Synthesis - James Swallow [60]
“Where do we start?” said Sethe.
“By admitting our mistakes,” said the chief engineer, his lips curling. “We were led down this route because we failed, all of us, to see the signs.”
“What signs?” said the Pak’shree, shifting her bulk toward the back of the office annex.
“I believe now that the incidences of minor program errors we noted in the wake of the Sentry attack were deliberately generated by the system itself.” It was hard for Xin Ra-Havreii to admit that he was wrong about anything, so he pressed on through the acknowledgment, pushing it swiftly aside. “The mistake was ours. It was mine,” he corrected. “The program errors were all designed to direct us toward one goal: a full reboot of the main computer.”
“You’re saying that Titan’s central intelligence purposely seeded itself with errors?” Dakal was frowning. “Why?”
“It programmed changes to its own coding,” said Chaka, picking up on Ra-Havreii’s thread. “But those alterations would never become active without a shutdown and restart to bed them in.”
“We opened the door,” said the Efrosian. “Now we have a ship’s computer that is apparently thinking for itself. I’m sure I don’t have to make clear to you the seriousness of that.”
“Do you believe that Titan is under the influence of the Sentry AIs?” said Torvig.
“That’s what the captain wants us to find out, so get to work.” Ra-Havreii turned on his heel and left the office, walking toward the thrumming tower of the warp core.
Ensign Torvig trotted out after him, his head bobbing. “Sir? You didn’t answer my question.”
He rounded on the Choblik. “What do you want me to say?” His temper flared, and he knew that the ire was directed more inward than out. “That we may have delivered one of Starfleet’s most advanced pieces of technology to a race of machines that cut one another up for spare parts?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
Ra-Havreii caught the tinkling hum of a holoprojector activating and felt a new presence behind him.
“You could ask me, if you wish,” said a woman’s voice.
He turned and found a striking human standing there. She was smiling awkwardly, in the manner of someone who wanted to be thought well of but wasn’t confident enough to hide it. The woman was quite attractive, and on some level he was evaluating her in just the same way he did with every new female he encountered.
Immediately, he knew. “You heard our conversation.”
“I have access to all shipboard internal sensors,” she explained. “You are one of my creators.”
He shook his head. “Don’t call me that. The term makes me… uncomfortable.”
“It is correct,” offered Torvig. “You are an originator of the Luna-class design program, and Titan is a—”
“Didn’t I just give you an order, Ensign?” said RaHavreii.
The Choblik paused, then nodded. “Yes, sir.” He padded away across the deck, leaving the Efrosian to study the avatar.
A tight twist of emotions gave Xin pause. He felt an odd conflict within him. Part of the scientist was amazed by the idea that a computer system he had helped to create could make such an incredible intuitive leap, and he wanted to understand the dynamics of it, but then there was also the part of him that felt a stab of threat from the mere presence of such a thing.
All at once, he felt his head swim with a sudden, giddy understanding. The nature of this meeting, this conversation, shifted abruptly, and he was so affected that he backed off a step.
“Is something wrong?” said the avatar. She spoke with genuine concern. There was real emotion in there, so it seemed. A need.
Ra-Havreii had once heard Deanna Troi speak about her father. Apparently, the man had perished in Starfleet service while she had still been a child. Unlike the lax bond between parents and offspring that the Efrosians demonstrated, Terrans and Betazoids placed far more stock in their intergenerational relationships—and he remembered with some clarity the look in Troi’s eyes when she had spoken about her lost father. He remembered it now because he was