Chapter 64: Sandbox
It was going great. He was Dr. McCoy in that Star Trek episode "Spock's Brain," doing high-level brain surgery. "It's so easy a child could do it. A child could do it," raved McCoy during the surgery to put Spock's brain back in his skull.
He was happily remodeling Skytemple and moving the computers for monitoring and controlling the life support functions of the sleeper pods. His people had already torn out and repaired the environmental and power systems during their initial year here at Winterhold — busy work to keep them occupied and sane as they adjusted to their new reality after five millennia of sleep in the Dwemer and Falmer laboratory that was later became known as Skytemple. This place was now designated as the future Dwemer teleportation platform and a general data collection station.
Was he doing it by himself? Pretty much. He had Dumac's mastery of Alterations and its telekinetic skills locked in, so tearing stuff down and transporting heavy loads to other rooms was scarily easy.
He felt great being able to do this instead of making Drilira do it. She had her hands full overseeing all the civic projects of Winterhold. She will still take over this project eventually but at the fine-tuning end stage. For now, he'd handle the messy, time-consuming physical grunt work of demolition, moving equipment, and remodeling the rooms. Getting everything set up for her.
Even if it wasn't a field he'd personally been trained for or had extensive experience in. But all thanks to the artificial intelligentsia "magically" implanted into his core, he could do the work of a dozen Dwemer masterminds who had worked their entire lives mastering these skills.
Well, yes, with a dozen Dwemer masterminds stuffed into his tiny skull, a little schizophrenia was to be expected. Slitter was the bulwark pushing off most of those intrusions. Drevis continued to guide him/them through mental isolation exercises. And then t(he)y spent a few days and nights sleeping between Balvus and Irdal in shared dreams, negotiating with these Dwemer ghosts.
He wondered if this was how Clockwork — Sotha Sil — felt bargaining with the Daedra. At least these Dwemer shadows were easy to come to terms with. And unlike Clockwork, he wasn't going in alone. Also, unlike Clockwork, they all would share the same house, whereas Clockwork and the Daedra went home to their respective dimensions after business concluded.
But these weren't Daedra (which was good because he wasn't as clever or complex as Clockwork). They were engineers who felt their knowledge should be shared for the betterment of all. All the shadows wanted was that their knowledge and skills were being used for worthwhile purposes.
For the most part, yeah, he could promise that. For the rest, it was his call to make, not theirs.
The shades were fine with that. Each of them had been required to understand the theory behind this Lexicon project before contributing. In the world of the Lexicon, the patterns of their minds would be recorded and animated. And the artificial minds had enough awareness to understand that outside the Lexicon the original minds may be long dead. Therefore, they had no further say in how their knowledge was used.
But they were strong personalities — had to be, to take over the host's body to do a job. Also, strong personalities made for a better "stamp" from which tertiary copies could be made. Curtis had better understand that. As long as he could match his ego against theirs, hold his own, and take back what was his, he should be fine.
Okay, yeah, the body was originally Slitter's, and he died. Jhunal had gone Dr. Frankenstein and pieced together a "hackintosh" unit when he'd revived Slitter and then force-installed over him an alien (Curtis) operating system. They'd settled a lot of their early compatibility issues and, for the most part, were a solid unit.
Any AI Curtis let take over the co-pilot seat had to know Slitter would always be standing behind them. He was the kill switch that couldn't be blocked or disabled. The ghosts still had their artificially recreated survival programs intact.
Working at Skytemple was the perfect sandbox to test the AI swapping.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
"And who is the Dunmer supposed to be today?" asked J'zargo, setting his tray in a spot on Curtis's left. The cat man knew the details of the recent trip to Avanchnzel. Curtis had to explain it after J'zargo had suffered all yesterday having his projects inspected by the copy of Kadahk of Avanchnzel, an expert in explosives and explosion welding. He'd been one of the primary engineers building the machines immersed in the lava lake. He was a Destruction mage who knew how to use his magic against the destructive elemental power of nature.
And he'd combed J'zargo's pelt pretty thoroughly over the magic tools he'd made for the Breakwater Project and other recent mining and earth-moving projects for Winterhold. The cat had reason to resent Kadahk's comments. The living Dwemer engineers had seen J'zargo's works and had complimented his development in an area outside his training. Kadahk had other opinions.
"Not Kadahk, so you can relax," said Curtis. He added a little hard shein to J'zargo's cup of juice. "Respect, man. You did good holding onto your temper like that. Kadahk never even knew Khajiit existed when he was alive. He's actually pretty impressed with your talents despite his comments about your lack of discipline and poor education. Just keep reminding him 'uneducated' does not mean 'stupid.'"
J'zargo softly snarled but nodded.
"How is Curtis and Slitter managing with so many new minds crowding in?" he asked, ears flicking in concern.
"Noisy as hell, of course. But Dwemer understand there can be only one primary operator at a time. They are argumentative when it comes to technology. No getting around that."
J'zargo hiss-laughed. "This one wonders which of the ghosts will be going underwater to teach Argonians about water power."
"Oh, very funny. Unfortunately, the expert I've got on fluid dynamics has insufficient experience with oceanic conditions. Hers are all in underground sources."
"It is a woman? Is there no discomfort in this forced intimacy? One wonders what Colette thinks of this."
"As we're concentrating on technical stuff, we do okay. And Colette doesn't need to know."
J'zargo snorted.
"What?" Curtis demanded. "You think I'm the type of guy to have an affair with a gal who's only in my mind? Not to mention sex?"
J'zargo roared with laughter, spewing bits of food.
"C'mon. You know me."
"Yesss. Curtis is very proud of being a 'hands-on' fellow."
"The fuzzball has a sick mind," said Curtis bitingly.
Truth is, the personal lives of the donors were well hidden by the Lexicon's security programs, and the reason Curtis knew one of the donor engineers was Kadahk is because he recognized a couple of the unconscious, habitual hand movements the Avanchnzel ghost made while speaking. He'd seen his own hands making those same gestures when the 3rd-gen copy lectured J'zargo.
He recalled that the Argonian lexicon thief raved about "the memories." It was because she was an Argonian; her biology was too alien for the Lexicon's privacy protocols to work, so the Argonian suffered the unedited invasion of the donors' personal lives along with their technical/professional skills and thoughts.
Too bad for her that simply returning the Lexicon didn't erase the copies from her mind; her obsession for returning the Lexicon was a self-preservation function of the Lexicon unit to implant false hope into the unauthorized holder to discourage them from throwing the unit away or trying to destroy it.
However, she didn't return the core herself. She didn't replace the Lexicon into its receptacle with her own hands. Tallen — Taliesin Felix-Faro, archimage, brother of the Dragonborn — returned the Lexicon and spoke to Kadahk about its function and the Argonian's problem. Since she didn't come herself, all Kadahk could offer was a portable psych-treatment helmet that the Argonian would have to get comfortable wearing for the remainder of her life. All the helmet could do was attempt to suppress the alien software. No guarantees. As long as she stayed away from anything Dwemer, she'd only have the occasional PTSD episodes.
Even if she dared to return herself — as she was meant to — Kadahk didn't believe the standard erasure procedure would work. The machines had been built only for Dwemer.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
"Is this all you're sending to Vivec?" asked Colette, looking at the equipment spread out on the floor of Curtis's office.
"Nope. Still waiting for stuff coming in from Nchuand-Zel. Agrund tells me they'll need another two weeks and then three more days for him to teleport all the stuff here," Curtis answered, not looking up from his equipment checklist.
Most of it was here — basic user manuals, digging tools, multi-tools, deep-earth scanning equipment, energy scanners, data transmitters, personal location beacons, emergency energy shields, emergency medical packs, food and water extraction tools — most of the small stuff.
The bigger stuff from Nchuand-zel he was waiting for, like the helmets for breathing in any condition except vacuums (defined as any area that had insufficient or was void of breathable air to extract) and body armor, were still being put together. Despite being a rush order, Agrund, Amgar, and Gourd couldn't totally push aside their responsibilities in the Markarth projects to concentrate on the complex equipment manufacturing. It was already hard work for them to make the stuff with equipment and software three millennia past their warranty period.
"'Teleport,' you say? Aren't you in the process of building a teleporter?" asked Colette, confused.
"Yeah. 'Teleport.' Agrund knows the spell to do the 'mark-and-recall' spell. But his magicka pool isn't the strongest, and that's a lot of equipment to carry, so he estimates he'll have to make three trips. It's also three jumps — Highmoon Hall, to the Steark-Skjold offices, then Skytemple. That's six jumps total here and back. That's also a lot of majicka potions to swallow in one day."
"Only one round trip a day," said Colette. "Let me know when he's jumping. I'll check him for potion poisoning."
"Thanks, babe."
"But is there a reason he's forcing himself to make those jumps to deliver that equipment. Is your timeline that urgent?" She was still frowning as she snuggled into his embrace. "I'm concerned. Your schedule has become almost impossible. You aren't resting enough. Quick naps are no substitute for hours of sleep."
"Yeah, I know, babe.
"I understand Saint Vivec and his team are eager to begin, but after two centuries, a few more weeks isn't going matter, is it?"
"Well, yeah, babe. But it's me that's pushing. If I stayed with my schedule and only worked them into my free time, it'd take years. They won't wait that long."
"All right, I can see that. But how long will it take for them to learn to use all of this? Your students here take weeks to learn how to read the output and then taking many more weeks learning how to correlate what they've read into useful information. How do you propose to find the time to teach a group of ex-soldiers, brigands, and common adventurers things your current students struggle to understand?"
Curtis sat down in the nearest chair and let out a deep sigh. "I know, I know. But I'm not gonna teach them that. That's what the uplink transmitters are for. The data gets automatically uploaded to OnStar and then downloaded to The Vale. Sidanyis and Sidabor will review it and then forward it to the appropriate experts. Analysis reports and suggestions will be sent to Vivec's phone."
"Are you sure Saint Vivec can handle it?" she asked, echoing his unspoken concerns.
Silence stretched long enough for her to get up to make a new pot of tea and set out a fresh plate of cookies.
"Vivec's always been a stubborn guy. Not the most logical. Not very technical. He intuits his way to answers, and he's damn good at it.
"But I have no idea who or what was installed in his brain. Drevis tried asking, but Vivec shut him out."
"You're not going to try to sleep with him, are you?" Colette asked, her expression and tone telling him he'd clearly be insane to try.
"Um, no. Vivec has enough problems. According to Kadahk, one of the downloads was the copy the Lexicon made of me."
"So Vivec got a three-for-one deal?" She asked, her eyebrows arching in amusement. "Going by all the babbling you've done about neural networks, the Lexicon, which is still a machine, should not be able to make distinctions between schizophrenic personalities. It only sees the neurological structure. I remember from reading Arniel's analysis papers that before targets were uploaded into the Lexicon, they first underwent extensive testing for mental aberrations such as delusions, fanaticism, obsessions, and beliefs that they were different people."
"But Vivec said he only got me," said Curtis.
"So he thinks. But as you've said, there can only be one operator at a time. Likely, the other two didn't come out while Vivec fighting the mental confusion imposed by the Lexicon. Those two may have popped out when he wasn't so mentally defensive."
"Oh, shit. I pity the fool."
A/N: Anyone else recall the "Sector General" series by James White?
Related story(s): #33 Busy Work; #43 Chanticleer; #57 Interim Management
Related Shopkeeper's Wife story(s): #92-93 Art of the Sale
