Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity

Montgomery Gaffigan was surprised when his handcuffs were removed. The metal chain between them clinked as they fell into the Admiral’s waiting palm. Calm as ever, he reached over and dropped the silver cuffs onto the low table in front of the couch. Gaffigan stared at them for a long moment, then he studied the room around him.

The wooden bookshelves were full of books and a red candle burned on the corner of the desk, more and more of its wax slowly softening as its warm, smoky scent wafted around the room. Gaffigan had spent a lot of time in this room, even on this old couch. It was familiar to him. He’d had many meetings in the warm lamplight going over mission parameters and discussing the state of the ship’s armaments. Back then, Gaffigan had felt welcome here, but now he only felt betrayed.

Still, his gaze fell again to those handcuffs, their removal an anomaly he could not explain. “Why are you releasing me?” It made no sense. “I tried to kill you,” and presently, they were alone. Nothing would stop him from trying again.

“Lieutenant, I have never been one to put off the inevitable.” He knew reality, and he rarely tried to deny it. “Simply, I am not willing to kill you.” Admiral Gives could acknowledge the blood on his hands. He was a killer, but he drew the line at the ship’s crew. “You would have your freedom eventually, so I see no reason it should not be now.”

Gaffigan wove his fingers into his greasy red hair, just trying to make sense of that. “I tried to kill you,” he said again.

“You are not the first,” the Admiral said simply. “And to your credit, you are among the more competent of those who have tried.” Sergeant Cortana should take notes. In two attempts, she hadn’t been able to get half as close as Gaffigan had.

Gaffigan rubbed his head harder. This makes no sense. “I tried to kill you,” and yet, the Admiral stood there complementing the attempt? “And the Matador…” Stars, the Matador. “You saved me.”

“No, I did not.” If there was a truth that could regain Gaffigan’s trust, that was it.

“You did. I remember.” His memory of the Olympia may have been faulty, but that memory was true. That madness could never have been anything less than reality. Not even the sickest minds could conceive such carnage. Gaffigan’s hands began to shake. “You dragged me out of there, past… p-past,” what remained of the crew.

Monty remembered that. He tried not to, but he remembered it. In vivid detail, he remembered regaining his senses at the sound of the Admiral’s voice. He remembered meeting the Admiral’s blue eyes through the bloodied faceplate of his environmental suit. “You were there.”

“Yes, I was.” There was no denying that. “Yet, you never found it odd that I was there?”

“Why would that be…” the question died in Gaffigan’s mouth, because it was odd. Now that it had been pointed out, the strangeness of that fact glittered like a jewel in the cavern of his memory.

The Admiral raised an eyebrow. “I am a flag officer, Lieutenant.” He’d had no cause to be galivanting around a hazardous environment like the Matador. He had a Marine contingent at his command to do such things, and the Marines had done so in that case as well. They had retrieved the Matador’s other survivors. “But you… You were trapped somewhere the Marines would never have been able to reach.” Not in time, anyway.

Hunched over on the couch, Monty tried to shake that memory from his mind. He tried to wipe the image of the blood and sinews from his eyes. The stench of it… Stars, the sounds. The screams.

No, by the time the Admiral had come, even the echoes had been long silent.

“It is not my intention to make you relive that, Lieutenant.” That would be cruel. “But you should understand that my role in that situation was merely as hands and feet. If they had not been stopped, the neurofibers would have torn you apart long before I arrived.”

“No.” Monty shook. “You saved me. The real you saved me.” Not this corrupted version that owed its loyalty to an AI.

“If I possessed the authority to disable a Black Box, do you not think I would have removed the Singularity’s?” The fact it was still here should answer that. “I dragged you off the Matador, but I am not the one who spared your life. That was the work of your so-called enemy.”

“Liar.” Gaffigan spat, venom seeping into his thoughts. “This thing wants my trust, and it’s not above using the Matador to get it.” This was a vile manipulation and nothing else. There was no hidden truth in his memory of the Matador. “I know who saved me.”

“I cannot force you to believe me.” The Admiral knew that. “But, if you refuse to trust me, and I refuse to kill you, then you may as well finish what you started.” He pulled out the tiny switchblade he kept between his wrist and his watch and tossed it onto the couch next to Gaffigan, where it landed with a muffled thwump.

Montgomery Gaffigan stared at the little knife as it was still tucked safely in its black sheath. “Sir-”

“Sir?” The Admiral hardened his gaze. “Am I your superior or am I not? You cannot have it both ways, Lieutenant.” That would get them nowhere. “You look at me like I am a traitor when I tell the truth, and yet you still regard me as the savior you trust without recourse. So, which will it be?”

Gaffigan shuddered. Please don’t make me do this. “Just tell me where that AI is hiding. I’ll throw it off the ship myself.” It was clear Admiral Gives was not its host, only a victim whose loyalties had been rewritten. “You don’t have to get any more involved.”

“I told you already, Lieutenant. If you want to get to her, then you have to go through me.” He nodded to that knife, “Make your choice.”

Gaffigan slowly wrapped his hand around the switchblade, hoping to find some instance of regret in the Admiral’s expression – some sign that he was being forced to act this way and that some part of him was still fighting the AI’s conditioning, but there was nothing. His demeanor was stony and certain, so Gaffigan shot to his feet and drew the knife. Sorry about this, sir. Then, he lowered his head and charged, tackling the Admiral roughly to the ground.

“I know you can hear me,” Monty called to the empty room as he pinned the Admiral down. “You intervened to save him once before, so show yourself, AI, or he pays for it.”

Unwilling to injure Gaffigan, Admiral Gives offered no resistance, even as the weapons officer’s weight dug into his back, but he could sense the ghost’s intent to intervene. ‘Don’t,’ he warned silently. The ghost’s appearance would only make Gaffigan more paranoid. At this point, it would not calm him. It would only expose her to unjustified hate. They had to let Monty work through this on his own, however long that took.

“How long did it take you to break him?” Gaffigan wondered aloud, eyeing the shadows of the room. “How many hours of conditioning and reconditioning did it take to reprogram the most loyal officer on this ship? How much did he suffer, knowing that he was being manipulated, before that awareness faded from him?”

Still, the room remained empty.

“Tell me,” Monty demanded, raising his voice, “how capable are you of creating a new puppet?” Only the most powerful AI could alter people on a whim, and he suspected this one was not nearly as powerful as Manhattan. If it were, then the rest of the crew would have been twisted to this same sickening loyalty.

But no answer was offered to him, so Monty brandished the blade. “I can’t threaten you, AI.” It, in essence, was a non-corporeal entity, “But I can threaten him.”

Admiral Gives groaned as Gaffigan grabbed one of his arms, twisting it painfully.

And, though invisible to Gaffigan, the ghost was very much present in this room, monitoring this situation as it slid further and further out of control, now inches from going too far. ‘You have to tell him the truth,’ she urged the Admiral.

‘No.’ The truth was probably the only thing that could get him out of here, but the situation was already too far out of control to risk that. It was too dangerous. He felt Gaffigan line up the blade. It was cold where it pressed into the skin, not sharp enough to cut on contact, but still sharp enough to serve its purpose. If this is how it has to be… Then fine. This was his duty. He refused to harm Gaffigan, and he refused to betray the ghost, so his purpose in this situation could only be that of a shield.

‘Admiral,’ the ghost warned, expecting him to fight back, but he didn’t. He just closed his eyes in acceptance and laid there, limp, and in an instant the ghost understood. He had no intention of moving. He would lay there and let Gaffigan cut him up until Monty grew tired of it – no matter what that did to him, and by the time she comprehended the horror of that, it was too late.

The bite of the blade was cold and fast. The cut was shallow, only deep enough to draw blood, and it welled red almost immediately.

The Admiral didn’t cry out. He didn’t twist away as that acute pain lanced up the nerves of his captive arm. He compartmentalized it, but the ghost could still recognize that pain. ‘Admiral!’ she cried, ‘Fight back!’ But he wouldn’t. And she knew he wouldn’t. Because he would never purposefully injure a loyal member of the ship’s crew.

“Show yourself!” Gaffigan demanded, tightening his grip on the Admiral’s bleeding arm. “You damn AI are all the same. You twist and mold your puppets to die for you, and yet, when one of them, one of us is in danger, you leave us to bleed out on the floor, mere pieces in your game.” To prove it, he moved the knife an inch lower on the Admiral’s arm and swiped again.

In that instant, the small thread that dictated thought and reason, that strand of thought that kept the ghost calm snapped like a music wire plucked too hard, and she bared her teeth. “STOP.”

The thunderous call froze Gaffigan mid-cut, and he slowly raised his gaze, finding that the AI’s avatar had reappeared, but there was something different about it this time. A horrible darkness now shadowed its figure, invisible even as it set off every instinctive warning in Monty’s brain. Run, his instincts urged as she narrowed her sharp, gray gaze. “Drop. The. Knife.”

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His hand opened before he really even considered it, dropping the knife from his fear-laden fingers. It fell to the rug with a dull thud, and Monty swallowed, his breaths coming shorter and faster. Danger. Run. He could sense this entity’s power. It was all around him, tightening slowly like a vice, and oh, could he feel it. This thing was infinitely more powerful than he, and if it desired, it could kill him with the slightest twitch, a motion so small it could hardly be called effort.

Montgomery Gaffigan began to tremble. “You’re not an AI.” Oh, dear stars. He had made a mistake. He could feel it in the way this power suffocated the room. What have I done?

“No,” the ghost snarled, “I am the one that killed them.” This terrifying power of hers had wiped two of those parasitic intelligences from this plane of existence. “And if you don’t want to be on my bad side, you will get the hell. Off. My. Admiral.”

Monty scrambled back, leaving the knife where it lay, and the moment he did, the ferocity around him stilled. The viciousness in her expression disappeared, replaced by an instant of confusion and then horror. “No, Lieutenant, I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I-I didn’t mean that.” Malfunction. Target violates ally directives. “I’m not supposed to… It shouldn’t be possible.” She was expressly forbidden from harming allies. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to lash out at one of the crew. Not like that. Her machine should have prevented it. It should have, but it hadn’t because it – she had been damaged, and no longer functioned properly. By result, no one around her was safe. Not even those she knew to be allies. “Did I hurt you?”

Gaffigan just sat there, his pulse thudding in his ears, as the sheer terror slowly receded from his mind.

Though no response was offered to her, the draw he put on the life support systems in this compartment indicated that he was at least alive. The feel of his terror was none too pleasant, but no physical pain tainted it. He will recover, she concluded, allowing that to calm her. Her loss of control had not permanently damaged his mind, though that did little to ease the guilt.

As she regained her senses, the situation was handed back to her in pieces, so it took a fraction of a second longer than usual to uncover what had prompted the malfunction. Admiral. She turned and knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”

The question was poised carefully, gently even, as Gaffigan watched, paralyzed by shock, but it elicited no response. She reached out, but seemed to think better of touching the Admiral, a genuine concern in her expression. “I’m sorry.” She should have stopped this, but it was too late now. Blood dripped down the Admiral’s forearm. The cuts were far too shallow to present real danger, but the memories they dragged forth were perilous enough. They left his hands shaking like bone-dry leaves caught in a chilling autumn breeze.

You fool, the ghost thought. You outrageous fool. Still, those thoughts were not tainted by annoyance. No, they passed with fondness, because anyone else would have fought back against Gaffigan, and the scuffle could have severely injured or killed one of them. Anyone else may have given her up, and left her to face Gaffigan’s wrath, but not him. He’d let Gaffigan attack him instead, despite knowing what that would do to him.

Admiral Gives hated being touched. Most of the crew had heard that, but they did not understand it the way she did. Hitting, well, that was generally fine. The Admiral didn’t take offense to few punches, but grabbing, that was another story, especially when it led to pinning him down with the express intent to injure. Admiral Gives was tough, hell, his pain tolerance was concerningly high, but pain was never the issue. Memory was.

Few people ever endured true torture. Most gave up their information before the interrogation got that far, and those that didn’t usually died by result. The Matador’s cataclysm had been madness, but there was something even more twisted about the willingness of one human to start tearing apart another. The things that had been done during the Frontier Rebellion, then to the Admiral on the surface of New Terra, well, no one ever recovered from that – not completely anyway. Truly, what Gaffigan had done was barely a scratch compared to any of that, but it wasn’t the injury that left the Admiral on the ground, quietly shuddering though his breaths, it was the intention behind the injury. Being grabbed and held down was triggering for the Admiral, but still, even with that history, that fear, he had endured it to protect her.

“You need to get off the floor,” she told him gently. “You’ll catch a cold.” Without his uniform jacket, the textured metal of the deck tiles would be chill to the touch and slowly sap the warmth from his skin.

He made no response, but he slowly picked himself up, dusted himself off and stepped over to the nearest reading chair. Then, he sat. He just sat. He said nothing, looked at no one and did nothing further, only sat. His hands shook where they had been placed, one on the armrest, and the other lifted to conceal his expression.

It was a shudder Monty recognized from the panic attacks he had suffered after the Matador. And as the numbness of terror faded from his own limbs, it was all Monty could do to stare. “This makes no sense.” It’s wrong. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, and he could sense the power around him, an incomprehensible darkness that stayed barely out of reach, but this entity had yet to attack him. In fact, the concern she had shown him and the Admiral felt disconcertingly genuine. “What the hell are you?”

He recognized this appearance. This entity had freed him on the Olympia. Her face hadn’t changed, but her attire had. Before, she’d been wearing the standard tactical vest and gray cargo pants of the Olympia’s Marines, and her hair had been tucked under a hat. Now, she was wearing the all-black uniform of a fleet officer, complete with the Singularity’s ship patch on the sleeve, though she had no identifiable rank. Yet, with her long, white hair hanging loose, she was unmistakable. The ghost. Monty had thought that an AI had used that rumor to conceal its presence aboard ship, twisting its appearance to match the legend, but this was no AI. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

“I am.” Truly, she had always felt that identity suited her. She looked over to the Admiral before continuing, and he raised a shaking hand in a permissive gesture, a signal that she could do or say whatever she wanted, as he was in no condition to face Gaffigan himself. “To put this in terms you will understand: I am a weapon. One that is primarily mechanical in nature.” He, as the ship’s weapons officer, ought to be able to understand that. “What you see of me now is an illusion, an interface.” It was a convenience that allowed her the means to speak.

“An illusion,” Gaffigan echoed, studying her in greater detail. She looked real enough, but still, there was something that nagged the back of his mind about her. Perhaps her appearance lacked the subtle details that made a human, or perhaps it was arcane power that lingered in her presence. And that power, Gaffigan knew it was beyond anything he had ever felt. Still, it didn’t feel hostile. “I… I felt your concern.” That gentle probing in the back of his reeling mind. “What concern am I to you?” Better yet, “What concern is he to you?” Gaffigan asked, pointing to the Admiral.

She moved gracefully, yet with a strange silence as her shoes didn’t tap on the deck, placing herself in front of the Admiral. The protective gesture eased another bit of tension from her expression. “You must understand,” she said softly, “to me, humanity is glaringly fragile. If I make wrong movement, if I endure even the slightest malfunction… that could be fatal to any of you.” And yet her flawed machine had been built and directed to save them. After the damage she had sustained, it was reckless to travel alongside anyone, and yet her loneliness had driven her to do so anyway. It was selfish. “It was not my intention to lash out against you, but I have seen so much death, and I… I-”

“You were protecting him,” Gaffigan said.

She lowered her gaze to the floor, ashamed, “But, you are also in my care.” And it was her vile nature that had driven him to those ends. “I should never have threatened you. Maintaining your welfare is one of my primary operating directives.”

Montgomery Gaffigan stroked his beard, knowing very well that if she had desired to kill him, she had been completely capable in that moment. “No weapon, self-proclaimed or otherwise, should be able to violate its operating directives.” It was his job, as the weapons officer aboard ship, to know that. “Unless…” he realized, “the weapon is damaged.”

There was a flicker of something like fear in her gaze, a laden, somber emotion. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Gaffigan had never met an entity like this – a weapon that could talk, and yet a weapon was a weapon. “You were damaged.”

Slowly, stiffly, she nodded once. “Yes.” It was becoming clearer to her as time went on. Her operations, or rather, what was left of them, were unharmed, but her higher control functions were deteriorating. Her ability to adapt, to learn from or accept new commands had declined. A large portion of her balked at the thought of being handed off to a new wielder, and that instability had grown severe enough to violate her greater operating directives.

A damaged weapon. One that was well beyond his comprehension, its scale of power beyond anything he’d ever felt. “What is your technical designation?” What, exactly was he dealing with here?

“I cannot answer that, Lieutenant.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Names have power.” For a human, their true name revealed their relatives and background. For a machine like her, that identity forced her to submission. “Like any weapon, I am functionally incapable of disobeying an order. Yet, for the order to be received, for it to be successfully interpreted, the commandant must know what they are addressing.” Otherwise, even telepathic commands became vague nonsense.

Functionally incapable of disobeying. “You’re a slave,” Gaffigan said, the words bitter in his mouth.

“No,” she corrected, “I am a tool.” Slaves could choose to disobey their masters, regardless of the consequences. She was not allotted that choice.

“But you’re intelligent.” He could feel that in her presence, the way she spoke and acted. That was not some defense mechanism built in to prevent the weapon’s abuse in the form of a pre-programmed voice. This intelligence was beyond that.

“That depends on who you ask.” Some, like the Admiral, had acknowledged her independent intelligence. Others had denied it. “I don’t know the truth.” How could she? Having struggled a human lifetime to find a place, to find a meaning in these worlds, her grip on existence remained so very weak. She needed acknowledgement, even required it to prove to herself that she did indeed exist, but too many over the years had told her that she was not real, that she was only a mirror – a reflection of the intelligence around her and not a mind of her own.

That was the truth they knew in their thoughts, and so that was the truth forced unto her. But that was wrong. She had thoughts, emotions, desires all her own. She valued things and people, even sometimes when they did not see their own worth. That was not the action of a mirror. That was not the definition of a reflection.

…Or so she had been told. Right or wrong, the thought of her independence was a kind idea. Reality was something less kind. Harsh and confusing, she was too often lost or drowned beneath the thoughts and wills of others.

It had taken so long to feel like she had any diversity, any difference from those around her. It had taken a shield. It had taken someone willing to stand between all that chaos and her. Only then had she begun to find her own thoughts and identity. Without that calm, without that anchor, she would have been lost for an eternity.

Maybe that was why she kept intervening to protect the Admiral. It was second nature to her because that presence of his had become a welcome constant. “I never asked to be a weapon,” she told Gaffigan. “Yet, that is all I have ever known.” How could she resent the only reality she knew? “My capability has been used to do horrible things,” and her telepathy had forced all that pain and fear upon her. “I don’t want to be forced to hurt people again.” She hated feeling that those around her were in pain. “All I ever wanted was to complete the mission I was created for, but that mission… It is impossible.” Even at the height of her power, she had been too weak.

Gaffigan swallowed, unease making his beard twitch once again. “That… you are a violation of the Hydrian Bylaws.” Manhattan and the other AI fragments already dangerously breached those laws, a biological mind in digital form, complete with human flaws and ambition, but this was something else. Something worse. This was an intelligent machine forced into war, forced into killing. One that had already been damaged. “You can not stay here.” Friendly, or unfriendly, it didn’t matter. “You are putting all of us at risk of a cataclysm.”

A cataclysm. The loss of rational control. If Monty already saw the symptoms in her, then perhaps it was too late. Despite the Admiral’s efforts, she never would recover. Keeping him and the rest of the crew here had been a mistake. She was a danger to them, even beyond her servitude to Command. “It is not my intention to harm you-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gaffigan interrupted. When it came to a cataclysm, intentions never mattered. An unfettered fixation could make anything dangerous. The Matador’s Black Box had only sought to preserve the operation of its ship, and its ‘preservation’ had slaughtered the crew, disassembling and reassembling them in a manic pursuit of perfection. “I’m sorry, but you can’t stay.” Truly, he was sorry. There should be more to this, more debate, more understanding, but they couldn’t risk it. A cataclysm with this weapon’s power would surely kill them all.

“I’m sorry too,” she told him softly, “because I can’t leave.”