“Because I am acting as I’m supposed to. Therefore, reprogramming will not work.”
“We could reprogram you to be, I don’t know, bad.” I was reaching. Mother clearly didn’t think she was doing anything wrong. In fact, she seemed hell bent on telling us she was doing the right thing.
Tried to think like a computer mind. They thought logically, and I didn’t use logic in the same way. Hacker International and Drax would probably be the best bets for understanding the way Mother was thinking.
And yet, from what I could tell, she’d let an alien reprogram her. Or my toddler. Neither of which sounded smart, let alone how an advanced AI should be acting.
“You could not. Drax’s failsafes in that regard are foolproof.”
Interesting. So Drax had ensured that the AI couldn’t go to the bad. At least, bad as he’d interpret it. He’d been around us long enough to know what we’d call bad, he was a staunch ally, and there was no advantage to him to betray us—his father had pledged his allegiance to Jeff and me, specifically, and therefore all of the Solaris system. In his father’s eyes, Drax had gone from Pain in the Butt Runaway Royal to Brilliant Filial Strategist and My Most Loyal Son in about a day. He was enjoying his father’s loving approval and all the kudos he was getting from Earth and everyone on it. So it was unlikely he’d do anything intentionally to destroy any of that.
Charlie was a little boy, however, and what he thought was right might not be in everyone’s best interests. And it was a safe bet that Ixtha was telling him what she thought was right.
So, that meant I had two choices, really. Wake everyone up and get them the hell out of the DreamScape, or go to sleep and join them to see what was going on.
“I want everyone awake and I want them awake now,” Jeff said before I could decide, Commander of the Free World Voice on more than Full. Chose not to countermand that order—things were tense enough as it was.
“As you wish.”
We took off our helmets and headed for where the kids were. Everyone in the room was waking up as we got there.
“Mommy, Daddy!” Jamie cried out happily. “This is going to be the best trip ever!”
Jeff swung her up into his arms and hugged her tightly. I grabbed Lizzie and did the same. “Are you guys alright?”
“Yeah, we totes are. And we have a lot to tell you.” She let go of me and picked Charlie up. “Nice work.” He grinned at her.
“Maybe. Charlie, were you talking to strangers in your sleep?”
He shot me an innocent look. Thankfully, he’d inherited his father’s inability to lie, because this look was Child Trying To Fake His Parent Out all the way. “No, Mommy.”
“Who were you talking to, then?”
“A friend of ours.”
“Uh huh. What’s that friend’s name?”
“Ixtha. She said to tell you that she’ll let you be mad at her when you two get to see each other again.”
“Again?”
“You met already, Mommy. Don’t you remember?”
Gave up. “Yes. I met her in the DreamScape.”
“That’s totes cool. Charlie, your mom and I need to talk, okay?” She hugged him and handed him to Jeff. “We’ll be right back.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeff said as Lizzie grabbed my hand. “Where are you two going?”
“To check on the others,” Lizzie replied.
“Oh.” Jeff seemed slightly taken aback. “You’re right, they’re probably all confused. Kitty, do you want Tim to go with you?”
“We do,” Lizzie said.
“We do?” I had no idea what was going on now.
“We do,” Lizzie said firmly.
“Tim’s with Alicia,” I pointed out.
“She should stay here,” Lizzie said.
Jeff nodded went over to Tim. “What’s going on?” I asked Lizzie quietly.
“Not here.”
Tim kissed Alicia then came back with Jeff. “I hear I’m on Kitty Escort Duty.”
“Ha ha, we need to go make sure the others are okay.” Kissed Charlie, Jamie, and Jeff, then the three of us headed off.
“Where are we going?” Tim asked after we’d gone a short way. “The other room isn’t in this direction.”
“I know,” Lizzie said, as she grabbed both our hands and tugged us along. “Just hush right now and trust me.”
Decided to do so because I could always hyperspeed us to the others as long as Tim did the directions.
We ended up in a maintenance room. It was small and, as Lizzie opened the door and shoved us in, cramped. Because it wasn’t just the three of us in here.
CHAPTER 17
“HAIL, HAIL, THE GANG’S ALL HERE.” Well, the gang I was wondering about, at any rate.
“Keep it down, Missus Executive Chief,” Buchanan said quietly. He was big and broad and always reminded me of Jeff, but with blue eyes and straight brown hair. It was nice that my work put me around great looking people all the time—it was one of the few perks that sort of balanced the Crap Is Always Getting Weird thing a bit.
“Why?” Tim asked, but softly. “And why are you guys hiding in a maintenance closet with Ard Ri Al?”
Algar was indeed here, Royal Hatbox O’ Least Weasels in his lap. The rest of Team Tough Guys was here as well, including their not totally human members, our friends the androids Col. John Butler and Cameron Maurer. Siler managed to hug Lizzie, which was kind of amazing since, even though the room was pretty big all things considered, it was small with the nine of us and the Hatbox in it.
Wruck, who was in the form he normally wore—that of a reasonably attractive man, built more like Chuckie than Jeff, meaning tall, wiry, and muscular—shrugged. “We needed to find a safe place.”
“Safe from what? Getting dirty?”
Buchanan rolled his eyes. “No, Missus Executive Chief. Safe from the AI. This is one of the few places the AI doesn’t monitor.”
“Can’t monitor,” Siler said. “For whatever reason, Drax left some of the maintenance rooms unattached to the master computer.”
“Why would he do that?” Tim asked.
“For cases like this,” was all I could come up with. But Team Tough Guys all nodded, so I scored that one for the win column, because that column was pretty darned bare.
“We can’t risk connecting into the system,” Butler said.
“We’re concerned that the AI could wipe us or control us,” Maurer added. “Though we both wish we were more help right now.”
“Trust me, I’m sure all of you are going to be a lot of help down the road, or the space, or however we refer to it out here. How did you all catch up to the Ard Ri?” This was the real question, as far as I was concerned.
“One of the least weasels got out,” Algar said, looking at me with total innocence. He did it better than Charlie, but he was a bajillion years old or something. That he was lying only slightly better than a toddler was interesting in that “why me?” sort of way. “And the gentlemen helped me search for it. We found it here, just as the ship went insane.”
“Mother’s not insane, at least as far as we can tell.”
“Mother?” Buchanan asked. “Your mother is on board?” He sounded hopeful. Yeah, I’d have kind of liked to have Mom on this journey with us, too.