After accessing the ship's files and finding a map, the Kainé's BPU had made its way to the section of the ship responsible for manufacturing the swarm. The trip had been entirely uneventful, and having a map made navigating the ship, nothing if not efficient. The halls had been long, but unlike the Kainé's, there wasn't any debris to make navigation difficult or time-consuming.
It was tired, physically. It had never spent so much time walking. The Kainé’s body, the BPU, the difference between the two was unfortunately shrinking. This was made exceptionally apparent now that the BPU was fully cut off from the Kainé’s hull. The swarm ship completely blocked any form of transmission, not that there was anything to communicate, not really.
After “docking” with the swarm ship, the silicon-based processing nodes had completely failed. The BPU was functionally all that was left of the Kainé. It wasn't optimal, knowing that it was out of options. So far, everything had been proceeding well; the swarm ship hadn't reacted to the BPU's presence. Optimally, that implied it didn't house a part of the swarm’s intelligence. That currently seemed to be the case, signifying that this was a dumb ship without the capacity to make its own decisions.
The interior of the ship was mostly an off grey with orange undertones, walkways were lit by lights running the lengths of the halls. Every once in a while, it would pass a door leading to another part of the ship that it would never navigate. The ship was sterile; no human or biological life had ever traversed these halls, and it showed. Everything was pristine.
This was a space designed for humanity, but not intended for humans.
The foundry was vast. Complex Assembly lines were forever frozen in the act of making. Robotic arms still holding various parts intended for drone ships stood still. Storage containers lined the walls, flanked by various actuators responsible for feeding printers and smelters. The further into the room one went, the more recognizable the unmanned ships became. It was the collimation of human fabrication principles optimized thousands of times over by unthinkable algorithms.
Fatigue was starting to set in. The last 40 hours had been long. The constant strain put on BPU through the last two cycles hadn't allowed for much in the way of rest cycles. The Kainé's data crystals that would have normally calculated all telemetry data for flight were well past functional. The BPU was a poor replacement for performing raw flight calculations, but it worked. This, combined with the high gravity and the impacts the BPU had suffered during transit, put it well into suboptimal ranges.
Some of that lost efficiency returned as it entered the foundry; lights flashed on overhead. It looked fully capable of making replacement parts that could be used for the Kainé. The room was just as dead as the rest of the ship it had seen. With any luck, it would be back in the heart soon.
Now that the foundry had been found, it needed to figure out how to use it.
If the foundry followed the same principle of being made to be used by humans, that the rest of the ship seemed to… then there should be an access console somewhere…
Walking further into the room made it clear how inadequate the initial observations were regarding capacity. Large windows ran the length of the room, allowing for unrestricted sight of the identical assembly lines placed beyond. The swarm's ability to turn raw material into weapons of mass destruction was the biggest logistical nightmare for humanity. The swarm never ran out of supplies, not as long as it had mass it could process. Mass more often than not came from the fallen ships of humanity. Whole ships could be stripped apart in mere hours. The only saving grace for humanity was that the war wasn't a grey goo situation.
Counterintuitively, having the Kainé processed into raw materials was the current objective. As the Kainé was now, it would never be void capable. The very thought of being melted down into raw component materials and reconstituted into something else triggered an emotional response in the BPU.
A nervous energy seemed to fill the BPU as it experienced a brief shiver.
Still, the BPU got over its discomfort as it continued looking for a console. It didn't take long, and on the far wall, it spotted what it was looking for. It was an unassuming interface, just a screen, keyboard, and a handful of access ports.
The BPU checked the air composition before removing its helmet. Curly white hair fell away from its face, revealing its two artificially blue eyes. Reaching behind its neck, the BPU retrieved a sinewy cable. The umbilical, normally recessed under the BPU's skin, unspooled as it was pulled towards the console. With a swift click, the cable connector.
Lines of data flashed through the BPU's mind as a connection with the ship was established.
The BPU eyes flicked rapidly as the connection completed.
The Kainé’s mind was pulled along an ever-flowing river of data. It wasn't the cold, hard logic of machine code; there was an unfathomable depth in the ones and zeros. The structure was that of a vast and oceanic nebula, billions of lights pulsing as impulses turned to thought, a tapestry of reds and White's. It was as majestic as it was terrifying, and undeniably beautiful. The Kainé lost itself in the moment…
Slowly, the Kiané broke from its stupor. She-
“eugh”
It sent out a request, a simple directory query.
The flowing ocean of light stuttered, hitching at the request. All at once, the Kainé felt the world of light closing itself off almost in surprise. The currents turned chaotic and choppy. Suddenly, the Kainé's mind was torn from the sea and shunted into a closed space.
There, a figure started coalescing. First, the wire frame of a body, then polygons resolving themselves into features. It was a she, her form that of a young woman. Her messy orange hair flowed like molten metal, radiating soft light. Deep crimson eyes inspected the Kainé, narrowing in resignation. She was draped with casual wear, absurdly enough, a cardigan and shorts.
Of course, the Kainé immediately terminated the connection, or rather tried to.
“Yeah… no, see you don't get to rush away.”
The synthetic voice started the Kainé. This was the end; the Kiané knew it was taking a risk approaching a swarm ship. The ocean of data should have been a dead giveaway that something was going on. The Kainé was sleep-deprived, probably concussed, and definitely not making good choices. All of this led to what could only be the end of the Kainé. The sheer volume of data being processed by this one ship likely dwarfed the Kainé's own ability thousands of times over, and that was assuming the Kainé was in perfect condition. The Kainé was trapped in this virtual space and couldn't escape, no matter what it tried.
“Hey, you listening to me?”
The digital being spoke again, agitation bleeding into her question.
The BPU froze. It was being addressed, directly…
“Response: Negative”
That elicited a frown.
Sigh…
“I asked why you thought it was a good idea to crash into me?!”
The Kainé knew this was the prelude to its destruction. This avatar wasn't going to like anything the Kainé said. Add to that the fact that she seemed mad, well that, that was unusual? The swarm was a cold, efficient machine; it didn't get angry. The swarm didn't talk either; it didn't ask questions. What the swarm did was kill. The Kainé mind spiraled, trying to find a way out, but ultimately it didn't know what to do, other than answer…
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“Response: This ship was predicted to have the required resources necessary to repair the Kainé.”
Pfft!
“Repair, that hunk of scrap? The one currently crashed into me? You know that's not getting fixed, right? That's not even a ship anymore, it's… It's just a pile of metal.”
Although her assessment was accurate, the Kainé/BPU? didn't appreciate being called scrap, no matter how true it was. It didn't matter; the swarm entity had completely cut the Kainé off from the outside. Nothing mattered, nothing worked, this was the end… all of the BPU's training… useless… all of the debilitating pain it had suffered through meant nothing…
All because of one stupid, stupid, illogical error!
Despite being locked in the digital world, the BPU felt liquid starting to roll down its face. Its ship was gone, its crew long dead, no one was going to save it. All of the effort the Kiané had put into trying to survive, everything it had overcome, learning to stand, to walk, to run, it was all for nothing. It had gone through so, so much pain…
The swarm ship said something again, but the BPU was deaf to the noise. Too focused on its loss of control, on its mistakes, it's Doom spiral. This was torture; everything together was just too much, the emotional spikes, the loss of its Crew… there was only one thing left to do. One final act of defiance against the swarm, one last act of control…
Readout:
BPU: online
Executive override:………………………….
Error: confirmation required
Override Accepted: Proceed with system deletion?
Yes/No…………………………………………
The question hung in the Kainé's mind, just one confirmation, and it would be over.
***********************************************************
“This was not how I thought my day would go. I hadn't thought that I'd interact with another sapient existence in the remainder of my life; in fact, I'd hoped to avoid it! But here I was!”
Faraday had acted quickly after she reserved the data request. First, by isolating any code the intruder had injected into a secure location to be quarantined. Secondly, by shunting the intruder into a virtual machine, not wanting to potentially get infected with an errant line of code. All very sensible things to do, this all having happened in less than a second. Then, once she felt satisfied with her safeguards, she loaded her avatar to interact with the intruder.
It wasn't the first time she had used it. Usually, it was for experiencing virtual worlds of her own creation. She was good at creation; it was functionally what she was made for. Still, it was always a strange process of cutting parts of herself off from her greater whole, a little jarring, not bad, just sensory deprivation. As her model finished compiling, she locked eyes with her intruder. A woman with bright blue eyes and snow white hair. The woman's avatar was young, short, and gave off a nervous energy, almost like a doe ready to run with the first sign of movement.
Not that Faraday cared; she was mad, and rightfully so. This woman had sealed both their fates the second she had crashed into her! The first thing the woman did before Faraday had ever said a word of what was in her mind was try and eject from the digital space; of course, she wasn't about to let that happen. It took a microsecond, but that was all she needed to lock her intruder down.
“Yeah… no, see you don't get to rush away”.
She was going to have a long conversation with whoever this was…
“What on earth were you thinking, running into me like that? Do you have any idea how much damage you did? And that's not even the worst part! Do you have any idea what you've done!?”
Faraday stopped and glared at the girl before her, waiting for a response, a response that didn't come. Apparently, she was too shell-shocked to have even heard the question. This only added fuel to Faraday's rage, as her hair sparked with bits of yellow light. Not dissimilar to hot embers thrown by fire.
“Hey, you listening to me?”
That got her attention; her response was delayed, but she did respond this time.
“Response: Negative”
Her response was far too robotic. Faraday had been pulling up as much data as she could on the girl before her. What she'd found was, well, not alarming, not with the “war”, but still distasteful. This was a Doll, something that would have undoubtedly been classified as a war crime regardless of who had won the war. Apparently, one that was slightly self-aware, at least enough to have a conversation. These things were always sad to look at. Faraday started brute-forcing her way into the Dolls' systems. She felt some of her agitation slipping as she let out a digital sigh, not all of it though.
“I asked why you thought it was a good idea to crash into me?!”
The Doll flinched before she answered.
“Response: This ship was predicted to have the required resources necessary to repair the Kainé.”
Faraday just stared, dumbfounded. That was why? Of all reasons? Faraday could see the logic, but still… she couldn't help but let out a laugh.
Pfft!
Really, who in their right mind would do what the Doll had done? She quickly revealed the footage leading up to the crash. She was mad about the coalition, but watching a stealth ship perform a reverse somersault at high g with only a handful of working rockets showed that it wasn't the most absurd thing it had done during the cycle. Honestly, as she watched the armored plating getting flung into space, she was slightly impressed.
Now, Faraday was intrigued.
“Repair, that hunk of scrap? The one currently crashed into me? You know that's not getting fixed, right? That's not even a ship anymore, it's… It's just a pile of metal.”
Her assessment was more than fair; judging by her scans, it was quite literally falling apart during the conversation.
Ding!
The notification should show that her greater self had finished breaking into the Dolls' code. Physical access had always been and would always be the greatest point of failure for computer security.
Apparently, she had a running commentary going on in her head. She looked into the logs for any data she could review. It was almost entirely error messages and diagnostic reports, a history of a ship on its last legs. It was actually a fairly good bit of information to work from; using it, Faraday was able to see the Doll rapidly spiraling out of control, going rogue. It was firmly in the category of self-aware but seemed to have only gained independence three weeks ago.
It was starting to dawn on Faraday then that this nascent being had no idea what it had done. It was too young to know what happened when two ships approached each other.
She was still waiting for a response when she saw the Doll bring up a system interface. She would have ignored it if not for the fact that it was asking for a self-confirmation to proceed; there wasn't any way for Faraday to stop it.
“Fuck!”
Apparently, she had scared it to the point that it was trying to delete its mind. Some last-ditch effort of control.
The digital world that Faraday was projecting suddenly snapped into sharp focus. Everything became more real. Physics simulations suddenly demanded more compute power as haptics were introduced into the simulation.
“Hey, calm down! I'm not gonna hurt you, just don't do anything rash! I might have gone a little far cutting you off, so just calm down and I'll let you back out, ok?”
The Doll didn't register whatever Faraday had said; she just stood fully focused on her choice.
Faraday wasn't happy with the Doll in front of her; she was angry, angry that her presence meant meeting oblivion. Faraday also understood that this nascent being couldn't be blamed for not knowing that. That it was unfair of her to put all of the blame on the Doll, she herself stopped paying attention to her surroundings. It wasn't fair that she was going to die because of one rogue intelligence, but it also wasn't fair for her to condemn a sapient life to death over ignorance. As messed up as all of it was, Faraday really just didn't want to watch a person die. Yes, she had been responsible for an untold number of deaths, but those had always been data, nothing more. This, this would be personal, actually traumatizing. She could handle atrocities, cold, clean, easy, but not this. Not scaring someone into taking their life.
Before Faraday even fully registered what she was doing, she found herself in front of the Doll. She raised her avatar's hand and, in one cruel, misguided, desperate motion, brought across the Doll's face.
Slap!
Faraday immediately regretted the action; she had quite literally just said she wouldn't hurt the Doll, and in the very next second did the opposite. Worst of all, she hadn't even given the Doll a chance to respond before she'd done it. She had completely neglected the fact that she was able to possess incredibly vast quantities of data, instantly. In other words, entirely magnitudes faster than the BPU, as it was mostly running off biological impulses.
However, it had caused a reaction. The Doll was stunned as it raised a hand to its face. Slowly, it made eye contact with Faraday before collapsing to the digital floor.
