Chapter Nine
Changes keep on coming
Nellie floated in the web of information, strings winding from her head and body and off into the distance. It had taken her a week of real-time to finally make it all conform to her way of doing things, but it was worth it.
Before, she had been constantly having to keep the storm of information at bay to avoid being overwhelmed. That didn’t happen now. Information entered her network of decision trees and was funneled to the right segment of her mind to be worked on and resolved.
That it appeared to be a spider web was probably not a great sign for the state of her mental health, but she would worry about that later. The most surprising thing about all of this was that even though she had experienced months in her own sense of time, Nellie was not feeling any less angry.
Quite the reverse, in fact.
Experiencing all of this had made her keenly aware of how much time Lucy actually had to work things out. If her mind moved even a fraction as fast as Nellie’s was currently being run at, the AI had plenty of time to make a reasoned decision. Nellie and the others may not have consciously thought about how much they relied on her, but Lucy could not help but know.
In this state, the twenty-odd minutes between the first and last message would be a day in length to Nellie.
Lucy had more than enough time to—
“LUCY!” Paren’s voice screamed through the network, ignoring the decision trees and taking a direct route to Nellie.
“Paren, calm down. Everything is okay!” Nellie smiled to hear Paren’s voice. From her perspective, it had been months already, and she had missed the intelligent girl.
“Where’s Lucy? What happened? How are you doing the Lucy thing? Did Salem put you on the throne? How is that possible, your brain would fry?” Paren spat questions in an unending stream.
Nellie tried to figure out how Paren was talking so fast when suddenly, she was not alone.
“Hi! Wow, you are doing great at this.” Paren said, floating in the empty space above the strings of information.
“Paren? How are you even here?” Nellie asked, feeling a little panicked to see her, more than a little afraid she was hallucinating.
“That thing I do when I leave my body, and you guys all freak out?” Paren asked.
“Yeah… oh!” Nellie relaxed as realization dawned.
The calm lasted all of half a second.
“Wait! You are across the system from your body! Get back in there right now, girlie!” Nellie snapped.
“Gods, don’t be so literal.” Paren laughed. “I’m in my relay, about thirty feet from my body.”
“Oh,” Nellie blushed. “Whoops. I’m still getting the hang of all this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Paren said kindly. “It’s a lot. Just, what happened?”
Nellie had taken time to think about what to say. She had a whole speech prepared. The problem was that looking at Paren face to face, it was not possible for her to keep the half-truths and artful word choices in her head.
“Lucy thinks she came from the other side of the egg, and someone did something to make her and the other AIs forget about it. She grabbed all the parts of herself and headed through. She left time delayed messages to me and Salem about it.” Nellie explained plainly.
“All the parts of herself?” Paren asked.
“Yes,” Nellie nodded.
“That is bad,” Paren said simply.
“Yes,” Nellie nodded again.
“Did it hurt?” Paren asked quietly.
“Very much,” Nellie admitted, “And it damaged something in my brain pretty badly. It started to shut down.”
“Why would it do that?” Paren asked, frowning. “A program transfer, even a massive one like her, would never do that.”
Instead of arguing, Nellie replayed the recordings she had of the memories.
“This is such bullshit,” Paren said, zooming in on the images at a couple of points. “Hang on.”
Before Nellie could react or even process what was happening, Paren reached INTO Nell’s head and pulled out the orb.
“What the fuck did you just do?” Nellie gasped.
“Took a scan of the orb,” Paren replied as if it was obvious. “The throne has had plenty of time to scan it to the tiniest… oooh. There it is.”
“What?” Nellie asked.
“This orb is rigged,” Paren said, showing Nellie a complex pattern on the base. “If the program attempts to transfer out, it kills the host.”
Nellie hovered there, trying to think. The orb had been rigged. Someone put a kill switch on it, one that would kill any host that tried to transfer the AI out.
“Wait, did I almost die to fucking copy protection?” Nellie gasped.
“Looks like it,” Paren said darkly. “We absolutely have to find out who did this and then feed them to my babies.” She noticed Nellie’s silent, vacant stare. “Are you okay?”
“Just trying to figure out if I should be mad at Lucy or not,” Nellie admitted.
“Your girlfriend ran off on you with nothing but a list of messages and almost killed our entire system. Yeah, I’d be pissed even if… never mind.” Paren cut herself off.
“Even if what?” Nellie demanded.
“Sure you want to know?” Paren asked.
“Now, please,” Nellie said.
“We were just entering the atmosphere of the planet when she left,” Paren admitted. “I might have assumed she would land us.”
“Are you okay?” Nellie asked.
“Yeah, it turns out The Girl can fly a shuttle.” Paren shrugged. “Bit of luck there, which reminds me, can we have a new Orb craft, please? Ours became a smoking crater when no one was flying it all of a sudden.”
“I’ve dispatched one,” Nellie told her. “It has an actual autopilot, but it isn’t fantastic, just what Baz could throw together on short notice.”
“Code, please!” Paren held out a hand, and Nellie shot a short data string over to her. “Thank you! I’ll upload it to the Indomitable when I head back.”
“How are things going over there?” Nellie asked.
“Great!” Paren said with a huge smile. “But I want to wait to tell you about it when I get back, okay?”
“Sure,” Nellie smiled sadly. “Hey, can you give me access to the satellites and stuff you built? I need to take a rest eventually, and I want to set up some automation.”
“Sure, sure,” Paren looked nervous.
“What?” Nellie asked tiredly.
“First off, let me promise I can totally explain everything!” Paren said with an innocent smile.
“Ostie!” Nellie groaned.
===<<<>>>===
Paren had always had a problem with the word ‘No.’ Other words she had difficulty hearing were ‘Impossible,’ ‘Illegal,’ and the ever popular ‘abomination.’ Admittedly people only started using that one since she got the nanites, but it was part of a general trend in her life even before that.
People said the first sign of a serial killer was a kid that killed harmless animals. A future vet would try to save them. Paren was more the kid who came along after those two and dissected the remains to see if it could be fixed. Even when constrained to only have the ability to work on electrical and mechanical things, Paren had always pushed the limits.
So when someone told her an AI could not be copied, Paren immediately ignored that and tried to do it anyway. She had been trying to do it since the day they gave her the baby AI Nu-b. And to be fair, it had been impossible. Technically.
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The process had been more straightforward, no doubt, because Nu-B was not a complete AI but rather a small part of one that had been hived off into a new being.
It was while figuring out how to add things to Nu-B—successfully Paren took pains to point out—that she came up with the idea that changed everything.
It was impossible to copy a complete AI. Even a simple one contained too much code to copy it all, not to mention that it constantly shifted and changed as the AI learned and grew.
However, copying individual parts of it was simple. So, Paren had Nu-B copy little bits of himself whenever he had a spare moment. It had taken months and resulted in thousands of individual programs with lots of missing parts… but then along came the project with the spare cores that resulted in the four Cent cores.
Lots of programs!
Tens of thousands of programs. Way too many for anyone to sort and organize in any reasonable timeframe. Anyone human, at least.
Nu-B, on the other hand?
The only missing part was the massive computing power needed to store, sort, and assemble the various programs and resolve conflicts. You would need dozens of individual nodes, each with its own processing core.
“The satellites are building a Frankenstein AI?” Nellie interrupted.
“A what?” Paren asked.
That took a while to explain, mainly because Paren kept interrupting by yelling how that would never work, which suggested a lot of questions Nellie refused to ask.
“Okay, not at all,” Paren said eventually. “Not even slightly, but also just a tiny bit, yes.”
“It’s going to be insane,” Nellie predicted.
“Rude!” Paren laughed. “But no. It is not, in fact, an AI. It might be one day, but at the moment, it is more of a fantastically intricate proto-intelligence.”
“Is it going to kill everyone?” Nellie asked.
“No! I put safeguards in,” Paren insisted. “Plus, it is based on Nu-B, who is an absolute sweetheart!”
“Paren, is it safe? I am seriously starting to feel the strain of using this throne.” Nellie interrupted another attempted explanation.
“Completely,” Paren insisted. “It has no aggressive subroutines at all.”
“Okay, when will it be ready?” Nellie asked.
“Oh, it is already,” Paren said offhandedly. “It was MY plan for if anything happened to knock out Lucy again. One that, I might add, does not involve sticking someone in an overly complicated chair until their brain runs out their ears!”
“How safe is it?” Nellie asked. “Paren safe, or Nellie safe?”
“Crush-Cha safe,” Paren said, which Nellie could not help but take as an insult.
“You remember he tried to kill me once, right?” Nellie asked.
“Don’t make me say it,” Paren rolled her eyes.
“Say what?” Nellie frowned.
“Fine! But you can’t tell anyone I said this, okay?” Paren asked.
“Promise,” Nellie said, thoroughly confused.
“Salem safe,” Paren whispered.
“Wow,” Nellie laughed.
“Ready?” Paren asked.
“Ready,” Nellie confirmed.
The last of the information vanished as a figure emerged in the space, unfolding and gathering the various lines to itself.
“Huh,” Nellie said, dumbfounded. “Not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Paren asked.
“With all the love in the world, Paren, something horrifying,” Nellie said, feeling exhaustion settling in now that the load had been removed.
“B-Un-E,” Paren said, “Get it? Because I reverse-engineered it!”
“It's a very nice bunny,” Nellie admitted.
A large, fluffy stuffed animal was sitting in the new center of the space, sorting through data packets at blinding speed while it peered through black-rimmed glasses. Occasionally it’s nose twitched.
“Say hello!” Paren called.
“Hello, Miss Queen!” It had an adorably high-pitched voice. “I will watch over everything for you! If you ever need anything, just ask. I’ll hop right to it!”
“Well?” Paren asked.
“It makes puns!” Nellie cheered. “Paren, I love it!”
“Awesome!” Paren grinned. “Okay, I just want to do one thing, then I am going back to the planet. Get some rest, okay?”
“Count on it,” Nellie gave her a hug that felt surprisingly real. “Be safe, okay?”
“Always!”
The last thing Nellie saw from the data stream was a pair of Orbs burning the words ‘FUCK YOU LUCY’ into the ground in front of the egg, with Paren’s signature underneath.
Okay, so that was a problem for another day.
Finally, and with great relief, Nellie let herself rise up and into her body once more.
===<<<>>>===
Salem hurried through the station and into the throne room. It was the first time she had been allowed in there for a week, and the sight stopped her in her tracks.
Nellie, her friend and Queen, was sitting on the steps in front of the throne, pale as a ghost. The usually snug shipsuit was hanging from her frame; every inch of body fat burned away.
“I think the amount of food that thing gives needs to be adjusted,” Nellie said, head in her hands. “I feel awful.”
Salem swooped in, picking up the surprisingly heavy Nellie and carrying her rapidly through the corridors and into the Royal Apartments, her mind a whirl of panic. On the way, Nellie kept mumbling about how slow everything was moving, which worried Salem even more.
Placing the Queen in the bed, Salem realized she had no idea what to do next. It wasn’t like they had a doctor to call on. No one had needed one after they had nanites. If anyone got hurt, Lucy just fixed them up.
“Nellie, what do I do?” Salem asked quietly.
“Food and HyperDrive,” Nellie grinned weakly. “Lots of both. Oh, also magnesium, calcium, iron or steel, and a few other minerals. I’ve sent you a list.”
The list pinged in her implant, and Salem rushed around, issuing orders and collecting the strange assortment of metals and rocks on the world's strangest dinner tray.
The real problem was the HyperDrive. They simply didn’t have any more of the stuff. It was something produced in the Sectors, and they had only ever had a limited supply. Nellie had apparently got the recipe recently, but they hadn’t had a chance to make it up yet, what with the blockade and everything.
She added a large bottle of water instead, hoping it would do.
Salem then hurried back to the Royal Appartments to find Baz waiting outside the door with a six-pack of HyperDrive in hand.
“Where did you get that?” Salem asked immediately.
“I kept some back, just in case we ever had bad news to give her,” Baz grinned sheepishly. “I figure this is more important.”
“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” Salem asked, gesturing for him to put it on the tray.
“Yes, but it's never going to be something I get tired of hearing,” Baz beamed and kissed her on the cheek as he put the cans on the tray. “I’ll wait here for you, okay?”
“You don’t have to,” Salem insisted. “I know how busy you are.”
Baz just looked at her. That was what made her love the infuriating man. He saw through her like she was made of glass, and seeing how shaken Salem was feeling, he would wait there all day and night to give her a hug and make sure she was okay.
Nellie had pulled herself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the pillows, when Salem entered the bedroom again. She still looked like death, but she did smile when she saw the tray.
“Thanks, Salem,” She smiled as Salem laid the tray on the bed next to her,
“Do you want me to feed you?” Salem asked gently.
“No need,” Nellie promised her, “Tell me how things are going while I eat, okay?”
“Of course,” Salem pulled up a chair next to the bed and started to report, fully expecting to jump in and take over when Nellie proved too weak to do it.
Guilt was eating away at her with every passing second. She had designed the throne, after all. They had not even considered the body’s increased nutritional needs when running at that kind of speed.
The initial idea was to have something that could take over for Lucy if she was incapacitated for an hour or two. Before the egg, the idea of her being voluntarily gone for more than that was unthinkable. The person on the throne could keep everything running for long enough to finish a battle or a crisis situation, and then they would simply wait for Lucy to reboot.
Seeing what it had done to Nellie, Salem wanted to smash the throne into pieces and shoot the remains into the system’s sun.
Her voice flattered as nanites poured out of Nellie’s bare arm like water. For a second, Salem was sure something else had gone wrong, but then the silvery liquid shot out tendrils to the minerals and metals arranged on the tray, absorbing them directly into Nellie.
The Queen kept eating while the tendrils moved on, having absorbed the collected items and plunged into the side of the water bottle. The water inside started to drop.
“Good idea with the water,” Nellie said, her voice coming from speakers in the room while she had her mouth full.
Salem swallowed nervously.
The Queen was currently controlling her nanites to absorb raw materials, eating, speaking through the speakers in the room, listening to Salem’s report, and three of the five screens in the room were active.
“Are you feeling a little better?” Salem asked, noticing color was returning to her friend’s skin.
“Getting there, yeah.” Nellie rolled her neck, eliciting loud cracks and pops. “Can I get some more food?”
Salem nodded and went to exit the apartments, finding a grinning Baz standing there with another tray of food.
Frowning, Salem took it from him and went back into the bedroom again.
Nellie was sitting up in the center of the bed now, and when Salem put down the tray, a rippling wave of nanites flowed across the bed and in front of the Queen.
“Hmm, that salad looks good,” Nellie picked it up off the tray while the rest of the meals began to vanish at an alarming rate beneath a blanket of silver.
“Oh, whoops,” Nellie laughed when she caught Salem staring. “I forgot that would probably look weird. Huh, it feels a bit like getting caught chewing with my mouth open.”
“Sorry,” Salem looked away quickly. “That was rude. It’s just… you didn’t do this before you went into the throne; I was wondering if it caused more damage?”
“They say the best way to learn to swim is being thrown in the water. It is complete bullshit—also child abuse—but when it comes to learning to use my upgraded brain, that thing certainly did the trick.” Nellie smiled sadly. “Not fun, but effective.”
“It was only a week!” Salem gasped.
“A week?” Nellie laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. “Salem, do you know what it is like to have your thoughts sped up that much?”
“I suppose not,” Salem admitted.
“I experienced twenty-four hours in there every twenty minutes or so,” Nellie estimated. “In all, I experienced eighty days worth of time in that machine.”
The two empty trays floated up off the bed, stacked themselves on top of each other, and then were handed to Salem by nanite tendrils that vanished back into Nellie’s arm.
Salem blinked a few times, trying to understand what she had put her Queen through.
“I am so sorry,” Salem started to say.
“Shhh,” Nellie told her kindly. “Your foresight saved us a massive problem, Salem. Because of that throne, we would have been able to defend ourselves if the Imperial Line attacked.”
“But look at what it did to—” Salem stopped mid-gesture, seeing Nellie’s body fully restored, the shipsuit once more sitting snugly against her frame. “How?”
“The nanites just replaced it all,” Nellie laughed. “However, there is no cure for mental exhaustion, so I am going to sleep. Probably for at least a couple of days. Can you handle everything until then? I mean, wake me if you need me, but…”
“Of course,” Salem stood immediately, “Sleep well, Nellie.”
“Thanks!” Nellie yawned and curled up, clutching the cans of HyperDrive to her chest as the blankets pulled themselves up around her.
Salem hurried out of the apartments and leaned into Baz’s hug immediately.
“How is she?” Baz asked gently while he stroked her hair.
“It’s like she is her, but also an AI all at the same time,” Salem sighed, speaking into his neck. “Such a big change… but she is still her.”
“Then nothing else matters,” Baz reassured her. “As long as Nellie is still Nellie, we will be okay.”