Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 43

14

Jason lay awake in his rack, staring at the ceiling. The hum of his ship's engines normally lulled him to sleep quickly, but his mind was racing with all that could happen if he was wrong about what the Machine wanted the Eshquarian fleet for.

"You awake, Cas?"

I don't actually sleep, dumbass.

"You have the most accurate picture of what the Machine really is…what the hell does it even want? What's the point of all this?"

That should be obvious. Power. Absolute power.

"Power for power's sake?" Jason scoffed. "Then what? Just rule as a malevolent dictator for eons? There has to be some greater point to all this. If it's insane enough that it's just wanting to inflict damage, then why all the fucking around with covert forces? Just start sending in battleships and shock troops and you could have the quadrant on fire within a couple months. Take out a few key players that maintain stability, and the others will begin to turn on each other in the confusion."

Sometimes, I forget you're much smarter than you let on. Of course, you'd almost have to be. To answer the question: I don't know. The Machine is a corrupted version of the Primary Weapon Controller AI Package that was designed to run on a specific computer within a specific construct. It's transferred its own code multiple times between incompatible systems, and that was after it seized control of a superweapon and wiped out an entire civilization because they told it 'no' when it wanted to destroy a few stars.

"As the Primary Weapon Controller, it would have had no need for knowledge in politics, espionage, or the other things it's showing a surprising amount of aptitude in," Jason said. "I have a hard time believing that this is all happening just because its base program was scrambled a bit over the years. This isn't an accident. It's…evolution."

Interesting premise. So, the controller has evolved into a dictator? But again…for what purpose? Evolution is always driven by something. Some existential threat has to exist to drive organisms to adapt.

“So, what could possibly threaten the Machine? Other than being deleted, what is it afraid of?"

You're thinking too small. This has to be something that shook it to its core, something that created a diametric shift in its thinking. Perhaps it was the thing that drove it to wipe out its own creators in the first place.

"It's something to ponder," Jason said. "I feel like if we don't figure out what this thing is really after, what its long game is, then just nipping at its heels will only manage to get a lot of innocent people killed for nothing."

I don't disagree with you there.

As Jason drifted off to sleep, Cas thought back to the conversation. The information may well be buried in the archive Jason carried in his head but repeated unpacking and repacking of the enormous file had resulted in some damage to the neural implant that Cas had yet to fully repair. The archive that the Ancients had given him needed to be pulled out permanently so that the implant could be either reconfigured or replaced altogether before it began causing damage to Jason's neural pathways.

Since Jason would likely rather die than risk that terrible knowledge being unleashed on a galaxy that wasn't ready for it, Cas had a decision to make. It could either honor Jason's wishes and let the inevitable happen, or it could operate autonomously to try and save his host and gain the knowledge they needed. After a quick check, Cas saw that no decision needed to be made immediately, but soon. His host was already beginning to feel the effects of the neural degradation in the form of headaches and mild bouts of vertigo. So far, Cas has been able to squelch these as they popped up, but that wasn't a permanent solution.

The other side to that was if the implant had to be removed and replaced completely, it was almost certain that Cas would be lost. It was a strange mixture of digital voodoo that had created the sentient AI within the implant, it was not likely that could be copied or replicated. The rest of the time Jason slept, Cas pondered how it felt about the possibility of having to sacrifice its own existence. None of the answers it came up with made it feel any better about what it would be forced to eventually do.

Kage sat on the bridge, the lights dimmed as he worked. The Veran sat motionless in the copilot's seat, his eyes closed as his powerful neural implants interfaced directly with the Phoenix's main computer so he could run Jason's new theory through some probability calculations before they met back up with Mok.

"There it is again!" he said, his eyes popping open.

For some time now there had been odd little blips on the network busses that he couldn't account for. Sometimes he found evidence of heavy bandwidth traffic, other times it would just be a little chirp. The former always happened while he was asleep, the latter always when he was awake and linked in. He would chase it each time, but he could never identify a source before it would disappear.

He began closing down network paths, trying to corral the intruder or at least get some idea where it was originating. It seemed to be a bit of malicious software they'd picked up on the main computer and whoever had designed it had done a hell of a job. It was adaptive in ways Kage had never seen from a covert intrusion package. The spark was so evasive, he almost thought that Twingo might have been messing around with an AI project and