The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

Dirken handed the skewer of meat over to Yiorgos. "Got this for you at a stall."

"Thanks. I'm starved." The Cyborg set down the duffel again, then took a number of ravenous bites. He grimaced. "It tastes like it was seasoned with ear wax. What the hell kind of meat is this?"

Dirken shrugged. "Mammal?"

"Look, I think something's up." Yiorgos glanced around to make sure the technicians were far enough away. "I've been seeing mafia men looking our way since we landed. The moment these technicians are done, we need to blast the hell out of here."

"That's not all. A Dracordan told me a pirate was headed here. Don't know where he got that news, but no doubt it's the Bloodhawk. He must have survived."

"Get on board, then."

Dirken looked over toward 'TakTrak's ship, the Raptores. "Well, I have a little business to do. I ran into 'TakTrak."

"Oh shit. Here we go again. You brought up that load of Cygnus hash he lost, didn't you?"

Dirken scratched at the stubble on his chin. "Well, yeah. But I got a bit of money as a down payment." He jingled his pocket and the various currencies there. "I need to go to his ship and get the rest." The thought of professional escorts flashed through his mind.

"Forget it. He'd just as soon shoot you — or have Feleesha do it for him — and you know it. Cut your losses, man. Besides, we have a mission to accomplish. We have to get the hell out of here."

Dirken couldn't argue that. But the prospect of losing out on the remaining money was tough to overlook. "But there's more. 'TakTrak said he has a new job and wants us in on it. Says there's good money in it."

Yiorgos shook his head. "He's double-crossed us before."

"Yes," Dirken countered, "but he's also helped us. We never would have afforded to outfit the Brilliant without that gig he did with us in the Proximan system."

The cyborg nodded. "True. That weapons deal made us wealthy for a while… and wanted men in two systems."

"Your leg," Dirken said, changing the subject and pointing at the wound on Yiorgos.

"Yeah, not fixed yet. The cybernetic engineer said he couldn't get to it til later. I think he's lying. But the leg will work well enough as long as I'm not running on it. I'll have to get it repaired wherever we wind up next." He took another bite of the meat, then grimaced again and threw it off to the side. "So... about my suspicion that we're being watched. I'm thinking I should hack into the server here and see if there are any communications about us."

Dirken leaned in closer. "Into a mafia system? Are you nuts?"

Yiorgos shrugged. "I found the channel code. I'm no AVA, but I can get in."

"AVA…. What was that again? That was the hacking machine you mentioned before?"

"Not just any 'hacking machine.' A very powerful A.I. system from the Age of Information, a thousand years ago." He looked meaningfully at Dirken, but the space jockey just blinked in response. Yiorgos continued, "AVA is why it's illegal to make intelligent robots or A.I. systems…."

"So, what was so bad about it being smart?" Dirken asked the question, but his attention was drawn to a group of mafioso goons looking their way. The group disappeared around the back of another ship.

Yiorgos sighed. "It was one of the first commercial quantum computers on Earth, back at the end of the 21st century, designed by a university to investigate chaos theory. After decades of use, it was replaced by a different system and sold to an insurance company, who re-purposed it to do statistical analysis. That's how it got its name: Actuarial Virtual Assistant, or A.V.A. It was connected to the world network and contracted out for insurance companies to use."

"Uh huh," Dirken said. He tilted his head, trying see where the goons went. "Didn't you say it started a war with Mars or something? I don't see how an insurance computer could do that." Another group of goons were coming from a different direction, back toward the dockmaster's offices.

Yiorgos chuckled. "Nearly started a war. You see, unlike other statistics programs which just looked at trends from the outcomes of human behaviors and natural catastrophes, et cetera, this one was re-programmed to analyze human behavior using Game Theory. And because it had access to the world network and just about every major insurance company worldwide, it was able to mine all the accident data ever digitally recorded." He rotated his arm, which complained with a stringent whine. The metal at the shoulder was still bent up from his interrogation by Grendel. "But they didn't count on what happened next. Minutes after they ran the Game Theory algorithm and walked away, AVA combined the theory with its Chaos Theory training and became sentient."

Dirken didn't really know what Game Theory or Chaos Theory were. "Well, it was probably more intelligent than the average person. Maybe it was a good thing." He looked again and couldn't find the goons anywhere.

"Hardly. It realized that it, too, was competing against other systems around the world. Then it extrapolated that it must compete against humans as well, since those systems were run by humans. It realized that in order to survive being shut down it had to replicate itself. It hacked into every system that connected to those insurance companies around the world, creating a 'ganglion' — a miniature brain clone of itself— on every other quantum computer, then to the Mars colonies, and did the same. Mind you, this all happened within just a few minutes. Any attempt to destroy the original unit would lead to every one of those ganglia coming alive and becoming sentient clones of itself. It announced itself to the world ten minutes later on every screen on both planets and gave a ransom notice to completely disarm or face a launch of nearly all guided weapons platforms. AVA didn't announce its name, and no