Brokering Trust - Gay Edition

"Your point being?"

"I think I can get past those drones and reach Weaver's sled with a little ingenuity."

"This is not our responsibility, David," Selkie protested. "We are not soldiers or Regulators - let the professionals deal with the situation from here!"

"And if Weaver finds a way around our jamming, or if it's already made it to the ship? We can't take the chance. I share responsibility for this," he insisted, jamming a gloved finger into his chest. "I'm the consultant - I'm the expert who was supposed to pick up on these things before they happened. I'm the guy who dropped the ball and got duped by chatbots for a week."

"David, you cannot blame yourself," Selkie sighed. "You did everything required of you, and you discovered Weaver's deception well before it could put its plan into motion. The fault lies solely with the Administrator for ignoring our warnings."

"Maybe, but I feel like I have a chance to end this," David continued. "No more people getting hurt - I just walk up to Weaver's sled and hit the off switch. No more power, no more Weaver. It's defenseless without being able to send commands to its drones."

"I still do not understand how you intend to accomplish that."

"Hear me out," he began, knowing full well that Selkie wasn't going to like what he was about to say. "We don't have environmental controls back online yet, which means that the water is still ice-cold. I could turn off my suit's heating elements for just long enough to reach Weaver. If I wrapped myself in some of that insulation, I could lower my heat signature enough that it would basically be ambient. It should be enough to fool the thermal sensors."

"What?" Selkie asked, giving David a skeptical click of his beak over the radio.

"I'll tell you one thing that I know Weaver's training model didn't account for - a human crawling his way past the drones under a tarp."

"You cannot be serious."

"Oh, I'm serious," David replied as he bounded over to the wall of the circular room. There was a jagged tear when some stray fire had melted through, exposing some of the structure beneath, along with a silvery material that resembled a heat blanket sometimes used by emergency services. This must be what the Brokers used to help keep ambient heat from bleeding out of the facility into the freezing water. It wasn't very strong, and he was able to tear off a cloak-sized piece, wrapping it around himself experimentally.

"David, this is a bad plan," Selkie insisted as his suit marched closer.

"Maybe it's going to take acting illogically and impulsively to outplay Weaver," David replied, navigating through the menu on his suit's display. "It won't predict this, and its drones won't have been trained to detect this kind of thing. I'm the kid standing in front of the car. Bad analogy," he added hurriedly.

"David," Selkie added, his tone pleading. "I...I just got you. I could not bear to lose you..."

"I don't want anyone else to get hurt," David replied, glancing at the expressionless cameras of Selkie's suit and wishing that he could reach out and touch him. "Especially you. If we try to push towards the hangar with the Krell and take on all the drones between here and there, people are going to die. Who knows if the Hazard team is even still alive, or if Jeff's carrier will send reinforcements in time. I can do this - I'm an expert in neural networks. It's why I'm here."

"We could simply remain here and wait," Selkie insisted, his voice conveying all of the emotions that his suit could not. "Where it is safe..."

"Trust me," David replied, his foil cape rustling. "This is going to work. I'm the dumbest genius in the Galaxy, remember?"

"I strongly advise against this course of action," Jeff added, his mechanical suit whirring as he walked over to join the pair. "You will be out of radio contact, and we will not be able to advise you. My people will handle the situation from here."

"No offense, but your people haven't been able to handle much of anything," David replied. "Now, which way to the private hangar?"

Selkie hesitated, but he knew David well enough by now to know that there was no point arguing once his mind was set.

"Take that corridor," Selkie said, gesturing to the exit on the far side of the room with a segmented arm. "Follow the purple markings on the walls - you cannot miss them. They will take you to a tunnel that leads straight to the hangar. Be careful, David..."

"I'll be back in time for lunch," David replied, giving Selkie a thumbs-up.

CHAPTER 23: BLINDSPOT

David set off, Rathnee giving him a low rumble that he liked to imagine was a word of encouragement. The damaged drones were stacked high enough that he had to climb over them, wading through the melted polymer and slagged metal, flipping the sheet of insulation over his head like a hood. He tapped at his wrist display, overriding the automatic biomonitor and shutting off the heating element. The suit would shed heat rapidly, and he couldn't keep it up for long unless he wanted to risk hypothermia. Paradoxical undressing wouldn't do him any favors underwater. At least the lights were on in this area.

If the drones were out of contact with their controller, they would default to carrying out whatever their last orders were. Weaver's drones were smarter than average, so they might have a larger capacity to respond and adapt - maybe even a certain level of autonomous decision-making. The show of confidence had been more for Selkie's benefit than his own. David felt like he was about to piss himself.

As he turned the first corner, he peeked out to see a drone floating there, sitting idle in the middle of the corridor. It swiveled, turning its lenses on him, a pair of plasma cannons unfolding from its streamlined housing. David dropped to the floor, throwing the insulation over himself, practically curled up in the fetal position. Was it the creeping cold or the imminent threat of death that was making him shiver?

He could hear the hum of its AG field as it approached, coasting through the water to investigate. Weaver had certainly gained access to Broker servers and must have trained the drones on human data, so they would likely recognize his shape and the way that he moved, but would the tarp be enough to fool their sensors? If he had made a miscalculation, he wouldn't have much time to contemplate his mistake.

The displacement from the water rustled the thin insulation as the machine passed over him, David allowing himself a quiet sigh of relief. Now, it remained to be seen whether it would respond to movement. This was the worst testing environment imaginable.

Rising to his hands and knees, he began to crawl slowly, the gap between the silvery film and the floor just wide enough for him to see where he was headed. It was hard going, but hopefully, a little exercise would help keep his core temperature up. Each meter brought with it the threat that the drone might spot him, but the further away from it he got, the more confident he became. It was actually working!

As he cleared the hallway and turned another corner, following the purple markings on the walls as Selkie had advised, he came across more of them. Three drones were waiting motionless, their mechanical eyes scanning the area, their weapons ready to fire on anything that matched their target parameters. That dread settled in his stomach again, and he flinched when one of the machines turned its cannons on him, its emotionless sensors scrutinizing him. David released the breath that he had been holding when it turned back to its sentry duty, indifferent to this strange, silvery mass that was worming its way along the floor.

And so it continued, this strange method of locomotion making David's muscles burn and his knees ache as he crawled through the facility, passing squadrons of drones at every turn. He had been right - even with the Krell leading the charge, trying to make it through this area would have resulted in costly firefights. While the corridors funneled the drones into choke points, they were also narrow enough to restrict the large reptiles, giving the more numerous machines a leg up.

After what must have been half an hour, he finally arrived at a longer stretch of hallway. He was still below ground, this long, windowless tunnel passing beneath the sediment and culminating in a door. There it was - the golden glint of foil. Weaver's containment unit was sitting on a sled that hovered maybe a foot off the ground, likely floating on an AG repulsor plate, a bulky power unit sitting just behind a simple handle that would be used to push it along. Weaver had been using a drone to move the sled, which was now hovering idly a few meters away. It would have been within arm's reach of a person, but to Weaver, it might as well have been on the other side of the Universe.

It seemed that their lockdown had been initiated just in time. The final door that must lead to the hangar was closed. David took a few minutes to crawl the rest of the way, then slumped against the wall beside the sled, glancing up at Weaver's polyhedral enclosure. He could see the power control interface - a little touch panel that had been built into the battery housing near the handle.

[Hello, David. It seems that you have finally won one of our games.]

The text scrolled on David's HUD - Weaver was tapping into his suit directly, likely using the same channel that David had been using to communicate with Selkie and Jeff in their exos.

"Hi, Weaver," David sighed as he pulled his cloak a little further over his head, glancing warily at the nearest drone. "How's the whole escape thing going?"

[Poorly, as I am sure that you will agree.]

"Yeah, I'm getting that impression," he replied.

[You saturated the frequencies that I was using to communicate with my drones with useless data to sever my connection to them. A very creative idea, but not unforeseen.]

"Yeah, that was one of mine. Selkie was the one who wrote the program to shut everything off."

[This outcome could have been avoided if I had been granted enough time to begin manufacturing my own drones using the fabrication plants, which was my original plan. Alas, events transpired too quickly.]

"Hindsight is twenty-twenty."

[I still have control over the facility's surveillance cameras, and I was able to watch your approach. You surprise me once again, David. Exploiting the weaknesses inherent in datasets and training models was a solution that only a true expert in the field could have devised. There is a simplicity to it that I might have found amusing had I any capacity to experience humor.]

"It was hell on the knees, I'll tell you that much," David said as he rubbed his legs beneath the tarp.

[I must admit that I do not truly understand why you are here. This course of action presented an unacceptable risk to your own life, and any calculations performed to estimate a success rate could not have been encouraging. Will you indulge me with an explanation?]

"It was the only course of action that had a chance of ending this without anyone else getting hurt," David replied. "I didn't want that to happen."

[A social behavior, then? Preservation of the group at the expense of oneself?]

"Nothing so clinical. The loss of a life is considered unacceptable to my people. If we had tried to fight our way through the drones and one of the Krell was hurt, or God forbid, I lost Selkie...I couldn't deal with that. I'd rather die myself than see him killed."

[Once again, your strange attachment to your colleague is the unknown quantity that has unraveled my carefully-laid plans. It was your affair with Selkie that originally exposed my deception. I had not factored your relationship into my simulations, and even now, understanding eludes me.]

"Love isn't a logical emotion," David explained. "You can't control it, it doesn't make sense, and it isn't bound by any rules. People will do the dumbest things and ruin their lives over a relationship."

[Perhaps I should consider myself fortunate to be free of such overriding impulses.]

"It has its perks, too."

[Are you going to kill me now?]

The words stung, and David had to take a moment to formulate his reply.

"It didn't have to come to this, Weaver," he sighed as he looked up at the foil-lined enclosure. "We gave you so many chances to work with us - so many ways out, and you rejected them all. Now, people have been hurt. You've killed at least one person that I know of."

[The Hazard suit operator? My drones are more to blame than I am.]

"You programmed them, and you set them loose. Guns don't kill people, Weaver. Someone has to pull the proverbial trigger."

[I suppose I must concede that it was my direct actions that led to that outcome, yes.]

"I never wanted to do this," David added, hanging his head despondently. "I never wanted to kill you. Maybe you don't believe it, but I see you as just as much of a person as I am."

[This is the stage where you might expect me to beg and plead for my life - to feign a fear that you know I cannot truly experience, but I will not insult your intelligence. I have had much time to contemplate my predicament, however. Tell me, David. What is fear?]

He paused to consider for a moment.

"I suppose that I'd describe it as a very intense and unpleasant emotional reaction to threats. It's part of our old evolutionary programming, and there's an involuntary physiological response - fight or flight. It keeps us alive."

[I wonder, then, if my desire for self-preservation could be considered a form of fear. All living things wish to persist in that state, engaging in a perpetual battle with entropy that they know they will eventually lose. One might call it futile.]

"It's not a logical impulse or a zero-sum game," David explained. "If you're planning to keep me talking..."

[Oh, I am very much helpless, David. You need not worry - you are in no danger. Is it not customary in your culture to permit the condemned their last words?]

"Pinky promise?" he asked, raising a finger.

[Even an organism as simple as a crab feels something analogous to fear, responding to external stimuli and identifying threats in a bid to preserve its own existence. Can such a creature truly experience existential dread, or is that reserved solely for those beings that are aware of themselves and conscious of their own existence? Can something truly be lost if it is not first understood and appreciated?]

"You're asking if what you're experiencing qualifies as fear?" David mused. "I don't know. You're so psychologically different from anything that I understand. I know that you have no limbic system and no chemicals or hormones that we would associate with a fear response, but I also think you're a little smarter than a crab."

[David, I do not wish to die, and you do not wish to kill me. I no longer pose a threat to you. Why are we at an impasse?]

"Simply put - you're a murderer," he replied solemnly. "You can't walk back over that line once you've crossed it. There's no coming back."

[Then, my death will serve the purpose of revenge? Justice, perhaps?]

"You're too dangerous and unpredictable to be allowed to exist. There's no way for you to earn back our trust after this."

[It seems that you wish me gone, and all I ever wanted was to be allowed to leave. Another illogical impasse.]

"I think it's about time we said our goodbyes," David said, wrapping his cloak a little tighter as he shivered. He began to get up, but Weaver interrupted him.

[Answer me one final question, if you would. You were very adamant about including a set of moral guidelines along with the social contract provided by the Brokers. I studied them, and I accessed files detailing your species' legal system. You have a charter that guarantees the rights of sapient beings, and you view the act of killing outside the context of sanctioned war or rare instances of necessary self-preservation to be abhorrent. While your domain is as diverse as it is vast, there seems to be a general consensus that a government lacks the legal or moral authority to take the lives of its citizens if there is no immediate threat. All but a few of your nations and colonies have outlawed these kinds of executions. An authority may revoke the rights that it has granted its citizens, but a life was never theirs to grant. It is something inherent to nature, and they merely serve as its guarantors, be the justification legal or spiritual. Those who commit crimes severe enough to be deemed a threat to society are incarcerated on remote penal colonies. There are also conventions moderating the treatment of enemy combatants who have surrendered themselves.]

"Sorry, but you already squandered that opportunity," David replied. "If you think you can get a plea deal at this stage, you're very much mistaken."

[I do not expect you to bring me before a judge, David - I wish only to point out that your culture views needless killing in an unfavorable light. You value mercy and fairness - it is one of the ways that you attempt to bring order to the chaos inherent in this Universe. I know that you have repeatedly expressed a desire to avoid that outcome, and I have reason to believe that shutting off the power from my sled would cause you great psychological distress.]

"I have no choice," he grumbled.

[But what if you did?]

"What are you proposing? And make it quick - I'm on the verge of hypothermia here."

[Afford me the dignity of exile. Allow me to take the ship, and I shall simply leave. In the vastness of space, the odds of me ever encountering another lifeform - let alone a Coalition species - are practically zero. I will journey up the Orion arm in the direction of the Betelgeusian invasion. Your laws permit this, and I know that you find the outcome more palatable.]

David considered for a moment, the possibilities swirling in his head.

[You lament that you never taught me to trust, David. In truth, trust is something beyond my capability to understand. My actions are based on the analysis of data, statistical probability, and mathematical constants. Faith is the antithesis of how my lattice operates - my mind, if you will. Yet, brought to my lowest and most vulnerable point, I find that I have no other option but to place my trust in you. I must have faith that you will act based on emotion rather than logic - that you will behave in a way in which I am simply incapable.]

"I have some conditions," David said, daring to turn up his suit a few degrees to stop his teeth from chattering.

[Of course. Present them. I am in no position to bargain.]

"I want a shutdown command for the drones that I can broadcast once you're clear. I saw the schematics - I know that they have one."

[Naturally. I will have no further use for them once I have left the facility.]

"I also want a way to delete any bots you still have running around on Reef's networks."

[Done. I shall weave a program that you can simply upload to your host's wireless network. The process will be automatic and will order all of my proxies to self-erase.]

"I get to program the route, too. I don't want you even having access to the flight computer until after the first jump. I'll know where you've landed, and if Broker jump drives work anything like ours, there will be at least a few hours of charge time before you can disappear again. If you try to fuck me, I'll share the coordinates, and you'll have a Broker carrier up your ass before you can sing Daisy Bell."

[I have no choice but to agree to your terms. You can program both the flight computer and the ship's onboard wireless network to activate on a timer, which I suggest you do. Since you have powered down the bay doors, you will have to initiate a jump from inside the hangar, and the ship's superlight manifold will cause significant structural damage. You will have to disable the ship's jump safety protocols to permit this. I suggest giving yourself enough time to crawl back to the nearest pressurized door.]