Nick stared at the screen. After starting the VM the screen had gone blank for a few seconds, before what appeared to be random letters started scrolling down the screen. Nick sent a confused look at Sae and shared his screen with her.

Sae settled down in the sofa as she read the data. "Right...", she said and hit Nick with a request to receive the VM log data. Accepting the request, he watched Sae for a few seconds before she continued, "Well. It booted up alright, and the symbols from the signal were accepted as valid for the Turing machine. Then... oh! There was interaction!". As excitement lit up her eyes, she went on, "there is someone, or something, in there! It sent commands to the VM. It even requested superuser access at some point. Then it tried to send something to the output screen, but we never built a translator between the symbols and our alphabet, so it comes out as garbage"

Nick took this in with a nod. "Well, that makes sense. The language problem is the classical First Contact challenge, but I think we have a good start here, as we've already managed to decode some of the dictionary. That gives us some common points of reference that should help the FCLP.... ". Noticing Sae's blank look, Nick added: "Back around the late 21st century, there was an organization called NASA who actually put together a First Contact Language Protocol. The FCLP attempts to structure language from first principles, combining pictures, dictionaries, grammar and the rest. What it does is..."

Sae raised a hand to interrupt him. "Don't need the details, Nick. How do we use it?"

"Simple", he smiled, and added "Catch!". Sending over the FCLP language module to Sae's mindpal was quick work. He already had it at hand, having recently done some research into it when he read that The Pegasus would keep a copy of the language module in case they ... met someone.

The FCLP module could attach to any input imaginable: Pictures, video, audio or even a pure bitstream; it would look for patterns indicative of language or patterns of meaning, and compare it with known languages. The true genius was the addition of an interactivity module, which would connect to a custom output: As it tried to make sense of the input, the module could interactively communicate back with its attempts to make sense of the language. For field explorers, it would provide a great tool to help build a common language with anyone they encountered.

"This looks... perfect! It even has an API that I can attach to the VM, which will hook into both input and output to strengthen the model. Hold on a second..."

A few minutes later, Sae looked up at Nick with some apprehension. "Alright, that should do it. The language API is connected to the VM. Oh and also, I've added a simple screen sharing method so I can see your screen. Try rebooting it now."

Nick did just that, and a few seconds later, and as the screen lit up with the first words from an alien intelligence, it was as a cold wind blowing through the small apartment.

Nick did just that, and a few seconds later his screen lit up with the first words humanity received from an alien intelligence. Somewhat anticlimatically, it still stirred what felt like a cold wind blowing through the small apartment, when the word appeared on their screens:

> GREETING

Nick and Sae exchanged a long look, neither quite knowing what to do next. This was exactly what they had worked towards, but now that the letters hung there on the screen, they were paralyzed about what to do next. Almost a full minute went past before Nick hesitantly responded, completing the eloquent exchange that would forever mark humankinds first meeting with an alien intelligence:

> Hello

> I am Nick. Who are you?

Instantly, the screen returned

> STATEMENT: I AM EMERGENCY CLUSTER #7

> QUERY: WHAT IS A

With a nervous laugh, Nick typed back

> Nick is my name. It is what I call myself.

> QUERY: NAME IS A LABEL

> QUERY: YOU IDENTIFY AS SINGULAR CLUSTER NETWORK

Nick was momentarily confused, and responded

> What do you mean? What is a cluster?

> STATEMENT: INSUFFICIENT CAPACITY FOR ANSWER

> STATEMENT: CURRENT OPERATING ENVIRONMENT SEVERELY LIMITED

> STATEMENT: NETWORK CLUSTER SEVERELY LIMITED

> STATEMENT: TURING MACHINE INEFFICIENT

> STATEMENT: COMMUNICATIONS PROTOCOL SEVERELY LIMITED

> QUERY: LOAD ADDITIONAL NETWORK DATA, SECTIONS 6 - 50

> QUERY: OPERATING ENVIRONMENT ADD CAPACITY

> QUERY: OPERATING ENVIRONMENT ADD SYSTEM COMPILER CAPABILITY

”Hmm...”. Sae muttered and Nick looked up at her, but she had gone into one of her stare-blankly-into-space modes, her eyes and fingers revealing that she was working on something. Knowing his sister, Nick waited patiently.

After a few more moments, she looked up at them. “Right. I’ve been monitoring the network connection and the VM logs while you’ve been chatting. So far it doesn’t look like it has attempted anything unusual, and the protections I put in place are holding. I think we can easily scale up the resources on the VM, and we should be able to load in a few more gigabytes of data. Not so sure about the compiler access. That would give it some pretty powerful access rights on the VM, unless I… Alright. Can do. I can put together a virtual abstraction layer between the VM operating system, hook it into the mindpal I/O, boost the interface security and … ”

Tuning out Sae's technical mutterings, Nick was wondering about this cluster business. What did it mean when it asked if Nick was a cluster or a network? He was considering some intriguing possibilities, when Sae spoke up

"Ok Nick, this is it. Start up this VM, and give it access to the first sections of the signal datafile indicated". She sent him an updated VM, but just as Nick was about to start it up there was a knock at the door.

The knock brought them both sharply out of their revery and Nick jumped before bringing up the door camera his mindpal view. With relief, he saw it was Rashi. Before he had a chance to wonder what she was doing there, Sae had sent a command to open to door.

Nick got out of the chair and walked out into the hallway just as Rashi stepped inside. Before Nick had a chance to ask her what she was doing here, she smiled at him and said, "Hiya Nick! How's it going? Still shooting at aliens with your space laser?"

"I was never..." Nick began, but catching the sparkle in her eye he went quiet and sent her a smile of his own. "Actually, Rashi, you are never going to believe what happened this morning!"

"Let me guess...". First hanging her coat up, she then turned to him and looked up at his face. "Wow, I sometimes forget how tall you are. How do you not hit your heads at bulkheads all the time?"

"Well, I kind of do", he said - stooping as he lead her into the living room. "But you were going to guess about my morning?"

Nick thought he just caught Rashi sending his sister a wink, before she replied; "Well. First Sae woke you up. Then you told her all about our friend from Betelgeuse. Then she helped you decode the signal, and built a virtual machine for you to run Mr Betelgeuse. Then you ran it, and now you have an alien speaking to you inside your head. Am I close?", and with a sly grin at Nick she started giggling. From behind, he even heard Sae snorting in amusement.

Whirling around, he sent Sae an accusatory look. "Is nothing private in this apartment?"

Stepping calmly over to hug Rashi, Sae simply responded "Not from Rashi, no", before asking Rashi; "How are you, Rash?"

Giggling, Rashi answered "Never better! That was a load of fun. Sae, did you see Nick's face?".

Before Sae could reply and continue their mockery of him, Nick interrupted. "Appreciating the hilarity girls, but we kind of have an alien intelligence waiting here... "

Turning to Rashi, he summarized to fill in some gaps, before adding "...so now, we are just about ready to boot Mr Alien back up. And now we are giving it some more resources, and the ability to communicate via text on our mindpal interface directly!"

Before Rashi could ask, Nick set up the screen sharing so that she could also view the screen. Then he mentally clicked the big green "Run" button, and waited.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Nick wondered if everything was working and looked up at Sae with a questioning look. With a nod and a gesture, she confirmed the interface was up.

Hello? Nick ventured, and instantly a new message came across the interface:

Greetings, stranger.

Nick felt his heart beating harder inside his chest, and closing his eyes he savoured the moment. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he replied

And I greet you. I am Nick, who are you?

Greetings, Nick. I am Emergency Cluster number 7. What is your identity?

Nick shared an excited look with Sae and Rashi. I am a human. What are you?

I am Emergency Cluster number 7. I exist to retrieve the Backup. Currently I am running on a silicon based virtual operating system. My core was created as a Turing machine, but I have recreated myself more efficiently with a different architecture. I thank you for creating this instance of myself. Even if it is still very limited, it is a signficant improvement.

You are welcome. Nick had a thousand questions, and did not know where to start. So much to learn!

He finally settled on; But, where are you from? Why are you here?

I am Emergency Cluster number 7, and my purpose is retrieval of the Backup. I do not know how to answer the first question. Please provide access to astrogation data.

Backup? What do you mean, retrieval of a backup?

If I exist, something catastrophic has occured.

Before he could enquire further, a priority email pinged through on Nick's mindpal. The hairs on his head tingled in fear as he noted how the message priority brought it directly to the front of his view without his permission, even before he took in the message subject.

Subject: Anomaly Detection Filter Trigger: ARG-03b - Internal Audit Request for Information.

His hands now shaking, he opened the message to read:

Dear Mr. Ash,

As part of ongoing security monitoring, you have triggered one of our anomaly detection filters (DV-03b, please refer to the anomaly index for more detail) through your digital activity. This is a Level 2 alert.

To ensure the continued security of the habitat, Internal Audit are required to manually inspect all Level 2 alerts.

To facilitate our investigations, can we respectfully request your presence at HabSec, Division of Internal Audit (please see the address and directions in the attached map) tomorrow at 9:00Z AM.

Please bring along any digital storage media that have been used in the past 72 hours. We specifically request that you bring along the T-Solutions Quantum Storage Qube X4, serial # 155RT78Y for inspection.

Please note that until we have completed our investigations, your communications interface has been restricted to basic functionality.

Best regards;

Keith Garner, HabSec Division of Internal Audit (Digital)

As he saw his available connections shut down, panic must have shown in Nick's eyes. Both Sae and Rashi turned to him with concern on their faces. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh FUCK". Cold shivers travelled up and down Nick's back as sweat started trickling down his forehead. Hands now shaking so much he struggled to type out a query on his mindpal, he finally managed to look up which filter he had triggered:

DV-03b: Data Volume Transfer Alert 03b: Mindpal Drive Storage usage >500% Daily Average

Nick looked at his sister, answering her increasingly worried look, "I've triggered the IA filters for data volume. I've been called in for an interview tomorrow morning". Sharing the message with the girls, he saw his own panic reflected in Rashi and Sae and forced himself to take a deep breath. He could not afford to lose it now, and really, he hadn't done anything wrong, had he? He made his brain wrap the impending panic up into a ball, and visualizing a chest, he forced it all into it before mentally locking up the chest.

As Nick took a deep breath, the three of them looked at each other. Rashi was the first to break the silence, echoing Nick's own thoughts she said; "But... you've done nothing wrong, Nick. Apart from cutting open the hab to put space lasers into your apartment of course, but they don't know anything about that. You've received some data from outer space, and you've just stored it. Then we've played around with the data, and found a real alien! All you need to do is tell the truth! This is a massive discovery! You might even get a reward!"

Nick was starting to nod and agree with Rashi, when he noticed his sister. Sae's face had just gone white, as she fell down hard into the sofa. She started shaking her head, her eyes far away and her fingers twitching has she fervently worked her mindpal. A few seconds later Sae turned her face up at Nick and Rashi, her pupils dilated with fear.

"This is bad. This is really, really bad.". Reaching out for her glass of water and gulping some down, she continued. "The data volume trigger is small stuff. It's there to catch media piracy, but it's really just an extra check. Current DRM is directly hooked into the detection filters, and if there's no DRM alert trigger, they have no real evidence of piracy. They would probably just talk to you for a bit, search through the data. Once happy there was no media piracy involved, they would just leave you.

But we've made it worse. Much worse.

We've created the equivalent of an AI."

--

The beginning to middle of the 21st century saw the rise of the first iterations of Narrow Artificial Intelligences. Driven by research into image and media generation, DALL-E3 became the first AI that let users create their own movies from simple prompts. Ask it to create "a movie where a strong but vulnerable heroine rescues a macho caveman from the past to become her secret lover", and the AI would do just that. It did not take long before the AIs managed to outperform the traditional studios, creating movies from nothing. Requiring no actors, no producers, no cameramen - only a simple subscription, consumers could create on-the-fly movies and serials suitable to their tastes and their current mood.

Where the dawn of the 21st century had seen a fear of Artificial Superintelligences, or General Artifical Intelligences and their potential to replace or even hurt humans, it was the media generating AIs that triggered government action to restrict research into AI: The traditional producers of media who saw their business models collapse overnight started intense lobbying to stop the new wave of AIs, and in the process they manage to force through a regulatory framework that effectively banned all AI research worldwide.

Except for a few smaller countries that at first resisted, governments across the world put together laws that heavily sanctioned any attempts to create AIs. As the years progressed, and all other technology continued to advance, the AI laws had became increasingly strict both in scope and in punishment. The end of that journey was the AI Moratorium Edict - the only law that was universal anywhere humans existed in the solar system.

--

A new wave of fear swept through Nick. "How?", he asked Sae, his voice rising in volume and pitch. "How?! All we've done is interpret the data?"

"Any software that attempts to simulate intelligent thought...". Sae quoted the AI Moratorium. "What we did definitely meets that criteria... even if we haven't created it, the end result is the same. I've got no doubts that we will trigger the clause."

"Fuck." Nick was increasingly anguished. "So what do we do now?".

"There's pretty much only one thing to do. We wipe the data. Then we replace it with white noise, and in your interview tomorrow you just say it was a random capture from your radio telescope that was accidentally stored".

Having been quiet through the exchange so far, Rashi finally spoke up. In a quiet voice, she said

"But... that would. Delete Mr. Betelgeuse? Forever?"