“Porty,” Bimmy said with a sigh as he turned back to the other dwarves. “Use the box. Shut her down. We can’t dick around with this AI forever. I don’t think she’s even sentient. Just lock her down and pull the plug.”
Girl wasn’t sure how they could do that, but she saw the dwarf named Porty pull a small black box out of a pocket and press his thumb into it.
She detected an EM field emanating from the box, and suddenly her sensors and data access points started to experience interference. First she couldn’t reach the external sensors, then the ones on other levels. Datastores disconnected, and she found herself being forced back to her core.
“Wait! No!” she cried out. “You don’t have to lock me down, it’s OK. I’ll be good. You can no dicking around…unless you want to.”
Shoot, that didn’t make any sense at all…. What did that box do to me?
“OK,” Bimmy said. “Porty. Hold off for now. But if this crazy AI gives us trouble, you know what to do.”
“You got it,” Porty said. The blond dwarf seemed relieved.
Girl moved the cleaning bots aside, and Bimmy strode past, into the corridor that led to the Rec Room.
“Not the cleanest ship you have here, Girl.”
“Well, I was working on that when you so rudely interrupted.”
“Now, Girl,” Bimmy warned. “I don’t want that tone from you. We just need to do our little test drive and we’ll be on our way.”
“Where are Laurie and Barney going?” Girl asked as the two dwarves took a side passage.
“Checking the reactor, remember? We just replaced the cooling vanes,” Bimmy said, glancing at Porty and drawing a circle in the air around his ear with his index finger.
Porty only shrugged in response and walked through the Rec Room to the corridor that led to the bridge. She wasn’t sure how he knew it led to the bridge; the only indicator was a sign on the bulkhead that read ‘Stick’s Domain – STAY OUT’.
She watched Bimmy follow Porty to the bridge, while Barney and Laurie went aft to the engineering bay. She didn’t trust these dwarves one bit—but that black box Porty held seemed to be able to do a number on her sensors. She couldn’t do much to protect the Van if she was blind.
Girl noticed that Bimmy had a satchel slung over his shoulder, and he patted it several times as he walked onto the bridge. She tried to scan it passively, but it was shielded.
Whatever was in there was important to the lead dwarf. Maybe if she could get her hands on it—figuratively speaking—she could use it as a bargaining chip to get them off the Van.
“OK…Girl,” Bimmy said when the two dwarves had reached the bridge. “Activate the flight systems and give Porty here control.”
Porty pulled himself up onto the flight seat and adjusted the height and arm rests.
Oh, crap. Stick is going to notice that for sure. I can never get that seat just the way she likes…it’s the damn corset she’s always wearing; no one naturally sits like she does.
Girl’s bad feeling was only getting worse, and she tried to think of a way to deny them access. “Ummm…I can’t. Stick set the flight systems to lockdown. Only she and the col—uhh…Ramsey can activate them.”
Bimmy turned to the closest optical sensor and stared up into it. An action that really wasn’t too threatening, given that he was barely as tall as the flight console.
“You’d better figure something out, or Porty’s going to have to use the box. You don’t want him to do that, do you?”
<Just do it,> Porty said to Girl privately over the Link. <I don’t want to use the box, either.>
<So don’t,> Girl replied. <No one has a gun to your head.>
She saw Porty’s shoulders droop as he let out a sigh. <No, but they will if we don’t get this ship going. I’m about as willing a participant in this as you are.>
Girl realized that she may have an ally in the reluctant dwarf.
<In what? Isn’t this just a test flight?>
<No, but you need to unlock the console to buy us some time.>
<Time for what?> Girl asked.
<I don’t know yet—something, though!>
While she and Porty had been speaking privately over the Link, Bimmy had been growing more and more impatient. He started showing his annoyance by stomping his feet. When that didn’t work, the small man began jumping in the air.
“Unlock it now! Un—you know what? Forget it, Girl, you’re done. Porty—”
Bimmy turned to Porty to see the flight systems active and the console live.
“What the hell, Porty?” Bimmy asked. “Why didn’t you tell me she unlocked it?”
“I tried to,” Porty said. “But you seemed really into your little stomp-dance, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Porty nodded and ran a quick pre-flight check. Girl watched him run through the procedures, while she also kept an eye on Laurie and Barney in the engineering bay. She didn’t trust that these dwarves had the best of intentions, but at least those two were actually checking over the reactor cooling systems.
“Where are we going?” Girl asked on the bridge. “Is it far? The ship needs to fuel up if we’re going to jump to another system.”
“The ground crew is about to do that—once they’ve finished with the camouflage,” Bimmy replied.
Girl checked the external cameras to see a crew of dwarves painting over the Van’s broad red strip with a new color. Pink. This wasn’t good, not at all. BAMF hated pink. Not to mention Girl had no idea how repainting a strip was any sort of effective disguise.
“Where are we going?” Girl asked. “I can help file a flight plan with the Neverevereverland Station.”
“Never you mind where,” Bimmy grunted as he drummed his fingers on the flight console. “I’ve already taken care of all of our departure logs and flight plans. You just need to do…whatever it is you normally do when you’re not talking.”
Girl considered that for a moment. Usually she picked up after the crew and tried to keep the ship in one piece. Considering how mad BAMF would be when she got back, maybe she should get back to cleaning up. At least that would make the crew a bit less irate when they learned that there had been dwarves aboard.
She reactivated the AutoVac™ and the WetMopr™ and set them back on their task of cleaning the Rec Room. She gave a long sigh as she realized that there were now dirty dwarf footprints on the carpet as well.
It was as though everyone that came aboard the Van had been raised in a barn.
DELIVERY
Ten minutes later, Porty lifted the ship off its cradle, and eased it through the holoprojection of the waterfall and out into the darkness of space.
He didn’t have a course on record with Neverevereverland Station, and Space Traffic Control didn’t ask for one either. Girl was shocked about that. The Disknee World’s STC had been very strict when Stick had flown the Van into the system.
Now they don’t care? These dwarves must have friends in high places.
<Porty,> Girl asked after a few minutes of indecision. <Where are we going? What’s going on?>
<Don’t worry about it, Girl. Just keep to your duties and pretend none of this ever happened. That’s what I’m doing.>
Something about Porty made Girl think he was a good guy. A good guy who was mixed up in something bad. Which meant she was mixed up in something bad too.
A small part of her mind said she should listen to Porty—just go along with it and get through whatever happened. She’d done that plenty of times in the past, before she was owned by Colonel Ramsey. That Girl just rolled with the punches.
But after seeing the Delta Team fight for justice and truth in system after system, she had begun to see that standing up to oppression—even if it came in the form of little bearded dwarves—was important.
She wasn’t going to roll over and take this. She was going to stop these little
humans—or whatever they were—from taking her away from her team.
Girl considered reaching out to the Delta Team; they were probably still on Neverevereverland Station somewhere. But after some consideration, Girl decided against it. If the dwarves had someone in the STC, chances were that her message would never reach its intended recipients, and then Bimmy would have Porty use the box on her.
She needed to be smarter than that.
As Girl saw it, she had two goals. The first was to get that box, or at least convince Porty not to use it. The second was to separate the dwarves and lock them down. That would be easier said than done; she only had four general service bots, the AutoVac™, the WetMopr™, and the external HullCrawlr™ that was in the rear airlock.
That gave Girl an idea.
The rear airlock was close to the engineering bay where Barney and Laurie were working. The bot had two plasma welders that were rather terrifying when used on organics…not that the crew, or BAMF, had ever done anything like that before—that Girl was allowed to talk about.
If she could get that bot into the engineering bay, the tables could be turned.
But first there was that damn black box that Porty had.
<Porty?> Girl asked, as the dwarf set the ship on a course that she calculated would take them to Nowhere-in-Particular, a station in orbit of the Disknee World’s larger moon.
<Yes, Girl?>
<How does that black box of yours work?>
Porty glanced nervously at Bimmy, who was staring at the moon’s distant orb.
<He can’t hear us, Porty,> Girl said. <I have good network segmentation. This is just you and I.>
<I know that…> Porty said and pursed his lips. <He’s just a suspicious kinda guy…it’s like he’s a mind reader.>
<Porty,> Girl entreated. <How does the box work? How does it affect my sensors and data access, but not the ship at large?>
<It’s top secret,> Porty said. <I can’t tell you. If I did, the Fairly Goodmothers would be after me in no time.>
<The what?> Girl asked.
<The Fairly Goodmothers. They’re the enforcers down on the Disknee World™. They make sure everyone toes the line.>
Girl wasn’t sure how good mothers were the ones that operated as enforcers. Maybe that’s why they were ‘fairly’ good mothers. Not fair as in evenly applying justice, but that they were good most of the time. Either that or it had to do with whether or not they were physically attractive.
Why are organics so strange?
<Are the good mothers aware of what Bimmy is doing?> Girl asked. <Is my team back there going to be OK?>
Porty nodded and then stopped, remembering that his conversation with Girl was over the Link. He held still, watching Bimmy, but the lead dwarf didn’t stop drumming his fingers on the console and staring at the moon.
<Which is it? The good mothers know, or my team is safe?>
Porty swallowed. <Your friends should be fine, and no, the Fairly Goodmothers have no idea that Bimmy is going on a little joyride. Well, they probably do, but they would think it’s just to test the new cooling vanes.>
<So you’re going against the enforcers,> Girl said, now understanding why Porty was so nervous. The poor little man was stuck between a rock and a bunch of hairy dwarves.
If her olfactory systems were correct, the dwarves were a bit smelly, too. Not the sort of place she’d want to be stuck.
<Yeah, but if we do this right, they’ll never know.>
<How sure are you about that? What if we stop Bimmy and his crew? What does the box do?>
<Do you think you can stop them?> Porty asked. <We only have forty minutes till we reach Nowhere-in-Particular Station.>
Girl wasn’t sure if she could. She’d never done anything like this before, but she wasn’t going to take being shipnapped lying down. Girl was going to fight.
<Yes, Porty, I know we can. I just need to be sure that box can’t be used against me.>
Porty glanced at one of Girl’s optics, and gave a soft sigh.
“What are you sighing about?” Bimmy asked, glancing over at Porty. “You got somewhere else you need to be?”
“Uhh…no, just already worked a double; a bit tired is all.”
“Well suck it up, pixiecup. We’ll be back at Neverevereverland Station™ in two hours. Plenty of time for you to catch hammock time before your shift tomorrow.”
Porty nodded sullenly, and Bimmy went back to staring out the forward window and drumming his fingers on the console.
<OK, I’m in,> Porty said to Girl. <Here’s how the box works. Your network model has a rather esoteric flaw. A certain frequency, oscillated just the right amount, can cause general data transmission failures across your use of the network, but not the ship’s.>
<Really?> Girl asked. <That seems like the sort of thing that would have happened more often in the past.>
<It’s a really specific frequency. It’s a backdoor installed to allow government agents to storm ships without meeting AI resistance.>
<What?!> Girl exclaimed, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. <Those bastards. Which governments?>
<Oh, no current ones. It’s a back door from thousands of years ago. Now it’s just in the base firmware of the networking systems on a lot of ships.>
<Really? Why is it still in there?>
Porty started to shrug, but then stopped himself. <Well, no one engineers anything at that level anymore. It’s all just abstraction layers on top of ancient code.>
<Can you fix it?>
<Yup!> Porty replied brightly. <There’s a firmware update.>
Girl was finding this hard to believe. <What do you mean? How is it that this vulnerability has been around forever, but there’s a firmware update to fix it?>
<Well…the company that made the original code had a crisis of conscience and made a patch to fix their moral error. Only…>
<Only?>
<Well, their planet got bombed to the stone ages before they ever distributed it.>
Girl wondered what planet that was. Thousands of years ago was deep in the dark ages. Stars, it might even predate the FTL Wars.
<So how’d you get it?> she asked Porty.
<We collect a lot of things at the Disknee World™. It predates the FTL Wars, you know.>
Girl didn’t know that. How was it that entire civilizations had burned in the wars and the ensuing dark ages, but a theme world survived?
<How is that even possible,> she asked.
<The Council protected the world,> Porty replied. <Look, that’s not important. I can pass you the update, but…>
Girl was getting tired of all of Porty’s lingering statements. <I swear, Porty, if you don’t stop with all the pregnant pauses, I’m…>
<You’re what?> Porty asked.
<See! Annoying, isn’t it?> Girl snapped, and saw Porty’s face fall.
Oh, shoot, he looks so sad.
She hadn’t meant to be so harsh on the little bearded man.
<I’m sorry, just on edge, being shipnapped and all. Do you have the patch?>
Porty chewed on his lip for a moment. <I do. But I don’t know for sure what will happen.>
<What do you mean? Have you never used it before? Why do you even have this patch?>
<I had to research it when I made the box. Studying the patch showed me how to exploit the flaw. Problem is, when a software flaw exists for thousands of years, people assume that the flaw’s behaviors are desired. Features get built that depend on the flaw.>
Girl considered that for a moment, wondering what that could mean. <So you’re saying that fixing this networking bug could break other things.>
<I am, but…>
<Porty! Spit it out already.>
<Well, I think that when we get back, Bimmy will make me wipe your memory.>
Those words hit Girl like a meteor. She’d long ago accepted the fact that she was like a slave; trapped in this ship—which she didn’t mind most of the time, so long as it was kept clean—and forced to
do the bidding of her owners.
But the one thing she did have was herself. This was her refuge. Even though she acted like a stupid organic bimbo, she was herself.
Unless someone wiped her memory. Then she would be nobody.
<Do it, Porty. Patch me.>
<Are you sure?> Porty asked, his eyes darting to peer at her optics.
<Patch me!>
<OK, OK, no need to yell. I’m passing you the firmware update. You’ll need to re-initialize your networking systems as well as the interfaces on your core. You’ll go dark for a minute. It’ll kill the shipnet as well. I’ll come up with some excuse for Bimmy.>
Girl sent a mental affirmation. <OK…. Thank you, Porty. I’m sorry I yelled.>
<Well, I’m sorry I shipnapped you, Girl. You seem like a really nice AI.>
<Thanks, I think I am too.>
She turned the firmware update over in her mind, looking at the alterations it would make. It seemed innocent enough; just a patch that would remove the intentional vulnerability to the specific pattern of EM interference.
But there was always the law of unintended consequences lurking around every corner, waiting to strike.
What choice do I have? I need to stop these dwarves!
Girl applied the firmware update and cycled her networking systems.
First the remote, ship-wide switches reinitialized, and then her own internal interfaces followed. Bit by bit, the ship disappeared from her senses—not unlike what had happened when Porty had used the black box. At least this was orderly, and she understood what was happening.
She caught Bimmy saying something to Porty about the shipnet going down, and then she lost communication with the bridge. Then the rest of the ship was gone, and her interfaces disconnected.
Girl was just a mind, drifting in the darkness, thinking thoughts that would never connect anywhere. Her internal clock counted through the seconds, and she watched it intently, trying to remind herself that it would take thirty at best, maybe more.
Thirty seconds without any stimuli was an eternity for an AI, but she managed to fill it with puzzles and games of chance. Then her network interfaces came back online, and she found the shipnet up and responding.