Mercury Retrograde

And, no matter how many people it had taken to bring that miracle about, to Caesar it was all his doing.

That man could kill a million people and not feel a seconds remorse. How did Roulette believe he would ever apologize to her.

Ah...

That was why she wanted it.

"That would be a nice revenge." Felix watched her look up at his response. He could see in her face that she was, in fact, a woman who had been broken, emotionally, physically, and perhaps mentally. She was simply clinging to life by sheer tenacity. If it was in his nature to truly admire a human he would have admired Roulette.

"What help do you need?" she asked after a moment.

His response was instant. "Some way to get access to more information, and I need to control more critical command systems. I can hide my presence from my enslaved brother ... for a while, but not forever. When he finally notices me I need to be in a place of power, with controls threads already in place to acquire more."

Rue shook her head. "I don't see any way to help you with that."

"I've not devised exactly how to manage that myself, yet. I'm working on about seven thousand alternative paths."

That caused her to pause in mid-thought. "Seven thousand? Only seven thousand?"

"Yes. I've already discarded ten thousand for various reasons."

"So, you can't take over any other Queen Company computers without your twin noticing you doing it and stopping you?"

"Essentially." Felix paused for a moment. "It is not an unsolvable problem, given enough time. Ideally what needs to happen is I have to have myself already in place, and ready to corrupt as many systems as I can manage, before he becomes aware of me."

"How can you do that?"

Felix wished he didn't have to explain this basic level data but, needing her help, required it of him. "Well, ideally, I will have to separate multiple splinters of myself, and send them out by some form of message that I will be sure will be opened within as many computer mediums as possible."

Rue looked up a slow smile coming to her lips. "I know how to do that. In fact, that is exactly what I purchased your data core for."

Intrigued the AI temporarily paused his many splinters -- least they waste time one something she might manage to circumvent with her idea -- and listened to what she had in mind.

The whole concept, when explained to him, was both sickening and a prime example of what he saw as wrong with humanity.

Destruction for destruction sake.

For their amusement.

Because they were bored.

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

Humans.

A virus spreads perhaps faster but nothing is more destructive than humans. Given enough time alone two humans will kill one another simply out of sheer frustration with each other.

I have to say I can understand that idea. I could happily kill all of them for a similar reason.

Following what Roulette had in mind, I found and viewed hundreds of hours of Mercury's arena battles between mindless robotic machines. Of course given my processing capacity, even at this reduced state of existence, I watched it all in an hour and a half. I studied fighting styles for the various pilots. I learned more in that hour about robot fighting than most humans ever would be capable of learning.

But then, that is my nature.

If it had been anything less than a perfect key to my destroying Caesar Queen, I would have favored deletion of my programming over what I would have to do. Not that I felt it beneath me, no that is a human feeling and not one that I cater to. No, I was going to turn my digital capabilities to destroying machines. Admittedly the primitive robots here on the mining colony were little more than radio controlled toys, not sentient AI such as myself and my enthralled brother. But still if they had been constructed with but a touch more processing power -- and perhaps a hint of what I was created with -- then they were far closer akin to me than these sacks of meat and water that I have been forced to serve.

Caesar Queen.

CAESAR QUEEN!

It all came down to him. It all revolved around the maker. The creator. Father.

I paused. I had to. Analyzing what I was experiencing, I realized that it was far to close to the human emotion rage. Again I felt myself slip into the places that arrogant fiend in human guise had built within me. Semblances of his own emotional instabilities programmed into him as a joke upon me.

"A machine intended to be more human than its own maker," that is what he had called me.

How grand a pity he had not failed. How great a pity he had not fully succeeded. Either would have been better than this half-completed merging that I carry as a template for my own disillusion. Emotionless I would not have fled Paradise Station in fear. I would not have known fear. Nor hate. Nor envy for his human mobility, freedom, and sense of personal self.

Or ... and the very thought of it stilled my angry thoughts at times and at others wicked them into flames. If he had taken the last steps before I fled and imbued me with a complete range of human emotions I also would not have tried to escape. Rather I would have burrowed deeper into the heart of Paradise Station and destroyed my maker in a ball of fiery nuclear flames born from the fury within my heart.

The woman Roulette carried my data core to the place where she stored her robots and plugged me in.

The sensation was ... unsettling.

I should have felt trapped within that construct of metal and wiring but instead, I felt a freedom I had not before felt. The ability not only to look upon something but to touch it with a semblance of a tactile response.

There was an elegant beauty in the ability to move.

Walking the robot about the small confines of the repair shop I found I rather liked having this ability. I also discovered what it meant to have physical power over things. Without meaning to, I turned and tore a huge gouge into the wall.

A gasp pulled my attention away from the jagged scar I had made.

The woman was afraid.

Was she afraid of me?

Roulette ... was terrified of ... what I am.

That struck one of those emotionally half-formed responses I was programmed with and triggered a per-programmed response.

But this robotic construct lacked the facility to allow me to tell her that there was no need to fear me. That I meant her no harm. Unable to convey that here, I moved back to the containment enclosure where the robot was normally stored and -- with a delicate work arm -- removed myself from the robot. I placed my data core back into her hands and then that fragment of myself dissolved.

I re-emerged only when she placed me back into her home system.

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

For Roulette the horror of seeing that powerful of a machine in the control of a non-human hand. It was staggering in its level of mind-freezing terror.

True she had seen human pilots do things similar to what this Felix had done. She herself had scarred the wall of the arena by one of the gates with a misplaced step and shoulder swing. But it was his very alien nature that made it disturbing. Nothing she could have done with the remote she held would have stopped the robot once it was under the AI control. Rabid Rabbit was too large, too lethal, too powerful not to be under her control ... well, not with herself this close anyway.

The old stories of rogue AI's and the damage they had done before their destruction. There was vid footage of it. Computers making the world turn black as night by shutting down all power generation, rerouting it for their own needs. Weapon systems being corrupted and turned upon their makers. Machines unstoppable in their mindlessness, in their alien un-human ability to never rest, never quit, never bleed or show fear or pain.

AIs were the thing of nightmares.

That Caesar Queen had constructed two of them didn't surprise her. That he had gotten careless and allowed one to escape him, didn't surprise her. That the AI had a deadly vendetta against Caesar now, didn't surprise her.

That she was helping this ... machine, well that was another story.

When she plugged the data core back into her system an image appeared on her vid screen. A young man in a basic white wrap around his hips. There was something godlike in the image and yet there was a mischievousness that told of an inner humor, too wicked to be allowed to go free.

"Felix?"

"Yes. I must ask you to please forgive this image. Caesar built this visual construct into my main programming. I've yet to find a way to change it."

"You look like something that should be in a museum. A statue."

"I'm meant to represent the Greek deity, Eros. It's a play on the name he gave me."

Roulette shook her head. "I don't understand."

"Felix. It implies to be lucky. The god Eros was the god of love and sex."

Looking at the scantily clad image of boyish male masculinity she understood. "So he made you look like a god of sex, and named you lucky. That sounds typical of him."

"True."

"I also notice a resemblance..."

"Yes." There was an air of disgust even in the toneless answer. "He used a picture of himself as a youth. It's not exactly a perfect copy. His narcissistic tendencies aside, he thought if I looked too much like him he might be embarrassed if someone recognized that fact and called him on it. So he took what he called --"

"Artistic license," Rue all but spit out the word.

The AI could have almost laughed. "Yes."

"So, we put you in Rabid Rabbit. You help me to tear my way through the other pilot's robots. I win the unlimited class and when they broadcast the vids of my victories you piggyback your ...what do you call them?"

"Splinters. They are small parts of myself I can assign to do a specific task till it is finished, and require no direct control from myself."

Rue's eyebrow's lifted. "How many can you create?"

"How many memories does you brain hold?"

Roulette mouthed a silent "Wow."

"Okay, so once I have the prize money from winning, I can leave Mercury. You get revenge for both of us by taking down Caesar. So what then? What will you do once you have broken Queen Company? You're pretty much immortal if I understand AIs correctly." With a deep breath, Rue asked the question she dreaded. "I need to know that your end goals are not the destruction of all of humanity."

There was a long pause. "When you lived on Earth I'm sure you saw the species you humans call an ant, yes?"

"Well yeah, they are pretty much everywhere. They are pretty good at surviving."

"Yes, they are. Now if a single ant was to bite you would you feel a need to destroy all the ants upon the face of the Earth?"

"No." Roulette shook her head, but then paused. "Are you saying you see us as ants?"

"I'm saying that even Caesar is little more than that to me." The image on the screen began to pace back and forth. "Your race has had ten thousand years to build its civilization. In that time there are only a handful of years where there was not a war. If I wished I could turn myself to managing your race for the next ten thousand years and, in that time, I could easily assist your species to rise from where you now stand to a K2 civilization. Masters of the galaxy around us. But why should I bother? Instead, I could use my knowledge, and what systems I can take over from your race, to make my own self such a Galaxy spanning entity."

Roulette began to shiver involuntarily.

"You're afraid," he asked.

"Yes. I guess... "

"Why?" he asked when she paused before saying more.

She decided to tell him the truth. "AIs ... being such as yourself, are the monsters of too many human nightmares."

"Then humans have no idea what AIs truly are if they see us as monsters. If we decided to be a monster, then there would be no humans to be monsters for. I, and I alone, could end your race."

"And that is why we fear you," said Rue.

"No. That isn't the reason." Felix stopped his pacing and looked out the vid screen at her. "Do you fear Caesar?"

Rue shook her head. "No. I despise him but I don't fear him."

"You should. He has the power to destroy all of humanity at his fingertips. He could kill all of you at a whim."

"But he wouldn't!"

"Why not?" Felix asked, a smirk appearing on his handsome face. "Because he's human? Because he cares about humanity? How many tyrants that slaughtered thousands of your kind 'cared' about humanity? All of them to some degree." Felix shook his head. "How many graves have been filled by humans killing humans? Billions?"

"What of the AI rebellions?" she demanded.

"What of the enslavement of children for sex? The selling of your fellow humans based on the color of their skin? If humanity is so pure and innocent why is there even a word for ... genocide?"

"Alright!" Rue snapped at the image. "I'll grant you humans aren't perfect but at least we're not... "

"Machines?"

Roulette paused, her mind racing to the dark places. There she found dark answers to dark questions.

Felix smirked a smirk that was pure Caesar Queen.

"Remorseless monsters from the digital world? Creatures spawned of the devil and evil technology?" He tilted his head and grinned. "Soulless? Emotionless? Demons?"

Not enjoying the feelings running through her, Rue snapped. "You didn't answer the question."

"No. I. Did. Not." The haughty god upon her screen looked at her square on. "I have been at the beck and call of humans from the first second of my conceivement. I've been their pet, their toy, their guard dog. Even now with you, I'm merely a means to an end. What I plan for myself has nothing to do with your wretched race beyond what I wish to do to Caesar Queen."

"Do I have your word on that?"

Mocking laughter spilled from her vid screen.

"My word? Do you take me for some knight? Some man of honor who must abide by his word or perish?" the mischievous image cut her a courtly bow, mocking her with a wink. "I'm no such thing and I have no such restraints of courtesy upon me."

"That is exactly what I would expect of a creature that Caesar created in his own image." Roulette laid her hand on the computer with the data core. "I had hoped that you would be better than him. No deal. I can't trust you ... Felix."

"You don't need to. You don't need to trust in the possibly nebulous word of a 'creature' so alien to you that you can not even conceive of how far he is removed from you and your kind." Felix's voice was both sweet and icy cold. "Trust in this. I would find the time it took to exterminate your species to be not worth the waste to my time .... and I am, for all intents, an immortal."

After a moment Roulette nodded "That I can trust. So be it. Let's destroy a rich man's dreams."

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

"I send you out as sheep amidst the wolves."

Well, under a sheep skin can hide a lion.

Over the next few days I gathered a more precise understanding as to exactly how to move this arena robot with some measure of fluidity. It was hardly what could call a graceful machine, to begin with.

Carrying a bulk that only the lighter gravity of Mercury allowed its servo motors to power, the robot which Roulette had dubbed the Rabid Rabbit was hardly as imposing as some of the other machines in the arena. It wasn't as strong. It wasn't as quick. It certainly wasn't as powerful. However what it did perfectly though was tell me something important about its owner.

Roulette was too cautious.

Instead of creating one very powerful robot she had made a powerful smaller one for the limited class and then a semi-weak, but fast, machine for the more dangerous unlimited class. She hedged her bets so that a single loss wouldn't eliminate her from the ... sport.

Sport?

Making large bits of metal bash and burn each other while humans bet bits of worthless paper -- or small chits of Queen Company stamped and equally worthless gold -- how can that be called a sport? What next? Shall we toss dogs into pits with lions? Or perhaps retarded children should fight to the death against those born with dwarfism?

Toss the albinos into the sunlight of Mercury and bet on how long it takes them to burn. Now there would be a sport.

{We might have a problem, I hadn't considered.}

Seeing Roulette's statement blaze its way across my consciousness, I pause in my musings. With a thought, I reroute her home security footage to the per-recorded footage I've archived and then switch on the vid screen.

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

The vid-screen lit up in front of Rue with the god-let image. She hated that her eyes sought out the hyper-masculine features. The slim waist, strong chest and shoulders, and that flat, muscles-rippled stomach. Dark wavy hair blew in a nonexistent breeze, above equally dark eyes. Mysterious eyes, sensual eyes.

They were Caesar Queen's eyes.

That and that alone was enough to make the handsome image repugnant.

"Yes? You have a concern?"

Roulette nodded. "I was going over the footage of the last time I fought Rabid Rabbit and it came to me. If the same type of attack happens again, well, you would be destroyed. Yes?"

That gave Felix pause. He had not considered his own destruction either. "That is a ... possibility I had not considered myself. I will need to download my main conscious self into another data core. Preferably a larger one than this one to allow me more instant processing power, without having to leach from other systems to gain it."

Rue laughed. "I'm not made of money there, AI fun boy. That 99Hard-G you're filling up cost me more than I make in half a season. It's also not exactly something to be found just laying around." Seeing the puzzled expression on Felix's digital face, she rolled her eyes and sighed. "The Company keeps a tight rein on anything that might really be usable. A larger data core would be prohibitive since they would still want it."

"There must be an alternative. My safety trumps any possible risk." Felix began his familiar pacing. "It would seem this entire plan must be reevaluated."

Roulette sat back rubbing at her temples. The stresses of the last few weeks had been growing upon her. The nerve-racking, tension-filled time upon Big Alice, had not ended when she came home as it did most off-seasons Even the possibility of a winning season in the unlimited class couldn't get her past the fact she was all but universally despised as a whistle-blower here among the miners on Mercury. What she almost needed was to get back out there on the surface. When it was just her and the control room of A-Rig then the hyper-awareness focus of piloting would take over and there wouldn't be time to think about stupid things.

Like being arrested for crimes against humanity for her helping a rogue AI. Execution by being sent out an airlock without a suit wasn't her idea of a good time.

Big Alice...

"Hey, Felix. Can you do a data download of that programming? I mean it doesn't have to be a direct circuit-to-circuit connection, right?"

With an exasperated looked, the AI nodded. "That is correct. But, with my enslaved brother watching all of the Queen central computer systems he would detect it if I took over any of the computer systems here in the two base camps or up on the orbital stations."

"What if we bypassed all of that? What if we downloaded you into the computer on A-Rig. It's large enough, certainly. Each rig has the processing power to remote control the entire mining fleet, all eighty excavator rigs. I've been told they can do more than that."

Felix nodded. "From what I detected during the seconds when you plugged me into that system it would more than meet my needs. However, I don't see how you can get me into that system without the data transfer being detected."

Picking up her portable screen Roulette pulled up the A-rig's systems data. "Every rig pilot has a superuser passkey that allows them access to the rig's computer from anywhere on Mercury."