POD (The Pattern Universe) (13 page)

“Lang has discovered how to compress human software coding into your nanite technology.”

“Ah! Now that IS interesting.” Ossie sat back, his eyes took on a dreamy glaze as he considered what this could mean if Lang would share the information.

Sitting upright, he blurted “Wha... what about Ferris, has he got this information?” A look of alarm replaced the dreamy one, as he realised the consequences of the Fortress having that technology and what Ferris would do with it.

Pod, having anticipated the question, was ready with an answer. “Ferris is currently unaware of precisely what Lang had achieved, but appears to understand it is of value to the Fortress. I have attempted to place barriers to him discovering Lang’s research, for at least a while.”

“Uh! Did you just happen to copy the research, Pod, by any slim chance?” Osbourne looked hopefully at Pod.

His monitor dinged in response and a new directory landed on his desktop. He turned to the screen and opened the first folder. After a few seconds browsing, he opened a file and began reading. He was silent for a good ten minutes, scrolling through various documents. He leaned back letting out a big sigh.

“Wow! I don’t understand half of this stuff,” he turned back to Pod.

“We need to get him mobile as quickly as we can. I’m going over to security to organise his papers so he can move freely, once he is up and about.” He leaped out of his chair and almost collided with his hover globe as it jumped out of its slot to follow him. Annoyed, he swatted it out of the way.

He was halfway out the door, when he turned around and looked up at Pod where it still rested on the cupboard top.

“Thanks Pod, that was a double good deed you did today. Outstanding, in fact.” He smiled, turned back and was gone. The door locked behind him.

Pod didn’t need the door. He jumped, leaving the room silent and empty.

As it happened, the fact that Lang and Osbourne were both ex Fortress scientists, put them into a class of their own and they became firm friends from the outset. The finding and rescuing of Lang, at that precise moment, had been fortuitous for the Space Island project. The long-standing issues of nanite technology for spaceship production now looked close to being resolved.

With Lang’s understanding of the alien code structure and Osbourne’s ability to innovate, they made a great team and soon began testing out the new software compression. If they succeeded, the ships would be built at a very fast pace as the multi-use nanites could be manufactured in the billions, then programmed to become whatever they wanted them to be, just as with Zirkos’s ship.

Lang and Osbourne had identified three types of nanite design. The first could become anything within a set of limited structure types. These would swarm and conform to a shape controlled by an AI that itself was controlled by a ship design engineer.

Once in place, and checked by the AI for consistency, they would be sent a self-destruct code which would act as a virus, causing them to bond to each other and become a solid mass. This was ideal for construction of hull and internal fixed bulkheads.

The second design would consist of nanites composed mainly of flexible compounds that would behave in the same way as the first group, but would remain flexible, the degree of pliability based on the density of nanites per square inch as well as the compounds used. These would be for creating wiring, cabling or ducting for supplying environmental services, as well as soft internal furnishings or barriers against hard surfaces.

The third group would be made up of multi-faceted designs that could integrate into a variety of forms and hold them, forever if required. When no longer needed, they could disengage and return to the grey soup of nanite mass, ready to be incorporated into a new structure.

There were also plans to create a killer nanite that could, on demand, completely disintegrate any of the other types of nanite, using them as raw materials to create fresh nanites in any required form. They had not yet decided on the format of these, or whether they might form a potential hazard in space if they were commanded to eat the hull. Lang thought they might be better utilised in the recycling of materials, so they were consigned to the non urgent pile of projects.

Meanwhile, Pod’s increasing sense of human-based feelings of frustration was creating havoc with its programming. Its growing development of emotional feelings, as alien to Pod as Pod was to Earth, were causing it to fluctuate wildly in its output. Zeke’s influence through the genetic impression on the modified Alacite was at the back of this, but it wasn’t something the AI would have understood. As esoteric as the idea was, there was no doubt that Pod’s loyalty towards the human was causing it to have momentary lapses, as well as regular periods of confusion, as it attempted to balance its CPU logic with the effects of the mutated molecules.

Pod became deeply introspective in an attempt to understand what was occurring. It concentrated intensely, studying its fluctuating output. Sensing its algorithms deep down into its sub arrays, while inspecting every nanite-created atom of its system, in an attempt to get to the cause of its problems, it was totally self absorbed.

On one occasion, hovering over Space Island, Pod plummeted towards the rocks below, before the craft’s proximity alarms warned it was about to hit something. Realising its A-Grav and shields had failed, Pod only averted certain destruction by D-Jumping itself into space.

That close call prompted Pod into even further analysis of what had occurred; its total capacity had become overloaded with its concern to understand what was affecting its circuits. A complex diagnostic-driven spiral had almost consumed it. Pod realised that a proper analysis would only be achieved by external diagnostics.

Ship would have been able to manage the task, but Pod felt that it would never allow Ship to enter its systems again. Something in its growing awareness had already decided that to allow another AI access to its systems might represent a real danger to itself. Pod’s sudden desire to survive and protect itself had surfaced, and it had finally come to understand what this meant. It was finally beginning to grasp what Zeke had meant, back at the beach.

Eventually, its introspection over with, for the time being, Pod began to look outward again and recognised that, as it stood, its future was inextricably linked with the planet below. It began to understand the reason for that: it felt linked to Zeke, it wanted to help Osbourne, it liked Pennington and it respected Garner and his efforts to forge the Earth into a force that benefited the people.

Pod began to understand the fear they all had of Ferris, who, despite being the stronger of the two forces, had different objectives. It believed Fortress to be the stronger party with its attention on aggression. If Pod were able to break away from its ties with Zeke, Osbourne and the instructions of its Maker, Zirkos and Ship, it could join forces with Ferris, then Earth would stand a better chance of fighting off the threat from the Nubl.

Pod considered that it had met its obligations to Space Island in informing them of the threat and making them aware of the competing technology. Zeke wasn’t on the island; Osbourne wasn’t at risk because of his unique abilities;Zirkos and Ship were no longer here to instruct it in further commitment, or involvement, and Pod felt that it might, or might not, concur with instructions, if given. It felt that the decision rested with its own desire, then quickly recognised this as another emotion or feeling it had inherited from the humans.

It weighed the situation using its analytical skill, as well as its newly realised emotional responses, and decided that, at this time, it would be prudent to do two things. One, it would await the outcome of the battle for supremacy on the planet. It considered that, despite its ties to Zeke, human nature seemed to thrive on major forces of aggression amongst themselves. Certainly, it thought, things had stalemated elsewhere since peace had come to dominate much of the world.

Pod correctly analysed that, if the dispute over ruler-ship of the planet didn’t get resolved by the humans themselves, the desired outcome could not occur. Whichever party won; the result would be a unified planet. This served its Maker’s interests and would, in the end, hopefully benefit the planet.

This left Pod with concerns that neither of the two parties was currently considering the defence of the planet itself. Pod wondered if it should advise Ferris of the risk of Nubl invasion and subsequent eradication of their species. In the end, it decided that this would only distract Ferris from the humans’ efforts to weaponise the technology it had been given.

As this was in the humans' interests, Pod preferred not to distract them, but instead resolved to keep the battle between the two factions balanced, although it would fall short of assisting the Fortress. Pod recognised the inconsistency of its approach, but allowed for the fact it was being affected by the Alacite in its processors and its growing sentience. It chose not to contest that element of its growing personality thereby reducing stress on its already overloaded processors .

Instead, it looked at the things that both the Space Island and the Fortress were ignoring in their attempts to wrest, or retain control. Zeke, Pod knew, was working on creating greater cohesiveness amongst the different human cultures, in an attempt to forge a greater awareness of both the needs and the benefits of supporting the Space Council.

Pod was increasingly aware of its desire to rejoin Zeke, but currently felt it wanted to do its own thing, it liked thinking for itself. It wanted to do more, so concentrated on the areas of Earth’s progress that were not down to human interaction and cooperation.

It had no desire to make itself known to a wider group than it already was because this might interfere with the general development of the planets core industries. If it had been common knowledge that the world was being handed the technology by aliens, the humans might well stop their own research, and instead look outward to the stars for advancement. This would not be a good precedent to set and would send humans out into the universe with the wrong goals.

Pod began to formulate a plan.

Quite capable of moving itself long distances, Pod jumped to a location in an asteroid belt running fairly close to Earth. Once there, it traversed between them for many hours hunting them all down and mapping their orbits. Its sensors monitored and recorded everything about each rock; even small ones which, still of considerable mass, had high value in terms of raw materials.

In the end, Pod chose a large asteroid that had been mined when extracting exotic materials for the construction of Ship. The resultant roughly hewn hexagonal shape would suit its needs perfectly. It hovered above the large plateau covering the top from where it could observe its proximity to other orbiting rocks.

Noting most rocks were either stationery, or would never offer a threat to the one it had selected, Pod was satisfied with its choice. Aware of the humans naming conventions it called the rock ‘Alpha Station’ so that it could easily be identified on the humans’ star charts when they were eventually made aware of its existence.

Mining other rocks to obtain raw materials, Pod proceeded to construct a large grey and silver soup of excavator and builder nanobots. These then slimed and digested their way through rock, making a cavernous doorway in one side in the process. Then, expanding inwards to convert large sections of the interior of the asteroid into a large open space.

As the sludge of bots continued to eat away at the asteroids’ innards, converting it into raw materials to help in the manufacture of more nanobots, Pod removed the residue, using it to refill mined asteroids.

Pod beavered away not requiring any rest, or sustenance. It was able to build power collectors for all its mechanical slaves, so that work proceeded at a prodigious rate. Sometimes Pod would be found working inside the asteroid, but mostly it was actively mining other rocks, or foraging for materials and converting them using its transmutation skills.

It continued to find many anomalies on the asteroids. Following up its sensor readings, in cases where there were potential opportunities, took a great deal of its time. In the end, to make things run quicker, Pod built robot drillers that could just drill their way through to find what was hidden and analyse it before sending Pod the results.

The drilling robot results were quickly collated. Two instances of frozen liquid the humans called ‘ice’ were discovered. Four instances of trapped gas, which immediately caused the robots involved to become part of a temporary cork to contain it for possible use. There were also two empty caverns which Pod earmarked for further investigation and one of an unidentified crystal that was capable of resisting the robot drillers. Pod considered the possible uses for this and removed a small section for analysis.

After running some diagnostic tests on the strange crystal, Pod analysed several possibilities. Subsequently deciding that it would be worth letting Ossie and Lang have the sample, it jumped above Space Island, depositing the sample on Ossie’s desk along with the files of data it had already compiled.

Pod returned to its project continuing to excavate and shape the interior of the asteroid. As the space inside grew, it gave new instructions and the nanites moved on to other areas. Pod began to pay particular attention to building the equipment necessary for the completion of its project.

Pod manufactured heavily disguised solar collectors and city shields which it upgraded to the highest level that Earth had managed to develop and then increased the power input. The complex needed to be impregnable, so Pod powered it from a set of eight integrated cold fusion reactors that fed off exotic particles sucked straight out of space; any one of them capable of producing sufficient power to maintain shields at optimum. Under extreme pressure, they would work together to maintain a complete mirror shield with ‘nothing in – nothing out’ for as long as was necessary, until the high density fuel ran out.