That stops me. “WhereisRover?”
“I’m considering OS an adversary until we find out why it’s been lying to us. I added some extra barriers to the blind room, soAuroraRover is blocked into the back half of the ship. We need a safe zone for ourselves. Rover can’t interfere with us here.”
I nod. “That sounds wise. Though if OS actually is an adversary, you know we have no chance against it whatsoever.”
“And it can hear everything we’re saying,” Kodiak says.
OS chimes in from afar. “Yes, I can.”
I shiver. “What do we do now?”
Kodiak leans in so he can whisper in my ear. “As long as OS continues to claim that communications with mission control are down—which we should assume is a lie at this point—I figure we have two possible sources of information. The strange radio transmissions from Earth, and whatever knowledge is locked away within the OS itself. How are your computer programming skills?”
I grin. “I’m not a Cusk for nothing. But you’re not proposing that I hack—”
He lays his hand over my mouth, gaze darting around my own eyes. “Shh. Don’t say it out loud.”
I wrap my arm around the solidity of Kodiak’s body. Clone or not, he’s unmistakably real. He jerks involuntarily, then wraps his arms around me, too. Like he needed the proof of me as much as I needed the proof of him. He strokes my hair, rests his cheek against the top of my head as he embraces me. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he says. “Now let’s go take control of our destinies.”
The Ambrose of even a few days earlier would have snorted at that high-blown statement. But now nothing could feel more precise to our reality.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
I’m debating just how a person is supposed to go about taking control of their destiny under these conditions when OS interrupts me. “Rover’s access to forty percent of theAurorais restricted. Without access, it cannot maintain the ship’s environment and ensure that theCoordinated Endeavor’s structure is stable enough to sustain life support for you and Spacefarer Celius.”
“We understand that, OS,” I say as I rummage through my clothing drawer. I’ve decided I’ll grab two of my identical jumpsuits, a bunch of pairs of chemically cleaned underwear, and as many meals as I can carry in my arms. This programming job in the blind room could take days, and I need to stay outside of OS’s view for all of it.
“You might claim to understand what I say, but you don’t seem to be taking corresponding action,” OS says. “This is a high-priority repair. You remember the transmission from Minerva, that her very survival had depended on her ship’s integrity, and now on the integrity of theCoordinated Endeavor.”
“We hear your recommendation.”
“May I ask what you’re trying to do right now that is a higher priority than the life of your sister?”
I can hear Rover in the next room, making its soft ticking sound as it runs along its tracks. “Something we have decided to prioritize. I won’t discuss it, OS.”
“I honor your need for privacy,” OS responds.
“Thank you.”
“...though I hope you will honor my maintenance requests before your obtuseness becomes fatal to you and your sister, who has no say in this inadvisable course. There is an asteroid that must be harvested in four-point-one days.”
I’ve got the food items I need. As I walk my way back to theAuroraI pretend to be chipper, as if OS’s words—in my mother’s voice, no less—haven’t hit home. “We’ll be sure to be prepared for that harvest. That’s enough, OS.”
I pass through the orange portal and into zero g, then a short while later I’m in the blind room. Rover tails me through theAurora, stopping only when it reaches the polycarb barrier. It could melt the lip down, of course, but that would take some time, during which... Kodiak and I would get ready to enter into armed conflict? Just how do I think that would work out for us? We just have to hope OS really does intend to honor our desire for privacy.
Kodiak’s got the headphones on, tuning the receiver dial like someone in an old-school reel. He looks up as I enter, before returning to his work.
I shift the terminal so that it’s out of Rover’s view. Here in the blind room we’re off network, which means I’ll have to do this reprogramming without consulting the ship’s partial internet image. This will be a true test of my tech skills. I crack my knuckles.
The only way to do what I intend to do—override the code that’s allowing OS to lie to us—is to create a shell system. That basically means taking OS’s adaptive intelligence and reinserting it in a new frame that doesn’t permit falsehoods. I’d have no hope of programming a new OS from scratch, but for OS to have lied to us thus far means that falsehood is permitted at the deepest level. That bios layer is actually a fairly small section of code, a few hundred thousand lines. I can manually debug a few hundred thousand lines. It won’t be fun, but I... who am I kidding, it will be fun.
I wave a manicotti pouch in Kodiak’s general direction. “Want one?”
An affirmative grunt. I toss it his way before opening another for myself to eat while I work. Gluten and cheese and tomato sauce—a classic programmer’s meal, though I’d have preferred the pizza version.
I actually have a copy of the OS’s code stored in my offline bracelet. I have no idea who put it there or why, but I sure am grateful for it now. I know some hallmarks to look for, can search those out specifically and then reprogram locally. Hours pass before I know it. Kodiak and I share a lentil curry, passing the polycarb bag back and forth until our mouths have sucked it dry. Then he fetches a fortified porridge from the Dimokratía supply and we share it the same way.
“You sleepy?” Kodiak eventually asks.
