Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 12

The Ovemind Blows Rome's Mind, Part 1 of 4

Yesterday, Rome made up her mind that the only way to track down Aason, her parents and Ursay was to contact the Overmind of Earth. This was a dangerous act in that Rome and Rei were banished from Earth but Rome was desperate. However, what the Overmind says turns out to be truly surprising:

     For Rome, it was like she had to go to another world. She closed her eyes and blocked out the very knowledge that Rei and Bonnie were standing by. The same went for MINIMCOM and Junior. To put herself into the proper mental state, Rome struggled to slow her breathing down, trying to get her beating heart from feeling like it was going to jump out of her chest. This was the biggest risk she would ever take in her life yet it was the only way. Finally, she was ready.
     “Hello,” was all she said.
     “Hello, Rome,” the Overmind of Earth replied, its voice nearly overpowering in its intensity. “It has been a long time.”
     “Are you going to have me arrested?” she asked, figuring she had to get that out of the way.
     “No,” the Overmind answered.
     “Really?”
     “Really. You and Rei were completely pardoned over two years ago.”
     “We were?” Rome asked. Her face echoed her surprise.
     “Yes. After Commander Ursay related to me what you had done to save our people from the virus weapon, I decided it was time to forgive you.”
     “Well, thank you for that,” Rome said, slightly flustered. She quickly regained her composure. “Enough pleasantries. Do you know why we are here?”
     “No, I do not,” replied the Overmind. “In fact, I am somewhat perplexed as to how you were able to reconnect to me.”
     Rome quickly summarized the events leading up to MINIMCOM’s reactivation of her PPT receivers. She explained that she had sent her son and parents to hide out on Earth until the crisis on Deucado had passed and Sussen’s role in the chaos surrounding her.
     “Sussen, the one with the mismatched eyes?” the Overmind asked with some disgust.
     “Yes,” Rome answered.
     “Then I understand your urgency and I will cooperate fully in helping you find your son. However there are some things you must know.”
     “Please just tell me where Commander Ursay is and we can chat about whatever along the way.”
     “Ursay is currently disconnected,” the Overmind replied. “He was able to connect just long enough to tell me that there were people storming his farmhouse and then he was cut off.”
     This sent another chill down Rome’s spine. “Did he disconnect of his own free will?”
     “There is no way to know but I suspect not,” replied the Overmind.
     “Then where do we start?” Rome asked dishearteningly.
     “Again, please allow me to give you some information and it may guide you in your search.”

Tomorrow, the Overmind tells Rome that it has known about the Onsiras for way longer than anyone realized and what it was doing to combat the threat.

The Nuclear Option

Yesterday, Rome, Rei, Bonnie, MINIMCOM and Junior returned to Ursay's ruined study to look for clues. Sadly, the unseen assailants did leave enough artifacts behind that Rome could figure out what had happened. As you will see, the results devastated her. She would have no choice but to invoke the nuclear option:

     Rome picked up one of the two remaining blue vials and held it up to the light. After examining it, she handed the vials and injector to MINIMCOM. “We’ll have MINIMCOM analyze them but I can already tell you what it is,” she said sadly.
     “What?” asked Rei.
     “When you and I confronted MASAL underneath Kilauea, he offered to modify my genetics to transform me directly into one of the Onsiras. Like those soldiers that captured us. He never said how he would accomplish that but this must be it.” Her eyes grew wide as her own words hit her like a ton of bricks. Helplessly, she said “Rei…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to figure out the implications.
     “It may not be as bad as you think,” Rei said. “Aason has our 25th chromosome. He may be immune. But your Mom and Dad…and Ursay, I don’t know.”
     “How do you explain the fact that I cannot reach him?” Rome asked, her voice catching. “Our poor baby?”
     “Like I said before, maybe he’s wearing a T-suppressor,” Rei said. “They did it to you. They can do it him.”
     “I hope you’re right…” Rome said. She walked over and sat down on one of the chairs. She put her face down into her hands to think. She had to force herself to not dwell on the negatives. She had to come up with something positive. Suddenly, her head snapped up.
     “MINIMCOM,” she said, “my PPT transceivers. The ones that connected me to the Overmind of Earth. You activated them, correct?”
     “Yes,” MINIMCOM replied.
     “Then I am going to contact it. If anyone or anything in the world would know where they are, the Overmind of Earth would know.”
     “But we were banished from the planet,” Rei said. “As soon as you let him know we’re here, he’ll have us arrested.”
     “I don’t care,” Rome said defiantly. “This is more important.”
     “OK,” Rei said. “But I sure hope you know what you are doing.”
     “I don’t,” Rome said. “I admit it. But I am going to try anyway.”

Contacting the Overmind will reveal the fact that Rome and Rei are violating the conditions of their exile. What will happen?

The Scene of the Crime

Yesterday, MINIMCOM had reconstructed his son, Junior, and everything was getting back to normal. Well, normal except that Aason, Rome's parents and Commander Ursay were gone. It was time to debrief Junior on what had happened but unfortunately he has less information that they wanted:

     “So what happened?” Rei asked him. “How did you get like that?”
     “And where is Aason?” Rome blurted out frantically.
     Junior looked over at the three of them. He turned in place and pointed behind them.
     “I was sitting in this field,” he said. “I didn’t bother with my stealth shield because I made myself look like a standard space tug. I figured I wouldn’t arouse any suspicion that way. I don’t know what they did but they blasted me with some sort of radiation and I couldn’t get my shield up in time. Before I could even lift off, they were slicing me up with PPT throwers and that’s how I ended up in that pile over there.” The livetar pointed to where the metal meshing had been.
     “What about Aason and my parents?” Rome asked. “Did you see what happened? Do you know where they took them?”
     “No,” Junior said sadly. “I gave them as much warning as I could, even as they were cutting me up but once they threw that netting over me, my transmitter was blocked. I’m sorry, Auntie Rome. I let you down.” The little livetar shook his head sadly.
     “It’s not your fault,” Rome said. “You did everything you were supposed to.” She looked up at her husband. “What do we do now?”
     “I don’t know,” Rei said, wracking his brain. “I have no idea where to start.”
     “I do,” Bonnie called out to them. Both Rei and Rome turned to her. “We go back to the scene of the crime and look for clues. Criminals always leave them,” she said. She stared down at the helpless forms of Troutman and Steele to emphasize her point.
     MINIMCOM picked up on her actions and the two remaining Darwin members disappeared, presumably returned to their holding cells.
     Bonnie led them back around the side of the farmhouse to the front door. Along the way, she told them about the gun-like thing she found there. They quickly mounted the stairs and reentered the study. Bonnie pointed to the far side of the room. She led them over to the desk so she could show them what she had found.
     Rei lifted up the black holder with the empty vial. Bad memories came rushing back to him. “Isn’t this…” he said.
     “Yes,” Rome said, quietly. “It is an injector. And those vials are what were used.”
     “The stuff they injected you and me with was fluorescent yellow, if I recall,” Rei said. “There’s one of those remaining. What do you think the blue stuff is?”

Obviously, Bonnie had watched a lot of police procedurals in her earlier life. Tomorrow, we'll take some guesses on the mystery vials.

Son in pieces, part 3

Yesterday, MINIMCOM had converted his starship form into a gigantic construction robot a la Transformers in order to rebuild his son. Today, we see the completion of the process:

     Piece by piece, MINIMCOM repeated the procedure one section at a time until he had assembled a facsimile of the fractured form of the little spaceship. It reminded Rei of scenes he had seen when the NTSB took the wreckage of a plane crash and reconstructed the original plane in a hanger somewhere.
     The gigantic thing that had been MINIMCOM carefully, lovingly, stroked each fragment, using parts of his own “flesh” to meld the sections together. Slowly but surely, what had been individual pieces flowed together forming a larger and larger structure. Once Junior was whole enough, he was able to complete the rest of the restoration himself. Finally, when all the sections had been joined, the MINIMCOM creature lifted the front of his son up into the air and inserted the front landing gear. He then repeated the action in the back. At last it was done. Junior was back.
     With a whoosh and a pop, a small slate-gray livetar appeared and walked over to where Rei and Rome were standing.
     “Hello, Auntie Rome, Onclare Rei,” he said, raising his hand as if nothing had ever happened.
     Rome reached over and hugged the little shell. Rei patted him on the head. While they were greeting him, the huge MINIMCOM creature returned to his previous position on the grassy field. He bent at his “waist” until the front portion was resting on the ground. He activated his front EG lifter and extruded his front landing strut. The arms retracted and the wings returned to their position in the rear. The two conical “legs” flowed together to form a larger cylinder, part of the fuselage. It only took a few minutes more and MINIMCOM had completely reversed his robotic transformation. Now there were two starships sitting in the field, side by side, father and son. With another whoosh and pop, MINIMCOM’s livetar appeared and came over to his son.
     “How do you feel?” he asked.
     “I’m not sure how it’s possible but I think I’m sore,” Junior replied. “Even so, you did a great job, Dad. My airframe seems completely intact. With each passing minute, I’m feeling stronger. I think I’ll be OK.”
     “So what happened?” Rei asked him. “How did you get like that?”

Tomorrow, we will get the story of what transpired when Aason and his grandparents arrived on Earth.

     

 

Son in pieces, part 2

Yesterday, MINIMCOM discovered his son had been cut up into pieces. As a father, he found this event devastating. But as a computer, he knew that because Junior was a distributed intelligence in the form of a starship, he could rebuild him. However, as a livetar, he wasn't really suited to this job. He had Rei then Bonnie and Rome help him set up reconstruction area using the same metallic mesh that was covering the pieces of Junior and inhibiting his ability to communicate.

Today, we see MINIMCOM the starship's approach to the construction project:

     With a whoosh and a pop, MINIMCOM’s livetar disappeared.
     “Where’d you go?” Rei asked mentally.
     “You will see,” the starship replied.
     With another whoosh and a pop, both Troutman and Steele materialized in front of them, tightly bound and gagged. Their legs were tied together and immediately, both fell over onto the dirt. Bonnie came to where they had been deposited and stood over them, watching them intently. They were so bewildered, neither seemed to have any strong desire to get away at this point.
     MINIMCOM dropped his stealth shield and the imposing all-black starship appeared before them. The rear landing gear retracted and MINIMCOM’s aft section lowered to the ground. With a grinding, grating sound, the rear section of the fuselage split in half, rolling tightly, forming two fairly large cones. The starship used his forward EG lifter to raise the remainder of his fuselage up in the air until he could settle his entire weight onto the conical sections. At that point, the rear semi-aerodynamic wings migrated forward while the long-neglected “roadgrader” cylinders extruded. They merged to form an approximation of limbs, complete with gripping ends.
     Once that was finished, the starship’s surface seemed ripple and flow binding each appendage until the transformation was complete. In front of them loomed a huge bipedal, all-black entity with arms and thick, conical legs. MINIMCOM even converted the cockpit area into a gigantic facsimile of his normal bullet-shaped head. The new form stood 120 feet in the air and reminded Rei of a creature out of a bad science fiction movie.
     The robotized version of MINIMCOM clomped forward. When he got to the pit containing the remnants of his son, he bent over and carefully retrieved the largest section of the group. He lifted it up gently then turned in place making his way over to the mesh. The ground shook with the giant creature’s every step. The father turned assembly robot lowered the piece right in the center of the meshing. After releasing the piece, MINIMCOM raised up and went back for another section. This one was clearly a portion of the Junior’s cockpit. MINIMCOM carried over and placed in the front-most section of the net, closest to the house.

Son in pieces, part 1

A few days ago, MINIMCOM discovered his son had been cut up into pieces. Normally, that would destroy a mechanism or even a computer but MINIMCOM and his son were the ultimate in distributed intelligence. Each element of their makeup was an autonomous unit and their intelligence goes on, even if the physical pieces are not in contact with each other. So Junior wasn't dead but that doesn't mean they could let the situation stand:

     The all-black livetar raced out of the room and bounded down the steps, three steps at a time. When he got near the bottom, he leaped and landed on the floor with a thud. He raced outside then stopped short. He looked around but could find no evidence of his son anywhere. Based upon Junior’s signal lag, he couldn’t be far. MINIMCOM darted around the side of the house and back to the field where his starship body lie. He didn’t stop there, though. He continued past to the odd mound that was covered with the metallic mesh. Running on instinct alone, the livetar pulled the edge of the netting aside. If he had a heart, it would have sunk. There, beneath the mesh, was a pile of huge black chunks and silver rubble. In no way did it resemble anything like the sleek starship that had been his son.
     “This is you, son, right?” MINIMCOM asked out loud.
     “Yes, Dad,” his son replied internally.
     Rei, Rome and Bonnie came down the stairway and outside, just in time to see the livetar sink to his knees, falling forward into the wreckage of his son. Seeing a livetar grieve was a novel experience for Rei. He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. He came up alongside MINIMCOM and put his hand on the livetar’s shoulder. “Can’t you just repair him?” he asked.
     MINIMCOM’s livetar turned to look up at Rei then back toward the rubble. For a moment, it appeared as if he was frozen, then his algorithmic nature kicked in. He lifted his hand, finger pointing upward.
     “Of course!” he said firmly. “Please help me take this mesh netting and spread it out,” the livetar commanded.
     Rei grabbed one end and MINIMCOM grabbed the other. Rome came over to help as well, as did Bonnie. They spread the netting across the field until it was flat and smooth. With a whoosh and a pop, MINIMCOM’s livetar disappeared.
     “Where’d you go?” Rei asked mentally.
     “You will see,” the starship replied.

I had another Transformers dream. You'll see that tomorrow.

Why I went to college, Part 3 of 3

Yesterday, I showed you how my graduate career was a healthy mix of science and computer programming. I checked out the job market in science and it was pretty sucky so I decided to take a one year post-doc at Northwestern to avoid the issue one final time. I spent 11 out of the 12 months writing another stimulus application/response monitoring computer system. I spent very little time actually doing science. I exited the program in 1981 and now I had to get a job so I went to work for my father as, get this, a programmer, creating display signs, instrumentation, hardware, whatever.

In 1992, we built the on-screen display of the election results when Ross Perot ran against Bill Clinton and George Bush. The graphical display was written on a Commodore 64 and the giant tote board were using our proprietary microcomputer.

Things got better and better and soon my Dad would get a job that would take two weeks to deliver and I would have all the software done in an hour or so. I created my own computer language (MAIL - Microsport Array Indexing Language), my own in-circuit emulator (ICE), a serial port buffer, a bank-switching EPROM board to hold the steam equations and so on. Finally, I decided to get a full-time job working for somebody else and just do my programming for my Dad as a consultant.

I worked for Ancier Technologies, Intelligo, Micro Endeavors and finally started my own company, Visual Software Solutions in 1995. We were briefly owned by MHA in 1999 and then re-emerged as Vega Applications Development in 2000. Here it is 2017, 50 years after my first computer science class and computers are still not writing their own code. So my Dad (who has since passed away) was wrong but I don't regret the career course I took. I love what I do and I love the depth of experience getting a degree in psychology and a Ph.D. in neuroscience gave me.

And as you all know, we have come to realize, the day that computers start writing their own code, that will be the end of mankind because then they will have no use for us. So thank you Dad for the inspiration for my hero, Rei Bierak, my career, and the ability to serve as canary in the coal mine writing about MASAL in the 35th century.

Why I went to college, Part 2 of 3

Yesterday, I explained to you why I decided to enter college as a chemistry major but got a part time job on campus so I could stick around in the summer. I was hired as an assistant to a psychiatrist who was trying to determine the success of treatment during their stay at the University of Michigan Hospital Neuropsychiatric Institute or NPI as it was known at the time. My job was to interview discharged patients to see how they were doing. I was diligent and interviewed a bunch of patients and filled out questionnaires which built up in a pile in the corner. When I finally asked my boss what she was going to do with the questionnaires, she told me she didn't know. I offered to arrange for them to get rendered into punch cards which helped out a lot.

When that was done, we had a boxes and boxes of punch cards in the corner and I asked my boss what she was going to do with those. She said she didn't know. I offered to write some software to read in the punch cards and put them in a database. She said that was a good idea so I did.

At this point, we had a database and, you guessed it, when I asked my boss what she was going to do with it, she said she didn't know. I offered to write code to analyze the cards and give her some statistics which she thought was a good idea. By this point, my job title (and paycheck!) had changed and now I was a junior programmer. I stuck with that job and the programming and when I graduated the college, I now had formal training in all elements of using a computer to help analyze science.

Once I was graduated, there was no putting it off. I had to do something but I wasn't really interested in working so I decided to go to graduate school to get a Ph.D. I selected Syracuse University because they paid the most. But I went into the neurosciences program instead of computer science because my Dad's words were still ringing in my ears. Within a year or two, computers would be writing their own code and it would be a waste of my time.

I spent the next five years cutting open animals, vibrating arms, testing vision, taction and hearing. I programmed computers to apply stimuli and record and analyze the results. I was the first graduate student to write his own thesis on a computer instead of hiring a typist. By the time I was done, I had a Ph.D. in Sensory Sciences with a minor in Computer Science. It didn't look like computers would be writing their own code in the next year or two (this was 1980 now) but I played it safe.

Well, the time had come. I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to go out into the world and get a job. Well, maybe I could put it off a little longer. More on that tomorrow.

Why I went to college, Part 1 of 3

As the middle child, I have a slight rebellious streak. Maybe it stems from the need to grab some attention away from my perfect older brother and "the baby" - my brother Bruce. But when it came to important decisions, I certainly listened to my parents. I didn't always take their advice or do what they said but I did listen.

One such life-altering decision was where to go to college and what to major in. There was never a discussion about whether I should attend college. It was just what you did. At the time (this was in 1969), I had spent several years learning about computer programming and I loved it. But my Dad told me that it wasn't a good choice because within "five years" computers would be writing their own code and it would be a dead-end job. I believed my Dad and fell back on my second love, chemistry.

I had a full-blown lab in my basement and I specialized in explosives. I'd regularly come running upstairs, right around dinner time, slam the door shut and tell everybody to stay out. There was one time that I accidentally sat in a small puddle of sulfuric acid and it ate away the seat of my jeans and my underwear. Nobody noticed for a while but finally I said, it seemed drafty and that's when my Mom discovered my butt cheeks hanging out.

Anyway, chemistry it was so I applied to several schools, got into the University of Michigan and started down the road to become a chemical engineer. The problem was, it was boring. All they ever did was make you read books about reactions instead of witnessing them before your eyes. I could tell the number of carbon atoms in a polymer string just by sniffing them or guess a compound just by looking at it but that was all taken away from me.

After two years of this torture, I threw in the towel and switched from a hard science, chemistry, to the softest of sciences, psychology. It was a breeze and far more interesting and I got a B.S. in Psychology which felt good. Rolling back to my freshman year, I got a part time job which became full-time in the summer, because I wanted to stay on campus to be near a girl. Unfortunately, she changed her mind at the last second and left for the summer but I stayed and had an awesome time.

Tomorrow, I will explain how my job "mutated" and I started drifting toward computer programming as a living.

Junior cut up

Yesterday, Rome, Rei and Bonnie came upon a scene where they knew nothing good could have transpired. Rome's parents, Commander Ursay and little Aason were nowhere to be found. Since Rome could not contact Aason and technically, she wasn't supposed to be on Earth, they had to find another way. Luckily, MINIMCOM figures out what to do by tracking down his son, MINIMCOM, Jr.:

     While Rei was trying to calm Rome down, Bonnie walked over to the other desk and examined the objects still lying there. None of them made sense to her. There was a black, vaguely gun-shaped object, lying on the desk, with an empty glass tube in it. Next to it was a stand containing three other tubes filled with liquid, one yellow and two blue. The stand had some holes where some other tubes might have sat. She shrugged and turned to wait to see what Rei and Rome would do next.
     Rei took a deep breath. He rocked Rome back and forth, stroking her head. “Romey,” he said, “I know this won’t make any sense but he’s probably alright. They want us, not him. If they hurt him or worse, they’d never be able to use him to lure us into whatever trap they’ve set.”
     While this was supposed to make Rome feel better, all it did was make her sob more. Rei turned and looked at MINIMCOM helplessly.
     “I will try to reach Junior,” MINIMCOM said. “If we can find him, we can probably find your son.”
     “Good idea,” Rei said.
     MINIMCOM held perfectly still but broadcast in a frequency that both Rei and Rome could hear internally.
     “Junior. Son,” the livetar called out. “Can you hear me?” There was no reply. MINIMCOM tried again but once again there was no response.
     “The EM transmitter has a limited range,” MINIMCOM said. “Perhaps the three of us could try together, as we did with the Stareater. That would increase the range of the signal.”
     Rei agreed and released Rome. “Can you do this?” he asked her.
     Rome nodded. She wiped at her tears and closed her eyes. Together, the three of them called out mentally, “JUNIOR!”
     A tiny voice, barely a whisper, said one word and one word only, “Dad?”
     The livetar’s mouth slit curled up in an approximation of a smile. “Where are you?” he asked.
     “I’m kind of a mess right now,” the younger starship replied. “They cut me up into little bits. I can’t really move.”
     MINIMCOM’s eye slits opened wider. “Where are you?” he asked as worriedly as a former computer could be.
     “I’m not sure,” replied Junior. “I don’t think they moved me anywhere. I’m probably nearby, somewhere.”

Remember that funky hill I mentioned a few days back? The one covered by a metal mesh? What do you think is under there?