5,001 - A Science Fiction Romance Short Story by Tracy Cooper-Posey Read Free Book Online Page B

resolution of the issue.”
    Caelen turned to look at them, moving
slowly to give herself time to think. If they were willing to pay
that much, then this was serious. Which mean it was true, the ship
was losing water. Which meant if she couldn’t fix this, then
it wouldn’t be just her reputation that would crack apart. It would
be her whole life. She hadn’t wanted the job in the first place.
She really didn’t want it now. So she nodded, looking as
grave as them and added the kicker. “I want full access to the
Bridge data river. I’ll analyze it from home.” She waited for the
screams of protest.
    Lakewood sighed again and turned
away.
    Grand nodded. “We’ll have it shunted to
your server within the hour.”
    Shaken, Caelen looked down at Scrub.
“C’mon. We’re leaving.”
    Scrub must have been worried, too. He
didn’t say a word.
* * * * *
    Caelen directed the spatula to her
letterbox and as it lifted her up and along the square faces of the
apartment wall, up to her level, she tiredly returned to
considering the nagging data anomalies she had uncovered in the
last ten days. She had hoped her trip down to the back end of the
Capitol to acquire unslaved server modules would clear her head at
the same time, but the facts were just too overwhelming.
    The platform stopped with its front edge
up level against the bottom of her apartment face. She palmed the
door and let herself in, digging the modules out of the secondary
pocket in her jacket. “Scrub!” She secured the door and moved
through the narrow apartment to the back corner. As she approached,
Scrub opened the door for her and she stepped through to the other
side. He secured the door and melded it.
    “Any thoughts, while I was gone?” she
asked and handed him the modules. Scrub rolled over to the open
bays and deftly started installing the modules.
    “I want to say you don’t make sense,”
Scrub said. “The conclusions are nonsense.” He closed the bays and
Caelen brought the heads-up displays on-line. Now the extra-large
laboratory felt crowded as the virtual screens jostled for space.
The extra processing power meant Caelen could display most of the
anomalies and their streams all at once.
    “Every data blip is undisputed,” Scrub
said. “The Bridge data river is as close to pure legacy data anyone
can get anymore.”
    “This is the ship we’re looking at,
basically,” Caelen murmured.
    “The logic you’ve followed based on this
data isn’t wrong,” Scrub said. “And I cannot think of an
alternative conclusion than the one you’ve drawn. That means you
have to be right.”
    “Someone has been manipulating the data.
Someone has been messing with the ship.” Caelen rubbed at her
temples. She might be right, but she didn’t like it. “There’s no
code changes. These are all physical changes to records. So it’s
not the ship’s AI that is doing it. But no one else has access to
the legacy data, so it has to be the AI.”
    “Which it can’t be,” Scrub said
stoically, as he poured fresh coffee and rolled over to her with
the cup.
    She patted his metal head as she took it
and gave him a smile. “AIs can change and develop their own coding,
but you are still just smart computers. Very, very smart in your
case, Scrubby. You can improve. But you can’t build.”
    “I can, too!” He held up his articulated
hands.
    “Digital building. You’re still the same
adorable Scrubby you were when you first blinked at me. You can
resolve problems, but you can’t create. But someone has been
changing records, changing meta-data levels above the ship coding.
W hy ? Why endanger the entire ship by venting water? There’s
nowhere else to go once the ship is crippled.”
    “Unless that was the point,” Scrub
said.
    She looked at him sharply. “Cripple the
ship?”
    “Endanger the ship. The venting is
incremental. It would take years, you said, to reach critical
depletion.”
    “Why endanger the ship?”
    “To call upon the ship’s