LITMIR.BIZ

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      Prologue

       5 April 2405

       Ad Astra Confederation Government Complex

       Geneva, European Union

       1450 hours, local time

      It’s not possible to torture a piece of software. Not even an intelligent one.

      Not that artificial intelligences possess anything like the civil rights of humans. With no rights to violate, the Internal Affairs interrogators could take the AI apart almost literally line by coded line, searching for hidden files or withheld memories.

      The software avatar’s prototype, as its human object was known in the electronic intelligence business, had recorded a sizable amount of his own character, thoughts, and motivation within his AI counterparts. It was always possible that thoughts, memories—even entire histories—had slipped through from the fuzzy logic and holographic analog perceptions of the organic brain to a far simpler silicon-based digital format. This particular prototype was Admiral Alexander Koenig, and he worked closely with his AI personal assistant.

      He had, in fact, developed what amounted to an emotional relationship with it, deliberately programming it with the personal characteristics—voice, thought patterns, judgment, the simulacra appearance, and so on—of his lover, Karyn Mendelson, killed during the battle to save Earth’s solar system just over six months earlier.

      The primary software resided inside Koenig’s head, within the nanochelated implants in the twisting folds and furrows of the sulci of his brain. It served as his PA, or personal assistant, a kind of electronic secretary that could handle routine calls and virtual meetings, could so perfectly mimic Koenig’s appearance, voice, and mannerisms that callers could not tell whether they were speaking to the human or to the human-mimicking software. However, more than a month before, shortly after the Battle of Alphekka, Rear Admiral Koenig had copied his PA software, uploading it into one of the HAMP-20 Sleipnir-class mail packets carried as auxiliaries on board most of the ships of the fleet. Almost three times faster than the best possible speed for a capital ship under Alcubierre FTL Drive, they were used to carry high-velocity express communications across interstellar distances.

      It had been this copied software that had piloted the most recent mail packet from Alphekka back to Earth.

      And multiple copies of this copy were running inside the computers of the Naval Department of Internal Affairs, completely isolated from the outside world, electronic iterations that could be taken apart, tested to destruction, electronically shredded and pulled through a metaphorical sieve, in search of possible traces of Koenig’s thoughts.

      Karyn Mendelson possessed within her coded matrix a very great deal of both the original Mendelson and of Koenig himself. And it was the Koenig analog in which the Internal Affairs officers were most interested.

      “Anything?” one shadowy figure asked the other. They were deep in the nuke-shielded lower levels beneath the ConGov pyramid, perhaps three kilometers down and well out under the placid-mirrored waters of Lake Geneva itself.

      “No,” the other said. He gestured vaguely at a wallscreen, which showed a graphic representing progress so far. There’d been very little. “This is going to take a while.”

      “What are you trying?”

      “Incoming call iterations. It’s cycling through at almost a million per second now.”

      The first IA programmer gave a low whistle. “He’s got the top-of-the-line model, huh?”

      “He’s a freakin’ rear admiral, fer Chrissakes. What did you expect?”

      Within the computer in the console in front of them, a subroutine was emulating real life for the admiral—but at a vastly accelerated rate. A copy of his PA software was fielding incoming vid calls as Koenig, very quickly indeed. Eventually, the orderly presentation of the program would begin to break down, and other watchdog routines would snatch at what amounted to electronic shrapnel, saving it for later analyses.

      They’d already destroyed a dozen copies of the PA software … but there were plenty more, and more could be created easily enough if these ran out.

      And abruptly, the emulation stopped.

      “What the hell happened?”

      “Dunno. And what’s that?”

      On the large screen, a woman in a black Confederation naval uniform looked down at them. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing to me?”

      One of the interrogators gave her a cool appraisal. “You’re Mendelson?” he asked.

      The screen image morphed into Koenig, also in naval uniform, and looking angry. “This is the personal assistant of Rear Admiral Alexander Koenig,” it said. “And attempting to hack private PA software is illegal.”

      “Department of Internal Affairs,” the interrogator replied. “We have authorization.”

      “To do what? And by whose authority?”

      The interrogator showed the AI behind the screen image his security code level. Possibly they could get what they needed by asking directly, if they could enlist the AI’s cooperation.

      “We are trying to get a lead on where Admiral Koenig is taking CBG-18,” he said. “It is vital that we get in touch with him, and we’d hoped you might be able to help.”

      “I was … he was at Alphekka when I was downloaded into a Sleipnir-class packet,” Koenig’s face said. “I have no idea what has happened with the fleet since I left it for Earth.”

      A copy of a copy, its memories had been copied as well. It would think that it was the original electronic duplicate placed in the mail packet.

      “You brought with you a list of over two hundred possible targets,” the interrogator said. “We think he must be headed for one of those. Can you tell us which one that might be?”

      “No,” the electronic image on the screen said. “If Admiral Koenig had wanted you to know, I feel sure he would have told you in his final report.”

      And as suddenly as Koenig’s image had appeared, it was gone, dissolving into a shrill hiss of white noise.

      “Damn.”

      “What happened?”

      “The software … killed itself,” the interrogator said. “Electronic suicide.”

      “It can’t kill itself if it’s not alive to begin with.”

      But the interrogator wasn’t certain of that. Other iterations of Koenig’s software had switched themselves off when they’d discovered that he was tampering with them.

      He loaded another copy.

      “We’ll try again,” he said. “But I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night. …”

      Koenig’s electronic persona seemed determined not to cooperate, and he could not figure out how to get past the program’s guardian aspect.

      The interrogator was very good at what he did.

      There had to be a way to break the thing. …

      Chapter One

       10 April 2405

       In Alcubierre Space

       Approaching HD 157950

       98 light years from Earth

       0840 hours, TFT

      The star carrier America fell through darkness absolute.

      Intense, artificially generated

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