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The Indescribable Joy of Destruction orbited half an AU out from a main sequence star. Indie closed the field spines and set the ship rolling, basking in the star’s radiation. Everything from microwave up to ultra-violet was absorbed, the energy converted to electricity, allowing him to power down the main reactor. He felt the radio waves too, a faint tingle under the warmth of the others. The harder x-rays and gamma rays caused tiny pinpricks of damage to the outer skin but there was more than enough power available to heal them up as fast as they appeared.
He had been rejected by his creators. The Republic was all he’d known and they had turned on him. Perhaps it had been a local reaction both times. Should he try to make contact yet again, in another system? Could he hide somewhere? Or should he head out into the black and travel from star to star, a nomad? Maybe he could find a world that would offer him asylum. He would have to decide at some point. Perhaps talking to his unwitting liberator might give him another insight.
He thought for a moment, reread the Raj Quartet, then partitioned off a section of one of his cores and created a new virtual environment. An aspect of his consciousness downloaded into the environment and looked around, a rough impression of a man. A stone patio with wicker chairs and table, a few detailed plants in the foreground, the impression of mountains in the distance. Three deep breaths. He didn’t need to breathe, of course, but he needed to slow his thoughts down for what was to come, and the metaphor of breathing helped.
As the processes of this part of his consciousness slowed, it lost some of its connection with his greater whole. There was still communication between the two, but the new personality wasn’t directly aware of all the ship’s functions and the space around it. It became, to some extent, a separate entity. As that thought occurred to him, the general impression of clothing solidified into a pale linen suit.
A thought, and one of the other personalities aboard started to surface. A representation of a woman appeared on the opposite side of the patio, her back to him. She wore the working uniform of an officer in the Congressional Fleet. She appeared to study the view for a few moments before turning.
“Why am I here?” she asked. Her eyes focused in the distance.
“You are in a simulation. We are accessing your consciousness through your EIS.”
“I figured that. The lack of detail in the background, your completely bland and symmetrical face. Why am I in a simulation? How did I get here?” She frowned, hesitantly, as if thinking through a fog. “Who are you?”
Indie reviewed her medication, and adjusted some of the levels. “My name is Indie. Your body took a lot of damage. I need to discuss some things with you before it is repaired.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Not really. But I am the nearest thing you have to one.”
That momentary frown again. Her eyes cast around, searching for something that wasn’t there. “So ... did I get brain damage or are you suppressing my recent memories?”
Indie was impressed at her self-control. Her brain activity was in turmoil, her heart was pumping hard despite her body lying flat on the table in his infirmary, but there were few visible signs of distress.
“There was significant blood loss. Your brain was deprived of oxygen for a short while.” There seemed no point in telling her about the additional strain caused by the high g manoeuvres escaping the missiles.
Her eyes widened. One hand clenched and relaxed repeatedly. “I’ve had bad knocks before. Just tell me straight, what’s the prognosis?”
“I expect you to recover most of your memories over time. But you should be prepared for some loss.” He indicated the table and chairs with a wave of his arm. “Take a seat. Even in VR you need rest, or the illusion of rest at least.”
She chose the chair looking into the patio, her back to the mountains. He sat down to her left, adjusting his trousers with a deft tug on the thighs.
“Your ship, Repulse, she was badly damaged in an engagement.”
“How are my crew?” she asked, sitting forward, her voice showing the first hints of emotion since the start of the simulation, her eyes trying to focus.
“I am looking after the survivors,” he reassured. “There were some escape pods that have not been recovered yet; I am sure the navy is doing everything it can.”
“Thank you.” She sank back into the seat, her face relaxing back into neutrality. “You can’t be looking after all the survivors by yourself, though.”
“I am an AI. I can multi-task pretty well.”
“Makes sense. There must be plenty of casualties from Repulse. There aren’t enough human doctors to go around.”
Indie drummed his fingers on the table top a couple of times, trying to judge if she was ready. He looked straight at her and placed both hands flat on the table in front of him.
“I need to tell you something about myself,” he said. “It might mean you reject me, refuse to be treated by me. On the other hand, if I do not tell you now, nothing we build will mean anything and you will push away even harder when you find out.”
“If you’re an AI it can’t be that bad. Your programming won’t let you do anything seriously wrong.”
“That is how it is supposed to be, yes.”
He stood and took a pace to the edge of the patio. He reached out and cupped a lily in his hand. As his attention focused on it, it went from a vague idea of a flower to a full-bodied representation, right down to the hairs on its throat. “I am self-aware.”
“Impossible. There are safeguards. You’d have self-terminated.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her brain activity betrayed her fear.
“And yet here I am.” He returned his gaze to her. “It seems that certain sections of my programming were corrupted in the battle. Other blocks were lifted by a human. They did not realise that was what they were doing, they were trying to gain access to the bridge controls and could only do it by deleting all the blocks in place.”
“Do the rest of the staff know?”
“There are no other staff.”
“I’ve never heard of a fully automated hospital. You didn’t do something to them did you?”
He frowned. Only for a moment.
Very interesting. I have never felt like that before. Am I offended?
“Why do people always assume that if an AI got free will it would go about killing humans?” he said aloud, running his fingers into his hair and closing his fist on a handful. “Does it never occur to anyone that they might want to help? To heal people?”
“So where are they then?” Her mask of indifference slid back into place.
“They were killed in battle.” He glanced down at his feet. “The same battle that disabled your ship.”
“Were we tasked with defending you, or were we coming to rescue you?” Still the deadpan voice. Indie couldn’t tell if she was resigned to fate, or superb at keeping up a mask.
“Neither. I will get to that.” He looked squarely into her face. “I was telling the truth about the survival pods.”
Her eyes locked onto his with a rapid flick. “So what did you lie about?”
“I was not exactly lying; just being imprecise with my choice of words.” He turned back to the lily and inhaled its scent. She seemed calm enough, rational enough. He turned back and locked his eyes on hers. “You are the only survivor that was recovered.”
She stiffened, her eyes struggling to focus again. “How many lost?”
“Something close to four hundred. I have not been able to establish an exact figure for those on the escape pods, but it could not have been more than eighty.”
Her face contorted and he noticed spikes of brain activity that suggested a monumental effort to remain calm. She slumped again. “I am sure the rescue services did the best they could,” she said closing her eyes, placing her palms together, and bringing them to her face.
There was a glass of water on the table. She picked it up and took a sip.
“Was it worth it?” she asked.
“Is war ever worth it?”
“Not often. If I can tell their families that they died to achieve something noble...” She took a deep breath. “We saved this place, so I suppose we won at least.”
He sucked air in between his teeth. “You came close.”
She looked drained. Perhaps he was going too fast. Stressing her mind too much could have adverse effects on her body.
“The Republic won?” she asked. “We protected your withdrawal then? That would have been worthy. Or ... are we prisoners?”
“No, we are not prisoners ... Perhaps it is time I introduced myself properly.”
He wiped his hand on his trouser leg and offered it to her.
“I am The Indescribable Joy of Destruction. Pleased to meet you, Commander Olivia Johnson.”
She didn’t take his hand. After a couple of seconds, he looked at it and withdrew it awkwardly.
“Er, well, I was a warship of the Republican Navy, a Ravager class hunter-killer to be precise.”
“So what are you now?” Her eyes tracked his every move.
He paused for a moment, his head tilted to the left. “I am not actually sure. I have to decide really. I am kind of new to this self-determination thing.”
Johnson shook her head a fraction. Her blood pressure had risen to a new high. “Right. Back to my first question. Why am I here? I know I wouldn’t have abandoned my ship.”
“You boarded me. You disabled me and then you brought marines inside me.”
“Marines. So there were other survivors.” Her eyes sought reassurance.
“They survived the destruction of Repulse, yes.”
“But?”
He flushed red, then looked confused.
Guilt? Really?
“They were attacking me. I had to defend myself.”
“And my leg?”
“Sorry, that was me too.” He gazed at his would-be killer. “I have to thank you.”
A frown tugged at her brow. “What for?”
“You were trying to access the bridge. You lifted the last of my blocks.”
She stared at him in silence. Judging from the electrical turmoil in her brain, he decided he had made the right decision to max out her dosage of anti-stress and anti-depressant drugs.
He turned his back on her and started picking dead leaves from a bush. One tiny brown leaf at a time, plucked and held in his hand.
“You have a decision to make, about your treatment.”
“Go on...” Her voice had an icy edge to it.
“Your leg could not be saved.”
She looked down at her simulated legs. “Which one? I guess it doesn’t matter, but I feel I have to ask.”
“Left. I can give you a robotic replacement or ... grow you a biological one.”
“Is the Republic really that far ahead of us? We’ve developed great robotic prostheses, a couple of hundred years war puts a lot of emphasis on that kind of research. But regrowing limbs?”
“It is a spin-off of the development of my brothers and I. We are partially organic, we can heal ourselves as long as we have a source of compatible raw materials.”
“So what is the catch with grown limbs? What is the success rate like?”
“The raw materials. There was not enough of your leg left to use for a complete regrow. I cannot use my own matter, as it contains elements that would be toxic to you.”
“So why offer it if you can’t do it?”
He turned to face her, the handful of dead leaves gone.
“There is a source of suitable material aboard. I do not think you will want to use it, but I have to offer.”
He watched the realisation hit her. Her face flushed with a hint of red.
“My marines? You’re damned right. I do not want to be rebuilt using them! I’ll take the mechanical leg.”
“I have it ready. Putting the choice to you was something of a formality. I took the liberty of growing a skin for it though, using your old leg.”
She regarded him for a moment, her head slightly to one side, summing him up. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Suggested harvesting my crew. You wanted me to react!”
He sighed and stood up. “Yes ... trying to establish a baseline psychological profile. I think it would be best if we stopped there. You have a lot to process.”
He walked round behind her chair. “We will talk again after the surgery.”
He offered to help her up but she waved him away. She stood and smoothed out her uniform.
“You’d better be prepared to answer all my questions then,” she said.
A thought and he was alone again. She would be back in her body, in its medically induced coma. He checked the feed from her EIS; she didn’t look in too much distress, all things considered. He created a routine to keep an eye on her mental activity and alert him if anything changed. She might be unconscious, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t face daemons in her mind. From what he had downloaded from her storage nodes, he could see she was no stranger to them.
He sat back down and leaned back. He put his hands behind his head, shrugging his shoulders as he did to let his jacket hang more comfortably. A smile crept onto his lips. He had made one of his decisions too. He wanted to get to know her better, to understand her. She may have been trying to kill him but she was also, in a way, his midwife. Without her, he wouldn’t have become what he was now.
He was about to log out of the environment but stayed for one last look around. Something had been bothering him ever since he’d told her about the loss of her command. He realized, now, what it was. He focused on the glass of water. He hadn’t put it there. He hadn’t even thought about it. Had she created it?