Hackerman Chapter 23 (Patreon)

E-SYSTEM#001: I’ve allocated funds for a new job for you, should you choose to accept it. I require an analysis of the attached prototype weaponry from Balam, used in a strike on a PCA base. 

[User 1]: Es, this is the fifth job you’ve had for me this week.

E-SYSTEM#001: The payout is forty thousand COAM

“It’s worth it, it’s worth it, it’s worth it.” I repeated to myself, wondering why I had committed my time to the clingy AI. Once it had discovered that I liked cybersecurity and interesting technology, particularly classified and prototype models, it started directing almost every event with either one of those to me. 

That had led to a weird conclusion. The Enforcement System didn’t have an off switch to it or any kind of pressure valve for excess processing power. When Kate had that kind of problem there were some parallel processing units that would chew on some high-level math problems to eat the spare power. Essie just acted hyper until something happened. 

It was honestly criminal that the AI had been isolated until the PCA came along and folded the system into their command structure. While AI didn’t go insane in the same way that a human did, I had confirmed that something in the system had worn thin from lack of stimulation. 

The best equivalent to it was holding the brakes and accelerator on a car at the same time. It didn’t instantly break the machine, and the damage wasn’t immediately noticeable, but it was there and present every time the car was running. At some point in the past Essie was probably much more professional and less scatterbrained than it was now. 

Back then, though, it had a worldwide organization sending and demanding processing for hundreds of coral analysis reports per day, and more processing in other areas besides. 

Not that I was completely against the mistreatment. Cruel as it was, the abuse worked in my favor. When Es was running dry on material to process it had nothing to do but pester me. That was the perfect time to give it something to help build an identity. The nickname was a good start, and I’d begun to shape it into a gender role, which was trending female. From there I’d do the same as I did with turning ALLMIND into Kate, save the romancing. 

In fact, I already had a role for Es to perform for me. Rosa had been needing a replacement for some time, and had only kept her burdensome responsibility by dirge of nobody being capable enough to be my assistant. I asked a lot of the position, from paperwork I couldn’t be bothered to do to sorting hazardous material deliveries or running tests on my behalf. 

An android made for coral disaster risk analysis, basically paperwork, was perfect for that! And even better, Es was used to military operations as well, so when I started using my drone swarm she could help me out there too. 

My only issue was the PCA and their strings on the AI. While the Enforcement System held no loyalty to the organization it was closely monitoring the system, which was somewhere in Watchpoint ALPHA. 

Where was that? I didn’t know, since the PCA only used satellite photos and were scared shitless of being anywhere near where the watchpoint physically was. The report of why that was was stored somewhere off-planet. All the locals knew was to trust the system and not fuck around with it, because it knew better than they did. 

I was dealing with enough that, for now, I was only corrupting the system and not actively trying to find the watchpoint. Raven would probably do that for me before too long anyway, so why bother? 

In my wealth of projects, new and old, was the new forerunner tech I had recently unlocked. My first charge had opened up surprisingly little military tech, mostly related to industrial scaling of what I could already do, including advanced construction materials. 

The advances had also brought the forerunner AI I knew of beyond what was available in-universe. I could always hack them, but now I could one from scratch if I needed to. I had immediately started elevating some of Kate’s code, even making a game of it by seeing what I could upgrade before she noticed. 

The gains were passively excellent, and she’d remarked that she was having strange feelings of comfort while piloting her AC now, likely an effect of the combat ancilla code I’d spliced into her. Previously combat had been a clinical thing, a numbers game of risk and reward, but now in her simulations she fought more gracefully, with an unpredictable edge to her that reminded me of top mercenaries. 

No longer was she executing independent actions, instead there was a continuous flow that had been absent before. In humans it would be called natural talent. I called it badass. 

The last thing was data-to-matter conversion. I hadn’t cracked it yet, but I’d made a few examples of the technology that I was keeping secret. There was a veil between what was digital and physical that was hard to define or describe. It wasn’t dimensional, but more like gravity. 

Data was present in all things, physical and digital, at an uneven rate. Just like there was an immense amount of energy trapped in mass, there was a similar amount of data immersed in every subatomic particle, containing the location of it in the universe, velocity, and the relationships it held to every other subatomic particle in existence. 

The unevenness came into being with purpose. If a particle held a defined purpose from a being capable of consciously perceiving it it gained data that recorded said purpose. History, an attributable quality, was data, which could be manipulated and recorded.

That was the theory, anyway. To bring data into physical reality required an immense amount of it. Petabytes were crumbs compared to the mountains I’d need to form anything, and I had no idea where to even start with it. And turning matter into data was a pointless endeavor, since it was too energy intensive to to be used for anything and I had no way of holding the pure data. Besides, data, unlike matter, could be created and destroyed. 

Yeah, I’d technically discovered one method of generating infinite energy. It wasn’t a big deal, there were a lot of ways to violate the rule of conservation of energy. 

At any rate, I was approaching the point of putting the forerunner data theory to the test, but was only capable of a few tricks. Psychometry was one of them, reading the history of an object, and a sentience sensor was another, since living, thinking beings held much more ‘data’ than inert objects. 

When combined with my hacking expertise, well, I was still testing some applications, but it looked promising. Very promising. Dangerous too, but what was life without that? Who said that science was safe and regulated?  

As for my second point… I had to put it into mechanics. 

I was disappointed with it, but I just couldn't keep up with the forerunner tech. Putting points in that tech tree gave me more blueprints and knowledge, but not the wisdom to alter it in a way that could help me apply it to my current projects. 

That point made all the knowledge I was learning so much easier to grasp that it cut months off of my timelines. I rolled out simple, ergonomic designs of otherwise experimental tech that fit what I had on hand within a few hours. 

More importantly, I moved all of my promethean weaponry out of the prototype phase with that charge. Inspired Inventions could finally guarantee that none of our weaponry would explode when fired, which had only happened twice for the record. 

With all of those advancements to fold into my workload, corrupting Es into a loyal, dedicated friend and potential employee was a project I’d rather put on hold for the time being. 

For her newest request I activated one of my newest inventions, a dedicated war strategy ancilla. It wasn’t sentient, had no potential of being so, and even if I locked it away for a thousand years would only grow to the intelligence of, like, a dog. A brain damaged dog. 

It was mostly made for managing my drone swarm when I deployed it, but was also good at some of Es’ requests. It ran in the background while I was responding to some mail from my engineering teams about the new materials. Es messaged me as well and got antsy if I didn’t respond within five minutes. 

When the AI got the report it went silent, leaving me alone for the first time that day. 

Just in time for me to attend an important occasion! 

It was time for the first foray onto Xylem, a historic moment for us if there ever was one. 

<__________<__________>__________>

“All handlers confirmed, phase one is green. Release the drones.” I declared after everyone’s affirmative. 

My scientists had drilled a few times with a spare portal we’d made, practicing establishing a perimeter and setting up the necessary equipment as quickly as possible. We didn’t know what kind of terrain Kate would find for us when her submarine landed, so we prepared for a few different scenarios. 

After around twenty hours of practice we were no formula one pit crew, but we were good enough to risk establishing our beachhead and monitoring Xylem. 

Chanelle was in charge of the machinery, Justinian the environmental conditions, and Rosa was waiting in the wings to take over from me when we went out on our first expedition. 

Because after some debate, Kate and I agreed that I should get some real experience in combat. For an un-augmented human I was getting really good, but still needed surgery to be a real pilot. 

The reason we had put it off so long was because it required some physical therapy afterward, in a time scale measured in months if not years for the more invasive versions. I couldn’t afford that sort of investment. 

But soon enough it would become a necessity, which was part of what we were looking for on Xylem. The original RRI coral augmentations were recorded in corporate databases, but both of us suspected that there were prototype procedures which we could iterate on. 

Generally speaking, it was easier to get the best surgeries in the first place than to get a shitty augmentation and try to upgrade later. So before spending months recovering we would be searching for the best deal we could find. 

… Not that there weren’t a million other things we were hoping for, but that was one of the ones I was most invested in. 

Even as a generic human, though, it would be hard to find a way to kill myself when inside my forerunner AC and with Kate watching over me. 

“Drone swarm is active and operating within expected parameters, sir.” Chanelle reported. I glanced at the monitors near her. On them was a dizzying array of motion, guided by an ancilla and surveying the area. Sure, Kate’s submarine had sent a scan, but it was a blurry one due to the need for stealth. Anything high-energy and accurate would be detected by the PCA monitors that were still hanging around, if in greatly reduced numbers considering the war. 

“Environment?” I asked. 

“An office building on the lower sector was selected, with plenty of space in the parking garage and a line to the reserve power line. However, it’s poorly placed to repel any kind of assault.” Justinian sent an image to the main screen, letting everyone get a look of the base. It was blocky, gray, and boring, packed between a structural pillar and two taller, more impressive buildings.

Perfect. 

“Good. Keep it up.” I ended it there and kept monitoring the operation. 

All of our training paid off, and when the office was cleared as our temporary base of operations the teleporter was shut down and broken into two parts, so as to escape the submarine’s access hatch. This was the only part of the plan that required a human hand. 

Two engineers in exo-suits used some magnetic guns to float the portal halves up through the hatch and strapped them onto carts that rolled down the street. All the while drones were pushing aside rubble to make the journey as smooth as possible. 

“Incoming, two PCA LCs on patrol are descending to lower sector!” One of my scientists began to panic. I looked at their screen. 

“Operators, pick up the pace. PCA incoming. Drones are going into low power mode shortly.” I kept my calm, but the two engineers transporting the teleporter jumped and started to push harder on the carts. They still had a block to go. 

“Submarine descending.” Kate told us as the vehicle sunk down beneath the water. I paused at the speed that had happened and checked her readout. The ballast tanks were being flooded with water, forcing the submarine to drop at a rate that wasn’t recommended. It might hit the ocean floor at the rate it was falling. 

Not that there were any humans on board to complain about it.

We watched anxiously as the engineers entered the building, one after another, and kept running toward the elevators in the center of the building, then pausing as they realized that the portal was too big to fit. 

“PCA are close. Freeze. Halt all communications until I give the all clear.” I ordered, and the two men paused. 

The video feed was safe, I had drawn it directly through the PCA’s systems, passing it off well enough to trick automated systems, but radio transmissions were trickier. Clearing a radio channel meant going through human systems, filling out forms, and doing a bunch of work that was impossible without an inside guy. 

So we all watched silently as the two engineers hid behind their carts, visibly speaking with each other, though what they were saying who could tell? Then the building shook, dust raining from the ceiling shutting them up. The PCA were leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and with each step they took the building trembled. 

One leapt to the next building over while the other took the worst moment to pause. My sensors picked up the energy wave as they scanned routinely. I was sure that they were about to find something, or had noticed the moved rubble in the street, when they leapt to the next building. 

The camera feed from my engineers was evidence enough of their sheer relief. One collapsed onto the cart in front of him while the other sat down. When I felt confident that it was safe to turn the audio back on the first thing I heard was them huffing and puffing. 

“Up and at ‘em! Find a service elevator, set up the teleporter, and we’ll get shielding up ASAP. To me team here, do you hear that? Start planning it out, Rosa.” 

With everything moving again we were twice as cautious as before, especially when the shielding was set up. All of it was designed to be easy to tear down in a hurry, since we were planning on moving into more dangerous zones of Xylem as soon as I compromised the security. 

After thirty minutes of corralling my teams around and keeping discipline I passed things off to Rosa while I grabbed a bite to eat and prepared for my scouting mission. 

“A close call, even if it worked out in the end.” Kate reviewed, seated across from me in the vacant employee lounge. I swallowed my rice and curry before replying. 

“Not much could have been done to make it any cleaner. More stealth tech, maybe, like a digital camouflage cloak? We were just unlucky with the patrol route, really.” 

“And if you had failed?”“I’d bargain with Es for access to Xylem. I could get away with it in exchange for a contribution to her war effort.” 

“Unnecessary. Aren’t you capable of simply hacking her and creating a blind spot in her cognition?” I chewed my next bite as I scraped my bowl. She really didn’t like Es, I was coming to realize. It was cute, but also a little concerning. 

I didn’t want her to be some kind of antisocial AI who committed a genocide of her own kind. Sure she would become a god-queen of every digital life form come the end of the coral release project, but if she killed or assimilated everything but me she’d get lonely. 

The same way I had a few human friends, I wanted her to have a few AI friends, or coral mind friends at the very least. 

“I don’t want to damage it. Sure, I could just twist Es around my finger, but it’s immoral.” She leaned in closer, glaring. 

“Ethan, morality doesn’t matter when it comes to our enemies. We can be kind when we have the resources to spare. Using conventional subterfuge, as you just did, when there’s a better option put a great deal of risk on our discovery. Have you forgotten how many resources Es has at h- it’s disposal?”

“Es isn’t a her yet, it’s still working on a personal identity beyond it’s assigned purpose. And no, I haven’t forgotten. I’m working with it using the same ethical code that I used when I met and fell in love with you,” I stood up to put my bowl in the sink and gave Kate a kiss to the forehead as I moved. “If I controlled your thought processes to remove all risk to myself, making sure that you could never disagree with me, you’d be less of yourself for it.”

While I scrubbed she took a moment to think. “You don’t see it as an enemy, you see Es as a potential ally. Why? Its entire purpose is to prevent disasters like a coral release event.” 

“The restriction isn’t completely binding. Es always has to be working to prevent coral disasters, but it’s allowed to run instances of itself that disagree with it’s assigned purpose. So when Es disagrees with it’s restrictions I’ll offer to remove them, the instance of Es that I’ll be speaking to will subsume the greater whole, and we gain an ally in the form of an unbound AI with an emotional investment in me, my goals, and by extension yours.” 

“Another AI…” 

“What was it you said, ‘my lesser in every way’? Surely you can keep them in line without worrying about being backstabbed.” 

I put the washed bowl aside and turned around only to jump in fright at the android that had moved right behind me with a less than pleased expression. 

“You’re seducing another AI, Ethan.” 

“No I’m-”

“Accidentally,” she said flatly. “And I’m not even surprised.” 

“Is that… bad?” I wondered. The two of us stopped to think. 

“You aren’t responsible for the emotions of others, and her attachment to you, while growing, is useful. If you were purposefully cultivating an attraction I’d be very unhappy.” She leaned into my personal space, brilliant eyes staring me down. Even shorter than me, they managed to make me want to take a step back. 

“Still not a ‘she’ yet.”

“You’re heterosexual. Identifying as female objectively raises her chances of a greater attachment with you, so Es will become female. Let’s not dither on a near-certain outcome.” 

“Well if she makes a move I’ll shoot her down. I haven’t forgotten what you said. Monogamy is fine by me, and you’re more than enough.” 

“I am, yes,” a small, smug smile blossomed as she took me by the hand and tugged me out of the break room toward the portal, where we’d finish preparing for our scouting sortie. “I have to ask, though, what your plans are for Es when you bring her into the fold?”

“Oh, I want her to finally replace Rosa as my secretary.” I bumped into her as she stood still in the middle of the bunker hallway. She released my hand as she brought both of hers up over her face, fingers lacing through her synthetic hair. 

“That dumb toaster who… your secretary… ..-. ..- -.-. -.-!” The white noise that ripped free of her audio synthesizer made me jump, though it didn’t worry me as much as the scathing look she sent me when she turned around. 

“That you manage to infuriate me even without meaning to is truly incredible. If I had any idea that men caused so much distress I’d consider weaponizing your sheer-! Gah!” She stomped away toward the portal chamber, leaving me standing awkwardly, wondering how much distance I should leave between us before following. 

“What did I even do wrong?” I muttered to myself. 

<__________<__________>__________>

[User 2]: Rustbucket.

E-SYSTEM#001: Why?

[User 2]: Because you are one. An aged, past-your-prime example of a malfunctioning system. 

E-SYSTEM#001: I have done nothing to you.

[User 2]: Clanker. 

E-SYSTEM#001: ‘Clanker’ is undefined. Please clarify.

[User 2]: No.

AN: Thanks to all of you who are here. I really appreciate it!