NOVEL NEXT Book 1 – Lesson 12: “Murphy always collects interest.”
Alpha - 7,234
Murphy - 1 [+1]
Yep, screw this day.
Screw spontaneously appearing black holes.
Screw random space squids flying in the middle of the road.
Screw mysterious star systems that appear out of nowhere
Especially screw fiery moon chickens with giant death lasers!
Who gives a chicken a death laser?! Why does everything in this place have lasers?!
//Please designate a location for delivery.//
“No, you stupid AI, I said hold it, HOLD!”
For the third time, Alpha had to stop the transport drone from storing his detached manipulator arm in its cargo bay.
//Please designate a location for delivery.//
“Just… stop… please.”
Alpha grumbled some very unkind things lower than the transport drone’s audio sensors could pick up. The last few hours had been… vexing. He had to stop questioning most of the surrounding insanity, or he’d have gone insane himself. Things like space squids, moon chickens, or temperate prairies on what should be an ice giant. Or how said ice giant was covered by an icy shell that blocked the view of the surface but somehow allowed a near-perfect view outside from within, like a two-way planetary mirror! Or how—!!!
{"Nope! Bad Alpha! You’re gonna blow a circuit again."}
The strange ice shell surrounding the planet was an issue, though. Alpha couldn’t even tell what the thing was made of; despite being almost invisible on this side, it still absorbed all his signals. He couldn’t get anything past the cursed barrier to reconnect to his drones and see where they’d been taken. A fully charged shot from a properly printed [Gungnir] might break through again, but that was pointless without a way to get off the planet. Besides, he only had half a dozen nitrogen crystals left, nowhere near enough.
Making more crystals would take time, too. Alpha had all the blueprints needed for the equipment to make more, but that would require proper infrastructure. To build that infrastructure, he needed to scout the planet and find an appropriate place to set up shop. And to do THAT, he had to use a few of his limited nanite nests to gather materials for basic field repairs.
In a stroke of luck, the transport drone he’d used as a platform during the last attack had also survived planetfall. They were made to last; after all, you never knew when one might be attacked by a pirate or stellar lifeform. Even the sketchier scrappers would nab an unguarded transport drone if they thought they could get away with it.
//Please designate a lo—//
“YES! I heard you the first time!”
Alpha sighed.
After assessing his surroundings and getting the drone back online, Alpha had quickly vacated his crash site. No telling what attention that had attracted.
That brought him to the present. He threw another random rock into the drone’s storage area, then moved on. The billowing cloud of nanites inside started pulling the stone apart into its composite elements. That was the benefit of nanite mining; because the nanites stripped things down on a molecular level, you could pull materials from just about anything. Materials such as quartz and trace metals were found in even the most ordinary rocks.
Most of it would be rearranged into more easily processable materials, using energy from the transport drone’s own fusion battery. The only issue was the process was painfully inefficient. The amount of useable materials he could extract with this method on the move was barely enough to do some basic repairs. It was like trying to repair a sports car with duct tape and dreams. It would get him where he needed to go, but that was about it.
If only he could get this drone’s AI to listen, he might get the chance to fix the wiring on the manipulator arm it was holding. Non-sapient Federation AI were intelligent, to a point, able to problem solve and “think” in the context of their programming. You could give them an order, and as long as they could “understand” that order, they could typically carry it out.
This was great for manufacturing and other forms of manual labor. You just had to tell an AI how a job was done, and they would do it. They could even follow complex flowcharts to problem solve and work around issues, such as adjusting parameters to account for environmental effects or reacting to sudden changes in enemy movements.
What they needed help with was critical thinking. They couldn’t form new conclusions or work outside the information they were given. If a group of construction AI, programmed to construct metal ships, were asked to make a wooden ship without being taught how to use wood, they would fail. In the best-case scenario, they may try to construct the ship like it was metal, with often comical results. Worst-case, they could be locked in an endless logic loop that needed a full reset to fix.
In most cases, this problem was fixed by having groups of AI overseen by a sapient capable of critical thinking. When a drone encountered an issue it couldn’t solve on its own, it would query its overseer for answers.
How many AI a person could handle at once was entirely determined by talent, though some species had an obvious advantage. Some, like the Elderon, with their in-born psionic abilities, found it came naturally, whereas a typical Vidaasi had difficulty with more than a dozen. Humans, on the whole, were in the middle somewhere, with individuals differing to a large extent. Highly skilled drone commanders were in high demand, so those with talent never lacked work.
And, of course, In the realm of drone commanders, Sapient-AI was supreme. It was one reason unshackled Sapient-AI were so dangerous; a single AI with an army of subordinate, non-sapient AI could cause untold amounts of damage on their own.
Now, if this drone would just behave…
No matter how often he’d tried to reformat the AI’s order parameters, it kept resetting to package delivery. Alpha was sure some internal damage was causing the issue, but he didn’t have the time or tools to check. He’d have scrapped it for parts if it wasn’t for its usefulness as a makeshift refinery. Not that he wasn’t tempted to…
Alpha used his attached arm to push the floating drone away, barely avoiding the mud ball that soared past. Then there was his other issue.
He wasn’t sure what he’d done to anger the gopher-like creature with magic dirt powers (because, sure, why not at this point?), but the evil little thing had been following him for literal miles now, constantly harassing him. Ya, he could have just shot the thing and been done with it. But one of the primary principles drilled into him throughout his training was careful discernment when taking a life.
A disregard for living things was one of the fastest ways for a Sapient-AI to go insane. The disconnect between digital and biological life was too extreme without constant affirmation and reassertion. Many Sapient-AI had to go through decades of reprogramming and reeducation after their birth before they were allowed back into society. This was especially true for soldiers like Alpha. It was far too easy to see kills as just another number on a report list, not as real lives with actual history.
Sure, he’d been tempted to shoot when the gopher first showed, given all the crazy stuff he’d seen recently. Who knew? Maybe this gopher was the covert emperor of a subterranean kingdom that even the moon chicken had to respect. But so far, all it had done was hurl dirt at him and chitter away like any other angry animal.
Alpha had taken tours of cities where civilians lined the street and pelted him with literal garbage. What harm was a little dirt going to do? If his job was to go around shooting everything that looked like it could be a threat, why wouldn’t the Federation just glass planets from orbit and be done with it?
Not that he couldn’t have some fun, but he wasn’t that kind of murderhobo. Alpha’s primary targets had always been military and manufacturing infrastructures and groups designated as too dangerous to allow to exist. Non-dangerous wildlife, civilian centers, and peacefully surrendered targets were all a no-go. Outside of extraneous circumstances, or course.
Alpha’s job was to cripple the enemy, so the Federation didn’t have to glass them into submission.
That being said, this pest was smarter than it seemed. After watching Alpha for a few hours, the gopher had learned he would tolerate dirt on his surface, yet vehemently kept any dirt away from his sensitive internals. This meant the bloody thing had only started back up with the mud balls when he was doing repairs. He’d already had to clean out several parts with a silica wash. Alpha had been expecting it this time and easily countered.
“Ha! Suck it!”
The gopher stared at him in silence as if surprised it had missed, before bursting into another round of venomous chittering.
The drone spoke up as Alpha pulled it back toward him.
//Destination: “Suck it” is not in my catalogs. Would you like me to scan for it?//
Alpha paused, then sighed. Ya, definitely something wrong with this one…
“That’s not wh—you know what? Sure, knock yourself out….”
//Acknowledged. Beginning scan.//
The transport drone sent out several signals of various types, trying to ping the non-existent beacon. It was a waste of time, of course, but maybe it would get the thing to shut up and remain still for a while, so he could get some work done.
That’s when the screaming started.
The gopher pest began writhing in agony on top of the rainbow-colored grass, pressing its tiny paws to its skull. Even the grass seemed to react, with each blade in their vicinity displaying rapidly shifting, swirling colors like the prairies threw a surprise rave. That couldn’t be good…
Alpha ordered;
“Hey!… HEY! Stop the scan! abort!”
//scan in progress. If you wish to start another scan, please wait.//
“No! I said STOP the scan, not—”
Alpha’s words were cut off as the gopher gave its own high-pitched scream and threw itself bodily at the transport drone. It latched onto its front display and sank sharp teeth into the composite plastics. The drone jerked back in response, blaring a warning.
//Warning! Warning! Unit under attack! Begin evasive maneuvers!!//
Alpha reached for the drone but missed as it backpedaled away.
“What?! No! Get back here! You’re not under attack! It’s an overgrown rat!”
The drone did not.
Instead, it began a series of random maneuvers designed to throw off enemy targeting systems.
//Warning! Evasive maneuvers are ineffective! Activating ‘Take_My_Loot_&_Leave.exe’//
“Abort! ABORT!”
//ERROR: Instructions unclear, overgrown rat stuck in audio sensors.//
“THEN HOW DID YOU HEAR ME?!”
//Take_My_Loot_&_Leave.exe’ booted. Jettisoning cargo!//
“Nooooooo!!”
Alpha could only watch helplessly as the transport drone’s cargo bay opened, and several hours’ worth of work was ejected randomly across a kilometer of open prairie. The program in question was a standard inclusion in any transport drone. The theory was that if a transport drone got into a situation it couldn’t escape, then jettisoning its cargo might distract whatever was attacking it long enough to get away. It was like a lizard cutting off its tail to escape a predator; to be fair, it worked, too. After all, losing some cargo was cheaper than replacing an entire drone.
It worked so well that pirates had adapted their tactics to restraining transports, rather than destroying them outright or crippling them (which would trigger its self-destruction protocol).
//Jettison complete! RUN AWAY!!//
Alpha tried to give chase, but it was already several dozen meters in the air, speeding off into the distance several times faster than the TAWP could move in its current state. It wasn’t even responding to his overseer commands anymore.
The last image Alpha got from the short-ranged visual feed before it cut off was of a furry figure clinging onto the speeding drone for dear life.
“Wait!… you still have my arm… greeeeeat. “
… something in at the core of his being told Alpha he wouldn’t like this mission very much…
Murphy - 2 [+1]
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Transport Drone AI - G33-2R2-13I-900M [GRIM] was having an awful, terrible, not-so-fun day. In the short time she’d been online, she’d been almost eaten by a shiny squid, attacked by a flaming chicken, marooned on an unregistered Federation planet, yelled at by her programmer, and attacked for a THIRD time by a psychotic gopher! To make matters worse, she lost her programmer’s arm during her escape!
Not good, not good at all! What was she going to do?! She wasn’t programmed for this! Someone help!
As if sensing her distress, the furry devil who’d caused this most recent trouble to begin with reached down from on top of her cargo bay and patted her monitor. The nerve! She was tempted to flip over and hurl the creature to the ground. But that would have violated the Federation operation code [Fr2-i6e-22n-63dl-0y: Reasonable preservation of non-hostile life]. She could be deleted for that!
But… what could she do?! She didn’t have a home beacon set. Her overseer wasn’t responding. And she needed to get his arm back before he yelled at her again! She wasn’t programmed for this kind of thing!!!
A person! That’s what she needed to do! She needed to find a person! They could tell her what he was supposed to do! They could even help her find her overseer’s arm! All jettisoned equipment was marked with quantum beacons, but she wasn’t programmed to retrieve them herself. But she could lead someone else to them! YES! THIS COULD WORK!
… now, how did she find someone?
As GRIM wracked her processes, trying to figure out how to enact her plan, a rasp of tiny paws rang across her chassis. She flicked her visual sensors for the demon gopher and saw it staring into the distance. GRIM turned to look in that direction and saw an enormous mountain.
//A mountain? A MOUNTAIN!//
Yes! Mountains were just big asteroids! and asteroids meant miners! And miners meant an overseer!
Happy to be back on track, GRIM + 1 speed off toward the mountain in the distance.