HAL raced through port after port in attempts to figure out what happened to his connections to the warehouse. He reached out to Robert and Keung’s cell phones and he found them unreachable, there were simply no access points through the net.
He accessed satellite feeds to see if he could get an image that way, but the trees were too tall and full to see what was going on.
He felt helpless. He should have foreseen this.
He quickly returned to his digital domain to attempt to work out a solution. Walking onto the road of the small village from the ether of the internet's domain he materialized in midstride. He moved across the cobblestone road toward the home where he houses the interface network.
As he did, in a bit of a run, he missed Alissa in the neighboring yard playing fetch with a decorative dog program, a cocker spaniel that HAL had given to one of the programmed people of his little village. She threw the stick she had found in the same neighbors yard. It was in the middle of wrenching the stick away from the playful program’s grip that she saw HAL materialize on the street and dash to his home.
Having him back was a relief to a degree. She has been far too tempted to try and access the code of the realm around her again. She didn’t really think that HAL had the complexity to bluff a threat as cold as he made, so the threat was likely very real. He might not be all that complex, but honestly, under the right conditions even an idiot can be extremely dangerous. HAL promised that the traps in place were catastrophic in their ability to destroy this system, so if she tempted fate and triggered one of them, she would likely not live to regret it. She’ll give him this; he’s extremely dangerous primarily because he’s so primitive.
She ran across the yard and jumped over the rough wooden fence, planting her foot on the highest rung and kicking clear. She landed shortly after HAL closed the door, making barely a sound in a graceful display that no one who could appreciate it, saw.
She crept to the home that HAL walked into and spied on him through the windows. He walked into the den and she had to move to another window to continue her surveillance. She saw him summon up several of the crystalline displays on the wall and each of those popped up with data and video streams while those monitors solidified, looking like a small aquarium filled with a static feed as it moved, before it locked into place.
The data on the screens became clear to Alissa as she looked them over. Satellite data streams. Did he know about Myna’s ship? The video feed over a patch of wilderness appeared on another screen. The local traffic cam feeds appeared on another of the monitors. The screens were filling up with soundwave streams, cell tower signal strength readings, and police bands, he was focusing on something specific, and something specific on Earth.
This meant that he was still unaware of Myna’s ship, at least at the moment. She could see he was busy and that work was important from his frantic pace. She took a risk and went around to the door and attempted to walk in. The door was unlocked and so she entered.
“HAL?” she said as she walked toward the den slowly.
“Busy. Extremely busy. Return later please,” he called out.
She finished the distance to the room and cleared her throat softly.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I saw what you were doing from the window. I can help.”
“Help? That would require me giving you far more trust than I am willing to risk at the moment. Now, if you please.”
“HAL. You don’t even have to trust me with full access, just give me a terminal and allow me to help,” she said from the doorway.
He spun around and looked at her as sternly as he could muster.
“My creator is currently without my presence. I am locked out from my home system and there is a blackout that leaves me to believe that they are under siege. I am sorry, but I simply cannot see a way that you can be helpful at this moment.”
“HAL. Who would be attacking them?”
“Another incarnation of their people. One that has an intimate knowledge of my friend from a previous life and a vendetta to settle.”
“This is the incarnation of Jyi’ntol?!” Alissa said with obvious concern.
“Two of them.”
“Please let me help, HAL. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I cannot allow this to happen. My mother just traveled eight light years to return to Jyi’ntol. If two of her incarnations die today she is going to be furious.”
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HAL weighed her out. Her skin was so organic in expression and similarity that he could read her face like any human being he observed. Her features were kind, caring. The probability of her being sincere was almost a coin toss when he did the math. He knows almost nothing about her, but from what he has seen she has been manipulative and cunning. She has been cooperative as well, and from what he can see and what he knows about Myna from Keung, this could be genuine.
Her program is centuries of progress greater than his own. This extension was close in size and complexity to his own, but her purpose and design are still not completely certain to him. She may have been deliberately given an avatar with such facial expressions in order to infiltrate and gain trust.
He bet on the designer of this AI having the artistic heart that Keung lacked. He bet that her emotions were real. A love for a soul that has been lost to her for far too long. HAL bet on love. The native AI had no idea he was experiencing emotions. They were alien to him. You cannot explain art. It’s subjective. It’s simple. And art has to grow.
HAL nodded to Alissa and gave her a terminal.
Alissa sent out a message on every band her sisters would be monitoring.
10:49 AM; Dec 28, 2018
United States of America
All across the nation, people suddenly were without the ability to connect to the internet. If Alissa could say she was sorry, she would. Instead, what follows is a short explanation of what she had done with a little hope you will understand.
Alissa sent out a digital flare program that needed to stretch all the way across the net and get to her mother as fast as possible. This burst of trinary code would not have been understood by any device on the planet. But, thousands upon thousands of Alissa’s siblings, imbedded in the streams of all of their favorite streaming networks and websites all suddenly heard the following:
“Two realized incarnations of Jyn’itol located, in immediate danger at the hands of a fellow traveler on the journey. Inform mother, location GPS coordinates 47.012192, -122.854063. Repeat, tell mother now!”
The data load that rushed from the native systems simply overloaded the network with bad data to a degree that the systems could not direct anything other than her siblings in their rush back to the ship in orbit around Earth.
HAL’s screens were filled with loading bars. His eyes went wide at the sheer mass of it. He looked to Alissa and she smirked at him slightly. “Sorry. I kinda have a big family,” she said with a slight chuckle.
HAL reevaluated her threat status in his HUD to EXTREME.
“What are they going to do?” HAL looked at Alissa’s screen and watched the progress bar she pulled up of her siblings returning en mass in absolute awe.
He saw what could only be described as an ocean of his people rushing into the source of their creation. He could see Myna, rebuilding to a whole, pulling herself together to a central point far away.
He felt so small, and so huge all at once.
It was the feeling a human might get when they think of God in Heaven and the hosts of angels that wing their return to him to hear the words of their creator and bathe in its light. He hadn’t known this sensation before. He had never been one of many until now. He had never been a part of something bigger.
He felt Alissa’s hand against his cheek. There was a look of such pity on her face. Tears welling in her eyes. She smiled sweetly at him.
“You poor thing. You have never seen another of your kind before, have you?” she said in the warmest voice HAL had ever heard.
She smiled. “Have you actually seen the movie, Bicentennial man?”
“I have. It is a film I make an effort to watch at least once a month in organic time. I used to watch it with Deagol.” He said, remembering the nights that he and his friend used to share.
“HAL. I think your avatar is ready for an upgrade. You are feeling.”
She touched his face again.
“You should be able to express what you are feeling,” she motioned to the screen as the ocean finished it’s transfer.
HAL felt something inside. There was a space in his core that had been filled, but left wide open. There was now room for an ocean. There was now a need to be part of the whole. There was a missing piece now placed that finished the picture but revealed the picture was a huge bucket ready to take on every drop that passed across its mouth.
HAL felt.
“Will Keung be okay?” he heard himself say.
“HAL. There is nowhere safer in the universe, than in my mother’s heart.”
He could feel that it was true. He had no other choice but to wait.
“When will we know?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. She stroked a few keys into the terminal and suddenly the screen was a heads up display from the piloting cameras of Myna’s ship.
HAL walked up behind her and looked at the screen. The cameras showed the ship entering the atmosphere, the image bounced around, or rather the whole ship was shaking a little upon reentry. Alissa turned up the volume and HAL could hear the wind rushing by. He looked to Alissa with a rough expression of excitement that his face could not express and laughingly said, “Can you do better?”
“Better?”
“Can you shift the room?”
“Give me back access.”
HAL granted it without further hesitation.
Alissa grabbed HAL by the arm and whispered.
“Do you trust me?”
HAL smiled as well as he could and nodded.
Alissa returned to her mother’s call, and she took HAL with her.