NaBloPoMo. Day 30

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5 - continued

Bryn met her in the lobby.  Her brother's usual uniform of crumpled trousers and ceased T-shirt had been replaced with a smart cream suit and a turquoise patterned shirt.  He smiled as she came in, but he looked tense.

  As promised, he'd booked one of the Pod tables, and as they took their seats behind the floor to ceiling glass walls Ren realised why the place was called The Ocean Flame.  T he sun was close to the horizon and the sky was aflame.  A blanket of gold cloaked the wavetops beneath them and haloed her and Bryn.  

  "Order anything you want," he said, "it's my treat."

  She chose the Ocean Platter.  It had startlingly turquoise crabs, pink lobster, and blue prawns.  It was delicious, and they watched the sun set as they ate.  Bryn was attentive to her and the conversation flowed easily enough, but when he laughed it sounded strained.  Something was definitely wrong.

  "And now for your birthday present," he said as they sipped their coffee at the end of the meal.  He took out a heavy envelope from his jacket and handed it to her with a flourish.

  She opened it and stared at the card inside with disbelief.  It was a Travelpass, and it carried enough credit to take her half way across human space.  "Bryn, this is far too extravagant," she protested.

  "Nothing but the best for my sister.  I have another present for you, but it's in my car. We should go to your house before I give it to you."

  "Bryn, what's going on?" She asked.

  "Just humour me.   It's a surprise."

This is the last NaBlPoMo extract from Panthera : Death Spiral.  I hope you've enjoyed reading about the adventures of the Hunters and Panthera.

NaBloPoMo. day. 29

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5. - continued

  Friday night arrived without any more kingcat deaths and Ren felt cheerful as she showered and dressed for her birthday date with Bryn.

  She put on a wine calf-length skirt and a scarlet top and examined her reflection in the mirror.  Her hair was too long and the layers were getting difficult to manage.  She must schedule a haircut.

  She fastened the ruby drop necklace which had been Byns's birthday present to her four years  ago. It matched her outfit perfectly.  She picked up her jacket and bag and went down to the garage.

  She eased her hovercar onto River Boulevard and watched the changing colours of the sunset sky as she drove.  Today had been hot, and only now nearing sunset had the temperature dropped to a comfortable level.  The sky changed from azure blue to crimson and deep gold.  She darkened the window plas to maximum but even so the brightness made her squint.

  The Ocean Flame car park was filling up fast as she arrived and she had to leave her 'car a long way from the restaurant. She didn't mind on such a glorious evening. She took her time walking to the building, drinking in the beauty of the sunset over the ocean.  It was a wonderful gift for her birthday.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo. Day. 28

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter 5.  -  continued

  She wasn't going to let that happen if she child help it. She sighed.  If only she and Nic hadn't  quarrelled about that hunting trip.  She'd been furious with him for not controlling the situation and had ripped into him when she saw him.  They hadn't talked since then.  Every time she saw Bryn he urged her to make contact with Nic.  Deep down she knew her reaction to that slaughter had been unreasonable.  She'd expected him to control an impossible situation.  She'd replied to his last two birthday greetings, but each time her messages had been undelivered. Nic was always on the move, and he'd left before she called him.

  Bryn had told her that Nic was out of CF now, working as a civilian security consultant. She couldn't use the excuse that she didn't approve of him being in CF any more.

  Nic's expertise was what she needed to solve the kingcat puzzle.  It was time to bury her pride and contact him.  She'd check his contact details with Bryn when they met on Friday night for her birthday meal.  And this time she'd keep calling until Nic returned her call.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo. Day. 27

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 5 

  Ren arrived at Kerestal Wildlife Reserve at noon on Wednesday.  The scene was depressingly familiar.  There were two dead cubs this time, and again their scans showed atrophied thymus glands.

  Now there was no doubt someone was systematically targeting kingcat cubs.  The questions were who?  And why?

  Kerestal's data gave her no more clues and she left the Reserve at nine that night, feeling thoroughly  depressed.  She was no nearer to finding out what was going on and she was scared about these attacks.  There were few kingcats left in the true wild.  Most of them were in wildlife reserves.  If she couldn't stop them being picked off, soon there was a real possibility the species would go extinct.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo. day 26

Panthera :Death Spiral.   Chapter 4  - continued

  I miss Bryn every evening when he leaves the building.   He's very special to me.  He  was the first person I saw when I became aware, and he's been with me every step of my development.

  My file dump ends and I disconnect the data jack. Now I'm free to think what I want without ES recording it.

  What I feel right now is lonely.  It's a vast, aching feeling I've never experienced this intensely before.    I'm like a frightened child that needs its parent, but my parent isn't here.

  It'll be fourteen hours before Bryn reappears at ES.  That's forever for a being who measures time In nanoseconds.

  Most of it I'll spend on standby, recharging my internal power packs.  Thankfully I'll be unable to think about my problems while that's happening,

  I raise my front paw and extend it towards the outlet. I push out my power receivers and plug myself in.  Power surges through my body, a rushing feeling that almost overwhelms me for a nanosecond.  It settles down to a manageable level and I feed it into my power packs.

  Just before I shut down to standby I wonder how much longer I'll do that here,

Panthera : Death Spirał is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo. Day 25

Panthera : Death Spiral.    Chapter 4. - continued

  Bryn had to write me some secret code to understand emotions and the way humans express them through their bodies.  He modelled every emotion for me, and described their accompanying mental states.  I was so eager to have that knowledge that I didn't consider it could have a downside.

  That downside is feeling scared as hell at the idea of self-destruct code.  Would I be able to reject it?  Could I erase it the second it was inserted into my memories?  Would I be able to erase a command to trigger the code?  I don't know, and I need to know.

  I find my data point and sit down on my haunches close to it.  With the fingers on my left front paw i part the seam in my programmable matter body covering, grasp the data jack with my other front paw, and plug it into my body.

  The feeling is briefly  unpleasant as my processors handshake with ES's storage system, but it doesn't last long, and I'm soon downloading my carefully edited file of my day's learning to their system.  I'm happy to report on my motion and sensing progress, but cognitive processing is another matter.  That I don't tell ES about.

  As the download runs I re-live the afternoon's events again.  I feel dreadfully alone.  I desperately need to talk to Bryn, but he's gone home.  He'll probably be driving through the evening rush hour by now.

  I could contact him at home.  I can tap into any electronic system, but it wouldn't be a smart move.  ES might notice the activity and investigate, and the last thing I want is for the company to discover my sentience.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPoMo Day 24

Panthera. : Death Spiral   Chapter 4 continued

  I'm careful not to show the company all of who I've become.  I feel embarrassed as I remember how angry I was with Bryn when he cautioned me not to tell people what I had learned.  Now I realise my programmer was right, and I'm so glad I didn't contact Torr Nevan, the man who's on the point of selling me to CF.

  I reach the download shack and transmit my access code to the door.  It rumbles open and I walk inside the room.  I'm not sure why humans call it a shack.  In reality it's the most secure and high-tech room in Exoviron Systems'  vast complex.  It's armoured, and has its own generators.  There's a shielded room next door full of processors that constantly churn over the data we send them.

  I share this space with the other twenty development AIs.  ES seems to want to keep us locked up for some reason.  But they don't deny us access to data while we're in here, so I don't mind being confined overnight.

  There are four EnviroScouts.  I'm the Panthera body form, Version 7.2.  Arachnis is built like a spider, the Homoform is a poor imitation of a human, and Chilopoda is modelled on the centipede.  It has fifteen segments and fifteen pairs of legs.

  ES settled on these four body shapes as they think that between us we'll be able to deal with every terrain.  Eventually they want to send us out into the universe as advance planetary scouts, but that's still a long way off.

  Or is it?  Not if the deal suggested in this afternoon's meeting comes off.  I re-run the conversation, and the way Lars so casually mentioned fitting weapons to me makes me feel scared.  But not as scared as the idea of having self-destruct code inserted into my operating system.  Would they really do that?  From the look on Bryn's face when it was mentioned I know he believes they would.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon..

NaBloPoMo. Day 23

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Four.  

Panthera - Exoviron Systems, Earth

 When the meeting in the Board Room ends Bryn sends me off to the download shack before he leaves ES for the night,

  As I walk along the hallway I'm thinking about the meeting we just witnessed.  I'd been right to suggest we listen in to it.  It affects us both deeply.

  I put a degree of jerkiness into my gait as usual.  I learned to walk fluently over six months ago. When I was first booted up I used to fall over often.  My legs seemed long and gangly and I couldn't imagine how I'd ever be able to control four of them.  But now I don't even have to think about moving them.  Bryn calls that 'unconscious competence'.

  I'm fully sentient.  It took me months to get my programmer to accept that.  When I first stumbled across data on Alan Turing and his tests for machine intelligence I didn't realise how me momentous being sentient was.  I ran every test I could find, setting myself against the brightest of ES's  programmers.  Not one of them ever realised they weren't talking to a human.  I passed every Turing Test first time.

  I'd made contact with Hyperion's AI just before the launch of the probe.  I'd wanted to measure my intelligence against that of a fellow AI.  Hyperion was way below me on cognitive and insight learning, and I wasn't surprised when the mission failed. 

NaBloPoMo. Day 22

Panthera : Dearh Spiral. -  Chapter 3  - Continued

  There was a moment's pause, and Nic saw Marcus's security crawler tracing the location of his call.  He hadn't bothered putting up any security.  He didn't intend to say anything incriminating in this conversation.  He'd save the confidential stuff for a face-to-face meeting.

  "Okay," Marcus said.  "Are you available at noon?"

  "I'll check my schedule," Nic said for the benefit of any snoopers.  He waited a beat then said "yes, that's fine.  At your office?"

  "Sure."

  "Good.  See you at noon," Nic said, and broke the connection.

  He'd made a start on protecting Bryn.  Now he had to turn his attention to Ren.  He had to talk to her, persuade her she needed his help.

  If CF took over the hunt for Panthera, Ren would be in serious danger, sand even he might not be able to keep her safe.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

  

NaBloPoMo. Day 21

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3. - continued

  He returned to Bryn's plan for abducting Panthera.  He didn't know how much money Exoviron had  spent on developing the AI, but it would be a lot. Which meant they'd be pissed as hell if their expensive asset disappeared.  Bryn had no idea what a hornet's nest he'd stir up if he stole the AI.

  Bryn had said those guys wanted to arm it.  That fitted with what his CF contacts were telling him.  There was a lot of tension right now on the Human/N'adiim border, and it looked like humans were the cause of if.

  Deal with the immediate problem first, he told himself,  Bryn needed to disappear as soon as the AI did.  He'd have to arrange a safe house, then get Bryn off Earth.

  Where could his brother go?  And what would he do if he walked out of the place he'd worked all his adult life?

  Enough brooding.  Time for action.  He got his internet contact lens to page through his valuable address book until he found the right contact.

  "Marcus Varner."  Marcus's voice was as sharp as ever.  There was no vid feed.

  "Nic Hunter.  I want to talk to you about a property matter."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBlOoMo Day 19. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3 - continued 

  Bryn was the geeky one, and from an early age he'd been able to sit still for hours, absorbed in writing and debugging code.  Nic couldn't imagine himself ever having the patience to do that.  He was a big picture guy, and he needed to be active all the time.  A career in Core Worlds' Combined Forces had seemed a perfect fit, so he'd signed up for a twenty year commission.

  Big mistake.  Shortly after he'd joined he'd realised that humans were mounting a big land grab against the N'adiim.  He'd quickly realised his moral centre was stronger than he'd thought and he couldn't bring himself to kill innocent aliens.

  He'd managed to get himself out of the front line and into intelligence work before he got to the point  of actually disobeying orders.  He'd spent the last ten years volunteering for unpopular and uncontroversial assignments most people rejected as too boring.

   Three years ago his commission had ended and he'd hightailed it out of CF as fast as he could go. Despite a very lucrative bribe to take on a new commission he hadn't weakened.  He was now the owner of Nic Hunter Security Services, a company  that had already made a reputation as a competent and ethical outfit.

  The questionable ethics of Bryn's plan to smuggle his AI out of Exoviron bothered him more than he'd admitted to his brother.  If the AI went to Ren he was afraid his sister would get dragged into things she didn't understand and get hurt.  Ren didn't know any more about security work than Bryn.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 18. Panthera : Dearh Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter 3

Chapter Three. Nic Hunter - Earth

  Nic keyed in his encryption codes and waited for the file to unlock.  The screen came alive with figures, a listing of money paid into his company business accounts.

  He leaned back in his seat and looked out of the window of his apartment, across the jumble of city rooftops to the river glinting in the sunlight in the distance.  He liked this place, and now his client had paid the last of his instalments for the Jupiter security contract he'd be able to pay the next month's rent.

 Looking at the river brought his thoughts back to his conversation with Bryn last night.  He'd never seen his younger brother so scared. He didn't understand what Bryn did at Exoviron. Bryn had joined the company twenty years ago as a junior information systems graduate, full of enthusiasm for creating sentient AIs.  Nic had dismissed his brother's dreams as unrealistic, but he'd seriously underestimated Bryn's talent.

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo. Day 17 - Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two - continued

  "Yeah, that could do it.  She know you're planning to use her like this?"

  Bryn shook his head, feeling embarrassed.  Trust Nic to see the flaw in his plan.  But Nic was ex-CF and he'd done intelligence work, so he was trained to think that way.

  "When your AI disappears they'll check family connections first," Nic pointed out.

  Bryn nodded.  "I know.  It worries me, but I haven't got any better ideas.  Have you?"

  "Not without getting other people involved, which I'm guessing you don't want."

  "No way."

  "Okay, then I agree Ren's your best bet.  But you gotta tell her the truth."

  "I need help to smuggle Pan out.  Maybe as a delivery to somewhere."

  "Like to one of my non-existent companies?"

   Bryn nodded.  "Yes.  I don't understand how security stuff works.  I'm a geek.  Can you sort that?"

  "Yeah, but you need to fake purchase orders and whatever other audit trails you gotta leave in ES's systems."

  "Pan can do that.  He can tap into anything at ES."  He nearly said Pan could hack into any electronic system, but that would freak Nic out.

  "Okay, get him to sort that.  Here's what we'll do..."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Da y 16 - Panthera - Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  chapter two - continued

  Now Bryn felt even more alarmed.  "Nic, you don't know all of it.  They want Panthera.  And Pan's sentient.  I can't explain how wonderful that is.  We've always known sentience would be an emergent property, that it would appear as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but he's so alive, so..."

  "Slow down, bro," Nic said.  "You're saying the AI you've been working on at ES is sentient?"

  "Yes.  I can't let them hand him over to CF."

  "Hmm."  For an awful moment Bryn thought his brother would dismiss his words, tell him he was daydreaming again.  Then Nic said "it'll need careful planning.  Any ideas how to make him disappear?"

  "I want to give him to Ren as her birthday present."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 15 - Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued 

  Nic was at the Riverbar when Bryn arrived, sitting at a table on the cantilevered jetty jutting out over the river. Bryn thought again how tough his brother looked.  Nic was six foot two and broad shouldered, and he still wore his light brown hair cropped into a severe military style.

 It was Monday evening, and the place was quiet.  The sun was almost down and the breeze off the river cool enough to keep other customers off the jetty.  Which suited Bryn just fine. He needed privacy for tonight's  conversation.  

  Nic waved him over, the gesture relaxed and casual, but Bryn knew his brother wouldn't have missed the tension in his voice when he'd called him.  He sat down beside Nic, ordering a beer from the table's holo menu.  When the robo-server had delivered it he said "I need this conversation to be secure, Nic."

  His brother nodded, indicating the innocent-looking datapad resting on the table beside his left hand. He hit a key and Bryn felt his skin crawl.  "That's the shield up.  What's eating you?"

  Bryn told him about the board meeting and Nic swore.  "Not good, bro.  They gotta be Combined Forces.  If they want weapons and self-destructs fitted they gotta be sending 'em somewhere disputed.  Sounds like they're planning to take on the N'adiim again.  Wonder where."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in paperback and ebook from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo Day 13. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued

  Fear flashed across Pan's face.  For the last six months Bryn had been working with the AI on imitating human emotions and body language.  He was startled to see the results of his teaching displayed so effectively on the AI's face and in the stance of its body.

  "That means I will have to leave you," Pan said.

   "You need to get as far any from me as you can, to throw them off your trail," Bryn explained.  "You can trust Ren."

  "If you say so," Pan said, his speech synthesiser producing an uncertain-sounding voice.

  "I do," Bryn insisted.  "We have to get you out of here.  I'm going to call Nic and try and meet him later.  Go to the download shack as usual and act normally tonight.  Tomorrow I hope I'll have a plan for getting you out of here."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

NaBloPoMo - Day 12. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two  - continued

  The first step was to call her.  He checked the chrono.  It was six p.m.  Would she be home by now?  He blinked, telling his internet contact lens to page through his address book and find her number.  He dialled it, and the word 'connecting' popped up in his lens.

 Ren answered on the third ring, and the vid came up on his wallscreen.  "Hi," he said, "how's things, Sis?"

  She turned towards him and he could see she looked tired and sad.  "Not good.  A case of a crap Monday.  I had to deal with three more dead kingcat cubs today."

  "Sorry your week started off so bad," he said,  "I was calling to check our birthday date.  Are we still on for Friday night?"

  Ren smiled, the weariness disappearing from her face.  "We sure are.  So where are you taking me, brother?"

  "How about The Ocean Flame?  We could get a pod over the ocean and watch the sunset.  I know you'd love that,  and I have a very special present for you."

  "Sounds intriguing.  Okay, The Ocean Flame it is.  Eight-thirty?"

  "I'll be there," he said, and cut the connection.

  "What are you planning, Bryn?" Pan asked.

  Bryn turned to face him.  "You're about to become Ren's special birthday present."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available in ebook and paperback from Amazon

NaBloPloMo - Day 11. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two - continued

  Bryn's mind raced.  He couldn't let them fit a self-destruct to Pan.  He had to find some way to save the AI, but he had no idea what to do.

  He'd known Pan was sentient for the last year.  That's when he'd starting telling the AI to be careful.  There'd been some tense moments, with Pan threatening to contact Torr Nevan directly at one point.  He'd been able to make the AI understand the need for caution in time, and now he was thanking the Gods that he had.

 He'd always known a fully sentient AI would raise all sorts of ethical and legal questions, questions his geek-brain wasn't equipped to handle. But now he had to get his head around them.  "I have to get you out of here," he said. "But where to?  And who can I trust with you?"

  Bryn thought it over.  When it came to real trouble, family were the only people you could trust.  His sister Ren was always travelling across human space.  Perhaps if he could persuade her to go somewhere remote... Harmarkis, or Dehuti.  He could smuggle Pan out of here before those CF goons came back, and give him to Ren to take off Earth.

Panthera : Death Spiral is aviailable as an ebook and paperback from Amazon,

NaBloPoMo. day 10. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral. Chapter Two. - continued

  "Weapons?  What kind of a project is this?" Kerr demanded.

  "An exploration of fringe worlds a long way from Earth.  The explorers would need to defend themselves from... shall we say unexpected threats.  And they will need self-destruct commands deep-coding so they can be destroyed if they fall into the wrong hands."

  Torr's jaw dropped.  Shock ran through Bryn, closely followed by fear.  "Self-destructs?" Torr said, his voice shrill.  "You can't be serious!  The AIs are high-level intelligences.  It isn't ethical.  We can't..."

  "You have a choice," Wolf interrupted.  "You can take the project, or let Exoviron Systems collapse.  Which is it to be?"

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.

 

NaBloPoMo. Day 9. Panthera : Death Spiral

Panthera : Death Spiral.  Chapter Two - continued

  "I am sure they are," Pan replied.

  Bryn tried to concentrate as the talk turned to the failure of the Hyperion explorer.  ES had poured billions into that project.  It was intended to be the first mass-production low-budget robotic explorer, but it had failed spectacularly.

  "We know the failure of Hyperion was a major embarrassment for ES," Wolf said.  His voice was silky-smooth, but it was dangerous somehow.

  "Not to mention financially ruinous," Lars added.

  "Not ruinous," Kerr objected.  "We got a lot of useful data we can use to debug the system."

  Wolf smiled.  "Nevertheless, the probe was a failure.  And we understand that those who were poised to place orders for Hyperion have gone mysteriously silent.  You're in a fix, Mr, Nevan, and we can help you out of that fix."

  "What do you mean?" Torr asked.

   Lars smiled, and Bryn felt afraid.  It was the smile of a predator about to pounce on its prey.

  "We can offer you a contract," Wolf said.  "A very lucrative contract.  Exoterra has need of robotic explorers now.  We're interested in the Panthera and Arachnis EnviroScouts.  They'd be perfect for exploring the world we have in mind,"

  Lars leaned forward and held Kerr's eyes in a stare that made Bryn shiver.  "Of course, we'll need some modifications to their programming.  We'll require weapons fitting..."

Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon.