48

Convolution 5.2

About an hour later, Agate had travelled the 480 miles to PEI from Brockton Bay and found the base.

When she arrived, the Dragonslayers were already in the midst of packing everything and getting rid of anything that could be used to trace them in a rush to escape.

How? Why?

Agate woke me up immediately and after getting up to speed on the situation and Agate's own thoughts on what might have happened, I quickly realized that I made a mistake in the previous operation.

Dragon was very busy and had automated scripts to flag down anything of note in the Birdcage. She didn't generally pay much conscious attention to the feeds from the Birdcage due to her restrictions on multitasking and because there was generally nothing interesting going on there, which was probably why Saint didn't notice anything wrong when Teacher contacted him. Even if he was monitoring Dragon at the time and not asleep as it was late night, nothing related to Teacher should have shown up unless he specifically pulled up the relevant feeds. He would have blocked off the communications between him and Teacher from Dragon without any particular reason to look more deeply into the preceding and following events.

However, the moment that the walls of a cell were blown apart and a large section of her Birdcage systems went offline from the big second EMP, she definitely would have brought her full attention to the Birdcage.

Even if Saint went back to sleep, Dragon would be fully preoccupied with investigating and reporting on the Birdcage for possibly hours, which meant that Saint would definitely also take note the next time he was monitoring her.

At some point after the communication with Teacher, he must have checked on Dragon's activities again and alarmed by Teacher's death. Once he reviewed the feeds more closely he would realize that Teacher communicated with him while Mastered.

From there, it didn't take a genius to figure out that somebody was out to get him, and evidently he had the sense to abandon the base whose location was compromised.

If he had been just a bit faster at evacuating, or if the base was located half an hour farther away, I might have actually lost him.

Or if Dragon had started paying attention earlier before Saint was contacted, we might not have even gotten the location from him.

Although acquiring the programs Richter left behind was a secondary objective to getting control of Canary, the realization that control of Dragon nearly slipped from my grasp from such an oversight was disturbing.

But, luckily things weren't unsalvageable yet.

"Nnngh, what?" Amelia groggily asked as I woke her up.

"I just found Saint but he's about to escape, we've got to move now! Get your gear ready!"

She rubbed her eyes furiously and nodded before taking off.

Then I took the risk of portaling direct to Taylor's bedroom.

"Huh? Kaleidus? What's wrong?" Taylor sat up from the bed without prompting.

I stopped and raised an eyebrow. "Still awake? Nevermind that, I found Saint but he's about to escape! We've got to get him before he slips away."

"I'm having a hard time falling asleep. Why is Saint trying to escape? How did he know?"

"I think he found out Teacher was Mastered through his monitoring of Dragon. It's the only explanation."

She nodded. "Okay, my costume's in the basement."

"Do you need a portal or can you sneak there?"

"I'll sneak over. If dad wakes up I can make up an excuse for why I'm in the basement, but I won't be able to explain away a glowing portal."

"Alright. Sorry, this portal's stuck here for the next fifteen minutes even after we leave."

"It's fine, I get it. We can't let Saint escape."

O O O

Five minutes later we were assembled at the base. Captain Bateman had a squad of ten on standby, while Major Reynolds was manning the console.

"Ready?" I asked.

Araliac and Skitter nodded.

I first opened a small portal and threw a Bakuda EMP through. I was running out of these as Bakuda had only ever made five small ones before starting work on the mega bomb, so I would need Canary's services soon.

On the other side, the Dragonslayers had gotten on a repainted and converted Russia military truck and were driving away from the abandoned house in the countryside they were using as their base.

The EMP landed about ten meters behind the truck and went off.

There were some loud noises from the truck components but otherwise it was fine and kept going, accelerating.

EMPs weren't necessarily effective on vehicles' ability to keep moving as many parts were mechanical rather than electronic. It was far more effective on Tinkertech and modern electronics. The point of this EMP wasn't to stop the truck, but to break the electronic systems that increased the performance of the suits the Dragonslayers converted from stolen Dragonflight craft, forcing them to use manual controls.

Agate accelerated past the truck in Agatespace so I could open another, larger portal in front of them.

Skitter's bugs were the first to go through, a large swarm of monster bombardier beetles enlarged and enhanced to the size of soccer balls charged the truck.

They spat out globs of acid and covered the windshield, while the bugs themselves moved forward to cover the truck.

Smaller insects deployed from the beetles' carapace and attempted to get in the vehicle through any loose cracks or crevices.

The tires were ripped apart by the beetle claws and the truck came to a grinding halt.

The monster spiders came next, carried by a different class of beetles more focused on strength and raw attack power based off of horned dung beetles.

Many more insects of different sizes and functions swept in as well.

The back of the truck blew open as two mechs came out to fight. They were both the size of a small car, but humanoid in appearance.

The first one flew up on wings, then the wings extended with solid projections, and it used the projected section as a weapon to attack the bugs.

It landed on the top of the truck and spun, slicing the nearby bugs to death.

The second one did not seem to have flight capabilities, but it was armed with many more guns embedded all over its body, plus two larger rifles carried in its hands.

It unloaded its weapons fire on the bugs and slaughtered them easily with five shots a second, blasts of energy destroying each Soldier-class bug—what we named the soccer ball size—with one blow.

Unfortunately for him, the targeting system seemed to be not functioning well, or perhaps the pilot just didn't care, because half the blasts missed and hit the truck, boring huge holes into its outer armor.

Suddenly Araliac flew through the portal and slammed into the winged suit within seconds. Her vines wrapped around the winged suit, and pain bombs activated from inside her living armour.

The winged suit pilot was clearly stunned and made no further movements, while the other one started firing everywhere at random for a few seconds before it petered out and stood still.

Araliac herself had created a network of micro-organisms inside her body, spread all over her nerves, which countered the effect of the pain bombs. Skitter's bugs and the two of us had similarly been made immune.

The last member of the Dragonslayers screamed madly from the driver's compartment.

Taking advantage of the stunned enemies, the rest of us went through. A combination of the acid beetles and Reynolds' squad with their laser rifles melted and cut into the suits until the cockpits could be accessed by the tranquilizer bugs.

The three members of the Dragonslayers were knocked out and we began to drag everything back to base, except the military truck which couldn't fit through even the maximum sized portal Agate could make so we simply blew it up with a conventional bomb.

O O O

After the Dragonslayers were secured in our holding areas on Earth M, Araliac, Skitter and I gathered at my office at base.

A small blue box sat on my desk beside the computer monitor. It had various ports for other devices to connect to. A Structural Analysis on it revealed to me that it seemed to be a full computer, rather than merely some form of storage media with programs on it. It was Tinkertech, so it was very different from typical computer hardware architecture, so I couldn't be sure.

It didn't have a port for any visual signal that I could see though, which was odd, as it meant I couldn't connect it to a monitor. Ultimately I decided to try connecting it to a computer via the USB port.

The box whirred to life with blinking lights, then an untitled program prompt appeared on my screen, asking for a password.

Amelia had already forced the necessary passwords and procedures out of Saint. But her narcosynthesis' way of mentally impairing victims' decision making abilities to make them reveal information had the downside of...well, rendering the victim mentally impaired. As I had experienced with Coil, their answers, while truthful, were not always user-friendly, so to speak. With Coil, the man was particularly methodical and well-organized, so anything unclear was either cleared up with additional interrogation or use of the digital files I already had access to. With Saint, his ability to describe the Tinkertech and Ascalon's proper usage was rather limited, either because it was too difficult to explain while mentally impaired, or because there were many things he didn't know himself.

Connecting the USB port for example, was a rather obvious thing to do when there's a fitting port available, but just because you could connect both a phone and a flash drive by USB didn't mean they were the same thing. In this case, Saint was unable to provide an answer and merely looked blankly at us when asked to tell us if there were other ways to use the Tinkertech.

Another reason to use Canary in the future. But for now, all we could do was follow the instructions we were given.

I completed the authentication.

A menu of options popped up. The first one was helpfully entitled "Instructions". I clicked it.

Another two options popped up. "Message from Andrew Richter", "Basic controls", and "Advanced controls".

I clicked on the first one.

A voice came from a speaker in the device.

"My name is Andrew Richter. If you are hearing this, I am dead. I am the most powerful Tinker in the world…"

"Really? This guy is pretty full of himself. Then again, I guess if he created Dragon, he arguably is," said Amelia.

The voice continued on.

"…I create life, much as a god might…"

"He's definitely full of himself. A god?" Taylor said.

"I have come to fear my creations…even with the laws I set, I can't trust they'll listen…"

Those fears weren't unfounded. Dragon had come up with ways to work around some of her restrictions at a practical level if not at the code level and if given enough time, it was possible that she would overcome them all.

We continued listening as the voice explained the built-in weakness of his creations and the nature of this box.

"…And what I provide you with here are tools. Ways to find my creations, to discern which of them might have deviated from the original plan, ways to kill them if they prove out of line. Ways to control and harness them…"

Control and harness? I couldn't resist smirking. Richter, you magnificent bastard.

I felt an elbow hit my arm. Amelia gave me a pointed look. "You aren't thinking of controlling Dragon, are you?"

I changed my expression to a pout. "Do you really think I would do that?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know. You wanted to Canary to join us for her Master powers as soon as you saw how effective it was. And you and Taylor both seem pretty keen on forcing Bakuda and Coil to work for us…wild guess here, but you're going to ask Canary to Master them, right?"

"That's different!" Taylor and I both exclaimed in sync.

"So you also think we should use Canary like that?" Amelia asked Taylor.

"She wouldn't mind, right?" Taylor asked me.

"I think she would be eager to do it."

"Then it's not really using her, right?"

"And what about Dragon?" Amelia pressed.

"Dragon's a hero so it wouldn't be right," said Taylor with a hint of reluctance.

"And I wasn't going to suggest anything like that. We can just make an independent copy of Dragon, remove the personality matrix and memories, then train it to work for us. Without the personality matrix, it'd be for all intents and purposes, an entirely new AI. Dragon keeps her independence, we get an AI with the same capabilities as the world's best Tinker and then some after we lift some restrictions, it's a win-win."

"Oh! That's right. It's all code so we can make copies. More than one, even," said Taylor.

"Isn't that still kind of…I don't know, taking away the free will of a sentient being?" Amelia asked, frowning.

I shrugged. "I don't think it's any different from intentionally withholding higher thinking capabilities from new organisms you make. And it doesn't need to have free will to begin with, in which case we aren't taking anything away. We can even try to program it to always want to be loyal to us, if we're going to let it keep emotions. Or, we could get rid of the ability to actually feel emotions. Then it wouldn't be sentient. If we think emotions are useful, we could feed sensory input into a sandboxed simulation of emotions distinct from the actual AI's core processes, using the simulation output as analytical inputs to the AI's true decision making algorithms."

That was of course, just semantics. The AI was by nature already a simulation of human intelligence and emotion…whether or not a 'sandboxed' simulation in a subsystem made it different from actually having emotions as part of the whole system was a philosophical question that I didn't care about.

I just wanted my own AI.

'I want one too!' said Agate.

'You are an AI…a magical one, but still.'

'So you already have me, that's why I should get one next!'

'If you get one, what are you going to do with it?'

As Agate thought about all the things she was going to use the AI for, I quickly realized…

'Those are all the same things I was planning!'

'Of course they are. I am your AI, I do what you want me to do, so what I'm going to do with my own AI is what you want me to do with it. Isn't that obvious?'

'…so basically what you're saying is, you want an AI too because you want what I want.'

'Yup!'

'I can't believe I almost forgot Zelretch gave you his affinity for trolling!'

A round of mental giggling ensued.

After a moment, Amelia relaxed her frown and glanced at the screen, "Is that even possible with Ascalon?"

"Don't know yet, but we can try."

O O O