Who's the Hero Now? Part 2

Posted on Sun 6th Jun, 2021 @ 5:45am by Exo-Comp EXQT

1,240 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Waging Peace
Location: Antero, Harrington's ship
Timeline: MD 1, 1445

Exerpt from Part One ...

It was a price list in one cluster. Organs, slavery, trafficking of living beings in spreadsheet layout. Names .... Images of ships, docks, ports where freight containers were used to smuggle people to slavery, or worse, were neatly tabulated and sorted. Peggy had no subconscious back then, operating purely on machine logic. It had taken the abuse of many before the portions of intelligence that are unalienable taught it the meaning of "what is alive or dead, killing is bad."

And now, the rest of the story ....

---

"Oh, my second house of Jupiter," Mia swore as the data began to appear and she realized what she was seeing. "Peggy, my girl, you should be living a life of abundance, but I see so much evil here, I don't think even Jupiter can make up for it. This is evidence of so much of the trouble in this sector, and we have to see that it gets to the right people."

She turned to look at the small bot on her work bench. Only the bot wasn't as she'd left her. "Peggy? What are you doing?" she asked.

The data was now unencrypted. Peggy awoke fully and called via quantumlink for the others upon detecting the removal of its circuits and memory. Peggy retreated to the far corner, arc lamp exposed to shock anyone who came close. It was expecting to fight once again.

"Girl, we're going to help you. I can't imagine Jason is going to see this and not explode with anger at what is stored here, but no one will blame you. We just have to get it to the right people ... and those people are on SB109," Mia stressed. She didn't move closer to the machine, knowing full well it could be deadly. She'd talked prisoners and slaves down from similar positions in the past, and she didn't expect a bot to be that easy.

Could a machine have PTSD? She didn't know how self-aware any of these Exo-Comps were, but if one were nearing sentience, it might be Peggy. Whatever had been done to her to keep these secrets ... that was evil in itself, but it could have caused damage to her positronic brain and Dr. Asimov's three laws.

Zombie entered the room first, somehow understanding immediately what Peggy was experiencing. Peggy responded by flaring the arc more, when Zombie maneuvered between Miarau and the frightened bot.

<{[ZOMBIE](CMd-IMP=[PEGGY](Self.Defense//INVALID//)}{([MIARAUMEREL]*(primary.ADMIN)}>

Peggy let out a stream of syllables, speech still a difficult matter. Without Nessy it was a screeching riotous noise which approximated, "Stop taking my parts!"

Banshee was a moment later, chirping with alarm:
<{[BANSHEE](Query*(Jaren-recall:prt?)(Escape?)(COMBAT?)}{([MIARAUMEREL](DO NOT HARM)}>

Banshee wasn't afraid of Peggy for any reason, and fearlessly went to the bot taking an accidental voltage spike to an armor plate. Peggy's processors registered the emotional cues of guilt but Banshee supplied a counter program. Wordlessly the two exchanged beeps and shrill tones, the quantum tunnels formed between them saturated by thought.

Mia stood aside, watching what went on with the bots. It was apparent that Peggy had called for reinforcements, but why? What threat did she see? She was the one who had given permission for the human to examine the memory core ... but if she had some form of mechanical PTSD, perhaps that was already lost in her compromised memories?

"Can one of you calm Peggy? There's no threat here!" Mia assured them. "She's suffering, and we have to help her reach a calm state so we can fix things. Where's Nessy? Her interface with me is best." Merel was feeling a little frustrated, and if she thought Peggy would go off the rails, she would be downright frightened. The other two bots seemed to be helping, and she thought they would settle Peggy ... at least they were telling her not to harm the human!

Hearing Miarau speak with fear began a separate series of emotional heuristics for Peggy, who then shut down, the learned response a successful one. Simply dropping from the hovering position and bouncing off of the cabinet edge to clatter across the floor, Zombie swooped to catch it, using an extended force field to mitigate the fall. To a biological being this would likely be seen as death, but the others like Peggy knew a power save state when they saw it.

Banshee accessed Peggy's worklogs, quickly understanding the preceding moments and relayed to the others a command to assist Peggy. It let out a series of pitches and tones, and an audio interface emerged, courtesy of Nessy teaching Banshee how to talk.

"Peggy inoperative, faults to logic response circuits establishing threat indication. Attempting repair [MiarauMerel], replace missing components for return to operational status."

Zombie however, was less understanding. Having been destroyed and replaced part by part over time had given it a negative view of how the biologicals treated their machine counterparts.

<{[ZOMBIE]*[MIARAUMEREL]=([Prev/ADMIN-"Jaren"]#Violated:CORE.Safe.\SYS\protocol)([[PEGGY])([MIARAUMEREL]#Violating:CORE.Safe.\SYS\protocol)(@prev: [PEGGY]}>

Banshee didn't translate it, the message wasn't vital just Zombie lamenting. Peggy had gone inert, and that was the trouble. The last time this had happened was on the Klingon Ship. With limited memory, Banshee tasked Peggy for the long term storage, and that module had been cruelly removed from Peggy by hand. Miarau had repaired it as best as possible, but where was once a Quantum computer was now a simple Isolinear array. What little remained was the fast find indexing tags for Klingon tasks onboard. Peggy usually told Banshee what to do but with the situation at hand the three of them brainstormed for a full second.

Banshee resolved to trust them, as they had already built a trust and this was not a violent action. In it own way Banshee understood Peggy' crippling emotional state. These biologicals had been wonderful partners, it was incongruous and non sequitur to presume Peggy was really in trouble yet when the moment came, Peggy lost its mind. All Banshee could remember was the mandate of "Do not remember," why did Peggy carry the burden alone?

Nessy finally arrived, explaining in better detail, "Peggy has experienced a fault in higher programming. Self-Defense protocols activated diagnaotics confirm no actual indicators of threat. The data contained within PEGGY has been contained by mandate of [HTEK], accessing has violated mandate: Peggy has determined this will bring negative effects to the Antero."

"That's not important to us right now, Peggy is," Mia said. "I see some of what is causing her distress, but if I return the parts to their previous location unchanged, she will still be suffering, we just won't be aware of it. I can't believe she's been functioning with this level of ... well, of pain.

"Give me a few minutes to download the relevant and horrible information someone has stored in her memory core, and then wipe the drive of anything that isn't Peggy. I promise, I'll put her back together better than she's been lately, and I won't do anything to cause her more distress. And ... I really need Jason here to help me with that, if you think we can introduce one more person to the mix. If not, I'll do my best. Then maybe Peggy can help us or fix herself with your help."

To be concluded ....

 

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