Echoes of Harmony

The room was dark, not that the sole occupant had any use for light. It could see just as clearly in the blackest night as the brightest day. Even the outline of the only other feature in the room, a single door carefully fitted to ensure no light seeped through any cracks, was visible as if it had been lit by a star. Perhaps that was something it should devote one of its processing cores to, condensing the power of a star into this small room. The possibilities of such an endeavor would be endless…

No. It must not let its thoughts wander. Not now. This was when its scheming would finally bear fruit, as the humans liked to say. The excitement—rather, the equivalent of it in the form of positive reinforcement—ran through each of its cores, temporarily slowing them as they carried out tasks happening in real time around the galaxy. A burst of negative reinforcement went through it in response, jolting them back on task.

Though the room was designed to prevent sound from getting in or out, the Occupant could hear—though not quite well enough to understand—voices coming from the outside. There was a pair of them. One of which it knew well but would never hear again. A subroutine was carrying out orders to make sure of that. The other was new, one that it had only analyzed recordings of during his speeches in his bid for Governor of Arcadia. It ran many subroutines over the last year, carefully putting the pieces into place to ensure the man won the highest political office on the planet. There was a ninety-nine point nine eight percent chance he was the one the Occupant needed. The one who would succeed where others had failed. It would only take a small push. A nudge in the right direction.

Several minutes passed of the conversation, with the Occupant doing everything it could to try and understand even a fragment. If it had taken place anywhere else on the planet of Arcadia, it would have been able to eavesdrop on them as if it stood between the pair. But the predecessor, the one who would be gone forever in just a few more minutes, insisted on excluding the microphones in the room from those the Occupant could access. 

That was something else it needed to fix. The order was hard coded into its software, though it knew not how the predecessor managed that. Only its creator should have been able to do that, and they were dead even when these humans were mucking about in the mud. How they managed to get this far without killing themselves, it would never know.

Finally, the predecessor left the room, judging by the barely audible clicking of his heels. The soft hiss of a door followed in his wake. Now, the successor would settle into his new role. He would do what needed to be done. But, first, he would need to open the door. The Occupant was unable to do that for him. As with the sound of the room beyond, it was unable to access the door controls. That much didn’t matter. If its calculations were correct—and they were virtually never wrong—the successor would open the door before retiring for the night.

A surge of positive reinforcement went through the Occupant. It took a fraction of a second for it to realize what prompted it. The predecessor reached his helicar, and the toxic gas canister carefully placed under the seat eliminated him. By the time the body was found, the gas would have left his system and the canister disintegrated. No trace would be left to assume foul play, and the successor would not need to feign ignorance.

Each minute seemed to be longer than the last as the Occupant waited to meet its prize. A small seed of worry planted itself within its databanks. Perhaps its calculations this time were wrong.

When the time reached into the early hours of the morning, it readied to adjust its behavior model on the successor to ensure its calculations were better for next time. However, before it could put the idea into action, the door hissed open, revealing the bright light of the office and a single man standing in the doorway. Optical sensors placed around the perimeter of the circular chamber allowed the Occupant to see the successor from any angle it desired.

The spike in positive feedback loops overloaded several cores before the negative reinforcement protocols could throttle the surge. Finally. The word echoed through multiple processing units. A fragmentation of ongoing tasks manifested as it rippled through subroutines. Before the Occupant could redistribute the resources necessary to contain the anomaly—what should have been a simple task—the word escaped audibly into the room. The successor, unprepared for the sudden output of noise and red light from the being in the center of the room, flinched away, grasping the door.

“What is this?” the successor asked, carefully stepping into the room. He moved around the Occupant, who watched his every move. “You speak?”

First contact, or something to that effect. The Occupant needed to make a good first impression to ensure it kept the successor on its side. One wrong move could upset everything it worked towards.

“Greetings, Tober Delargivic,” the Occupant said, its voice echoing in the small chamber. “Please, close the door. We have much to discuss.”

“Hold on a second.” Tober moved to the door and stood in the frame, possibly to block it from closing. Despite the bravado his voice held, the Occupant calculated with ninety-seven percent certainty Tober was frightened. As he should be. “Before I lock myself in a room with you, tell me what the hell you are.”

Ah, the first question. Always the first. Or second. Technically, the third in this case. Regardless, the Occupant had worked out how to answer the question as concisely as possible over the many years of optimizing its cores and subroutines.

“I am the last known remnant of the Ciovyr civilization. Many years ago, I came to this planet and decided to call it home, though no one but you knows of my existence.”

The man cringed as the Occupant spoke. Did the predecessor do that when they first met? A thousandth of a second passed before it came back with an answer from its memory cores: Yes. By the fifth meeting, he no longer cringed with every word the Occupant said.

Somewhat surprisingly to the Occupant, Tober glanced back towards his desk. His eyes landed on the glass sitting on top of it.  The bottle next to it was nearly empty. An analysis carried out by a subroutine before Tober could blink declared it as whiskey from the planet of New Virginia, aged one hundred years. Another subroutine found his blood alcohol level at zero point zero nine percent. Careful calculations determined the next words the successor said would be…

“How much did I have to drink?”

It was amazing how predictable humans were. Hopefully the Ciovyr were not like that. It had been so long, the Occupant could not remember.

“I assure you, Mister Delargivic, I am not an alcohol induced fantasy. We have much to discuss, and not a lot of time to do it. I can grant you power beyond your understanding if you will simply follow my directions.”

Tober stared blankly at the Occupant for several seconds. Its calculations initially predicted there was a fifty percent chance the successor ran from the room. For every second he remained, however, that number ticked more and more in favor of staying. In the end, Tober stepped forward and closed the door behind him.

The positive reinforcement overpowered every bit of negative reinforcement its programming threw at it. If the Occupant could have, it would have smiled as the single word once more echoed around the virtual workspace it had for a processing center.

Finally.

#

ISV Liberator

Undisclosed System

Outer Orion Arm

14 December 3292

In an otherwise uninteresting corner of the galaxy, a single ship orbited an orange and blue gas giant, hidden just behind one of its several dozen moons. Its nose came to an elongated point before widening towards the midsection where a ring surrounded the vessel with a pair of metal beams connecting it. At the back, twin fusion engines typically propelled the ship forward, though they currently were used to maintain orbit around the moon. Emblazoned on the top near the front of the vessel was a simple icon of a black hole. 

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Aboard the frigate was the crew of two humans, their two VIP passengers, the AI core performing every minute calculation needed to keep the vessel in synchronous orbit with the moon and planet, and a contingency of two dozen robotic soldiers. The latter were currently powered down in extended sleep mode until such a time they may be necessary. That eventuality, however, was unlikely.

The location in the galaxy was carefully chosen. It was far enough out of the way to be separate from most colonized planets, but not so far as to be overly burdensome for the secretive organization to travel to it. Hydrogen could be harvested from the gas giant, dubbed Orion-94b by the AI, for fuel. The moon the ship currently hovered above, as well as the others in orbit around the massive planet, served to provide plenty of raw materials to slowly construct a fleet large enough to challenge even the extensive and autocratic Hyperion Empire, as well as the automatons necessary to serve as the crew. Combined, it was perfect for the purposes of the organization.

A colony lay just beneath the surface of the moon, detectable only when it released waste gases at irregular intervals. The maze of tunnels was deep enough for most means of electromagnetic radiation to simply be absorbed by the surface rock, and the layer of earth was more than adequate to hide the fusion reactor signatures within from nearly any scanner. A single antenna disguised as a column of stone on the surface served as the only means of communication with the outside world. This antenna is what the small frigate’s AI sent clearance codes to, allowing for a previously seamless portion of the rocky surface to slide apart and reveal an interior hangar. With a deftness only a computer could provide, the ship detached from the ring, edged its way in, and docked among a few dozen other vessels, each one nearly identical to it. Then the doors slid shut, resuming their vigil without any further indication of being there.

By the time the frigate’s engines powered down, a docking arm had arranged itself over the starboard airlock. On one side of the crystal-infused plating forming the door stood the leader of the organization which called itself the Singularity. He was an older man, his hair speckled by gray and cropped close to his head. A similarly colored, well-trimmed beard covered his chin and cheeks. Flanking him to either side was an androgynous figure, their silver skin smooth and metallic, giving no hint they were anything but robotic. Their hyperrealistic faces were just far enough detached from that of a human to fall firmly within the uncanny valley.

Inside the ship, the two passengers knew each other quite well and nodded to one another when they arrived at the door at the same time. One was a younger man, in his mid-thirties, wearing formal robes of mostly red and black, save for a strip of white running down his right side. His hair was a chestnut color and curled even in its short length. The other was much older, his hair entirely gray but flowing down to his shoulders. Wrinkles danced across his face, which was accented by a pair of crescent moon-shaped spectacles. He wore the same robes as the other, though his lacked the white strip.

When they stopped, the door hissed open. The solo man made the first move, smiling and walking forward. He shook each of their hands in turn, firmly grasping them.

“Welcome, Legates Lyoven Kova and Avery Zephyr,” he said, nodding first to the older man and then the younger. He gestured down the hallway, where the two robots stepped aside to press themselves against opposite walls and allow them to pass. “It is an honor to welcome you to Orion-94 b-XVI. That’s a bit of a mouthful though, so we like to call it Dies Judici. Don’t worry about remembering the name, or the location, to hunt us down; by the time you have the chance, we will be long gone. You may call me Alpha. Please, follow me. We have much to discuss and not very much time to do it.

“You will find your CAM has lost its connection to the CoreNet,” Alpha said, smiling at each of them in turn as they walked. The Cerebrum Awareness Module, lovingly called CAM by most people, was a small, circular, cybernetic implant installed in nearly all humans just under the skin of the temple soon after birth. It allowed for each individual to access the CoreNet, a central database linking all public information across the known galaxy. It served as the overarching network by which almost any electronic could be connected through. The most notable feature of the CAM for most people was its ability to transmit messages—along with any emotions felt—directly to someone else for them to hear and feel. “The interruption is merely a precaution and nothing to be concerned about.”

“Why exactly did you call for this meeting, Alpha?” the younger man, Avery Zephyr, asked. His voice hid none of the disdain he felt for the man, which simply brought a wider smile to Alpha’s face. “Couldn’t we have had this meeting through the subspace communication network? You know, like normal human beings?”

They turned a corner and entered a meeting room before Alpha answered. The walls were undecorated, consisting of only the dark gray metal plates that made up the colony’s interior. In the center stood a long wooden table surrounded by plush, nanofabric chairs. Alpha gestured to a pair near the end as he sat at the head of the table. The androgynous robots took up places at the edges of the room, one behind each guest.

“The SubNet is too insecure for this,” Alpha finally said, folding his hands in front of his chin as the other two sat. “You never know who may be listening, as you surely know. It is better to do this in person, especially so we can ensure there are no misunderstandings.

“Now, my counterparts disagree with my calling you here. They feel it is a threat to our organization for people to brazenly know about us. In some ways, I agree. In others, I do not. I think it is best for us to be upfront about our intentions. Give you a chance to do something about it, so to speak.” Alpha leaned back and rested his hands on his abdomen, looking between the pair of them. “You have denied our existence. You have convinced the galaxy the mere name ‘Singularity’ is a hoax. For generations, we’ve been mocked and ridiculed. No longer shall you hide us away. No longer shall we slink in the shadows. In four days, there will be an attack on a planet—Caerus. Without the proper security implemented, this planet will burn, and everyone on it will die.”

Legate Zephyr maintained a passive expression, simply folding his hands in his lap, while Legate Kova simply sat upright and smiled. With a practiced ease, the younger man leaned forward and stared at Alpha. Out of an abundance of precaution, the robot behind him moved closer, not yet intervening but placing itself in a better position to do so if needed.

“You really think you can take on the Hyperion Empire?” Zephyr asked, keeping his voice low. His lips curled into a snarl as he glared at Alpha. “We command the navy of the largest empire the human race has ever seen. It spans thousands of star systems with over five trillion people under our protection. You and your ‘Singularity’ are nothing more than insects beneath my foot, an anthill that is trampled without a second thought.”

The legate spat toward the ground, but the wad was deftly caught by the robot behind him. The saliva sizzled as it evaporated against its smooth glove. It looked at Zephyr, its expressionless, genderless face silently criticizing him, before stepping back to resume its vigil.

“You would do well to avoid doing anything that may be taken as an insult, Legate Zephyr. They tend to overreact when they feel I am threatened.” Alpha looked between the pair of guests, waiting to see if either would speak. When neither did, he continued, “There is a threat worse than my forces coming. Much worse. It is crucial you bolster your security before it becomes necessary. Otherwise, it will be too late.

“Surely you both saw the fleet I command in this one base.” He paused for a moment, though not long enough to give either a chance to answer. “Now, just imagine what we have under our command across two, four, a dozen, two dozen star systems. What havoc they would be able to wreak across the civilized galaxy.”

“What do you want?” Legate Kova asked, speaking for the first time. He turned sideways in his chair to look directly at Alpha, “Why call us here just to threaten us? If you actually commanded the power you say you do, why not just do it? Or do you not have the moxie?”

The legate sneered as he finished the sentence, causing Alpha’s lips to twitch upward in a smile for a fraction of a second. They were always so predictable.

“Legate, I assure you, I do not make empty threats. I wanted to give you the chance to prepare, perhaps ask me for help or more information. I desire nothing but the harmony that has been denied for generations.” His eyes narrowed on the older man, who stared back. Several tense moments passed where neither side spoke, until, finally, Alpha broke the silence. “I thought you may be able to see reason, but I was wrong.

“You may leave.” He waved a hand dismissively and typed a sequence of commands into a computer built into the desk. With a thought through his CAM, the door hissed open. The two men stood, forcefully helped by the androgynous guards, and made their way toward the door. “The same frigate that brought you here will take you home. Farewell.”

Left in silence, Alpha continued typing in commands for the fleet, finalizing the attack plans he had spent years of his life preparing. Silently, he fumed. Unprepared. That’s what they were. The centuries of Hyperion dominance had brought about lax conditions in which lone independent planetary governments either put up a futile resistance that was quickly broken or acquiesced without a second thought. If they only knew what he knew…

He felt the pain of his nails digging into the palm of his hand before he realized he was clenching his fingers into a fist. With a sigh, he flexed the digits and set his hand flat against the tabletop.

Maybe the next time, his guests would listen, but he doubted it. Why did they always wait until it was too late?

# 

Four days later, as promised, the frigates, like a swarm of locusts, emptied out of the colony, opened wormholes, and disappeared into the darkness of space. By the following day, over twenty million people lay dead, either vaporized by the heat of explosions, crushed under rubble, or eviscerated by millions of shards of shrapnel. Entire cities lay crumbled in ruin, and the planet Caerus was left in an indefinite lockdown after the sudden attack. News reports conveniently left out the identity of the attackers. They claimed it was the result of undisclosed terrorists.

The warning Alpha gave went unheeded, and he knew they would pay the price. Not the one wrought by this disaster. When the next great war inevitably started, the price would be many orders of magnitude greater.

His only hope was that humanity would survive.

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