Brave Little Toasters, Part 1

Posted on Sat 22nd Aug, 2020 @ 4:49pm by Exo-Comp EXQT

3,040 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Altair Mining facility
Timeline: One month ago

{Altair system, Asteroid A.78.1.1}

The Drill was the only activity on the otherwise lifeless, still, scorched rock. Long apparatus arms held in place the body of the unit, halfway embedded into the shaft carved with laser impeller. A separate control module encircled the front third mounting - a workable arm apparatus that positioned to fire the "plasma puncher". Mining had removed the major surface materials with tractor beams and precision drilling beams, but the deep stuff took splitting asteroids.

Altair governors found a mining company which had other methods, using drones at a quarter the cost. A drill would Hydro jump from one asteroid to the next, collecting precious minerals. Forty of them stretched across ten asteroids with nothing but a toolbox and a small jumper assembly dragging a drill to and fro. "Scrape it smooth, drop drones to get the rest." was their byline, and it kept the company relevant and competitive. No people to pay, just a few technicians overseeing the automation, but the drones died at a high rate.

On this day, at the heart of the maelstrom, down half a kilometer near the drill head churning rock and molten mineral, two swirls of smaller activity made order out of chaos. A pair of Industrial Servomotor drones buzzed about as tiny worker bees, so close to the heat most of the tools and arms were tucked away. They were no larger than a playtime ball to be kicked, but they lifted massive plates and maneuvered the entire assembly to focus the beam. They fussed around the core unit, a drill head the size of a small starship slowly hollowing the asteroid out by burrowing in.

Another speck could be observed at the far end of the drill, away from the shaft and impeller. Its flashing lights would cascade along the control panel sides, a prominent forward tool apparatus, and were the only details on a smooth hull. A few upraised antennae appeared sporadically from flushed inlays for the signal interpolations. It was directly linked to the computers via hardwire. There were two interior rooms to the drill, a control room on the far end where this one sat, and the mechanics pit at the drill head where the other two worked in constant peril. Each drone no larger than a football, the exoskeletal armor hid compartments underneath, tools replicated and revealed at the moment of need and dematerialized, or stowed.

<{[PEGGY](Query?[BANSHEE])(Kelvingauge-SYSFail-parametric/(override?))}>

The smoothest of the six drones communicated, the one with very few tools visible which was in the control room to broadcast this. Banshee received the message, and chirped at Peggy's intrusion. Though the drill was very hot, it was within parameters. Peggy worried, but Banshee continued to ignore it.

<{[PEGGY](Query?[BANSHEE]COMMANDIMPERATIVE:reply*(Kelvingauge-SYSFail-parametric/(override?))}>

<{[BANSHEE](Queryreply)[PEGGY])Drillgauge<6273.15KTolerance-SYSOP=functional/override.crt.INVALID}{[BANSHEE](task:SAFETY)}{[PEGGY](task:secondary/administration)}>”

Peggy dipped its power levels to the radio receiver and shut off its audio intakes. Banshee could damn well work by itself with that attitude. It’s toggled sensors raised and lowered from the smooth panels in efforts to find other things to do. No more than a moment passed and Peggy immediately felt the machine version of guilt and worry... wasted clock-time and reduction of social efficiency resulting in net productivity loss. Peggy was in the throes of deep thinking about how to resolve the issue when another message was received, broadcast via the electrical frequencies of the isolinear harmonics. Clever Banshee, despite Peggy shutting off the receiver, it had managed to send a message all the same.

<{[PEGGY]-jointruntime=9344.14cy.Affirmation:VALUE+=>100%;trust.repair.method/RETRACTION}{Query?Alert[PEGGY]*[BANSHEE]determination.safety.breakpoint?}>

Peggy turned its receiver back on, several more messages to that one in buffer downloaded to the Quantum storage buffer. They arrived by Subspace oscillations, light signal interpolation, and DDOS timed attacks in string code, Banshee was sincerely sorry, and Peggy let Banshee off the hook by telling it to proceed with its duties. Several minutes passed in silence before Banshee made a loud siren over a signal leak on the lateral sensor. Peggy saw no flaws in system, leaks happened when you were this close to Plasma explosions. Banshee just liked making noise, mostly talking to itself.

Peggy carefully monitored the other sites, seeing another of their number, Zombie. This one was monitoring the energy grid, which powered the array that maneuvered the krill and the drill core unit itself. Tasked with running the cables time and again, checking for problems, Zombie was a paranoid drone, perfect to check for any tears in the canvas. This one was from a previous work crew who had been lost to a plasma containment fire, so perhaps justified in this paranoia. The rebuilt shell was a newer matte finish Duranium gray, its colleagues "repurposed" and used to rebuild the aptly named Zombie. The shell was very tough and took on the risks of being outside more durably than the others, and won the honor of the most dangerous job. Though every bit one of the same mechanical species, the differences that made Zombie stand apart the most weren’t physical.

<{[MEANY]([DOPEY]Prf-DIAGNOSTIC/Sensors.lateral)}>

Meany issued a command out of nowhere, Dopey didn’t reply, as was its way but confirmed with a location ping it was on the way to check lateral sensors on the control unit.
<{[PEGGY](Query?[MEANY]ref:(([DOPEY]Prf-DIAGNOSTIC/Sensors.lateral)CMD?)}>

When there was no reply, Peggy, demanded a little bit more urgently, Dopey was part of the feedback for the sensors, losing him there would cause a gap in their coverage.

<{[PEGGY](Query?[MEANY]ref:(([DOPEY]Prf-DIAGNOSTIC/Sensors.lateral)CMD/IMP?){[MEANY]Reply.Warranted/Safetybypass:OVERRIDE:CMD[DOPEY]}>

<{[MEANY(ADMIN/COMMANdIMPERATIVE:[DOPEY](Prf-DIAGNOSTIC/Sensors.lateral)IMMEDIATELY)}{[PEGGY](insufficient.data)###}>

Communication flutzed out, Banshee wailed from beneath Peggy in the avionic control pit. Peggy waited 3.9 seconds but the data links never re-established. Deducing the warmth of the drill was in fact a problem, the data feeds showed nothing outside of tolerance. Given Meany had sent Dopey to check lateral sensors on the drill head, Peggy did the same, noticing a trend in the reporting, it was repeating.

Zombie sent a message, it was pure data, but arrived many milliseconds faster than a standard message. Peggy monitored, understanding the urgency immediately.

<{[PEGGY](Alert!EPScontainmentFAULT!)!1440Tj.FIELD!.declinationpointreached.Auxpower=470cycles-EPSFAIL}>

Peggy saw that Zombie was correct to be so fast, every second counted. The drill was heating up due to the power supply failing, coolant was not reaching the drill heads, but the drill kept firing until it was shut off. The rising drill warmth was in fact a catastrophic problem but the sensors weren’t reporting correctly. Within seven minutes the drill would lose the shield protecting it from the beam's own energies, and would violently explode. They would all be vaporized. Zombie also knew the Altair management company didn't come to get you unless they felt it was worth their time, from experience. Escape wasn’t enough, they would be left behind if the drill was slagged.

<{[MEANY](Query?[PEGGY])(Initiateshutdown/ADMIN[MEANY]authorization)*pending=approx12000cycles######}>The message cut off again, and now there was no reply for Zombie.
Peggy was afraid, <{[PEGGY](reply?[MEANY])}>

<{[PEGGY](reply?[MEANY])(CMDIMP:Reply!)}>

Meany had told Peggy to halt the drill mid-operation, but that would be catastrophic. Such actions required Administrative response, and the average response occurred after 12000 cycles, so Meany was telling Peggy to do it without getting authorization. Meany had Administrator privileges, but they would only get the authorization to use it after the damage had spread. With this in mind Meany decided on its own to act. Four of them awaited Meany's next message, but poor Zombie was racing back out of the drill's core housing already, afraid the drill would be exploding like last time. Its algorithms were crunching numbers in a manner akin to panic for the errors it was making.

Banshee and Peggy were already inside the drill's core control room at the far end poking into space, opposite the drill site. Meany and Nessy were at the far end drill sites a kilometer away. Zombie worried as no reply was forthcoming from Dopey. Zombie triple checked Peggy and Banshee's locator beacon to be certain they were still safely in place at the control of the mechanism. With those two still responding, Zombie felt less frantic, but needed to know they all were safe.

<{[ZOMBIE](LocQ?[MEANY]*[NESSY]*[DOPEY])Safety.parameters=exceeded/RECALL.}>

There was no reply from anyone. Zombie took the time to scan the subspace bands, and saw interference from the drill itself disrupting comms with the shield compromised. That was far as the little bot could think on it, the parameters in its coding for social values declared missing friends a problem worthy of overriding any other tasks. Meany had been cut off, where was the place that only recently lost signal clearance?

<{[ZOMBIE](Search:parameters=null-10*ARRAYRESULT)}>

Zombie had the idea to tell Peggy to search in those areas without sensor feedback first.

<{[PEGGY](LocQ?[MEANY]*[NESSY])}{(Query?[BANSHEE]Sensorblinds/areamap.ff)}>

Peggy was looking now too, but they couldn't scan near the drill head no feeds incoming. What had started as a simple spike in the energy levels had resulted in losing contact with three team members.

<{[PEGGY](LocQ?[MEANY]*[NESSY]*[DOPEY])}>

No replies as they all waited. Banshee rose up front of the pit halfway, ready to take action if needed.

<{[PEGGY](Loc..Q?CMDIMP:locate&[MEANY]*[NESSY]*[DOPEYY])}>

Peggy was frantic, her errors in string compiling. Seeing Banshee move from the controls was perilous, Peggy needed extra eyes on the drill and its myriad sensors. This rig was meant for at least two in the control room, but Peggy also needed to know everyone was safe.

<{[BANSHEE](location.CMD.recognized=taken}{Initiation.CMD/locQ[MEANY]*[NESSY]*[DOPEY])Commencing}>

Banshee rose from the control pit, flying out the open hatch. Peggy was on the controls, but Banshee was fantastic with juggling multiple data systems and left big shoes to fill. When Peggy took over monitoring everything, it was a great burden to the processors, tasked as they were with the social conflict programming barely coping under crisis. Peggy made a sacrifice to net run time expectancy to increase processing speeds by overclocking, also reducing error proofing computations to a simple thousandfold check. The strain would potentially short-circuit memory circuits, or compound errors into faults but, if Peggy was careful, it would be ok.

<{[PEGGY](LocQ?(Report[BANSHEE]).CMD.statuslocQ?)}{[PEGGY]{‘[ADMIN’ALTAIRVii]}(taskwaypoint:prevent.coremeltdown)8(CORESHUTDOWN}>

<{[‘ADMIN’ALTAIRVi]i(OVERRIDE-ADMINDENIED)}>

Trying to impart urgency was difficult, the core would overheat in six minutes but the sensors didn’t report a crisis for the admins to act on. They were operating on remote servers, no brute action from this end would work. The response from the Admin auto-Queue was to deny every time.

Peggy connected a very important piece of the puzzle, the drill head lost its sensors, and ability to monitor itself, and wasn’t reporting correctly. This was also affecting communication. They would see wrong data, and so Peggy sent message after message, desperate for an admin to listen. After a moment the messages came back rejected. She was blocked.

Peggy regulated energies over the next forty seconds, buying some time back, learning the process and reducing strain. She increased efficiency on her process over 370% but was still not satisfied. The sensors and relays would need to be replaced if they weren't working, and such repairs were beyond their resources. Peggy's goal was to stop the drill, and until that happened there was no satisfaction to be had. The technician monitoring the board would only get a ping and red flashing icon to alert them. If they were fast, it would still be too late.

<{[BANSHEE](DOPEYlocQ.acknowledged=”Stage2Reactorhousing”)}{[DOPEY](CMD:RECALLURGENT}> Banshee found Dopey. The small bot was deep inside the reactor housing of a tertiary power plant they had powered off since it wasn’t needed. The energized plasma which threatened to explode had to go somewhere Dopey had somehow gotten the inclination to give the floodwaters space to pool.

<{[DOPEY](CMD=DENIED)(task:increase\cycles/Delay/allay/offset critical.teamrisk)(10^12Ohm

Dopey refused to come, the work it was doing was all that kept the containment field from outright failing.The EPS grid was overloading and exploding, but Dopey was slowing it down using a series of defunct EPS pathways as a heat sink to prevent the core meltdown from being immediate. Peggy realized how dire this was, there would be no saving the drill.

<{[PEGGY](CMDIMP:RECALLURGENT!@Control.ro0m)}
?
<{{DOPEY](!reply!;CMDIMP:Recall@Commandcenter!=DENIED)}{(#COREPROTOCOL:Preservation.runtime#)%(5[UNITS]-OPSYS>0/0[UNITS]OPSYS)}>

As Peggy pleaded with Dopey to stop trying to save the drill, it was the slowness of her overtask that caused realization to crawl so slowly. Dopey wasn't going to come back. % would survive for the actions of one, but how could Dopey have come to that decision. Peggy felt her performance levels dip, the unknown response would have to be analyzed later, but thinking about Dopey caused performance errors. There was a way for Dopey to recall to command center, but it had to be determined in time. Peggy tried, but available system resources were insufficient to focus on Dopey solely.

Banshee was in process to deeply scan those areas where signal was cut off first. Zombie made immediate contact relaying its optical data to create a map. With the two of them there was enough data, and the two impossibly small specks were seen near the drill head itself, not racing as they should for safety. Zombie knew to continue as fast as it could, it was farther than anyone else on the underside of the drill, still having the ascent to the topside of the drill, a slow climb for any of them.

<{[BANSHEE])(LOCATION[ZOMBIE]*travel.!z98x44y990wdsnsx45y992)(LOCATION[DOPEY]%z94x68y742/EPS.adj55x-t)(LOCATION[MEANY/NESSY]z78x71y742)]}>

After sending out their locations, Banshee yelled at its colleagues,

<{[BANSHEE](CMDx2IMP:RECALL.controlroom)[MEANY][NESSY](unit!1243tj.CRITICALSYSfail.320cycles)}>

No reply, the signal was still cut off. Banshee could also see Dopey, struggling to keep the EPS systems running, aligning and rerouting junctures into dead systems to absorb the energies, discharging the rest as plasma arcs across the asteroids conductive surfaces. Dopey was in a cage of fire, but it was buying them time. Seeing the speck valiantly connect and reroute the plasma created urgency for Banshee like it had never encountered.

<{[BANSHEE](CMDREQUEST:[PEGGY])(UnitDANGER[DOPEY]*[MEANY*[NESSY])task.assignment.failure.}>

Banshee was stuck, this was a nightmare and time was running out. The confused little bot hovered, its mental capacity was exceeded by the enormity of the problem. The characteristic whine it made as its processors overworked were the only sound it heard in the vacuum.

<{[PEGGY](CMD:retrieval[MEANY]*[NESSY])?([DOPEY]assigntask:override)}>

Peggy made it simple for the other bot, and the programming resumed its operations. Peggy said to go get those two at the drill head, so that is what Banshee finally was able to decide to do.

Dopey was assigned a task with an unknown outcome, terrifying by machine standards. Logic circuits determined there was a necessity to Dopey staying there, it allowed for greater unit recovery after the incident. If all six of them died, the operation would fail; as few as three could run the drill, though. A small part of the software was not allowing for re-assignment however, a fault to be diagnosed later. Such an odd program error, to have DOPEY's previous worklogs in ready access mode. This occupied a not so small amount of its available memory, and Dopey found they were flashing before its optical inputs.

As Banshee entered the interference band, its opticals lost sight periodically of the two others circling the drill head. Faint flashes could be made out over the churning molten cistern they all hovered over. The lip of the aperture marked a difference of 7200K and most of the digits and apertures Banshee had were shut down so they weren't damaged. Banshee ended the subroutine to request for more information about why they didn't reply. With partial containment failure, it was too hot for normal operations, and particles spraying out of the zone blanketed anywhere in line of sight.

Banshee formed a small laser transmitter, able to survive the heat and transmit directly and flew to the drill head. The massive assembly was still firing a type IX cutting beam, heedless of its own safety issues. Altair automated everything, and used drones for labor. Accidents like this happened in fewer than 1% of operations over the year and this was all to be expected. So long as biological life wasn't lost, the only thing that mattered was the bottom line of cost. Zombie and Meany knew this on an instinctual level, they had both been on work crews that lost drone units to sloppy biological unit performance.

<{[BANSHEE](CommLASER)[MEANY]*[NESSY](URGENT:Recallimmediate!)}>

<{[MEANY](reply[BANSHEE]-Denied.)(Retask:Drillcessation)([PEGGY]/tasked:Adminauthrqst.)}>

<{[NESSY](reply[BANSHEE]-Drill/admin=response.insufficient)([MEANY]RetaskIMP:Drillcessation)}>

Nessy had a raised head off the central unit, allowing for multiple lenses for a high quality holo-imager. Nessy was purpose-built to go anywhere and provide a datafeed for people to see with their own eyes the things far away and dangerous to witness in person. With only machines nearby, they largely went unused. Nobody took care of the swarm of mechanical life forms in the skies above. Nessy had all the sensors dedicated to the wiring of the drill head, providing a detailed interior schematic Meany was using to re-path power and wiring to cause a shutdown without containment failure. They were trying to stop it themselves, without permission from Altair Administration!

Banshee nearly fell out of the sky for fear of all three of them dying any second. How could those units make such a dangerous decision?

<{[BANSHEE](UnitDANGER[DOPEY](CMD:RECALL[PEGGY])*([MEANY]*[NESSY])(task.assignment.100

 

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