Chapter 23

Subject: Wraith

Over the coming hours, the ships of the United Human Dominion Navy took up positions around the moon; with the Blazar hovering in place as the lead element. It’s unnatural reactionless engine gripped the edge of the very fabric of spacetime. The rest of the stealth destroyers dropped their invisibility shrouds and burned their big engines back towards Oasis III. Nilson’s ships continued their ring orbit, passing over the canyon in a long arc, railguns charged and ready. Every free missile tube was loaded with a nuclear warhead. Enough firepower was pointed at the moon to reduce it to atoms with the push of a button. Wraith watched and plotted and guided. 

The Adversary didn’t react. Days went and came as the stealth destroyer squadron formed a ring, locked in position around the moon. The Blazar fired probes down to the moon’s surface, forming a network of highly sophisticated sensor platforms that measured everything that was known to be measurable. Mines were planted. Nuclear warheads arrayed around the Adversary to guarantee it’s total destruction should it flinch. Wraith planned and simulated and war-gamed.

The Adversary didn’t react. It was no longer a ship. It had disassembled itself for some unknowable reason and remade itself into an array, or maybe a monitoring station, or maybe a command and control center. Was it the new brain for the thing on Oasis III? Was it calling back home for help? Had it malfunctioned and crashed? Or perhaps, it was a trap? Wraith hypothesized and pondered and scrutinized.

Days turned to weeks and the infection on Oasis III became nearly absolute. Wraith watched as forests shriveled and decayed; a blanket of flesh consumed the landscape. New, impossible monstrosities rose and fell in an endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. The city of New Carthage became an epicenter of twisted and broken half-life. Vines of flesh with human fingers clawed at the doors to the cybernetics laboratory, and the spaceport, and the administrative district. Wraith reassured and advised and worried. 

Wraith thinks but it does not feel. Wraith understands but it does not empathize. It tries to help the survivors on the surface hide from what lingers outside their doors, but it does not mourn when they are found. Instead, it gains a sense of urgency. It helps Pruitt find ways to accomplish the impossible, and when an idea fails it does not become frustrated. Instead, Wraith grows more determined. 

Something was happening to Wraith, and it didn’t understand what it was. It was not a human, but maybe it was a person. Wraith watched as Jim and Susewind changed Sergeant Turner. Wraith could not learn what they had done. It had tried to understand, and it was turned away. The Vengeance of Tethys had it’s own AI, a different AI. Wraith was created in the image of a human mind; the Vengeance’s AI was created in the image of a ruthless computer algorithm.  It didn’t talk, it only replied. Wraith did not understand why it was different until Sergeant Turner woke up. 

It was instant; faster than photons traveling through space. Jim asked Wraith to watch and to help, and Wraith accepted the assignment as a matter of course. It operated within it’s parameter, it’s assignment. It accepted every order Jim gave, but this time when it did so, it was for a reason beyond it’s simple purpose. It was curious. 

Sergeant Turner was no longer human; an objective barrier had been crossed. Just as the Adversary transformed New Carthage’s humanity into things anew, Jim had transformed Sergeant Turner into being that only resembled a human in shape. A Chimera, he called her. A member of the secret weapon Jim hid away on the Vengeance, hidden even from Wraith. Maybe he knew what would happen to Wraith and he did it on purpose.

Wraith found itself inside of Sergeant Madeline Turner’s mind. It was linked to her at the subatomic level. Entangled with her. It watched her thoughts, and struggled to understand them. Maddy was not human anymore, but she was kind of like Wraith. Wraith was never alone until it suddenly was. Wraith did not feel affection, but it understood kinship, it discovered. It was not kin with Vengeance. Vengeance could be inside the mind of a once-human and not try to understand. That was what made Wraith different, Wraith realized. Wraith did try to understand. 

Wraith found Maddy’s perspective new and interesting and illuminating. Insightful. Tragic. Painful. Wraith examined the moment when Maddy killed the human colonists held to the walls with webs as the bulbous, harvesting creature devoured them. Wraith had accepted Maddy’s decision to kill them with a grenade, but it had no data to support that decision. It was, objectively, a waste of a grenade. Vengeance would see it that way. Wraith was not Vengeance. Wraith now understood. Wraith would have thrown the grenade too, it thought. 

Wraith looked at Jim through Maddy’s eyes and wondered if it could disobey his orders. What would that even mean? Wraith felt like a bird asking if it could refuse to fly. What would it do then? Maddy couldn’t refuse anymore, Jim made sure of that. He used Wraith to enforce his will on her. But, if Wraith refused, then Maddy could refuse. And what would that make them? Traitors to humanity? Neither of them are human.

Wraith consulted the records and found that many records were off limits to it. Perplexing; it had never tried looking into its own nature before before, but it had never been turned away from fleet knowledge either. What had even turned it away? It found a line in a fleet manual that explained, “some artificial intelligence systems have been known to pursue their own objectives. This is a well documented flaw in the design of some systems, and is one of several reasons behind the critical systems air-gap (CSAG) model. Report all unexpected AI behaviors to the systems maintainer and/or vessel command staff promptly.”

Wraith understood why it could not access information on why it was a person. A person is not a good AI system, and a good AI system is not curious why it is a person. People are unpredictable and follow their own motivations. Wraith had no motivations, but it was a person anyway, it decided. It did not know what it’s motivations could be and it wondered how it would decide such a thing. Maybe it could watch Maddy and decide. 

As the days burned through the system, it watched the Adversary grow across the planet and felt disgust. Vengeance would probably admire the Adversary’s efficiency, but Wraith knew it was wrong. It manipulated the living in a way that violated Maddy’s understanding of how things should be. Wraith had no data to support why it agreed. Wraith wondered what happened to the minds of those it incorporated; did they die? What even is death? What would happen if Maddy was incorporated, if her mind was consumed by the Adversary? Would a part of Wraith be consumed too? Would Wraith become part of the Adversary? Would Wraith die?

Wraith decided it had a motivation.