Brokering Trust - Hetero Edition

Almost as soon as he had moved into his new estate, Selkie had left her apartment to join him, occupying the aquatic partitions. She had always aspired to own a home in the shallows, which was usually a sign of wealth and success, and her chance had finally come. As lavish as her apartment had once seemed to him, living at the bottom of the continental shelf surrounded by only murky, freezing water was a lot less appealing than a view of the beach. They both still had many reasons to visit the city, and the estate was connected to the transportation network via a tube that would whisk them off to the nearest shuttle bay.

The last few months - or rather Mountains - had been like an extended honeymoon. Their new home was designed from the ground up for habitation by both species, and as much as the wet and dry sections were separated, there were many rooms that could be partially flooded or drained to comfortably accommodate both partners.

The Board's generosity didn't extend to letting David live on their dime forever, but work for an alien consultant was easy enough to find, especially when saving the planet from a potential AI uprising was on his resume. As the foremost expert in her field - and being similarly credentialed - Selkie had quickly been able to get work in another research position. Neither of them were working on drone software anymore, however. Selkie was focusing her talents on writing software for autonomous survey vessels that might one day help to map out the Orion spur.

As she had posited, nobody had been able to recover anything of value from the drones that Weaver had left behind. The software was so alien and incomprehensible that even if she had been willing to reverse-engineer it, she would not have been able. What data was still on the facility's servers wasn't much help either, as so much of the legwork had been done by Weaver itself, weaving neural networks within its inscrutable lattice. It seemed that anyone who wanted to reproduce Weaver's work would be starting from scratch, and without Selkie's expertise or Board investment to boot.

"How are things progressing?" David asked, peering over her shoulder at the readouts. He had learned to recognize enough Broker characters by now that he could read most things unaided, though the spoken language would forever be beyond his vocal capacity.

"The public forums have been awash with discussion for several Rains," she replied. "The Regulators are supposedly almost ready to announce the results of their preliminary investigation."

Their plan to have bots leak the truth about the Reclamation and Betelgeuse had worked out better than they could have imagined, the virus spreading throughout Reef's networks, dumping the information onto everything from tube terminal kiosks to the virtual forums the Brokers used to socialize. It had spread throughout Trappist like wildfire before any real measures could be taken to suppress the information.

Over the following weeks, outrage had grown until the Board had no choice remaining but to address it or face a vote of no confidence from their Council members. There had been hearings involving surviving Board members who had served thirty years ago at the time of the Betelgeuse incident, and a couple of current Board members had even resigned preemptively. There was nothing concrete yet, but it seemed that at least some of them had been privy to the information and had elected to keep it from the public for reasons of system security. Nobody who had been responsible for manipulating the Krell could still be alive after so many hundreds of years, but knowledge of their actions still survived, protected by ironclad contracts that only the Regulators could declare void.

At this rate, the entire Board might eventually be replaced, and with that could come sweeping policy changes. There were already factions within the Council demanding that Trappist end its policy of isolationism and increase trade with the rest of the Coalition, some for moral reasons and others for purely financial reasons. David didn't really care what their motives were as long as the outcomes were positive. Others were demanding that PMCs be allowed to take contracts from other Coalition species and engage in joint combat operations against the Bugs, while some voices even suggested technology-sharing programs - at a price, of course.

Many factors had contributed to that policy, least of all the antisocial leanings of the Brokers. There was the fear and mistrust ingrained both by the invading hives and humanity's rapid expansion, the technological protectionism that maintained their advantage over their more numerous neighbors, and even the personal anxieties of Board members who feared their secrets coming to light.

David had been right to put his trust in the Broker people. More of them were like Selkie than were like the Administrator. To his knowledge, the revelations had not made it to human space yet, but they would likely do so in the form of an extended hand of reconciliation. The two species would get over this bump in the road together, and the Coalition would be made all the stronger for it.

"Do you think Jeff suspects anything?" David asked.

"Well, I know that the Regulators believe this attack is a trap left by Weaver, since the bots are behaving in a similar manner to those originally created by the AI. They do not think that your shutdown code erased everything, and they are currently trying to reverse-engineer the neural networks in a bid to stop them."

"How do you know that?" David asked skeptically.

"Because Jeff contacted me this phase and asked if I would lead the project," she replied with a smirk. "Unbeknownst to him, he will be paying me to devise an antivirus solution for software that you and I created. We could not have hoped for a better outcome. The opportunity will allow us to both cover our tracks and give the Regulators a satisfying solution to their problem."

"I should be surprised, but you are a genius," he replied as he gave her a pat on the shoulder. "Hey - I'm gonna whip up some grilled fish in a little bit if you feel like eating anything."

"I feel as though I am living with a dry chef," she giggled, placing her fleshy hand over his as she glanced up at him. "I doubt that even Board members are fed as well as you feed me. It is becoming decadent."

"Well, it's one of the perks of living with a land-dwelling mammal," he replied. "I'll flood the observation lounge, and we can eat up there."

"Alright!" she chimed. "Allow me to finish my work, and I shall join you."

He gave Flower another pat, then headed for the kitchen.

~THE END~