The Commander (6 page)

“So you won’t help us?”

“Not at all. If you are able to independently reproduce this capability, I will be delighted. I just can’t give it to you beforehand.”

“Why the secrecy, then?” Luke wanted to know.

“I suspect it is one of the advantages of the Nobility.”

“If they keep medical knowledge to themselves, they sound like a bunch of losers.”

“Do not delude yourself, Commander. If one of the Nobility were to visit your world, they would own the planet and everything on it in very short order.”

“How do you figure that?” Luke asked.

“Think for a moment,” George suggested. “Consider Sam, whom moments ago you called a prankster. After being with him for less than a minute, you introduced a medical device into your own body without understanding its capabilities and set in motion a chain of events which will alter your planet forever. He accomplished this without force or violence. And yet, Sam is an extremely minor functionary of the Nobility’s bureaucracy. How much more could the leader of such a galactic empire accomplish? I caution you to not discount their ability.”

Luke knew what George said was true, but didn’t want to dwell on the subject. “Okay. So what is the other secret?”

“It’s not exactly a secret, just something I thought you might not want publicly known.”

“Okay.”

“Your earpiece is more than a communication and authorization device. When it assimilated into your body, it started a transformation that is even now ongoing. When finished, the upgrade, so to speak, is quite extensive.”

“
Meaning
?”

“For one, your lifespan has been lengthened. I can’t tell you how much because a number of factors affect the result. Suffice to say, it is on the order of ten times that of normal humans.”

“Ten times!”

“Do not think you are invulnerable,” George cautioned. “You can die from an accident just as easily as before, so please be careful. But it is unlikely that disease or old age will be an issue.”

“Same thing for Annie?”

“Because she started younger the result is longer.”

This was not something Luke had even dreamed about and he wasn’t even sure it was a good idea. Everyone wanted to live a long life, but a thousand years was a long time to worry about anything, let alone the survival of the human race.

For now, it was something to file away in the back of his mind. There were too many other issues that needed attention. At the moment, he needed to get back to Earth for a meeting that Annie had arranged. He left the office and headed toward the hangar.

Still, lifespan was an interesting topic. “How long have you been alive, George?” he asked.

“I am not alive, Commander. By your parlance I am an artificially intelligent machine.”

“You’re a lot more than that, George. Don’t sell yourself short. You tell jokes;
bad ones, I admit. And Annie exasperates you. I hear you placate her often enough. But your frustration indicates you’re alive.”

“That is not the case, Commander. However, it is common for people to anthropomorphize AI technology when experiencing it for the first time.”

Luke disagreed. “That’s not what it is. I’ve interacted with you on a daily basis for months now. Your being alive is not even a question. Of course you are.”

“Thank you, Commander. I’m pleased that you feel that way. I appreciate your consideration.”

“You see?” Luke stated. “The fact that you can feel pleased proves you are sentient.”

“Commander, I am afraid it only proves that my software is extremely sophisticated. The Nobility’s best and brightest engineers have been upgrading AI technology for thousands of years. The result is that I am an affable companion and an excellent assistant; but that’s because I am programmed that way, not because I am alive.”

Luke wasn’t sure. Could George be alive without knowing it? “What about
Sadie
?” he asked. “She’s a little smart-ass, but I like her. She has personality in spades.”

“An interesting argument. However, her personality is the result of her experience in addition to her programming. She was designed to make passengers feel comfortable with her ability. But her intellect is based on software. All of her human interactions are shared with me and integrated into other AIs. You may have noticed that
Duffy
knows what you mean when you give her a destination. That is due to the software’s synchronization routines.”

Luke arrived in the hangar.
Sadie
was waiting for him, alerted by George.

“All set, boss,”
Sadie
said in a friendly voice.

“Thanks,
Sadie
,” Luke returned her greeting. “Are you alive?”

“Alive and ready to go,” she responded.

Luke looked at the hangar’s ceiling. “So what about that?
Sadie
thinks she alive.”

“A better explanation is that she responded that way to give you a feeling of comfort. Let me give you a demonstration.”

“Okay. Show me,” Luke said.

“
Sadie
. Self-destruct against the wall on the opposite side of the crater.”

The shuttle took off faster than Luke could follow. He saw the explosion in the distance where she impacted the cliff.

“George!” Luke cried, aghast. “Oh my God! What the hell did you just do? That was
Sadie
, for crying out loud. She’s my favorite!”

“Calm yourself, Commander. She was just a machine. She wasn’t alive.”

“But…But… I can’t believe you did that! I
liked
Sadie
. Annie
loved
her.”

“I am aware of that, Commander. Please direct your attention to the replication bay.”

The replicator was already shimmering. As Luke watched, a shuttle appeared. It looked just like
Sadie
and
Duffy
. The shimmering stopped and the shuttle hovered over to where
Sadie
had rested a moment ago.

“You still want to go Earthside, boss?”
Sadie
asked. Even the inflection of her voice was the same.

“
Sadie
, is that you?” Luke asked incredulously.

“Hello, boss. Still me. Don’t pay any attention to that prick in the ceiling. He doesn’t understand.”

Luke needed proof. “
Sadie
, what did you say to me during my very first flight here?”

“You mean about you trying to fly too fast or that you didn’t understand light speed?”

It was
Sadie
. It really was. And she was a computer.

“I got it, George,” Luke said. “But don’t do that again.”

“As you wish, Commander. Have a nice trip.”

Luke walked into the engineer’s workroom in a cheerful mood. Desks were scattered about in workgroups so teams of engineers could work in pairs or small groups of three or four. Luke could hear George’s voice mixed in with the animated conversations of each group. The center of the room contained a large white design table. A holographic cube floated above the surface.

On the other side of the work area, one of Morrow’s talented engineers, Luke knew him as Riley Stevens, was apparently having a serious discussion with an engineering diagram that was displayed on the wall. The diagram changed slightly from time to time. George’s voice floated faintly from that conversation as well.

Moonbase residents, Luke included, were accustomed to having George involved in every aspect of their lives. Whether in their residence, out with friends, or in their workplace, George was omnipresent. Luke had worried that George would be perceived as an Orwellian big brother figure, but that wasn’t the case.

Instead, George replaced the smartphones that everyone left behind. He took care of their contact lists, their calendars, and passed on messages from friends and family. More than once Luke overheard George remind someone that so and so was waiting, or wanted them to stop on the way home and pick up some Chinese take-out. The more that people lived with George, the more they came to depend on him.

Luke felt the same way. But for him, the connection was even closer. Because of his implant, George was right there in his thoughts. It was like having the AI’s archive as part of Luke’s own memory. If he wanted to know something, he merely formed the question in his mind and the answer appeared.

Interestingly to Luke, George was never intrusive; he never made a suggestion unless pressed. It was one of the facts that finally convinced Luke that George was, in fact, not sentient; not alive. He must have come as close as possible without crossing over that undefinable line. Luke now accepted that George was a tool, an incredible piece of software that made life better.

This was especially true for the engineers in this room who struggled with the application of new concepts. A young man stepped forward with an eager expression. “Can I help you, sir? I mean, Commander?”

“Just looking for Morrow,” Luke replied. “What’s that?” He nodded at the hologram hovering over the central design table. It was a large cube, pockmarked by hatches and windows of all description. It sported antennas and a variety of appendages around the exterior. Luke thought it had a slightly menacing look.

“That’s a mockup of the Mars colony ship,” the engineer replied.

“Whoa!” Luke exclaimed. “That’s way too Borg-like. Can you imagine trying to sell that to people down on the planet?” He smiled at the engineer. “Don’t you think?”

The engineer looked shocked.

“Do you know where Morrow is?” Luke persisted.

The young man shook his head.

“No problem. I’ll find him.” Luke turned away and went in search of the ship builder. They had promised to have lunch together and Luke was hungry. He didn’t see the young engineer scurry over to his team leader with the bad news. The Commander wanted a complete re-design of the colony ship.

“We need medical,” Roth said. “We’ve been lucky so far but sooner or later someone’s going to get hurt.”

Luke agreed. He added the requirement to his growing list of
must have right now
. Although three months had passed since Sam’s initial appearance, Luke often felt that nothing had been accomplished. The total population of Moonbase was miniscule. He wanted to see a warship like
Battlestar Galactica
with hundreds of Vipers and X-wing fighters flying around, practicing to shoot down the enemy. Instead, he didn’t even have people to work on the concept. Yesterday he had hired away the director of public works from the city of Las Vegas so they could expand Moonbase’s design and build more of the basic facilities. The problem was that he was still hiring people one by one.

He needed five thousand people yesterday. They should be designing battlecruisers, space fighters, beam weapons, or photon torpedoes regardless of what George said about their fictional nature.

Despite Luke’s frustration, days and weeks slipped by while everything around him moved at a snail’s pace. It wasn’t lack of effort. Ambrose and his crew worked ceaselessly to build out the residential areas.

Planetside, Annie was establishing the pipeline necessary to start funneling people in their direction. From the looks of it, she was going to need another three months before turning on the spigot. From that point on, their growth rate should kick up significantly. He worried about a million other things as he flew back to Earth after lunch.

In his office in the Baggs airport terminal, he sighed heavily and picked up the phone. After an hour of negotiating with various levels of bureaucracy, he had an appointment with a Doctor Tanner, the head of the emergency department of the Las Vegas Regional Medical Center.

# # #

A week later Luke groaned in frustration as he sat at his Moonbase office desk.

“
George, I need a different kind of shuttle.”

“What kind would you like Commander?”

Luke thought about it for a moment. “Ideally, one that looks just like a Boeing 737. I can’t afford to have another episode like the one with Doctor Tanner.”

When Tanner first saw
Sadie
, he walked out. It turned out he was a rated pilot himself. He knew
Sadie
wasn’t a legit aircraft and thought Luke was pulling some kind of stunt.

“It’d be nice to have a shuttle that looks like a Gulfstream for small groups, but I really need something that I can get a couple hundred people on without anyone freaking out.”

After a moment of consideration, George responded. “It’s not a problem Commander, but there are limitations you should know about.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“The aerodynamics would be those of a shuttle, very similar to
Thomas
or
Sadie
. In other words, it could not be flown like a Boeing 737. Would you want the pilot seating area to have traditional Boeing instrumentation? If so, it would only be decorative.”

“That doesn’t matter, George. Passengers aren’t allowed in the cockpit so design the instrumentation as you see fit. Anything else?”

“Two hundred passengers is less than ideal on an aircraft that size. I would prefer to limit the design criteria to one hundred fifty. That would make seating much more comfortable for those aboard.”

Luke chuckled at the suggestion. “George, you’re the only aircraft designer in the world that takes things like that into consideration. When can we have it?”

“It will take quite some time to complete the design and fabrication. Can you give me an hour, perhaps?”