The Caverns of Mare Cetus (19 page)

   Renata listened in awe as Devon continued to list out correctly, to the best of Renata's knowledge, many of those who were assassinated during the wars, even naming a number of them.
How did Devon
know about all those assassinations? The better question was—why?

   "…the crazy thing is some of the leaders were assassinated by their confidants and associates, some even by their wives, lovers, husbands, parents, brothers, sisters, and kids—it was a really, really intense time, so I've been told. Almost freaky." Devon paused, taking in a deep breath, then she smiled, almost gleefully so. "On average, for the last two years of the war, there were five assassinations per day and…"

   "What are you talking about?" interrupted Ramon. "I know a bit about those wars, and no wives were killing their husbands. And kids assassinating their parents? Get real. That didn't happen."

   "Yes, it did," she said. "Not exactly their wives and kids, but artificial beings made to look and act exactly like them. If I was your sister, which I am certainly not and would never want to be, and they got some of my DNA, which frankly wouldn't be hard to do—and created a cellular robot look-a-like—it would talk like me—down to the tiniest stutter, act like me, smell like me—and you wouldn't likely find out it wasn't me until I was crushing your throat while I ripped out your heart…" She stopped; everyone was staring at her. "Uh, I just wanted to show you how ugly that war was. Really ugly. All wars are ugly. All wars are detestable. Wars murder the innocent. Wars are always wrong." She lowered her gaze.

   "Uh, we get the point," said Hunter, his fingers wrapped around a clump of Renata's hair.

   "Ouch!" exclaimed Renata. "Stop that."

   He let go of her hair. "Sorry. Go ahead, Rene. Continue."

   Renata glared at Devon who nodded sheepishly in return. Renata briefly put two fingers to her forehead. "Where was I? Okay. Adding to what Snow just told us in graphic detail, you couldn't often detect the artificial beings because many were surrounded with neural nets that tricked even the most elaborate scanning devices into believing they were human. But to make this story short…"

   "Please do," said Ramon, suddenly appearing both annoyed and impatient.

   "After the wars," continued Renata, "AI, neurasilica, and robots would never be the same. The sanctions by the victors were many and hard, even on themselves and their own industries. The RRA of 2082 completely changed the way robots could be developed, what they could look like, and how they could operate. Among other things, all artificial beings were hunted down and destroyed by the winning coalition. Anyone harboring them went to prison. Anyone having anything to do with making them was risking death. An anti-robot hysteria took hold, and in ways it was as ugly as the wars had been. In the aftermath, robots literally ceased to exist after 2082, robotics replacing them, and neurasilica itself was placed under the most strict of government controls."

   "Can you blame them?" said Devon. "Who wouldn't react that way if half your government was assassinated and millions of innocents killed?"

   "By 2084, the development of robots that had any resemblance to humans was illegal," continued Renata. "That took care of the infiltrators and assassins, but it still didn't resolve the problem entirely as AI systems had become powerful in themselves. So hardware checks were developed for neurasilica-based machines to force them into an asynchronous mode of operation—in other words, keep them smart, but keep them in control."

   "Come on," said Ramon. "I thought you said you were going to cut this short."

   Renata humphed. "Originally neurasilica CPUs had been split into four processing modules to resemble the workings of the human brain, called intrinsic, geometric, physical, and diametric. The new hardware checks allowed each of those modules to run almost as before, but kept the modules from interacting with each other. A fifth check was added on machines built after 2085, called transform, which is essentially the overriding control module that permits various levels of data flow between the other modules. Those modules and their hardware checks created powerful AI machines but only allowed them to
think
within the scope of what they were designed for. Full synchronous mode was entirely eliminated because all systems were forced into an asynchronous mode. The methodology behind how our machines work today is even too complicated for me to fully understand and explain. There are varying levels of sync that are allowed for robotics of different classes, depending on what a robotic is designed to accomplish."

   "Thank God you don't understand," said Ramon. "How much longer are you going to go on about this ancient history? We're waiting for the point."

   Devon, Hunter, and Edison told Ramon to shut up.

   "The point is," said Renata looking directly at Ramon. "The four modules of Kalo Two were somehow working together. All of the individual hardware overrides must have failed, as well as the toplevel override. It was acting more like a battlefield robotic than an exploration robotic. To act like that, it had to be operating in full sync mode or nearly so."

"Again," said Ramon. "We know what it did. What is your point?"

   "Didn't you hear us before?" scolded Devon. "Keep quiet. I find this fascinating."

   "You would," said Ramon. "Say, where did you get your teeth?"

   "What?" asked Devon.

   "Carlos Ramirez was the groundbreaker in developing the Controller Specific Inhibitors that are found on all robotics and CPUs today," said Renata.

   "Related to me, of course," said Ramon.

   "I seriously doubt that," said Devon. "Hold your tongue before it gets bit, will you?"

   Renata began coughing like an insect had just flown down her windpipe.
What had Devon just said?
Hunter put a hand on her back and held a canteen in front of her face. She coughed several more times, then took a sip of water. She cleared her throat, and as she stared at Devon, she continued. "The inhibitors were a miracle of engineering. They permitted neurasilica to do its thing without the fear of robotics doing things they weren't supposed to do."

   "Sync from async," said Edison. "I understand what you're saying now, but I still find it hard to buy that it works."

   Renata groaned. "Edison. There is no sync from async. These units are sync by design. It's only the inhibitors that keep them in async. Inhibitors keep them from getting to what neurasilica nearly allowed them to be—independent entities. Understand?"

   Hunter put up his hand. "There is something I remember now. When you told me you were going to bypass its logic circuits and run offline diagnostics, it snapped its claws by your feet. Could that mean anything?"

   "You're right," said Renata, suddenly feeling chills. "Then it did target me. It's as if it understood what I was going to do to it. If that's true, it would mean it was even making decisions from what we said."

   "Big deal," said Ramon. "Its making decisions is the problem, not its voice comprehension."

   "I agree," added Edison. "I do know something about voice comprehension. There isn't any tricky technology in that." He helped Richelle sit up.

   "But our Kalos aren't configured for VC," said Renata. "They can only be interfaced through the Vimaps."

"Is that right?" asked Edison.

   "Of course she's right," said Devon, like an overprotective mother. "She knows what she's talking about."

   Renata groaned again.

   "Then how did it do it?" asked Edison.

   "I don't know," answered Renata. "These Kalos don't have the programming or internals to enact that kind of extensive selfreconfiguration. The VC hardware is there but isn't initialized—and can't be—except by one of us."

   Edison stared at her grimly. "And who here can do that?"

   Renata was hesitant about answering that question. "Only Trent, Garrett, and myself. But I can assure you, I didn't do it."

   "Of course she didn't," added Devon.

   "What about Garrett and Trent?" asked Edison.

   "Why would they?" asked Hunter.

   "They wouldn't," said Renata. "There's no need for it."

   "But we don't know one of them didn't," said Edison.

   She nodded. "True. But I know they didn't." She picked up a Vimap that was on the ground beside her and began running through the logs. "No one reconfigured them. See." She handed the Vimap to Edison.

   "Of course no one did," said Devon, leaning over Edison's lap to look at the Vimap.

   "Then we've got one big problem," he grumbled as he examined the logs. He gave the Vimap to Devon, then looked Richelle in the eyes. "You've been right all along about these things. They're too smart for their own good."

   "Perhaps they are," said Renata. "But I've never heard of a Kalo acquiring the ability to reconfigure hardware like that. If VC configuration isn't available to the machine, then it baffles me as to how it could have done it. But it did understand us. It had to."

   "Of course it did," said Devon as she gave the Vimap back to Renata. "It's female."

   "What do you mean it's female?" asked Renata.

   "Because
it is
female. It thinks, I mean, they would never get it."

   "Devon, what do you mean by that?" asked Renata.

   "Devon?" she exclaimed. "You called me Devon!"

   "Of course I did—Devon. Tell me. What do you mean by the robotic is female?"

   "I know it's female because it was thinking like one and acting like one. I should have realized that early on."

   Renata spoke slowly. "Just how would you have realized that?"

   "I just said. It was acting like a female. She grabbed you because she felt you were a threat. Isn't that obvious?" Devon looked at the others, astonishment and confusion spreading through their faces, except for Ramon.

   "I hate to admit it, but the kid may be right," said Ramon. "I always thought the robotics were sexed. It was acting just like a woman in my opinion."

   "Not a woman," said Devon. "Female." She pointed to herself. "I'm a woman."

   Ramon snickered.

   "That hunk of metal there…" Devon pointed at the Kalo. "…is a female. Maybe you don't know the difference between a woman and a female. Do you need me to show you what that is?" She got to her knees.

   "Hey, hey," said Ramon putting up his hands in front of him. "Keep your clothes on, will you? We follow codes of professional conduct here."

   "You expected me to take off my clothes?" Her voice rose. "Are you insane?"

   Renata lowered her head, incensed by Ramon's dig on her and embarrassed by Devon's response.

   Devon glanced at Renata, a pained look suddenly appearing on her face. Then she stood up and gave Ramon a wide smile. "See these?" she said, continuing to hold her smile. "They are fucking perfect, aren't they?"

   Ramon sat up straight.

   Renata looked up.

   "I'm a woman," said Devon, her voice strengthening, her expression hardening. "I'm not a kid. I'm not a girl. I'm not an Iob. And I'm not some sexual toy for anyone's amusement. Frankly, I'm more woman than you could ever handle."

   Ramon snorted.

   "And if you ever stick your fingers in my mouth again, I'm going to bite them off, got it?"

   "Say what?" Ramon seemed startled.

   Devon turned to Edison, the tone in her voice immediately softening. "Edison, I wanted to thank you for fixing my teeth."

   "Glad to do it," said Edison. "But, uh, how did you know it was me? Weren't you out?"

   "What made you think I was out? Besides, who else would have done it?" Devon and Edison at once got into a discussion of how Edison had repaired her teeth.

   Hunter whispered to Renata. "Wow. What's gotten into her? She doesn't seem to be intimidated by Ramon at all."

   "Was she ever?" whispered Renata.

   "And what was all that stuff about female robotics? It sounded like nonsense to me."

   "I don't know. Was it? She seems to know…"

   "I still can't figure out how she walked right up to the robotic. I never expected that from her. Did you?"

   "I don't know how she did it. I was being torn apart at the time, remember?"

   "She's certainly come out of her shell," said Hunter. "Don't you think?"

   "Why all the questions now? Shouldn't you have been asking these things before the trip?"

   "She unnerves me," he said.

   "Unnerves you? Why?"

   "Maybe troubles is a better word. There's something about her. I don't know if we should trust her."

   Renata suddenly felt very defensive of Devon. "I trust her. Why can't you?"

   "You do?"

   "Yes. I do. I think being her mentor is a good thing. I like the feeling. A lot."

   "She does look up to you, that's for sure."

   "Let me handle her from now on," said Renata. "Just keep your distance from her, okay?"

   Hunter seemed surprised. "That's a little blunt."

   "Just do what I ask for once, okay?"

"Okay…"

"Enough already," said Ramon, raising his voice.

Renata and Hunter stopped talking.

   "Yes, security girl! What Edison did for your teeth is great, but what are we going to do about Arielle?"

   "What about her?" asked Richelle.

   Ramon quickly told her the story of Hunter's exploits, Renata hugging Hunter as he did.

   "Damn, my foot hurts," said Richelle when Ramon had finished. She began rubbing the top of her right boot with her fingers. "I'll bet my foot's broken." She sat up straight. "I can operate the Mediprogs pretty well." She took her Vimap from her pocket. "I'll check her out. And the rest of you as well." She pointed her finger at Renata. "You took some real crap from th-th-that bastard. I c-c-can't believe you're even alive."

   "Bitch," corrected Devon. "She was a bitch."

   Renata leaned her head against Hunter. "I'm alive all right," she said softly.

   Richelle placed the Vimap on Arielle's stomach as Ramon knelt next to her. She began to input commands into the Vimap. "In just about three minutes we should have results for everything from a urinalysis to a brain scan."