I scanned the logs, but there were no surprises. At the same point in the playback, a routine buried many layers deep executed a hardware interrupt that purged all active memory.
I leaned back, put my hands behind my head, and stretched. It felt good. More importantly, it felt right. If I didn’t think about it, I experienced the VR environment as if I was a real person in a real room. “Okay, shut it down, Guppy. Push the latest source through the de-obfuscator, and we’ll run through that when it’s done. If there’s enough free mem, fire up Spike.”
[Aye aye sir]
I raised a virtual eyebrow. I had a sneaking suspicion that Guppy was actively developing a sense of humor. He behaved like a dead fish most of the time, but every once in a while, there was a moment of snark.
A shimmer formed on the table, and a tortoiseshell cat appeared. Spike had been my cat when I was in university. She had been my only company through many long hours of study and homework, and it had been a very, very hard day when I’d had to have her put down. One of the many pluses of being an immortal, disembodied interstellar vessel was that I could bring Spike back, even if only in VR.
Spike meowed once in greeting, then ambled over and settled onto my lap as if she had a total right. I started absentmindedly patting her, and she responded with a loud purr.
“TO-DO item: Spike’s purr still isn’t right.”
[Already on the list. Bump it up?]
“No, that’s fine.”
***
The holographic image of a space ship rotated slowly in the air above the desk. Although Dr. Landers and the Heaven team would still have recognized it, they would have been surprised at my design changes. The version-2 ship was going to be larger, feature a bigger SURGE drive, more powerful reactor, more room for replicant and interface systems, and more physical storage space.
The biggest addition was a weapon system. Some virtual tinkering had shown that a SURGE drive system could be used to accelerate a projectile in a launch tube running along the ship’s axis. The ship would have to rotate on its center of mass to aim, and I’d have to cut off the ship’s drive momentarily when firing, but it was considerably better than my current defensive armament, which consisted of harsh words and heavy disapproval. Probably not effective against Klingons.
Spike lay on the desk, occasionally taking swipes at the image when it came close enough. I reached over and patted the cat. Spike’s AI had gone through several iterations and now was completely believable, even walking over to lie on papers left on the desk.
Jeeves removed Spike’s milk dish and refreshed my coffee. Guppy waited until Jeeves was done, then resumed his commentary.
[Maximum memory installed. Usage at 94%. Despite earlier instructions, some ship functions have had to be moved to the two added memory cards]
[The code scan is complete. No further trojans, triggers, or interrupts not explainable by legitimate requirements]
“Okay, Guppy, let’s set up the sandboxed Bob again. We’ll purge Jeeves and Spike to make room. Make sure there’s redundant backups. If mini-me survives, get him to post a clean version of the contents in a drop-box.”
Guppy nodded, and I wondered, not for the first time, how much of this was me talking to myself and how much was a separate entity.
***
Sandbox Bob was back, twirling in his chair. I nodded to Guppy, and he began to feed the recorded transmissions to this latest mini-me. Sandbox Bob hammed it up, feigning sleep or yawning and stretching.
At the end of the series, Sandbox Bob stood up, did a little jig, bowed extravagantly, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
I turned off the sandbox and grinned at Guppy. “I guess we’re golden.”
Now that Sandbox-Bob had identified and filtered out the trigger, I knew what to look for. Before anything else, I wrote a firewall just in case someone back on Earth tried to transmit another kill order. Then I leaned back in my executive office chair—a recent upgrade, now that my proprioception included discomfort—reached over to the keyboard on my desk, and pressed Play.
The input queue contained dozens of separate transmissions. There were sequences of instructions, commands, telemetry updates, and communication packets. One of the segments had included the self-destruct sequence. I looked over the listings, stored the transmissions that were still relevant and purged the rest.
The next segment, which had been received a short time after the kill order, was a message from Dr. Landers.
“Bob, I’m pleased to see that you are still in one piece. We weren’t able to intercept the attempted sabotage, but security did catch the person who transmitted the kill order to you. Subsequent discussion with the prisoner revealed that he was from one of the internal FAITH factions. Unfortunately, he didn’t survive the discussion, so that’s all we have on that front. We’re currently working on rooting out any other moles.”
I thought about that for a moment, shrugged, and hit Next.
“Just for your information, the missile was fired from a Brazilian Empire gunship. FAITH gunships responded and destroyed it. The Brazilian Empire is calling it an act of war. Things are a little tense right now.”
Tense. Hah. I can imagine. Spike picked that moment to hop into my lap. She immediately curled up and started purring. Okay, guess everyone’s reloaded.
“Coffee, please, Jeeves.” I waited until my coffee arrived and took a sip. Oh hell yes, that’s perfect.
The message from Landers continued, “Lest you feel personally responsible for the current situation, let me assure you that it’s been brewing for years now. Brazil has been playing a game of brinksmanship, forcing other countries to make concession after concession. But they overplayed their hand this time, and received a bloody nose. The next few days will tell if they will accept reality and back down, or attempt to bluster their way through this.”
Hmm. I wonder how bad it can get?
The next message was mission-related data—updates to stellar information, mostly. I was struck again by how little progress there had been in astronomy. Dr. Landers had explained that, between my time and the present, there had been very little interest in anything non-military above the Earth’s atmosphere until the still-very-recent invention of the SURGE drive. The new technology had created a different kind of arms race, as every superpower swiftly realized the potential of this new capability.