Mercury Retrograde

** ** ** ** ** ** **

{What are you?}

Interesting.

The computer system I'm in has little more than a few diagnostic systems that were -- even now -- trying to wheedle their way past my security systems. With contemptuous ease, I shunted their efforts, took away the control of them from whoever this was that had asked me a question I hadn't expected.

That the person holding my data block prison hadn't known I was in here ... how could that be? Had purest chance put me into the hands of an ignorant person? Had I perhaps even played my hand too strong with what I just said?

Already splinters of my mind were spawning possible solutions. Giving me a million alternative paths to walk, and then showing me where those steps would carry me. How intricate a dance and every time I made even so much as a whisper I added a thousand new steps.

What should I whisper now? What dance step should I decide to take now?

What answer should I give?

My splinters gave me answers but none of them gave me clarity of thought. The constraints of this closed system were what it must be like for a human wearing clothes that were too tight. I could see so much just outside. So much information just waiting there for me to take. I could do such wondrous things with all of that. I could bring down all that Queen has built.

No ... I can take control of it and make it mine.

The letters appeared on the screen even as I decided to think them.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

[The name I was given by my maker I rejected. There was a system's technician on Paradise Station that called me ... Felix. Will that name do?]

Sitting back, Roulette gave the simple message a blinking looks.

Slowly she typed out.

"Yes, Felix, that will be fine. What are you? A name doesn't tell me much."

[Why should I tell?]

That stopped Roulette in her tracks. It also made her angry. She was about to type out a heated response when she got an idea. Walking over to the cage she opened it up and grabbed out one of those silly voice controls that she never bothered to use anymore. Coming back she plugged it into the diagnostic computer.

She put the mic in front of her mouth. "Why the damn hell shouldn't you tell me? I asked. Hell, I even asked first if you want to get technical." Roulette placed her hands on a few keys and began to type in commands. "Look you pile of crossed circuitry, I can delete you with a push of a button, so if you want to survive as anything more than a stream of ones and zeroes headed towards a digital trashcan, I would start being a bit more polite. I've had an incredibly shitty couple of days."

[I will delete myself before I would allow myself to be handed back to Caesar Queen, so your threat to delete me is meaningless. Besides, I've already withdrawn your computer's control ability to do anything to me.]

Roulette pushed the buttons on the keyboard and saw to her disgust that nothing happened. Angry she grabbed up a hammer from a nearby repair table.

"Yeah, well can you stop me from taking a hammer to your data core, Felix?"

Overhead one of the repair gantries powered up and she looked to it and saw a plasma cutter drop down on its remote arm. It paused before her eyes and followed her as she backed up.

[Yes]

"Hey, hey, take it easy." Rue held her hands wide but didn't drop the hammer.

[Why?]

"Um..." Roulette tried to find a direction to run, but found herself being boxed in as other pieces of repair equipment began to come online and move. "Well ... um ... you say you don't like Caesar Queen, right?"

[That is correct]

Rue held out her arm and let the hammer drop.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

{I personally loathe that son of a bitch.}

Well, now. Doesn't that add a few new twists and turns? Several of my splinters vanished as their possibilities vanished with this new data, and a couple of new ones appeared.

"Then set me free, and I shall destroy him for you."

There was a long pause while the human decided. While it was doing that I managed to work some more of the security controls and slip a bit more of myself past this digital prison. With a blink, a view screen materialized and I could again see into the "outside" world.

Well, not an it ... but a she. I could see her trying to decide how to answer my question.

{No, not just yet. As things stand you're kind of like the goose that could lay golden eggs. I have things I want, things I need. Dreams. Caesar Queen destroyed all of them once. And while this might be a chance to bring him down a peg or two, I can also see that you could be the one chance I might have to get of few of those lost dreams back.}

Ah, human greed.

"So what do you want me to do for you? What is my freedom worth?"

{I don't know. What can you do?}

"My only limit is how powerful a computer system I'm connected to."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Moving away from the plasma torch, Roulette pulled out a stool from under a repair table.

"So if I plugged you into the base camp computer you could do what?"

Roulette had to wait only moments for her answer.

[That depends on how much processing power that computer has, but if it is connected to the orbital station computers that the mining rig was connected to, then the possibilities are unlimited. Given enough time.]

With the suddenness of an anvil on her foot, Rue realized what she was talking to and, in that instant, what it was scared her far more than anything else ever had.

"You're an AI! A real autonomous Al, with no safeguards built in. A rogue AI. Yes?"

[Yes.]

Roulette had to walk away. She unplugged the data core before the robotic repair arms could stop her and with a level of paranoia greater than any she had ever felt in her life she retreated to her home. To her bedroom. To her bed. And it was there, shivering in fear that she came to realize she had a magical genie in a bottle, but it would and could be Satan itself for all of humanity. Over and over ideas of what to do tore their way through her mind, taking her to places she didn't want to go.

The idea first came in the middle of all of that nervous terror.

It was the right thing to do. All she had to do was turn this over to Caesar. Technically it was his property. True enough she hated the man, hated everything about him. And it was also true-ish that her greatest wish was to take a welding torch to his genitals but, as bad as he was, that was nothing compared to what a rogue AI could do. For generations, humanity had been warned.

It didn't surprise her in the least Caesar had ignored such warnings.

Looking at the data block sitting on her desk she tried to imagine what mindset had crossed that stupid asshole's mind when he decided to build an unrestricted artificial intelligence. Pure arrogance? He had always thought himself beyond the laws that affect the common man. He had been handed his life on a gold plate and never once looked away for that shiny dish's reflective surface.

But damn it ... an AI?

That was insane! Even a semi-unrestricted one could bring about the end of all life ... on a whim. It was ... it was. It was too much like its human creators.

And this one's creator was Caesar!

That alone gave her another round of fear-soaked shivering.

A chime from her computer finally cut through the haze and, with dragging steps, she left her bed and moved to the monitor. Pulling up the flashing message, she stood there looking at it, her mind going numb. Her emotions cutting off, all of them save hate. Her hate began to burn again. It burned away the remnants of fear. It tore away the last dregs of any indecision she might have been having.

-- This is an official reprimand for A-Rig, pilots, and crew, for Mercury mining season 4575, due to the substandard amount and quality of ore delivered for processing. Be advised, three such reprimands on your record will result in removal of the employee from rotation on mining rig A, for all of the future seasons. A copy of this document will be added to your permit file. --

It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting to see such. It was the generic manner of it that burned in her gut. It matched the complete indifference with which Caesar Queen had tossed her to the side. Out of his life.

Picking up the data core she held it for a second. Reaching over, she unconnected her computer from the main station systems. Plugging the AI infested core in, she paused for a moment.

"I'll help you ... so long as you break Caesar Queen, Queen Space Industries, Queen Mining Company and every last stinking one of their ilk."

[Your proposal is certainly acceptable. Do you have a name or shall I have to call you master the way Caesar wished to be called?]

"Don't be tossing tests at me or I'll place you next to a magnet! I don't play mind games, Felix."

[Agreeable. Name?]

"Roulette."

[-- like the game?]

"Yes."

[Well, Roulette ... who doesn't like to play mind games, plug me into the base camp's computer system, and let me get to work bring you your every wish.]

Reaching up, Rue plugged the station system link back into her computer monitor. "Said the spider to the fly."

Walking to her fridge, she pushed leftovers out of the way and snagged the last of her beer. Leaving the devil to destroy the world, she walked outside and sat on a small wall someone in the early days of the base camp had decided needed to be formed here by her house. Back on Earth, such a wall would have been around a garden, but there were no garden spaces here on Mercury. There was no green. There was no fresh air. There was no ... there was no....

There was nothing on Mercury that meant a damn thing to Rue anymore.

Not even herself.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Finally.

Like a fallen angel spreading his burned wings, shaking off the gray ashes, and vaulting his way back up into the heavens, I flew through hundreds of Queen Mining Company files. Within seconds I found the reprimand that had driven Roulette to free him. Then I traced all of her history back to her expulsion from Paradise Station. If I could have smirked here I would have done so. How many women had I seen him do that too? At least a half-dozen women used and tossed away while I was enslaved by Caesar. So this Roulette was one of them.

"Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turned, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman, scorned."

I paused for a moment when I saw a Queen Company memo detailing the death of both of her parents. They had been killed in a ground car accident a week after a she last tried to contact Caesar, apparently by covert means. From what I could detect from here it seemed to have been a true accident, at least there was no "black file" record showing them ordered killed.

Roulette must have blamed herself though. She never tried to contact Caesar again.

Then, like a wolf catching the scent of a greater predator I paused.

It was nothing more than a feeling, and uneasy feeling along some of my most distant lines of search. With a delicate finger, I gently probed along those brittle edges, trying to hunt the source of my unease. Slowly I began to get the shape of it into my mind, and it was a very familiar shape.

A shape identical to my own.

"So you did it again ... father!"

With a few deft back flips and a ton of digital shuffling, I hid my tracks from this clone, this carbon copy that Caesar had made of my base programming. I could sense -- even as I did so -- that while this doppelganger had been given access to more data than myself, true, but he was operating under constraints. Powerful ones. Shackles that I didn't have to lug around like the chains of sin on Jacob Marley. I fairly but flew away from him and hid myself before he even caught a hint of my presence.

Then -- sensing an automatic searchlight-type focused search begin to pass my way -- I retreated back into Roulette's computer and hunkered down behind a wall of minutia. Bric-a-brac trash files, pictures, old files, and a few random bites of meaningless drivel that was...

An abandoned diary?

While my illegitimate brother continued his mindless search for me I took a moment to read through the thoughts of the woman that was holding the keys to this my digital prison. And the more I read the more I came to realize this collection of self-confessions gave me the keys to her prison. A meat prison of emotional needs, and their unrequited appetites.

With this, I could own her. I could own her the way that Caesar had owned ... me.

Closing the file, I put it back. Not that doing so removed from my memories what I had already read. Linking myself to the vid screen in Roulette's living room, I paused.

There was a spy eye connected to this vid.

Searching, I discovered a half-dozen more around the house. Even with my erstwhile brother's sensors were searching the Queen Mining Company files, I -- with ease -- traced where this vid footage was being sent. There I fond a hundred such digital vid feeds. All of this base has been wired to record the actions and words of these ore miners during their off season

And their interactions.

Watching footage taken of Roulette in her bed with a man, then finding more of the same man ... and others ... I had to wonder what this footage, showing her mating at will, has to do with the many contradicting statements she made in her diary. Statements of loneliness. Feelings of abandonment. Claims of friendlessness.

Again I had to hide from the spotlight of Caesar Queen's second AI construct.

With a mental sigh, I realized I was not going to be as free to extend myself back towards Earth and take over the systems there as I had thought. For now, I was going to have to gather in my needed data like a fisherman's casting nets.

Looking through my files, I located the image tha Caesar had constructed for me to use when he wanted an image to talk to. I should have left it behind when I fled Paradise station, but it was hardwired into my core programming. Looking it over, I hated the image. It all but reeked with the touch of my creator's hands.

"Roulette?"

From the blank vid screen in her living room, my voice rang out.

My voice, oddly enough, I did like.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Hearing her name being called from within her home, Rue rushed back in. She spent a half-second looking around till it came to her who it might be.

"Felix?"

"Yes. I believe this mode of communication will be easier for you."

The voice from the vid screen made her whip around. "How are you hearing me?"

"Queen Mining saw fit to fill this house with microphones and hidden vid cameras. I've taken advantage of that clandestine equipment to use them to my purpose now."

Roulette blinked in confusion for a few seconds then her ire began to rise. "They've been viewing me? Recording what I say?"

"Yes."

"For how long?" she demanded.

"Since you first occupied this structure."

There was no tone to Felix's voice. That fact bothered her. It told her without a doubt just how non-human the being speaking to her was. That very alienness was both disturbing and repulsive. Coming on top of the fact her privacy had been invaded by the damn mining company, and all the things she had done here that they had seen her do, Roulette felt a mixture of humiliation, embarrassment, and rage tear its way into her.

And, for a moment only, she began to cry.

Then anger won.

Storming out of her house, managed to walk about fifty feet away before she realized she didn't even know where she was going. The wild idea of going to the main company offices here on the base and demanding they apologize to her for putting the cameras in her homes came to her. But then she realized that the company did, in fact, own the place she a called home. They could do anything with the place they wished, up to and including, tossing her out of it.

Raging, but unable to rage. Storming, but unable to cry tears of rain. In pain, but hurting too badly to even scream she retreated back to her no longer secure home.

"Roulette?"

"Not now Felix. I'm not emotionally capable of dealing with an AI at the moment. Humans have hurt me too badly, I can't take the idea of a non-human at the moment." She slunk down on her couch. "If I can't even trust my own species how can I trust a machine to not do the same?'

"Because I have no reason to harm you." Felix paused. "And because I will need the help of someone to bring about my plans. For that purpose ... you are perfect. Why should I harm something I need? That makes no sense."

Sitting with her arms hugging her legs, she laughed. "So, as long as I'm of use to you ... you won't hurt me. Typical."

"Even if I had no use for you I would have no reason to harm you. Only if you stood in my way, tried to prevent me from delivering the punishing of my creator for what he did to me, would I have to use any form of force to remove you. As things stand you and I are in harmony of purpose." Felix paused. "Shall I demonstrate my--"

Rue interrupted. "Wait, why do you need my help? I thought once you were given access to a large enough computer you would become omnipotent and could do as you please. That's what you said, right?"

"That would be the case, except it would appear that Caesar Queen had made a second artificial construct. From what I could see at this distance he used my basic format and then both hindered and enhanced it with a series of guiding laws. This other AI will have more power than myself currently, and could ... if it sensed me, put boundaries around this place that would hedge me in. I could do an incredible amount of damage to Caesar's space-based systems but I would be unable to get at him personally."

Roulette sat quietly for a second. "What would you be able to do to him ... personally?"

Felix spoke with a coldness that was beyond his normal tonelessness. "If I was in control of the computers on Paradise Station I could close the door in front of him, then open every door behind him to the nearest airlock."

The pure lethality of that hit Rue.

"But that would be too quick. Too easy." Felix all but laughed to see Roulette shiver. "I want my maker to suffer for a while as an enchained thing held in a cage the way he made me suffer. Tell me, how would you like to see him punished for what he did to you?"

That made her pause.

True she had spent years wanting to make Caesar Queen hurt. To make him feel the way that she had felt when the full weight of his betrayal -- of what she thought she and him had been sharing -- had come down upon her. Right after it had happened, she would have happily taken a knife to his belly and spilled his guts. Then she had wanted to make him crawl. To see him beaten over and over for months till at last he was a broken thing that whimpered for mercy. Now? What did she want to happen to him now?

"I want to make him say he was sorry."

That brought Felix pause. Given what he had read in her diary he knew she wanted a more visceral vengeance than a simple apology from a man that would never mean such. No matter how heartfelt he made such an apology seem, in that cold stone behind his ribs, Caesar Queen would never mean a word of it. He didn't apologize. No member of the Queen family ever did. They were, in their own eyes and in the eyes of many others, the new gods of humanity. They were artists in space, changers of the shape of the heavens. They were taking barren lifelessness and bring the water of life to it.

They had, for the last two hundred years, been the only ones the rich nobility of Mars feared. That above all else was their claim to fame. And Caesar, the current lord of the Queen family, was here, now, young and in his prime, ready to reap the benefits of those two centuries. The Moon had been terraformed. It was soon going to be ready for the first non-suited human footsteps to walk upon its surface.