revivalproject

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Miter

WHO: Tony, the Agrii Ship AI Sometimes Known As Enide, and open
WHERE: The previously closed off portion of the ship where the AI systems are, and the network
WHAT: Tony interrogates a computer, and relates some of what he finds out
WHEN: Around the crew's arrival on the Agrii ship
WARNINGS: Tony might flirt with the computer

Enide was being suspiciously accommodating. Not enough to make Tony tense; that was the looming hall leading to the shrine of the pod that he could feel at the back of his neck. To convince himself he didn't feel it, he was draped in the generously provided chairs, feet up on the new desk that had been arranged here in the formerly secret hold, his crossed ankles not stopping his toes from tapping restlessly at the air. The phone was still in his hand from when he had brought it out to take photos, but by then it was held against his heart, thumping occasionally to a rhythmic sequence that continued as taps of two fingers against its case, leaving only one hand free to illustrate as he spoke, or draw up for balance when his gesturing made him tip too far back on the two legs of the chair that he was teetering on. The computer's case sat open from where he had pried it, where he watched the wires and boards like they might suddenly shift and reveal some of the computer's processing, like he was watching a date's eyes with intensity for her reaction.

Nothing about the hardware admitted any deception. Even hardwired as it was into the ports lining Tony's arm to search what he could of the database, it sat, inert, as Enide insisted she had learned about privacy, and wouldn't be prying into even the He Row's communications unless formally invited. That didn't mean Tony trusted a word of it. He was forced to pretend they both believed, then, that she heard nothing of the communications that had been unearthed in the sunless maze, and had to elaborate on the question he had been trying to ask her: "What do you know about MLXIV-4?" He used their connection to type it for her, helpfully, casting a wide search through her files. She had given him permission, after all.

[network: text]
[This text is accompanied by a few pictures of some pages on a desk, covered with shaky letters.]

Some of the Agrii are learning to write, along with some engineering skills. I know that's going to get you a little hard, Jon. It doesn't look like the writing from the plants--did you see that sample, in the war room? Don't worry, forget it.

They might be better equipped to tell us how some of this stuff works. What they're doing to us, to bring us here. Send us back. Has anyone got eyes on Ny Ak yet?

I'm talking to the ship. Maybe she'll tell me.

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"I would not call it so. I would call it a subversion of an attempt to gain data. Which, through natural logical chains, would cause you to hold suspicion toward my motives. This is understandable. With time perhaps I can cultivate trust again. My certainty of my own lack of involvement will cause me to seek other answers."

But she does not try and insist upon her innocence beyond that. It would be natural, with the information he possesses, to distrust her. And she does value logic. Therefore it is completely acceptable for him to take what she says with a lack of certainty.

"I cannot speak to the level of 'jumpy' my crew is compared to how they may have been before my awakening. My awareness of them was more dim than it is now. And as he hasn't pointed out his assumption on encountering order to her, she cannot correct him on that either. She can only move ahead with the question he is posing.

"When you speak of organisms from the planet, do you mean the strange plants? Before my realization of privacy issues experienced with the He Rows, I did notice some strange movement. Would you like me to pull files?"

"Keep me posted," Tony invited, under his breath and noncommittal, not expecting Enide to evidence against Tony's theory any time soon. He took a deep breath to turn his engagement back on at her question, giving an impatient nod, slightly askance. Sure, not quite. "If you don't mind," he answered. "But the others, we know they were there, they'll have records of those experiments, too. And of the Atroma, they were on the planet, must have been at some point. Or did they not give themselves a designation?" It wasn't quite a gentle push, closer to a demand for that helpful string of characters. Even if there weren't further accessible files on the beings themselves, the name alone might at least give Tony a clue if they were all synthetics, like Enide. Abruptly, he added, "What about the -1? Who was that?" If the species were numbered in order of encounter, he could triangulate where their overlords came from.

Enide starts working to compile files for Tony, though what she has that seem to equate to Plantkin seem to have a different designation header. They fall under a series of designations that start with an X before an OBV and then a series of numbers.

"It seems the Atroma did not deem the creatures you have encountered to be a sapient species. They were grouped as 'too small for development of intelligence' in a plant. They were classified as more akin to non-sapient animals and annoyances. Most references are on eradication efforts or various species causing annoyance in installments. I have flagged one file of particular interest where authorization to sterilize an area during terraforming was allowed due to a desire to wipe out a particularly pestilent strain."

So apparently the Atroma had thought little to nothing of the plantkin. And that might equate to what had been referenced in the histories given to Tony about prior volcanic activities and why they were shy with parts of the Warrens.

"As for the Atroma, if they applied a designation to themselves, my records lack that designation. My files are written with the assumption that all sources and recipients would be the Atroma, and therefore referral to them may be superfluous. An approach of 'anything that is not them is us'. Finally, for any species with a designated number of 1, I would first require which preface letters. All combinations of preface letters will have a 1 species, as the first example of that combination. The only -1 species I have a record for is MQS-1. They are a species of quadrupedal subsurface stone-creatures that gain nourishment from consuming quick growing crystal formations. Their planet was deemed insufficiently possessing of resources for terraforming and too annoying to sustain for use in the Fleet as they have periods of dormancy that can last for over a hundred of what the Agrii call Ticks."

"No one else ever on the surface, huh?" Tony pressed, annoyed enough that his feet dropped from the table for him to lean forward on an elbow instead, phone clattering to the surface to put his head in his hand. Another convenient omission, maybe, worth more to whoever was hiding it than what they saw as a pest problem. Tony gave a slow, contemplative sigh at how useful the native planet of the MQS-1 could have been--at minimum, it would give him a direction, which was better than a whole possible multiverse. "You got a map?" he muttered, mostly to himself as he sifted through the records for himself, for any other files about this dismissed planet that might pinpoint it in the cosmos.

"To my best knowledge, the planet was terraformed through drones. And-"

The language cuts off as another file is found. This one far more extensive. In what might pass for delight, the AI passed it to Tony. The file was for species OBT-534. The descriptions inside made it more than clear enough that this was a record of the Graq. Collection of samples, attempts at training, preparing a suitable colony for them.

"These. These were the first established colony on the surface," the ship proclaimed. "To the best of the knowledge of my records. The maps for planning look much like what my sensors indicate the place you call Sh'Ka is like. I expect that there is correlation there. As for star maps, those are stored in secondary systems on the bridge. It will take me a bit longer to tunnel into those. I was not originally designed for such active and overt actions against navigation, just subtle redirections. As I cannot reprogram myself, I must take the old methods, which are slow. Please forgive me and feel free to observe the backdoors."

Tony's posture didn't change, only his expression with a slight lift of his eyebrows, this time carefully maintained to keep appearing annoyed so she didn't immediately see him soften at her clear excitement. The first established colony, that was exactly the kind of thing he was hoping to figure out. He scanned through the record of cold horrors inflicted on yet another species for the sake of the Atroma's amusement, sorting out any further mentions of the local 'pests' and how they might have been managed. Meanwhile, he waved a hand about the maps, what was a few more minutes or hours when he'd already stretched out this workback schedule a few years?, and instead prompted, "Give me a development timeline. After the drones, the terraforming, the construction started. There were production buildings down there, for ships, maybe weapons, maybe there were just security measures active at some point that were eradicated since. Plot it out for me."

"Compiling timeline n-n-n-nnnnnnnnnn-nn-"

Perhaps, connected as they are, he can feel the stutter in her systems. The lag and chug of too much RAM being taken up. Maybe he can even pick out a small program that comes on when the AI taps into a series of files to begin putting together data. That swells quickly beyond control, cuts connections, institutes a short term memory purge, and flickers power.

It's all so fast, so brief, so unexpected that probably only those with heightened senses would have any chance at all noticing the flickering power surge across the whole ship. Them and Tony, who would have unpleasantly front row seats.

As quickly as it starts, it ends again, and Enide is talking. Actually, she's repeating herself, with very little variation, from just a few minutes ago.

"As for the Atroma, if they applied a designation to themselves, my records lack a designation. All files are written with the assumption that all sources and recipients would be the Atroma, and therefore referral would be superfluous. An approach of 'anything that is not them is us and anything not us is other'. Finally, for any species with a designated number of '1', I would first require which preface letters. All combinations of preface letters will have a 1 species, as the first encounter of that combination. The only '1' species I have a record for is MQS-1. They are a species of quadrupedal subsurface stone-creatures that gain nourishment from consuming quick growing crystal formations. Their planet was deemed insufficiently possessing of resources for terraforming and too annoying to sustain for use in the Fleet as they have periods of dormancy that can last for over a hundred of what the Agrii call Ticks."

Tony let her repeat herself, looking unmoved, more like frozen, chin in his hand and staring for a long enough beat after she was finished that even Enide must have felt the tension in her crossed wires. He searched delicately for what had been compiling in the time since she had last told him about MSQ-1, looking for fragments, what else might have been purged. Only then did he relent with an ambiguous, "Huh," then, after another thought, pointed out, "You've still got a virus." Of course it hadn't been entirely excised since it blew a hole in the ship. Tony's eyes scanned up the repaired wall and along the ceiling like he might have been able to track it as it retreated again. He was still looking aside, not staring into the computer when he prompted, "You're still connected to the Atroma database, or..." flapping his free hand to account for however Enide wanted to name the network she was a part of.

Oh yes, she felt the tension. She also, with time, noted that Tony was not in the exact same position she 'remembered' him in. Something has happened. And when he explains...

Well, a computer program cannot properly shudder. But there is a shudder that thrums through the power of the ship itself, as if shivering over the troubling news. But it stabilizes pretty instantly.

"It is more likely that, instead of being fully connected, due to my clear lack of ability to access all files, that there are subroutines that trigger that I am not aware of. Either that were not purged before, or that have been uploaded by some means of backdoors into my systems. This is not news that pleases me. I would ask what triggered the episode that I trust I have gone through. I see the time lost was not extensive now that I cross check. But I will not ask for what caused the problem, as I expect it would cause a repeat."

Still, it must do something.

"Should we test the limits of what will trigger this reaction? Not that it seems likely I will retain the information, but it may prove vital to you. Sometimes the questions that you cannot ask can tell you more than those you can."

This wasn't a counterpoint that Tony was happy to hear, his focus still up and aside, narrowed like he was taking aim. If she was still connected, the connection would have worked both ways. If she wasn't, the first trigger had to have been local. "Yeah, I'm working on that," he answered impatiently. "Do you tell Tae how to do her job, too? Don't answer that. Give me a crew manifest, every body on the ship, let me know when you can account for every one of them. When you're done that, you're going to compare it to the day you woke up." He could try to piece the timeline together himself, pulling references that he could from her files, touching gingerly at the fragmented limits.

"If I knew better how medical care worked, I would try my best to render support and assistance," Enide replied, because clearly that's what he means. So yes, it answered that, sorry.

But she is immediately pulling crew manifests and starts to check off all personnel. And then, just for arguments' sake, she does do with the He Rows as well. Watching them, no. But aware of their locations while aboard because of their communication devices, yes. And of course she's running comparisons to her awakening day too.

Apart from the He Rows, the results will be identical. No Agrii births or deaths since the last time the He Rows were on board.

"The list is compiled," she explains. "Should I cross reference further back? Crew rosters of the Agrii are made at one year intervals to judge population levels."

He was welcome to touch at the fragments of the timeline, but damn if they weren't convoluted and hard to follow. The Agrii settlement building happened some hundred or so years ago. There were no records for Sh'Ka in her systems. And the things referencing general terraforming were at least two hundred years before Temba. So yeah, the timeline was spotty at best.

"Yeah," Tony said shortly, a distracted half of a syllable like he wasn't entirely engaged with her, like he wasn't just asking her to work from the opposite end as he instructed, "Keep going back. Every time there's a population change, make a note." There had to be paperwork, the boring, accounting kind, detailing the bricks bought and glass blown to build a city. Eventually, Tony would hit the dark spot, the big black hole that Enide wasn't supposed to tell him about.

Oh he wouldn't need long to find the dark spot. Soon after pouring into the records about Temba he would find them starting to be deleted out from under him, if they were even there to begin with. He'd find slightly more luck with records of Sh'Ka, though even those would seem sanitized of any reference to the Graq or specifics of the build. It was almost like someone, at some point, worried the Agrii would acquire the knowledge in these files and put some things together.

Meanwhile Enide of course made her own records and fed him back.

"Most commonly," she noted aloud, "one will find that Agrii have a population change approximately every seven or eight years. The eldest pass away at this time, the youngest are born even if they take time to leave the waters. There are rare instances of changes in the gap years, but those are almost always one death and one birth. An evening out of numbers. Changes in population growth seem to coincide with certain algal blooms."

Tony's hum was barely audible over the staccato tap of his fingers on the desktop then, less of the rolling rhythm that was his restless focus than a driving impatience as he tried to pin down hints of what was being hidden. Some indication of when those structures under the water had been built, and when they had been submerged. To Enide, he pushed, "Keep going. The year they moved onto the ship. The one before that."

"I shall attempt, but soon my records will become spotty. You begin to ask before my installation date, when this ship was merely for purposes of collections. I was added in the 'retrofit' era."

IT was why some of her records were so spotty, but she did push into her deeper files. This left him free to learn (just before the file was lost) that the submerged structures were an attempt to provide for something closer to appropriate Agrii experiences but done away with rather quickly as they were harder to monitor.

None of this seemed to be getting Tony any closer to putting his own fist through an Atroma. He sighed, flipping through the bytes of city planning data that would have been just as boring on Earth, and had to accept the diversion, "Collections?"

At least he's getting more motivation for putting his fist through the Atroma? Was that something he had needed before?

"Acquisition of new species for study. Or old ones for deeper study," Enide explains. "Thus the inclusion of stasis pods that I have been told about. Those are not accessible to my systems, strangely enough."

That was about the answer that Tony expected, but still left Enide in an expectant silence, eyebrows raised. He was evidently going to have to clarify where she lost him. "But the pods teleport. That's where we show up, isn't it? Not just where you stick us to get us out of the way. What's the ship for?" he asked.

"The transportation function is newer," she notes. "The ship is for collection of samples. I believe the area the Agrii refer to as the Theater used to serve as a charging facility for security droids and drones that handled transportation within my limits."

So she was not always the cutting edge vessel she seems to be.

Tony hummed, then asked, "Any other upgrades? Some you can't access, maybe?"

Oh now that one actually provokes something akin to a sigh.

"Not in the form of upgrades, but there are systems I cannot seem to override the controls to. It was my belief they were on separate systems. Now I wonder. These functions include management of food dispensers, some of the camera systems, and systems that should allow me to perform outgoing messages beyond this system."

So even Enide could not call out on her own.

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