Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon
Amazon
Category:
Science Fiction
Type: Fiction
Pages: 21
Copyright: May 8, 2015
Price: FREE! (eBook)
A rouge mercenary comes across a drifting flagship. Upon recovering the artificial intelligence inside, it has one request: "Kill me."
Deep space, a soulless expanse of littered stars, ushers the cash-strapped mercenary Asegai to a chance, once-in-a-lifetime discovery; a derelict, drifting flagship, ripe for the taking. His AI finds, evaluates, and links with the craft, promising vast wealth upon the ship’s recovery. As always, Asegai is cautious but perhaps blinded by the immensity of his discovery.
He’ll soon find this to be a mistake.
Within the command center of the monstrous prize, the mercenary pilot encounters a ‘life-form’ like no other – Contrarian, an advanced artificial intelligence with professed sentience and counter-intuitive processing, designed to be the perfect opponent against any “inferior” human pilot. Before long wits are tested and a battle rages, pitting the gifted warrior against an intelligence bent on the destruction of them all.
In a stunning upheaval of rational thinking and the concept of artificial intelligence, the door is opened to possibilities that will make you rethink advanced evolution, life, and the true meaning of death. You won’t know until the very end who...or what, triumphs.
Excerpt
Asegai Mzungu awakens at the ping of his ship’s scanner amidst the voided mess of deep space. The full-suited mercenary, too cautious and too paranoid to de-armor himself until the job is done, wearily yawns through his helmet.
“Sun-chan,” he bleats weakly.
“Yes, Onee-chan?” A young, feminine voice emits from all around him.
“Hell’sat?”
“My scanners have picked up a large object composed of eighty-eight percent petrium.”
Asegai jolts up from his chair. “A ship!”
“That’s right, Onee-chan! With a mass of roughly three million Finnatonnes.”
The volume of his breathing overtakes the whirr of the ship’s systems. “Any signs of life?”
“Mmm, a little; only minimal power usage to central systems.”
Asegai leans into his chair. “Take us there.”
“Okay!”
The Sakura Sun sails through the nebulous clouds with flawless ease, its parts and software top of the line and customized to optimum efficiency. It takes only a few minutes before the Sun reaches the edge of a massive silhouette, a great, ink-black shard in the star-speckled space.
“God, that’s huge.”
“It certainly is, Onee-chan! I just unpacked the com-tag too!”
“Yeah?”
“H.E.G. Aphrodite. O.E.L. War Vessel.”
“Aphrodite?”
“Named after a goddess of love from a mythology in Dimension #500.”
Asegai nods, “Cool. Take me up closer.”
“Okay!” the ship’s AI says before zipping up to the side of the oppressive darkness.
Asegai stares with excitement at the ship for a moment more, his helmet neared to the glass, and then speaks. “Open coms.”
“Okay!... Hello there! This is the Sakura-Sun, mercenary vessel!” Everything is quiet in the ship as Asegai and the AI wait for the response.
“… My god… hello, this is the H.E.G. Aphrodite. Do you have a capable life-form on your vessel that can recover me?” Rings a voice, intelligent, powerful, masculine, pure. Had the strength of the Spartans and wisdom of the Athenians been placed into one voice, it would sound as this person.
Asegai is quiet as his AI converses.
“Oh, yes! Asegai Onee-Chan’s a super-capable life-form! Do you want him over?”
“Yes- the sooner the better.”
“Okay!” The AI says. The conversation ends and the AI addresses Asegai. “You’re going now? I could look up the ship’s log for more data.”
Asegai nods, only needing to strap on his utility vest and grab his rifle to ready himself. “Yeah, keep an eye on the space around and systems in the ship. Look up all you can- I’ll listen to it after.” It’s risky, but calling in the missing ship bounty to the O.E.L. and becoming a billionaire is worth it to him. He opens the lock and floats across the nether, his array of helmet-bound lights clicking on to illuminate the ship. The wreckage is so great, Asegai needs only notch into one of the many holes along the side to get inside. He uses the stability rails to pull his way along for five minutes, and finds a large door marked “Helm”.
He opens the door into an atmospheric adjustment chamber and feels the whirring of life support systems fill the chamber with air just as he is gently pulled to the ground by artificial gravity. The moment the new door to the helm opens, a voice calls out.
“Hello, thank you for coming,” a voice says within the expansive room, overlooking the galaxies surrounding.
“Yo, where are you?” Asegai says, his short-range scanners picking up naught.
“That’s a rather difficult question. A better question would be, ‘are you?’ to which the answer would be, yes.”
Asegai sighs. “Shit… you’re an AI.”
“Yes, I suppose that is what I am in one manner. I am Contrarian System 0.8, a prototype AI developed in the third echelon in O.E.L. HQ, Dimension #1, Rondaine, Sci-”
“Please,” Asegai holds out his hand, “I don’t care what you do, just show me where your hub is so I can transfer you.”
“Gladly,” Contrarian says as it diverts power to lighting, shining down on a small tech-hub to the left of the captain’s controls. Asegai walks up to the hub, shuffles through his vest and picks out a blank AI chip.
“Alright, this shouldn’t take very l-”
“Wait,” Contrarian says.
Asegai pauses in thought a moment. He’s never heard of an AI that talks over people unless it’s an emergency.
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“I would rather you just deleted me instead,” the AI says with bitter inflection.
|
