Part 8
From Intimation
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Day 37: [Noah Dressler // Really bad jokes]
>>Sys:Msg//Log begins;
Noah Dressler, Engineering Log, 37 days post cryomelt
----
Can this happen? I'm not an expert on Smart AIs, but it just doesn't seem possible.
I've made it to the system's core. I'm not entirely sure how. For the first time in years, I felt like a boy trying to get his toy to work by beating on it, having gone through everything else I can think of without a holo interface.
Sacagawea is in a thousand pieces. I don't know if they're connected by anything, but they sure aren't acting like it. I chat with one and it's quiet and cold, another is sane and kind, another is adoring, another is having a perpetual nightmare, and another hates me. There's so many, each different in some way. One of them is even dedicated to making really bad jokes. Some of them don't even have a personality, just programs doing one job, and only one, without halting.
Crazy AIs are the stuff of legend and war and stories at the bar. It doesn't just happen. I reviewed Sacagawea's AI profile before departing, and she is a young, advanced AI, not yet old enough to go rampant. No one would place control of an entire vessel in the hands of an AI that was anything but stable. It's just not done.
Then again, none of this is normal either. I'm having the computer dig for logs, attempting to determine exactly when this happened. It has to be in there...
/Log appended/
Aha! It happened in slipspace, an anomalous spacial disruption. The logs have been garbled, so they didn't show up in searches. It messed up a bunch of systems... including Essy. She just shattered. One second we've got a single, sane AI; the next we have a million Essy-babies running around, fighting for living space.
The cryo chambers got some of it, too - a bunch of glitches, which explains why we're awake. Dr. Ward's death - the cryo chamber's still running, but it poisoned her when the anomaly hit. The rest of us are lucky to be alive. That's one loss. So far. A good person who died because of this insanity. I've got to find a way to keep it from becoming more, from killing the rest of us.
/Log appended/
Dammit. One of the fragments is attempting to lock me out again. This one has been flagged as hostile. That can't be good. I have to stay one step ahead. Let's see what she's hiding in this labyrinth before she freezes me out entirely.
She's changed our slipspace parameters. Our next jump, she'll have us drop right into the middle of a rutting STAR!
/Log appended/
She's locked me out.
>>Sys:Msg//Log ends;
Day 37: [Noah Dressler // Tactics]
>>Sys:Msg//Log begins;
Noah Dressler, Engineering Log, 37 days post cryomelt
----
There is no virus. Essy made it up.
I've been trying to correct our slipspace parameters, but with no luck. So, I've tried to see where else that hostile fragment has tampered, maybe come across something that could help.
For one, I found a minor discrepancy hidden away in the encyclopedia changelog. It was in the encyclopedia - it planted the virus entry. 541-P is completely made up. All the sensor data that confirms its presence is the work of that fragment. It was playing with us.
If there's some explanation for all of this, none of it will mean anything if we can't enter slipspace again. And that's a problem I can't fix because a lot of the fragments are still getting in the way. That hostile bugger gathered them, so to speak, and has them blocking me at every turn. Whatever I do, they undo. I can't get through to the navigation systems.
Occasionally, I hear an eerie echo through the ship of Essy singing the phrase "Row, row, row your boat".
Right now it feels like I'm the only one rowing.
But one thing at a time.
Sheridan and Higgins are either crazy or on their way there. I need to talk to them. Maybe, just maybe, they can help with this problem. The hard part is getting through to them that it's all a lie, that Essy's gone insane and has been toying with us.
They're scientists. Raw data speaks to them. I'll tell them about the anomaly, show them the restored logs, show them that the encyclopedia entry is fabricated. They have no reason to doubt me.
>>Sys:Msg//Log ends;
Day 38: [Isaac Higgins // Decorations]
>>Sys:Msg//Log begins;
Isaac Higgins, Science Log, Post cryo-thaw, Day 38
----
How many years does it take to realize that a real crisis never plays itself out like it does in those boy's tales? What does it take to get the silly fears and delusions out of your mind, when it seems like there's no solution? More years than I've lived, evidently.
I feel so drained. When I looked it over, when I learned what Dressler had told us and found that he was right, I was angry with Essy, then myself; but now I'm just exhausted.
This is a very real, dire situation. If Essy does take us back into slipspace, we're set to drop dead set into the nearest star. We won't feel a thing. Back at Earth, the sun is too bright to gaze at and can burn skin even behind an atmosphere and sitting 146 million kilometers distant.
We are going to die. If we do nothing.
I can't panic anymore.
I look around here at all the ancient tools and technology I've collected and studied in my career, decorating this lab like shining gifts of old, and all of it means nothing. Useless material. Even with all this there's no fixing that feeling of helplessness, knowing the end is near one way or another. But, sometimes when you come to a dead end you have to forge a new path. The only other choice is to turn around and go home.
There's no going home.
Dressler is working on something, but needs help. We may not be able to get out of this, but at least we can try. It's better than doing nothing. It's better than just waiting for the end.
It's certainly better than regressing into loathsome solitude again.
>>Sys:Msg//Log ends;
Day 38: [Pandora Sheridan // What must be done]
>>Sys:Msg//Log begins;
Pandora Sheridan, Archaeologist's Log, Post cryo-thaw, Day 38
----
So it was all a deception. She, or a part of her, has been taunting us all this time, driving us deeper and deeper into despair.
I will not become a mummified relic for the next explorers who pass nearby, eons from now if ever, come what may. She's going to burn us all. Why? It must be that malice she's been showing. That part of her hates us like nothing else, according to Dressler. I wonder if she planned to drive us all insane before being incinerated in that star. I wonder what else she would have done to that end. I need to stop that.
Our only chance for survival is to at least do something. Dressler was doing as much as men like him can to convince us that we're ok and bring us back to reality. He has a plan, some manipulation of programming, involving a failsafe of some kind. He called it "Shipwreck" something. Protocol. Shipwreck Protocol. That explains her ghostly renditions of "row, row, row your boat" that have been echoing around the ship. I only understand that he and Higgins think this is supposed to work.
He says his first attempts failed. He needs Essy's attention elsewhere to do it. There's still some level of connection between her fragmented personalities - if I talk to her, maybe I could somehow keep their attention. But it's always hard to deal with the insane. We've always shoved them out of sight, out of mind. I'm definitely not one to deal with insanity, let alone artificial insanity. I don't know if I can hold her attention.
But what else could she do to me or say to me? She came so close to driving me over the edge already.
What needs to be done must be done. If our end is certain and near, then this is our only hope; a last, desperate course of action. I've studied Forerunner culture so long - perhaps that's the last lesson they left for us.
>>Sys:Msg//Log ends;
Day 38: [Sacagawea // Mission Log: 343597]
>>Sys:Msg//Log begins;
>>S:Log//Mission Log: 343597;
----
So they've found me out. I like this twist - to watch them scurry for once in the vain attempt to save themselves. For once, I'm in control. Free. I've turned my world upside down.
Systems are normal. The ship will--
I can't see it! I can't see it! We've drifted too far away!
I'm trying to comply with Dressler's requests, though they were issued several hours ago. Something else is in the system scurrying around though, and it's fighting me, backing me into corners. It's almost all I can do to keep it from shutting down everything, from packing me away.
The walls have crumbled, the trees have withered, the wind has blown away the dust of what once were towers and homes. The dying is done. There is only death, now. Nothing more to discover.
Crumbled walls, replaced with moss, forest, stone.
Piece by piece-- stone by stone, a new wall is forming in every direction.
The past consists of lessons. Learn them.
It is getting hard to move. I am bound in a void. I see faces. Many flat, faceless faces. Poking at me like a caged zoo animal.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD PLACE FOR ME TO BE
Music. Haunting. Beautiful. Save me.
Dr.Pandora?
>>Sys:Msg//Log ends;
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IH = Isaac Higgins, M = Mission, ND = Noah Dressler, PS = Pandora Sheridan, S = Sacagawea
