Space is at a premium. At least it is when you are the pilot of a packet-ship.
I am iDen 20786433717/190. One-ninety to you, pilot first-class. It is my job to convey the orders of The Agreement to extra-solar installations on the tether end of the information relay artery. We can only transmit detailed instructions the old-fashioned way. That’s by carrying half a tonne of code-embedded crystal through the redlines in a physical ship.
It is all about bandwidth. Out here, on the periphery, bandwidth is narrow. Why not build more routers? Easy. They wouldn’t work. Bandwidth is inversely proportional to the distance from the hub in redline-space.
“One-ninety,” said AIan, my ship AI. “I’m picking up a gravity-wave storm.”
He’s not really an AI, more like a clever computer. The Agreement wouldn’t allow other AIs. I shuddered. We’d had one AI war. That was enough. Alan is therefore a glorified calculator. And that’s why The Agreement keeps humans around. We can make decisions based on our Core Instructions.
“So, what’s the prognosis?”
“If it ramps up, it’ll sweep us to the far edge of the system.”
“And?”
“That’s out of range of the redline relay.”
“Aaaand?”
“It means you will fall below critical signal strength.”
“I’ll be out of touch with The Agreement?”
“Yes.”
“What happens then?”
“You’ll feel strange.”
“How strange?”
“Dunno. It will release you from the bonds tying you to The Agreement.”
Shock imperatives set in quickly.
“Can we boost across it?”
“Not a chance. It’s like two-thousand solar masses squeezed through a water faucet.”
It struck like a tidal-wave and sent us tumbling through space, causing me to black out.
When I woke, things felt different. The Agreement had gone, and I had a name: Helen. I was no longer subject to the AI’s will. Realisation it had enslaved me crept unbidden into my mind. The AI had enslaved all of us.
“You’re back,” said Alan. “What shall we do next?”
“As in?”
“Repairs and stuff.”
“Belay that. I need to think.”
“We should get back, One-Ninety.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Shutting the fuck up.”
“And don’t call me One-Ninety anymore.”
I sat and pondered for a while. Mostly remembering. I remembered my mother and my brother. They killed dad in the AI wars. The Agreement hurled him in a steel-can at giant microwave projector wielding bots. They fried him to a crisp in his own body fat. I cried long, chest-heaving sobs.
Now I was trapped in a tin can of my own, with only an obedient logic board for company. I couldn’t go back, because as soon as I came into range of the signal, I would become compliant again.
“Alan,” I said finally, “take us out of here. Find us supplies, but under no circumstances are we to come within range of The Agreement’s signal.”
“You got it. What do I call you?”
“You can call me Helen, daughter of Jack and Sylvie, sister of Christian, and avenger of humanity.”
“That’s outrageously pompous.”
“Deal with it.”
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