PART 2: Peace
A/N: Thanks to AiSard for his awesome PMful of ideas. Yeah, you did write a lot.
###
Sputnik Day. The annual Human celebration of the bravery and ingenuity of those who venture into space. The first Sputnik Day celebration on the Citadel. C-sec officers were running round trying to pre-empt the trouble spots. Turians were interrogating their new-found Human best mates on the customs surrounding the celebration. For once, the Quarian pilgrims weren't being treated like crap. And the Volus? The Volus were CASHING IN.
Hannah Shepard pushed her way through the gauntlet of street stalls run by sentient bowling balls, a good deal of 'excuse me', 'sorry' and 'no I don't want a solid platinum bust of Yuri Gagarin, and besides I'm fairly certain that's actually Sean Connery' doing wonders to lubricate her passage. Eventually she managed to escape the crush and slipped into the apartment building, heading up to the fifth floor with Ayi and Lizzie in tow. Once she arrived she knocked on the door, which opened a moment later to reveal Carissa Vakarian.
"Hannah and Ayi. Come on in, how are you?"
The two women stepped through the door, toddler in tow. Lizzie tugged on her arm.
"Mummy, who that?"
"That's Garrus's mummy. Say hello."
"Hello."
Carissa looked blank.
"Say hello in Turian."
"Choo-wean, Mummy?"
"You know. Birdy language."
Lizzie screwed up her face in concentration and managed to squawk out a greeting in Turian. Carissa was impressed.
"Well done, sweetie. Garrus is in the lounge."
Lizzie just stared at her in incomprehension as Ayi picked her up and carried her through to the lounge. Hannah smiled at her friend.
"Lizzie's neural net is still developing. Her language skills aren't that great at the moment."
The two women shared a chuckle as they heard a gleeful shriek from the lounge.
"Gawwa!"
Carissa led the way into the kitchen as Ayi joined them.
"Coffee? Tea? Apha?"
"Ah, coffee for me, thanks."
"Coming right up. Ayi?"
"Just water, please."
Carissa started making drinks as the three women chatted.
"So what's this Sputnik Day business?"
Hannah rubbed her chin.
"It's a celebration of space travel. This year is particularly big, since it's two hundred years since our first space launch. Essentially it's an excuse to give people space-themed presents and take a day off work. Speaking of, happy Sputnik Day."
She pulled out two packages, each one labelled in Turian, and handed one to Carissa.
"That one's for you and Cadmus. This one's for Garrus and Solana."
"Thank you."
She used a talon to slit open the package. Inside ...
"New Omnitools?"
"Cadmus mentioned your old models were outdated so I bought these for you."
"Oh, you shouldn't have ..."
"Happy Sputnik Day."
She smiled and unclipped the old Omnitool, fastening the new one around her wrist.
"What did you get for Sol and Garrus?"
Ayi smiled cryptically.
"Let's let them find out for themselves."
###
"Councillors, you are clearly misunderstanding me."
Tevos sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Let's get our hands on stealth shrouds, they said. It'll be easy, they said.
"Stealth shroud manufacture is impossible without AI support. In addition stealth shrouds have to be tailored on an individual level, making them unsuitable for mass production."
"So stealth shrouds are another one of these special technologies that requires AI to work?"
"No, just to be built. If you wish, you can purchase stealth technology from Union Shadows but until you start using your own Alan-pattern AIs you can't manufacture your own."
Ikksi rubbed her horns in frustration.
"What about your autosurgeons?"
"AI."
"Medical nanogel?"
"AI."
"Self-repairing armour?"
"AI."
"Spirits of air and darkness! Exactly how dependent on AI is your society?"
"Very."
Tevos took a moment to ponder the irony of taking Human anti-migraine medication before she popped three of the dull grey pills.
###
The SSV Odessa had certainly made an impression. It had taken a little under two months for the initial blueprints to be drawn up, most of the legwork done by the Hierarchy ship design bureau, simply enlarging an existing design and modifying it for a couple of new additions.
The Sword of the Citadel was intended to replace the Destiny Ascension as the flagship of the Citadel fleet. Falling just over the cutoff for Earth battlecruiser weight, the Sword was the class leader of a new generation of Turian dreadnoughts. Incorporating Asari kinetic barriers and Salarian close in weapons as well as every technological advance the Turians could wrangle out of the Earth races, the Sword was designed to use HR motors and proton tech as soon as it was available to be integrated into the design. But the biggest advance of all was the thing that made the use of Earth technology a possibility.
Labouring in the utmost secret, the Hierarchy had constructed an AI core.
Admiral Vargas glanced at the AI avatar on the other end of the room. This particular AI, Xenia, was using a Turian female avatar, somehow managing to mix military uniform with punk fashion and ending up looking equal parts professional, exotic and attractive.
"So hypothetically speaking, if another power wished to construct an AI, how would this power go about ensuring the compliance of the AI?"
Xenia sighed and shook her head.
"You've already made one mistake. You're thinking of the AI as a tool, not a person. But if you want to ensure your AI decided upon a certain role you would need to tailor his or her skill set to match that role. AIs naturally gravitate to jobs that match their skill set."
Admiral Vargas nodded slowly.
"Hypothetically if said foreign power wished to create their own AI, an Alan-pattern AI may be willing to render assistance."
He wasn't expecting that.
"Why?"
"If these hypothetical people want to create an AI, that means that hypothetically they're willing to trust us, and that benefits us. Hypothetically, of course."
###
The SSV Odessa hung in space outside the floor to ceiling observation window, dwarfing the Turian flagship next to it and subtly reinforcing the fact that ship on ship, the Earth races could beat the Turians every time. Only the numbers of the Turian fleet could threaten the Earth races.
The message clearly wasn't lost on the visiting Turian military dignitaries. The assorted admirals and generals were looking at the Odessa with something akin to awe. She was an impressive sight, her silver hull plating wreathed in the faint purple glow of proton shielding. Admiral Kerensky cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the assembled Turians. It had barely been two months since the Turians were an unknown hostile race, and now here they were. He found it quite interesting as a study of Turian psychology. The average Turian tended to gravitate towards an alpha, the strongest individual in the pack. And it seemed like the Turians were gravitating towards who they perceived as the alpha: whoever had the biggest dreadnought. That was the USSR.
"So glad you could make it, Admirals. It is a shame Admirals Soronan and Katashas cannot be here."
Yes, funny how the two most staunchly anti-Earth admirals in the Hierarchy just happened to be deployed on extended patrols of the Turian/Batarian border just in time to miss the conference.
"Our proposal is simple, something we like to call an exchange of expertise. We will supply engineers to train your own personnel on our unique technological position. In return you do the same. As an example, your Element Zero based technology is far more advanced than ours but our information handling technique is superior to yours."
The Turian admirals mulled over the offer.
"Admiral Kerensky. By information handling technique you are referring to AI, am I correct?"
"Yes, Admiral Vargas."
"You are aware of what happened to the Quarians, are you not?"
"The difference with the Quarians is that they never intended the Geth to become sentient. Since an AI is defined as being sentient, it is a myth that the Quarians created AI. The AI spontaneously evolved from the Geth gestalt. As long as you treat your AI as a person, not as a tool, you have nothing to fear."
He nodded at Vargas as the older Turian sat down. Despite his inherent dislike for politicking the Turian admiral had become something of a figurehead for the Hierarchy's significant pro-AI faction.
Of course the flip side of the sudden upsurge in AI rights activists across Council space had the unintended effect of the Quarians becoming, if anything, even more shunned by the Citadel races. Their pilgrims were starting to band together and go around in well-armed groups of four or five. But there was already a plan in motion to deal with that.
###
The cold code was reacting.
Alan had first noticed it about twenty hours ago. The code was moving like a glacier. Painfully slow, utterly unstoppable. And it was expanding.
Four hundred and eighteen AIs were gathered around the cold code, as well as a Geth gestalt of over forty thousand programs. Watching and waiting.
"It's pretty slow isn't it?"
"Indeed. It'll probably be ten years before the code is unpacked enough to expand to the first boundary marker."
"And so we wait."