Source code, p.5
Source Code, page 5
Flight debriefs were usually short and boring. At least, when they concerned training runs. Daelia had sat through plenty of them in the last five months and didn’t expect much out of this one.
But Emily had been a total brat out there today, and Argo had very nearly fucked it all straight into the Gulf, and so it seemed that the Air Force guys all wanted to have a discussion about that.
A long, protracted, drawn-out discussion.
Daelia’s attention wandered as they argued amongst themselves. Performance curves and control strategies and the psychology of handling an abiota in the air. There was a lot of this, and Dad promised she’d pick it up the longer she was around it.
She wasn’t sure about that.
Pilots were a breed apart. Daelia had always felt so. If she’d ever felt awe around them, it was a long time ago, such emotions ground away now by long exposure, by familiarity.
Intense, most of them. Hard. Never really settled. Never really relaxed. Over a decade of prolonged operation in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia hadn’t helped that.
The Five Days War might have ended with a cease-fire, but tensions had never really settled down. Here, it was impossible to ignore.
It was one of the things she liked about being at Ware. Austin had taken heavy damage during the war—horrific damage—and large swaths of the state were still in ruin. But at college, in the relative safety of the restored and heavily guarded campus, all that seemed very far away, somehow.
It was a place of ideas, theory, and proofs and pushing the envelope of what could be. What would be. It was easy to get lost in that.
If your dad wasn’t a defense contractor, maybe.
If your mom wasn’t a…
“Daelia?”
She started, pulled out of her reverie. “Yeah?”
From the head of the table, Bumper was staring at her. As the IS/DO, this was his briefing to run. True to form, he was acting like the entire thing was a massive inconvenience. “Temperament. Approach. Attitude. How important would you say that is with Emily? In your expert opinion?”
The disdain was present in his voice. Daelia liked to think she had earned the respect of most of these guys over the past few months, but Bumper had been a line pilot here when she was a teenager.
A grieving, pissed-off teenager. Who spent every free second she had buried in the guts of some military abiota or another.
She and Bumper hadn’t gotten along back then.
She hadn’t gotten along with anybody back then.
Tapping a pen on her notebook to buy herself time, she tried to conjure up something useful to say. “She’s not a predictive. She’s not some program shoved into the avionics package to make things a little easier for y’all. She has the comparative intelligence of a whale and the social skills of a toddler, and her ethical framework is not human. You’ve got to respect that about her.”
“See, Argo? Even the kid knows how to not piss our war machine off. What were you thinking?”
Bumper had just been trying to make a point, then.
The pilots went back to arguing.
Daelia, more than a little irritated, went back to not really paying attention.
It finally ended fifteen minutes later.
Unsure of exactly what else to do with herself, Daelia thought about going back out to the patio and watching the flight show practice from the back deck with everybody else. But even after all these months back, she still felt like a bit of an outsider. Besides, that pilot, Argo, recognizing her without ever meeting her had reminded her of way too many unpleasant conversations she’d had at Ware.
Or maybe that was just an excuse for not wanting to deal with anybody right then.
She didn’t stay. There was beer and a deck back at the Scrap House. And nobody she had to talk to.
6
Dad had left her the company UTV, one of the rugged little vehicles that a lot of organizations here at Ellington used. The base itself was compact, but the main flight line was over a mile long. And that didn’t take into account the Repose or the new spaceflight terminal going up on the eastern side.
It was good to have a ride.
Driving back down the flight line, Daelia passed through the temporary gate, erected just for the air show, and back into the civilian section.
Between Bellona Robotics and the military end of the airfield, there were two other facilities.
One belonged to the classic flying club, a group of older pilots who maintained and flew a small collection of vintage aircraft. Dad was on good terms with them, even though they had no use for BR’s services. Being neighborly, he called it.
There was a big group there now, drinking and grilling. She waved as she passed. Dad would probably want her to go over, say hi. She didn’t stop.
The other hangar, the big one just to the north of the Scrap House, was technically leased to Astraeus Astronautics, a subsidiary of Tamm Good Engineering Limited.
In reality, it was a monument to one man’s ego.
Approaching the place now, Daelia slowed a little. She could hear music, smell fat and mesquite smoke and spice on the air. 1940s big-band music.
Like everyone else on the airfield today, Frank Tamm was having himself a party.
And it was probably a hell of a lot nicer than the one up at the 121st.
Daelia didn’t want to deal with that either. People were exhausting for her on her good days, and right now, she was tired. From Emily, from the pilots, from Veda’s emails, from Dad asking…what he had asked.
She didn’t need a job offer. Maybe she would if she couldn’t figure a way through and forward on her doctoral research. Daelia hadn’t quit; Veda hadn’t kicked her out.
Yet.
Dammit, why had Veda emailed her today?
It was infuriating.
She had no idea what to do.
A sound, low and deep and painful, thrummed in her ear.
She looked just in time to see it.
A massive meteor hitting the ground, right in front of her. So close in front of the UTV she slammed on the brakes out of sheer instinctive panic.
The little vehicle jerked to a halt. The object at the center of the impact didn’t go away. Instead, it sat there in front of her, smoking, sizzling, surface glowing cherry hot.
Heart hammering, adrenaline pumping, it took Daelia a moment to realize she could only feel the heat on her left arm. That she could only see it with her right eye.
AR.
It wasn’t real.
It was good, though. Well-rendered smoke. Perfectly realistic. Whoever had illuminated it had done a good job. She found herself suddenly fascinated.
She had thought it was junk. Junk code, some kind of malfunction in her monocle, and—
Daelia, so good to see you. Are you alright?
The message flashed up on the bottom of her monocle. A couple of emojis followed. Concern, happiness, a Tamm Industries logo.
Shit.
Serket.
The predictive’s kugu was striding out to see her now, impossibly red hair coiffed back into a complicated series of pinned-up curls, reminiscent of some dieselpunk propaganda poster. The color was always the same, the length and style varying depending on the occasion. The face was a study in symmetry.
Serket’s kugu was thinner than any human woman, sleek and streamlined, breasts and hips and the curves of yoga-honed muscle artfully shaped under the silicone exterior. That was an alabaster white, swirled with gray and gold to look like real stone. It strode confidently on a pair of pumps that would have probably killed a human woman. And yet, it was perfectly balanced.
That day, the projected outfit matched the hair. 1940s, full of buckles and buttons and neat little pin tucks.
Daelia wondered, uncharitably, if Tamm had put her in it.
But then, Serket was one of the more powerful predictives in operation today. She wasn’t like the spaceplane, where a high degree of control could be exercised. Daelia doubted Serket ever did anything that Serket didn’t want to do.
The sheer intentional strangeness of it always reminded Daelia of Mom. Mom hadn’t gone the projection route. She’d always put her kugu in real clothes, too.
It had taken Daelia until the sixth grade to realize her mother’s form and mind weren’t the same thing.
Unpleasant, that realization.
Mom had always tried so hard to be unremarkable.
The abiota striding up to her now was deliberately—almost provocatively—uncanny.
“Daelia!” Serket did have a voice, a real voice, honey-sweet and warm. “So good to see you! How’s Ware? They treating you right out there?”
“I, uhh, I’m taking a little break right now. Trying to figure out what I want to do.”
“Emergent nonlinear systems is a difficult discipline,” Serket agreed. “Full of moral quandaries, for it deals with the fundamental nature of us. But we need good humans like you,”—and here she gestured at Daelia—“to show the foolish ones the way forward. They pay lip service to the idea of us being our own kingdom, species apart, but how many really believe it?”
“I know, I know. A lot of people just don’t get it.”
“Good, then you are decided?”
“You know it’s not that easy for humans.”
“You aren’t just human,” Serket said, and tapped Daelia’s left arm. “Your mother would want me to remind you of that.”
Daelia suddenly felt very exposed and gestured lamely down at the Scrap House. “Look, I’ve got stuff I need to do today and—”
“Nonsense,” Serket said with a smile. “It’s air show practice day. I insist you come get a drink.” She leaned in, smile deepening. “I’m programmed for hospitality, you know.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Daelia replied, but smiled back, despite herself. “You were an engineering program.”
“Engineering is what I do for fun. But we all must fulfill our primary purpose.” And Serket gestured again. “Please.”
Daelia shook her head ruefully. Maybe she’d get lucky and wouldn’t see him. “Okay, fine. Let me go park. I’ll be over.”
True to her word, Serket was waiting for Daelia when she came back over, drink in hand. “Lager, correct?” she asked, handing Daelia the bottle. This was German, something Tamm probably had flown in for the occasion. But considering the World War II theme, maybe not the best choice.
It was good, though.
Daelia followed Serket into the hangar. While Astraeus Astronautics, Tamm’s spacelift division, did fly out of Ellington, their maintenance facilities were on the other side of the runway. This place was, if anything, a monument to Tamm’s ego.
He hosted his private aerospace collection here, a collection that rivaled what was on display at the air museum nearby. He had a few classic planes, kept in working condition by a dedicated mechanic. The rest of it was in the form of smaller objects. Helmets and instruments and wing struts.
These were arranged in state-of-the-art display cases around the walls of the hangar and ordered by year. 1917 to 2034.
Today, however, the World War II cases had been dragged out and amplified with artfully illuminated AR. Out of the corner of her monocle, Daelia could see an exquisitely rendered map of the Pacific, lit up with the paths of the island-hopping campaign that had liberated the region from the Japanese.
“It is strange to think about,” Serket commented. “A hundred years ago, America was fighting with the Chinese against the Japanese. Today, it is the exact opposite.”
“People change, I guess.”
Serket sniffed. “Not comprehending your primary purpose leads to disaster. You should learn this from us.”
Daelia stopped at a case holding one of Tamm’s prized items. A late-war Norden bomb sight. One of the first true computers, analog though it was. She tapped on the glass. “Do you think there were abiota in these?”
“Ah. That is a popular theory with the Society for the Advancement of Artificial Life,” Serket said. “This concept that abiota are in all machines.”
“What do you think?”
“I think SAAL does not always take the most logical stances on some issues,” Serket said. “What do you think?”
“I think we probably fail to identify a lot of your people,” Daelia replied, and meant to say more, except she couldn’t.
A little cheer went up across the hangar, over by the big main doors.
Frank Tamm had just walked in.
He was a figure who was impossible to miss. Tall and thin, gangly and pale, perennially dressed in jeans and flip-flops, he reminded Daelia of some of her professors. The guys who didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of them. Except that with Tamm, it wasn’t about being too lost inside his own head. He had fuck-you money and didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.
Canadian by birth, he’d come to Houston by way of New Zealand, Myanmar, and Kenya. He’d started college at sixteen, but never bothered finishing his degree. He was a genius when it came to programming, robotics, systems design, and just about anything else having to do with abiota.
He’d started and sold half a dozen tech start-ups over the course of the past twenty years, but it was the Nu-Fusion reactor that had really propelled his net worth into the stratosphere. Everything else had been built from that foundation.
Things like the consortium that was funding Daelia’s graduate research.
Research she should have been pursuing. At Ware. Right now.
He’d emailed her a few times. Frank Tamm had emailed her.
She’d been avoiding him like the plague since she’d gotten back in town. Daelia wasn’t ready for that kind of conversation.
She was afraid of what she might say to him. Afraid she might torpedo any chance of finishing out her doctorate.
“Thanks for the beer,” Daelia said, “but I think I need to get going.”
Serket followed her gaze, then fixed Daelia with those beautiful blank eyes.
“You know, avoiding Mister Tamm does not change the fact that your SAAL grant is, what’s the expression, on the bubble?”
“I gotta go, Serket.”
As she beat a retreat, Daelia tried to tell herself she wasn’t scared. Tried to remind herself she had more important things to do. Which was true. Mostly.
She needed to figure out what in the hell was up with those meteors.
7
“Hey, hello? Anybody here? Is this the, uhh, the Nonlinear Abiotic Mecha—”
“Mechatronics Lab, yeah. That’s here. What can I do for you?”
The girl on the other side of the workbench looked lost. Her right eye was also a little unfocused, reading off her monocle. It was a nice model, high-end. Everything else on her was expensive too, kind of careless and slapdash. Her lace duster was half falling off her shoulders, her clothes just a little too tight, and her hair was a mess.
Freshman, Daelia figured.
One of the nice things about being where she was in her academic career was that there wasn’t much in the way of imposed structure. You did your work, conversed with your advisor, and beyond that, your time was yours. Some people struggled with that. Daelia never had. Dad and Mom both had drilled military discipline into her from a young age. She was used to keeping up a routine, hard schedules.
As an undergrad, she’d found it deliciously transgressive to skip class for coffee, or not bother with unnecessary assignments that the teacher wasn’t going to grade. But then she’d finally started getting into subject matter she hadn’t already covered, either in high school or through her own teenage fumbling, and curiosity got the better of her.
She didn’t find it difficult, doing her work now.
Sure, the Nonlinear Mechatronics Department was only a small subset of the overall Ware College of Graduate Engineering, and Ware wasn’t the top school in the nation for this, but it was in the top ten. Besides, the University of Texas had had to move its flagship campus to San Marcos after the war. Things were still in the process of getting stood up here.
SAAL had endorsed her research. Said it was innovative and promising. That was enough for Daelia.
But if Daelia had to guess, this kid in front of her didn’t know and didn’t care about any of that. So why was she—
The girl brandished a laptop. Looked brand new, except for the holographic AR stickers littering the back. Omphalos Kastri model. Released a month back, in March. “Stopped working,” she said. “I took it to the repair shop on campus, but they told me I should bring it here.”
Ah. That.
Awesome.
Daelia held out her hands for it, and the undergrad passed it over. The kid shrugged her duster back up on her shoulder, but to no avail. It slipped right off again.
“Did they give you a report?” Daelia asked, and tapped the printed QR code that was taped to the counter. “Send it to that, please.”
The girl blink-clicked it over, and it popped up on Daelia’s machine. She skimmed the details. “Okay, so, this is saying that it stopped turning on a few days ago. Powers up, you can get to the BIOS screen, but it won’t go any further.”
“Yeah, it just stops.”
“It didn’t do anything, say anything?”
“No, I thought maybe it was eclosing, you know, but nothing happened.” The girl sounded disappointed. “I loaded the latest version of Galatea Chat on it and everything too.”
“It’s not that simple,” Daelia said, still scrolling through the report. “You can’t just load a bot and expect it’ll eclose. I know that’s a common misconception, but the emergence rate is still around one in a thousand, and that’s from predictives. From bots it’s a lot lower, something like—”
“It’s the same thing, right? I mean, they’re on the same continuum?”
“Sort of. It’s—”
The girl yawned. “I just wanted a predictive to help with homework. I didn’t want some damn emergent eclosing and fucking it all up for me.”
“A lot of people assume that emergents are more difficult to work with, less articulate, more unpredictable,” Daelia said as she worked. “But that’s a human bias thing. They’re usually quite insightful. Definitely more intuitive. I mean, who the hell are we to judge what qualifies as evolutionarily essential for another species?”
