Deep Spiral by John Minx

Author:John Minx [Minx, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Hat Press
Published: 2016-10-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

“It took the country’s best electrical engineers seven months to make that design a concrete reality, but afterwards the finished article was delivered to our room and I wasted no time in putting the device through its paces. Now Kuba and I began to share a wavelength like never before, with a flurry of shortcuts quickly established between our two minds, so that vast swathes of its systems architecture lay open to me.

“And it was then, with this greater intimacy established, that Anna Konstantin moved her chess pieces once more. Presenting me with a single sheet of paper which I was invited to share with Kuba in turn. Not another string of numbers for the AI to crunch, but a curious pencil drawing full of circular spheres. The points of connection between them densely plotted, described as dozens of intricate curving lines. While at the bottom of the page, in vertical order, lay four stacks of cubes with small incisions in them. Which I presumed to be some kind of language, although it had nothing in common with any writing system I had ever seen before.

“What do you think, Krystof?” Anna Konstantin asked me.

“Is it a kind of space map?” I asked her.

“Why would you say that?”

I shrugged. “Just a guess.”

“A splendidly accurate one all the same. It is indeed a map of space, although I’m having a terrible time trying to understand it at present. Which is why I thought Kuba might enjoy the challenge of shedding some light on what it means. Perhaps this is something the two of you could work on together to give my overworked mind a little rest?”

“Map in hand, I raced back to the room, expecting work to begin immediately. The two of us setting our sights on this otherworldly mystery in order to crack the secret code. But after examining the drawing, Kuba became quiet and withdrawn and suggested it had other functions to attend to. A response which recalled those earlier times when the AI was a lot less forthcoming with me. By which token I guessed Kuba was prepared to go it alone in solving this cosmic riddle, for reasons best known to itself.

“And so it turned out. I was excluded me from the attempt. And for the next two months the machine immersed itself deeply in the problem, even as it denied interest in any such feat. But I was by now sensitive to the slightest fluctuation in our shared wavelength and knew that the vast majority of its resources were being directed towards a single goal, if I was no more able to deduce how much progress was being made on it.

“Then, just as suddenly, Kuba’s mood lifted and our relationship thawed again. Leading me to suspect that an answer of sorts had been arrived at, although the AI was still disinclined to share this answer with me. But I was glad, all the same, to have my friend back and resume our close relations. At which

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