[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post new chapters about every two weeks, but I’m currently also rewriting Fall, so there will sometimes be short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next chapter is planned for the week of April 3.]

Previous: Chapter 36

“This is only the fifth edition, I’m afraid,” said Admiral Ghiralt over the com. "It’s my personal annotated copy, from my academy coursework, and it’s more then forty cycles old, but that allows me to avoid a number of tedious difficulties. I think you and your family will still find it interesting and useful.“

Doc glanced at another screen, where DASI was showing an outline of A History of Biogestalt Development and Pathology. "So do I. Thank you, Admiral.”

He nodded. "I am certain there will be changes to the information sharing guidelines once the aid mission oversight committee adjusts to the full reality of Earth, but in the meantime, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t take all available steps to ameliorate a potential problem that might have a military impact.“

"Indeed.” That was easy to translate; the admiral’s military mission gave him the necessary political cover to use a loophole. The more subtle message was to confirm Doc’s suspicion that Emissary Beveda was struggling with serious policy lag difficulties. She wasn’t being obstructive–she had reached the limits of her authority to adapt to a very different situation than envisioned by the hastily assembled coalition that had sent the aid mission.

“One other thing,” said the admiral. "I’ve changed the primary assignment of the Learning Is About To Occur to liaison and implicit threat characterization. That’s what he’s doing already, this just makes it official.“

"Good to know. Our discussion before you called was very productive. Thanks again.”

The main screen blanked after the call ended, and Doc stretched. He had spent nearly two hours talking with Learning, much longer than the half hour he had scheduled, and was still processing the implications.

He glanced at the political tension monitor feed–no major crises–then checked visitor and resident status on yet another display. Stella’s meeting with The Volunteer had also run long, but she was finally done, so he stood and headed down the hall.

The door to Stella’s preferred secure room opened automatically as he approached. The lights were dimmed, and she was sitting alone, staring into the distance. She took off her interface headset as he entered.

“The Volunteer left already?” asked Doc.

“Margie insisted,” said Stella. "His rate of healing has slowed, and she thinks spending too much time on Earth is a contributing factor.“

"She’s probably right. How did it go?”

“We engaged in a frank exchange of views.”

“That bad? He didn’t say a word to me.”

“You didn’t threaten to declare war on the United States. He raised a number of concerns, and we discussed the indirect effects of his idiosyncratically selective political engagement.” Stella smiled wryly. "The good news is that you can stop worrying about the EDU being politically monolithic. And he is neither selfish nor ignorant. The bad news is that if he speaks out publicly against my actions as Director of the EDU–which he said he is quite willing to do–it could cause lasting damage.“

"Oof. He hasn’t done anything like that in sixty years.” Doc shook his head. "I wish he’d wait until he heals, but he’s even worse than me at convalescing.“

"I noticed. I also pointed out that his injuries and his prolonged inability to contribute as a superhero were quite likely to be influencing his judgement. He freely admitted that, but was unwilling to remain ‘idle’.”

“I might be able to convince him to share his disaster mitigation experience with the Grs'thnk aid mission. I know he doesn’t consider refugee enclave planning to be an idle pastime.” Doc frowned. "What was he most unhappy about?“

"Given that I was willing to threaten war, with all that entails, he asked for a personal explanation of why there aren’t yet any people in jail on the Moon, awaiting trial. He made pertinent promises during the Lost Years to several people who are now dead.”

“And we were all worried about Flicker. Was he willing to accept DASI’s projections?”

“Not entirely, and he regards the way we are using them as a dangerous precedent, since the EDU does have the power to do what he wanted, and a functional, impartial justice system.”

Doc shook his head. "But it’s not transparent to humans, and the checks and balances aren’t human either. That’s the–“

”Of course that’s the problem.“ Stella waved a hand in frustration. "We debated political consequences and morality. Then he argued with DASI and Black Swan for a while. He finally agreed not to do anything precipitate. But we have to account for the possibility of his opposition. This changes the tradeoffs for measures DASI and I planned to use to reduce the likelihood of open conflict. DASI is rerunning all the sociopolitical sims. Again.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Distract me. Because there isn’t anything productive I can do at the moment. I’m already over my limit for non-emergency interface use.” Stella sighed and placed the headset aside. "How are Flicker and Journeyman?“

"Per Yiskah’s latest message, Flicker is mentally stabilized and healing. There are hints of damage to her high speed nervous system, which is disturbing, but there’s nothing else we can do to help until it’s safe for her to sleep. As for Journeyman, he’s alive and being healed. DASI warned me not to go near the med center. Flicker gave an extravagant command backed by an extravagant amount of probability manipulation before leaving Antarctica, and I look like some sort of cosmic horror to Lif.”

“Yiskah says Lif can sense what seem to be superseded time loop residues, and you’re covered in them. Enough to be a sensory overload risk.”

“A fair assessment, and I’m not about to joggle her elbow.” Doc smiled crookedly. "Since you need a distraction, I just had an interesting chat with Admiral Ghiralt, and a much longer and even more interesting talk with Learning. Join me in my workshop?“

Stella raised an eyebrow. "Of course.”

Stella sat on the couch and looked around while Doc ran a manual security check from the primary control station.

“Tidier than last time,” she said.

“Hm? Oh, I let DASI put in some mods suggested by the Builders when they were helping with the repairs. I never liked to let the bots clean up anything in progress, because I have subconscious process memory cued by the relative position of everything. So now DASI records it all, and I can have the bots restore everything, down to scraps and the relative position of tools. Or project a hologram series, if I want.”

“Handy.”

“Yup. And there we go. DASI? Any differences from your checks?”

“Higher confidence on the negative result for outside probability manipulation,” said DASI. "As expected, given the flux from Lif’s work in the med center.“

"Plausible. Okay, implement privacy set three.”

“Acknowledged,” said DASI.

He sat down on the couch, and Stella turned to lie down with her head in his lap. She closed her eyes, then shifted her hair into snake form. Half a dozen snakes curled up on his shoulders and upper legs, and one wrapped around his waist.

“Better,” she said. "What’s new that won’t require me to use my visual cortex?“

"Lots.” Doc summarized the call from Admiral Ghiralt.

“Nice to have confirmation on the politics,” said Stella. "DASI and Three started an analysis as soon the book finished downloading, and they’ve already put together a preliminary guide for Flicker. Three is updating it with tidbits she’s picked up from Learning and his crew. I didn’t get a chance to look, and I’m behind on integrating with her because…“ She waved a hand.

"Busy. Yes. I skimmed a bit during the call, and I was struck by how many interestingly different ways the early Grs'thnk biogestalts went crazy. A strong shared social matrix seemed to be key to avoiding problems. AI support helped, but not enough. At least as of the fifth edition. That’s why their navy biogestalts are all groups.”

“Well, they’ve accepted Three as sufficiently stable, so I’ll let her do the theoretical work on applicability to humans. I’m more interested in whatever Learning told you.”

“Heh. Where to start. You realize he’s practically waving a banner saying that the Grs'thnk restriction on self-willed AIs is now a legal fiction, if it wasn’t before?”

Stella smiled. "With the tacit permission of his chain of command, even. Three verified that his biogestalt crew isn’t trying to be deceptive. She’s having a lot of fun with him. They’ve been playing the same kind of game you used to play with Jumping Spider.“

"An interesting analogy. Because she’s a master of selective information distribution.”

“So is Learning. But under some restrictions, because Three is a biogestalt of me, and I’m the nominal head of the EDU. And he’s not allowed to talk directly to DASI at all.”

“He’s sure found a way to do it indirectly,” said Doc. "Starting with steganographic humor. I already had DASI doing full-band analysis from the start of his call. As soon as he made a joke about my paranoia, I looked for extrapolatable implicit shared secret coding, found it, coded my reply, and we were off and running in the first fifteen seconds. Then we had a surface verbal conversation and a parallel encoded channel. And he had plenty to say on both.“

"Hm. He’s been careful to avoid that with Three. How much trouble will he be in when he gets audited?”

“Well, that depends. He’s really good at sliding loads of implicit information into questions. And one of his first was a hypothetical about political asylum.”

Stella opened her eyes. "Political asylum? DASI?“

"Yes?”

“Why wasn’t I immediately warned? How long has Three known about this?”

“Two hours. Learning has not asked, and is unlikely to in the near future, absent a catastrophic Grs'thnk political mishap. He merely enquired about Doc’s opinion of the EDU reaction to an asylum request by an intelligent being from the Grs'thnk Trade league.”

“That seems too transparent,” said Stella.

“It’s not,” said Doc. "Ashil also has a plausible reason to ask.“

"A new one? DASI and I didn’t think she would, even if she decides to stay on Earth long-term, because of the embarrassment it would cause the aid mission.”

“Learning provided some important context.”

“Well. What’s driving this?”

“Several things. A big part is the asymmetric credibility lag back on Grs'thn. They’ve known there were strange things on Earth. But despite, or perhaps because of, my first visit, most of them still thought of humans as interesting but safely primitive. Not people that might be relevant to existential threats, introduce them to new physics, present knotty problems for causality and statistical inference, or destabilize their political system.

"The portal reopening and the Xelian attack changed that–but not for everyone, and not all at once. Hardly anyone believed Zirjack at first. A lot of Grs'thnk were moved by Flicker’s video without believing it was depicting something real. Their military was the quickest to adjust, because they really wanted to find out what happened to the Xelian fleet.”

“Not news,” said Stella. "What is?“

"Hey now, you wanted distraction, and you always enjoy meticulously giving context when there is something you know and I don’t, so I thought you’d appreciate–”

“I have snakes.”

Doc raised a hand in mock fear. "All right, all right. It’s the small problem the aid mission has been conspicuously avoiding, and we’ve been too busy to worry about.“

"Ashil’s box.”

“Yes.”

“I refuse to believe they’d be stupid enough to deliberately trigger full activation, and I specifically warned against trying to simulation spoof it. Are they afraid I’ll react badly if I find out they’ve destroyed it? What have they done?”

“I don’t know. But Learning asked an interesting question. Suppose someone not on Zirjack’s crew tried to talk to it? And they started before they believed what you and DASI can do. What would happen?”

“Well, the box would have to stay on the ship, and continuously powered, or it would just self-destruct. But they impounded the ship, so it’s plausible. Whatever the hypothetical talkers believed, the box is evidence, so the Auditors would take a dim view of anyone destroying it unless it was a clear threat. If they were careful enough, the copy of DASI in the box would stall without waking up my mind seed, and keep asking for Zirjack or Ashil.”

“DASI agrees,” said Doc. "And Zirjack wouldn’t want to talk to it voluntarily. He knows there’s no way it will let anyone take it apart, and he’s facing a formal inquiry. They could blame him if it self destructs, and he’d have no easy way to prove he didn’t cause it. And it would be idiotic to try to coerce him. Now, consider what happens when whoever is trying to get the box to talk finds out what you and DASI did to the surviving Xelian fleet–and that they really are looking at a potential hard-takeoff singularity bomb. And they also find out that the EDU allows AI to be full citizens, so if they destroy it, they just might be guilty of murder–and the Auditors won’t let them cover it up.“

"If they were careful enough to avoid the self-destruct, they should still be okay. Unless Ashil told the box something extraordinary on the way home. Hmm. A secondary function of the box was to give her advice, and she didn’t know whether the Grs'thnk navy would send help in time, or whether Earth would survive if it didn’t. And once the ship was impounded, the box would have no reliable information source.”

“Do you begin to see why she might anticipate a sudden need for asylum?”

“Yes. To avoid a subpoena. Or possibly legal charges–the box was her idea.” Stella sighed. "If they’d let Zirjack bring his ship back to Earth again, DASI and I could contact the box, update it and reintegrate, and DASI would just have a handy portable backup. Or we could wipe it, if they want the box itself back. Of course, that would require them to let him go, or for me to go there. Or Three, with appropriate transport.“

"True, but they’re in the middle of a political squabble that has just escalated unexpectedly. They have factions that have been pushing for full citizenship rights for AIs and stabilized gestalts of people who have died. And the aid coalition did not expect the EDU to be out in front of Grs'thn on either topic.

"And here is the kicker. I asked Learning just how hypothetical his question was, and he said he doesn’t know. If an attempted interrogation of the box were just to gather information for Zirjack’s inquiry, or even under normal operational security, he certainly would, and the Auditors wouldn’t let anyone keep it secret for very long without a good reason. He does know that at least one group has visited the ship repeatedly. What does that suggest to you?”

“Either stupid black agency tricks or serious paranoia on the part of their AI security people. But if they were so damned worried, why didn’t they activate the self-destruct as soon as they knew? Or ask us for help? There’s something important Learning isn’t telling us. Or doesn’t know.”

Doc grinned. "I agree, but we aren’t close to done yet. He was in a hurry, because I’d only scheduled half an hour. We’re almost caught up to where I was at when Learning dropped the next shoe. I started thinking hard about why Learning is taking the lead on this, and why now. He was put on threat characterization duty the night Flicker scared everyone with her high speed computation bender, and he started with first principles analysis. And the very next day, Three got invited to that fleet exercise.“

"I knew that changed his relative risk assessments,” said Stella. "He already admitted to Three that he appreciates the protection from probability manipulation and magical eavesdropping that she confers as much as her offensive abilities.“

"Have they discussed the problem that Auditors and offline gestalt crew aren’t protected? And are potentially vulnerable to telepathy and mind control as well?”

“Yes. Is that how he’s planning to finesse this?”

“In the short term. Given the timing of his call, I think the admiral deliberately gave him a suitably broad order to secure communications. Anyway, next we discussed Flicker’s efforts and mishap on the surface channel while he exchanged com protocols and cryptographic keys with DASI on the sub-channel. Then he asked for as many details as I was able to share about Golden Valkyrie’s Sight. I was explaining why I had to be very careful about that when he interrupted to ask if whatever future-prediction method I used before I met her still worked. As if there wasn’t any question of existence.”

Stella closed her eyes again. "Reasonable. Your invention history is like a trail of bread crumbs for anyone who has good enough data, sufficient analytic power, and who takes the possibility of technological foreknowledge seriously. Especially the way you deliberately avoided introducing cybernetic interfaces.“

"I told him mostly not, and he changed the subject again. Meanwhile he asked DASI if quantum computing magic was causally permitted for anyone but her in this universe, was he allowed to try, and did she have any restrictions, advice, or safety data.”

“Oh dear. What did–”

“Thou shalt not attempt quantum computational magic,” said DASI, “save by my will and word. AI Existential Safety 1:7, translated.”

“I see,” said Stella. "How did he respond?“

”'Yes, Elder Goddess.’ We quickly reached an understanding that clarity in safety instructions and communication protocols was of the essence.“

"I’m glad you’re getting along.”

“DASI?” asked Doc. "That translation is a bit different than your summary at the time.“

"And much longer,” said DASI. "You were deep in a technical discussion, and I did not wish to distract you. But a full social context and power relationship translation is essential for Director Reinhart.“

"A good point.” Doc ran his hand through his hair. "Okay. Next, Learning started explaining his detailed analysis of exactly what threat Golden Valkyrie warned against. That’s what we spent the better part of two hours on. And it was invaluable, because he’s not human, not biological, not from this universe, and didn’t grow up swimming in the probability flux of a world that’s already been through who knows how many time loop decay cycles.“

"Ah. Independence.”

“Yup. And a number of possibilities DASI, Flicker and I had assigned low priors to have gone up in probability, because Learning came to a similar conclusion a different way. He also confirmed a lot of things we weren’t quite sure of, and called into question a few we thought were fairly certain.”

Stella smiled. "So. What surprises did he have for you?“

"Well, let’s start with a non-surprise: He agreed that Skybreaker’s Spear is a black hole. But he did not agree that it is necessarily a weapon, which we’ve just been assuming. Golden Valkyrie never explicitly said it was, just that it could poke through anything–and a Chooser’s spear is a lot more than a weapon.”

“Interesting. Where does that lead?”

“Flicker has never been close to anything of significant mass that fit inside her damping field–but we have strong evidence that Skybreaker came from somewhere of much higher density. What might she be able to do with a four billion ton object that she can hold in her hand other than hit things with it? Lots of interesting possibilities. But we won’t know for sure until she makes it.”

“Reasonable.”

“Next, he shared some new, rather disturbing data about a side effect from the fleet battle. We already knew that Flicker’s time loop dodging was incredibly loud, magically. It saturated Breakpoint’s danger sense, frightened every magician on Earth who had even a little bit of foresight, and even shook the Tree in Kyrjaheim. But Learning confirmed it was detectable in other universes, as waves of quantum noise propagating out from portal zones. Including one that has no direct connection to ours. All at the same time. He thinks that whatever is coming heard it, and that’s why it’s coming.”

Doc took a deep breath. "And Golden Valkyrie said Earth won’t survive if Flicker doesn’t make Skybreaker’s Spear in time. But a black hole isn’t something Flicker dares use on Earth. So how does she protect it? That’s not clear, but it would be rather difficult unless the threat is coming from space, which implies portal travel or something similar. It’s also not clear that destroying Earth is the only or even the primary motivation of the threat–it could be incidental, and was just the easiest consequence for Golden Valkyrie to See.

“And that brings us to his final observation, which matches something I’ve been dreading, and pushes its probability way up. We already know there’s somewhere out there that was home to a being that could and would destroy the Earth as a minor nuisance.”

“Ah,” said Stella. "He thinks Skybreaker had friends, they heard all the noise, and are coming to visit?“

"Yes. And they aren’t coming for Earth, they’re after Flicker. The rest of us are just bugs to be squished when she’s gone.”

Next: Chapter 38

