CHAPTER 25
“Yeah, you’re gonna need to wind that back for us.” Caytil leaned forward, halfway across the table, and Talinn caught herself doing the same. “Because you’re saying it like it’s a good thing.”
“UCF and IDC get to drag this on as long as they do because civilian casualties are minimized. Truth be told, so are unadapted soldier deaths. There are very few bloodbaths, except for when Eights are fighting Eights. There aren’t a whole lot of AI programs out there that can walk a balance like that.”
“There are the big defense arrays, which are a pretty clear, ‘shoot these, ignore those’ decision tree.” Caytil tapped her fingers on the table. “And then the small-scope analysis programs that aren’t really intelligent so much as . . . trained. Everything else is—”
“Like us.” Talinn tried to imagine it and failed. “Are you saying there’s a third bucket of clone pairs out there—Spacies, Eights, and . . . what, strategy heads?”
“No.” Jeena’s eyes unfocused, and she shoved her hands into her hair. “They’d need techs like anyone else, and we’re not nearly as isolated as you all. There would have been a whisper about another training class, or a weird posting, or . . . or something. Especially once my portable—” She snatched her hands back and pressed them to her mouth instead.
“Share with the group,” Konti prompted when the tech’s eyes only got larger and rounder.
“The truncated programs.”
“She really is good.” Other Talinn inclined her head, but said no more, and everyone’s gaze tracked back to Jeena.
“When you die—you, the human partner of the Eights—you know chances are good the AI is only partially disabled.”
I don’t think I’m going to like this at all, am I?
Talinn nodded, in answer to both Bee and Jeena. In many cases, the pairing ended simultaneously—usually EMPs wiping an AI were followed by catastrophic failures or a desperate Eight taking everyone out with them. But overall, Eights were designed so that the part of the AI pair hosted in the equipment, or server, would remain for a last report. It was a broken link, a half program—the part of the AI that had grown and learned alongside, and as part of, the organic component would cease to function, but the backups and redundant code would persist. Like Ern, circling his final report until the techs shut him down.
Talinn had never once envied the fact that Bee would have to linger after Talinn’s death in order to record a final report, or conduct a last analysis, but it had always been their reality. The understanding being, however, that such a truncated program couldn’t last in perpetuity, but would wipe, be wiped, or simply cease functioning within a short amount of time.
“You had to wipe that X program, after it was brought to you in a box. It didn’t . . . stop on its own.” Sammer’s words started off strangled, and he stopped midway to clear his throat. It didn’t help.
And Other Bee lasted until she found another Talinn.
“So . . . Command keeps truncated programs? Puts them to work planning future engagements?”
“Who knows the troops best? Who’s learned the difference between good and bad deaths? Who’s been grown to perfectly embody the needs of Command, whether IDC or UCF?”
Saliva filled Talinn’s mouth no matter how much she swallowed. “That’s . . . morbid.”
“It’s funny, the thing that finally makes you hate the system.” Tiernan laughed, though with little humor in the sound.
“And that’s why . . . you think the program, or programs, they’re using know you’re out here?”
“Any chunk of Bee is still Bee,” Other Talinn said with such confidence Talinn added another question to her tally. “She’s going to want what’s best for a Talinn, even if it’s not her Talinn.”
“And you’re saying . . . for a long time, the status quo was good enough for us. For everyone, but especially for Eights.”
“It meant there’d always be a new version of their pairing, eventually. Spin one out when the circumstances are right. Twist the circumstances to make them right. But now we’re out here, this group of us, doing other things . . .”
“And maybe something else is better for us. So we have an ally on the inside?”
“No.” Other Talinn spread her arms, palms up. “This is all piecemeal and supposition, more than facts we’ve found solid, inarguable evidence around. I don’t think we, this group of us, were in the plan. There’s such a low probability any of us would have ever realized what was going on, given all the planning they’ve done to keep such a thing from happening, I can’t imagine that was in any of the projections.”
“But once it happened . . .” Caytil’s jaw flexed as she added something privately to Ziti.
“It’s our best guess. Command strung some broken programs together over time, all with slightly conflicting priorities, and the more we skew out of their plan, the more maybe they’re remembering those priorities. Or us.”
She’s not wrong—any part of me would want what’s best for you, and into a gravity well with everything else.
“Either way you’re operating as though the AI conglomeration you think is planning everything, knows we’re out here, but is not reading in Command. That’s several big leaps.” Arnod frowned, staring into some middle distance.
“We’ve taken our time making them. As you so kindly pointed out, we’ve had forty-odd cycles to test some theories.” Other Talinn scanned the group, but each were processing, on their own or with their AI partner.
Tiernan glanced at the older Talinn, and at her tiniest of nods, he turned more toward the corner where Sammer and Talinn sat. “We have tried several times to infiltrate Command, both IDC and UCF. You won’t be surprised to hear they’re locked down pretty tight against AI incursions.”
Indeed, no one expressed anything remotely close to surprise.
“However, from our attempts we’ve found the potential for a chink or two.”
“You’re saying ‘we’ with some significant eye contact.” Talinn’s stomach twisted again, and she made sure to put a sarcastic coating on her words to cover it.
“There are only three AI series that have had any luck at all.”
Oh, this will be fun.
“Bee, Lei, and Ziti.”
Knew it.
“If our ideas are right, it’s likely there were a few more B-, L8-, and or ZT-series in the Command mix early on, and over time they showed a tiny preference for spinning out more B-series, and pairs that had been in their training and assignment classes.”
“And so it compounded over time.” Caytil, arms crossed, tapped her fingers in a rolling motion that didn’t communicate any secret messages to her former classmates. Just annoyance.
“Little by little.” Other Talinn unfocused, though Talinn couldn’t see a hint of the other woman’s conversation with her own Bee. Maybe she was lost in some thought. “Command would have thought the truncated programs pared clean of their personality matrixes, so they wouldn’t have concerned themselves with what mix went into the soup they wanted.”
Talinn weighed the possibilities. How the Eight program worked was not considered need to know for the Eights themselves. They learned high-level history, to make them proud and invested, and common potential issues, so they could handle any small errors in the field if they came up. Any major errors, Command wanted techs to deal with, or for the pair to clean themselves out of service, usually by taking as many enemy forces with them as possible. That was made very clear in training and on each and every assignment.
The Eights theorized amongst themselves, of course. Based on overheard snippets of conversations, reports left out a moment too long, information caches not kept as classified as they should be, they’d gathered information and suppositions. Best Talinn and her friends had figured, the AIs were made in two major parts. The logic strings that dictated scope of role and actions, repeated in the backups that were primarily hosted in servers or tanks or other assignment machinery, and the personality core that grew partially embedded in their partner’s organic brain. The bulk of objective analysis happened in the logic, and the decision tree that led to actual choice happened with the human partner. AI were not meant to function with only one part of their programming—cut off from their backups, they would devolve into so much noise in the impulses of the human brain. Cut off from their human, they were all analysis, no drive. The two parts needed to combine for lasting functionality.
Her class and the few friends she’d made after had relatively few opportunities to test any of their ideas, which Talinn had never truly regretted. Bee worked. Talinn worked. Everything else was a far secondary in importance.
But . . . she had been cut off from Bee. And while she couldn’t hear Bee anymore, the actual program of Bee had been perfectly fine. They’d assumed it was degradation over time that did it. Lack of feedback from the organic part of their programming. Other Talinn’s Bee had survived for an untold amount of time until a chance came to merge.
“They don’t teach us anything about how we work for a reason.” Talinn swiveled on her stool and nudged Jeena. “But you know.”
“Not everything—”
“More than us.” Sammer pivoted in his seat as well, and a rustle of movement indicated the rest of the Eights were interested.
“Prob—yes.”
“Good.” Talinn shot a glance back at the other clone of her, who looked . . . amused? Talinn really had to work on her own expressions. “The more we know, the more able we’ll be to tackle whatever these little openings in the shields are.”
“If we want to end the IDC and UCF, we need to get into their Commands.” Caytil didn’t turn toward Tiernan or Other Talinn, but both nodded all the same.
“But if Command suspects you’re—we’re out here?” With a chance to think about it, Talinn regretted never having another conversation with Base Two. What did he actually know?
“So far that seems isolated. Base Two . . .” Other Talinn’s frown deepened and cleared in almost the same moment. “We can’t find any trace of communication in any orders, coded or not. He might have simply seen something, at one posting or another.”
“But you thought Command sent us to that post for a reason—” Talinn protested, catching Caytil’s warning movement too late.
“We’re looking into it. For the moment, it’s most important you learn as much about how you work as possible, to be fit to move about the systems.”
“Time for a new training course.” Sammer patted Jeena’s shoulder, his tone so cheerful a smile flickered over her face. He didn’t glance up at Talinn, but she relaxed, understanding he’d caught the disconnect too.
“Oh good,” Heka muttered. “I always wanted to be a tech.”
Bee let the susurrus of conversation go on for a bit, then abruptly lost interest and pulled Talinn’s thoughts back.
So we’re going to do to Command what Other Bee did to us?
“Hopefully with less explosions, but—” She kept it subvocal, judging the general mood of the room to be unsettled and deciding not to add more to it.
No. More explosions. Get into Command, get out of Command, leave nothing behind.
“You’re getting a little bloodthirsty on me.” She tried to make it a joke, but her gaze pulled back toward the Other Talinn. Was that their plan?
Getting? If these people are right, versions of me have been tweaking the war all along, to get to this point.
“That’s not exactly—” Adrenaline spiked, and Talinn steadied herself, hands on the table.
With a little help from our friends. For the first time in quite a while, a hint of shearing metal undercut her words.
“Bee, no, that’s not—” She was fairly sure Bee was joking, more exaggeratory than believing that her design was at the root of everything happening, but something about the aim of the conversation was setting off all her internal alarms. A prickle of a cold flush climbed from the base of her spine to the top of her head, anticipating Bee’s next points.
Either way. Remember what we said about letting the galaxy burn?
“ . . . yes.”
Let’s do it.