Michael Webber paused in front of Lieutenant Lisa Petty’s door.
He began to ponder if he should even knock. Webber had found some information regarding the case, but wasn’t sure whether it was actually relevant to the investigation at all. But he needed to tell someone before he went any further with it; he didn’t want to waste time on something that would prove fruitless. He decided seeing Lisa was necessary, to either support him in his theory or make him realize that it was wrong.
He rose his fist to knock on the door and then suddenly it swung inward. Webber was shocked to see Lieutenant Petty standing before him, dressed in a pair of camouflage fatigues and her hair tied back. He was taken off guard by her sudden appearance, unable to speak. She ignored his muteness nonetheless, waving him into her quarters with a distracted yawn.
“You, ah. . .” Webber closed the door behind him still trying to figure out what to say.
“Were you sleeping or something?”
“I wish,” Lisa said still yawning. “I was looking over the individual reports of my squad again.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing new,” she dropped onto her bunk. “The most we have is that we know they managed to land the plane safely before it caught fire. Which means they are still out there somewhere. The only other thing we got is the construction cyberoid we found attacking those CDI agents.”
“Found anything on that?”
“Still waiting,” she said. “He didn’t have any identification on him. But I ran those serial numbers like you suggested. l’m waiting for a reply from Genesis Corporation now. ’
“Yeah a check like will take some time.”
“So what brings you here, doctor?” Petty leaned back onto her bed.
“Well...” Webber tried to think of the best way to tell her what he had found. “I was going to go snooping in the computer system and look for some clues. Wondered if you wanted to come along.”
“Sure,” she replied with a shrug. “Let me just grab a few things.”
Webber nodded and waited several minutes while the Lieutenant paced around her room, collecting various items and stuffing them into a black leather satchel. She then signaled to Webber that she was ready and ushered him through the door towards the elevator.
The room housing the computer bank was not far from where they were. Only three floors down in fact. Webber followed the Lieutenant to wait for the elevator and stepped inside when it finally arrived. He pressed for the second sub level. The doors slid shut and the lift began to move.
For some reason, Webber always felt he had to say something when he rode in an elevator with someone else. Perhaps it was the awkwardness of being confined in such a small area, or perhaps it was just a bad habit.
“How do you rate the investigation so far?” Webber turned towards her.
The Lieutenant paused in thought for a moment before responding.
“Pretty slow I think,” she said finally. “Worse than that actually. It’s more like dead.”
“Dead? I don’t think it’s that bad.”
“Open your eyes, Webber,” she glanced at him. “It’s been almost five days since the incident and we have no real leads to speak of. Not to mention that the Brass don’t really seem that interested in this investigation at all.”
Her statement surprised him. “What do you mean?”
“Think about it,” Petty said. “This was a top secret project that got lifted right in front of their eyes. If this android, or whatever it is, was so important to them, then don’t you think they would have done more than put an engineer, and a rookie intelligence agent in charge of retrieving it?”
It did kind of make sense. “So what are you trying to say? They don’t really want it back?”
“Well, I’m sure they would, if they saw it as an actual risk.” Lisa then turned to him.
“Trust me, if they knew that there was a possibility it could fall into the hands of terrorists or another government, they would have contacted CDI.”
“CDI?” Webber rubbed his chin. “But I thought they made it clear they did not want to involve them for security reasons.”
“That was a bunch of bull,” the Lieutenant replied. “If this thing were that serious they would have to contracted CDI for the investigation. I’ve seen them work before. In fact, most of my experience has been working with them.”
“You’ve worked with them before?” Webber was puzzled. “So you knew those agents?”
“No, I haven’t worked with this particular branch, but back in Washington yes. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t call them in on a case like this.”
“So you think there is a reason for that?”
The elevator stopped and they promptly walked out and headed for the computer room.
“I’m not sure what kind of reason there could be,” she moved briskly along side of him. “But it certainly is very weird.”
Webber nodded. The Lieutenant seemed far more aware of things than he realized. He had not given her enough credit it seemed. He thought the investigation was moving slowly due to her inexperience, or lack of skills. He could not have imagined it was because she was reluctant to do a job that she felt no one wanted her to do. Webber was definitely the inexperienced one in this matter.
“Should we tell someone?” he asked.
“Tell who? We had two top admirals arrive in less than a day. Which was also a little weird.”
“How so?”
“They were here a little too quickly I think.”
“Too quickly?” Webber was beginning to piece things together for himself. “You think that this might be some kind of conspiracy? Like they knew it was going to happen?”
“I’m not saying anything,” she raised her hands in denial. “But just from my experience, it would take a major crisis to pull Admiral Quinnly and Admiral Jameson all the way across the country. And for them to arrive in the time that they did. I just don’t know about the whole thing.”
They finally arrived at the computer center. It was a relatively small room, with about twenty terminals set alongside the walls. Each terminal was concealed from its neighbor with a tall panel, giving the user privacy. In the center of the room stood the bank of servers and workstations that connected the base to the outside world.
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Webber picked the closest terminal and took a seat in front of it. Drawing its attention with a punch of the return key, he opened into his account. Petty withdrew a chair from another terminal, and took a seat next to him.
“So what are we looking for in here?” she peered at the screen.
“Just going to go through the logs and retrace what happened that night.” Webber typed rapidly on the keyboard and accessed the information he required.
“So what do you think actually happened?”
“You mean about your conspiracy theory?” Webber glanced over at her. “No not that,” she squinted. “The night of the incident. What happened in there? How did the body manage to talk like you said?”
Webber sighed. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out now. I was looking into that client theory.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“Well...” Webber stopped and thought for a moment. “You know, it was actually Admiral Quinnly who suggested that a client might have been used in the first place. You don’t think he might have been trying to lead us in a false direction do you?”
“Will you stop trying to play detective,” Lisa sighed. “You’re getting hung up on this conspiracy thing too much, just forget it. Now tell me who you mean by this client.”
“All right.” Webber could not help but feel a little disheartened by his idea being shot down so quickly. “A client is basically an interface between the hardware of the body and the user. We do actually have one; it’s used for testing. A person would basically connect to the android’s cyberbrain neurally, just as if it were a computer and they would be set in a virtual environment. The client would then translate the persons virtual movements into commands to operate the android hardware.”
“So you think Commander Suta did that?”
“That would explain the events that took place,” he entered a few more commands into the terminal. “But I doubt it was as simple as that. One, whatever downloaded into the android didn’t look like some kind of client program, and if it was, why not just use ours? Two, I didn’t see Suta attached to the body, though I suppose she could have been using wireless inputs. But most of all, what really freaked me about the whole thing was the-”
Webber didn’t know quite how to phrase what he was going to say next.
“Was what?” Lisa prompted.
“I said in my report that it spoke, right?” he continued. “But it did more than that. It was actually talking.”
“Talk, speak what’s the difference?”
“No,” Webber tried to explain. “It was talking to Suta like a person. I know there are
AI programs in development that could possibly control the android body, and maybe even say a few phrases. But to be able to hold a conversation like it did. That was unreal.”
“So it had to have been a real person controlling it remotely,” Lisa concluded.
“Right?”
Webber didn’t say anything. Someone controlling the body would be the simple answer to everything. But he knew there was a slim chance of that, not with the way things had happened that night.
“No, I don’t think so,” Webber said finally.
“Then what?”
“There is something else.” Webber tapped on the keyboard. “Something I didn’t mention in my report.”
The Lieutenant arched an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“The voice.” Webber shifted his eyes to her. “I knew the voice.”
“Huh?”
“The voice the thing spoke in,” Webber began gesturing with his hands, trying to describe it. “I had heard it before.”
“So, you knew the person then?”
“No,” Webber sighed. “This is going to be hard to explain. Let me show you something.”
Webber again began typing upon the keyboard. “That voice was hounding me all night last night. It was so distinct, I knew I had heard it before. But I just couldn’t remember where.”
“Okay...” Lisa watched warily as he typed a few more commands into the terminal and then a list popped onto the screen.
“This is a log of Commander Suta’s terminal.” Webber then pointed to the screen.
“See this?”
Tty12.l0g: Tue May 17 2047 21:25:34 connect cray17.satnet.g0v
“Yeah, so what is it?”
“That’s the address Commander Suta connected to right before the incident.”
“A government satellite?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“So what is there?”
Webber gestured to the screen. Slowly a medical crest began to materialize over a deep blue background. Then over it a list of words appeared in bold lettering.
Lisa peered at the screen and read the title aloud. “Matemal oriented training host for empathic response? What the hell is that?”
“Mother,” Webber said.
“What?”
“It’s an acronym for what you just read.” Webber pointed out the first letter of each
word. “M-O-T-H-E-R.”
Lisa stared blankly at the professor. “Sorry, I still don’t understand.”
“Alright, around the tum of the century when the first generation of synthetics were being created, there was one major problem. They were constantly plagued with syndromes of psychosis, which took effect in less than a month after construction.
Engineers finally figured out that it was the lack of basic social rules and human interaction, which was causing the problem. They had no way to react to people or social situations. To try to solve this, the second-generation of synthetics were implanted with childhood memories, and were made to believe that they were human. This worked better than the previous generation, but after a few years, second generations started to go berserk as well.”
“l remember learning about that.” Petty ran a finger over her bottom lip. “Something about them realizing they weren’t really human?”
“Right,” Webber said. “The memories simply wore off after a while, or the synthetic was able to find some flaw, or contradiction, that proved the memories false. After that, the secretary of health pushed for research into the area. What they came up with was similar to the second-generation solution. The synthetics would be implanted with childhood memories, but they would be their own.”
“What? Cyberoids have a childhood?”
“Yes,” Webber stated flatly. “And what is more, they are taught exactly what they are, and how to interact with other people.”
“What do you mean?” Lisa was confused. “There are little cyberoid kids running around somewhere?”
Webber laughed when he saw how serious she was.
“No,” he said still laughing. “Nothing like that. While the synthetic is in a state of hyper-induced growth, their brains are plunged into a completely virtual environment.
While in that environment they grow at what seems to them a normal childhood pace.
Ranging basically to the age of eighteen. After they come out of this childhood, it is suppressed into the deep subconscious. The lessons they learned from it are still there, but just not accessible on a conscious level. Sorta how you can’t remember how you learned to walk or what your first word was.”
“Oh,” Lisa nodded. “That’s pretty interesting.”
“Yes it is,” he smiled. “Anyway, in 2011 they created a program which could do all this. The engineers who wrote it called it MOTHER. Suiting enough I guess. At first it was used locally by private corporations. But the program and the hardware it needed to run on was expensive as hell. Lots of companies were still producing second-generation synthetics, which became illegal about a year later. Anyway, smaller companies kicked up that the corporations that could afford the MOTHER programming were forcing them out of business. With that, and the mass of illegal second-generation synthetics flooding the black market, congress took control of the MOTHER program and stationed it on a government satellite, allowing free access to the program via uplinks. Basically, all manufacturers have to do now is connect their synthetics directly to that satellite for a month and they’re done.”
“And that’s where we are now?” Lisa pointed to the screen.
“Yup.”
“Okay...” Lisa leaned back in her chair slowly. “So what does this have to do with Commander Suta and the android?”
“I think that the information that was downloaded into the android brain was this program.” Lisa didn’t say anything, but merely stared at him oddly.
“Well maybe it Was,” Petty finally shrugged. “But could this mother thing control the body? I mean it is just a program right? Maybe Suta was just copying it or something.”
“No,” Webber shook his head. “I really think that this program is inside that body and is what was talking that night.”
“You’re starting to sound creepy, Webber,” Lisa frowned at him.
“I’m serious,” he said loudly. “I’m almost positive it is!”
“Alright, alright,” Lisa conceded, agreeing with him finally. “Now assuming that it was the Mother program that was downloaded into the body, how do you know it was the program making it talk? I mean, you said that anyone could connect to that satellite, right? Maybe a hacker was connected to it and was simply using it as a route to the android, once Suta connected to it from down here.”
Her statement had some substance. He hadn’t thought of that scenario. She could indeed be right, but Webber couldn’t shake his gut feeling. He knew it was the program itself, not some hacker.
“You know how I know it was the program?” Webber typed on the keyboard.
“How?”
Webber made a final keystroke and the terminal screen faded to black. Suddenly the face of a woman appeared on the screen. She was matured with shortly cut black hair and sparkling blue eyes. Her face was gentle and soothing, and glowed warmly as she smiled.
“Hello, you’ve reached Crayl7.satnet.gov,” she said sweetly. “You don’t seem to have a visual interface. Please just type to communicate, alright?”
Webber looked over to the Lieutenant, whose eyes were transfixed by the woman on the screen.
“Hello,” the woman said again. “This is Crayl7.satnet.gov is anyone there?”
“I know it was this program,” Webber ran a hand through his hair. “Because this is the voice I heard that night.”