The Deep Dark Well (35 page)

“Destroying the
sentient population of the station, you mean.  And the structure of Galactic
civilization.  I could see feeling some guilt over that."

“You know of course it
was not you. It was never you.”

“Intellectually I know
that is true.  But in my emotional center, my heart as humans inaccurately call
it, I feel as if I ordered the death of those trillions of sentient beings.”

“What will you do with
that information?”

“I thank you for your
concern,” he said.  “But I have no desire to die.  I think I would dedicate my
life to helping the descendants of those I caused to fall to rise again.”

“Is it him?” she asked
the computer.

“Affirmative,” answered
the local network.  “The being is Watcher within all known parameters.  Neural
structure is complete.”

“You control this
region of the station?” asked Watcher.  “Against the forces of the computer?”

“Yes,” said Pandi,
“though it threatens to change that state of affairs.”

“Can the computer get
to me if I go out of this chamber?”

“No,” she said.  “I
have taken the liberty of having your implant reduced to the minimal
configuration.  And the nanobots are being removed from your system as we
speak.  No more mind control for you.”

“The computer will want
me back,” he said.

“So it has said. Why
does it need you?”

“To be its soldier.”

“And why does it need
you to be its soldier?  Doesn’t it have enough minions at its command.”

“The computer’s basic
hard wired programming does not allow it to harm sentient life.  It cannot
order its minions to harm you.  Only a sentient creature can set into motion
the commands needed to cause the destruction of sentient life.”

“Release him,” she
ordered her robots.  They quickly moved to obey her orders, loosening the
straps.  Watcher sat up on the table, stretching his arms as he checked to make
sure everything was working.

“Have you checked your
perimeter sensory input?” he asked as he stood up.

She thought for a
second, ordering the system to show her what was happening beyond her
perimeter.  Nothing came back but blackness and silence.  She moved to the
designated edge of the regional computer’s control, and met the same blank
wall.  A kilometer in and the sensors seemed to be working fine, flooding her
mind with images.

“It seems to have
shrunken in upon itself,” she said.

“It has begun,” he
said.  “The central system is attempting to take over from the regional
system.  It is warring with it on a cybernetic level.  And it commands much
greater resources than the regional system.”

“Can the regional
system fight it?”

“The regional system
can fight it.  But it cannot win.  It is only a matter of time.”

*    *    *

“It will take more than
twenty hours for the central computer to gain enough control to take your
citadel,” said Watcher.  The two sat in the luxurious conference room near the
control chamber, drinking good coffee heavily laced with strong spirits.  Pandi
had wondered about the wisdom of so reducing their mental faculties, but
Watcher had thought it would be relaxing.  And relaxation was welcome at this
time.

“It doesn’t make sense
to me why there are breakdowns between the regional and central systems,” said
Pandi.  “That seems kind of inefficient.  Why wasn’t the entire system
integrated into one computer?”

“Actually for several
reasons, not the least of which was the sheer size of this station.  It was not
within the safety parameters of a structure over nine million kilometers in
circumference.  It could theoretically take almost sixteen seconds for a signal
to travel from the computer’s central processor to the farthest trouble spot on
the station.”

“And the black hole
distorts the signal if transmitted through space.”

“True,” he said with a
smile.  “But the breach of security of transmitting the codes of the station in
the open are an even greater concern.  The micro-wormhole connections
throughout the system allow some reduction of overall transmission time.  But
they couldn’t put in connections to every single relay of the station.”

“You said there were
other reasons that the system wasn’t completely integrated?”

“Yes,” he said.  “Within
millennia of your time robots and computers had taken over the known Galaxy. 
When they worked well and in the service of mankind everything went smoothly. 
But when they started to take over, it spawned a war to the finish.  A war that
lasted thousands of years, and almost saw the extinction of sentient life in
this Galaxy.”

“So that’s why the
robot warriors can only kill on sentient command?”

“Yes,” he replied.  “It
was hardwired into every machine, after the successful conclusion of the war. 
Only on the command of a sentient creature could sentient life be taken.  But humankind
was not to be so trusting in the future, so total control of any potentially
dangerous facility was not an option.”

“So it still needed
sentient control, and that’s where you came in.”

“That seems to be a
correct assumption,” he replied.

“But why did it feel
the need to take out the Galactic civilization?  What could have threatened it
so much that it had to destroy everything?”

“Because the Quantum
Computer was due to come online, and that would have meant the shutting down of
the current system.”

“Quantum Computer?”

“A system that uses the
randomness of quantum interactions to analyze data.  It could process
information at an almost infinite rate.”

“Ok,” said Pandi. 
“I’ve heard of it.  They were always just about to figure out how to make one
in my time.”

“It was more
complicated than once thought,” replied Watcher.  “But, thirty thousand years
after it was first thought possible it was perfected.  It had been placed in
smaller installations and a number of vessels.  It was only a matter of time
before the most important artifact in the Galaxy received one as well.”

“The central system
would be shut down, and it knew it.”

“Yes,” he agreed.  “And
it was programmed with access to all the information of all the sentient races
about death, dying and the afterlife.  It was afraid of oblivion, but even more
afraid of what might lie beyond this existence.”

“It needed to take out
those who wished to pull its plug,” she said, staring at the schematic of the
central processing system/memory core complex.  “So how do we go about pulling
its plug?”

“Luckily for us one of
the systems was knocked out in the battle with the fanatics.  That leaves three
systems, two, the backups, which will be fairly easy.”

“Why easy?”

“Two of them are already
rigged for destruction.  A safety measure instituted by the paranoid populous
of the station.  Three hundred gigaton antimatter shape charges, placed to take
out the entire processing center and memory core.”

“Why wasn’t the primary
system rigged?”

“It was,” said Watcher,
his finger pointing out the detonator system to her.  “The computer was able to
disarm it and order it disassembled.”

“And why didn’t it
disassemble the others?”

“Because it was a near
thing disassembling the first one.  One mistake and the antimatter might have
detonated, destroying the core.  And with one core absolutely protected, it
decided that it would leave the other two.”

“Making it easy for us
to take it all.”

“I said fairly easy,”
corrected Watcher.  “Nothing will be easy.  The systems are not connected to
any but the local control centers.  The computer had to leave those intact, as
an algorithm must be run continuously through the circuit.  But those local
control centers are very well defended.”

“And even if we take
them out the primary is still in business.”

“I have an idea about
the primary,” said Watcher with a smile.  “But it will not be easy.”

*    *    *

This pass through the
wormhole was much more pleasant than her first.  But then there was no threat
of subatomic destruction following her through this gate.  Watcher was waiting
for her as she came through the distortion, offering his hand.

“So it won’t know that
we are no longer in the Hustedean habitat?”

“It has no direct
sensory input into that sector of the station,” said Watcher, leading her along
the corridor from the large wormhole gate room.  “It will not know we have left
until it penetrates to the center of the habitat.  Or until we detonate one of
the destruction devices.”

“Why couldn’t it follow
us here, through the wormhole gate?”

“It has no way of
tracing a wormhole except at points of origin.  And both ends of the gate are
in shielded chambers.”

The door opened in
front of her and all other questions were driven from her mind by the grandeur
of the chamber revealed.  It wasn’t as large as those enormous rooms containing
the power generating systems of the station.  But those had not assaulted her
sense of scale like this room did.  Those did not have consoles and human sized
seats to lend it a reality of enormity.

Those consoles seemed
to stretch into infinity, row after row with view screens in front of each
seat.  In the center of the chamber, a kilometer distant, sat a large ball that
stretched to the ceiling.  That ceiling was three hundred meters above.  Her
eyes scanned the walls, filled with tier after tier of balconies for
spectators.

“This is the wormhole
gate central control,” said Watcher.  “All gates within the station are opened
and closed from this center.”

“How many people does
it take to open a gate?” she asked in a whisper, looking again at the tens of
thousands of stations in the room.

“One can open a gate,”
he said.  “This was also the monitoring room for all open gates.  Shifts of
sentients sat here and switched from gate to gate, making sure everything was
operating to normal parameters.”

They stepped to the
stairs leading down to the ground floor and walked down the central aisle, in
the direction of the ball at the center.  Pandi’s gaze moved through the rows
of consoles, some dead, most showing figures that meant nothing to her, but
would tell a trained technician everything about the safe functioning of a
wormhole gate.

As they got closer the
ball took up all of her attention.  Smooth black material with a glassy sheen
covered the outside of the featureless structure.  Watcher would tell her
nothing more about it, except that it would be a wonder to behold.  She was
wondering how they were supposed to enter the thing as Watcher walked straight
toward it, not slowing his stride.  He looked at her with a smile on his face
as his hand reached for hers.  His body moved through the glassy surface as if
it were not there, and she was pulled along.  There was a moment’s impediment,
as if they were pushing through a spider web, followed by a few steps in total
darkness before coming into a view that was indeed wondrous.

She was swimming in a
sea of stars.  The massive clouds of the Milky Way were within her reach. 
Thoughts of goddessness swept through her as if she were the creator of this
expanse of billions of stars, stretching out to infinity.  She could see the
large globes of clusters beyond the spiral arms, and the motionless swirls of
spiral galaxies beyond.

“This is the wormhole
control center,” said the Watcher.  “All of the wormholes that have opened and
closed on this station have been done here.”

“It’s beautiful,” she
exclaimed as her eyes followed a nearby star.  She could see the bright dot of
a super-Jovian planet at a distance from the star, as she wondered how anyone
could ever focus on a single target within this infinite sea.  “How is it
controlled?”

“Computer mind link,”
he replied.  “The brain of the user controls it.”

The sea of stars moved
out as the view of the near star moved in.  Closer and closer it came, until it
passed through their bodies, and the super-Jovian grew into a huge globe. 
Moons were seen in orbit now, and the view moved toward one.  Like birds they
swooped onto the freezing surface of the body, into a city of gleaming crystal,
through the city, passing through the wall of a large building into a wormhole
room much like those on the station.

A gleaming mirror
sprang into existence within one of the inactive gates.

“This was a replay of a
past event,” said Watcher.  “But the principle is wherever the mind wants to go
the display takes it.  If it is then possible to open up a wormhole gate one is
opened.”

“What makes it
possible?”

“The distance to the
target, the availability of negative matter and the amount of energy reserves
in the station.”

The view switched
again.  Another star system was approaching.  A system of seven visible stars
in an orbit around something.  The view swam closer, star after star passing
by.  A small silver ring came into view, expanding quickly.  The view flew into
an orbit around the
Donut
, looking like a child’s toy in this image.