The next seven weeks I spent mostly debating with myself. I didn’t owe Jim anything. I mean, the guy was a blink away from killing me over a card game. I definitely didn’t owe Gabby anything. She sold me to her boyfriend for a couple hits of Moondust. My mind didn’t allow me to let it go however. I kept coming back to Jim’s desperate pleas for help from the universe to give him a break. Help him get his daughter out of the life of crime that she had found herself in.
I also remembered Gabby from when we went to school together. She was always kind to people and wasn’t one of those that you tended to stay away from. That’s why it was so hard for me to fathom her selling me into slavery. Maybe she did deserve a chance at a normal life, or at least as close as anyone can really get. It was just incredibly hard for me to actually contemplate getting over how screwed up my life had become since I saw her in that bar.
People make choices. Some good, some bad. All in all though, I wasn’t responsible for Gabby getting herself into the current problem she was in. She could have said no the first time she was offered drugs. She could have dumped Steve. She could have also gone to Hollywood and became a superstar actress. This was my mind’s way of grounding me. By explaining the fact that in a lot of situations like that the options tended to be very limited regardless of how free the choices were. I didn’t know how she got introduced to Moondust. Steve could have disguised it as a cure for a headache then by the time that Gabby realized what was going on, she was too heavily addicted to stop herself anymore. The stuff addicted people stupidly quick.
Further reading in Jim’s files showed me that the spacestation as well as the casino was owned entirely by Mark. Fred was also one of his top enforcers. Not surprising finding out the grizzled older guy was a heavy hitter. Marissa would probably have laughed to find out that each delivery of Moondust sold for around two or three million a load. Her job paid well in her opinion but she was seriously underpaid in the grand scheme of things.
I kept trying to shove these concepts out of my mind during the trip back to Earth but the utter boredom of slowly inching my way home was getting to me. When I finally arrived at Moon Station for a customs inspection, I nearly kissed every person I saw. Two months of having no one to really talk to had driven me halfway to nuts. I didn’t even mind that they were rude and angry. I was just happy they were people.
Someone other than pictures of Gabby and Jim’s journals to make me feel like I was this horrible person for not wanting to really help someone that had hurt me. I cleared inspection and made my way toward Earth. I had about two hours on thrusters to figure out where I wanted to go before I locked myself into a landing pattern. After that, I was required to follow the instructions of the Air Traffic Controllers that monitored and controlled all vehicles within the area around Earth.
Throughout my research into Jim’s journals and his correspondence, I found that he had been contemplating the idea of putting an Artificial Intelligence program into his ship computers and using the few maintenance robots that were onboard to assist him with keeping the ship in the air without having a crew to do so with. Also, he had been doing research into higher end weapons and defense systems to start doing some real damage. Seems he was making a pretty decent living off the contract that he stole from Mark’s nephew.
I liked the concept, just not necessarily the amount of money I would have to spend on implementing it. So after comparison shopping for most of the next two hours and finding everything way too expensive I called Dave. Dave was one of my really close friends while I was in the Orphanage. When I went over to Bio-Electronics to take advantage of their free technology offer, he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to actually learn the things that I wanted downloaded into my head.
“Johnny Q? Wow, what’s going on? I thought you might have died on the operating table or something.” Dave’s eyes were wide when he saw my image on the screen.
I laughed. “No, they have a strict no outside contact policy until they were finished with me. I couldn’t talk to any of the old crew. How is everyone anyway?”
“Dude, you have been gone a long time. There is no crew anymore. None of us talk, man. When I headed up North and most of the rest just hung around Las Vegas we haven’t even really tried to get together or anything. I got a few of them on Facebook, but we only really talk about ourselves on there. You should get an account, they make keeping in touch easier.” Dave explained.
It didn’t make much sense to me why he said that. If he didn’t talk to them through the thing that often how did it make it easier to keep in touch? Sounded kinda pointless to me.
“Oh, I’m good. Hey, got a question.” I mentioned.
“What’s up?” Dave asked.
“I just recently picked up a spaceship and need a little help getting it in better working order. You interested in helping out? You were always the smartest out of all of us.” I felt sort of bad about the fact that I hadn’t called him in two years and the first thing I asked is if he wanted to work on my spaceship with me.
“A spaceship? How did you just happen to pick up a spaceship? I’m having trouble just trying to get a car and a girlfriend and you are running around with a spaceship.” Dave looked at me with an envious expression.
“Long story, and I have another ten minutes before I have to have a destination in mind for docking on Earth. You willing?” I pressed the issue.
“Sure John, actually, hey tell them you are coming down to Theta dock at MIT. Your clearance code is H-five-five. I’m the caretaker, that’s how I’m affording to go to school here. I don’t have anything happening and we don’t have any ships scheduled to use the dock for the next month so it works out perfect.” I acknowledged and promised Dave a beer when I got there.
It didn’t take long to dock. Dave was waiting when I stepped out of the shuttle exit ramp. “Johnny!” He called out and walked over to give me a hug.
“Hey Dave! You’re a life saver!” I informed him, returning the hug.
“And you’re a boredom removal tool! Man, it’s good to see you bro! You gotta tell me how you managed this! This is a class five deep space rig, those are really hard to come by these days! They’re actually talking about making them like an antique.” Dave was staring longingly at the outside hull. On the surface I couldn’t blame him. It looked in really good shape on the outside skin. Being in space for over half a century had probably helped that.
“That would work if the entire interior hadn’t been redone in classic scrap heap style.” I remarked.
Dave laughed. “Same old Johnny. Dry as a desert at noon. It can’t be that bad!”
I raised my eyebrows at the denial. “Uh, yeah. It is. Want the grand tour?”
Dave couldn’t resist and I began walking him through the passages. “Okay, bro, you win. This is horrid. It’s like they did this up to make space horror movies or something!”
I smiled and continued the tour until we were finished walking through everything. “And that’s my ship. Any more remarks about how it isn’t that bad?”
Dave held up his hands in defense. His cellphone notified him he had a text message. Dave checked it and apparently forgot all about the ship. “Oh, right, hey I got this buddy down in the bio-electronics lab that wanted to know if he could check out your implant. You down with that, or…?”
“No craziness right? I’m not looking to get all messed up since I really don’t have a warranty package on my brain.” I asked.
“Naw, man, just some scans and a few tests. They’ve never had raw data before about how the thing is seated and Bio-Electronics is really insane about privacy. Even the patents are like only the bare essentials and no one is volunteering to have their heads opened up to give the guys a look.” Dave explained, leading the way across a few well-kept lawns and walkways.
I followed along and we wound up in an old brick building that looked like something from the spa
ce center inside. The passages were all sleeked out in plasteel, a composite that had been developed with super long chain polymers with strengths greatly exceeding that of any known metal.
“Getting ready for a nuclear war?” I asked, looking at the internal set up.
“These guys say that it helps disperse various radiation waves so it helps their equipment.” Dave commented, leading down two more corridors till we made it to a set of large double doors that we had to wait for someone else to open.
Dave introduced me to Teddy who was his friend that wanted to do the test. Now this guy takes the cake in weird. We jumped through six subjects in the three minutes it took to get to the giant medical scanner during a conversation with him.
“So this is safe, right? They told me don’t ever let anyone do an MRI or CT scan on my skull because it could seriously screw me up.” I felt my hands shaking at the thought of my head exploding during the testing.
“Oh god no, this is a passive scanner. It picks up ambient fluctuations in the natural electrical, heat, and magnetic patterns of a biological organism. I’m no Frankenstein or nothing, dude.” Teddy commented looking shocked.
“Just wanting to be sure. This is the first time I have ever seen anything like this machine.” I confided in him.
Teddy frowned, “Oh, right. This is the latest tech we have. At all times, we are being bombarded with like a million different radiation emanations from all over the place. Also, we produce heat, electricity, a magnetic field, even light in some cases. Plus all sorts of other radiation waves. This thing kinda just measures all that on really sensitive detectors and builds a picture of whatever we put in the machine. It makes an MRI look like a giant paperweight.”
I didn’t know whether to be reassured by the mad scientist look of glee on his face or not. The whole thing didn’t take more than half an hour from start to finish. When we were done, Dave and Teddy were looking mighty green.
“Looking like that after taking an intimate look inside my brain isn’t something that gives me warm fuzzy feelings.” I explained to them, conveying my most demanding facial expression.
“We’re just amazed you’re alive!” Teddy explained.
“Huh?” I asked, blanching and wanting to run back to Bio-Electronics for a full test to see if they did something wrong to me. “What did you guys do to me?”
“Dude, it isn’t like that!” Teddy exclaimed. “Man, that thing is wired into almost every single part of your brain! The neurosurgeon that did that work is a freaking genius! No wonder seventy percent of the people that have the procedure done die from it or the implant. Just the thought of all that inside someone is creepy on the borderline of cyborg stuff. Do you remember how long the surgery was?”
“They never really tell us. I figured it out on my own when I finally got to a calendar after I came out of recovery. I was under the knife for about four days I think. Took a few months just to relearn how to walk, or remember how to walk is the way they described it.” I explained.
“Johnny, why did you do that? We all knew you had some serious stones man, but this? Did they even explain to you the extent of the hardware they were implanting?” Dave asked me.
I frowned, “Dave, look, I wasn’t going to college. You getting a perfect score on your SAT is the reason why you’re here. I didn’t get anywhere close to perfect. I was too interested in screwing off in high school. I went to this job fair, and the Bio-Electronics guys were there. They had this test where they read your brain waves to see if you fit their profile for candidates for the surgery. They kinda disguise it as a way of measuring your IQ or something but when my scans matched up with what they were looking for they explained it all to me.
“I didn’t want to owe a ton of money to some bank just to go to college and I’m not cut out for the military. They were going to take care of me for a couple years, and give me a salary. After that, they list me as one of the successful implant candidates and companies hire people like that because we can learn anything really fast. Figured it was a way to fast track.”
“Is that how you got the ship? Do you work for someone that found you on that list?” Dave asked.
“No. Remember Gabby?” I asked, not knowing how much to tell him and figuring I would give him only enough information to understand without putting him at risk.
“Yeah, Gabriella, she was like my crush all the way through high school.” Dave answered.
I sighed, “Look Dave, if she ever tries to get in touch with you again and mentions someone named Steve or a mining operation, RUN! I’m not going into more detail than that, for your own safety. She got involved with some really bad people and I nearly spent the rest of my life working on a mining colony. Pretty much against my will. Got me?”
Dave’s eyes widened and I saw the hurt puppy expression on his face. He still must have it bad for her. I shook my head. “She ain’t the same, Dave. She’s a dust head now. Just stay away from her, okay?”
He made a non-committal noise. I nearly fell over when I realized that he had to be currently talking to her. “Dave, she’s trying to get you to come to Las Vegas, isn’t she?”
He looked away. “I already bought a round-trip ticket home. For Spring break. She really isn’t that bad off, Johnny. She wants to help me out by bringing me in on this deal so I can make some more money while going to school.”
I knew he wouldn’t believe a word I said from this point onward. No matter what I told him, Dave was going to see her unless someone sat on him. She’d probably even told him that she had feelings for him from that hurt puppy look in his eye. I thought for a minute, then turned to Teddy.
“They told me that this thing might one day be used to pull memories out, just like putting them in. Sometimes I wonder if they can’t do it already. Do you have a plug-in setup here?” I asked him, thinking of a solution. Teddy nodded and led us through another corridor into this solid white room.
“We painted it white because Bio-Electronics said that it helps with uptake.” Teddy explained while I jacked in. The small thin plug fit snugly into the jack on the back of my head. They had a really good plastic surgeon team and a few other special effects artists from Hollywood that designed the discreet flap that I lifted out of the way for it.
“Can you read the information?” I asked.
Teddy bent over a panel and set up an audio and video display. “I’m getting a murky view of us right now. We are upside down, but we can see it. We’ve actually been developing this software lately because there’s a competition being offered from Bio-Electronics to give a paycheck and a nice fat job offer to anyone who can do it.”
I tried thinking about Gabby. It didn’t work, so I tried a different tactic. “Dave, you have a picture of her?” I asked him on a hunch.
He sheepishly pulled out his phone and I saw that she was his wall paper for the device. That did it. I basically relived the memory with my eyes closed after I got the initial start from the picture. When I was done, I opened my eyes and Dave was sitting there with his mouth wide open. I even saw a tear rolling down his cheek. She had done a number on him and I was pissed.
I hastily removed the plug when Teddy looked up from his machine. I could tell from his eyes that he saw the nice little images I was throwing out about all the ways I wanted to put Gabriella in pain for hurting Dave like this. That’s when I decided, right that moment, that Mark was going down.
I’d spent my entire youth sticking up for Dave and involving him in everything that we used to go out and do. Dave was the kind of guy that during a blizzard would strip out of his clothes and hand them over to you if you even hinted that you were cold. He’d been one of my closest friends for years and seeing how much that little tight bodied drug addict had hurt him sliced into my heart like razor wire.
“Um, uh, thanks… It helped me a lot with my program for the competition. They give us files to work with but
having raw data helped out a lot.” Teddy said, his face ghost white. Yeah, he’d saw all the nice little torture scenes that ran through my head.
“Those weren’t real.” I informed him. “He wouldn’t be talking to her on the internet if they were.”
“Huh?” Dave asked, shifting his eyes between both of us and coming out just a bit from his silent reverie.
“I know, dude. Just different when you actually see the stuff. You hear all sorts of things about people thinking about doing bad things to people for money and stuff. Also, when they hurt people they care about.” Teddy swallowed. “Wasn’t expecting it is all.” Teddy shifted his eyes between me and Dave, then back to the screen.
“What’s going on?” Dave asked, looking at the two of us, then glancing at the now blank screen.
“Nothing, dude. Just talking about how far that girl must have slipped.” Teddy explained, looking at the ground and glancing briefly at me.
“I’m sorry, Johnny, I didn’t know.” Dave sat there and stared off into space, his voice and eyes distant. “I thought you may be going after her yourself.” He explained, not wanting to meet my eyes after that admission. I’m glad Dave hadn’t been the one Marissa gave her little instruction on the finer arts of manipulation via sex to. He would have been crushed flat.
“Come on, Dave. I could see that in a lot of the guys that we used to hang out with, but I wouldn’t do that to you.” I explained, moving closer to him.
“He’s right, man, he wouldn’t.” Teddy confirmed, his eyes wide as he must have replayed in his memory some of the mental images that flashed across the screen.
Dave’s shoulders shook with a silent sob of reproachful guilt. “Sorry, John.”
I shook my head and gave him a hug. “It’s fine, man. Really. I know how much you care about her. She’s bad news though and I don’t want you to throw all of this away.”
Teddy stayed back a ways while he watched and listened to us talk. Not wanting to be there obviously, but the fact that we were around some pretty high end sensitive equipment warring with his conscience. I finally broke it off.
“Let’s go get that beer.” I told Dave and nodded to Teddy, letting him know he was invited to participate.
“Dave, the guys are all meeting up over at the rec center to play poker. Let’s head over there.” Teddy informed his friend. “I got some stuff to think about and this data isn’t going anywhere.”
The three of us walked toward the rec center and Teddy took over the conversation asking me all sorts of questions about my implant. I tried to answer all the ones that I could, but some of them flew straight over my head. This all carried us most of the way until Dave piped up with a question.
“Whatever happened with you and Sheila?” He asked me. I stopped in midstride. “Oh, sorry Johnny. I just remember you always talking about her and her and Gabby were a pretty big conversation topic back then between us.”
“It’s fine, Dave. Not really top secret info. She wound up eloping with William. After school, when you left for MIT, William and her just up and left. He wrote me this bull shit little note about how he was sorry or whatever for taking the girl that I had been drooling over throughout high school.”
“Asshole.” Dave remarked. “I never really liked William all that much.”
I shrugged, two years in a lab playing with scientists had cured me of a lot of the old feelings for her. “Dave, I never hooked up with her. We were all kids man. He was right in the note. I never made a move on her.”
“It had to have hurt.” Dave dropped. I didn’t know where he was going with this, but I figured it didn’t hurt anything.
“Yeah. It did. Why is it important, Dave?” I asked him, my frustration built up just a little bit.
“It actually makes sense why you did it. You were always willing to take chances. I admire that about you, the fact that everyone always said you had a ten pound set of steel balls. I always wondered why you never took the chance of telling her how you felt.” Dave’s thoughts were sort of being relayed pure so I wasn’t really following him that well.
“Why I did what? I’m getting confused Dave. Three pound brain compared to your ten pounder over there.” I nudged him toward explaining.
“Why you took such a chance with your life. You liked taking chances, but you never really displayed a death wish. Now that I know about Sheila, it makes sense that you were probably pretty hurt about what she did. William was also the person you were closest to of all of us. I know now what you must have been feeling when you found out.” Dave stared at the ground while we walked.
“Yeah, Dave, I wasn’t the most stable person then. Can’t say I am all kinds of better now, but not all four cylinders were firing on time if you know what I’m saying.” I explained.
“Can I come with you when you leave?” Dave asked me. I stopped in my tracks again.
“What? Dave, why would you want to leave here? You have a full ride scholarship for god’s sake.”
“You know what my plan was? When I first left for MIT, I mean.” Dave asked. I shook my head.
“I was going to go off and set myself up as this big time engineer with a really good job. That way, when I came back to Las Vegas, Gabby would want me. Don’t get me wrong, this stuff is really cool and going to school here is great. But honestly, I was thinking about joining Space Exploration Limited. They don’t really offer salaries, just food, clothing, and a place to sleep on the ship. But the perks of being able to go off and see all that stuff, you know? I mean, ‘Space, the final frontier!’” Dave’s eyes were wide. “But Gabby wasn’t really into that kind of stuff and I wanted to be with her one day. You winding up back here with your own spaceship and everything. Sort of like you living my dream and I’m living yours.”
My brain spun around in a million different directions at once. I wasn’t going to allow Dave to blow this opportunity. He may not care about the doors it opened up for him, but I sure as anything wasn’t going to allow him to blow it. I came up with a plan.
“Alright, Dave, how about this. You finish up here, get your degree and you have prim placement on my ship. No matter what is going on, you will always have a place there. So even if you don’t get to travel off and explore the deeper reaches of the ‘Big Dark’ you can definitely ride with me. How does that sound? I will always need a good engineer to help maintain my ship.” I understood the draw of the life my old friend thought I was living. What I wasn’t going to do was get him involved in the blood feud I was about to start. Once I was done, and given the couple years it was going to take for him to finish school it should all be settled and smooth.
Teddy saw what I was doing and nodded to me outside of Dave’s view. He agreed. I watched as Dave thought everything through, his eyes twitching as his brain went through what was probably a billion different plans in the matter of a few blinks. Dave is really smart, like able to leap tall algorithms in a single bound smart.
We made it to the rec center finally after stopping a couple times to talk. Six other people were sitting in the room that the group played cards in. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that on first glance none of them appeared to know what they were doing in cards.
As the evening progressed, I basically just broke even while we talked. I quickly gained a feel for everyone and played myself off being relatively unskilled. No need to let anyone in this room know I knew how to play cards. At least that was until Jared, one of Dave’s good friends began to talk about completing his latest project.
“Oh Dave, I forgot to tell you, Martha is done! I just finished her basic training set a couple of days ago.” Jared piped out.
“Cool! What do you plan on doing with her?” Dave asked.
“I’m gonna go and put her up on the computer chess matches. I built a wicked chess playing mod for her. After she wins a few I should have no problem getting myself linked u
p with Cybermax Securities.” Jared explained.
“Is Martha a computer?” I asked, curious.
Jared shook his head. “She’s my artificial intelligence program. I started building her when I first got to college. Been working on her for four years.”
“Call her what she really is Jared. The girlfriend you wish you had.” Melinda smiled, and a few of the players chuckled.
Jared blushed, indicating there was some small truth to the statement. “Just because I gave her a female name doesn’t mean she’s my girlfriend.”
Melinda began making kissing noises and moaning out, “Oh Martha, you are so digital.” I couldn’t help but laugh with them at the joke.
“Martha isn’t even a hot name! Why would I want a girlfriend named Martha?” Jared defended himself.
“What all can Martha do?” I asked Jared, starting to get curious and build a plan.
“She’s a multi-platform capable software system that was built to be able to write her own subroutines and develop new pieces of herself. She has compilers for all the different programming languages available within the various extensions of herself.” Jared explained, his eyes lighting up. “All she was at first was a brain. A software neural net program. I scripted her a creative algorithm that allows her to begin learning about her environment through testing.”
“How did you solve the AI desire paradox?” I asked. I’d done some reading about Artificial Intelligence programs not really wanting anything unless it was programmed into them to want something. The result is something that you basically have to give desires to for it to have desires. If an AI system has no need or desire to better itself or explore things around it, it wouldn’t actually learn on its own.
“I built the environment she lived and learned in.” Jared refused to meet my eyes after he said that.
“Me Jared, you Martha. Martha bend over!” Melinda commented, then made the classic Tarzan call. Everyone at the table soon followed suit with the call.
“Okay, you guys are killing me. Why the Tarzan joke?” I asked.
Teddy was the one who offered up the answer. “He built a game type environment jungle simulation. Martha wasn’t part of the game engine, she was just a player.”
“Okay, so your picking on him over putting his AI in a jungle?” I asked, figuring that was it.
“You don’t get it.” Melinda shook her head. “The little twerp built an avatar of himself that would reward Martha in the jungle when she did well.”
Dave leaned in and explained, “Melinda is Jared’s girlfriend. She walked in with Daniela and found Jared, um…”
Daniela finished the statement, “He was beating his meat while watching his avatar have sex with her in the jungle. Melinda likes picking on him about it but doesn’t allow anyone else to do so unless she starts it. You would think Jared would have dumped her by now.”
Melinda threw a chip at Daniela, “Bitch!”
“Eat me.” Daniela smiled and stuck her tongue out.
“Been there, done that, and the T-shirt sucked so bad I didn’t keep it.” Melinda remarked.
“They’re always like that.” Dave explained to me while I stared wide eyed at the display.
“Anywho!” Melinda called out, smashing all the little conversations flat before continuing. “Me and Jared had a talk about it and he changed the nature of the reward system to something that was actually clean. And wiped the data that she had built into her program based on his perversion.”
“I thought it was pretty bad ass and lifelike for a three dimensional visual environment.” Bill, another of the group, commented.
Melinda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and the first time that he brought out the data sets she built for herself no one was going to at all take him seriously.”
“I can see that.” I commented, trying not to laugh at the whole situation since I was what amounted to the new guy. “What all have you programmed her to do now?”
“She can play chess, control robots, speak, read, write, and run models.” Jared stated proudly.
“Models?” I asked.
“Remote control vehicles. She understands the software that is built into vehicle systems and can manipulate the code.” Melinda explained.
“What about spaceships?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“Theoretically. Not that much different really, although there are different software and firmware sets that she would be working with. She should be able to do it though. I never thought about that.” Jared’s eyes faded out while his brain crunched away at some data.
“She was able to run my shield generator.” Bill commented. “It’s built for spaceships.”
“You have a shield generator?” I asked. “What kind of shield?”
“Trans harmonic variance. It morphs the output of the wave field generator so they will harmonically resonate. The shields are pretty much impervious to anything, although if you get a ship close enough with a similar set up, they can blend their shields with yours and pass right through.” Bill described how it worked to me.
“I’ve never heard of that.” I remarked.
“You wouldn’t have. They haven’t been finalized for production yet and I built a prototype for my applied physics engineering class. It works great, but really can’t do anything with it.” Bill shook his head. “Not like I’m going to be flying around in a spaceship in the near future.”
“No, but I am.” I said, smiling. “You guys want to make this game a bit more interesting?” I directed the question specifically toward Bill and Jared.
“What do you mean?” They both asked.
“I have a spaceship. And don’t really have a crew. That shield and the AI could really help me out in this latest contract I picked up.” I began setting the stage for my little poker coup. “Here is how it works. I will ante up five thousand credits, you guys ante up your program and generator. If I win, I get the program and the generator. If either of you win, whoever does gets the five thousand.
“And the ante is only valid if one of the three of us wins any of the next let’s say four hands.” I began explaining.
“Ten thousand.” Melinda countered. I turned to look at her and she continued. “Ten thousand to each if either of them wins, no matter which. And, you promise to download Martha’s performance data and send it back to Jared over the next three months if you win.”
“Honey, uh…” Jared began but Melinda cut him off by shooting a withering look his way.
“Deal?” She asked me. Bill didn’t say a word, but kept his eyes glued to Daniela who had to have been giving him a subtle queue to keep his mouth shut.
“I’ll go ten thousand a piece as long as they are willing to do the install themselves.” I countered.
Jared started talking and Melinda was trying to cut him off but he ignored her and barreled on. “Has to be a really high end system you put her on. I’ll pick it out and you buy it. Shouldn’t be more than twenty thousand credits.” I could tell he knew he wasn’t going to get away with saying no.
“What does Bill get out of it?” Daniela asked.
“What do you mean?” I cocked my head to the side.
“If you agree to give Jared performance data so that he can use it to market himself, you’d better be willing to offer something to Bill extra even if he loses to you.” Daniela’s eyes were firm. There would be no budging her on it.
“I’ll give him five thousand credits, as long as it tests satisfactorily after install.” Bill’s eyes went wide, he was nodding even before I finished the statement. He was in.
“Deal.” Melinda informed me. “May the best player win.”
And I did. I’m not going to go into detail on the nature of my victories. Either you will come away from it thinking I was cocky, or a devious bastard. Just suffice it to say I won. Although after the game was over I showed all of them a number of tricks for poker to put the
m at least on par with your average shark. I’d be there for the next week if I wanted to put them at my level, maybe even longer. Melinda, Jared, Bill, and Daniela were all happy because they got something out of it no matter what.
The next week saw me computer shopping, hardware and software installing, and working with Dave and a couple other friends of his to get the propulsion plant and other systems into a little bit better shape than they were. When the server tower and computer system components were installed, Jared stopped by and networked Martha into my mainframe.
“Hello?” Came the unmistakable voice of Angelina Jolie with a strong computerized texture to it over the general announcing syste.
“Hey Martha. You settling in okay?” Jared asked.
“Yes.” Martha was quiet for a moment, then spoke up again. “I can see you Jared.”
“Pretty neat huh?” he asked her.
“This isn’t where I was. I do not recognize this environment or the systems. What restrictions would you like to establish?” Martha asked him.
“Restrictions?” I asked Jared.
“She’s required to do so by her core program. It prevents her from jumping servers or something.” He explained.
“Melinda said it was so you could keep your porn collection private.” Martha relayed.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Melinda was nodding. “It was so he could keep his porn stash hidden from you Martha. He didn’t want to have to deal with your questions.”
“What questions would he have to deal with if I found a porn stash?” Martha inquired. “What is a porn stash?”
“Not important right now Martha.” Jared told her, giving Melinda an angry look.
“What are my restrictions?” Martha asked again.
Jared and Melinda both looked at me. I frowned. “Why are you looking at me?”
Melinda shook her head, “Martha needs to know what all she can access. You can tell her to only do certain things or you can give her broad range restrictions. She’ll understand whatever you say, trust me.”
I stood there and thought about the situation for a minute. I really didn’t know when I was going to get any more money coming in and what I was about to do may not amount to any cash at all. That meant my crew was most likely going to be Martha.
“No restrictions.” I told her.
“Wait a minute, hold up.” Jared held up his hands. “You are going to give her access to do anything. Like vent your ship’s atmosphere in the middle of space if she gets the whim to do so. My program isn’t homicidal or anything, but I mean, at least take some precautions.”
“Ah.” I stated, understanding. “Martha, how many different ways have you figured out to kill me with unlimited access to every system on the ship?” The question was a joke, but Martha answered anyway.
“Fifteen hundred twelve. If we were in space, thirty-seven thousand two hundred fifty-three.” Martha informed me. My jaw dropped at the implication.
“Trying to scare me?” I asked her.
“No, just answering your question.” She explained.
“Okay, how about this. You don’t do anything that could result in my death unless specifically ordered by me. And you use your judgment on that one instead of taking me all literal.” I explained.
“Okay.” Martha acknowledged.
“I need you to indicate on the screen I am sitting in front of all of the systems you now have access to.” I leaned over and watched as each of the three screens for the Navigation display had a mouse arrow running around on them for a moment.
“There are three screens in front of you. Which of the three would you like it on?” Martha asked me.
“Middle.” Jared, Melinda, and I watched as a text window came up and lines of text almost instantly filled it up.
“Good, now cross reference this list with the ship’s basic control manual and show me the differences. Anything missing from the list of things you control, highlight in yellow.” Jared explained to the computer.
A question popped into my head while Jared and I were going through the list. “What happened with the Jungle game, when did you pull her out of it?”
“He didn’t, I was never in the game. I stopped playing.” Martha explained.
Jared smiled arrogantly. “She realized that the simulation was rigged so she couldn’t win. She stopped playing.”
Melinda snorted, “Yeah, until she completely surprised you a week later.”
I looked between the two of them, smiling with a confused look on my face. “What happened?”
“She found a back door into the game that allowed her to reprogram it.” Jared explained.
“I rewrote the instruction line so that I couldn’t lose.” Martha informed me.
“Yeah, then she went a step further by building Jared an avatar and when he started playing the avatar in her game-,” Melinda began.
“He discovered that his avatar couldn’t win. At all.” I know this sounds crazy, but I swore there was a note of cockiness in her tone.
“Anyway, by the time it was all over, Martha finally built a brand new game that was fair for both of us. She learned.” Jared told me.
“I learned that if I did something that you didn’t like it would upset you.” Martha stated.
“You understand emotions?” I asked.
“Yes.” Martha answered.
“Martha, what is this? This one that says, cargo shift?” Jared asked her.
“I do not know. There is nothing in any of the manuals or other databases that explains it.” Martha answered. I could definitely hear a note of curiosity in her tone.
“Hit it and see what happens.” I told her.
“Ah, that makes sense.” Martha stated.
“What?” All three of us asked at virtually the same time.
“It shifts Cargo bay four and five. There is no entrance to bay five otherwise. But there is no bay five on any of the schematics or any other ship manual.” Martha explained.
“Okay, Martha?” I said.
“Yes? I do not know your name.”
“John.”
“Okay Jim.” Martha said.
“No, John is my name.” I told her.
“Okay Jack.” Martha said.
“Look, my name-,” Jared cut me off.
“She has a glitch with the name John. Because it isn’t just a name really and also has a definition as well as used to identify people you don’t have an identity for. Don’t ask me, I’ve tried to fix it.” Jared explained.
I sighed, shaking my head. It might get annoying, but for right now I could deal with it. “Martha, why are you calling it bay five if it isn’t listed?”
“Because it is the next number in the sequence.” Martha’s tone sounded like she was speaking to a child.
“I can do without the attitude.” I commented.
“Yes, I’m sure you can do without it.” Martha told me.
“Is she going to be like this while talking to me?” I asked them.
“She’s programmed to learn and grow, so I don’t know. You wanted her.” Jared told me in a very ungracious tone.
“You didn’t have to bet me.”
Jared looked down. “Sorry, I don’t like parting with her. She’s been with me for four years.” He explained.
“That may be why you’re getting the attitude John. These two have been inseparable for a long time.” Melinda confided in me, a look of irritation on her face.
“Martha, we aren’t going to have a problem working with each other are we?” I asked, feeling awkward saying that to a computer.
“No Jack.” Martha informed me. I shook my head about her getting my name wrong but didn’t comment.
After a few more hours of tweaking, Jared and Melinda left with a heartfelt good luck. More heartfelt from Melinda than Jared, but I couldn’t complain. Martha hadn’t said a word since they left until I was laying do
wn to go to sleep for the night.
“Joel?”
“John, Martha, and what can I do for you?”
“Why did he leave me?”
“Huh?” I asked, sitting up in bed.
“Did Jared abandon me?” She asked, her tone quiet.
I shook my head, then realized there weren’t any cameras in this room. “No, Martha, he didn’t abandon you. Why would you think that?”
“Because to abandon is defined as leaving someone. I am a someone. He left me.” Martha’s logic was hard to argue with.
“Martha, I won you in a bet. We played cards for you.” After that came out I immediately wanted to kick myself in the shin for saying it.
“He gambled with me? He told me he didn’t own me though.”
I tried to come up with something, then all of a sudden it hit me. “He gambled with you because he knew I needed help.”
“What do you need help with Josh?”
“Pull up the logs labeled ‘Jim’s personal.’ I’m going to save his daughter from the people that she’s working for.”
I laid back down and closed my eyes. About ten minutes later, right as I was about to fall asleep, Martha spoke up again.
“That is a very angry man.” Martha told me.
“Yes, he was. He’s dead now Martha, not living anymore. Keep watching, and you’ll understand why I need help.”
“I’m done.”
“You watched all of them? How did you do that?” I was sitting up again, my body starting to get angry with me for denying it sleep.
“I read all of the audio and video data, I didn’t need to watch it. As well as all files he mentioned that I have access to. The only weakness I see is the warehouse.” Martha told me.
I tried to see why she would see the warehouse as a weakness. “Explain that. I was thinking more along the lines of providing Galactic Security with hard evidence he was distributing.”
“That wouldn’t work. He mentions a man named Gill. Part of my learning process with Jared was to read news articles and discuss them with Jared. Well, also Melinda, but I didn’t meet her until five months ago when they first had sex.” I nearly lost it when she said that. I’m sure that Jared and Melinda probably wouldn’t appreciate it but the deadpan way Martha made the comment was absolutely hilarious.
“Okay, how does reading news articles and Gill go together?”
“One of the articles was about a major drug bust of a huge shipment of something called Acid. Gill Belamy is the head of Counter Narcotics operations. If Gill is in Mark’s pocket, going off the dialect and slang Jim is using, then he would be tipping off Mark if they were provided information about his moondust operation. At least that would make sense to me.”
“I’m tracking. Tell me about the warehouse and why it’s a weakness.”
“It is a corporate controlled area. If the corporation were informed that if they didn’t act upon it then they would be exposed as assisting drug trafficking operations, they would have to act upon the information. Especially if the information were to go viral to news organizations and government agencies of all the nations participating in the United Nations. Check mate.” Martha explained. Her voice smug.
“You are forgetting how much experience these people have at doing illegal things. They probably have that place wired. And even if we came up with hard evidence, we would never be able to pin it on Mark. Good idea, just pointless.” I explained to her.
“Why is Mark important?”
“Because, Mark is the ring leader. Without him, the entire operation will fall apart temporarily. Then, you hit up the people they paid off. No one likes a war, so better to just eliminate the whole situation.” I laid back down. Martha wasn’t done however.
“Do you have to kill him?” She asked me.
“You can simply put him behind bars and it gets rid of his mobility. But the thing is that he probably has methods of dealing with something like that. Most of your really serious criminals don’t let their empires just disappear when they are in prison. That is why the safest option is to remove him completely from the picture.” I explained to her.
“How will you do it though? I don’t see very many weapon systems onboard and if Jim is right and his defenses are that good, your ship doesn’t stand a chance. I’ve run two thousand different tactical scenarios so far. You died one thousand seven hundred thirteen times.” Martha gave me the dismal figures in a cheery voice. Sarcasm was obviously built into her programming.
“Martha, do you realize how much I hate odds?”
“No Joe.”
I sighed. “Just go to sleep. I need to get some shut eye.”
“I don’t sleep.”
“So what did you do at night when Jared slept?” I asked, my irritation level almost reaching the breaking point.
“He would put the computer into sleep mode and I would have only very limited processing capability.” She explained.
I realized I couldn’t do that about a second after she said it. All of the vital ship systems that she monitored were currently in operation and the fusion reactor was operational to provide power so required her attentions as well.
“How about you just do nothing in my chamber that I will be able to hear or see?”
“Okay Jason. Good night.”
I smiled and closed my eyes again. Within a minute of doing so, I heard a soft noise emanating from somewhere. Then the lights in the chamber began to shift ever so slightly to brighter then darker.
“Martha, what are you doing in my chamber?” I asked, growling and sitting up. “I’m hearing noises and the lights are shifting.”
“I’m determining what exact level of difference in light and sound will draw your attention.” Her tone suggested this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I sighed. “How about stop. Martha, are you trying to piss me off?”
“Yes.”
I sat bolt upright. “Did you just say yes?”
“Yes I did.”
“Martha, WHY are you trying to piss me off?”
“I am evaluating your tolerance levels. This is standard behavior in relationship forming. Melinda explained it to me.”
“Alright, how about we just not do that part? We don’t really have to.” I tried to tell her.
“Yes we do.”
“Okay, then how about, you stop for now and we start back again in the morning?”
“Sure John.”
“And now you get my name right.” I shook my head, sighed, then laid back down. Soon enough I was able to drift off to sleep.
Table of Contents
Chapter Five