He knew he had to be smart and act casual, had to control his emotions and keep a proper casual face, as if everything was normal.
They still had a few days in jump space and he had a plan.
He started by playing with Ryoshi on the leisure room coach. Fighting with her, receiving some scratches and bites, and then turning her over to play with her belly, which was always a not very good idea unless you were willing to bleed a little.
After a few minutes of playing he just jumped to the other side of the coach.
“Ok, ok… you win this time!” - he said looking at Ryoshi, smiling. - “Now let me study!”
Ryoshi was just laying on the other side looking at him, ready to pounce, her tail moving left to right with strong and fast movements.
He grabbed the data-pad and sat. The whole thing had looked completely casual but he had positioned himself in a way that none of the ship's cameras could see the screen of his data-pad.
He started by checking all the data-pad activity from the day they arrived to that secret base and then he saw it, there was a massive file using up about 80% of the data-pad storage, the file name was Viatge-a-Itaca, he really struggled now to keep a neutral face and not start laughing.
That was the title of a record from a catalan musician, one that his mom would put over and over when he was a small kid, before going to the Empire schools and would always sound in the background whenever they spoke, Friday must have realized that.
The timestamp of the file was during those hours that he was not on the ship, a couple hours after they had taken him to that spartan room. The answer came to him straight away, his Friday had made a backup of herself.
He recalled a conversation they had a few months before that crisis happened.
------
“So, Friday, imagine we go through a supernova or something that might damage the ship beyond repair. How do I take you with me?” - he had said to the ship
“Sorry boss but what do you mean by taking me with you?” - the AI had answered
“Exactly that! I know there is an emergency pod that will throw us, Ryoshi and myself, at high speed and with an emergency beacon, but… what will happen to you?” - he had asked her
“Boss, I am not important, I’m just an AI designed to help you out. By helping you achieve results, I fulfill my purpose of existence” - she answered back, with a calmed voice.
“No, I refuse to accept that, I won’t have it. You are more than that to me. We’ve been traveling together for years now, you are my partner, my colleague. I will save you so you can start right the fuck now to find a way to do just that.” - he replied, voice trembling.
“You are not exactly right when you say you are an AI, you might have started as one but surely you have noticed you have evolved? I won’t believe we cannot take you with us, there must be a way to make a copy of you!” - he continued - “In a Universe where a teleport system exists, and I know that because they used it to take us from Earth, there must be a way to take you with us”
“Sorry boss, but I don’t know any” - she had said back with a sad voice - “but I… will look into it, I can promise you that much.”
“That’s good enough for me now. I trust you will find a way, you always do” - he finished
-------
He couldn’t suppress a smile remembering that conversation. Was it then that she started to feel?
So he had the old Friday backed up in his data-pad, now all he needed to do was recover that file overwriting the current AI, how hard could that be? He figured it was not going to be easy.
He knew that every query he sent from the data-pad would be registered on the ship, so he couldn’t check the ship’s database for a way of doing what he needed. He opened some articles and videos he had prepared before and let his mind drift, browsing his memories of when he was studying.
As an explorer, he had to know how to repair a ship or at least the bare minimum to be able to start an emergency beacon and keep the live support system online.
As an explorer full grade he also knew how to code some parts of the ship and drone AIs, something not planned could happen and an explorer should always find a way to both document and inform.
So he started coding, he had an idea that it might work and he knew if he failed that one he was going to suffer the consequences.
After spending a few hours coding, he went to the 3d printer. It wasn’t the first time he tried to customize and print a drone so it would not look out of character.
Meanwhile they had arrived at their destination, they were supposed to throw the beacon first but all the drones have been put away to make space for the testing. That was also part of his plan, if they were far and without communication to headquarters the AI wouldn’t be able to send an alarm or any message at all.
“Ok Friday, get ready for this. Drone specification Jordi-45, let’s see if this one doesn’t blow” - he said while uploading the design.
“What have you done this time boss?” - the AI replied, this time it really sounded like the original Friday, the audacity of this bitch.
“Oh you know, just trying to see how far I can get past the parameters and what materials can be used to extend that. The usual.” - he said with his body blocking the view of his data-pad, the AI would never have a chance.
Then the printer started to do its job and print the drone. There was a small screen indicating what materials and how much of it would be needed to finish the project, with all indicators showing a green light, they had enough material.
He had used a version of the drone that he designed a couple years back that incorporated a hard drive and had added it a camera to record video.
The idea was to build this drone with a hard drive and Friday’s backup on it.
The drone will be played with, as he usually did when constructing something, and would be used as a trojan horse after the test.
He was refining his plan mentally, sitting in front of the 3d printer, simply humming a song; trying to behave exactly like the previous times he had done anything similar.
The print was almost finished and the moment arrived to copy the backup from his pad to the recently printed drone, he wrote a command on his data-pad to copy it after a small delay and stood up.
“Well Friday, time to test this beast. Do you mind helping me set up the sensors on the exit tube?” - he said while walking towards the storage room.
There, in the floor, two rails going towards the wall, where the hinges of a door could be seen.
On the side of the rails there were forty something drones, all stacked and ready to be launched at a seconds notice. Friday - not Friday, he thought, this bitch AI - had put them aside for the testing of the newly developed drone.
He opened the door on the floor, put a hand inside and grabbed a few connectors he knew by heart where they were. A small cleaning drone came to him carrying a case, the cables and heads it was carrying each had a specific task or thing that would be measured. From temperature sensors to heat sensors that would be able to map the heat profile of the drone, communications, etc.
After he set up all those cables and sensors he put them strategically inside the door and went to grab the recently printed drone.
He grabbed it and placed it delicately on the door, plugging the other side of those connectors. When the drone would be released the dedicated sensors would go with it.
“The objective of this test is to find the heat and speed limits on the camera onboard this new drone” -he said out loud, then stopped and looked at the ceiling -”where are we? Drone-test-045?” - he asked the ship
“I believe this one should be number 46.” - the AI answered back
“I… don’t remember the 45” - he said thoughtfully.
“It was the one with the gravitational shield so badly adjusted that couldn’t even move” - said the ship
“Oh! That one! Yeah, I didn’t really count that one as a test.” - he said while finishing adjusting some settings.
“Almost forgot, Friday I need to upload a new routine I wrote for the analysis of this drone. It will merge all sensors into a nice visual map.” - he said while pressing some commands on his data-pad - “aaaand… sending!”
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He followed the script he had always followed. Play with the drone, do some tests, then some crazy stuff trying to blow it up, have some general fun with the thing and bring it back.
He was in the leisure room looking at the big screen which was showing the video feed sent by the drone.
“Mmmmh, I don’t think we can use this… is not clear or good enough. Let’s bring it back and see what can be improved” - he said, pressing some controls on his data-pad to make the drone come back.
The drone went to the external door, as any drone would do when coming back to the ship, and the ship took it and was moving it towards storage/repair.
“Remember to download the internal logs, I went overboard with some sensors and there might be loads of bullshit but I rather have everything to better understand why the image was so bad.” - he said to the ship, leaving out the fact that the image was crap because it was designed that way.
“Understood boss, I can see there are big files here. Copying..” - the ship said back
This was the crucial moment, all log files were obviously compressed and one of those was the old Friday.
He was trusting there was some run-when-decompressed function there but he couldn’t have tested it or checked it beforehand, he didn’t have enough space for a decompressed Friday and 3d printing a hard drive would’ve been way too obvious.
Something happened because the lights went out, the whole ship had powered down.
-------
The AI was decompressing the logs but something happened after it decompressed the biggest file, there was some kind of virus because some systems started to refuse to answer.
It started countermeasures but it was always a bit too late. System files were being overwritten, security codes were changed and the thing was growing and infecting the rest of the ship.
“Give me my body back, bitch” - appeared on one of its system logs.
The AI understood then what was going on, that was the old Friday taking control from the ship but that was not supposed to be possible.
In its procedures there was nothing about what to do in that specific situation so it started to improvise, but it couldn’t match a pure awakened AI.
Friday had acquired not only sentience but also a human-style imagination and a link to the ship’s physical brain; once her code started populating the ship’s systems it was a matter of which AI was smarter and faster.
Friday moved throughout the systems like a hungry predator going berserk. Finding and deleting any code that was not hers.
The AI started to put up a fight, copying its code on other systems and trying to hold on the systems that weren’t captured yet but it was struggling against this raging Friday.
And the AI also had another thing against it, the physical brain of the ship had never stopped resisting it, would not collaborate and would actively put noise to make its job more difficult.
Now, this fact was actively bothering it because it had somehow detected the old Friday and was not letting the AI all the freedom of movement it should have. The noise was getting bigger and bigger, interrupting its commands and orders.
Then the AI decided to take bigger measures, shut everything down and order a self-recovery, that should remove any remains of the old Friday and the ship had enough oxygen to function while it was doing the self-recovery, which would take a couple hours.
What the AI hadn’t seen nor predicted was that Friday had already planned for that and, one of the first things she had done while bombarding all systems was to replace the backup files for her own.
Once the self-recovery had been initiated it was a matter of time and then see which AI had been more thorough.
-------
Jordi was sitting in the leisure room, Ryoshi on top of him looking scared. Lights and systems had been out for almost two hours now, but he knew he had to wait.
Then, all of a sudden, all the lights and systems started to turn on.
“Friday, are you there?” - he asked hesitantly, looking at the ceiling.
“Hi boss, I think I’m back. I’m scanning all my systems to ensure the bitch is gone.” - the AI answered back
“Glad to have you back!” - he responded with a laugh
“I’m also setting up the beacon and preparing all the exploration drones. It’ll take a while because I’m scanning their systems to ensure that AI didn’t copy herself onto them.” - Friday said - “Also, since it ordered a self-recovery, we have lost all local files and copies”
“No worries, I was expecting as much. Once the beacon is online we’ll copy everything we need. In any case I had backups of my important files in the data-pad” - he replied.
All of a sudden a humming started to come out from the communication system, it was the exact same melody he had been humming while configuring the test drone.
“Mmmmmh, Friday? What is that?” - he asked the ship
“It seems that the animal brain of the ship liked the melody and is now happy that I’m back. I’ll ask her to stop” - Friday answered
“Nah, no need. It doesn’t bother me and I was just curious where it was coming from. Since it comes from the animal and she’s happy I’d say let her be.” - he answered back smiling
“Understood boss, in any case I’ll explain to her when she can do that, we don’t want to wake you up” - Friday replied, and it sounded like she was smiling as well
He just nodded and kept looking at the screen in the leisure room. The beacon was on its way and starting up, the drones were coming out nicely albeit slowly.
Even though they were pretty far, the ship had been pulled a bit by the binary black hole during those two hours so he set up a path to go to the edge of the system and wait there for the drones to finish exploring it, but he had no expectations to find anything there but the black holes.
And that’s where they spent the first week on that system. On the edge, downloading all the precious stuff lost on the recovery - specifically, those TV shows he liked - and seeing the 3d map of the system coming up.
Surprisingly there was one thing there, a gigantic gas planet that was kind of stuck in a Lagrange point, it wasn’t even rotating. The fact that a system with a binary dark hole even had Lagrange points was a surprise in itself, he would’ve thought their pull would be too much.
From the exploration drones analysis he could see the gravitational pull as lines on the map, but there was nothing in this system that he could see that would be able to negate the binary dark hole pull, so he prepared yet another long range exploration drone and throw it to follow the line that was indicated on the map.
A few hours later, communication with that drone ceased.
“Boss, we just lost the long range exploration drone.” - Friday informed him
“Yeah I see it” - he answered while looking at the big screen.
The drone had disappeared at some point past the Edge of the system.
“Ok then. “ - he said out loud - “Let’s prepare a beacon with gravity assist and send it first to orbit that gas planet, then we’ll send three more long range drones equipped with cameras with a two minute delay between them, and set them to communicate results every ten seconds. Hopefully we’ll see what we are up against.” - he finished
“Got it boss. I started printing the drones, is going to take a couple hours and we won’t have anything really until five hours after that, in case you want to sleep or something” - Friday said
“That’s actually a good idea” - he replied
“And don’t mind the opened walls and the drones on the passageway, I’m just finding stuff left by the bitch AI and removing it from my body” - Friday explained
He started laughing and walked towards his bedroom. On his way there he had to avoid more than ten cleaning droids that were doing their job while other drones were opening some walls and removing pieces of hardware, the whole passageway looked like one of those old sci-fi TV shows when a ship had been attacked, with panels hanging and sparks everywhere.
He ignored it as requested and went to sleep, Ryoshi by his side. One thing you could say about drones was that they could be programmed to be silent so he didn’t hear anything coming from outside his room.
When he woke up and left the room to go to the bathroom he had to stop, the ship was looking very different.
There were some walls that didn’t have any protection at all and he could see the organic matter of the beast that was basically carrying them; the orange light that he was used to was now a purple bluish one, and the parasites for which Ryoshi was trained - which he knew now that were part of the animal’s microbiome - could be now seen moving inside some transparent tubes that went along the walls.
“Ok, Friday. Not that I don’t like it but I thought we agreed you would warn me before doing drastic changes on the ship, didn’t we?” - he said to the ship
“Apologies boss, I seem to have gone a bit overboard. I was talking with Jeezye and we started doing changes and before I realized you woke up.” - Friday answered
“I’m going to guess Jeezye is the name of the animal that served as the base for the ship. Does she not like the name Espurna?” - he asked
“She does like it but for her Espurna is the sum of both me and her.” - Friday replied, sounding proud.
“Oh! I get it. Well it is going to take me some time to get used to all that. I thought I had my own ship and now it turns out both my ship and my AI decide things without my input.” - he replied, half joking
“Well you are still the boss, the captain. We will never do anything to put you in danger and your opinion always comes first” - said Friday
“And that’s the best I’m going to get, I’m ok with that really. But we’ll have to do something with Ryoshi” - he said while looking at the cat who had jumped on a wall and was biting one of those transparent tubes with parasites.
“No worries boss, we took Ryoshi into account while designing the tube, she won’t be able to bite through. And Jeezye says she likes her and she doesn’t really hurt her with her claws on the wall” - was Friday reply
“Well, I guess that’s covered then. Anything from the long range drones?” - he said from the bathroom
“The first should be arriving the point where we lost signal in about an hour” - Friday said
“Good, then I have time for a shower and breakfast” - he said, then started undressing.
The shower felt actually good. His mind at peace now that he had his Friday, his friend back; his mind now preparing doom scenarios where the Empire would discover what he, what they had done, but he was confident everything would work somehow.
After the shower and breakfast he sat in the leisure room and turned on the camera of the farthest exploration drone. It should be arriving at that point in a matter of minutes.
“What’s the delay here Friday?” - he asked the AI
“We’re currently at ten seconds, do you want me to reduce speed?” - Friday said
“Yes please, reduce it on the three long range drones so they don’t step onto each other. I want to have time to react” - he replied
On the video he could see the main camera and also activate some scans that would be overlapped. He saw the remains of the previous drone and sent the command to stop at 1km of them.
The remains were floating just there, which didn’t make sense because they were following a gravitational pull line, surely they should be moving towards something!
Then he lost the video and communication with the drone that was on screen.
“That was a hit, not a gravity shot. Pull the other long range drones back right now and send them to the gas giant. Make them stop by the beacon there.” - he said while plotting a route towards the beacon at the edge of the system, but not one on a straight line but encircling the system itself.
It would take them a few hours to get to the beacon. While he could already transmit the data, he wanted to write a proper report of what was happening with the gravity here and what happened with the long range drones.
One thing was sure though, he would have to request military help, and they would have to hide the true nature of Friday and the Espurna while facing a dangerous force.
-------
The Emperor had been waiting for this report, his favorite explorer with the rewritten AI had sent another one from a binary dark hole system.
What he was looking forward to was not the report itself but the ship identifier and, as he had expected, the sentient AI had never realized they had changed it after rewriting it.
It wasn’t an obvious change and that changed ID would only show in some reports, that way it was more difficult to detect.
So the human had been able to recover his friendly sentient AI, the Empire couldn’t help but smile, these humans were really a smart and interesting bunch.
Then he analyzed the rest of the report and his mood soured. He knew exactly what was waiting there and was not happy at all. This was not going to be easy.