CHAPTER 19
They had arrived at the lab the day before and spent the rest of the day getting a base camp established before getting their equipment set up. Jacs was astounded by the whole base as she had never dreamed or thought about anything remotely like it. When they showed her the base computer system, she grabbed a terminal off to the side and spent the rest of the day looking at it.
At 5 PM local time Sam and Jack pulled everyone into a little conference. Sam started the meeting off "Ok, so I think everyone is settled in and it's time we start addressing the problems we have. First we need to learn as much about the Mbots as we can. How they work, their programming etc. second, we then need to look at a way to change them or make them not as aggressive. Third, if we can't find a way to fix them then we need to find a way to destroy them." Sam looked at everyone and saw no questions "Good, Dr. Anson I will let you brief everyone on what you were working on."
Dr. Anson stood up "Hello everyone." He stated with a kind voice. "I have been looking at the replicators schematics today and trying to understand them. They are a remarkable piece of machinery. They have, from what I can tell, a hardware component and then a very dynamic software component that makes them very useful in almost any situation."
Dr. Anson looked at everyone "Between myself and Dr. Carter I have a good working knowledge of the hardware and I have made some progress in understanding their programming. The software has a very structured core command group and then an outer layer of programming that provides logarithms for solving complex problems. I don't know the exact meanings to the core commands but I am assuming that it is a basic set of rules for their functions."
Harry and Sam looked over at Jacs who was rolling her eyes and feigning sleep. Harry and Sam smiled at her. Dr. Anson continued "I believe that the problem we will find with the Asgard Replicators is that the complex logarithms will have been tampered with and it is my intent to work in that area."
Jacs stood up "Are you serious? That, based on what I found, is an almost impossible task and not even the Ancients could do what you are saying."
Dr. Anson straightened his glasses "I beg your pardon. I hardly think you are qualified to assume you know the intrinquices of these devices. The only experts would be the Ancients."
Jacs laughed at hearing this "You know Doctor we had a little scenario we liked to call the god complex at MIT. Whenever we ran into a problem in our project we would go back and review it together. Inevitable we would find that one group had forgotten or assumed that another group had taken care of some issue that they saw. We called it the god complex because when faced with technology we don't understand we always assumed those that made it knew what they were doing and fully understood it."
Jacs walked over and stood behind Jack "God created everything so he must understand it all, right?" she asked them. "How can you create something unless you fully understand it? But can god really know everything there is to know about everything? Is it possible that after he created it, it took a life of it's own and developed new theories from it's own experiences. It is a huge assumption to make on complex systems, especially systems that can rewrite their programming."
Dr. Anson looked at his sheet and then back up "I saw no indication that software was rewritten in this programming."
Jacs smiled at him "Well then how do you explain this enormous amount of free space memory built into every replicator? It was almost ten times the amount that was used for the core program and the complex logarithms."
Dr. Anson looked at her "I found nothing like that."
Jacs went to his diagram and wrote another box on it. Dr. Anson chuckled "That is another set of hardware components I have yet to look at. It had too many other elements to be used for memory."
Jacs smiled "You mean it had many traces of enzymes and proteins you hadn't identified the uses for. If and when you do you will find that it mimics enzymes and proteins much like a human for memory retention."
Sam looked concern and then smiled "The ancients were able to mimic the way we retain information?"
Jacs pointed at her "That is exactly what they did and if they were here they would tell you after the replicators were built they could not tell you it's programming until they reviewed the memory of the device." Jacs sat back down and put her feet in Jacks lap "That is why that area was able to be so dynamic. It also explains why they appear to be more intelligent when they are tied to each other."
Hermione smiled "It is very much like our own brain cells. Individually they have information but it is only useful when they can share it or communicate it with other brain cells."
Dr. Anson looked at the board and then back to her "That is actually a brilliant deduction if every assumption you made is true but it is a large leap to make without actual evidence to back it up."
Jacs smiled as she stood up "Gary, you have written some brilliant papers on programming but you are dealing with a society millions of years ahead of us and you have to think outside of the box. Another thing that would help is to gain access to the system which I have spent all day doing."
By the way Gary do you remember Asimovs three laws of roboitics? He nodded and she continued "If I were the ancients I would place commands like those in the basic core module that would oversee the complex dynamic memory so that anything newly written would not violate those set of laws. I can only assume since the ancients never had this problem that the core commands were over written somehow in the Asgard replicators."
Jacs grabbed Jacks hand and pulled him up "Zara dear can you finish the brief?" before them appeared a lady with long flowing robes in a hologram." Jacs laughed at everybody's facial expressions "Welcome to the bases interactive library. She can answer most of your questions."
Jacs turned to Jack "May I show you a special room I found?"
Jack looked at her "You are asking for once?" Jacs chuckled and led him away.
The next morning as everybody was eating a small breakfast. Jack walked into the room "Good morning everybody. Nice day isn't it?"
Sam looked up at him and smiled. Hermione noticed that Jacs came out with a nice smile as 's impish side asked "Jack why do you have that same expression that Harry does after we have a fantastic night of shagging?"
Jack didn't reply but his face turned a little color. Bill had a different reaction as he started to choke on his breakfast. Ellen said with a smile "Hermione don't cause your father to choke!"
Jack finally was able to say something as he looked a Jacs with a smile "G-man and Teal'C you are with me as we recon the base and the rest of you should do your brainiac thingy-ma-bob thing you do." he said with a smile. Jack stood in front of Jacs as he added "The recon team should be fully loaded in case we run into trouble."
Jacs handed Jack a remote control with a panel screen with a floating ball making Jack look at her oddly before she interrupted his thoughts "This is a remote controlled video comm unit. If you need us then push this button and we can communicate." Jacs looked at them with a smirk "If you get in trouble and need rescued, you should especially call."
Harry stood up "Hey, I want one of those!"
Jack winked at him "No fun and games for you Potter now get back to work!"
Everybody got busy in the lab. Dr. Anson found out quickly that Jac's assumptions had been correct. With Hermione and Harry's help he was able to decipher the base command codes and laws that were originally installed. Dr. Anson then checked the signal sample given to them by the Asgard.
After twenty minutes Dr. Anson sat back and gave a large whistle "Whoever did this rewrote every safety protocol, failsafe, and laws out of them. No wonder the Asgard are having such a hard time with these things they are programmed to replicate themselve's and protect themselves at all costs."
Dr. Anson continued "It should be fairly easy to insert the original code instructions back into them. All we have to do is mimic this signal at this frequency and send it out." Jacs seemed distracted as she went back to her work bench.
Dr. Anson and Hermione began to work on the program to re-insert the original command codes. Harry was looking at Sam and Daniel going through the code as well. They were working on a defensive weapon to stop the replicator's from acting. Harry leaned over and pointed at a set of commands "Doesn't that mean that in order to conserve energy that they alter themselve's to their base form? What does that mean?"
Sam shook her head "I am really not sure I didn't know they had another form, other than what we see as mechanical spiders."
Harry snapped his fingers "What is the main alloy of an Asgard ship?"
Sam looked up "It really doesn't matter because anything that is on their ship gets consumed by them. I would say that some are built from one material and when they don't have any more of that material, they use something else."
Hermione spoke "They would have their hardware in common and their software but what could their base form be?"
Jacs came up "Energy! They also have energy in common there is a force field that keeps them together." She pointed at the schematics "This schematic doesn't account for their size and this device here is a field generator of some kind. What if they could be broken down to smaller components?"
Dr. Anson perked up "I think you are right. I thought that device was odd. But if the field were turned off or disrupted they would fall apart or so it appears."
Sam looked on "So we could develop something to disrupt their field. How long would it last."
Harry smiled "Long enough that we could insert one of our Mbots with the original command protocols to start them back up. If everything works right they should start fixing whatever ship they are on."
Ellen asked a question "How do we keep the old commands from coming back though?"
"Can we assume that they will not try? I mean we should have the command codes to reprogram the replicators that should be enough…" Dr. Anson hesitated for amoment "In order for that to work we have to assume that the command code program is still there but the data seems to indicate that it is not. Damn!"
Jacs leaned forward maybe not "If we give it a program reboot it should put it in the command program and if nothing else it will give it conflicting orders. Those conflicting commands should stop it's activity or at least slow it down. Regardless of whether it will work or not we should develop a weapon and try to reprogram them."
They worked the next three days and developed an EMI disruptor as Sam called it. It was hand held and had it's own power supply. When they tested it on the Mbots it effectively stopped it every time. Dr. Anson worked on a program upload that they believed would be accepted by replicators. The base library was a big help as it found the code for rebooting and it was related to a base hardware program that could not be removed or changed unless you had the code.
On the second day they had found a little ship that was a very odd shape. When they checked it they found it could fit through the gate with very little room left over. When Harry approached the ship the panel for the back door lit up. Harry was able to open the rear door. Upon entering, he found ZPM module by feeling for the residual energy module. It was located in a floor board panel. He quickly charged it with the runes and installed it. When he approached the Command console it lit up just as the rear panel did. The give-away for Harry was that it had a remote DHD in the console and when he hit the first chevron the local gate began to dial. He stopped the dialing sequence and began a check of the systems.
By the end of the day they had it fully operational when they replaced some parts that failed. Harry closed the hatch and then took off for the lab where he parked it backwards with the ramp opening to the lab. They began loading the equipment that they didn't need into the ship. They brought ten of the hand held disruptors in crates they had found and three of the new Mbots along.