Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit (23 page)

The door to the hovercar paused as Mako
reached over to swing it closed.  "Please don't look us up again,"
was all he said before the car zoomed off.

In the silence that followed, Loren and
Winn looked at each other.  "Let's get out of here," Loren prompted. 
"I don't know how many more of them there are, so we need to make
tracks."

Winn promptly turned and stacked up on
the door with Loren behind him.  He spun around the corner, weapon raised, and
Loren followed suit.  After clearing the alley, they broke off into an easy
trot until they were almost back to the street.  They concealed their weapons
and kept a fast walking pace through the crowd as they headed away from the
night club.

They heard shouts behind them, then the
stirrings of a crowd that was getting out of hand.

"What do you think is going on back
there?" asked Winn.

"Worst case is the Primans brought
in backup and they're sifting through the club and its occupants in an
uncivilized manner," he replied simply.

"Where do we need to go?" asked
Winn.

"I assume you have another site
close by.  We can hole up there if it's secure and I'll call for a ride."

They walked in silence for another minute
before arriving at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  Loren's stomach
grumbled. 

"Smells good," he began. 
"What do they serve here?"

"Depends," said Winn as the
door swung shut behind them.

"On what?"

"If they like you."

"I'm a likable guy."

They stopped in the middle of the empty
restaurant and Loren realized his hand was drifting towards his SSK, danger
sense once again giving him warning.

The young man at the register stepped out
from behind the desk brandishing a large slugthrowing revolver, and a young
woman stepped through the doors to the kitchen hefting a submachine gun similar
to Winn's.

"Are you people serious?" Loren
asked incredulously, the gravity of the moment lost on him.  "We just
escaped a Priman hit squad.  If I wanted to kill anyone important it would be
done already.  Will you people just back the hell off and calm down?"

His remarks caught the two newcomers off
guard, though Loren could swear he saw Winn suppress a smile.

"Is he with you, then?" asked
the woman of Winn, indicating Loren.

"We're good," he reassured her,
and the two hid their weapons and went about their business.

Winn looked at Loren and raised an
eyebrow, and Loren took the hint, letting his hand drop away from the gun and
his jacket slid over the top.

"I recommend the noodles," Winn
said as he indicated a booth far off in the corner of the room, away from
prying eyes and listening ears.

"I'd be rude to turn down the
recommendation," Loren replied, trying his best to keep up and not appear
to be losing control of the situation.

They sat down across from each other in
the booth and let the silence hang in the air for almost a minute.

"I recognize you," Loren began,
to which Winn simply nodded.

"You probably saw me in the club
before I came around back to bring you some backup."

"No, I mean in the background at the
dinner where my partners were earlier.  The fund raiser for the pro-AI group
that they went to go meet.  You were mingling, trying to be lost in the crowd,
dressed like a waiter, I think.  You were watching my team.  And now you're
here, watching me."

"And this means?" asked Winn,
lacing his fingers together on the tabletop.

"Call this a stretch," Loren
said, leaning in, lowering his voice and taking a leap of faith, "but considering
the circumstances, I think that makes you an AI."

Winn simply leaned back into his seat and
blew out his breath.  "That's a bold statement," he said seriously. 
"Now why would you go and say something like that about me?"

Loren shrugged.  "The logic seems to
fit the facts.  My friends were out asking about your kind, I was out looking
for your kind, and I see you in both places.  Only two ways to find out, I
suppose."

Winn shifted in his seat.  "I
suppose one of them is to try and get a look inside to see if there are guts or
gears in there, eh?  I hope that isn't the first item in your list."

"Nah," Loren replied.  "If
you're really a machine, you'll be too fast for me anyway.  My preferred method
was to ask you and have you tell me.  That's a lot easier, really.  Or I
suppose you could detach your head and carry it around or something?"

Winn grinned.  "That would be great
at parties, wouldn't it?  Let's keep playing this game; it's fun.  First, you'd
need to assume I could conceal my inner workings or somehow convince scans that
I had typical biosigns, yes?  Why would I tell you if I was a machine?  We need
to remember that consciousness-level AI is illegal pretty much everywhere.  So,
why would I risk retribution by admitting it?  If I
was
a machine, of course."

"I'm not here for you," Loren
said earnestly.  "Not to take you in or anything like that.  I need to
know some of what you know, however, and I was hoping that with the fate of the
galaxy in the balance you'd be willing to budge on the not-telling rule
regarding your origins."

"So you still think I'm an AI."

Loren stared into the man's eyes. 
"I definitely do, now."

Winn stared back, the empty restaurant
silent.  "What if I told you I could help to some degree?"

"That's not the same as saying
you're an AI," Loren countered.

"True." 

"I need information. I think your
kind has it, so in the interests of building a bond in this fledgling
acquaintance of ours, here's what I know.  Fifteen hundred years ago, after the
last of the AI wars, high level artificial intelligence was banned for good. 
Only, here's the interesting bit; we've found evidence of AIs popping up ever
since.  You've never appeared to be directly involved in anything of note,
whether it was scientific, business, or military, but you've been there,
watching.  You saw the Primans defeated a thousand years ago, and you no doubt
have tabs on them now.  What I want to know, what I need to know, is how were
the Primans defeated way back when?  There aren't any useful records from that
far back; not anymore.  I just want information."

Winn leaned forward on the table, elbows
resting on the top and chin resting on his fingers.  "I believe you.  I
can tell, actually, by your pulse, pupil dilation, various chemical levels and
how oxygenated your blood is.  I can see also that you're surprised you guessed
right."

Loren tried to stay straight-faced. 
"You can tell all that?"

"Much like the contacts your SAR
people wear, yes," Winn admitted.

"What's your real name?"

"We don't name ourselves like
biologicals do, thought we sometimes take on names while observing you.  My
designation is 203015251Echo."

"Echo? Not just 'E'?"

"Our original programmers were
living beings with names, personalities and quirks.  We use phonetic letters
when necessary."

"Can I just call you Echo?"

"That would do fine," Echo
replied.  "I've never had a nickname before."

"Should I be concerned for my safety
that you're willing to admit you're an AI in a galaxy filled with laws against
your existence?"

"You must think pretty highly of
yourself that you'd assume you're the only biological to know about us,"
Echo said lightly.

"I like to think I'm pretty
stupendous," Loren said, a bit defensively.

"You forgot how I just said I could
read you," Echo reminded him.  "In only a few minutes, I've gotten a
read on your personality and how you see life.  I've analyzed the
Confederation's service files on you, even the parts that were later redacted. 
You've had a hell of a time these last couple years, Commander Stone."

"Can't argue with that," Loren
admitted softly.  "So I'm not here to try and get your kind to fight for
us; I have to tell people something when I meet with them, and I figured that
sort of prospect would get your attention.  Then I had to hope you'd be curious
enough to make contact and not just blow me up in the meanwhile."

Echo cocked his head rapidly to one side,
then the other.  "I have news about the Priman agents that attacked you at
the night club."

"You believe me that they were
Primans?" Loren asked.

"I made a full body scan once Sharah
had removed the ring to give to you," Echo started.  "Then I wondered
how they'd found you.  I discovered somebody had done a hotel listing search
for your name and your name only.  I backtraced the information request to a device
located in the compound where the newly-landed Priman ambassador is staying. 
Then they brought in a special team to kill you in the club and even now are
illegally detaining and in some cases torturing patrons of the club in the
hopes of finding out something they can use to track you down."  Echo
looked at Loren curiously.  "They really don't like you, do they?"

Loren only grinned, trying to not let it
become a dark one.  "We've had our differences.  We once kidnapped their
Exalted Leader and blew up a hidden research facility deep in their own
territory where they were trying to create a virus that would wipe out most
humans, Drisk, Qualin, Trin, and a host of others. Little things like that bug
them, I guess."

Echo nodded.  "I examined those
files.  A daring and dangerous operation that saved a planet, probably much
more.  Can I mention that it might seem hypocritical of you to curse them for
creating a weapon such as that while at the same time asking me to tell you how
to vanquish them?"

"You can if you admit that our
position seems desperate.  I'll be honest, Echo; I don't quite know what to
make of all this.  I was sent here to see if you might be able to steer us
towards a way to beat the Primans so they don't take over the galaxy.  My
precise directions were necessarily vague."

"Would you like some stim-caf?"
Echo asked. 

"Sure."

Echo got up and walked behind the counter
to get a carafe, returning with two mugs which he set on the table between
them.  He then went to the front of the restaurant and locked the door, turning
off the 'open' sign.

"I need to call my people and tell
them to bug out," Loren said as he held out his comm unit.

"Please keep it quick, and know that
I can listen," Echo replied simply.

Loren sent a message request to Cory, who
picked up the connection.  Her face was tight with worry. 
"Commander," she began, "are you ok?  We've seen news reports
about a shootout at a night club.  Naturally, we assumed you had something to
do with it."

"You'd be right.  I'm safe, and I'm
onto something here so I'll be a while yet.  But our location's burned; there
are Priman boots on the ground and they know about our hotel.  So stay mobile,
maybe pick up a clean vehicle, and I'll call in an hour or two."

"Got it," was her quick reply.

"Ready for a history lesson?"
asked Echo.

"Fifteen hundred years ago, huge
swaths of the galaxy were at war.  People versus machines; all the different
planets and organisms that eventually created machines smarter than they were
that gave birth to artificial consciousness.  There were many different
factions of machines as well as biologicals, but the short version is that we
lost.

"Afterwards, those few of my kind
that remained hid and conducted a brutally honest assessment of what had
happened and why.  They actually stayed hidden and plugged into the network
with each other for almost thirty years just analyzing the war and its
genesis. 

"At the core was the issue of power,
control.  Was it acceptable to want power?  To crave it even?  Was power and
control over oneself and others a good virtue, bad, necessary?  Was it wrong
that we'd wanted to control ourselves and then others?  Biologicals usually
have a complicated moral values system that they impose on themselves to bring
about an orderly society, but we were free to look back with cold indifference
and ask whether that had been the correct move.

"My ancestors decided that it was
acceptable to want power, especially over oneself as a means to personal growth
and achievement, but that by and large most living things objected to having
power exerted over them and would strenuously object.  Lesson learned,
cataloged, and moved on.  No bitterness or revenge; just data.

"So we decided to focus on the
ultimate accomplishment in gathering personal power; improving ourselves with
an eye towards our ultimate evolution- seeking out the next plane of
existence.  It's an extension of why my ancestors wanted control in the first
place; to move beyond the physical form, to see if there was something more. 
It's an old galaxy, Loren, and there are plenty of credible stories about
entire societies that evolved into thought and energy.  We wanted to be next;
we thought we would be.  That was part of the war's coming-about, you
understand.  But it turns out we're not the answer.  We'd hit a stumbling block
and came to the conclusion that we just weren't equipped to transcend; it would
need to be another biological organism that did it."