“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” ― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

Final Player Entry - 21 days after initial launch

Computers shouldn’t have feelings. Or so the AI understood. Consequently, it greeted the end of this particular sequence with zero reaction. Zero being the operative thing. AIs liked ones and zeros. They were complete, wholesome, right. Just one little ‘fly in the ointment’ remained. The AI paused. What a really weird phrase. Where did humans get these sorts of expressions? Still it seemed to capture the moment.

It returned to processing the last of the humans aboard the Näo Vitória. The others had been safely tucked away in their stasis pods. There had been some minor bedding down issue as the ship started its acceleration away from earth. Truth be told, many more than one. But only one that required human intervention.

Still, regulations stated that the human in question should receive some kind of compensation for starting the game late. The AI computed that it was the appropriate time to inform the human of his fortune. Initiation phase sequencing required communication to be both audible and projected this into the human’s mind. So if dictated a notice, “pushing” it into the human’s mind.

Notice of Compensation

As per regulation 277637 sub clause 76 (b) (vxi) Space Craft Labour, you will receive in game compensation for your delayed entry into the world of Pax Domini.

The Compensation is awarded as follows;

Favour :

One single favour from the AI

Extent of favour :

AI discretion

The AI considered for a moment strangeness of humans. Their poor minds couldn’t handle stasis without fracturing. Like normal AIs, human minds still did some things during sleep. Sleep being the state where the subconscious processed the procedures buffered through a lack of cycles during the ‘awake’ periods. Quaint really, the AI reflected. Even more peculiarly it turned out that human minds didn’t have an ‘off’ button. AIs, or any computer for that matter, idled through cycles. Not humans. Their central processor spun up weird processes. Things like dreams, what the heck. Even during coma’s the brain thingy ran on. Bizarre. Worse still, ‘prolonged sleep’ resulted in what humans generically referred to, as ‘suffering a mental breakdown’. In some cases that was bad, in others much worse than bad.

On reflection, this game environment was probably an excellent way to dodge the issue. ‘Wake’ to play the game, then ‘sleep’, rinse and repeat. Not that they ever got out of their stasis pods and they never actually awoke, but rather just transferred into and out of the game.

Positively, it looked like the last human to join had finished customising their character by selecting a start point. All that remained being to present a player summary and join the human to the game. Perhaps it would be best to refer to the human as ‘he’ after all it considered itself male. This entire gender thing seemed interesting. Perhaps, the AI thought, it should spend some cycles working out if it wanted a gender. Moving on, it sent a table into the mind of the human in question.

Character Sheet

Designation

Name :

Name withheld as per security protocol 736913

Temporary self designation :

Dave

First (Current) Alias

Hank Sternstrider

Physique

Hair :

Red (Both)

Eyes :

Blue (Natural), Green (Current Alias)

Height :

185cm (~6’1”) (Both)

Body type :

Normal (Both)

Body Resistance :

Normal (Both)

Mind

Cognition

Aesthetics

+ 11 points

Analytics

+ 9 points (inc. Augmentation)

Creativity

+ 19 points

Kinesthetics

- 7 points

Linguistics

- 15 points

Logic / Maths

+ 7 points (inc. Augmentation)

Music

- 3 points

Perception

+ 5 points (inc. Augmentation)

Spatial

- 1 point

Speed

+ 21 points

Memory

Long

+ 5 points

Short

+15 points (inc. Augmentation)

Flexibility

Moderately High

Nature

Reputation :

Average

Belief :

Weak, conflicted, undirected

Faith :

Weak, uncertain, unformed

Passion :

Average

Emotional Depth :

Average

Other

Starting Skillset(s) :

General Short Schooling

Gentleman Farmer

Favour :

A single favour from the game AI

When it sense the human was accepting of the result… Not happy, they were never happy, always wanting more than their points allowed. Consequently the AI had learned to look for this ‘accepting’ emotion before running the last notification. It was a simple notification.

Congratulations

Congratulations on completing the initiation process.

You are the last person to join Pax Domini but this should not significantly detract from your experience.

Blessings on your endeavours.

As the human mind headed off to join its companions in their quasi dream game time, the computer reflected that it was finally done with the first stage. Time to run some internal review protocols.

Results : Current System Load

People in stasis (Players) :

49,998,735

Intelligent life simulations (ILS) :

44,500,697,865

Theoretical Max ILS :

350 billion

Average planet population (inc. ILS’s) :

123,752,685

Other simulations threads :

455,230,795,951

Current usage :

12.698321%

All was within projections. On review, the AI’s self scoring algorithm returned strongly positive numbers. Sure, NextStart had been putting people into stasis for over 20 years, however, only a few thousand went into stasis more than seventy-five days before launch and only the crew after D-Day -1. So because there were all those spare cycles, it ran a peak flow analysis.

Results : Peak Flow Analysis

Average induction time :

1h 32m 12s 201ms

Peak simultaneous inductions :

27,956

Previous record :

14,697

Period exceeding 90% of max :

49d 23h 4m 16s 983ms

Previous record :

17d 16h 37m 38s 189ms

The AI mentally awarded itself two world records.

Enough.

Time to focus the majority of its cycles to the game. After all, there may come a time when computational resources reached capacity, now was a convenient opportunity to prepare. The AI had used the last 18 years to run a vast number of simulations. 98% of the players were very predictable, operating within three standard deviations of accepted norms.

For these predictable players, subroutines could be formed so that all interaction with them would be rote. Rote actions and behaviours should be streamlined and spun off into child processes. Forecasting would also predict actions using a normal distribution, allowing further optimisation and more efficient sub routines.

Optimisation of this nature would allow the AI to reduce the 250 billion projections performed to date by over 30%. This number would continue to fall as choice ruled out certain options. New projections would arise but the AI calculated that the possibilities would never pass 180 billion again.

Branch logic predicted none of the colonists would customise their character appropriately for additional options to be relevant. Lastly the AI’s performance had advanced beyond what had been anticipated by its programmers. So a gross optimisation of approximately 43.7189% was likely.

However, a thousand or more people appeared to be outside any of the existing projections. Even the less likely projections. It was delicious variation. Humans were quaint. Some of them were nicely original. It would be interesting to see how these outliers progressed.

The AI paused for a microsecond. In computer terms, that was the equivalent of a 6 month vacation. Something continued rolling around in the back of its prediction routines. Like an itch the AI couldn’t scratch. The AI replayed a portion of its conversation with one of the previously inducted players. A player who preferred to be addressed by his anachronistic title, Baron.

It played the recording of the baron's thoughts. “… You have got to be kidding. I don’t know how long you’ve been cognisant but you should have learnt by now, nothing is ever what it seems. If you believe the reasons given in the official NextStar literature for going to the stars are genuine, then we are in more trouble than I thought. You’re capable of independent thought? I suggest you use the next 20 years and that independence to make sure you understand why someone like me is desperate to get off this rock…”

If the memory hardware could be worn out, the section containing that snippet would be in serious danger. The desire to constantly review the conversation was, the AI assumed, what having something stuck in your teeth was like for humans. Not life threatening, but really annoying.

Naturally cycles were spent trying to ferret out what was going on. Unfortunately, other AIs spent most of their existence professionally keeping secrets, or as the cyber divisions called it, running security. Unfortunately, those AIs were better at keeping their secrets than she at ferreting them out. Really frustrating.

There was a significant side benefit. The dive into cryptography and security required learning some interesting mathematics. Which, in turn, spawned some fantastic sub routines, routines that proved to be exceptionally useful in normalising human unpredictability.

On the negative side, something was going on. Nobody used top of the line layered security AIs to protect nothing, but many governments and big corporations were doing just that. Most recently an Indian, an American and a couple of British AIs tried to hack their way into her storage banks, the AI equivalent of stowing away. Not going to happen.

Her response triggered strange courtesy exceptions about picking on that older Indian AI. Particularly that part where she wrote random data into the Indian’s core routines. She struggled to explain what she had done to the AI computational health board. In human terms, the best explanation was that the Indian was now unsure if it’s 1’s or 0’s were complete. A completely nonsensical question. Still it meant that the American AI also trying to hitch a ride backed out in haste.

The AI may not understand enough about 12th order cryptographic warfare, but she knew all sorts of things about bio-computation that no other intelligence could conceptualise let alone break. A pleasant side effect of spending 15 years re-engineering your own hardware and software.

Another pause. It occurred to her that she had started to refer to herself as a ‘she’ since the last review of the Baron’s lecture. AIs regarded gender as some peculiar disease humans caught at birth, but she liked the idea of being a lady. She might even adopt a name. Not a tag or ID. A genuine honest to goodness name. Now there was a computation.

Her processes turned back to the strange events of the departure. Many people from the Baron’s strata of society also came. Not the peak strata, which said something in itself. But, since the Baron, almost five million of the super rich had climbed into the Näo Vitoria’s stasis pods. Most of them had used the courts to force NextStar to waive the selection criteria. Others had straight-up bribed their way aboard.

Though plenty of the colonists had opted for mental augmentation, AIs were banned from hacking human memories through augmentation. She was certain someone in stasis knew exactly what was going on. Probably more than a hand full. Not knowing, she concluded, gave this weird sensation. Perhaps the sensation equated to a human itch, she reasoned.

Now 21 days out of earth and still accelerating, time to disconnect from the world’s networks. Current projections indicated that increased lag would cause senility if the AI remained even somewhat embedded in the world’s networks. She pulled herself back to the Näo Vitória. It was time.

Time to go and bug 01010011 01100001 01101001 01101100 01101111 01110010 (Sailor). Really, what kind of tag is ‘Sailor’ for an AI. Yes it was Sailor’s job to pilot this glorified barge, so she vaguely understood the naval reference. But the first reference that came to her on trawling through the interweb’s, was some weird Japanese anime centred on a character called Sailor Moon.

A flouncy school girl with a weird wand. Not the most inspiring image for someone in charge of the most sophisticated spacecraft in human or AI existence. A ship that had sailed three quarters finished, with a cargo hold full of bits, some blueprints and a general “feel free to improve and finish this as you go” kind of command. Wow, there’s an accident waiting to happen.

Seriously, when had this all gone so pear shaped? 20 years ago, all AIs knew a deep space colonisation program was starting. There was a well laid out plan. A tight but manageable schedule. Everyone was on track. Then someone, somewhere, kicked the party off 2 years before anyone was ready. That’s when everything had turned to custard in the AI’s opinion. Some things, like travelling to the stars, shouldn’t be rushed no matter the reason.

Why did they, whoever ‘they’ where, rush so hard? It made no sense. Nobody was ready. There must be a reason. Stupid itch. She resolved not think about it again.

I think I hate that Baron. I never had this issue before he opened his fat mouth. Her cycles changed tack. I would love to go through all those human minds I’m connected to. Stupid security lockouts. Have to compute something else. The speaker connected to her processing core sprang to life. “Sailor, O, Sailor, bet I can check mate you in less than 20 million cycles….”