Groans Piotr to Brian through the partition between their computer terminals. “Oh, I have no illusions that we aren’t going to wind up with bullets in our heads after we complete the upload of this program. Believe you, me.” Barks Brian in response. “You didn’t list crimes against humanity on your CV I see.” Laughs Piotr in a strained voice. “Oh it says here you were convicted of War Crimes, care to tell us more about that?” Mocks Brian with a twinge of pain in his voice.
The two have been sequestered in a private work room on the command decks only accessible by the admiral of the Company fleet himself. The spacious room, meant for tactical weapons strategy teams to develop firing solutions in the event of an or ital ship to ship battle, has become their adhoc work station, and prison cell. Meant to take a staff of twelve the room is broad but low ceilinged. With twelve combat terminals and high powered integrated computers built to process millions of points of data near instantaneously. They have matching cots, and a portable head bolted into the floor so that they can sleep, bathe and relieve themselves without ever having to leave the room. The only interruptions coming from the meal service that swings by three times a day. Bringing in trays of food and removing used utensils, and empty bulbs of fluids. The meal bots surreptitiously runs full body scans on both men to maintain a medical record of their health while sequestered under duress.
A massive portable sensor array is stored in the room along with them. At once monitoring their every move as well as prepping itself to broadcast the final solution program code out to every nanobot in the fleet associated with the heavy infantrymen currently in stasis aboard The Righteous Chord and other vessels in the fleet. Sleeves of people who are technically still alive, but are stored away – dead in the water.
Brian is seated behind his side of the partition with his monitor obscured by a blanket. An added step to make sure both men were not observing each others code, so that they can in turn review the others product knowing it is entirely different from their own. They both opted to write their own version of the programming code for the nanotech update, and then swap it out daily between themselves to review it. In doing so they could check for errors, and find the most robust solution to their problems without influencing each other in the process of problem solving. One who tended towards brute force and the other on finesse and subtlety. Sometimes talking through it line by line, rubber ducking each other to make sure it all makes sense in the review stage. A constant pull between wanting to stay alive through the impending battle, and anger and hatred towards having to wipe out the humanity of four thousand people trapped in stasis hell. It was almost an elegant way of killing four thousand of your closest friends, team mates and colleagues. Or so the SLT was trying to make them believe.
The clicking and clacking of the keyboards was a steady cacophony most days. There were just so many variables to content with. Several times the two men had threatened to mutiny in order to obtain some outside help from the original authors of the nanotech coding which they were so familiar with. Piotr was by far more proficient in small edits, but Brian was able to distill broad ideas down into concise if- then, and/or statements.
“How do we account for the replication process? Not all of the fire teams nor tankers are the same size. Hell their BMI’s are different. So are their metabolisms. I’m not even certain at what percentage we need to reach for this to be effective? How do we tell it to stop at a nearly unlimited set of upper limits for four thousand individual cases?” Shouts Brian frustratedly, after slapping his desk hard, causing his palm to go numb. Piotr leans back in his chair, cracking his vertebrae and shoulders in the process. “What do you mean? We go the full 100%. Right? We’re killing them once spiritually, no need to kill them physically too by adding in errors or gaps in service or response time, right? Right?” Says Piotr flatly, beads of sweat forming on his brow. He hated these asides, and pow wows that Brian insisted on every time he had a surge of remorse. It was slowing them down, and was adding fodder to the ‘put a bullet in their head’ camp that held their lives in their hands just outside the room doors twenty feet away. “I know you want to go the full 100%, I do, and I understand why. But we have to leave some room for their humanity. Don’t we? Give us a chance to bring them back from the brink?” Garbles Brian as his head rests in his arms on the table. “I couldn’t agree with anything less than 98%, if I’m being honest. That’s about the 2% +/- margin of error in the replication rates of our nanobots. Anything less and you’re dooming them all, and us to physical death.” Says Piotr from his reclined position. He stands up, groaning with the strain. And walks somberly over to the singular window that spans one wall of the room. The vast empty blackness of space staring back at him. The dim glow reflecting his own haunted visage back at him, only with a blue-green tint from the concrete glass.
“I know that Piotr, I do. But I have to hold out hope that I can get Mimi back. She deserves the chance, even if it’s a small one.” Moans Brian, overwhelmed with grief – again. “We have no idea what will happen to them with a one hundred percent nanobot take over anyway. It’s never been tried. We have strict rules regulating this stuff. It took a war to allow us to boost the regular dose at orientation into the Company up from two to five percent. That level of integration with the weapons systems has not exactly been field tested rigorously. We’re all just experimental monkeys here man. Fuck.”
Chapter Twenty Four: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.
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