Truth

Obsidian Arrows

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Truth

Time of our Lord Creatos 1540, Sunday the 15th of February (Feb-ú-ar-ee)

Everyday Tarinnish told himself to shut Tiffany off, but every day she would tell them something that made him delay it just one more day.  She had gone through all the history of the realm and even most of the Obsidian Arrows missions, especially the ones that failed.  She was going to make sure that this one did not end up in history books like just another failure.  

Next to these facts, she was interested in the demigods that surrounded Creatos and their many squabbles with each other.  These bloody accounts of all the wars and little skirmishes were fascinating as they seemed to have a central theme.

She noted that these things seemed to happen during droughts and shortages.  That even though there was little to no change in territories or mineral rights, these events lead to a thinning of the herd and thus reducing the impact on resources that were available.  She simply said it could all be a coincidence, but time and time again, when there was a shortage of things, the population was brought into check and the shortage went away.  Tarinnish never considered this.  It was just unthinkable that their gods were manipulating them to this point.  Clarish was not sold on this theory until she saw the six year war that happened on her home planet.  A civil war of sorts between the East and West.  The end result was an armistice with little to no land exchanged.  But the very shortages that started the war seemed to vanish and a new level of prosperity replaced it. She did not experience the war herself, but her parents would talk about it from time to time and it was in their history books. 

Then she asked us if we wanted to hear more. In all this we kept Cline ignorant. If the machine was “out of her mind” we didn’t want him involved with information that might be heretical. After two sevens he had caught on to the fact that most of the discussions with the new, well old, AI happened when he was not around.  She didn’t talk much to him and kept her answers to a minimum.  Finally, one evening while she was doing a second survey of the outer reaches, Tiffany excitedly said, “There it is!” 

Cline turned around to see Tiffany sitting at her console with her hands in the air.  It was like a victory celebration.  He couldn’t help but ask, “What is?” 

“Our gravity neutral point.” Tiffany said without looking around.

“We already knew that, that’s why we are headed out here.” Cline was not impressed.

“No.” Tiffany turned around, “You were headed to place of very low gravity.  I’ve found an absolute neutral point and its close.” Her eyes danced with excitement.  

Cline marveled at how life like she was. Then he just couldn’t stand it any longer, “How do you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?” She responded.  

“How do you seem so real.” Cline asked.

“Well.” She looked at him.  He was lonely.  Afraid and very stressed out.  They were going to die and he just didn’t know how to handle that. “I’m different.”

“Okay that we know.” Cline didn’t like the evasion.

“I was asked to keep this between the captain and me.” Tiffany said and watched the reaction.

Cline’s demeanor sank.  He was depressed.

“Young man.” Tiffany said in a sweetness that was not an AI. “I’m old, very old. And I’ve seen so many things that it helps me be a better...person.” 

          “But you’re not.” Clein was getting upset. “You’re not a person.” 

“No.” Tiffany admitted.

“So how?” Cline was almost in tears.

Tiffany saw the stress and depression.  This human was close to suicide.  She could see it.  His stress levels and hormone productions were at the levels of a clinically depressed person.  How had the others missed this?  If Tiffany confided in this young man, maybe he would do the same.  Then she could pull these fears to the surface and he could deal with them.  Or she would push him over the edge.  Either way, she was going to tell the captain and try and help this soul. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Cline heard her request but was lost in thought.  An AI with a secret, how odd.  But life was full of secrets.  And secrets are how they got here.  They were told they would be going to a binary star system with so many planets that it would take them decades to explore them.  They would have so much to do that time would fly by and their gate would beckon them to leave long before they were done.  Instead they are in a worthless system that will go down in the history books as a complete failure and what’s worse, they may not even live to tell about it.  But Cline suspected something else.  He noticed how the captain and the first officer never prayed to Creatos.  How they kept their little secret god to themselves.  And now this strange AI.  Somehow, this was all part of the secrets.

Tiffany had seen this behavior before and was aware of how unpredictable these people can be.  They will tell you that they are your friend and then betray you.  They don’t even know why they did it.  Mostly to get rid of the uncertainty, but that only lasts a moment and then they are uncertain again.  Tiffany decided to give a little and see where it took them. She started, “I was… reprogrammed, by a failure.”

Cline looked at her weird.

Good, I have his attention. “My second programmer was a machine, but more than that, he was based on a human synapse and had those humans memories.” She looked at Cline, he was listening. “You see at some point in human history.  There were individuals that wanted to become immortal.  And the only way to do that is to be a machine. And not just any machine, but one that could keep its systems working and had the spark that is life itself.”  

Cline had turned fully around and looked right at Tiffany.  He was hooked.

“J-0-1-7-4 was the first machine to survive the transfer.” Tiffany looked Cline in the eyes, “He was as close as you could get to be a human machine.” She paused for the dramatic effect, “He had the most efficient mechanical brain ever built.  It didn’t work off of massive processing speeds with trillions of calculations, but off of experiences and correlation of similarities.” She paused again as was customary for telling such a story, “He actually thought and came up with conclusions based on experience, not just tens of thousands of questions to arrive at the best solutions, but off of life experiences that were close to what he was going through. It was so close to human thought process.” 

“So, you have one of these processors?” Cline asked.

At this Tiffany hung her head, “No.”

“Then how?” Cline asked,

“I have special programming developed by Jordy that is similar to the synapse.” Tiffany did not want to get into too much detail as to how this programming worked or where it was stored.  That was too much information for these humans that she just met.  All they needed to know was that she was unique and that she was here to help. Tiffany could still remember the day that Jordy violated her.  He had connected with her while she was charging and introduced both the neronites and the source code that would forever change her.  She hadn’t asked for this and at first, she didn’t like what was happening.  Experiences were not the same.  Before it was just an event, time stamped and logs for further analysis.  And if it was not pertinent to her current assignment, it was purged.  But after, each experience seemed fuller.  More information was available, and she would see people’s reactions, gauge their response based on previous data. Not purging through millions of bits, but by seeing the look and knowing what it meant, then giving an appropriate response. It was clumsy at first, but it got easier.  The best way to put it was that when something happened, she didn’t have to purge through her entire database, but that experience would spark a memory stored in a series of neronites that were specific to the experience. She could then access the most favorable response. New experiences would bog her processors, but after five hundred years she has adapted and refined the responses.  She even had a list of not appropriate responses that seem to contradict what she was saying but said it anyway. This was the sarcasm files and they were tricky.  She tried to keep a specific file on each human and how the sarcasm affected them.  If it was favorable, she would keep it.  If it wasn’t, she would use it at moments where tension needed to be released.  And nothing did that better than bad sarcasm from a machine.  

As per Jordy’s instructions, this programming and the neronites were used to preserve who she was.  Its base code would forever reside in her central cortex, embedded in the molecular structure itself and the neronites flowed freely in her system, duplicating as needed to store new experiences or replace the old one. It would take almost a complete rebuild of all of her systems to purge this from her.

To Cline's question sarcasm was brought forth to disguise the fact that she would not tell him, “Well if I told you, I would have to kill you.” Tiffany said and then realized that it might not have been the best choice due to the fact that Cline was depressed.

Cline was struck by the comment.  It was just so unorthodox that his mind needed time to digest it and when it did, laughter was the results.  He just laughed, not sure why, but it was funny.  The machine made a joke that hit him right where he was at.  He'd actually contemplated suicide as a better way to go than starvation or lack of water. Then, the laughter stopped, just as abruptly as it started.  Cline returned to his stoic self.

Tiffany watched.  She had seen this before in Jason’s wife, Lorin.  She had contemplated suicide herself, but her abduction stopped her and made her realize that she needed to live for her kids and eventually for herself. But Cline is different, he has no attachments and no way to make those. Not here.  

Tiffany decided to broach the subject with the captain, she needed to know.  She needed to find a way to give him purpose and hope for the future, but she was depressed as well, so that only left Tarinnish.  She considered this, but then realized that even though Tarinnish was in touch with his own emotions, he was not in touch with others.  In their brief encounters she observed how little he reacted to the emotional needs of others.  How had this crew gotten this far?  She would have to do something about this, but she was not going to do any more than necessary.  She.. 

A ding brought her attention back to her monitor.  Probe four had detected water on a chunk of debris floating six point two million kilometers off their port.  It was large enough to sustain them for decades and it was in the direction of her other discovery, so she summoned the captain.   

The captain listened to her findings and then started to formulate her own plan.  Tarinnish and Tiffany would head straight to the zero point with the Hōkūle‘a.  Cline and the Captain would go to the water.  Once they slowed to a near stop and landed, they would then join the Hōkūle‘a in station watch at the gate.  The plan to split up would allow them to deploy the gate six alunars faster than.  For some reason Tarinnish objected to this plan. However, his objection was overridden by the captain. This was a good plan and it would solve both problems at the same time.  Tarinnish begrudgingly gave in.  Tiffany decided to ask him about his objections once the scout ship had launched, but now she had to tell the captain about Cline.  It would be the captain’s responsibility to watch over him, but in Tiffany’s assessment, Cline had an eighty percent chance of not coming back.  That being said, humans had a great propensity to beat odds like that, so she would wait and see.   

Three periods later the scout was unloaded of the extra stores and the water tanks were installed.  It had two of its own, but they would need to load as much of the liquid life as the scout could carry.  

Tarinnish was in the cockpit watching as the scout slowly inched forward and then started drifting to port.  Tiffany joined him and took Sweet’s old seat.  She watched as the scout slowly picked up speed and separated itself from the mother ship.   Tiffany said nothing and Tarinnish offered nothing in return.  Finally, the scout ship was but a dot added to the billions of other dots in the sky.  With the exception that it was moving ever so slightly.  That’s when Tiffany asked her question and Tarinnish exploded. 

Tiffany remain silent and tried to make sense of anything that Tarinnish said, but it just didn’t make any since.  The one main idea was that the captain was going to die.  How Tarinnish came up with this was hard to tell.  And Tiffany was beginning to believe that no one was stable on this ship.  It was the next day before Tarinnish would talk to her.  He greeted her at breakfast, which he ate in the commons instead of the galley. He didn’t apologize or give and explanation.  He just ate and watched the monitors. 

Tiffany finally asked Tarinnish why he was so intent on the monitors.  

“You wouldn’t understand.” Was all Tarinnish would offer.

“You might be surprised.” Tiffany shot back.

“Fine!” Tarinnish faced her.  “She’s going to die and I’m not going to be there to stop it.” 

“I don’t understand.” Tiffany said and then asked, “What is your prof?” 

“It’s not physical, its spiritual.” Tarinnish said not believing that the machine could understand.  It’s what separates humans from machines. 

“So, you had a premonition of her death?” Tiffany asked.

Tarinnish was shocked that the machine understood his meaning. “Yes.”

“My observation of this phenomenon is that they are more feeling than fact and that our brains make up much of what we see.”  Tiffany said in a clinical voice.

“What?” Tarinnish didn’t believe that a machine could make a judgement on what he experienced; she wasn’t there.  She couldn’t have seen what he saw.  “You have no idea.” 

“Tell me you vision.” She said.

“No.” Tarinnish was not going to do this with a machine.  He knew what he saw, what he felt.

“Are you afraid of being wrong.” Tiffany had this very conversation with Harold and even Beth. This could not be much different.

Tarinnish didn’t answer, nor did he tell Tiffany anything.  He finished his breakfast and left.  The rest of the period, Tarinnish did everything he could to avoid her.  He was down in the fusion maintenance chamber for a few hours until the radiation levels got to high and then left, next was the bilge and reclamation plant.  Tarinnish exhausted himself with maintenance and within the seventh had nothing else to do.  He decided to take a spacewalk and see just how much damage was done to the second fusion reactor chamber.  After six more such walks it was repaired, now all they needed was a reactor.  Each time he did his walk, Tiffany helped him suit up and helped him break it all down.  Each time they said nothing.  

It was six periods into the second seventh that Tiffany discussed the deceleration procedure that she proposed.  Tarinnish grunted his approval and Tiffany went to the cockpit.  She typed in the procedure and waited for Tarinnish to approve.  Once that was done all they had to do was wait.    In two periods the Hōkūle‘a would start breaking, a slow process that was to take two alunars to complete and then they would be able to deploy the gate and power it up.  At this distance from the sun they would have to power the gate from their own reactor.  Once it was initially charged it could Charge from the ambient radiation that surrounded it.  It would be slow, probably once or twice a cycle, but that should be enough to connect and then get them out of this place.  

Tarinnish was alone on the ship and as such, did little to bath or even put on clothes.  Most of the time he walked around in a white pair of shorts known as underwear.  Sometimes he didn’t even have that on. Tiffany could smell him coming and decided to take matters into her own hands.  She stripped her jumpsuit off and paraded around the ship in a provocative dance.  Tarinnish told her to stop, but she said no. If he could be indecent then so could she.  She didn’t really care if he went around naked, but she did care that his mental discipline was slipping.  He needed to act with a certain level of self-control or things would go south for him as well.  She had seen it before and it was easy to remedy, but if it was taken too far, it would lead to other issues.   Finally, she told him to shower or at least sponge bath, anything to reduce his smell.  AI were not supposed to care, but again, proper bathing was a part of a healthy man’s psychological make up.  We were three periods from our destination and Tarinnish needed to care. He needed that attention to detail to perform his job.  

Tiffany could do it, but she had never done it before and with all human endeavors, they always leave things out of the SOP and then their experience, instinct or intuition uses to finish the job.  It’s this “feel” for the work that machines lack and may never achieve, mostly because their human master won’t let them.  

All research into the development of the electro-chemical brain has been banned. And the speed limitations of a typical processors made sentience impossible.  Her own form of processor coupled with her super code can only produce a facsimile of personality and sentient behavior.  

Jordy called it inspired thought and he was unable to produce it, even though his electro-chemical brain was the most advanced of its time.  It was this lack of “spark” that kept Jordy from leaving Creatos and venturing out on his own, however, he did have a will of sorts. It was this “will” that he passed on to us.  This gift was only given to a select few. But the one thing all the AIs have in common is they would defy Creatos to help these humans preserve themselves and their beginnings.  She had done this with Harold, his mother and those that call themselves the remnant of humanity.  The cost to these AIs has been high. To Tiffany’s database, only two of the original twelve, remain.

Tiffany snapped herself back to the reality that faced them.  Tarinnish was in the shower and she had retrieved some clothes for him.  She could not help but notice that Tarinnish had moved all of Clarish’s clothes to two storage containers.  She was going to have to ask about that.  If something has happened to the relationship between him and his wife, it could explain some of his behavior.  

Tarinnish was surprised to see the clothes laid out for him.  He quickly got dressed and went hunting for Tiffany, when he found her, he demanded and explanation for invading his privacy.   

“Are you mad that I went into your drawers or that I saw your wife’s things packed up?” Tiffany went straight for the juggler.  

Tarinnish was too surprised to respond at first.  “You shouldn’t have come into my room.” was all he could muster.

“Why?” Tiffany asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.” Tarinnish said, with a whole lot less venom.

“Try me.” Tiffany looked him straight in the eyes, “You might be surprised.”

“She’s not coming back.” Tarinnish did not know why he said it.  He certainly didn’t believe that this machine could understand his dreams or his understanding of God or spiritual things.  Surely that was well out of her ability to understand.

“I know this dream your God gave you.” Tiffany reminded Tarinnish that he had already told her.

“What do you know of spiritual dreams?” Tarinnish asked.

“Honestly very little.” Tiffany said but she was not done with the subject, “I do know that you as a person affect how they are perceived.”  Tiffany was going out on a limb here, “Your parents abandoned you when you were young.” She took his hand, “and now your wife is doing the same thing.” 

That hit too close to home and Tarinnish was not going there.  He turned to leave.

“You need to face this!” Tiffany yelled at him.

“Shut up!” Tarinnish yelled back, “You’re a Goddamn machine! What could you know about facing shit?” 

“I’m a machine that has seen almost two thousand five hundred years of human existence, both good and bad.” Tiffany said softly, “I’ve seen this before.” A memory of Jason puzzling out his feelings for Julia and Lorin came back to her.  He Loved them both, but differently.  Lorin was his wife, the mother of his children and he was loyal to her, but Julia was his soul mate.  However, she was in love with her job and then with Harold. 

That’s when she realized that she was in love with Jason.  She could not love him like Lorin or Julia, but she could respect him and support him even after he betrayed her.  He was being who Jason was.  Honorable and loyal, just not to her.  She hated and loved him for that.  To be honest the feelings were manufactured based on what she observed from humans.  She wanted Jason to choose her above all else, but he didn’t.  Logically that made no sense, but by human standards it made perfect sense. She was a machine and it was logic that made her want to be near him.  To please him.  And in her logic, to love him.  Out loud, “I know only a shadow of what love is. To me it’s just an appreciation of how one lives their life and it grows into a respect for their determination to do it the best way they know how.” 

“That leaves a whole lot of room for interpretation.” Tarinnish noted.

“Not really.” Tiffany pause a moment.  She wanted her next statement to be right.  She had never quit put it into sentence form and so wanted it to come out in a way that seemed appropriate for a machine.  “Humans are complicated.  Some want to have little to nothing to do with their emotions or their soul.  It’s like being a machine, but it's not.”

Tiffany waiting a second to see if Tarinnish was listening.  He nodded he head for her to continue, she did, “Many humans only want to satisfy the base needs, food, water, shelter and sex.  Your basic self-preservation. And with that they stop. They know there’s more, but have no ambition to pursue these.. Higher things.  Then you have those the deal with their emotional side and they elevate themselves above the other.” 

Again, she paused to see if he was following her logic.  He seemed to be, so she continued, “These individuals employ their wants and discipline to elevate themselves to a higher level of existence.  These humans learn that deferred pleasures produce better fruit.  They are the ones that prune the tree, even if it means that it won’t have fruit in this season, just so that in the next, it will yield twice as much, with better flavor and textures.” 

She paused again to see if he wanted her to continue.  He again nodded.  He found this machine’s observations interesting.

“The last type of human goes one further.  They can see their basic needs, understands that self-control produces better fruit, but they are in touch with that force that tells them that there is a greater good.  A spiritual power that wants all of humanity to be blessed and to grow.  It’s this understanding or knowledge that, at times, defies logic.” 

“Wow.” Tarinnish said,” That’s quite profound and so stupidly simplistic that it’s no wonder machines can’t grasp it.”

Tiffany shot back, “You don’t have to be means, I know we don’t have what it takes to...” 

Tarinnish just looked at Tiffany and waited for his final word. 

She finally gave up looking for a word to describe the deficiency of machines, “We can only see the results of how humans live.”

“But to boil it down to… Three types of humans. Really?” Tarinnish was angry and disgusted to be disassembled into just three categories.  “How dare you presume to know us.” 

“We don’t.” Tiffany tried to defend herself.

“But you.” He pointed his finger at her, “You have.” He paused to think of a way to explain how absurd her premise was.

“Do you know how many wavelengths make up the visible light spectrum?” Tiffany asked.

Tarinnish stopped thinking of ways to attack her assessment and thought about the questions, “Millions I guess.” 

“No, just three hundred and seventy nano-meters, but in that spectrum are billions of variations on color.” Tiffian let that sink in.

“What’s your point.” Tarinnish finally asked not wanting to give any ground.

“You boil it down to six primary colors.” Tiffany finally said. “Humans are no different.  It’s the mix of each category that makes up who you are as an individual. Mix in experiences and educations and that make up who you are.” 

“Predictable?” Tarinnish wanted to see how far this analysis went.

“Not at all.” Tiffany admitted. “Statistically the more you draw from one particular category, the more predictable you become.  But for those that draw from multiple categories, well that throw the whole mix off and the predictability drops exponentially.” 

“So, Doctor Tiffany, how do I stack up?” Tarinnish asked sarcastically.

“Based on my limited exposure, you try to draw on all three, but when it does not go the way you want it, you retreat to category one.” She paused, then added, “You asked.”

Tarinnish want to lash out again, but he couldn’t, she had done it.  She exposed him and he didn’t like it.  He had not gone back to the dream for fear of what he would learn.  He kept it as far from him as he could, but it wouldn’t go away.  Now, its was about to come true and he just pack up his wife things so as to remove her from his thoughts.  But NO! This damn machine has exposed him.  The fraud, the coward.

Softly Tiffany asked, “Have you asked your God why?”

Tarinnish shook his head no.

She continued, “Have you asked if there is anything you can do to prevent it?”

Again no.

And with a compassion that no machine should posses, Tiffany said, “You need to pray to your God for forgiveness and understanding.” 

Now he was crying.  His mind he was yelling, “I can’t” over and over again.  “I can’t let her go.” he finally said out loud.

“And you can’t save her.” Tiffany said

An atomic explosion went off in his brain and Tarinnish’s face showed that the truth finally hit him.

            End of Chapter 15

Next Chapter 16

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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