Synthesis - James Swallow [64]
“Few resources… the apparent threat of a constant enemy, this ‘Null’ they spoke of.” Riker thought aloud. “All that means the Sentries have little ability to ‘reproduce’ or expand the numbers of their species. That goes a long way to explaining their behavior.”
“I’d call it paranoia,” said Vale.
Commander Troi shook her head slightly. “Am I the only one here who isn’t assuming that what happened to the Titan’s computer is part of some Sentry conspiracy?” She looked around the cabin. “White-Blue told us that this was a chance event.”
“A chance event that it set in motion,” Tuvok added. “If for a moment we concede the point that the AIs are incapable of direct falsehoods, even then, the Sentry White-Blue remains fully culpable for that act. It opened the door to allow Titan’s computer to become self-aware, without our permission.”
Troi’s dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t dispute that at all. But White-Blue did that. Alone, not on the orders of the Governance Kernel.”
Vale sniffed. “If it’s a renegade, we have all the more reason to kick it off our ship.”
“Despite what White-Blue has done, he was correct.” Troi shared a long look with her husband. “Does Titan’s computer system have the capability to become sentient? Yes. We knew that. We’ve always known it. The intelligent thinking machines we have aboard starships have been pushing at the borders of sentience since the twenty-third century. But as a society, we chose to make sure they didn’t cross that line. White-Blue said we prevented Titan from thinking for itself. He’s not wrong.”
“Point made and taken,” conceded Vale, “but that doesn’t forgive the intrusion. And it doesn’t address the fact that we keep a tight hand on AIs because history has shown us what happens when we don’t.” She let out a breath. “How many instances have there been where uncontrolled machines have become self-aware and then dangerous? The V’Ger construct? Daystrom’s M-5 computer? The mainframe on Bynaus?” Vale looked Troi in the eye. “Deanna, you’ve seen it yourself. The nanites from the Stubbs project, the Moriarty holoprogram—”
“I can cite counters to every one of those,” replied the other woman. “The Retellik Lattice. The Exocomps. The Pathfinders on Memory Prime.” She glanced at Riker. “Data.”
Torvig watched as Vale seized on the mention of the android. “And the flip sides of him? Lore and the B-4 prototype? However you cut it, the record is not good in the plus column.”
Troi was silent for a long moment. “None of which has any bearing on this. If we had encountered an alien race holding a being like us aboard their craft, shackled to a neural servo, without the freedom to think… tell me, Christine, what would you have done? Wouldn’t you have been compelled to rescue it?”
Vale opened her mouth to reply but instead she paused. Torvig saw the passage of complex emotions across the woman’s face. “I want to say that I would be certain of the dynamics of the situation before I did a damn thing,” she said at length, “but I’m not sure that I would.”
“What’s that Earther phrase?” said Pazlar. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. The change has been made. We can’t unmake it.”
“Certainly not without the…” Riker paused, struggling to find the right term. “The avatar’s compliance.”
And then the Choblik was speaking, the words coming to him automatically. “If anyone present has commonality of experience with the Titan, it’s me.”
The captain nodded to him. “Go on, Ensign.”
“Sir, my species were once a race of arboreal animals, without true sentience. The benefactors who visited my world in our prehistory and gave us the Great Upgrade enhanced us with cybernetic implants just as White-Blue granted Titan the chance to upgrade herself.” He paused and licked his lips. “We’re alike.”
Riker studied the diminutive engineer for a moment, considering his words. What he