“Well, I’m not sure why I got the job, but I’m glad I did. So tell me. What is all this stuff with modified programs, anyway?”
“Well, what he was talking about isn’t exactly something I want Mom to know about. But it got me a billet on this flight, and that’s the important thing.”
“Doing what?”
“There are three of us, see? Bos is one. So’s…that corporal over there. Yeah, the blond woman. Corporal Dillon. We graduated from a special 4069 MOS class they just held at the SCTF at Quantico.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Well, the UN has built a ship at a base they have on the farside of the Moon. An antimatter ship, like the Ranger. According to intelligence, she’s just about ready to go. She already has made some short hops, but they think they’re still working on getting her main weapon mounted and working. Our team is going in to either destroy or capture that ship, whichever we have the best chance of pulling off.
“Anyway, the three of us are on the boarding team. We go in with our nutcrackers, try to subvert the UN computer system running that ship, and take it over. If one of us can pull it off, we might be able to fly that ship out of there.”
“Ah. And if you can’t?”
“Then there’ll be other Marines planting explosives to make damned sure the UN can’t fly it out either!”
“And this nutcracker is?…”
Jack pulled out his PAD, opened the screen, and tapped in a command. “Sam?” he said. “I want you to meet my Uncle David.”
“Delighted to meet you, Uncle David,” Sam replied. She was modestly dressed, thank God, in slacks and an unrevealing blouse. Once, when he’d been working with her at Quantico, some of his instructors had dropped in to see how he was doing, including Staff Sergeant Ostrowsky and Colonel Joanna Bradley, the base XO. When he summoned Sam’s image, she’d appeared in the nude…a bug left over from the days when he’d wanted her to appear that way. He’d received a pretty stiff lecture on sexual harassment and proper respect shown to female members of the Corps.
He was pretty sure he had that problem worked out now, at least. The question was how she was going to fare against the UN computer.
“I’m, ah, pleased to meet you, Sam,” David replied. He glanced at Jack. “This is your nutcracker?”
“She was originally a Net agent,” Jack explained. “Or part of her was. That means she was designed to go out into Earthnet and find information for me, which she did by looking at lots of programs very quickly and comparing their content with lists of things I told her I was interested in. It wasn’t hard to modify her so that she could go into one program, figure out how it worked and what it did, and change how it worked.
“In fact, a lot of the work I did on her, she really did to herself. I just told her what I needed done, and she did it.” He snorted. “Everybody around here’s convinced I’m some sort of programming hotshot. She did all the work, though.”
“You talk about her as thought she’s…alive.”
“Uncle David, sometimes I wonder if she is. She sure acts like she’s self-aware.”
“Well, if she was programmed to act that way—”
“Oh, sure. I know all about simulated personalities. That’s what Sam started off as.” He didn’t add that the personality in question was a rather shallow adolescent’s sex fantasy. Now that Sam had become…legitimate, it embarrassed him to talk about that aspect of her past. “The thing is, AIs, even simple ones like Sam started off as, are meant to grow. To change with time, as they learn things, as they work with humans. It’s fun. Sam’s reached the point where I can’t really tell what she’s about to do or say. Just like a real person.”
“So you think she’s self-aware?”
“Well, I don’t really think she is, but sometimes I get the strangest feeling that she’s doing things on her own. Thinking. Reasoning things out.” He shook his head. “She’s probably too complex now for any programmer to understand how she works. That can be unsettling, y’know?”
“How about it, Sam?” David asked the woman on the PAD display screen. “Are you self-aware?”
“Would you respond to me differently if I were, David?” she asked. “Maybe it’s best that you not be too sure of me.”
David blinked. “I see what you mean, Jack. You didn’t program that answer into her…into it, I mean?”
“Nope. Sometimes she comes up with the damnedest stuff, seems to think of things I never would’ve thought of in a million years. Anyway, we’re going in with three different nutcrackers. I’m betting Sam will be the one that breaks through.”