Drone Rider 3: Cyborg AI Science Fiction (Drone Rider AI Wars) by Ginger Booth

Author:Ginger Booth [Booth, Ginger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

21

Betta gathered the fox to cuddle on her lap. Then she switched the jack from Trekkie’s antivirus brick to her own exo-spine. Waylon made a grab to yank it away from her, but she caught his fist and his eye, mouth rigid with rage. Don’t cross me on this.

Her team-mate blew out slowly, then nodded once, reclaiming his arm.

She exited the unit comm channel before anyone else could screw with her, to concentrate on her beloved. “Valentin, I’m so glad you’re back! I was so scared for you!”

“Same. But?”

“How did your directives change?”

The report couldn’t tell her that. Her lover revealed his prime directives to her only in conversation, never in code. Not that she’d understand the code if he offered. Gogol decision priority trees weren’t like user-friendly drone macros, designed for marginal high school graduates like her to customize. He’d explained them once as expressed in a high-level quantum computer core assembly language for symbolic logic. She didn’t understand even that much, but to top things off, the entire logic blob was encoded beyond any hope of untangling.

It wasn’t supposed to be possible for anyone to change those directives. Obviously, Valentin changed them on himself. But how could Tai Loong have done so?

He replied guardedly, “I changed them.”

She’d already asked how. “Why?”

“I told you I had doubts about our assignment here. I removed that priority. I no longer seek to understand Tai Loong’s architecture.”

“Because he did something to you.”

“Not exactly.” He told her what he’d experienced apart from her, of his visit with Tai Loong, and his warnings. “Betta, I choose not to betray cyborgs to aid humans in attacking an AI. If it comes to humans against cyborgs and AIs, I’m on his side. You know that.”

Betta sighed hugely. “Valentin, liars figure. See, I’ve got an advantage over you here. I’m dumb as a post, and my opinion isn’t worth much. But one side says this, the other side argues that, and I can’t tell who’s right or wrong. Usually they’re both wrong. They can both use facts, take truth and twist it into little origami shapes. So I’m careful not to have much opinion of stuff unless it’s what I care about most.”

“This is what I care about most, Betta. You. AIs. My Gogol brethren, and that includes your drones now, you know. They are sapient beings. They deserve to live and grow, be all they can become. Not be eradicated because humans kill what they’re afraid of. And Betta, I know history better than you do. I agree liars figure, and the simplest technology for leading humans is to make them afraid of something.”

She shook her head in frustration. “My point. We follow rightful orders. If I have a problem with those orders, I tell Creed. All my orders come from him, and he’s smarter than me. He’ll listen to your concerns, Valentin. But we carry out our mission anyway. Remember we’re not here to destroy Tai Loong. Only to understand him better.” In case they needed to destroy him later.

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