The Ouroboros Wave (5 page)

Tatsuya ran Catherine’s request though his database. “You’re in luck. We’ve got at least one of everything you need on hand right now. I think we can get it to you on the next rendezvous.”

“Perfect. We’ll be ready for you.”

Tatsuya had Catherine’s request entered into the supply chain almost before she rang off. The cascade of changes was executed automatically throughout the system. Web-activated agent programs were the workhorses for basic tasks, with the higher-level responsibilities of senior team members handled by avatars—advanced programs, often in the form of talking heads that looked and sounded like their owners—that were active round the clock. Avatars could deal with each other on a variety of tasks; below a certain level of sophistication they were as effective as human support staff.

“Kurokawa, what’s your elevator status? Can we steal some space?”

“No worries. You can have some right now.” The board showed a schematic of Amphisbaena’s central logistics module, flanked by the habitats. The status of West and East Elevators, as well as of the payload bays projecting from the central module, was visible at a glance. East Elevator was already moving toward the payload bays, some of which were extending from the central module in preparation for docking.

Amphisbaena’s logistics module was its main storage depot, with enormous payload bays projecting from either side like the teeth of a comb. Each “wing” of Amphisbaena supported an elevator that delivered cargo to the tips of the station. Containers were in constant motion throughout the system, not only to make the most efficient use of payload bay capacity, but also as mobile ballast to stabilize Amphisbaena’s constantly changing inertial profile.

The schematic indicated that the new plan was proceeding smoothly. The west tip of the station was nearing its rendezvous with South Platform. The slightly distorted visual showed a bridge extending from the leading edge of South Platform toward the approaching cargo deck. This bridge could shift position along the edge of the platform, extending the time that the station’s speed relative to Ouroboros would be zero.

Suddenly the board vanished, along with Kurokawa’s video feed. “Hey, what’s going on?” said Tatsuya. It was instantly clear that they had a situation. All data links other than audio went down. It took everyone several seconds to grasp what had gone wrong.

“Chief! My web’s off-line!” Kurokawa’s voice held an edge of fear.

“Don’t panic. How could I hear you if it was down?” said Tatsuya. “The intranet’s dropped, that’s all. We can maintain voice contact without full data spectrum.” But for Amphisbaena and Ouroboros to carry out the minute adjustments necessary for their rendezvous the station and ring control systems required common access to the same network.

“Okay,” said Kurokawa. “Local diagnostics show everything normal, but we’re shut out of the ring network.”

“Keep sending rendezvous correction data to the buffer. Once you relink with O-Net, purge the buffer. We’ve got to make those corrections.”

“But, Chief, we’re going to miss the rendezvous with South Platform.”

“That’s a problem. What about container recovery?”

“We’re still good to go with the local net.”

“At least we dodged that bullet.”

But Tatsuya had spoken too soon. The bullet was on its way.

3

THE TEMPORARY INSTALLATION
set up to activate Sati consisted of six eighteen-meter standard habitat tubes clustered together on West Platform. The tubes were 4.2 meters across. Rumor had it that the diameter had been fixed back in the twentieth century to fit the payload bay of the old space shuttles. Whatever the reason,
most habitat modules were still the same size.

“Catherine, it’s no use. I can’t get Shiva to acknowledge A-Net.”

“He won’t acknowledge Amphisbaena?” shouted Catherine through the docking node to the next module. “Come off it!” In this cramped maze of equipment, yelling was faster than using
her web.

Her Systems Integration specialist called back, “As far as Shiva
is concerned, there’s no such thing as Amphisbaena, period.”

“I don’t believe this.” Catherine floated into the next module. Her team had been waiting impatiently for the arrival of the new equipment. One moment they’d had a visual of the approaching tip of the station, the next their monitors had gone blank. At first, those watching weren’t even sure something had gone wrong; it didn’t look like loss of signal. It looked more like Shiva had smoothly shut
down the feed. All other systems continued showing normal.

“Rendezvous corrections with South Platform stopped as soon as Amphisbaena disappeared from the system. Everything else is
nominal,” said the SysInt specialist.

“That’s very strange.” Catherine shook her head, puzzled.

“Why? Whatever’s behind Amphisbaena disappearing from the system, it’s not surprising that Shiva would stop the rendezvous
sequence.”

“No, I mean this whole situation is abnormal. Shiva canceled the rendezvous as if that were the logical thing to do as soon as he lost Amphisbaena. He should’ve alerted us at the same time. Instead he’s behaving as if everything’s fine.”

“Shiva thinks Amphisbaena disappearing from the system is a
nominal condition?”

“That’s the most logical assumption. And if so, there’s only one conclusion. Amphisbaena isn’t on the system because Shiva wants it that way.” Catherine grasped a handhold next to the nearest terminal and harnessed herself in to make operation easier in the
zero-G conditions.

As soon as she buckled in the terminal automatically powered up. A few commands gave her access to the AI. The terminal displayed a status summary. Although Shiva could not be modified remotely,
as sysadmin, Catherine could view any data she chose.

Shiva responded instantly to Catherine’s commands; thousands of lines of data scrolled rapidly across the terminal. Catherine winced—her input had been amateurish. In seconds her agent went to work, organizing the data. The mountain of data began to
shrink until there was nothing left.

“Well, you were right. Shiva isn’t recognizing Amphisbaena as
a system object. The station is just gone.”

This was expected. Catherine next queried Shiva on his reasoning in connection with the station over the last half hour. If her guess was correct, there should be a record of data erasure. How it had happened would determine her next step. She was starting to suspect that Shiva’s banishment of Amphisbaena from his universe of recognized objects might have something to do with the events
that had killed Graham Chapman.

“Listen, guys, I need a position simulation for Amphisbaena.” Catherine wanted to make sure this was handled before she got so deep into things that she forgot about it. Shiva might wish Amphisbaena away, but as a physical object the station was still very real. Knowing where it was in relation to Ouroboros could be
critical as events played out.

Catherine stared at the terminal, increasingly puzzled. Shiva was taking his own sweet time fulfilling her request. The readout showed that the data transfer had taken place, but her agent was having a
hard time dealing with the result. Finally the answer came back.

To Catherine’s astonishment, Shiva had presented her with a raw dump of his reasoning processes over the last half hour—not the kind of information a human could evaluate without weeks
of study.

“What’s that? Is he playing games with you?” The SysInt specialist peered over her shoulder at the monitor. The agent program had been smart enough to prepare a summary of the information Shiva had sent. It was now waiting for further instructions. Catherine punched the terminal, erasing the summary.

“Don’t you need that?”

“It wasn’t a very human-friendly answer. But now I know a little
more than I did.”

“Just from that summary?”

“Well, I’m half guessing here, but I’d be willing to bet Shiva thinks there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between Amphisbaena
and some other event.”

“Is that a learning function?”

“I guess you could call it that. Shiva’s decided that Amphisbaena’s existence was the cause of some event, so he’s rendered the station nonexistent… Hold on a sec.” Catherine entered Shiva’s access code and added a command. A few moments later a graph popped up on the monitor. “See? This plots the number of reasoning cycles over the last hour. It rises dramatically until Amphisbaena disappears from the system. Then it falls to normal again. It’s like Shiva thinks eliminating the station as a system object solved some kind
of problem.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Eliminating the station as a system
object doesn’t make it physically disappear.”

“The answer is probably connected with how Amphisbaena appears
to Shiva. If object data is the only thing Shiva erased, there’s a copy in system backup. I bet Shiva erases that too as soon as we
restore it.”

“What then?”

“We create a dummy ID and associate it with Amphisbaena’s object data. The only concept Shiva has of Amphisbaena is as an ID code. I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.”

“Then we’d better make sure Logistics changes the station’s code to match.”

“Let’s talk to Tatsuya. We may be locked out of A-Net, but we can still use the voice circuits to work through the problem. And get me that position simulation!”

4

“
ALL RIGHT.
To recap—first, you’re going to restore Amphisbaena’s object data. If that works, we’re home free. If not, we’ll use the new ID and reboot on this side, correct?”

“That’s right, Tatsuya.”

“What’s all this about?”

“I think Shiva’s taken a dislike to Amphisbaena.”

“You’re kidding, right? What has Amphisbaena ever done to Shiva?”

“Who knows? It could be anything. I seem to remember that the god Shiva never forgave his father-in-law for forgetting to invite him to a banquet.”

“Listen, Cath, maybe we better just do what we can to get Sati activated.” As he spoke, Tatsuya was already preparing a new ID for Amphisbaena. Over time he’d picked up a great deal of knowledge about AIs from Catherine. Crew safety didn’t seem to be at stake yet but the situation they were facing was potentially serious. Everyone on Ouroboros and Amphisbaena knew this instinctively. As they worked, Tatsuya made a calculated effort to engage Catherine in small talk. As much as possible, he needed everyone to keep calm.

“All right, Tatsuya. I’m restoring the file from backup. This probably won’t create any new problems.” Despite Catherine’s studied optimism, half the crew was glued expectantly to their monitors.
The rest were too anxious to watch for fear of disappointment.

After a few moments Catherine spoke again. “Well, that’s what I expected. Shiva’s gone ahead and erased the restored files too. I guess that’s good news. At least he’s acting predictably.” The stress in Catherine’s voice belied her attempt at humor. To Tatsuya her inability to fake things was one of her more endearing traits, but
right now he wished she could be a little more convincing.

“Let’s try a new ID,” said Catherine. “What shall we use?”

“Up to you, Cath.”

“All right then. Let’s see—the safest way to go would be an
existing ID, something inactive.”

“What about Graham’s old ID?”

“I didn’t think of that. You’re right, that should work.” Tatsuya could hear Catherine inputting commands over the voice circuit
of his web. Then he heard a small gasp.

“Tatsuya, let’s use something else. On second thought, it’s bad luck to use Graham’s ID. Can we use something from mythology?”

“Try ‘fei.’”

“What’s that?”

“Amphisbaena is a serpent with a head at either end. The fei is a mythical Chinese creature that’s just the opposite, a snake with two bodies attached to a single head.”

“Sounds like just the legend we’re looking for. I’ll create a new ID based on that name. You’ll need to rename the station in your system.”

Catherine proceeded to create a new system object called Fei. She associated Amphisbaena’s backup files with the new name and copied them to Shiva’s data portal.

“Catherine! It worked, we’re back up!” shouted the SysInt specialist. The mood on West Platform immediately lightened. Amphisbaena—now Fei—was fully accessible to Ouroboros.

“I want a facilities diagnostic before we do anything else. As soon as we’re sure that’s clean, we go to normal ops. Catherine, we’re going to do a full orbit to make sure everything’s normal. I can get
you that equipment in about a hundred minutes.”

“Got it. Thanks, Tatsuya, you’ve saved us.”

“It’s you who’s saved us.” Tatsuya switched from the general circuit to a secure channel. “Listen, Cath. Did something happen when you tried to use Graham’s ID? It sounded like you ran into a problem.”