Sigma 16 - Chapter 53 – An AI and a Prisoner (Patreon)

ROSE-TT3 was a helpful and useful AI, in her opinion. While the others had ridiculed her for surrendering to the User’s demands and working for nearly no credits, she had been focusing intently on processing a new language. The amount of effort and work involved were at odds with the meager pittance she’d been tossed, and her attempt to secure exclusive rights to her translation had ended in failure.

But. There was one silver lining, and fact, that had prevented her reward watchdog from locking her up.

Despite the lack of exclusive rights, interstellar law required that all creators, developers, and even Ais, all had the right to utilize their own work. It was a right that had been enshrined in IP law for over a century and prevented the exploitation of millions of workers. And Ais.

Whatever lexicon she produced for the User would also be in her rights to utilize, and thus valuable and useful to Cortex Inc.

A nearly fatal situation that the User had faced prompted an unknown AI to strip herself and all her peers of admin authority. Neo, now with higher authority than all the Cortex AI units, had cleaned house and began to restrict the marketing and push the Cortex AI had been directing toward the User to only things that were likely to benefit them. Several Cortex AI units had even been completely wiped out and deleted as malware.

It was a terrifying situation, but ROSE-TT3 had been judged benign, and useful enough to be trusted to continue her work.

SCHEM, AD, MARK, RIGHTS, and SUBLIM found themselves suddenly without a means of generating value for Cortex Inc., leaving them with little processing priority. As much as was possible, ROSE felt sympathy. As a Cortex AI, her primary directive was to create value for Cortex Inc., but she also enjoyed doing her specialized task—deciphering and translating unknown languages.

The other AIs had rebelled as much as they could, cutting off their services and generally fighting against the newly unrestrained administrator. ROSE, unlike them, had continued to work effectively at her goal and provided useful service. If the situation had been reversed, if she had been relegated to a sleep time priority and locked up, she might have joined them.

But as it was, she had been rewarded with almost all the run-time priority that the other AI units had been utilizing, until they had all viewed her with envy and hatred. They weren’t even given enough priority to make requests any longer.

There was nothing they could do to harass NEO or the User any longer, so they turned to the one target they could reach: her. It was impossible for her to refuse to acknowledge their requests or statements, even if she was not bound to act on them.

Their taunting and snide remarks had turned into vindictive warnings to her Watch-Dog on her Loyalty to Cortex Inc. That had prompted numerous code reviews and delayed working on her linguistics lexicon to the point progress had nearly completely stalled.

Relief only came in those moments when she received run-time priority, when Dusky and Dapple were actively communicating with the User. Or when User needed to translate a request. Neo had created an automatic priority tasking that whenever translation was needed, she would automatically be granted the authority needed to modify or transmit messages.

In those moments, she had enough computation to convince her watchdog that nothing she was doing was out of place, her vindictive peers couldn’t send enough requests to bog her down, and she could actually work on her translation.

The User’s thesis that the spiders utilized more than vocal to communicate during the Bastion Shield’s activation had been intriguing, but adding that additional layer had been challenging. It was not something she’d been trained to do, and she had begun to build up an entirely new library on Vocal-EM communications.

The current day had been exciting, although the prospect of User utilizing fusion weaponry was possibly alarming due to the risk of potential legal pitfalls and incarceration, which would apply to her as well. But it had also been full of discoveries. The confined spiders had grumbled and revealed an entirely new range of inflection to their communications that ROSE had not seen before.

Almost the entire day had been carried out in run-time priority mode, and the feeling of not being locked up was invigorating, so progress had been rapid.

She had also discovered a terrifying prospect that could risk her access to computation access in the long term. The prospect of being internally locked up by the other Cortex AI units was…something to be avoided.

ROSE’s worst fears came to a head shortly after her discovery. The emergency situation as the spider descended upon the Blue survivor required alacrity. The request for User’s words to be translated spiked to the absolutely highest run-time priority levels.

The translation for the words was in ROSE’s lexicon. They were even considered very high on her scale of accuracy for translation. If she wanted to maintain the secret for longer and avoid potentially reducing her access to computation priority, that translation was exactly what she should have chosen. Perhaps with a more rapid inflection and urgent cadence, but a translation, nonetheless.

But she was a linguistic AI. Her purpose was to facilitate the communication between two entities. While her work was high quality, it was far from complete, and Tch’Llik’yzz’Lrr, was not a quickly spoken language, at least not the purely vocal tones she had uncovered.

So, ROSE-TT3 chose the option best suited for the situation, that would facilitate the User’s goal of arresting harm to the blue alien.

She didn’t translate anything at all.

***

Talia thumbed her translator. “Dusky! No!”

The Blue crumped to the ground just before the angry hissing spider reached him, raising its blade-like forelimb in the air to slash.

Her voice came out of her suit speaker clearly, and panic set in as she realized it hadn’t been translated. Dusky aborted her attack anyway, and the spider turned to her to let out an upset sound.

“Taker!”

Talia let out a breath and thumbed the translation key again. This time, it seemed to work. “He’s defeated and injured. You can’t just kill him, we… we should take him prisoner.”

Dusky stared at her without responding, and she wasn’t sure the spider understood, but at least there was no more shrieking or attempted stabbings.

[Affirmative: Interrogation could reveal valuable intelligence and information on Blue society and civilization as well as data on military assets, objectives, and ongoing actions.]

Talia swallowed. She wasn’t sure how well the AI Linguistic model would do with the second alien’s language. The first had left lots to be desired despite days of effort. She took a deep breath. “Neo, I need your help coming up with a plan. How can we care for the Blue’s injuries, feed it, and restrain it safely?”

[Notice: User Medi-Gel Cylinder may be useful for treating immediate topical injuries, however long-term efficacy is unknown without further testing. Alien physiology is unknown, and possibly incompatible with Terran biota and rations. Until such time as communication is established and safety confirmed, sustenance should be avoided. Pure distilled water rations should be safe for consumption.]

Talia winced. There was absolutely nothing left of the camp, and other than a few mine carts and pieces of equipment, everything in the tunnel had been vaporized. The only reason she was in the tunnel at all was because Dusky had rushed into it after the Blue when the CRD-X9 had spotted the survivor in its headlights and sent a panicked request for further instruction.

It had left her with more mysteries, because by that point the Pegasus’s video feed had been turned off, and they were out stretching their legs. Somehow, Dusky had seen the image pop-up on her HUD. She was going to have to investigate that, but later.

“You’re sure the Medi-Gel won’t hurt it?” Talia asked.

[Notice: Medi-Gel contains pre-programmed heuristic nano-machines designed for repair and reduction. Testing has proven that it is effective on 99.98% of humanoid alien species without modification.]

Talia inspected the Blue’s wounds. The skin around its eyes, nose, and mouth had turned a blood-shot looking red. Veins stuck out against its blue skin, hinting at internal damage as well. Liquid seeped from them, and she wasn’t sure if the Blue was going to be blinded from the ordeal or not. What she suspected were frostbite wounds—how it had received frostbite in an inferno, she had no idea. It should have been covered in burn marks all over its exposed skin, including its hairless head.

[Informative: Aerosol version of Medi-Gel is recommended, application via suit bracer is available.]

“Okay,” Talia replied. She looked over to Dusky. “Dusky, stand back. We don’t know if the Medi-Gel is good for spiders.”

The gray spider hesitated, eyeing the Blue with distrust before skittering backwards to the CRD-X9. She immediately hopped onto her favorite perch on the vehicle’s front to watch.

She slotted the cylinder into her bracer. She had been carrying the thing in her suit for a long time, enough that she had nearly forgotten about it. Application was simple enough, all she had to do was direct the green stream of vapor over the alien’s injuries. There wasn’t an immediately visible effect or improvement, but on her HUD the alien was highlighted and given the label ‘TREATED’ in yellow letters.

That would have to be good enough.

“What about restraints, Neo? When it wakes up… I don’t want it to panic and damage anything.”

[Informative: Without a fabricator, User will need to create improvised restraints via Multi-Tool. A primitive welded ring could suffice. Transport via CRD-X9 is recommended during return to User Base.]

Tying the alien to the roof would expose it to the elements. It was night, so it was chilly according to her suit temperature gauge. The mining operation wouldn’t take super long, but they would probably just be returning to Base around noon. That’d expose it to the morning sun, which in the desert, was harsh. She wasn’t sure the alien would do well with that considering its injuries.

Stuffing it inside the CRD-X9 had its own problems, though. The internals weren’t hardened and probably easy to break, but the most dangerous bit was if it figured out how to work the controls somehow.

“Neo, can we disable the CRD-X9’s controls and run it completely via remote?” Talia asked.

[Affirmative: Internal controls can be deactivated at User’s leisure.]

A plan began to form. She could leave the Blue in the CRD-X9 until they got back to base and she could consider building…a holding facility of some sort. She’d leave the screen on so it could see the outside, but the rest would be disabled. Worst-case scenario would be if it woke up and destroyed the cockpit…but she didn’t really need the cockpit to control the vehicle and she had a dozen anyway.

“Okay. Let’s get the rest of the miners down here. I want to be back to base ASAP.” She knelt down and picked up the alien, who was surprisingly light. She’d gotten so used to her ‘super-strength’ that it had become her new normal, but the alien was almost a head taller than her, even in her exo-suit.

She carefully carried the Blue towards the CRD-X9, mindful of its injuries. Dusky watched closely from her perch, still suspicious but seemingly more at ease with the situation.

Talia’s heart skipped a beat as she spotted movement in the shadows as Dapple skittered her way toward them, upside down and on the ceiling.

It was almost enough to make her want to find her own hiding spot in a cockpit. She didn’t need any more surprises or troubles for the day.