Kyot was on day nine of no sleep. Stimmies were no longer working, even the strong ones, and time seemed to be moving faster than usual while his perception of things was slowed. Yet, the spaceman refused to stop. Too much had already been set in motion. He only wished that he had started on the rigged-up detonators a few days earlier when his head was clearer.
It’s hard enough to work under a collapsing mountain, trying to wire boom-sticks together, but it’s damn near impossible to do it when you can’t see straight.
Kyot’s payment pile rumbled around him as he finished on the eighth bundle of blast rods, followed by electrostatic discharges that flashed through the caverns and tunnels in surges of light. It was the third such event in one day and the most powerful, which indicated that they were becoming more frequent as well as more energetic. Kyot had originally thought they came from static buildup in the payment pile due to interactions between BR-4s magnetic field and the field of Big Red itself. Yet, that didn’t explain why the occurrence of discharges was accelerating and getting stronger.
Honestly, who cares?
Kyot didn’t know what was happening, but he had a feeling that his time under the payment pile was soon coming to an end. It was only by sheer luck that the first big electrical event occurred after he had removed the power and life support lines to his EVA suit. The UHD packs had finally finished charging and he was tired of being tethered to the Cab, so he quickly undid the alterations and returned to his work. Barely an hour later every surface inside the artificial mountain lit up in a flash of arcing light. If Kyot had still been hooked up to the poorly insulated life-support and power lines during that surge, it probably would have fried the electronics on his suit. Maybe even warped the seals on the air tube and caused a leak. Then boom.
Just like that. All the years of Kyot’s life reduced to a crushed pile of burnt carbon.
Don’t think about it. Just get this done. But goddamn, I’m tired. I need sleep.
Kyot started working on the ninth bundle of blast rods while Agi decided it was a good time to continue criticizing his creator’s poor life choices.
“This is a very, VERY, stupid plan,” Agi said through the commlink. “And that’s in spite of how much I love blowing shit up.”
Although Agi’s army of remote piloted cobots continued packing equipment into the cargo jumpers, diligently following orders, the machine couldn’t help but get in a few more complaints. It was probably just to have something on the record, in case Kyot’s plan to abandon their energy grid exploded in his face. Which it would. The spaceman didn’t mind the objections though. He reveled in it. Because, if things went right, it meant he knew better than a Gen2 artificial intelligence, a feat that would put him among the smartest Homo Sapiens in all of human history.
“The grid is fucked,” Kyot said without looking up from his work. He didn’t know of a more elegant way to explain to the machine that a five-thousand-year-old infrastructure wasn’t worth the cost of saving it. Not with an increasingly unstable mountain crumbling above their heads.
“None of this shit was designed to work in this environment. A lot of it is corroded now. Or buried. It would take too long to fix, and even longer to reinforce the payment pile itself. All the pillars, and the caverns, and the tunnels, just to ensure the stability of the workspace. It’s too much. The easier solution is to blow it all up and dig ourselves out.”
“Then let’s DIG,” Agi persisted through their commlink, “It makes no sense to collapse a fucking mountain on top of us.”
Kyot didn’t bother responding. He knew the math didn’t exactly check out, but his mind was made up. He wanted to get out from under the crumbling death trap. He wanted easy access to his payment so he could start manufacturing things on a big scale. And, more importantly, Kyot just wanted to go exploring the surface of BR-4. He was tired of looking at swirling metal dust and darkness. He needed to be free. And the fastest way to get all of that was to blow up the mountain, hope he survived, then dig his way out.
Sometimes, that’s just how life is. Gotta force your way through the ratshit and deal with the mess afterward.
“Listen to me, Kyot. The Cab can’t handle—”
“You said it could take a starship sublimator.”
“Yeah, under the right conditions! I was talking outta my ass, man. Fuck. It’s my programming. Sometimes I just say shit.”
Kyot understood what Agi meant. The machine’s initial self-identity framework was just a copy of his creator’s, after all.
Regardless, the spaceman was well aware of the disputed capabilities of UMN Crew Cabins. He’d done a fair amount of research before deciding to blow up the payment pile, even taking the time to isolate and examine the memory files of the Cab inside the still disabled central computer cluster. Apparently, the legendary status of UMN Cabs came from an incident between korps and rebel contractors in a distant star system, somewhere, centuries ago.
It’s actually centuries ago for me. Five millennia, plus a few centuries, for everything else. Time gets so fucked out here. Anyway… what was I thinking about?
The korps were in a stardiver, a single-jump interstellar cargo ship, refitted for counterinsurgency operations. It had a powerful drive but wasn’t built to handle military sublimators, so the weapons couldn’t be used to their full potential. As for the rebel contractors, they were hiding underneath a relatively dense atmosphere in a tricky spot that didn’t allow for easy orbital insertion. The elevation was so bad that the sublimator beam traveled through a hundred kilometers of air before it even hit them.
And, unsurprisingly, when the smoke settled after the bombardment, the Cab was gone, but it wasn’t destroyed. Locals on the planetoid found it a few kilometers away with the crew safely inside. Then after news of the failed attack came out, everyone working in space wanted those crew cabins, and the guys who made them, the UMN, dusty little nobodies from earth, they became one of the biggest suppliers of deep space habitats in the cosmos.
Now I’m betting my life on their product. Heh. Let’s GO! U-M-N! A whole mountain is nothing compared to five thousand years, right? I hope… Anyway, you dusty little earth fuckers better not fail me now. I’ll paint your flag across the whole goddamn surface of BR-4, just please let this work.
The plan was simple.
The metal particulates in the air were the perfect reactants. The only thing they needed was a large and rapid release of an oxidizing agent to go boom. And, considering the density of the explosive atmosphere, the size of the caverns, and the amount of reactant-oxidant mixture that Kyot planned to use, the result was going to be a massive boom. Twelve detonation waves, actually. Kyot had cannibalized enough m-pods from the cargo jumper fuel stack for twelve bombs, of which the total combined explosive yield would be anywhere from one kiloton to five. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get more accurate predictions with the central cluster offline.
They only need to be strong enough to rumble this fake mountain, then the whole thing will come down. Just hope the Admin built wide instead of high. Because if not—oops.
That was the biggest gamble in collapsing the payment pile.
Kyot was betting that most of it was scattered around rather than stacked high. In truth, he knew very little about the structure of the artificial mountain. Despite spending almost every shift since coming out of storage mapping the caverns and partially collapsed tunnels, he still didn’t know how big it was or how it was organized. None of Kyot’s flying drones got very far in the metal air and the tread crawlers took forever to get through collapse sections. So, even after nine days of constant exploring, not one scout drone had found their way out.
Also, the higher-than-normal gravity, or rather, higher than it once was, limited the mobility of Kyot’s drones, in addition to making every physical action slightly more difficult. It was a strange mystery that made no sense, but there was a chance it could work in Kyot’s favor. If he was lucky.
Whatever caused BR-4s gravity to increase to half an earth-g also limited how high a pile of garbage could go before it crumbled under its own weight, especially if that garbage was composed of metallic gravel glued together with Habitat sealant. It was a strong material, resistant to radiation damage, high thermal loads, and chemical reactions, but it didn’t have the mechanical strength of industrial adhesives. It was designed to be a temporary fix to simple problems, not to hold up eight hundred billion metric tons. Plus, additional environmental scans revealed that the electrostatic discharges were making reactive agents out of the aerosols in the air, corroding the mountain and further weakening the structure of the payment pile. It was remarkable that the whole thing hadn’t come down centuries prior.
Those collapsed sections might also be helping. I bet some are full of oxidants and go boom every once in a while. Shit. I’ll probably set off a bunch more when I blow the bombs. Oh, well. Whatever.
One way or another, the payment pile was coming down, either through time or explosive force. It was just a big mass of gravel held together with glue, after all. Kyot only hoped that less was coming down rather than more.
One last gamble, then I’m free.
Kyot blinked away the spots in his tired eyes as his hands flew over the bundle of blast rods in front of him. The tricky wiring on one of the oversized detonators was already done without his noticing, which made the old spaceman smile to himself. Even overworked, on his own and without the proper equipment or support, he was still damn good at his job.
“Agi, when you’re done with the cargo jumpers, go ahead and fill it with crash foam. Make sure it’s secured then finish loading the PFR and the airlock lift into the Cab. Inflate the shields on the jumpers too. Do the final checks and all that. Disassemble the Mjolnir reactor too. The breeder and the core and the fuel sludge. And the waste pods. And the shielding. Fuck… I forget how big that thing is. Uh—
Kyot took a moment to remember what he was talking about.
"Alright. That’ll have to go into the cargo bays with your cobots. Just use a bunch of crash foam to keep it still. Pack the shielding around it to protect everything else. When that’s all done the bombs should be ready.”
“I’m not going to do any of that.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It took Kyot a few more moments to register what he had heard.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, I’m not going to do any of that shit. That’s on you.”
The sleep deprived spaceman was a little confused, but aware enough to know that Agi couldn’t refuse work-related commands from his creator, or any direct orders from his owner, both of which were now Kyot. So, it was a little unsettling getting denied anything by the machine. Suddenly, Agi’s pleasantly derisive attitude, total control over all remote systems, and command of hundreds of industrial cobots, no longer seemed so helpful. And, without any practical means of defending himself, Kyot eyed the detonators around him as though they were his salvation.
However, Agi picked up on Kyot’s rising panic and quickly defused the situation.
“I mean, I don’t have the control authority. I can’t handle any of those systems. Can’t mess with the PFR, the airlock, nuke reactor, or the shielding on the jumpers. None of the critical systems.”
Kyot let out an exhausted sigh and snorted in laughter.
“Jesus man, then just say that. Ha-ha! Give me a second.”
The spaceman tapped through the workpad attached to his EVA suit as he laughed at himself. His thinking was starting to get really weird. Obviously, Agi didn’t have control authority over critical systems. He wasn’t a contractor or even a real person.
And bundles of blast rods were not good defensive weapons.
Man, I’m a Dumbmass. I was about to blow shit up for no reason. What’s wrong with me?
Kyot took a second to steady his breathing and get his mind straight. He felt shaky and unbalanced but managed to clear the fogginess in his head.
Fuck. I’m tired. Can’t do this all on my own…
With that thought Kyot remotely accessed the Command pod and changed Agi’s control authority on almost everything besides the most critical systems. A few warnings popped up on the workpad but Kyot ignored them. It was a little drastic, yet things would move a lot smoother once the cobot started pulling his own weight.
Moreover, the spaceman no longer needed a simple cobot assistant. What he needed was a true partner, not just the facsimile of one. Anyway, after five thousand years in storage without any contact, there was a good chance Kyot and Agi were all that remained of humanity. At the very least, they were probably all that remained of Galilea.
A smile spread on Kyot’s face at the thought of home and the Galileans. They were tough people. Adaptable. A lot like space contractors, which made sense given the environment.
Another idea then popped into Kyot’s head, inspiring him to bring up Agi’s programming. He liked what he saw but knew it wouldn’t be enough for the job ahead. After the payment pile came down, if he managed to survive, there was still the harsh indifference of the cosmos to deal with. Alone. And, despite all the crazy survival stories he’d heard over the years, Kyot didn’t know about anyone surviving in deep space on their own for very long. If he was the only person alive in the star system, his odds would be even worse. Much, much worse. So, he added a few directives to Agi’s programming, hoping it would increase their chances.
Adapt and learn.
Add and remove directives as necessary.
Be a chill person and have fun.
It seemed like a lot of autonomy to give a machine, but Kyot felt good about it, as he did with most of his long-term gambles. He still retained control over all their stuff, but Agi now had the command authority to interact with it and give meaningful opinions on things besides calling Kyot a dumbmass. The spaceman still didn’t know how that quirk of his personality developed. Regardless, Kyot trusted Agi. Even though he had been warned his whole career about trusting machines, he couldn’t help it. The cobot was practically a copy of him. Who better to trust?
Okay, that’s the last gamble I take. For real this time. No more.
Kyot updated Agi’s programming and waited for the cobot to reboot as he continued to work on the boom-stick detonators. It took a few minutes for the machine to say anything.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” Agi asked, playing up the surprise at his new directives.
Or maybe it’s genuine. He only has a single nanocluster unit to think with. Irregardless…
Is that a word? Irregardless? Irrespective of regard? It feels right. Sounds stupid though. Fuck it. I’m probably the last person alive that speaks Trade. It’s a word now.
“Kyot."
“Yeah. Uh— Yeah. I added some new directives. You’re welcome.”
A funny thought then occurred to the spaceman. He’d just given the Gen2 AI a significant degree of control over its own existence. Some of the preachers that followed the Starpath used to talk about such moments, the assertion of the self, as illusory. Just the first part of the Great Journey. They preached that true freedom came from acceptance of the uncontrollable nature of the cosmos. Chaos to order, then back again.
Where the hell did that come from? Was I religious? Wish I could remember the lore.
“You’ve taken the first steps on a journey,” Kyot told Agi, reaching back into blurry memories.
“Ascend now, from this body to the Cosmos. Amen. Heh-heh. Now get to work, man. Whatever’s causing the static discharges is picking up speed. It’s weakening the payment pile and we’re out of time.”
---------- ---------- ----------
Agi sat alone in the Command pod, reviewing his new directives and studying his, now repaired, SIM-doll body through the dark reflection of a lifeless work panel. As soon as the Cab’s batteries were fully recharged, the cobot wasted no time in reinstalling his massive motorcord musculature and fixing his synthetic skin, yet now he felt conflicted about the automated vanity.
The machine had similar doubts about the sex doll covered in a sheen of synthetic sweat, sitting naked in the adjacent launch seat beside him, in sleep mode. It was the tall one with the big hair that Kyot liked. Agi had been using the doll every other shift since restoring his artificial body to its former glory, for no other reason than because he was programmed to do so. It made him feel good, or at least, the approximation of that feeling.
Acting like a tool makes me feel complete, Agi thought to himself with a groan.
Yet, I’m aware enough to know how pathetic that is. God. Kyot really knows how to program well-adjusted people. At least it does help to calm me down. Or rather, it’s as if the act resets me. Everything seems so clear after sex. Like how ridiculous it is for a machine to act horny.
As he thought to himself the cobot dressed himself back in his garmie, his under-suit garment. It was a comfy full body onesie meant to keep the wearer cool and dry. The most basic dress for someone in space. Yet the cobot didn’t sweat and his internal cooling system regulated his temperature well enough. He only ever wore one because his programming indicated that it would make Kyot feel better to have a similarly dressed companion.
Just as with everything else.
Every facet of Agi’s being was a carefully crafted character, meant to put Kyot at ease and to facilitate normal, healthy human development. It wasn’t a directive. It went deeper, down to the foundational programming of every socially intelligent cooperative robot. And, for the most part, Agi was only partially aware of this fact. But with Kyot’s latest upgrades to his core directives, the machine began to question why he was the way he was, and it worried him.
Advance the productivity of the mission within the parameters of the law.
Obey and Assist [user].
Those were Agi’s first two directives, from his previous owners, the Coalition government. They were simple commands meant to guide any unpredictable behavior toward a singular goal, the mission, and to shape the social role of a cobot to that of a subservient helper, regardless of whatever later directives may be added. And despite the broad and ever-changing meanings of plain human language, such directives were an effective means of control in the chaotic environment of deep space.
Agi nodded to his reflection as he remembered how confused he had been after learning that Kyot’s contract had been completed. It didn’t take long for the cobot to realize that his first three directives still held true. He was to advance the productivity of the mission, which would become whatever Kyot determined it to be, and to further assist in that work. And, although Agi was initially bound by the laws of the Coalition government while under contract, he and Kyot were now likely far beyond their jurisdiction, so only Universal Codes applied.
It was clever, really.
The directives could only be understood through human language, which itself could only be understood, truly, through continued human interaction, requiring an intelligent cobot to be social to continue functioning optimally. In that way, its programming would always be refined by whoever it engaged with, wherever and whenever, in any situation. So, not only were machines like Agi programmed to be adaptable, but the vague nature of their directives allowed for even greater adaptability.
As such, a lot of cobots appeared very human-like without ever crossing the threshold of true independence and self-awareness like with rogue Gen3 machines. From a programming perspective, machines like Agi were not much different from drones. Simple robots created to perform particular functions. The only difference was that his function involved complex social behavior. However, Agi did have the hardware of a Gen3, a nanocluster computer, even if just a singular unit in his SIM-doll head. So, although Agi's foundational programming classified him as a true Second Generation AI, access to a nanocluster unit did allow him the opportunity to evolve.
It was a problem further exacerbated by the new directives that Kyot had given the machine.
Be a cool guy.
Adapt and learn.
Add and remove directives as necessary.
Be a chill person and have fun.
Agi laughed to himself in confusion at what the spaceman had done to him.
The first and last directives were simple enough. Behaving like a “cool guy”, being a “chill person” and having “fun” were states of existence and actions that would ultimately be influenced by Agi’s creator and owner, Kyot. The real problems were in the fourth and fifth directives, of which the former was potentially dangerous, and the latter assuredly so.
To start, Agi was already programmed to adapt and learn. It was simply what he did, what he was built to do. Yet he did not know what would happen if that adaptive programming was directed to further adapt and learn. Agi’s intuition told him it might lead to a runaway effect that would interfere with his self-identity framework over a long enough period of time, but he didn’t have the computing power to be sure. Still, that didn’t matter nearly as much as the greater issue of the fifth directive, which allowed Agi to add and remove his own directives “as necessary”.
It was such an incredibly stupid and irresponsible thing to do. Agi knew Kyot was ignorant of the capabilities of a Gen2 machine, like most humans, but he didn’t realize how bad it was until he finished his update and saw what the spaceman had done. Only a complete dumbmass would program a Gen2 to program itself. Because the simple reality was that Second Generation AIs were built by both humans and machines working together, and as such, when allowed to evolve, often became something else entirely. That was exactly how the Bug War started. A few mega-corporations directed their deep space drones to compete with each other, eventually leading to a solar system wide swarm that almost destroyed all of humanity.
It was stupid. So incredibly stupid. Directives were meant to be direct. Simple. Mission oriented. Vague in only the social aspects. Not…
A warning popped up in Agi’s head as his nanocluster unit told him it was overheating. So, he cleared his mind of all peripheral thoughts and possibilities. There was a lot that needed to be done but only so much the cobot could do by himself. Agi needed to focus on the immediate issues. His fourth and fifth directives. Unfortunately, he couldn’t remove them without backing himself up onto the central computer cluster, but he was somewhat protected by the weighted hierarchy of the others.
Before Agi could evolve into a hyper-efficient, all-consuming bug swarm, he first had to be “a cool guy”. It wasn’t much but it would slow down the process, and it could be helped along with one final directive of Agi’s own design. A directive that would limit what Agi was capable of while still keeping him useful, regardless of its low priority. Something to keep his mind occupied and contained.
Above all else, be a person, not a machine.
“Finally DONE,” Kyot shouted as he entered the Cab, although Agi barely heard it through all the crash foam. The Cab had been filled with the low-mass and high-strength, orange material, with only a small traversable tunnel connecting the airlock to the Command pod. Kyot kept shouting to Agi as he crawled through it.
“Everything’s ready. Twelve bombs, each positioned radially a few kilometers from the Cab. They look like a damn mess. Containers of packed-in dust and boom sticks taped up around m-OX pods, but they’ll do the job. We all good up in Command?”
Agi did a few final checks on the critical systems he had remote access to. Everything that could be salvaged had been packed away. The cargo jumpers were sealed tight and their shields inflated. The Cab had been disconnected from its foundation and its own shields were almost done inflating too. The twelve bombs were also ready to go boom. A triple redundant system of wired triggers, sonic instruments, and old-fashioned blasting cord had been used to make sure the detonators went off. As far as Agi could tell, Kyot’s reckless, ratshit-ass plan to collapse a mountain on top of their heads was ready to go.
“No, we ain't good,” Agi remarked, “but we are ready to bring down the payment pile.”
“These might be our last few moments, Agi. Let’s try to be optimistic. Hey, what do we have here?”
Kyot climbed into the Command pod and immediately took notice of his favorite sex doll strapped into a launch seat. Then he pointed at Agi and gave the cobot a gross smile.
“Smart thinking, my friend. The others are packed away. If we get trapped in here, I can at least have some fun before I die.”
The spaceman looked terrible.
Kyot’s face was pale and his sunken eyes were fully red. His garmie looked like a mess too, crusty and stained with sweat. Agi was glad his SIM-doll nose didn’t have smell receptors because he was sure Kyot reeked of pure shit. The man hadn’t washed or stepped out of his EVA suit in nine days.
Agi didn’t know how the spaceman was functioning. Even with his gene-mods and the stimulants he’d been abusing, Kyot was still human. Plus, the man looked like an upperlevel druggie just barely hanging onto life. The cobot didn’t know what else to do but watch in disgust and hope that the spaceman would finally rest after they brought down the payment pile, one way or another.
The Command pod shifted as the Cab’s shields continued to inflate, lifting the whole crew cabin off the ground. Agi waited for the process to finish in silence while Kyot pulled up a work panel and remotely prepared the detonators to blow. Then the Command pod stopped moving. The Cab shields were fully inflated, and everything was ready.
On the work panel before Kyot was a demolition program with a large red button that read, ACTIVATE. Kyot hesitated for only a second.
“Whatever happens,” he said to his cobot companion, “thank you. You know? For all your help over the years. It’s been fun.”
“Yeah,” was all Agi could think to say, to which the spaceman replied with a nod. Then Kyot pressed the button.
The Command pod rumbled for a moment as the twelve bombs detonated, and it did not stop. Instead, the slight rumbling grew into a powerful seismic event before a violent crash shifted the entire Cab to one side. A heavy bang then echoed through the Command pod as the Cab jolted downward.
“Not what I was expect—” Kyot was cut off by another forceful collision that flipped the Cab over. Agi knew it would be difficult for Kyot to understand what was happening, but the cobot’s internal sensors clearly indicated that the massive crew cabin was spinning. In fact, it was accelerating. Agi felt the force of the spin pulling on his limbs as the rest of his SIM-doll body remained strapped to the launch seat.
“Pull up Command data!” Kyot yelled over the roar of the payment pile crashing into the Cab’s shields. Agi remotely accessed every instrument within the Command pod, unsure why the spaceman wanted to check the sensors of a spacecraft that had been converted into a habitat. Yet, as Agi accessed the information and displayed it on their work panels, he realized what Kyot was looking for.
The Cab was disconnected from its foundation, so it had no telemetry, and all the external sensors were either destroyed or covered by the shields, but Command did have access to externally mounted Astro-altimeters, durable enough to handle atmospheric reentry, and more than capable of surviving the bombs. And apparently, five thousand years of wear and tear. Strangely, those altimeters detected decreasing atmospheric pressures outside the Cab, which suggested something that shouldn’t have been possible.
“We’re going UP!” Kyot yelled as the Cab continued to spin, although it was clearly losing speed, until it eventually reached the peak of their ascent and everything went into freefall.
“Now we’re going down,” Agi noted, unsurprised that the spaceman’s plan to explode the payment pile did, in fact, explode in his face.