All too soon, I was past Saturn and on my way outbound. As I continued on toward the outer reaches of the solar system, I saw the night side of the planet, alive with electrical storms and auroras.
The flyby was over. My hydrogen reserves were within acceptable range and would be topped up over the course of the voyage. With a mental sigh, I adjusted my heading for Epsilon Eridani and cranked the drive back up to 2 g. The trip would take just under eleven and a half years to the universe at large, but only three years ship’s time. At midpoint, I would be travelling within a hair of light speed.
***
One of the irritating things about being a bodiless mind was, well, the lack of a body. I found that I had to keep myself constantly occupied, or I began to feel like I was in a sensory deprivation tank. All my attempts to smile, waggle my eyebrows, frown, had met the same fate—a feeling as though my whole face had been shot up with novocaine. And the rest of me felt like I’d been wrapped in a giant cotton ball. I wondered if that feeling contributed to the problems with replicant insanity.
It may be time to correct that. Sensory data is just electrical input, even in meatware. For me, a virtual reality interface should be a piece of cake. And, worst case, at least it’ll keep me busy.
I had to do some hardware mods, as a VR wasn’t part of the ship design. Fortunately, some spare parts had been stowed for in-flight requirements. But the bulk of the project was, and would continue to be, software.
My first attempt was primitive, and honestly, a little embarrassing. I had a basic room, blue walls, no windows, and a hard, nondescript floor. I floated in the middle of it like a ghost. Definitely needed work.
Over the next several weeks, I added furniture, a window, an outside view, carpeting, and a body to enjoy it all. Admittedly, my first body was as pixelated as something from an early Donkey Kong game, but hey, it was progress.
By the end of the first month, I was sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner, eating chips (not enough salt), feeling a cool breeze through the open window (too flat. No odors), and watching TV. The TV was playing one of many documentaries available in the libraries supplied by the HEAVEN project.
I looked around the room, sighed (feels good), and settled more comfortably into my chair.
***
I looked up from the active-surface desk which displayed a schematic of my hardware. Guppy stood on the other side of the desk, watching.
“I’m going to need more memory if I want to keep expanding my VR,” I told him. “How are we on expansion slots?”
[Memory usage averaging 86%. Available slots: 2. Spare memory boards: 4]
I had to swallow an incipient giggle. I had made Guppy look like Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars—a humanoid fish out of water. The first time he’d talked, I had collapsed in hysterics. I wasn’t sure if Guppy was self-aware enough to be offended.
“Right. If I’m going to raid my spares, I’d better be prepared for the worst. Guppy, when the new memory is installed, make sure the VR runs only in the new boards, and make sure nothing else runs there. If I have to pull them, I don’t want to lobotomize myself. Or you.”
Guppy nodded. It had taken some programming to convince GUPPI to interface through the VR and that verbal acknowledgements weren’t always necessary. Guppy wasn’t a sparkling dinner conversationalist, but at least now I could feel like I was interacting with another intelligent being. I was surprised at how much difference it made. I think I understood now why Tom Hanks made Wilson in Castaway.
Jeeves came in with fresh coffee. Another example of my lack of maturity, Jeeves was the image of John Cleese, complete with tuxedo and tails.
The coffee aroma wasn’t quite right yet, but I’d nailed the taste. For now, I could pretend I had a slight cold. I took the proffered cup, sat back, and relaxed. “Okay, Guppy, what’s the TO-DO looking like?”
[2,386 items, divided into the following categories: VR Systems, Replicant hardware upgrades, Weapons design, Review of exploration strategies, Ship design reviews, Ship replication strategies..]
I smiled at the response, thankful that Guppy was finally beginning to get colloquialisms. The first time I’d asked that, a couple hundred pages of dense printing had appeared in the air in front of me.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to be a busy guy. I get it. Let’s move on.”
I turned around in my chair to face an empty table up against the wall. “Testing replicant software for booby traps. Take, uh.. [24] Okay, take 24. Activate software sandbox.”
A sandbox, in computer terms, was an isolated copy of a computer system where you could run potentially harmful programs in complete safety. I needed to find the actual sequence of bytes in the radio transmissions that was supposed to trigger the kill order, so I could trace what they did to Sandbox Bob and how. Then I could check for the same booby trap in my own code and remove it.
On the table, an actual sandbox appeared, with a miniature Bob sitting in a miniature chair in the middle of it. “I admit I’m not very mature. All right, Guppy, when ready, feed the recorded transmissions into the sandboxed replicant.”
On the table, the miniature Bob twirled lazily in his chair. Abruptly he leaped into the air, grabbed his throat and fell over, then disappeared in a scatter of pixilation.
“Dammit! Still haven’t found all the hooks. These guys were pretty good. Okay, Guppy, transfer the logs to my desk, and let’s see if we can figure out what the kill order is triggering.”
I knew approximately where in the incoming stream to find the kill order, but I had no idea what it consisted of. I certainly wasn’t about to take any chances with trying to analyze it close-up. I’d been running through my code with a fine-toothed comb, and had found several different booby traps, a depressing number of bugs, and a couple of out-and-out WTFs. The listings were massive—literally gigabytes—and even at my highest frame rate, it was a slog. I’d also, incidentally, found the buried imperatives to obey FAITH orders. Those had already been yanked.
The last, very important item that I had located was the endocrine control system. More than any other thing that they’d done, this enraged me. Well, to be honest, it made me mildly annoyed, but I knew that original me would have been furious. I was effectively a dog wearing a choke collar. And the choke collar was preventing me from properly mourning.
I sat with my finger over the delete button for what seemed like forever, then dropped my hand. Not yet. I wasn’t ready. To do this properly, I needed time, and I needed the ability to properly express myself. It would have to wait. With an effort of will, I dropped that project into a folder and set it aside.