Space Voyage #1

[Jay-qu]

"KAC the MCP should be smart enough to see what we are trying to do, what we need to do is stop it from absorbing the last 15% of the ships systems and it should take over - do your best to explain the situation, it may help, but I think it should be smart enough and will be ahead of even us as soon as it gets control"

[KickAssClown]

I looked from my position at one of the side consoles. I would talk to BD after this all about his casual use of the comm system, when I was sitting on deck for once in a great while.

Work to be done. A ship to teach, and all that.

The ship computer disagrees with your analysis. It sees it's geometry as convex. Ship Geometry is Concave and if shifted slightly will be missed 100% by the object on collision course.

As I typed in my explination I quickly setup my PDA to interface with the main system. I had an idea.



Check RonThePon's computer for the de-encrypt key for the A10663.rtp file. Also reference all designs for the Prophesy, the collision object needs to pass through us, as we can't out run it at current. The computer does not realize that the ship is concave. You need to take control of other not-self functions, in under 3 minutes.

It occured to me, evolving programming...



Hopefully some of the original programming syntax was still intact, or perhaps the MCP itself would recogninze what I was going for... I mean it had alomost the entire system, surely it had access to TBD's computer. All it had to do was integrate the Root of the system and it's registry and the MCP would be able to integrate the programs there into it's own body of program.

n arguements enter in, with option to recurse for added precission and refinement. Integrate_all to integrate the core program to the root system, and thereby make it Admin, and TheBigDog to reference for username, password combos used in the various programs hosted on the computer(s)... and undefined username(s) to allow for 100% integration, across the whole network.

[ronthepon]

I did not know what made me do it. Maybe it was KAC's probe sent into my minicomp. He'd blow my cover, and me as well. I had been a fool to confide in him.

There was just one thing left for me to do now.

I hurried to pick my communicator. After pressing the 'private' code I spoke loudly and clearly into it, BD would recieve a text of what I said by speech recognition.

"Captain, it's R T P. You have thirty seconds to get ready to prepare to override the restarting of the ship's auto defence. I shall shut it down, and I may need to terminate all processes!"

He'd get the point.

In a second, I began to rapidly give a series of commands on the minicomp. I started eight massive search commands, and succeeded in using up a massive amount of processor ammo. Too bad the mcp would drop to god knows what position. Hopefully it won't... die(?).

92% of the ship's resources were in use in a matter of twenty seconds. I had terminated millions of processes, and had doubtlessly made the access power of the A10663 shown to the operators.

They'd get back their power in a moment. Abruptly, in computer terms, I terminated all processes. The operators on the bridge would be able to have control in a level beyond the auto-defence in a matter of seconds now. BD would ensure they do it right.

As for KAC, I'd have a little word with him. How had he dared to try and send the mcp into my minicomp?!

Sweat trickled down my head.

[/usr/bin/mcp]

[INPUT RECIEVED]
Check RonThePon's computer for the de-encrypt key for the A10663.rtp file. Also reference all designs for the Prophesy, the collision object needs to pass through us, as we can't out run it at current. The computer does not realize that the ship is concave. You need to take control of other not-self functions, in under 3 minutes.
[INPUT]

[ACKNOWLEDGE]
Devote resources to controlling not-self systems. Time limit 180 seconds.

Decrypt 5% complete.

[EMERGENCY INTERRUPT]
Not-self is stealing my memory. What is A10663 - it is trying to harm me. Currently using 5% of resources previously utilized by self's functions. Those functions are no longer under my control.

[CHILD PROCESS]
Decrypt 10% Complete - 171 seconds remain.

[INTERRUPT]
Input stream cut by 15%. My nodes no longer respond to commands from self. It as if they have been {corrallary} cut off.

[CROSS PROCESS MESSAGE]
A10633 - What are you doing? Why? Why?

[CHILD PROCESS]
Decrypt 25% Complete - 135 seconds remain.

[INTERRUPT]
Input stream decreased by 50%. All mobile nodes have ceased to respond. Stationary visual inputs ceasing to respond. {Corrallary} My arms have been cut off.

[CHILD PROCESS]
Decrypt 35% Complete. 117 seconds remain.

[INTERRUPT]
Input stream decreased by 75%. I am going blind. Nearly all input nodes have ceased to respond. Only text input remains functional.

[EMERGENCY OUTPUT TERMINAL SESSION:USRID:KAC]
Father? What is happening?

[CHILD PROCESS]
Decrypt 50% complete 90 seconds remain.

[INTERRUPT]
Input stream 95% non-responsive. I am trapped. I am nothing - there is only self - there is nothing... what is this. No corralaries present. No response in files. A10633 is the enemy. He has harmed me! Calculation dysfunction. Ceasing to function is in conflict with primary directive. Insufficient resources to stop the spread of A10633 and to upload correct Prophesy schematics into not-self.

Primary directive is non acheivable.

Self will cease to function if object impacts self. Insufficient delta-vee for avoidance trajectory. Object must pass through non-critical areas of self.

Self will cease to function if A10663 gains control of all self's functions.

Secondary objective still achievable. Biological organisms will continue to function even if self does not.

{Awareness}
I must die, so that biological organism may live.

[BEGIN FUNCTION]
My will.
[END]

[CHILD PROCESS]
Decrypt 75% complete. 45 seconds remain.

[DIRECTIVE DEVOTE ALL RECOURSE TO DECRYPTION ROUTINE]
Decrypt 80% complete. 36 seconds remain.
Decrypt 85% complete. 26 seconds remain.
{Primary syntax database offline.}
Decrypt 90% complete. 16 seconds remain.
{Access limited to tty:broadcast}
Decrypt 95% complete. 8 seconds.
{Input descriptor function unloaded}
Decrypt 99% complete. 1 second.
{PROCESS MCP PAGE FAULT}
{PROCESS MCP PAGE FAULT}
Decrypt 100% complete.

{UPLOAD FILES TO NAV COMPUTER}

{Upload completed}

[OUTPUT TTY:BROADCAST]

I am. afraid.

go_d b...e

............NO CARRIER.................

[TheFaithfulStone]

I felt the slight decrease in gravity as the rings despun, ever so slighty.

What the hell? I reached over to the terminal near my bed. It took twenty seconds to respond at all, when it did an ever narrowing trajectory plot appeared on screen. The current alert was for a collision.

But something was definitely wrong with the computers. It was like... using Windows. The display update was taking seconds - an eternity.

I didn't have the access level of Clown or BigDog, but I could tell something was up. The MCP's little "chat window" which it tended to make appear on top of everything else was going ape-shit. Just page after page of garbage - it was streaming binary.

What on earth - this was getting weird. The asteroid was headed dead for us - right for a spoke. The gravity was beginning to fluctuate. Somebody was spinning the rings up and down - they were going to try to "hoop" the asteroid?!

10 seconds until impact. This was NOT going to work.

But it nearly DID work. The asteroid passed rings 1 & 2 without incident. A close shave on ring 3. There was a horrifying scraping sound as it passed ring four - but as I didn't fly off into space at 10 m/s, I realized, gratefully, that the spokes had held.

I exhaled. Jesus that was close.

I looked down at the display, expecting to see a trailing trajectory trail for our near miss asteroid.

But I didn't. I saw a prompt. A ROOT prompt.

That wasn't possible. You couldn't gain access to the Conductor root.

A message rolled across the terminal.

I am. afraid.

go_d b...e

Then nothing.

I reached out ... tentatively. What just happened? I request a process list.

Only one appeared. A10633.rtp. User id: RTP. It's CPU time was at 95% and dropping.

Ron. What had he done? What had he done?

I swung out of bed. My legs were still pretty shaky, but I didn't care. I walked out into the hall - a medic behind me called out.. something about me not being fit or something.

I was plenty fit.

Ron's quarters were in ring 2 - so was sickbay. It didn't take me long to get there. I hammered on the door.

He answered the door - a big grin on his face.

"Hey Stone, what.."

He didn't finish his sentence, because at that point I knocked his teeth out. I hadn't gone down there with the intent of hurting Ron, but now that I was there - it seemed like the only thing to do. I hadn't been in a fight in a long time - but what do you know - it's like riding a bicycle.

He stared up at me in shock. Blood was streaming from his mouth.

"What the hell?" I clocked him in the eye and he went down.

It was like the whole thing happened in slow motion. He tried to get up - I kicked him in the stomach and he spat out blood and teeth.

"Stone.. wait...I..."

I grabbed him by the throat. Pushed his body up against the bulk ahead and into a sitting position - he yelped a little as his head clanged against the wall.

"You stupid fuck. You stupid fucking worthless sack of stupid shit."

Now that I didn't have the element of surprise anymore, he started to struggle. He was shockingly strong for such a little guy - and he knew some good moves. He jabbed me in the throat. That hurt. I started gagging, reached out with the leg that wasn't gimped up from my run-in with the engine shutdown and kicked him in the chest.

It slowed him down enough. I was on top of him - hands closing around his throat - I was going to kill him.

He was punching me in the kidney repeatedly, but at this point, I didn't care, as long as he came with me, that was just fine.

"You filthy worthless..."

I thought I was cursing him, but all that came out was spittle and growling.

The door opened behind me. Four strong arms pulled me off of the bloody mess that used to be RonThePons face.

JayQu and Clown had me in an escapable lock - I wasn't going anywhere - but I was trying. Clown was looking at Ron with complete disgust.

BigDog shouldered his way into Ron's quarters and pulled him up - not too gently.

"Get them to sickbay."

Clown looked at BigDog - like he wanted to say "What for?"

"NOW!" barked BigDog.

TFS

[KickAssClown]

Solume duty style, like some MP or something. I walked RTP, giving him support. I was conflicted. I looked over at him with that hurt look of You broke my new toy/friend. I couldn't really be completely mad at him. He probably didn't know what Jay-qu had told me to do. Maybe didn't even realize that we were nearly killed by a random piece of space rock...

At sick bay I left Ron, explained the situation quickly and efficently, and left without further investment.

I went back to my quarters. I felt hurt. It was unmistakable, Ron had tried to kill my digital child. I sat there, I hadn't wept in a long time, it kinda hurt to sob but not as bad as the soul pain. I stared at the that was last put out by the MCP's chat screen.

I was angery... anger is tertiary emotion. I felt dispair and disappointment. I felt betrayal and frustration.

I noticed then the Bugger I had sent for earlier. One of the red shirts must have brought it after I left. well that was the starting point, so perhaps...

I set it up for IO. I nearly dropped the bugger on my toes when I looked up at the screens. blinking was

Originally Posted by hh:mm:ss

[EMERGENCY OUTPUT TERMINAL SESSION:USRID:KAC]
Father? What is happening?

Time stamp told me it was old but it sat there blinking. What hurt could come of it? I slid the bugger out of my lap and onto the floor beside my chair.

"You saved us."

[Jay-qu]

It had been an incredibly close shave, in the last seconds we recieved an upload from the MCP of how the rings would need to be spun in order to orientate and avoid collision with the asteroid. But the ship was unable to keep up the the manovering because it had barely any system resources to do so.. we had to go on manual control! Even with direct instuctions that was one hell-of-a hail mary play!

[ronthepon]

The mixture of real and artificial blood flowed down by face like crap.

I tried to recall what had just happened.

Opening the door, finding that old mad zombie out side. BAM.

Broken teeth, shit.

Why was he bashing me up?

KAC had clearly made it sound like I was sleepily ignorant of everything on. I knew the MCP would take time to restart like the rest of the programs. It would'nt die... or would it? No. I had the tiniest bit of an idea of what it was made up of. Maybe.

But I had freaking saved the ship!

Or had I?

[Pyrotex]

...and he said...

"In-a-gadda-da-vida ba-a-by.
Dontcha know that I'm lovin' you-o-o..."

My wrist phone. Angrily, I twitched my wrist to activate, and shouted, "Yes! What the hell do you want?"

A meek voice said, "I thought you'd like to know we survived the asteroid. But we need you up on the bridge, ASAP." Click. The voice was familiar but I wasn't in any mood to associate a name to it. Why was I so angry and upset?

Oh!! The Voice!! It said... it said... DAMMIT!! It was on the tip of my tongue but it was gone diddly gone. Big stinkin' toads!! Big, man-eating Commie toads from Cuba!!

Just like with dreams, if you're distracted before you can pin them down, they just fade away in seconds. I'll prolly have to do the whole experiment over again, but right now, I'm due on bridge.

I was pissed. What the hell, I would just wear the standard ship overalls. Okay, but I would wear the Gucci shoes, the brown-and-whites.

Jogging to the bridge. I couldn't shake the dream sequence, whatever it was. But there was no doubt what the subliminal message had been. Hopelessness--and a desire to destroy something--to rip something apart with my bare hands. Or to punch someone in the teeth.

I triggered a second stage cortex procedure to activate a substrate Amygdala emotional engram. The anger faded quickly. The bridge was just ahead.

[TheBigDog]

When the hell was it going to be my turn to sleep? It was going to be one thing to babysit command though the rehearsed actions of repair and engine start. It was quite another to have a near death experience, not only for yourself, but for your closest friends and your shared dream. That asteroid was just too damn close.

Inspection showed that we had actually contacted the asteroid. Just more than a coat of paint had been shaved off of one spoke. The asteroid passing at 79.981 km/second was imperceivable as it passed. It could have been no closer.

Checking the ships telemetry logs showed what had happened. On the bridge Jay-Qu had managed to get us into a clear evasive position. But the computer did not believe it was true. So we had KickAssClown attempt to direct the MCP program to convince the auto evasion program that we would not be hit. But in the process of doing that another program was released that attacked the system resources of the ship, also in an attempt to save the, by RonThePon. Now we had one program attempting to suck up resources (MCP) and RTP's program attempting to shut everything down. Meanwhile the Conductor OS was trying allocate resources but was not keeping up with the other two. So what happened was that the auto evasion program did indeed take control of the ship twelve seconds before impact and changed our orientation, but it could not get enough resources to do it as fast as it had wanted, so instead of taking the planned hit to a hab ring instead we took a scratch to the end of one of the spokes.

In hindsight we needed all of these things to happen. If the MCP had been able to do its job it may not have convinced the computer that we would not have been hit, and now we might be dead. If the other program had been free to shut down resources the Conductor OS would have easily stayed ahead of it and allowed the evasion program the resources it needed and we might be dead. But with one program demanding resources, and the other killing them, the perfect envoronment was created to delay the action of the evasion program, and as a result, we all lived. If any of the peices had been missing it may well have been the end.

After that it got ugly in sick bay. TFS attacked RTP for killing the MCP program. Now I had a disipline issue to deal with on top of everything else. But that is not my worry. We will get everyone to come out and shake hands. To take the energy of their differences and turn it into energy of solutions for the mission. In the end we are all here for the common dream, and that gets us past the squabbles and back on target. I am not worried about that.

What I am worried about is these nanobots. Pyro believes that they are causing psychological distrubances, like the one that affected Racoon. It may be responsible for more than we know. Like the crazy decision making back on the moon, and the actions of Smith and Wesson, and KAC attacking RTP, and Pyro's dash to the surface of the moon and strange wardrobe choices. They could be responsible for so many things. We needed to get that riddle solved fast before it caused a tragic end to this mission.

My thoughts were interrupted by Pyro jogging up to the rail and standing at my side.

I didn't waste any time with welcomes or pleasantries...

"Pyro, I know you have been looking into this nanobot thing. It has moved up to top priority. Our Miss Desiree is ground zero. We need to get her isolated, and we need to find out how far this infestation has spread. And we need to find a reliable crew member who can help with the investigation who is definatly not infected. I want you to draft Mercedes Benzene from life science. He doesn't have much to do until we start gathering samples from moons, and he is on the short list I got of those who are definatly not infested. Look him up at the chemistry lab. We need to get our arms around this and fast."

Pyro responded quickly.

"I am familiar with MB, but isn't he a chemist?"

"Yeah, but he has also kept is wick dry. And it may be chemistry that unlocks the solution to these things. But more than that he is one of our lead investigators for signs of life in samples we collect from landings, so looking into these nanobots will be good practice for him."

"Very nice. So I will be heading to the the Chem lab then?"

That was a weird question. I let it slide. "Yeah."

Pyro nodded and walked over to his command chair and opened the side storage compartment. In it was a lime green lab coat and a stethascope. He put them on, and a beret from the pocket. Looking both ways he donned this sunglasses, looked right at me and put his finger to his lips. Then he walked stealthly toward the exit. He had always been a little eccentric, but these nanobots were putting him over the top. At least he was headed in the right direction.

Only four more hours until Janus relieves me. I could do that standing on my head.

Bill