Valyien Box Set 2, page 35
part #4 of Valyien Series
“It’s the size.” Eliard stepped back hurriedly, looking back around the nursery as he finally saw what indeed was out of place here, apart from everything, that was. It was the size of the toys and the walking treadmill. Even the chair behind the screen, and the first, smaller striped ball, were still things far larger than a toddler or child could easily manipulate.
“What?” The section manager had walked to the door underneath the stairs at the ground floor, reading the words on small wall-plaque there. “Engine Room. Stores.”
“The size of everything,” the captain explained, pointing out each item in turn. “If this was the containment facility for some kind of baby, it was a very big baby.
“Not a human baby, though,” Karis said offhandedly. “I’m surprised that you haven’t figured that out yet.” She shook her head.
“What? How do you know that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Human babies need food, water, and lots and lots of cleaning facilities.” She nodded to the crystal-glass container. “Look. It’s spotless.”
“Maybe they cleaned up before whatever it was attacked them?” Eliard said, but he knew in his heart that she was right.
“Never mind the speculation. Let’s see what this thing really was, shall we?” She walked to the largest console, and her hands started to flicker over the physical keys until there was a chime and a whirr as green-lit LEDs flared nearby.
10
Enhanced Cognitive Network 1
Project Log for Station Commander Nkolos, Captain 3rd Rank, Intelligence Division.
My crew aren’t happy about this. They have heard scare stories about Epsilon G3, that it’s haunted, that it’s plagued with monsters and all the rest.
As you know, the planet is a classified Valyien ruin site, but as yet no significant retrieval has begun, to my knowledge, anyway.
I have to say that I share their concern about coming here to conduct a series of developmental tests when this site clearly has a lot of its own mysteries—and dangers—yet to explore.
Upon landing, Epsilon G3—‘The Ice Cube,’ as my crew have come to call it not-so-affectionately—has shown itself to be a hazardous environment. We lost three scouting drones in as many hours thanks to storms, and one crew member was taken by one of those accursed snow-manta things. I have requested heavier support and set up a perimeter of micro-missile sites as well as mines that should keep them away.
Our orders have been simple so far: establish the lander site, test the equipment. Results have proved variously mixed. Some scan readings are becoming impossible during the heaviest storms, and I am to expect that we will lose all data-space connection with Armcore Prime during these.
As for our subject, the developmental tests are going well. The ECN1 (Enhanced Cognitive Network 1) is positively responding and interacting to its environment. It shows ability to recognize and manipulate simple handheld objects, but as yet cannot move itself without significant outside aid. I just wish that the scientists had designed it a little smaller!
It has been several days since my last log, for which I apologize. A particularly bad ice storm occupied the northern part of the planet, meaning that all scans and communication were useless, and no patrols or repair missions were possible. We have been working around the clock to just keep the lander systems working, and not freezing up or malfunctioning. More later.
Development tests on the Enhanced Cognitive Network 1 are showing a remarkable degree of insight that I haven’t usually seen in such models. It has full mobility now inside its containment zone, and it is able to perform all tasks requested of it, as well as seeming to take a greater intuitive interest in us, its observation team.
Several times, I have walked into the start of my shift to see the ECN1 standing at the nearest point to the nearest member of staff, not doing anything, just…watching them. I am taking this as a remarkably good sign!
After having forwarded my results to Prime, through one of the few small windows of data-space connection, I have to say that I am ill-pleased with the impact that it has had. Not only are my crew killing themselves out here in the frontiers, with no guarantee that we wont all be frozen and crushed in the next ice-storm, but now the orders have come down from Ponos that a complete halt is to be put on all ECN1 tests while they conduct a ‘procedural review.’
While we sit here and twiddle our thumbs, risking our lives against monsters and freezing conditions, Ponos is currently involved in some squabble with the senior about what the point is that we are even doing here!
All tests have been suspended, I promise, but the ECN1 continues to ‘grow.’ Although we have had absolutely no interaction with it, it has started to make tapping gestures on the containment unit whenever one of my staff enters the room. It appears confused, lost even, if such a thing is possible for a robot…
Today has been a long cycle indeed. I am only too glad to return to my work after seeing the shuttle containing the Ponos-drone lift off.
It arrived just the last cycle, in an Excellent-class Armcore traveler, no less! Since then it has raked me and my crew over the coals over every aspect of our mission and insisted on meeting ECN1.
That meeting was strange. I know that Ponos was currently using the small spy-drone merely as a transmitter for its greater intelligence elsewhere, but as the tiny floating thing approached the metal mecha ECN1, I “felt” as though I was watching two similar beings.
Both Ponos and ECN1 appeared fascinated with each other, observing each other’s movements carefully, before the ECN1 tried to communicate. It started to emit an electronic sort of noise at Ponos, but the Armcore intelligence professed that it could not understand it. Our tests have been allowed to continue.
I am deeply concerned about ECN1. Since progressing to Stage 2, letting it comingle with the humans of the observation station, it has started to exhibit dangerous, seemingly sadistic behaviours. It broke Officer Horsham’s finger yesterday, for no other reason than it appeared to be testing how brittle it was. We have of course gene-coded and healed Horsham, but she has stated that she will not go near ‘the thing’ again. It is such talk that spreads easily amongst a small, isolated crew as this, and I will have to keep a close eye on their psychological morale.
A part of the Stage 2 program, of course, has been the continuance of the eventual aim of the project: the development of the intuitive machine intelligence. Stars know why on earth they decided to do it here of all places, on Epsilon G3.
To that end, however, we have been instructed to start ‘creativity challenges’ and one of which is where the ECN1 creates simple drawings.
Each one shows the ECN1 engaged in some sort of volatile, violent, or murderous act.
Stage 3 has just been released and downloaded to our servers. I don’t understand it. We are to remove all conditioning software from the ECN1 and encourage it to accompany an away team down to the as-yet unexplored ruin site below us.
I do not know why. Is it to test the ECN1’s responses? Its ability to act and react in a new environment?
Stage 3 has been…completed. I think.
Of what I am about to write now, I will probably delete as I will delete this entire log in the near future, because some things should probably die with me whenever the stars call me.
Or maybe I am a coward, I don’t know.
I was on the away mission down the ice tunnel to the ruins. We were under strict orders to use a meson security barrier at all times, only turning it off when we were making passage. It was a pain as it makes the central ice lobby pretty lethal if you don’t know where you are going, but we had managed to obey the orders, of course.
The ECN1 appeared confused at first at what we were ordering it to do, but after a little while, it agreed with a nod and that electronic whine, and indeed appeared even excited—or willing at least—to accompany us. I have to say that it was a little unnerving to walk beside that seven-foot tall beast of metal knowing that there weren’t any software safe-codes active in its programming!
We rappelled down the ice shute and what we found down there was…
Breath-taking is too nice a world.
Awful might be a better one. Awful or awesome. An entire mountain made by alien hands. It’s been eroded and crushed by the ice sheets of course, but it was clear which areas were still intact by the lights that the original Armcore surveyors had put in place. They revealed a wide ledge of sandish-colored stone, leading inside the mountain near the top.
There are galleries and halls in there. Narrow, but long and higher than you would believe, and their walls are covered with elaborate carvings of organic shapes, I think—creatures that must have been the Valyien or were perhaps their gods. Four-legged. Six-limbed things that are almost beetle-like, but with tentacles… The images were maddening and grotesque, but ECN1 regarded them with apparent interest.
We were under no orders what to do with the Enhanced Cognitive Network once down there, but the metal steps of the robot appeared to take its own course, as if it already knew. It led us down the central avenues and passageways until we came to a wide and grander room, even than any of the others that we had been in before.
And that was where something happened.
The room appeared to be a throne room, only one that was without a throne. There was a set if stairs that led up and up and up for many paces until finally it reached a platform up there under the empty dark space before the roof of the mountain. There were two pillars up there of black rock, and nothing more.
What was this? A Valyien temple? A shrine?
We accompanied the ECN1 as it ascended the steps, eagerly, I think, to stand between those pillars and…wait.
I cannot describe how I know that something happened, but something did. I felt it, as did every one of my crew. There was a change in the air, a coldness, a freshness, even down there surrounded by the kilometres of plate-ice. I felt something strange happen between those pillars, and I do not know what it was. When the ECN1 turned around, it appeared and acted just as normal as it had ever done, but I knew that there was something different about it. A way that it walked perhaps, or the way that it would raise its metallic head to regard you the moment before you talked to it.
It is different, and, although it appears willing and compliant now, I fear for what has happened down there under the ice. But believe me this: if it so much as raises a metal claw toward my staff, I will blast it to smithereens and shove its remains back down that ice chute where it belongs…
11
Alpha
“Alpha,” Eliard said, it all coming together in his head with an awful, terrible symmetry.
“Explain.” The section manager took a step back from the console, a nervous step back, Eliard had to notice. They had just finished reading the captain’s log about what had happened here, and Eliard thought that he knew exactly what it was.
He had thought that he’d seen the birth of Alpha back on the moon of Tritho. He had been wrong. It had been the, what… Rebirth?
And what was even worse was that Ponos knew all about it. “Baby brother, he used to call it.” Eliard remembered his first meeting with Ponos, in the heart of Armcore Prime.
“You’re not making any sense, Captain.” Karis was now looking around the nursery room, seeing the over-sized child’s toys with new, understanding eyes. They weren’t toys at all. This place was a containment cell, an experiment in a new type of sentience.
“You really need to be told?” Eliard sighed. “Isn’t it all in my files you lot doubtless have on me somewhere?”
The section manager scowled briefly, before walking to the table where the ‘creativity lessons’ had occurred. She looked at the front piece of frozen paper where the Enhanced Cognitive Network robot was pictured, standing over the body of a broken man—as broken as the very real bodies in the hallway outside, or embedded in the walls beyond even that.
“Actually, I didn’t even know that it was you and your crew at Tritho. I told you that this was gold chair clearance, and that I and the rest of the Endurance had been requisitioned by Ponos to try and help you stop the Alpha-machine. All the access records told me was the basics: that Alpha was an experiment gone wrong, and that Ponos believed that you had the ability to put a stop to it.” She finally looked up, and Eliard recognized the hurt look he saw in her features. It was precisely the same sort of hurt look that he had worn most of his time at the Trevalyn Academy. Betrayal. The people you look up to as your heroes are just using you for their own benefit.
“So no, I don’t know all about it,” she said.
The captain nodded. That was good enough for him. “When we were at Tritho, we saw the Armcore people there excavate something like an underground pyramid, just as there is supposed to be some kind of underground pyramid below our feet.” He nodded to the floor.
“And they summoned something out of the depths, like a metal orb, but it unfolded like a petal, and it was connected by wires to Armcore control boxes. Later, it turned out that was the core intelligence of Alpha, what we thought was a new type of machine intelligence, software that had been spliced with Valyien technology.”
The section manager nodded.
“So, when we realized how dangerous it was, thanks to House Archival actually, we were told that we had to talk to Ponos, the only machine intelligence who might have the chops to stop the Alpha. Ponos had known of the Alpha experiment—it called Alpha ‘little brother’—but it seemed that the Senior CEO of Armcore had also been keeping parts of the Alpha experiment back from Ponos,” Eliard explained. “When Ponos realized that it was going to be replaced, outstripped by an alien intelligence that was vastly superior to even it, that was when Ponos agreed to help stop Alpha, and why I am here, and why I am like this.” He waved the Device.
“But what has this got to do with this robot here, this ECN 1 thing?” Karis asked.
She’s being willfully obstinate, Captain Eliard Martin thought. Like she doesn’t want to see the horror for what it truly is.
“Ponos called Alpha little brother, meaning that it already knew him. It already regarded him as a relative,” Eliard explained further. He didn’t know if he could explain adequately how he knew what he was about to say was true, but he knew it all the same. This was true. He could feel the truth of it as deeply in the marrow of his bones as the Q’Lot virus was fundamentally entwined with his DNA now. There was no arguing it.
“What’s the name of this lander?” Eliard asked, then waited for her face to fall.
“The AC990alpha,” she quoted the name stenciled to the front door that they had walked through to see that grisly sight.
“Alpha.” Eliard nodded. “If Armcore were to merge some human-built machine intelligence with Valyien code, then they had to build that machine intelligence somewhere, right? And Ponos didn’t know everything about it, it seemed to me, so it couldn’t have been grown in the code-labs on Armcore Prime.”
Karis was nodding, finally catching up to speed with what the captain was suggesting. “They grew him here. As a robot. Inside a robot.” She nodded, tapping her chin. “I’ve heard of this kind of thing before, but I had thought that the practice had been proven outdated and foolish, that human intelligence can be recreated only through bodily sensations, haptic processing, they call it, and that you get a different type of machine intelligence if you create it solely in a memory server.”
It sounded feasible to Eliard at least, but he wished that he had Irie down here with him now. She would know what was going on here, he was sure.
“And they tried to do something with that new intelligence, they tried to teach it new ways to grow and to think…” Eliard stated.
“Only it just wanted to kill people,” the section manager said dryly.
Was it something about being an Armcore program? Captain Eliard wondered. Was it because Alpha was the errant son of a military-industrial complex that it couldn’t help but grow up to want to be a soldier? Or was it something about this place, he thought darkly. This harsh, austere planet on the edge of nowhere that had its monsters prowling the ice fields that had imprinted that cruelty into it at an impressionable age?
“Whatever happened, it didn’t work,” Eliard continued, thinking through the last entries of Captain Nkolos’ log that they had so recently read. “Or maybe it did. Maybe that was precisely what Armcore wanted to happen. The Alpha ECN1 was going to be a meld of ancient Valyien anyway, right? Maybe that was why they wanted to send it down to the ruins. Introduce it to its godparents, so to speak.”
“The Valyien are all dead,” Karis said suddenly and vehemently, standing up tall. “Everyone knows that. They died centuries before humanity even discovered jet propulsion!”
“Are you sure about that?” Eliard asked. He couldn’t help it. It was a nagging suspicion that had been growing in him ever since he also had the Q’Lot virus growing in him. He raised the Device so that the section manager could see it clearly. “These beings are supposed to be a myth as well, but look at me!” The captain managed a wry smile.
“The Q’Lot fought against the Valyien and their slave-race the Duergar, and they canceled each other out,” Karis restated the traditional wisdom. “Maybe some of the Q’Lot ships survived, and so became the premises of the deep space and Frontier ghost stories, but not the Valyien. The Valyien all died. They’re extinct.”
“It sounds to me as if you are working awfully hard to convince someone that isn’t me,” Eliard said evenly. “Just for the record, I hope that you’re right. I hope that the Valyien are really gone, and that all that’s left of them is their smoldering ruins.” He looked up at her sharply. “But humanity has been living off those ruins, and Armcore in particular, ever since we made it to the stars. Every single breakthrough in science, meson manipulation, plasma control, warp drive, energy generation, data-space and quantum entanglement? It all comes from Valyien tech!”
