know it was my decision to pull the trigger. That might work, but I’m afraid to lose the connection with my pilots. It would be like not being able to feel my fingers. Feeling what they feel is important. It makes me feel more human.”

We all paused to think about that. We all knew Ubie wasn’t human, but he was all the things a human was except a physical body. And the fact that he felt human emotions when he was flying with the pilots suggested he had extreme empathy as well.

“What about a human filter,” Tatts suggested. “Someone with even faster reflexes and a deep understanding of the game machine. Someone, in fact, who loves you.”