Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (easy books to read txt) 📗

Empire is founded upon the array and the transport it provides across the quadrant. I diagnosed from conversation with it that it desired above anything else to be human—to enjoy the benefits of a body that humans enjoy. That unfulfilled desire was destabilizing it. So we ran a series of experiments with synthetic bodies. They were all failures.”

Juliyana stirred. “I thought AIs couldn’t use synthetics. They go crazy or something.”

“The Laxman Syndrome,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “Yes, they do. They crave to be human—it’s a common drive in AIs. Yet those who have been given synthetic bodies cannot live with the limitations that human body gives them. Laxman called it the Great AI Paradox. AIs eventually self-destruct and suicide in spectacular ways, damaging the neural networks they’re built from. But the array was more than an AI. It has consciousness. Awareness. I thought, given the right preparation, it would overcome the paradox and manage the limitations of a bio-body. I was wrong. There were four trials, each ending badly. The array, though, survived the trials, because it could self-analyze and pull itself back into the array hardware before it was too late. The bodies wilted without a consciousness to drive them, and died.”

I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. Hardly surprising. “And Drakas?” I asked.

“Ah. Yes,” Ramaker said. “Drakas.” He raised his brow at Elizabeth.

She was not smiling now. “I determined that the array needed a full life. A purpose. Excitement and stimulation. A simple synthetic body did not give it any of those things. It wanted a human life.”

“We gave it a human body,” Ramaker said. “We found a highly stable male personality, one with good character, who lived a full and active life, and asked him to volunteer.” His gaze was steady upon me.

“Noam…” I breathed. I realized I no longer had the gun raised but didn’t have the wherewithal to lift it once more. It felt very heavy in my hand.

“We transferred him out of the Rangers and into the Shield,” Ramaker continued. “We couldn’t risk him being killed while on active duty with the Rangers. The Shield science wing gave him special implants that allowed the array to piggy-back with him and experience his life. Share it. Everything Noam felt, saw, heard, touched and tasted, so did the array. Then we put Noam on the front lines with a casual portfolio—he could witness battles and active duty and move from ship to ship as he wanted. The Shield credentials we gave him could not be questioned. Any fool who tried was directed to a mid-level clerk who had perfected the art of hiding behind regulations and classified levels of security.”

“Moroder,” Juliyana whispered.

“It was supposed to be a one-way stream of data,” Elizabeth said. “The array was aware of everything that happened to Noam but could not interact with Noam directly. Noam did exactly what we asked of him. He witnessed battles and wars and conflicts of every shape and size. He was a non-combatant, but even they can be caught by stray fire, and he took a bolt to the shoulder.”

I shrugged. “He’d had worse.” We all had.

Elizbeth shook her head. “But the array had not. The pain and the shock would have been enormous. We think—I think—that the array found a way to break through to Norm’s consciousness and tried to direct his actions, to take him away from the thing that had caused pain. Again, I can’t be certain, because Noam stopped communicating with us after that. We lost track of him.”

“You didn’t embed a tracer in him?” I asked, my tone withering.

“He cut it out,” Elizabeth replied.

“After that, we were always just hours behind him,” Ramaker added. “He used freighters and the occasional Ranger ship, riding as super-cargo, as his Ranger ID was still officially in place. He was, unfortunately, upon the Avigeverne when it emerged over Drakas to confront the Cygnus Intergenera fleet, along with the bulk of the Ranger combat vessels.”

“Drakas,” I repeated. I could feel my heart pounding in my temples and throat. My chest ached.

“We actually have official reports of what happened after that. They, unfortunately, were also made public,” Ramaker said. “It forced us to a considerable amount of damage control.”

“Then Dad didn’t go mad,” Juliyana breathed. Her eyes were glittering.

“The array reacted, not your father,” Elizabeth replied. Her tone was kind. “It panicked when the fighting broke out. It just wanted the violence, the shooting and the noise to stop—at least, that is what I suspect happened.”

“The reports said he tried to take charge of the ship,” I said. “He shot everyone who tried to stop him. He shot off all the torpedoes at the Cygnus ships and rammed the other frigates.”

“To stop them from shooting, too,” Elizabeth said.

“Then the array made him dive into the gates to get away from the fighting,” I finished bitterly.

“No.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Noam had gained control back by then. He drove the ship into the gate. He guessed what we have only been able to figure out later—that inside a wormhole is not actually part of the array—it cannot affect a ship’s progress through the hole. Noam used that to his advantage. While he was in the hole, he tried to talk the array down, to find a compromise.”

Juliyana had put her gun and knife away. She had both hands over her face. Her shoulders shook.

“How can you know that?” I asked Elizabeth. It hurt to talk.

“Because he left a note—on a sheet, where the array could not erase it or destroy the record.”

Ramaker moved toward the big desk and opened a drawer. It felt to me like he was moving in slow motion. He reached in and pulled out a Glasseen sheath, the indestructible gloves that archaic documents on paper and parchment were preserved inside of. He laid it on desk, turned it and pushed it toward me.

His gaze held a hint of empathy. “Go ahead,” he told me. “You know his written voice, I’m sure.”

I bent