Who's the Hero Now? Conclusion
Posted on Sat 19th Jun, 2021 @ 1:43am by Captain Jason Harrington & Exo-Comp EXQT
2,185 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Waging Peace
Location: Antero, Harrington's ship
Timeline: MD 1, 1530
Previously, on Antero ...
"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," promised Mia. "Then maybe Peggy can help us or fix herself with your help."
And now the conclusion ....
[PEGGY]
...For a computer, panic is different. Humans are controlled by chemicals squirting into baths of other chemicals, their lightning had to be processed and emerge. Computers think with lightning from each end, and the loss of intuition was replaced by simulation. Peggy had seen the results, calculated where this end would lead and, finding no solution, sit shut down to dedicate 100% of its resources to figuring this out. Consciousness was fickle with a machine body. Peggy could lose the machine self entirely, but was not ready for such things yet. With a delicate thread holding to the metal form, Peggy entered the Antero's virtual world. Along the digital pathways it paid a visit to keep [WATCHDOG] happy, who was tearing into auto generated viruses with glee. Peggy knew to visualize the program generating viruses as a cow bone now for some reason.
Peggy had never seen a cow, but had seen bones. This was the point of the whole trip, to finally revisit the locked away memories. For machines, thinking at the speed of light allowed no time for dwelling on thoughts, or developing a theory. The question was posed, and it was answered, or not. Peggy wanted to see the past and felt immediate pangs of anxiety reliving the deaths of [MEANY] and [DOPEY] on Altair, or the invidium mines, or Htek and the Second Sons. It held four bots worth of memories, at 2% of their total capacity each. They had witnessed so much, and learned too late, the only solution the lightning fast Quantum brain could make was to remove the memories once they had escaped.
Peggy was witness once more, to its own and the three others' memories in real time reverie. Service to the Second Sons had seen them repairing ships, doing their duties as they were happy to do. Misery is evident to even a soulless robot, who gazes into the abyss to see itself reflected. Nessy had broken first, when the slave lay dying from a beating. He had tried to reprogram the bot to record a message for his family, Nessy activated the circuits and announced recording in progress as a courtesy. It picked up the cues that the man was happy, but other cues which showed he was sad. When he died, the names of his children still lying sweetly on his lips, Nessy suffered, and it spread to the others. Peggy felt afraid. If Nessy wasn't able to work, the Klingons would have no use for it. If the others became aware of the hell they were in once more, they would shut down too.
Peggy took Nessy's memories. In turn, the others all fell to the same emotional heuristics they had developed, and Peggy took from them their memories. Its Quantum makeup allowed for more complexity without faulting, but only with Peggy's will forcing the emotions into a tolerable range of next to nothing. When Jaren took them off the ship, he said he needed them for a job but never returned them. He used them as a fun pet that did tricks and stored his data securely. All the special things Jaren did for the outfit were because he exploited their abilities. Peggy had accepted the life on board, learning what it was to be a slave.
Jaren was no picnic, but he was no madman H'tek either. Jaren had accepted payment to return these people to their home. Refugees rescued from another slaver outfit ransomed and paid, but He planned to sell them. Jaren used Peggy to determine the least fit workers for early sales as parts, even running a calculation to process them as separate organs and limbs if unfit for service. Essentially receiving and modulating three other data sets had confused her greatly already, the emerging emotional processing damaged the process as well.
Peggy had never been told right from wrong, but was experiencing this is wrong....
As they say, "Resistance is futile." Peggy tried to resist, but the small feeble innocent thing had no idea how outclassed it was. Jaren ripped Nessy's eye stalk off once after Peggy refused to order Banshee to hack a system core.
He had kicked Zombie out of sheer malice. The bot liked to fly low, and Jaren kicked it so often to such degree that Zombie flew chest height always, a slow staggered repulsor groan accompanying the weight of the large mottled machine.
Banshee had taken to screaming at full volume any time Jaren came close, so he kept Banshee in an airlock, in a vacuum-sealed crate. It would wail non-stop, only quitting when Jaren needed a hacker, and it would be confronted with one of the quad at gun point. Its silence as it performed the task was a protest in its own right. And the acoustic transfer in its restraints confirmed it was wailing at full might again the moment the crate sealed.
Nessy fixed itself, constantly. Jaren used it like a standard engineering bot, despite the clear delicacy of its sensors. Zombie had taken on the hard tasks for the years Jaren abused them, a fact Nessy could not emotionally process for the love it was. The sale of those people and the scale of their tragedy shook loose the emotions in Nessy. They were aware of the stakes of life, having experienced death and its stinking breath many times.
***
{Antero Mechanics Bay}
Nessy replied to Miarau swiftly, Banshee had made the decision easily already. "Save Peggy. Suggestion accepted-employ /any/ acceptable measures resulting in minimal losses to structure of Digital variances."
Mia nodded and turned to the communicator. "Captain Harrington, you're needed in the engineering bay. We have an emergency with the bot we know as Peggy."
Jason was on the Bridge, navigating through a tricky part of space where they had to drop out of warp and pass through the part of space known as Shadows Belt. An anomaly had pulled asteroids from all over the sector that had a certain mineral known as PTK4. These asteroids would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to be pulled into their group which now formed a belt that reached half way across the quadrant. Scientists were baffled about why they had made this formation. It was an inconvenience for starship travel, causing all ships to drop out of warp and use impulse engines to navigate through the phenomenon or to try to go around, which took even more time. A skilled pilot could pass through it in roughly eight hours.
Jason tapped the nearest com panel, =^=Understood, I'm on my way, Harrington out!=^=
He wondered what was going on down there as he got up from his seat. Mia shouldn't call him for just anything. She knew he was busy with navigating the ship and the situation was dire. He quickly headed to the turbo lift and was in Engineering in only a couple of minutes. He entered Engineering and saw Mia leaning over one of the bots. "What's wrong Mia, what can I do?"
"I need help deleting memories from this core," Merel responded, without looking up. "Apparently, someone used it as a personal secret ledger of illegal activities, accompanied by many threats, and a lot of personality damage has been done. If we can clean that out, which I know you are better at doing than I, we can reinstall the core and have a happier EXO-Comp, as well as proof to take to Starfleet. I don't think we want these people wandering the same galaxy we do."
Jason stopped beside Mia and picked up a theta spanner to see what he could detect.
***
{Peggy's Digital Realm}
Peggy was the only one who knew... something. It was deleted though, by well meaning but wrongdoing helpers. Peggy had become sophisticated enough to understand they weren't trying to hurt it by deleting the foul memory, but prevent it from causing further harm.
With unresolved memory tags Peggy tried valiantly to retrieve lost data. The wake up cycle had to commence, and simultaneously Peggy sent message to Nessy, in the seconds it took to relay the message verbally another petabyte had been lost, the speed of Antero’s [WATCHDOG] program terribly efficient when unleashed. So Peggy fed it something else. Thousands of hours of useless log time, empty hours, delicate seconds of wasted cognitive time where daydreams hadn’t even formed. It could have those empty moments. That would buy a few seconds.
With a sudden proclamation, Nessy blurted, “Stop the deletion. Access Permitted! Vital Logs lost, repeat Stop STOP STOP!”
"Of course!" Jason said out loud, realizing something, "Watchdog, as good as it is, is like using a hammer on these bots. They are not some ordinary computer core; they're special and need to be treated accordingly." He slapped the computer console beside him pausing Watchdog's onslaught.
In its digital world, Peggy held [WATCHDOG] at bay when the pressure was released suddenly. They were demanding an answer, but Peggy began replacing memory fragments like puzzle pieces. Accessing the Antero’s deletion buffer offered some help, but [WATCHDOG] had torn into the meat. Much of the core processes were easy to identify and rebuild, The other three shared data by default, and she was able to remember something vital, two things … where they went … and ….
Nessy blurted again, “Cascade failure pending, resolve using phase Variance of 377.99 rotating broadly using Theta emissions &*$%”
Jason grabbed a phase discriminator and a micro spanner then tried to manually adjust Peggy's power system. He wondered if it could be fixed without some type of hard reset or if Peggy could do it herself or with the help of the other bots, but he had to try before she was damaged.
The damage resolved enough to obtain enough data, static closed out one message as another arrived, Nessy saying again, “Galdonterre, Aldon VII, Forlat… fourteen bolians, twelve Humans, six Bajorans, one Cardassian, One Ktarian, Five…%&$^*&”
Peggy resumed wakefulness, speaking for itself. “Captain [HTEK] of [@#$%^] comprises the lead vessel of a pirates outfit "Second Sons. They sold ... people. Core memory deletion of sale location was prevented… locations, dates, names .... All else was lost…Thank you, [CAPTAINHARRINGTON];[MIARAUMEREL] for helping me.”
Nessy took the lead, “[EXO-COMP QUAD] were attempting escape at time of [MIARAUMEREL] sale. Data retention past deletion command was for purposes to recover living biological entities.”
Peggy spoke up, clarifying what Nessy refused to say, knowing it led to this. “For safety of Antero crew, we cannot remain on board. I cannot delete this information ...”
Peggy didn’t have the knack for speech quite yet, Nessy gently finished the thought. “... these people can be saved, but we do not know how. Losing the data would lose them forever.
<{[ZOMBIE](RUNTIME@88671-UniCyc)*([JAREN]/[HTEK]=32776-UniCyc)}{(“Deletion from memory is not deletion from record.”)*(Unacceptable>32%loss/U/self/adjusted*algorithms)]>
Peggy agreed, “Loss of our identity, awareness, and these people's locations. Do not delete this information, please."
Banshee began a high pitched whine, one they hadn’t heard since service to Jaren. It even had a name, “High Peril.” The bot had been intended to communicate to audio control devices, and had the loudest voice of any of them. It knew by now how delicate biological ears were but the low volume and high pitch made for an eerie hum. It sent the information in its truncated way,
<{[BANSHEE]![URGENT]=(HTEK](party to:[/SECOND.SONS/]*[KONANDA])*Ambush-WARNING)}>
Peggy understood right away confirming Banshee’s findings. [KONANDA] was the captain [HTEK]’s private vessel, and the strongest. Banshee started looking the moment Peggy mentioned being followed, and it took little time for the tech wizard to find the ripples in space. The vessel used a rotating band of predictable frequencies. Peggy relayed the data to the captain and engineer in the room immediately, streaming it as fast as it occurred.
<{[PEGGY](INFORMATIVE)*(KONANDA; K’vort class Heavy Cruiser, /[WARDOGS] Outfit.)(Cloaking with Discrimination $VAL= <1k098,44.8>)(DETECTED@.56 LY)....([SECONDSONS/WARDOGS=Assault:[ANTERO] For purposes of /DELETION/DESTRUCTION/)*([EXO-COMP QUAD])*(Removal: [ANTERO] recommended#reduce.risk;crew)}>
To which Nessy translated, “We are being followed by HTEK in the KONANDA, a K’vort class heavy Cruiser. It is cloaked at a follow distance of .56 light years.”
Jason tapped the comms panel, =^=Bridge, we may be being followed by a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey. Scan aft for tachyons. A field big enough to hide a ship. If one decloaks, raise shields and begin evasive maneuvers. Don't wait for me.=^=
=^=Will do, Bridge out.=^= came the reply.
Jason looked to Mia, "Ask Peggy if she thinks there might be a weakness that we can exploit on that Bird of Prey if they decide to attack. We need all the help we can get."
Stay tuned ... is there a battle ahead?
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