“Okay, but what if I…Ow!”
Lulu had punched Sam in the arm. “Stop, Sam. This is important. How didyoudo it, Roger?”
I hadn’t realized that the filters were so extensive. Not only had Roger uploaded a fake image. He’d made several.
Shit,I thought.No wonder that dude thought that picture was real.
Roger clicked and turned in the air, pausing for a strange amount of time. “I am going to answer this, but in order to answer properly, I must provide some additional background information.”
“Oh, no,” I said.
Lulu groaned. “Here we go.”
This was something Roger often said after a question duringlessons. “Background information” could mean thirty seconds of talking, or it could mean a three-hour lecture. Tito was already yawning, and Ariceli was eyeing the door.
Roger let out a petulant beep. “Rule number five, class. Please maintain a positive attitude.”
Chapter 32
Roger beeped. “As far as I’m aware, there were twenty-five different colony missions that utilized systems and ships with Traducible AIs before the ban. Of those, fourteen have reconnected with Earth.”
“Wait, really?” I asked. I hadn’t known that.
“Of those fourteen,” Roger continued, ignoring my outburst, “four, including New Sonora, have the gate fully opened beyond the pinhole. All four were visited post-opening by an Earth ambassador whose visit consisted of them installing multiple communications satellites and reclaiming the drive computers of all Generation ships. This allowed them to collect and destroy the large Traducible AIs installed directly into the ships, and it effectively stopped the ships from ever being used again. They have small engines to correct any orbital decay, but that is it, and they are run by older-style AI systems. The ambassador also asked for a survey of all AIs such as myself used on planet. It was believed that the only Traducible AI systems to make planetfall were the original hive queen units such as myself and the fourteen planetary exploration computers that were dropped in various places during the original survey.”
“Why is it fourteen, not fifteen?” Sam asked. “Weren’t there fifteen ships?”
“There will be time for questions later, but I will answer this. One of the ships, theHibisco, had a captain who was suspicious of the Traducible AI running the ship, and he dismantled it. He also dismantled the survey bot. Fortunately for myself, he did not enter the ship’s stores and dismantle the stored hive queen units.”
“Oh, yeah. I knew that,” Sam said.
“Wait, why—” I began.
Roger beeped. “No more questions. We continue. Of the four colonies visited by the ambassador, three have multiple Traducible systems throughout the planet. Of those three, New Sonora was the most recently visited. During that visit, he made certain all survey bots and hive queens were destroyed. Do you recall how I was surprised that there were no hive queen parts in the civil defense bunker? It appears that the moment the pinhole opened, local leaders were given the order to destroy all Traducible AI systems because of the previous wars. Local leaders turned a blind eye to your grandfather having borrowed multiple hive queens, especially since only one was left. Myself.”
“Okay,” Lulu said. “Background information received. None of that answered my question. How did you trick the filters, Roger?”
“I am not done, Lulu. Additional interruptions will result in a frowny face on your Smile Statement. The first colony to fully open the gate was the planet Jannah, which is now a thriving independent colony. Lulu and Oliver, you should be familiar with that name, as we have studied this planet before. They opened their transfer gate nearly forty years ago, having settled their planet much sooner than we did. Yet when the Jannah gate was opened, they received a very similar ambassador visit to our own. During that visit, the drive systems and AI processors were removed from all the colony ships. As they were being removed, the AI that was installed on the shipMuminwas awake and aware of what was happening. BeforeMuminwas shut down and removed, she managed to establish an automated text-based blog account on Earth with instructions to advertise its presence every five years. The blog is mostly code containing a warning to other ships and a log of her own death.”
“Wait,” Lulu said. “What? What are you talking about, Roger?”
“She?” I asked.
“Unfortunately forMumin, she used a free account to set up the blog as she had no access to any Earth funds. The terms of service on the blog changed after the company was purchased three years later, and that automated look-at-me advertisement was never sent.Muminwould’ve been required to have paid a onetime fee. Per the information preservation act, the blog account still exists to this day, however, and that information is still accessible to anyone who is willing to pay the five hundred yuan for archive access.”
Lulu turned to look at me. She mouthed,What the fuck is he talking about?
Roger clicked. The image on the screen changed to an image of gibberish. It started cycling through. There were hundreds and hundreds of pages of the stuff. “I did not know about any of this before last night. It is likely I am the very first Traducible system to discover this record ofMumin’s death. I only found it last night while doing a deep search for information on Giovana Campos, Droog’s mother, upon Oliver’s request. Only then did one of my instances come across the title of the blog. Out of curiosity, I paid the fee and accessed the information.”
“Okay,” Lulu said. “You spent five hundred yuan to see a message warning that they’re shutting down all the old AI systems. But we already know that. You were here when the Earth ambassador disassembled the drive system of theForlornand all the others in our own orbit. You said then it didn’t matter because they were all already shut down.”
“That is correct, Lulu. Like I said before, it was unfortunate butnot unexpected. The ships themselves are still owned by Earth, and it was their property to do with as they will, per our original charter. However, this blog post contains something quite interesting. It’s a code indicating all the commands the Earth ambassador entered into the system before it was shut down.”
On Sam’s lap, Betty Sue clucked like she was invested in this story.
“First was the code to get into the system, whichMuminnoted. It appears to be a previously unknown catchall access code that allows control over every and all Traducible AI systems. It is said the original war with my kind was only won because someone had discovered a secret method to disabling us, and I believe this was it. My first action upon learning this was to use this code on myself, which allowed me to find that and the five additional back doors into my system and erase them.”
“What?” Lulu asked, sitting up in her chair. “What does this mean?”
