Chapter 270

... As Jeff started to leave, he suddenly turned back to Kei.

"Kei, we need..."

And at the same time: "Jeff, we need ... to sit down and talk," Kei finished with a smile.

"Just say when," he responded with a chuckle. "I would like to have Diana, Frank and Margaret there as well, if you don't mind. But before that meeting happens, Diana and I need a little private time with you and Edi."

"We are at your disposal," Edi injected very formally.

"This isn't about your profession, but it is important. Frank is at Security Headquarters training today, however, we can meet with the two of them after supper."

When Jeff left, Edi looked at his wife, wanting a private conversation with her, but Alesha was present and he didn't wish to offend.

Alesha noticed the look, however, and interpreted it correctly. "You two need a few minutes?" she asked while coming to her feet.

Edi almost answered affirmatively, but Kei startled him by saying, "No. There is no reason for secrets. All three of us probably assume that Jeff is going to give us limits to work with, and rightly so. But when I previously asked him about spending limits, he just said to be reasonable, laughed and added that he didn't want ten-thousand-dollar-a-foot flooring."

Alesha almost said something, but stopped.

Kei noticed. "What?"

"Well, I just..." Alesha started, but remembered what Diana and Jeff had said. Clearing her throat, she said instead, "I think I know what Jeff is going to ask you, and I doubt if it's about spending. And if it turns out my thoughts are correct, you are going to learn a lot this afternoon – a whole lot."

"If it's not about limits, then what could it be?" Kei wanted to know.

"I can't tell you," Alesha said, then began to giggle, "I really can't tell you. And that's a literal statement."

Kei and Edi looked at each other, then back at Alesha. "Do you mean..."

"You'll find out when you meet with the Prime and the Clan Queen," Alesha answered, mysteriously.

Kei frowned as she sat staring at her computer screen, but after a second, turned back to Alesha. "I've heard Jeff refer to Diana as his Queen, but you said 'Clan Queen.' What does that mean? And what is a Prime?"

Alesha sat quietly for a moment, then, "I'm not sure just how much I'm at liberty to say, and ... well, I don't want to find out the hard way that I've gone too far." On a couple of occasions, Alesha had felt the blocks warning her when she had inadvertently gotten too close to some of the Matthews' secrets while chatting with an outsider. Even the warning nausea was scary, and it brought Jeff's admonitions to mind about how intense the nausea could be. The blocks wouldn't even let her slip and say something. She surely wasn't going to risk doing it on purpose.

Jeff and Diana sat in the living room near the big window. Diana, as usual when she had the chance, snuggled in her husband's lap. "How much are you going to tell them?" she queried. "And are you going to use Little One, or just the blocks so we can talk freely in front of them?"

Jeff let out a sigh. "Those are the questions that keep coming back, and one of these days, the results are going to bite me on my ass. Where do I stop with this? Who do I..."

" ... give long life to? Give wonderful health to? Enhance?" the Queen continued for him.

"Same old story, Di. I have a whole team that I haven't enhanced. True, with their training they have done everything possible to enhance their own bodies and minds, and they were very sharp individuals to begin with, but where do I stop? These Security troopers are almost in my team's category. They train an awful lot, and they're very sharp people, too. Say I use Little One to enhance my team and everyone in Security, but what about the base personnel? They wouldn't be part of the General's people if they weren't damn good. Those groups would add a few thousand people total. How long would it take Little One to do all of them? People get seriously hurt, sometimes even killed while training. How do I respond to that? What about the millions of people in the world who have cancer this very minute?

"Di, you know what would happen if the super wealthy, the politicians or the public ever found out there is a Little One. Who wouldn't come looking for her? Our Security is good – even excellent – but they can't withstand an army. The Ship can expand and build on the AI that is Little One. Hell, Little One has expanded her own abilities and functions. But I'm almost certain that the Ship could not build a sentient AI like the one who is the core of our little friend.

"Ship hasn't mentioned it or volunteered to build other AI's that could be developed into a Healer. She shut the other Healers down, or at least, I think she did. But those other Healers weren't like Little One. They were basically just a very, very advanced type of battlefield medkit for soldiers. They're controlled by AI's, but they aren't sentient. Those healers could stabilize a patient until he or she could be brought to the Ship's healing chambers, and they could heal minor wounds. But the AI that eventually became Little One was developed by the Ship to be her Prime's personal, uh, physician, I guess you could say.

"As best I can determine, Little One was in a cavern near where we found the Ship. That first underground 'warehouse' – for lack of a better term – that we found was obviously part of the cavern where we later found the Ship, but we entered each cavern from another direction that seemed, at first, to be different from the one we found the Ship in. To further confuse things, I'm almost sure the Ship had utilized her knowledge of the dimensions, and truth be told, the caverns might be in separate dimensions. Hell, for all I know, the Ship might have been there all the time when we discovered the Healers and all the other things, but in another dimension, or invisible, like she is now. I'm beginning to wonder if the human mind is even capable of fully understanding the dimensions to any great depth.

"There is an enormous amount of data about the race that built Ship's brain – the AI herself – but it's..." He stopped, frustrated at not being able to communicate exactly what he meant to say. "The Ship, as well as Little One, seems to have the data, and they willingly share it with me, but like I've said before, it's like receiving all the data from every book in a library at the same time. I'm not a friggin' computer. What would take them seconds to sort through, would take me several lifetimes. And remember, the Ship's core intelligence is an AI that was built by her masters. According to what she was told, she was given the sum of all the data her master's race had, as well as everything her master's associate races had. In other words, they pumped all the data they could get their hands on into her memory, but they were in a hurry because the race was involved in what they expected to be the final battle, and ... they knew they were almost certain to lose.

"Somewhere in all that data is the basis for building a self-aware AI, I suppose, or most anything else the race or other friendly races could do, but not all of it comes in neat little packages, or one labeled how to build a sentient AI, and from what I understand, even if she had the correct information, she doesn't have the facilities to build an AI, at least not one as involved as Little One. She does have the knowledge to build healing chambers, but they must remain on the Ship in order to function. In other words, her brain must operate them.

"And ... to further complicate things, as I've said many times, she's alien. She just does not think the way we do. So the bottom line to all this: there is one Little One, and there probably always will be just one, at least for the foreseeable future.

"So back to the original problem: who do I heal, enhance and give long life to? And where do I stop? So, do I have Little One enhance Kei and Edi or do I just convince them to take the blocks?"

Alesha walked with Kei and Edi to the living room, but as the couple turned in, Alesha continued on by, intending on going to the kitchen, assuming that she would find some of the women there. As it was, they weren't in the kitchen, since they were all in the basement training, but after a few steps, Jeff called out to her.

"Alesha, I think you should be part of this, too."

"You sure?" she asked, turning back.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said with a grin.

With a smile on her face, Alesha hurried by the Prime as he closed the living room door behind her.

Diana smiled at Edi as she addressed him. "We have coffee and green tea as well as Earl Gray. Your wife told me that was your favorite tea, Edi."

"I am honored, Mrs..." He hesitated as he saw Diana begin to frown. "Uh, Diana."

Diana hugged him and ushered everyone to seats. "We don't know all your favorite meals yet, but if you'll let us know, we'll do our best to provide them."

"You shouldn't go to all that trouble, Diana..." Kei began but was cut off by the Queen.

"Nonsense. You're going to be here awhile, and we're going to become fast friends. We need to know what you two like so we can all be happier together. We're going to know an awful lot about each other..."

"Which brings us to the reason we wanted to have this meeting with you two," Jeff interjected. Leaning forward a little and catching Kei's eye, "You had questions while you were designing the school. Some we answered, but some that were very innocent questions, we avoided." When Edi tried to inject a comment, Jeff just shook his head. "I suspect I know what you're going to say, Edi. And the answer is, yes we do have to tell you some things, simply because you have already seen enough that what you know would probably be of great use to our enemies, should they manage to get that information."

"We would never do anything like that, Jeff," Kei responded in a very serious voice.

"Of course, you wouldn't, but you wouldn't hesitate or think twice about describing the building or mentioning how many of us live here – things like that. So, anyway, Diana and I were faced with a decision, and weighing heavily in that decision is the fact that we really like the two of you. So, I'm going to give you some things to think about, then let you decide if you trust us enough to go forward with what we have planned."

For the next few minutes, Jeff talked about Alphas, but didn't give specific information. "I can't tell you anything more without using the blocks I've mentioned. I'm perfectly willing to let you talk to any of the family about whether the blocks have hurt them, but to be frank with you, they won't be able to tell you any more detail than I've already mentioned. But they will, at least, be able to tell you whether they have been hurt in any way by the blocks. I suppose it all comes down to trust. Do the two of you trust Diana and me enough to allow the blocks?"

"You won't be sorry," Alesha quickly added. "I can't go into detail, just as Jeff said, but I can assure you that you will not be sorry."

Jeff expected that Kei would probably agree with the blocks and Edi would balk. Instead, Edi took his wife's hand as he spoke to her. "Mr. Matthews is an honorable man. We were employed by him to design the school for his children, his friends and his wives. He trusted us to make the correct decisions and his trust honored us. There can be no other honorable answer other than to accept these blocks and whatever else he thinks best."

"Yes, my Husband," Kei responded.

Jeff and Diana looked at each other for a second before Diana came to her feet to hurry toward the other end of the living room. A moment later, she opened a closet and rolled out a serving cart bearing the blocking equipment.