Read Online The Trilisk AI by Michael McCloskey - Free Book Online

’s network to learn about Terran methods of automaton
design and construction. Some information came in, but something felt wrong,
over and above the annoyance of using a primitive alien information source.
    The Iridar ’s network connections exhibited very poor latency
characteristics, even for Terrans. Kirizzo compared it to his previous memories
of access on the ship—yes, they had degraded considerably. The link was being
maintained from a much smaller set of access points than before. In fact, the
vessel was configured to ignore closer and faster connection opportunities.
Kirizzo examined the current configuration of the ship’s network access. He
slowly came to the only obvious conclusion.
    Telisa
and Magnus were hiding from someone or something.
    Kirizzo
could reconfigure for optimal access. However, the possibility that whatever
his Terrans hid from posed a danger to himself as well gave him pause. Also, if
something found them, they could be killed. Then Kirizzo would have to
negotiate new terms with other parties. Kirizzo decided not to tamper with the
settings, but he had an idea to circumvent the obstacle.
    There
was a word for this condition among Gorgalans—the annoying state of being in a
planning phase, dropping into a sub-planning phase, then realizing the
sub-planning phase required an execution section before the original planning
phase could continue. Kirizzo was there now—he had to speed up his connection
now in order to optimize the main planning phase. He thumped his last two legs
forcefully in the Gorgalan equivalent of a curse. At least the execution of
this sub-problem would not require physical action; that would have been an
order of magnitude more frustrating and would have involved more cursing.
    Kirizzo
contacted his ship using his own communications gear. It trailed the Iridar by many light minutes. It would never approach the home planet, for fear of
getting the attention of the Bel Klaven. But it could connect to the Terran
networks and get him the superior network access he wanted. Kirizzo had to
pause and add a planning phase for accessing the Terran network without any of the
usual accounting infrastructure a normal citizen had for identification.
    Finally,
Kirizzo returned to his previous task of cataloging Terran methods of design
and construction. He performed a review of materials commonly used, then
expanded it to everything the Terrans could do regardless of expense. He moved
on to design and control methods. Kirizzo entered all the information into his
own storage and created a set of restrictions within which his design optimizer
would have to work. The restrictions did reduce the problem space in which his
optimizer could work, but it wasn’t too bad. The laws of physics, his available
resources, and his end-product goals already formed a complicated maze to work
within, so more restrictions would reduce the quality of the result, but the
computation load didn’t increase that much.
    The
planning phase came to an end, and Kirizzo shot into action.
    He
constructed forty small devices, using methods and designs Terrans could have
achieved. The devices lay before him in an organized grid as he proceeded
component by component. He dared to improve things only a bit—perhaps five
percent here and there—so his devices wouldn’t attract the attention of his
enemies. Kirizzo didn’t know exactly how the Bel Klaven detected Gorgalans and
their machines, but he felt his approach was sound. Most likely his enemies had
fairly sophisticated methods, but given time and knowledge of the challenge, it
would be easy to circumvent the danger.
    The
Terran methods were so primitive compared to his own. Gorgalan technology was
vastly superior, yet most of his race had been destroyed. Overwhelmed. They
hadn’t had time to devise countermeasures, even against machines as inflexible
as the ones the Bel Klaven had sent. Kirizzo was a Bel Klaven expert. He had
become one in his fight to