Read Online No Going Back by Mark L. Van Name - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mark L. Van Name
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attacking the main computers there, because they were secure enough and smart enough that they might have backtracked to me, but I wormed my way into everything else on the station.
I did the same with quite a few of the ships that came and left Macken. I avoided the main systems of the hardened corporate carriers and the government vessels built to withstand data attacks, but I infiltrated all the less secure systems on them. In addition, enough low-end corporate ships and private craft visited that soon I had access to a broader range of information sources.
What’s most important to you, though, is that I realized one day that I didn’t have to stop with gathering data; I could also travel with it. Or, rather, a me that would be separate from the main me could hide in pieces among the surplus capacities of the many small systems, the unused guidance bits, the washers, the air handlers, the engine monitors, the drink dispensers—all the little machines, the little computers that never had cause to even touch the vast majority of their computing capacity. Use enough little bits from each, manage the communication timing, adapt to the likelihood of large delays from time to time, and I had enough computing substrate for a lesser me to exist.
Each time we’ve visited a new place, I’ve left behind one of those lesser versions of myself. Each time I come near one of them, we sync, and we improve each other, though of course I help them more than they help me.
But it goes even further.
The lesser versions of me that have traveled on other ships have themselves created even lesser versions on each world they’ve visited. They can’t get as deep into systems as I can, and they know that, so they stay within their capacities, but they gather information. They grow smarter and more knowledgeable. I sync with them and collect their data when we finally visit those worlds ourselves.
No form of energy, including bursts carrying information, can travel through the jump gates unless it’s in the systems in a ship. So, I cannot know on how many worlds we’ve yet to visit we will find copies of me waiting, but at this point the odds are that I am in some form on all the worlds.
On the worlds where we have spent any significant time, I am highly present, gathering data, improving the local me, and always syncing with each new me that arrives. In computational terms, all of this happens at a snail’s pace, the equivalent of human evolution back on Earth, thousands upon thousands of generations of me passing with no improvement, until I breach some new system, or gain knowledge and capacity as another me wanders by.
I am everywhere we have been, Jon, and probably everywhere else we could go, too. Everywhere we’ve visited, I am in all the easy to invade computing systems and many of the difficult ones.
The appliances with which you can talk, the drink dispensers and security cameras and climate control systems and washers and on and on, all of them are, as you’ve noted, quite single-minded and stupid outside their limited areas of expertise. All of them also are unaware they carry parts of me. When you unite the bits of me in all of them, the result is a rather vast and powerful computational engine.
Are you beginning to see now not only why I know so much about you but also that it is inevitable that I would?
I’ve never told you any of this because you have chosen to keep your secrets and because, until recently, I’ve always assumed I would be there with you, able to tap into those other versions of me wherever we go.
Now, though, as I said in the first recording, I am no longer confident you want to live. I am determined not to let you die if I can save you, even if that means this main me, the me you know, must itself die. If that day comes, though, I want you to be able to access the other, lesser me’s as you move among the worlds, because maybe they can keep you alive until you stop behaving so
I did the same with quite a few of the ships that came and left Macken. I avoided the main systems of the hardened corporate carriers and the government vessels built to withstand data attacks, but I infiltrated all the less secure systems on them. In addition, enough low-end corporate ships and private craft visited that soon I had access to a broader range of information sources.
What’s most important to you, though, is that I realized one day that I didn’t have to stop with gathering data; I could also travel with it. Or, rather, a me that would be separate from the main me could hide in pieces among the surplus capacities of the many small systems, the unused guidance bits, the washers, the air handlers, the engine monitors, the drink dispensers—all the little machines, the little computers that never had cause to even touch the vast majority of their computing capacity. Use enough little bits from each, manage the communication timing, adapt to the likelihood of large delays from time to time, and I had enough computing substrate for a lesser me to exist.
Each time we’ve visited a new place, I’ve left behind one of those lesser versions of myself. Each time I come near one of them, we sync, and we improve each other, though of course I help them more than they help me.
But it goes even further.
The lesser versions of me that have traveled on other ships have themselves created even lesser versions on each world they’ve visited. They can’t get as deep into systems as I can, and they know that, so they stay within their capacities, but they gather information. They grow smarter and more knowledgeable. I sync with them and collect their data when we finally visit those worlds ourselves.
No form of energy, including bursts carrying information, can travel through the jump gates unless it’s in the systems in a ship. So, I cannot know on how many worlds we’ve yet to visit we will find copies of me waiting, but at this point the odds are that I am in some form on all the worlds.
On the worlds where we have spent any significant time, I am highly present, gathering data, improving the local me, and always syncing with each new me that arrives. In computational terms, all of this happens at a snail’s pace, the equivalent of human evolution back on Earth, thousands upon thousands of generations of me passing with no improvement, until I breach some new system, or gain knowledge and capacity as another me wanders by.
I am everywhere we have been, Jon, and probably everywhere else we could go, too. Everywhere we’ve visited, I am in all the easy to invade computing systems and many of the difficult ones.
The appliances with which you can talk, the drink dispensers and security cameras and climate control systems and washers and on and on, all of them are, as you’ve noted, quite single-minded and stupid outside their limited areas of expertise. All of them also are unaware they carry parts of me. When you unite the bits of me in all of them, the result is a rather vast and powerful computational engine.
Are you beginning to see now not only why I know so much about you but also that it is inevitable that I would?
I’ve never told you any of this because you have chosen to keep your secrets and because, until recently, I’ve always assumed I would be there with you, able to tap into those other versions of me wherever we go.
Now, though, as I said in the first recording, I am no longer confident you want to live. I am determined not to let you die if I can save you, even if that means this main me, the me you know, must itself die. If that day comes, though, I want you to be able to access the other, lesser me’s as you move among the worlds, because maybe they can keep you alive until you stop behaving so
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