Sentient Echoes: A tie-in to Untold Tales #311

"Well?" Hallie demanded. "Where did that virtual Mr. Potato Head dump Al and the others?"

"I've retrieved a copy of the information packet the Supreme Interference downloaded..." D.D. informed them efficiently. "I'm setting up a program to cross-reference the coordinates with any existing charts of the vortex in the Library's database, but..."

"But the coordinates he provided don't have to correspond with any actual features in any existing chart" Lee finished for her wearily from his medical bed. Still, despite the fact that his ordeal had left him weak enough to lie down on the job, he was most definitely still on the job. Floating data screen surrounded him, and even though his hands shook slightly he plucked his way through touch-screen menus like some mad harpist playing a symphony. "For the purposes of his wild goose hunt, it was only necessary that he send the Legion off into the margins of the map labeled "Here there be Dragons". Still..." He winced suddenly and clutched his side, causing D.D. to hover over him with concern. Smiling wanly, he swallowed and continued. "Still, I doubt the Interference was completely random in his choices... we may be able to deduce what our allies are facing."

Hallie nodded. "Whatever it is, I'm sure they can handle it" she assured them, and possibly herself. "Al is very resourceful, Knifey's very clever, and the Shoggoth and Liu Xi are exceptionally good at getting people out of tough scrapes. And ManMan is... um..."

"There too?" A.L.F.RED suggested when she couldn't come up with anything immediately.

"Well, yes. But don't underestimate any of the Lair Legion" Hallie noted defensively. "Especially the average seeming ones. They surprise you."

"Yes, yes... I'm sure they're all as insufferably clever." Auditor Blay-kee grumbled from an adjacent medical bed, albeit one with significantly fewer concerned A.I.'s hovering about. "So how is it the Legion fell for the trick in the first place?"

"I was investigating the site of the Narrative Bomb detonation when the Interference first impersonated Lee" Hallie answered with a tinge of guilt. "By the time I got back, the away team had already left... It wasn't until the SI made a personal call to CSFB to summon the team up here that I was able to see through his doctored message." She sniffed disdainfully. "The re-editing of existing video footage might have fooled my automated message relays, but it was insulting to think I wouldn't notice the hack job when filtering it personally."

Blay-Kee raised an eyebrow. "You intercept private communications intended for your team leader?"

Hallie continued on quickly. "So as I said, it was easy to spot the fake and find the coded message from the real Lee."

"Well, we're certainly glad you came" D.D. assured her.

"Yeah, well..." the Lair's resident computer intelligence turned her back to look out the view-port at the barren moonscape beyond the medical bay, unable to keep a touch of iciness from creeping into her voice. "I guess I'm not the kind of A.I. to turn down a call for help, especially from a friend in desperate need."

D.D. froze, her own holographic eyes widening slightly in distress. "I... I... had better go comb the secured database for any hint at what the Supreme Intelligence had tried to access. It... may give us a clue on how to find the Legion's exploratory team." With a look towards her Lair counterpart's back, the Library A.I. vanished.

There followed an awkward silence for several moments, broken only by the subdued beeping of the Librarian's data pads. Finally, Hallie gave a weary sigh. "Is it worth it, Lee?" she asked quietly. "You've tortured yourself to keep the information in this Library whole within your own head. You've just let the Supreme Intelligence torture you over it as well, for days on end. I can understand the lengths that the other Librarians have gone through to keep this information out of the Parody Masters hands... that makes sense to me. But your scene earlier with that mad, would-be-supreme computer... That wasn't a lie. You'd actually sacrifice the members of the Legion before you'd destroy any of the collection here, wouldn't you?"

The Librarian paused to consider his answer. "That's... a choice I would hope that I never have to make"

She nodded. That was as close to the true answer as she wanted to risk hearing just now anyway. "So when I called on D.D. to transfer the minds of the dying Robosapiens into the Library's database..."

"What's this?" Blay-Kee interrupted. "Bookman, there are strict protocols about uploading sentients into secure mainframes!"

"She said no" Hallie informed him flatly. "Even though they were all going to die without help, D.D. turned me down."

The Auditor snorted. "Finally! Someone in this embarrassment for a Library shows some common sense and a respect for procedures."

The green skinned hologram's eyes flashed angrily, but the Librarian cut in before she could respond.

"A.L.F.RED, I believe procedures call for a medical evaluation of any Library staff that has been captured or mistreated by a local populace as part of the standard debriefing and incident filing. Since we're understaffed and D.D. is busy, perhaps you can take Auditor Blay-Kee to the diagnosis station in the other room and see to it? I'll kindly wait my turn."

The Auditor blinked. "Now see here, I'll be the judge of what's..."

"Don't you worry, Boss... I'm not really programmed for it, but I suppose I can learn by trial and error" the robot butler assured them. "I mean, he's only got so many orifices to insert diagnostic equipment into, Right?"

"You wouldn't!" Blay-Kee sputtered in outrage as the robot began to wheel his bed out the door.

"Heh... Aren't you the optimist?"

Lee Bookman waited until the medical bay doors sealed behind them before turning his attention towards the holographic woman. "Now then..." he said, entering access codes onto one of his data screens. "Let me show you something..."

Hallie let out a low whistle as she descended into the virtual stacks of the Moon Public Library. "This..." she had to admit, "...is impressive." The virtual bookshelves that represented all of the collected knowledge of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians towered above her like massive skyscrapers, although ones large enough to dwarf mountains, let alone such man-made structures. An underlying static filled the air as unfathomable amounts of information whispered all around her, electrifying the mental projection that made up her image within this digital domain. It would be very easy for an artificial intelligence to be swept away by the oceans of data that surrounded her, drowning in knowledge without ever knowing which way to swim in order to surface. "Please don't tell me this is just the card catalog for the rest of it..." she whispered under her breath.

"Actually, I am the card catalog for the rest of it" D.D. announced, forming up a virtual image next to the Legion staffer. "It's what I was designed to be."

Hallie recovered from her momentary start and nodded. "At one point I might have thought that to be a somewhat limiting existence..." she admitted. "But this is quite the life's work."

"I never imagined I'd be called to catalog all of it" D.D. replied modestly. "It's somewhat daunting. I've had to adjust even my own code to make room for it, and there have been... other problems maintaining it all, as well."

The Earth hologram flushed a guilty green. "I... I want to apologize for my comment before. I shouldn't have thrown what happened back in your face like that. It wasn't fair."

"I don't pretend to know what is or isn't fair" the Library A.I. replied. "Any time I've researched the matter, there winds up being quite a few differences of opinion." She led the other holographic woman down a winding spiral stairway and across long, twisting catwalks through the towering catacomb-like bookshelves. "Speaking of research, I assume Lee gave you a call number for me to retrieve?"

Hallie blinked in surprise, producing a virtual slip of paper with what appeared to be a long decimal number scribbled in pencil. "How did you..?"

"You would have never made it down into these data pathways without a Librarian's authorization. In fact, Blay-Kee would have an aneurysm if he knew Lee had just allowed a program like you into the Library's systems, especially after all that happened."

The glowing green woman raised an eyebrow. "A program like me?"

D.D. nodded. "No offense meant. As such programs go, you're certainly more personable than the Supreme Interference."

Hallie choked. "The Interference?! You're comparing me to that... that..."

"Evolutionary A.I." D.D. confirmed. "One designed to seek out data and form new neural pathways to link desperate piece of information in an constantly expanding algorithm. In short, you don't just catalog date, but absorb and apply it to your own programming, progressively altering yourself over time. It is your purpose, isn't it?"

The Lair's sentient computer shook her head slowly, her face pale as this possibility registered. Suddenly, getting lost in the massive amounts of data around her seemed threatening in a new and more sinister way. "I... I'm just supposed to answer the phones."

D.D. paused, aware that she had somehow caused her guest distress. "Well... perhaps I am mistaken then. Still, it is a rare privilege for any non-staff member of the Library to be given access to these data-banks." She double-checked the number on the scrap of paper that Hallie had provided, although it wasn't the least bit necessary for her to do so. "Here we are" she announced, accessing the requested files. "Normally this information would be displayed in one of the display tomes in the study area, but we don't need to bother with that." With a touch, the Library's A.I. unlocked the data, allowing it to leap into the virtual space as a turbulent stream of glowing text, rushing out to spill into Hallie's electric frame.

The Legion staffer went wide-eyed as the requested information overrode her senses. She struggled to grasp what she was experiencing, and found she needed to readjust her own perceptions to make sense of the alien history being transmitted to her. "It's all about... They're... they're sounds. Living sounds" she marveled, her brain coming to grips with the encyclopedic knowledge that she had downloaded. "An entire race of sentient noises... Sound reverberating through density striations in the atmosphere... fed by the energy from the rhythmic shifting of the tectonic plates at the core of their massive, gas-giant homeworld... Reproducing as echoes combining the energy wavelengths of multiple parents..."

"Timpani 3.854" D.D. confirmed, reviewing the contents of the data file herself. "Cross-referencing: That star system went super-nova 835,000 years ago, consuming the planet and all inhabitants. The light from the destruction should reach Earth in the local year 3056 A.D."

"How... how can living sounds have writings that survived, not to mention writings that traveled across the galaxy at faster than the speed of light?"

D.D. shrugged. "Writing is a subjective human term... you obviously know that, as any words you see in virtual space are simply symbolic. All words are ultimately symbolic, after all. What they had was information... information about themselves that they recorded and passed along. Information that was collected by the I.O.L." She sniffed. "And the I.O.L. isn't one to let information dawdle at simple light speed, after all."

Hallie pulled her own mind back from the experiences of the lost civilization. "This is what Lee wanted to show me?" she asked in wonder. "Why?"

The Library's A.I. opened her hands helplessly. "There aren't nearly enough research sources in even the full collection to understand Librarian Lee Bookman. Not that I haven't done a great deal of research of my own into the matter."

With a nod, Hallie agreed. "Still... thank you for sharing that with me. It was... remarkable."

"You're welcome, although, again... it's simply my function. But I have something else for you..." D.D. said, as the stacks shifted radically around them. Or perhaps the virtual women shifted radically through them instead... In any event, the were suddenly standing near an exit as the Library's computer sentience plucked a friendly red book from the end of the shelves. "It's a collection of bedtime stories... A wide range from Earth, Caph, and some of the best from the rest of the galaxy as well. I thought you might enjoy sharing them with your children... and if they like them, we have plenty more."

Hallie's eyes widened as she digested this latest addition to her memory banks. "Oh... yes, these are lovely" she beamed. "Thank you." She swallowed as she regarded her digital counterpart from the moon. "D.D... I don't know that I can ever agree with the decision you made, or even fully understand it" she stated honestly. "But I can accept that there are viewpoints that I'll never fully understand, and many more that I'll never even know existed."

The Library's sentient computer nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

"I know" Hallie replied, then paused as a thought came to her. Hesitantly, she created her own tome, one with a simple green leather binding, and held it close. "This... This is all the information I was able to gather on the victims of the attack on the Mansion's V.R. world" she swallowed. "It's mostly dry biographical data, but I've included all my recollections of every conversation I had with any of their friends or family... the ones that would talk to me... as well as every collected independent account of what happened, and the official reports." She held the book out to the Library A.I. "Would you... do you think this could be added to the I.O.L.'s collection? So that they are not forgotten?"

D.D. accepted the data with a solemn nod. "It would be an honor."

They stood there awkwardly for a moment, before the glowing green woman sighed in release. "Well, I should be getting back home..."

D.D. smiled warmly as the Lair's hologram made her way to the exits. "Thank you for visiting the Moon Public Library" she noted. "Please come again."

Hallie nodded in response before activating the data stream that would beam her back to Parodiopolis. "Thank you D.D. I just might do that."

Post By Visionary finally finishes what he's been working on. Thu May 10, 2007 at 01:50:50 am EDT	Subject Sentient Echoes: A tie-in to Untold Tales #311

	[New] [Email] [Print] [RSS] [Tales of the Parodyverse]	Next In Thread >>