The Middle Brother had been trying to drive spores deep into the sand with spikes of Psy; exhausted, he sat back onto a mushroom cap that extended out to catch him and rubbed his eyes. A purely unnecessary action.
“Eldest Brother?”
He eyed his youngest sibling sitting on his shoulder, “Yes, Little Brother?”
“Why won’t this bitch just die already?”
He didn’t respond as he pondered the surrounding situation; these Ones had pushed the Water Reclamation SI and her disgusting ‘Humans’ deep below the surface of her electromagnetically-sealed metallic sand. Despite those early and constant victories and their inevitable victory, the firmness of the sand and the extremely tight bonding of the grains meant that even their spores were having difficulty breaking through it. The pulses of anti-life that would occasionally sweep through the sand didn’t make it easier either.
“Little Brother, can use your spatial manipulation to get a spore down there?”
“I can try, Eldest Brother.”
Middle Brother slapped a hand over his eyes, “Why? Why are we even doing this? We’ve already taken over Water Reclamation. Let her hide in her little hole.”
Little looked at his Elder Brother in question.
“Continue, Little Brother.”
_____________________________
It was… nothing. There was… just nothing. The pathways all continued as normal but it felt like the smooth metal pathways and tunnels were twisted and bent, under incredible pressure. He blinked, the floor and walls looked the same, but at the same time, they weren’t.
“How is that possible?” Jack was tempted to reach his hand into the murky dark. It just… ended. He looked to Jonah, asking the question again with his face.
“I… Uh… Well…”
That set off more alarm bells in Jack’s head than anything else, Jonah not having an answer to something? Not even a guess? ‘Danger danger danger’ rang out in his mind. He pulled his tentatively probing hand back.
“Jonah, shine a light in there.”
The SI beat Jonah to the punch and lasered into the black, the light from it died when as it crossed the threshold.
“Do you know what the hell this is, Trash?”
Jonah finally got the light going and it did exactly nothing to help the situation. The SI responded, more solemn than usual, “No, meat. I have no idea what… this is. Do you want to… explore it? Leave me back here while you do.”
Jack didn’t quite believe that, “This is Waste Disposal, how do you have no idea what it is? When did it start?”
The SI wasn’t in a hurry to respond and Jack took a few hurried steps backward. He could feel some sort of attractive force, “It feels like something’s calling me toward it.” He noticed his feet had moved a few measures closer.
“Psychologically or physically?”
He looked to Jonah, who had followed his retreating steps, “Both? Neither? I don’t… know. If we stay here much longer I might just throw myself in. Or be thrown in.”
Jonah had a far-off look and Jack grabbed him and slowly pulled him backward, away from the endless sea of nothing, “L’appel du vide. Do you know these words Jack? How do I know?” Jonah’s first words sounded as a jumble, some ancient eldritch tongue that tickled the back of Jack’s mind.
Jack gave him a look, “What the hell did you just say?” He kept moving backward, away from it.
“Call of the void.” The SI said in an overly robotic tone.
“How do you know it too?”
"An old tongue of monkey Earth, traces of its use can be found on the ship."
Jonah's voice cut in, interrupting the SI, "Had the speakers of that language known what this was? Impossible. It doesn’t make sense.” Jonah’s expression sent a spike of tickling fear into the back of Jack’s skull.
Now that they were away from its direct vicinity, it looked less… menacing? No, both more and less than that. He did know that it was wrong, deeply and completely, but it didn’t feel entirely like that either? Thoughts swirled and cycled and came back to the curiosity of what was beyond. What was in there? It didn’t feel malicious, if only he could get a bit clos-
“Gah!” Jack clutched his head, a sudden migraine ripped through his skull and receded to a dull throb. He was back where he started, near the edge of the void and Jonah was slowly moving toward it alongside him. He snatched the older man then placed a restrictive hand on the shoulder-bound SI, feeling it minutely struggling against his grip.
He dragged them away from it, against the metaphysical gravity that called for him to return. A small figure darted out from Jonah’s robes and sprinted toward the choking void. Before Jack could settle his own mind enough to process what was happening, the little rat plunged herself into the dead space. He didn’t think twice as he turned his staggered run into a sprint.
“Ship that.”
There was no way he was going back for a small rat that he had interacted with for maybe a few times. Not into that.
_________________________
“What happened? Aren’t we going to investigate what’s north?”
Jack, eyes as wide as saucers turned to Jonah, “What?!" He slashed a hand as if to emphasis the point, "No, absolutely not. We’re going to Arkology.”
He felt the other man’s narrowed eyes looking at him, trying to extract whatever he thought Jack was hiding from him, “Hmph, fine. You were the one who wanted to investigate what was north anyways.”
"Yeah, it was a bad idea." To ward off the questions that would come with that, "I decided you were right, we should just exit from Arkology."
Jonah patted his robes, “Where’d that rat go?”
Jack cleared his throat as they continued to move at a swift jog, “It, uh she left. You were distracted.”
The older man shrugged, already dismissing the thought before he angled his run and hopped on Jack’s back.
“Hey!-”
“Oh shush, you’re already carrying Trash, what’s one more.”
Jack grumbled but was somewhat relieved now that he could pick up his pace.
__________________________________
Arkology Door… Accessing Entry Protocols.
Accessed.
…
…
…
Before he could command it to open the screen continued to scroll.
Mission Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 86.14% chance of Mission Completion within Acceptable Parameters.
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Performance better than initial calculations estimated…
Good Work Emergent Security Personnel Team Leader, Jack!
ShipWide Scan of Reconnected Doors and Terminals in Effect.
New Data Detected by Ship-Wide Scan…
//Unresolved Conflicts
-Mutant Rat Leader, potential for complete rejuvenation: 73%
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 84.6%
That was… news. Rattigan was alive. Huh, well probably. He had kind of suspected something like that could happen but it wasn't reasonable to slice and dice him apart at the time. At least the AI thought that Rattigan was less a hindrance to success than he had feared.
Maybe he’d even be able to enlist Rattigan’s help… although he’d probably just try and leave the Rat down here. He didn’t want to surround himself with… people that he couldn’t kill. Not that he would, just if he had to, he wanted to be able to. Or if they became an issue. Just having the option was better than not, not that he was planning on murdering anyone. He just liked having the option.
To that note, bringing a seemingly near-immortal giant ManRat into the mission had more ways to go bad than good, so the new calculation made sense to him. Unfortunately, knowing how things were likely to go he mentally reminded himself to leave a Rattigan-sized contingency in any future plans.
“See! Look at that!-” the SI’s harsh voice brought his attention back to the screen at the Door Terminal.
-Enlisted ‘assistance’ from ‘Trash-SI’
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 85.09%
An entire half percentage more likely to succeed thanks to me! Bow in thanks, meat! Wait. ‘Trash’?!?” Jack tuned out Trash’s offended screeching.
-Emergent Security Team Yumata’s likelihood of reaching the Hanger Section based on Emergent Security Access information…
Independent Success Calculation… 76%
He let out a breath he didn’t know that he had been holding. He had been worrying about Yuma, at least in the back of his head. He had had a bad feeling about her but it was good to know that she was having an easier time of it. He didn’t even want to dive into the fact that he was looking at 76% like it was an easy, sure thing.
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 87.8%
More than 2%, that made sense, she wasuseful.
-Head of Security Activation Detected - Detection Location: Cryo-Laboratory - estimated trajectory: Bridge Core.
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 32.4%
His stomach lurched. The Head of Security’s activation had that much downward weight? Who the hell is that?
-Emergent Security Personnel Teams Activated: 1 Team(s) Detected
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 33.7%
His own mental-math was thrown into turmoil and had no time to recover. Other teams? That would have been useful earlier. Now? He had less confidence than the AI did, odds were that they’d likely get in his way as much as they’d help.
-Mass Disturbance Detected… Running Detection Algorithms to Locate Source.
Triangulation Complete 94.7% Accuracy… Gen-Pop Cryo-Storage Facilities.
Probability-Matrix Success-Likelihood ReCalculated… 25%... 24.99%... 24.98%
The number kept dropping at a measured pace. It didn’t seem like it was happening all that fast, but whatever the ‘Mass Disturbance’ was, it was steadily making the situation on the ship worse.
//Attempting to Maximize Success-Likelihood CoEfficient:
Full Emergent Security Personnel Permissions Granted… Congratulations!
That seemed a bit… overdue. To say the least.
New Tasks:
Locate a Security Terminal
-Access Security Nano Stash
-Find more information on Head of Security
ReConnect with Emergent Security ‘Second’, Yumata
-You need all the help you can get
Use AI Disk to Absorb three additional SI-entities 0/3
-More is better.
Known/Suspected SI - Available for Absorption:
-Waste Disposal SI
-Administrative SI
-Cargo Bay SI
-Arkology SI
-Hanger Bay SI
-Bridge SI
GET TO THE BRIDGE.
Jack took a breath and a moment to collect himself. From making his own decisions and his own path through the ship, little help from the AI, and now being given a new set of ‘orders’ told he was inevitably heading down the route of “Completely fucked”, he needed a few seconds to sort everything inside his head.
“Oh Human, you’re really fucked now, aren’t you?” Jack resisted slapping the Trash-SI across the room. He obviously couldn’t afford to give up the SI’s half-percent advantage. Well, the 0.49% advantage, at least. Still, turning the Trash-SI into one of the three SI’s he needed to absorb was tempting.
“That’s not good at all. AI can you show the Probability-Matrix metrics you used for-”
“Thanks Jonah, I hadn’t noticed,” Responded to Jonah's first statement to cut him off, he had too many questions and desperately needed information. Doing a deep-dive into the math behind the AI’s guesswork was pointless. No one knew all the variables, that much was obvious, not even the AI apparently.
Although the Trash-SI did seem to have formidable foresight. He tabled that chain of thought right alongside the others that rattled around inside his head, he needed to continue before Jonah got ‘over’ being interrupted again and asked another stupid question.
“AI, what’s… who’s the Head of Security?”
UnResolvable Conflict if Head of Security gains Primary Bridge Access. Remote Permissions Conflict, Need Direct Access to Override Head of Security Permissions. GET TO THE BRIDGE.
It was all nonsense, what was it talking about? “That’s not what I asked, who is it?”
Head of the Security Office. Your nominal ‘Boss’, ‘emergent’ conditions aside. The Security Office is completely incapable of being accessed by AI Control. It has view only access to rest of ship.
Jack took a deep breath before he released his anger at the AI, why hadn't they headed there to begin with? It was being cagey which meant that it either didn’t know or it thought that him knowing more about the situation ahead of time would hurt his chances. Or at least, ‘his chances’ as calculated by the AI.
Despite interrupting Jonah from asking that very question, he wondered what metrics it was using to calculate all of this, including his efforts. Something like a ‘chaos-coefficient’ if this entire journey had clued him into anything.
“What are the other Emergent Security Teams?” Before he got the response he stopped himself, “Scratch that, what do I need to know about these teams?”
If the AI responded like it had with the Head of Security he would absolutely lose his cool.
Standard Security Teams were able to be activated in Sections without hostile SI. One team detected on its journey through Cryo-Laboratory. Potentially more Emergent Teams active now that control is being restored through the ship.
So that meant that the other team activated… somewhere in the Cargo. Somewhere without a hostile SI. So somewhere he had already cleared? He glanced at the SI on his shoulder. All SI weren’t apparently hostile, at least right off the bat, so presumably it could be somewhere else. There was the Lady-SI in Water Reclamation. Why hadn’t this happened before was the real question.
“Did you activate them?”
No.
Just seeing ‘No’ from the AI was somewhat unsettling, he had been expecting a ‘beepboop, Negative, human’ type of response. He didn’t like crabs thinking they were Human and he added ‘machines acting like they were Human' right to the list, just below the crabs.
That said, he would have easily preferred something like, “Yup it was me, meatbag,” or at least some sort of reassurance that the AI was behind it. Knowing it wasn’t the cause left him in a lurch. Trying to calculate the overall probabilities involved just twisted his head as more information continued to come to light, his fairly substantial IQ Allocation seeming to not help enough with his effort.
“How’d that happen?”
It scrolled an overly-complicated, overly-wordy block of text, but he got the hint. It only detected the team once they had entered the Cryo-Laboratory proper. It suspected that there was at least one more team that was activated somewhere in the Cargo-Bay, potentially. Before they accessed areas the AI had complete control over, they were undetectable on the Ship.Net. He had nominal control over the Cargo-Bay and was getting particular readings from there.
Were they some sort of failsafe? It must have been somewhat similar to his room, originally severed from the rest of the ship. In this he also learned how his room had gotten activated, apparently 'Emergent' systems were keyed into backup verbal commands that could activate them. That kind of explained how his room's Terminal was both ‘cut off’ while still being able to be activated. He hadn’t, honestly, cared about that particular mystery for a long while.
“Who did it.” It was a question, but how it came from his mouth didn’t make it seem like one.
UnKnown. Suspected action from Bridge-Core.
Dammit! What have you done Julie?? Some of her actions made little to no sense. The questions he had asked the AI, after he had absorbed the Shard of the Primordial Virus, had condemned her actions even further. It hadn’t been necessary to base reset the Nano in his body, wiping out his Skills, but Julie had done it. He had wanted to write culpability off from a presumed lack of ability.
But now? Now he wasn’t so sure. What that she had told him was true? She had helped but she was also a big UnKnown. Maybe she had the best intentions for the ship… but were they the same as his? What would she do if she had control of the AI? Could the AI even be controlled? He suspected that her Plan B was unlikely to be the same as his ‘crash with no survivors’ Plan B.
“Let me guess, she started the Mass Disturbance as well.”
…Suspected.
“What does that mean for us?” Try to pretend that he and the AI were on the same side. That wasn’t that far from the truth. At least, he hoped.
No change in plans. GET TO THE BRIDGE.
He knew asking more questions would just bring pain through the HandPad.
“Open the Door,” now thinking of Rattigan behind them, “and lock it behind us. Can you direct Rattigan to somewhere where the monster will be useful?”
I can… try.
The too-Humanlike response didn't even phase Jack at this point. This ship was fucked and growing fuckier by the cycle.
The Door opened to a long, dark, twisting tunnel. They started up it.