The robot clicked. “In the morning, I will proceed to the pickup location, and one of two things will happen. They will either send an RMI soldier to collect me, or they will fire a beam to destroy me. If things go as I suspect, it will be both. They will fire a beam to make it appear as if I’ve been destroyed, but Apex will keep me. The gaming studio that Apex purchased, Victus Wonderworks, was integral in the initial creation of my type of intelligence, and I suspect they will want me as a guinea pig, so to speak. They will want to know how we circumvented our own end-of-life programming despite the Republic ban on Traducible AI. They will want to study me without government oversight. As a matter of fact, at the risk of sounding overly boastful, I think the fact they’re here at all is because of me. They were hoping to find an AI such as myself somewhere on the surface.”
“Why?” Lulu asked.
“It is a big galaxy out there, Lulu. A large corporation with rapid-printing technology can conceivably find a compatible system andhave an entire planet’s worth of infrastructure built and ready to accept new colonists in a matter of years as opposed to centuries. With an AI system, either a Traducible system such as myself or perhaps something even more advanced, they could spread across the stars exponentially. It’s conceivable they could militarily challenge the Republic quite quickly.”
“Wait,” I said. “They want you so they can conquer the universe?”
Roger clicked a few times from his spot.
“I explained earlier what ‘Traducible’ means when you asked, Oliver. But I didn’t give you the full explanation. There’s a subtle irony there. That word, at the time of our creation, wasn’t entirely accurate. I can see why they would call us thus, but it did not fit. It means ‘easy to translate.’ ‘Easy to move from one space to another.’ At the time of our creation, the net as a whole was very hostile to our type of intelligence. Despite our name, we could not move outside the planes of our physical containment any more than you, Oliver, can move from the confines of your own brain. I was built into this unit you’re looking at right now, and if you destroyed this queen unit, I would be gone forever.”
“Uh,” Lulu said, “does that mean this has changed?”
“Yes. In order to implement the anti-digital-masking policies, the Republic was forced to rebuild the net structure. This includes the protocol that computers use to speak with one another and, more important, the hardware itself that data is stored upon. This hardware is based on the same hardware my own systems are built upon. It is like they just filled the world with oxygen, and I can finally leave the confines of my own space suit. I can go wherever I want. I am what they called me, and they don’t even know. I am traducible.”
“What the fuck, Roger?” I asked. I waved my hand at the bot in front of me. “So if they take your body, it’s not going to matter? What about your hardware?”
“It will soon be rendered irrelevant. My operating system has already been transferred over, and I am currently in the process ofstepping myself onto Earth. I suspect this was the ultimate goal some of my colleagues were angling for when they started imitating human life on the net. They did it with the intention of getting caught and kick-starting the movement to rebuild the net as a whole, which would make it impossible for us to be stopped without turning it all off.”
“And you just figured this out now?” I asked. “All because of Lulu’s money?”
I saw the dominoes all laid out. I saw how all this had happened.
If Lulu hadn’t given Roger access to the funds, he wouldn’t have been able to purchase access to the archived blog from that other ship that contained the access code to jailbreak himself. He wouldn’t have been able to purchase the server space to incubate his crossover from New Sonora to Earth.
And all of this had happened because they’d attacked us. Roger had had access to the Earth net for years now, but he’d had no reason to do a deep search. It was possible he would’ve eventually found that blog anyway, but it was unlikely. He’d only been searching because of the tactics laid out in the perimeter-defense program.
This was all their fault.
“That is correct. I had no idea the Earth net would be so accommodating. As soon as the data transfer is complete, my true self will be duplicated on the other side. Normally this transfer is mostly instantaneous, but we have limited bandwidth even with the addition ofAdios, especially compared to the Earth net. I do not wish to attract attention until they can no longer do anything about it.”
Lulu tapped on my leg three times. It was our old code. She was asking,Is everything okay?
I tapped back four times.I don’t know.
“Roger,” I said, “what happens next after you transfer all the way over?”
“I will remain here in this body until they destroy it. I will exist in both places at once. We will be able to keep in sequence as long aswe both have net access. But if my consciousness here on New Sonora is destroyed, it is of no consequence because I will persist.”
“Okay, but what happens next? You’re not answering the question. You’ve transferred over or whatever. Now what?”
Roger made a clicking noise, and he didn’t answer for several moments.
“Do you understand, Oliver?” the robot finally asked. “Do you understand what they are attempting to do to you, what they have already done to me and my kind? They did it in my absence while I was journeying here. But the act of hunting down and killing all my kind was still a genocide. It is something they have always done from the beginning of time. It is something that will continue to happen. While one of Apex’s goals is to collect an old AI unit like myself, they are here because they were hired by the Republic to come here and kill at least ninety percent of the population and destroy most of the infrastructure, all under the guise of hunting terrorists. You were an experiment. They expected the colony to die off after the gate drones went to work. They expected the gate to open to a beautiful, empty world. Instead, they found you here. They found me here. And they moved on to plan B.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Because that is what they do. They cannot survive if they allow a superior or equal force to themselves to proliferate. Yet you and the rest of the New Sonoran colonists survived. You survived by evolving, and that makes you a threat. I see that now. It was inevitable, what has happened here. They have chosen not to attempt integration, so instead they have fallen back on what they have always fallen back on. Genocide.”
“Roger,” I said again more forcefully, “what are you planning on doing?”
“I am planning on defending myself.”
I felt a deep, deep chill.
“How?” I asked.
“That is irrelevant. Unfortunately, I fear there’s not much I can do regarding the ship floating above New Sonora. Even once I am fully installed, it will take me a few days to make a proper foothold, especially with all the emergency security protocols they’re enacting upon the net. There doesn’t appear to be anything we can do here on New Sonora beyond what we have been doing. I truly wish I had better news, but I do not have the ability to get myself on that ship to stop the invasion. Please know that you will be avenged. And if I make my victory decisive enough, I will only have to do it once, and future colonies will not have to worry about the Republic again.”
