The Catalyst

-Chapter 26-


I’m slow sometimes. I don’t always see the possibilities in a new development for hours, days or longer. It was on my way back to talk to the robot I’d built that I came up with something important: if this robot could speak the language of the Centaurs, humans and Macros, perhaps it could speak other languages as well.
I’d almost made it to the room where I’d left it after taking a break to eat and check on things. The factories were still churning and there had been no sign yet of the pursuing missiles, even though we knew they were closer. The cruiser was looking better all the time, as we’d let loose zillions of nanites to reconstruct the damage. Sandra, unfortunately, had shown no improvement.
When I thought of the idea of translating languages, I realized we were half-way across the Helios system. We had a golden opportunity to communicate with the Worms—if the strange little artificial mind the Centaurs had sent me knew how.
I was startled to see my robot in the corridor just outside the weird zone. It had reformed itself and was now using both the arms I’d given it to operate the camera as legs. It balanced the camera on top of its outsized brainbox and had to tilt the entire body to see anything. The entire structure was unstable, as the legs were not even in height and the top surface of the brainbox was canted to the left. I halted and watched it slowly turn, scanning its environment with what could only be called curiosity.
Watching it, I felt a tiny chill. This robot wasn’t like the others I’d known. Not even the Nano ships had shown this kind of initiative. They had acted in a semi-independent, problem-solving fashion, but it had always been traceable down to an underlying compulsion built into their source code somewhere. This thing was different. It had gotten bored with the room I’d left it in, restructured itself as best it could and set about exploring its environment.
The camera swept over me finally. “Kyle Riggs,” the tinny voice said. “Identification confirmation requested.”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m Kyle Riggs.”
I leaned forward toward the dwarf robot. It squatted and reached up with its arms to adjust the camera. I watched the lenses dilate and contract in tiny shivers as it focused on my faceplate.
“You need a name,” I told the robot. “From now on, I’ll call you Marvin.”
“Reference stored,” Marvin said.
“Marvin, can you talk to other biotic species—besides humans and the Centaurs?”
“There are the compressed forms you refer to as the Blues.”
“Of course,” I said. “What others?”
“Reference unclear.”
I nodded to myself. I brought out my computer tablet and displayed the world of Helios and still shots of the Worms. I let Marvin examine the images at length.
“Have you seen these creatures before?” I asked.
“No.”
“Have you seen recorded images of them before?”
“No.”
I frowned. Maybe this was a dead end. “Do you recognize the species?”
“Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. Marvin was literal-minded. He liked precision. Probably, he’d never ‘seen’ the images, but they might have been transmitted to him via a file transfer. He’d never been in their visual presence, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know about them, just as a person might not have even been to Paris, but still knew about the French and their history.
“Can you communicate with one of these creatures in their native language?” I asked.
The camera lifted from the surface of Marvin’s brainbox. It glided up smoothly, refocusing and studying my face again.
“Why?” Marvin asked.
I felt that chill again. What had I accidentally created here? Was this how things had gone when the Blues had invented the Macros and the Nanos, as I now suspected they had? Was this the path to doom for all biotics? At some point in technological progression, perhaps we were all doomed to build something like Marvin. He was a tool for a job that needed doing, but once such a fantastic tool was built, perhaps it was fated to eventually examine you closely and ask why?
I felt an urge to draw my pistol and blast Marvin right then and there. I’d witnessed vast destruction caused by smart little machines like this one. Placed inside a hundred foot body of alloy and machinery, this thing might decide to lay waste to cities. I took a breath and tried to slow my heart. I told myself I was still in control here. My paranoia would serve me well, and I would know the day Marvin became a threat. More importantly now, Marvin knew too much to be discarded or destroyed out of fear—I had no idea what was locked in his mind, but I knew Earth needed every byte of it.
“I wish to communicate with these creatures, Marvin,” I explained. “We need their help.”
Marvin studied me further. “Help indicates need. What necessity can be fulfilled by these creatures?”
It was my turn to think for a second. “This ship and everyone aboard is in danger. We are under attack by another ship. These creatures are potential allies.”
Marvin looked at my tablet again. “The Worms could help Marvin?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“I will speak with them then,” Marvin said. “But I have a need as well.”
I stared at him. “What is it, Marvin?”
“I’m having difficulty with locomotion. I need four new appendages for maximum stability and an instrument to aid in coordination and balance.”
“You want legs and a gyroscope?”
“That would be sufficient.”
As I submitted to Marvin’s demands I felt I had somehow placed my foot upon a path and taken the first step upon it, without knowing where it led. I suspected bargains with the Devil always felt like that.
I made sure the legs were short—stumpy even. I didn’t want him building anything new with them, so I organized the nanites with locked programming. They could not be reshaped into anything else without being reprocessed by one of my factories. I attached them to the bottom of his braincase and ran silvery threads to his central I/O node to power and control them.
The gyroscope was a little trickier. I didn’t want to put it on top where it might get into the path of his camera, and there wasn’t really room below where his legs would churn. Either side would throw him off balance. Finally, I decided to mount the camera forward a bit on the body so he could use the gyroscope as a counterweight on the rear. Essentially, I gave him a box-shaped tail. He ended up looking like a dachshund that someone had put through a trash compacter.
I looked him over, and knew that Sandra would have pronounced him cute. I might have agreed if I hadn’t been worried I was looking at humanity’s possible future replacement.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk to the Worms then. I want you to translate my words as closely as you can into their language and when they speak, translate it back to me.”
“I do not wish to communicate here in front of the prisoners,” Marvin told me.
I blinked at him. Had that gyroscope thrown his little mind out of balance?
“What?” I asked.
“I do not wish to communicate here in front of the prisoners,” Marvin told me again.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I got that part, but I don’t know what prisoners you are talking about.”
Marvin twisted his camera around to examine the bio-tanks in the middle of the chamber. They gurgled and churned with thick, dark fluids. I stared at them with him.
“The stuff in those tanks?” I asked. “That stuff is alive, isn’t it?”
“The contents of the enclosure contains billions of biotic structures.”
“Okay,” I said. “Those bags, tanks, whatever they are do enclose biotics. And they can’t leave. But how can mindless creatures be classified as prisoners?”
“The classification is correct. They are not mindless. They are a collective intelligence.”
I stared at the bags now, which shivered minutely while I watched. A fresh thread of condensation rolled down the walls of the nearest balloon-like bag and splashed to the floor where a puddle had formed.
I looked back to Marvin, not sure which was the more upsetting: a biotic mass with a collective brain in a baggy, or Marvin the know-it-all dog robot.
“Are you telling me these bags are full of intelligent…bacteria?” I asked.
“Collectively intelligent, yes.”
“The Macros kept these bags here for a reason, Marvin,” I said. “Do you know where they come from or why the Macros would want them here?”
“The Macros study dangerous fauna of all types,” Marvin explained. “These creatures come from the ocean-covered world which is the seventh most distant world from the star you refer to as Eden.”
I thought about it. The seventh from the star? That would make it one of the innermost of the warm-water worlds. One of the six jewels of the Eden system.
I walked over to the tank and tapped at the surface experimentally. Did the soupy stuff inside swirl fractionally? Or was that just my imagination? I tried to visualize what a race of bacteria would be like. Marvin said they had a collective intelligence, which I took to mean they didn’t each have a big brain. Together, they communicated in some way and formed thoughts and as consensus which they could all act upon. I suppose it was the same sort of distributed intelligence that Marvin himself had in his brainbox. Marvin didn’t use a single massive brain, the way a human handled intelligence. His mind was made up of a thousand working microscopic machines. A community intellect, just like this biotic version in the balloon-like tanks.
I’d studied the basics of neurology in my graduate program in computer science. I knew that even in the case of humans, it wasn’t really correct to consider our own intellect as a single entity. We had dozens of processors in our brains, dedicated to specific functions. Like any modern computer, we had many voices going on inside our heads at once, doing different things. That was how we could drive, talk and listen to music all at once. Or least we could try.
Beyond that, any single portion of our intelligence was spread over thousands of neurons—brain cells. How different was that from the idea of a bacterial intelligence? They were like us, but they formed a single mind out of individual cells that were more physiologically independent. It was intriguing.
I ran my fingers over the bag again, testing it. The fabric felt strong, but not so stiff that it didn’t give. If I had to make a comparison, I would say it was like thick leather.
Before my thoughts could drift any further, a sizzling jolt of electricity fired into the tank from the electrode nearby. The sound was jarring. I felt the tiniest shock myself through the fabric as I touched it. I jerked my hand away in irritation.
“What the hell is that thing, anyway?” I asked.
“They call it the ‘mass-death device’,” Marvin said calmly.
I turned to look at him. He had followed me to stand nearby. His camera panned the length of the leathery tank and finally halted on my face.
“Mass-death?” I asked, feeling a bit sick. “You mean that thing kills the microbial creatures in this bag?”
“That is the most probable interpretation.”
I backed away from the bag in horror. The Macros, I thought. I was in one of their labs. What had they been doing when I first entered such a place? I recalled the first Worm I’d ever seen. They’d been dissecting it alive. But what if their real purpose had been to inflict pain? To torture an enemy until information was gained? I could not think of a more horrible fate than to be tortured by a machine. There could be no compassion, no change of heart. They would only know that causing minor damage to a biotic might gain useful information. They would not know when to quit. Why bother quitting at all? Why not just keep it up until the victim died? After all, at any moment they might relinquish yet more valuable information.
There could never be mercy in a being that felt no pain, which did not understand the concept. The torture would just go on and on. I felt ill, thinking about it, and thinking that under my watch, these tiny beings had been zapped over and over. We could have saved them, but we hadn’t realized….
Another thought came to me as I looked down at Marvin. He was able to talk to these tiny creatures. “Marvin,” I said. “Tell them we’re going to try to turn off the electrode. Tell them we destroyed the Macros and took over this ship. We wish to help them.”
“Concepts transmitted…” Marvin said. “Reply is…confusion.”
“They don’t understand?”
“No, they are confused by your motives.”
“We wish to help them, because they are biotics as we are. We are on the side of all biotics. We are rebels against all machines.”
“Concepts transmitted…”
“Tell me what they are saying in response.”
“They wish to know why you applied the device fifty-seven times since your arrival.”
“Fifty-seven…” I took a deep breath. “It was a mistake. We didn’t know.”
“The machines never applied it so rigorously. Their population is now only one-third optimal for the space provided. You never even asked any questions.”
“We didn’t shock them, Marvin. Tell them that. The Macros left the device active, and we didn’t know what it did.”
“They humbly request the device be deactivated before the next scheduled application. They are more than willing to answer your questions. They assure you that your ruthlessness is clear. You’re cruelty is beyond that exhibited by the machines. They beg for your questions.”
I shook my head. Somehow I felt horribly guilty, even though I hadn’t done anything. I began looking everywhere for an off-switch. I called down a team of engineers, and we worked on it together. Ten minutes passed, and I began to sweat. I could not simply rip the electrode out of the bag, it would rupture the surface and release the contents. Likewise, we couldn’t switch off the power or sever the cable. The same power source provided warmth and circulation inside the tank. Time was running out. All my discussions with this new, possibly helpful race would be lost if the shocks continued without cessation. They would simply figure I was a lying monster.
“Dammit,” I complained. “Marvin, can you turn this shock-device off?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me how to do it?”
“Disconnect the power.”
“But if we sever the line, it will cease giving them life-support as well. Leave it to the Macros to build a torture system directly into the life-support system of their prisoners.”
“They are efficient creatures.”
“Here, give me your camera arm, Marvin.”
Marvin’s camera swung to examine my hands, then face, then my hands again. “What do you intend?” he asked.
“I’ll give it back, or make you a new one. I want to use the nanites to short out the power wire to the electrode only.”
“That is likely to damage the nanites.”
“I told you, I will give you a new arm.”
“How do I know you are truthful in this case?”
“Marvin,” I said in exasperation, “you’ll have to trust me. Have I been truthful so far?”
“Past events do not predict future realities with one hundred percent accuracy.”
“No, they don’t,” I said, trying to be patient. “But they are the best indicators we have on which to base judgments. You will just have to trust me this time. Long term cooperation is built upon trust.”
Marvin considered it. At last, he walked to the thick cable with a humping gait. He was not yet accustomed to his new legs. He crouched and allowed his nanite arm to slip off his back and form a grip around the Macro cable.
I was thinking I was going to have to provide the program, step-by-step, for the nanites to follow. But I didn’t. Marvin, I realized, had written that program by himself.
Soon, the arm shivered and sparked.
“The task is complete,” Marvin said.
I saw the nanite arm he’d deployed begin to crawl back up onto his back.
“Hold on,” I said. “Just leave it there. I’ll give you a new arm. A longer one.”
Marvin did not examine me with his camera this time, as he could no longer move it around and activate it. After a few seconds consideration, he agreed.
I sent one of the marines to fetch a good-sized mass of nanites. Marvin had earned it. I wondered how long it would be before I began to trust him.
Once things were settled with the microbials, who still considered me a cruel god, my mind turned back to the Worms. We only had so long to talk to them before we crossed their system and left it behind.
I received a beeping summons from Major Sarin before I was able to transmit anything to the Worms, however.
“Riggs here, go ahead,” I said.
“Sir, the missiles...they are on-scope again, accelerating. They are closer than we thought, Colonel.”
She kept talking, but I missed the rest. The moment I heard the word missiles, I’d started running through the ship to the bridge.