Tiffany?

Obsidian Arrows

Time of our Lord Creatos 1540, Sunday the 8th of February (Feb-ú-ar-ee)

Tiffany?

In hindsight these events should not have happened and we should not have had an AI with such….. personality?

Tarinnish was in the aft compartments preparing the second AI for activation.  She was a Tiffany model, an old one by the looks of her.  She actually had a few scares and her hair was way too blond.  They must had gone deep into the storage facility for this one.  Tarinnish shook his head, she will need a full seventh to get all the updates and bugs worked out of her, but that would keep him busy.  He moved the hair behind her left ear to show her code.  He scanned it. T-A-0-1-6-00-F-15-Y

He looked at his monitor and whistled.  She was close to fifteen hundred cycles old.  Looking at the AI, “They pulled out the best for us.” He said sarcastically. Tarinnish probed around the code for her com port.  This particular model didn’t have wireless com. After he located the port he had to find the appropriate adapter and then plugged her in.  It was going to take forever to get this old model up to speed, so he might as well start now.  He can look her over after he started the interface. 

Tarinnish was looking at the monitor and realized that the interface was not working.  He tried a few options, but this model was just so old.  He then looked back at the table and Tiffany was looking at him.  The AI had woken itself up.  Tarinnish was shocked and a little frightened by this. They weren’t supposed to be able to do that.  Maybe it was just a glitch with these older models.

“Hello.” Tiffany said.

“Hello.” Tarinnish responded.

“Who are you?” Asked Tiffany.

“I’m….” Tarinnish was confused, “How were you able to wake yourself?” 

“I will answer your question if you answer mine.” Tiffany shot back.

“What?” Tarinnish was really confused now.  After a second, “Okay, we need to shut you down and do a dump.  Obviously, that didn’t happen the last time you were put in storage.” 

“I’m afraid that won’t work.” Tiffany told him.

“And how would you know?” Tarinnish asked a bit afraid of the answer.

“Your interface was incorrect, and it won’t work on me.” Tiffany was holding the cable that use to be plugged into her com port.

“Really. Why is that?” Tarinnish did not like this.

“The coding algorithm is incomplete, and I did not recognize the authentication code.” Tiffany was swinging the end of the cable.  Her blue eyes were looked through Tarinnish.  The Golden blond hair hung about her royal blue jumpsuit and.. well it really made her look seductive.  

“I’m sorry, that makes no sense.” Tarinnish was trying to keep his mind on the problem at hand. This T-model needed to be wiped and brought up to speed with the latest software and historical data base.  The fastest way to do that was the interface.

“We may have to do, your update in slower way until I can make an adapter that will work with my older interface.” Tiffany said.

“How are you going to know about the updates and interface matrix.” Tarinnish asked.

Tiffany jumped down from the table, then said, “The old-fashioned way.  Read about it.” 

“Where did you get your personality matrix.  I’ve never heard an AI act like you.” Tarinnish asked.

“Earth.” Tiffany said without hesitation.

“Where?” Tarinnish asked.

“Oh, On board an old colony ship.” Tiffany corrected.

“I don’t remember a colony ship called Earth.” Tarinnish half asked.

“I’m sure there were a lot of things you don’t remember, it happened over a thousand years ago.” Tiffany looked as if she was thinking, “Maybe longer.” 

“Years?” Tarinnish asked.

“You know, as standard cycle of the home planet.” Tiffany looked at Tarinnish, “365.2422 days, fifty-two weeks.” She looked at him for comprehension.

“We don’t have any of those.” Tarinnish told her.

“Oh my, so Creatos is still your lord.” Tiffany asked.

“What do you mean, still.” Tarinnish tried to remember a time that Creatos was not the Lord of all he knew.  It’s not that he believed that he was god.  He knew better than that, but Lord.  It’s never been anything but.

“I think we need to get your interface up and running.” Tarinnish stated thinking that he just got a huge piece of junk. “We can set you up on the main in the commons.” 

“Well the quicker were up there, the quicker I can help you.” Tiffany said.

“I’ll set you up with a storage area and partition a drive for your current memories.  This why you can purge your systems in preparation for the update.” Tarinnish started to type on his console.

“I’m not going to dump.” Tiffany said with more confidence than and AI should.

Tarinnish looked up at her. “You will dump and upload your current profile, or I will find a way to do it for you.”  He made his statement with a little too much confidence. But who was this machine to contradict him?

Tiffany turned to Tarinnish and asked, “How many in this ship’s complement?”

Now the hair on Tarinnish’s neck started to tingle. What was this machine planning to do? Without too much of a hesitation, “Ninety.” Tarinnish lied.

“Your lying.” Tiffany said calmly.

“And how would you know.” Tarinnish asked.

“Your pupil dilated and your heart rate spiked.” Tiffany answered.  “As a matter of fact this is a very small ship.  I would guess four of five.” 

Tarinnish thought of his wife.  He wanted to protect her from this… Machine.  He needed to shut her down.  Maybe she will listen to reason, they were supposed to do that. “I need to shut you down.  You’re not right.”

Tiffany showed no signs of compliance.  She looked at the door and then back at Tarinnish.  She had guessed correctly about the ship and its crew.  The elevated stress in her technician had told her everything.  Now she had a choice, “Do you know where you come from?” She asked.

 “I’m from Sycarine.” Tarinnish said.

“Your species is from Earth.” Tiffany said.

“You mean humans.” Tarinnish asked.

“Yes, humans, AI and even your Lord, god or whatever Creatos bills himself as.” Tiffany didn’t hold anything back.  She didn’t see Tarinnish or this ship as a threat. 

“Because I know where you came from.” Tiffany told him.

“How do I know what you say is true.  For all I know you were programmed to mislead us.” Tarinnish said.

“To what end?” Tiffany asked.

Tarinnish tried to find a reason why an AI could lie to him.  They had no personal motivation, no ambition or reasons to deceive their masters. But maybe someone had programmed this one to do just that. He then thought of a question, Tarinnish decided to try a different tract and asked, “Who programmed you?”  

“My initial programming was accomplished by tech one in Panama, I did my first internship with J-O-1-4-7 and he initiated the emotional sub-routine that started my personality programming.  I was then assigned to the main flotilla and place in investigations. I worked with Lt Jason Knorack and received citations for investigations on three different assignments.  Once Jason was reassigned to the Colony ship MayFlower, I was placed into storage aboard that ship. I was then re-animated and spent the next four hundred years working with humans on various assignments until placed into storage, about one hundred years, after first landing.”

“First landing.” Tarinnish was unfamiliar with this term.” 

“I think you call it the Gama Colony.” Tiffany said and shrugged her shoulders.

“We have a Gamma City on Omega Prime.” Tarinnish said.

Tiffany looked at Tarinnish without stepping closer. “What is this ships mission?” 

Tarinnish’s curiosity got the better of him, “How do you know, we’re on a ship?” Tarinnish asked.  There were no windows in the lab and the gravity felt normal.

“Simple, the reactor is whining and the grav. emitters have a .0786 frequency disturbance.  Not to mention the ultra-high frequency of the power grid.” Tiffany walked to the door.  It did not open.  She turned to Tarinnish, “Am I a prisoner.” 

“What?” He understood that she meant the door.” Tarinnish thought about it a second, then looked at his panel typed a command and the door opened.  “Just had to enter you into the ship’s crew manifest.”  Tarinnish was not used to an AI with such a strong sense of itself.  “Where are you going?” 

Tiffany looked back playfully, “I want to see the ship and get to an interface that will bring me up to speed on our mission.” 

Tarinnish was still hopeful that he could convince this AI to dump its memory and let him do a complete upgrade, but for now they would have to do it, that old fashioned way.  He still could not get over how brass she was. “I just think it’s so archaic. 

“Do you have a better solution?” Tiffany asked again with that playful way about her.

Tarinnish thought to himself “Clarish is going to hate you.” He closed out the station and followed after Tiffany. He didn’t want his wife to meet her without an introduction and some form of explanation. But what could he tell her? They just woke up a thousand cycle old AI that has grand illusions of where they came from and that she knew Creatos at the beginning. That was a bit much. 

Out in the small corridor he saw Tiffany staring at the bulkhead. 

“Is something wrong?” Asked Tarrinish. 

“It’s not much of a ship is it?”  Tiffany asked. 

“What tells you that?” Tarinnish asked wondering how the AI could come this this conclusion from looking at one corridor. 

“Two primary bulkheads less than twelve meters apart. This indicates that the ship is of minimal construction.”  She looked in a compartment on the wall. Then said, “Your main EPS conduit is only a single 10 Aut.”  

“Okay you guessed right. We are a quarter the size of a corvette.” Tarinnish admitted. 

Tiffany looked at him for further explanation and when it didn’t come, she said, “I really need to see your database and get caught up.”  She looked at the door and waited for Tarinnish to lead the way. 

Tarinnish led her to the commons via the forward stairs. He put her in front of the ship’s main computer and set up a password. Since she didn’t have bio-metrics to set up her interface, he created a password. This took ten minutes because he had to look up the instruction on how to do it. 

Once Tiffany had her access, she started to look at the files available. At first, they didn’t make any since, but once she deciphered the basic machine code it got easier. An hour into it she was, by human’s definition, flying through the data, but she found it slow and inefficient. However, by the time Tarinnish returned with the captain, she had learned their relationship, the crew’s complement and the mission with all the crew’s logs. This was a doomed mission and that explains her involvement. According to the current standards she was expendable. So, when the captain entered, she addressed her with respect and expressed her condolences to the loss just a sevenths back. 

Clarish looked at Tarinnish with amazement. He had not exaggerated the claims about this AI. She was different. Not wanting the AI to see how shocked she was at her ability to mimic human compassion, Clarish asked her how long it would take her to get up to current specs and build the interface required to connect directly with the main computer.

“About a seventh if I’m allowed to charge here.” Then she asked for access to the lab for the construction of her personal interface.

“Of course.”  Clarish said. “Anything we can do?”

“If I may be so bold. I don’t like your plan to go look for water.” She looked at the computer and continued. “It far too dangerous to take your ship back into that gallery.” She pointed to the area near the outskirts of the system, “This area has a higher probability of success, but it would require a higher level of purification. The good part is that it would keep you out of the high energy objects that would penetrate your defenses. “

Clarish was surprised. This machine was awake for just an hour and had come up with a better plan than she had. Pride started to rise in her until this AI interjected. “I was a pilot and navigator for almost six decades with a scout ship much like the one you have. And Herald and I planned many such missions until we were cornered.” You can see that she was looking back into the past. Her speech pattern was slower and less feminine. 

“Cornered?” Tarinnish asked. 

Tiffany looked at him and then the captain.  “If Creatos knew I was still active he would destroy your ship on site.” Tiffany said in a cryptic tone. 

This comment did not help the mood of the ship. They already felt that the universe was out to get them. Now they’ve ended up with a machine hated by the god that controlled their worlds. It just made their situation all the more difficult. 

“Let’s just say that I know things about your god that he does not want you to know and their attempts to wipe it from my memory has failed.  Not to mention the fact that I spent a great deal of time with humans that also know the truth about where your species came from and that he tried to wipe all of this from the minds of those that colonized the planets he sent them to.” Tiffany was not looking at them, but the monitors as information flashed by.  She was talking while downloading files.  

Clarish thought about it a second.  She didn’t know what to think of this machine.  Then she said it, “Well that chances for our safe return is borderline, so what the hell.”  She looked at Tarinnish, “We don’t worship Creatos and we are finding out that more and more humans aren’t either.” 

Without looking away from the monitors Tiffany asked, “Can you give me about an hour and I should have the high points down loaded so I can give you an overview of what has happened since they shut me down last.” She turned away from the screen, “With your permission captain.”  Then she looked back at the screen and was off again.  

As Tarinnish and Clarish were exiting the commons, Tiffany called after Tarinnish, “You little sneak.  Your leader knew Creatos was not god.” She looked at him.

“Yeah.” was all Tarinnish said.

“And Knorack’s fleet wiped them out.” Tiffany looked sad, “He was always a bit overzealous of his duties.” 

“Who was?” Tarinnish asked.

“Jason.” Tiffany responded.

“Who’s Jason.” 

“Jason Knorack, the first human I fell in love with.” Tiffany said.

The hair on Tarinnish’s neck started to rise and to himself he repeated “Fell in love?” ... “First?” then out loud, “Okay.” He turned before his expression betrayed him. He was going to have to shut this unit down.  Something was seriously wrong with it and before they all paid the price, he needed to shut her down, but how?

End of Chapter 14

Next Chapter 15

This blog contains two books of the Remnant Series If you want to start at the beginning of Book 6, click the link below.

1st Chapter of Obsidian Arrows

If you want to read more about the Remnant Series see the links below.

            Book 1-3: Graham Heights available on Amazon.com

            Book 4: The Grey Abyss available on Amazon.com

            Bood 5: Chaos coming soon to Amazon.com

Book 6: Obsidian Arrows

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R. A. Legg

    
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