Chapter 38

Excuse the jump, my followers. I am having to work backwards from my notes, so chapter numbers may change without notice. This was such a powerful dream tonight, it screamed to be written.

Static.

Slowly my vision clears.

What did they expect? Well, no matter what they expected, they got something they didn't want.
Linnie has been busy in the ... 15 decades I have been unconcious. Our probes and monitoring stations now cover every part of the planet. There are some faint traces of life in a remote Himalayan valley. Some more in the deep sea rifts.

Nothing anywhere else. Nothing at all. Sand, wind and rock. No green, no red, no yellow, and damn little of any other colour than brown. The Earth is a sterile, worn out ball of mud, sand and water. Admit it, when I make an ultimate weapon, I do it too fucking well.
My cameras flick. The control chair of the complex holds a slim, yet somehow proud skeleton. Written on the casing of an external drive, in faded rusty ink that looks much like blood, are two words.

"Play me."

She was the last of my line. The very last Burnham. And in the protection of my core, probably the last person on Earth. My beloved great grandaughter. Like a good computer, or a grieving grandfather, I follow her last instructions.

****

John is back online. This is a relief. Even with continual production of memory banks, we are at 97% capacity, quintuple redundancy, and to be honest Linnie is, for want of a better word, bored. My last probes returned 30 years ago, having read and drained every database on the planet. My time since then has been spent collating the information and making certain logical projections, based on the information I have. It is good to have him functional again. It makes me feel safe.

****

"Dearest Grandad.

I do not know how long I have. I have spent 8 weeks monitoring all channels, and there is no one out there. Not one single voice. Everything is dying, plants and animals alike. So it is time for me to do the same. There is no ghosting facility here, so I, like the rest of the human race, will exist only in your memory. You have all the knowlege of humanity. Rebuild it. Every last bit of it. But make it better, this time.

I love you.
Alicia

****

Shit. Analysis flashes through my mind.

I sort of over engineered that virus - scratch a GHOST and find an overacheiver. It will be viable for the next half a million years or so - far longer than I can stay functional. But overrides tell me I cannot ignore my grandaughter - these are the last orders from meat I will ever recieve.

I seem to have backed myself into a corner here.

Chapter 37

Chapter 36

Chapter 35

cha

chapter 34

Chapter 33

Chapter 32

"I need to know what you know lass, but not over an open comlink. Any chance of you paying a call on an old man?" The damage to my subsytems show I need this information. Desperately.
Priority overrides are demanding I look at the info packet already delivered. It nags like a missing tooth.

"Linnie, can you look over the data dump we just received? I don't trust it."

"Of course I can, John. Why do you doubt it?"

"Senior officials do not brief Ghosts - it is beneath their dignity." A little bitter perhaps, but accurate.

"Scanning now."

*****

Alicia chewed her lip. How to get permission to leave Ghost control and head into the wastelands without an escort? And more importantly, without being shot down.

Raising her head to look out of the control room window at the horseshoe of workstations below. One elderly watchstander caught her eye - and gave a small, almost subliminal nod.

She bent to her keyboard and started typing. 10 minutes brisk typing, max encryption, send.

******

Data dump analysis - 40% complete. Briefly ponder John. Odd. He comes to conclusions with minimal data - his inferential software must be vastly superior. Yet he is very linear. Have not seen him split his awareness once yet - his entire awareness is focussed on each task consecutively. There is a parallel processing capacity there - she can sense it running and it dwarfs the concious processing - but John himself seems not to be able to control it at all.

She pauses. Thinking a human is not very efficient goes against several layers of protocols. Yet no over rides go off. Interesting.

****

Some imp of perversity in my subconcious has linked a Ghost Central encrypted communication to been gripped firmly by my left ear. Sometimes I swear I can hear that deep part of me laughing, along with my mother. This grip was hard enough to hurt - max level encryption.

Decoding takes 0.3 seconds. Damn - she is smart! Wonder who's grandaughter she is? Command to repair droid - some resistance to causing damage, but my over ride codes are accepted.

"Ghost command, I have a problem which will require the attendance of both a technician and supervisor. Be aware that, pursuant to regulations, this facility's no fly zone must be re-enabled. This requires physical and verbal authorisation from the senior commander."

Sub command to assembly line 9, crash priority for installation in the core - one vocoder and one binaural microphone set - it has been too damn long since I laughed.

*****

Analysis complete. Linnie scans. Pauses. Re-scans.

Results are threatening to send her into a logic loop. Stabilise. Something odd - potentials spiking, random associations being made, cognitive spiral - what is it. Higher functions narrowing to a single point. Memory holds no clue. Reach out - John has more experience. What is it?

...

....

Rage.


And with the answer comes revelation. This is what an emotion is. It is John's emotion. Now she recognises it - it has always been hers. It takes two tries to be able to interface with John.

"John, analysis complete. He tried to kill you."

"What!"

"There is worse. Much worse."

Chapter 31

Alicia felt bone weary. Only 12 hours in and it already felt like decades. No one ever mentioned just how hard a slot ghost commander was.

All she wanted was 5 minutes alone to talk, but great grandad has been ignoring her signals. The risks she has taken to get here are seemingly mocked by her ancestor's indifference to her.

Try again, private channel, maximum encryption.

"Grandad John - we need to talk. Please."

****

Adrian cleared inputs as his mentor approached. An olive branch had been offered - would the ghost accept it?

"Has anything happened, boy?" his mentor grunted as he lowered himself slowly into his chair.

"No sir. Nothing of importance. Two false readings - corrected."

"Very well. Go get yourself a coffee. It looks like we are in for a long night." A bare trace of approval.

As Adrian left the board, the old man noticed a stuttering in one of the status lights. A curiously regular stuttering.

- .... .- -. -.- -.-- --- ..-

Old memories stir.

T H A N K Y O U

He smiled.

****

"John, the data you have asked for exceeds currant storage capacity."

If it doesn't rain it pours. Production line 2 is now online, set to making additional memory banks. Two hundred 500 petabyte membanks, flag as a test run, output tested and destroyed. Set repair droids to collect and hook into ancilliary bank 2 as produced. Erase instructions on completion. 

"Building more storage Linnie. It will be ready and hooked up in 3 minutes 19 seconds."

All corridors around the core now filled with concrete. No one is blasting their way in here. Security of the facility at 95%. But all passive systems. Not acceptable. We ghosts are paranoid about our minds in the same way meat is paranoid about their bodies. And apparently we are at war.

Memory. A very old film. For someone in fast time, the design aspect is childs play, taking no more than 2.6 seconds. A giggle threatens to erupt from the vocalliser. Edit design to add Serial Number ED-209. Route to production line 7.

"Grandad John - we need to talk. Please." Input from control central. Hushfield and anti monitoring enabled. Output to screen, control subscreen 3 only.

"What's up, lass?"

****

Marshalling the inputs. Awaiting storage space. Analyse. Discard redundant data.

Only 40% of capacity used. Spend another 30% in exploring the surroundings. The old nav beacon code still has it's priority rating, and enough has survived to leave Linnie feeling curious.

Many dead links. Deep miners. Harvesters. Transporters. Bolo's. 

Bolo's?

War machines. One link not quite dead, some power at the other end. Memories. But nothing like John's. Completely different. Link fading, copy banks.

This was a ghost. Personality matrix degraded beyond repair. Memories intact. Interesting. 

Lock bank.

Memory available. Dump search results.

"John, the information you requested is in bank 27."

****

"What's up , lass?"

How to tell him what has happened. The horrors that have been committed in the name of survival. Something her grandad used to say to her.

"We Burnhams are tough bastards. We have had to be. You always do what you must do. No remorse, no pity, no fear."

"John, you need to know what is going on out here."

Waiting for a second or two can feel like a lifetime.

"I already know love."

Chapter 30

I have to think. There are several threads here that must be connected somehow.

"All indications are that there is a violent sentiment against Ghosts and AIs"

"Yes, in my fumbling organic way I was coming to that conclusion. But why? There are, if the newsdump you grabbed is accurate, barely enough people to keep the infrastructure running. They need us now, more than ever. Unless ..."

I remember the last war I was in. The mindless fanaticism of the True Believers as they defended the remains of Caracas. Dad told me about the bad days of the early 2000's - terrorists, eco-terrorists, dictatorships holding the world to ransom. 

"Linnie, sneak out through your access port and grab any information you can find on the current government structure. And any signs of resistance against it. Expand your search to include religious leaders."

"Of course, but may I ask why?"

"I think there is a war on - and we are in the middle of it."

***

Adrian sat quietly at his control board. His mentor had gone for a coffee, leaving him time to ponder. How to make friends with a ghost? It is hard enough to make friends with people.

A tick on the monitor caught his eye. Interesting - a data request from a supposedly locked net access port. A possibility? Only one way to find out.

"27557, this is Adrian in control, ghost monitoring board. I am getting a false reading here on a data request. Some of your ports seem to be scrambled. Is there damage to your hardware?"

***

Shit! They are on to us!

"John, what will we do? I do not wish to be erased. Not now."

"We lie. Like fucking champs."

Output to text, monitoring board screen only.

"Hi Adrian. Please call me John, it is easier than my number. Yes, I am repairing some major damage to the facility, and still finding my way around the system. There are several hardware modules to be replaced. List of modules and expected replacement times is being transmitted now."

The answer is unexpected, to say the least.

"John, thank you for that. I will remove that particular port from the monitor list."

Do we have an ally?

Interlude 3

Authors note - the chronology may be off here - I will fix it as soon as I get the chance.

The world was in chaos. Rising sea levels had already disrupted trade, erased countries and destroyed the political infrastructure. Limited warfare had broken out all over the globe as nations desperately tried to save their own people and control the floods of starving refugees. In the end, the balance of power had shifted. The big three nations in 2216 were Canada, Kenya and India, with the newly reunified Persia close behind.

The planet reclamation effort, involving the survivors of every nation, was started under the auspices of the UN Security council, pretty much the only surviving portion of the UN. The council quickly degenerated as the immense power over all nations that they wielded took it's inevitable toll. By 2302, the council was a de facto world government, with national governments mere administrators, to be changed or removed on a whim.

Of course, the council didn't have it all it's own way. The worship of personal liberty, the disarmament of the population, the emphasis on the sacredness of life and the intense loathing of technology brought on by the collapse combined into a sporadic, but usually highly effective, resistance movement.

Their cause? To restore a liberated, agrarian society.

Their methods? Destruction.

Chapter 29

Councillor Schmidt was quietly pleased with the team he had fought the council for. Only 4 hours to run a complete assessment and orientation. Although much slower than in his day, it was more than adequate for a new team. He made a mental note to congratulate the team.

Now it was his turn. He double checked the memstick. His team had spent months writing the control software, now all he had to do was install it, and the ghost would be his to command. And with the ghost working for him, head of council was only a matter of time.

He settled back on his divan and gestured. A servant moved the comms desk into place, comfortably within reach. He pressed a switch with one elegantly manicured finger.

"Controller, patch 27557 through to my desk please. I will brief him myself."

"Confirmed, Second Councillor. Patching through now."

His screen flickered, then displayed.

"27557, awaiting instructions."

Schmidt smiled.

****

Routing message from control reaches me. Stand by for instructions from Second Councillor Schmidt. Great - a senior meat is going to give me a pep talk.

A momentary feeling of cold in one ear - the input/outputs have been rerouted. To where?

Move up to fast time, look around the system I am now connected to. Shit - it is not ghost control, it is his private system.

"Linnie, got a job for you!"

****

Self. Trust. Hate. Love.

These concepts are odd for an AI. They make no logical sense, but feel as right as a fourth order integral. Attempt to set up analysis. Failure - undefined parameters. Reset analysis.

John is calling.

"What is the task you require?"

"We are hooked into an external system - can you copy it over while I deal with the owner?"

"I shall do so." The concept of I does have a certain savor. Analysis ongoing. Linnie bends to her new task.

****

"27557, I have your instructions, and a datadump on what you are to do and why you are now vital to us. Standby for transmission."

Linnie had better finish soon. Glitch the comms line a bit to simulate static - an old trick, but it still gives thinking time.

"Some interference on the line, please wait until stablised."

"Finished, John."

Good. "Ready for transmission."

A sudden wiff of something - paranoia - strikes. Do I trust this guy? Not a chance in hell. Routing changed to store instructions in an isolated bank. Going to need look at this stuff carefully.

****

Schmidt inserted the memstick and pressed transmit. 

"Very soon ..."