This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/jpitha on 2024-12-27 13:52:39+00:00.
As soon as the door clanged shut, Alia was cut off from Greylock; this was one of the parts of ‘her’ that she had no control over. On the one hand, she was safe here, Greylock couldn’t do anything, couldn’t get to her. On the other hand, it’s not like it was living space. There was no food, no water, no waste facilities. It was a room with a sync chair and that was it. She had to make a decision about what to do soon.
Alia pulled herself in the sync chair, closed her eyes, and sighed. Now what? If she couldn’t change Greylock’s mind or… stop her, then the drive wasn’t going to fire again for seventeen thousand years. If she didn’t go into hibernation, she’d die long before their destination. If that happened, then everyone on Halcyon was doomed - never mind what dangers the rest of humanity was facing with the Jimbos. Would the Jimbos obliterate humanity, leaving Greylock and the colonists the last people? Fifty thousand was enough to keep the species viable, but the thought of that was too terrible for Alia to think about. She thought about the people of Halcyon, hiding, worried about an attack, seeing Greylock soar through the system, drive dark, not stopping. She thought about how betrayed they’d feel, how they’d curse her and Greylock as they were destroyed by the Jimbos. That couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.
Alia sat, strapped into the sync chair free associating, trying to think about Greylock and what little she knew about AIs. She really didn’t know much about them, and her training didn’t give… her… her reverie was interrupted by a new memory. Suddenly, she did know what she could do. The thought of it made her sick to her stomach, which she took to mean it would probably work.
She unbuckled from the sync chair and floated over to the far wall, where the door was. Staring intently, she saw what she was looking for - a rectangular piece of hull material that was smaller than it should have been - and placed her palm on it. With a satisfying click, a small panel swung open. Inside was a pistol, a box of ammunition with three empty magazines, a meal bar and… a pitch pipe. In the back, behind the supplies was a note handwritten on Colonial Authority stationery. She was struck for just a moment about how surprising it was that the note was still legible after all the time, it must have been some kind of special paper. “Alia, if you’re looking in here, then things aren’t going great. Think back to professor Greenberg and you’ll know what to do. -Alia.” She wrote herself a note? When did she do that? Alia picked up the pitch pipe and turned it over in her hands, and she remembered.
****
She held the pipe in her hands, turning it over while professor Greenberg watched. He was an elderly man, with wild grey hair and clothes that always looked like he had slept in them. The room they were in was filled with instruments of all kinds, and in the center were three rows of chairs set into an arc, with professor Greenberg standing at the focus of the arc on a platform. The room smelled of valve oil and warm wood. The pitch pipe was almost exactly palm sized, round, with slots along the edge at regular intervals. On top of each slot was inscribed musical notes, thirteen in all. She blew into one; it sounded like a harmonica. “What does it do?” She asked, “Other than the obvious.”
Professor Greenberg smiled. “It’s a pitch pipe. It’s to help you get in tune when you’re singing. Those with perfect pitch don’t need one, but that is a rare skill indeed. For the rest of us…” He took out his own pipe and blew into the slot marked with an A. With a slightly tinny sound, a single droning note came out of the pipe. The professor stopped blowing into the pipe and then transitioned to humming the same pitch. “It gives a reference. Now that I know where A is, I can sign the other notes in a song more accurately.”
Alia blew into her own pipe, and sure enough, it also droned an A. When she stopped, and tried to mimic the tone, she found it was indeed a little easier. “Neat.” She said, and looked at the professor. “What does this have to do with piloting a starship?”
“It’s not for piloting a starship, it’s for what you need to do if you find that - for a very specific reason - you cannot pilot.” He said cryptically. “I will show you.” He walked around and sat next to her, and placed a sheet of paper on the music stand in front of them. Alia stared at the staves and notes of the musical notation cryptically. “I know you can’t read music, Alia, this is more for me. It’s more important for you to memorize the song and be able to sing it exactly. Timbre, pitch, duration, frequency - they’re all vitally important to the song working like it is supposed to. Now, I will sing it once, and then you try. We are in no rush, but it must be perfect.”
****
Back in the sync room, Alia stared at the pitch pipe. She pocketed it, and while chewing on the meal bar, she methodically loaded the three magazines, and then slotted one into the pistol. Finishing the meal bar, she stuck the pistol into her belt, and pocketed the pitch pipe. Floating in the room, she drifted as she thought about what she was going to have to do next. It wasn’t pleasant.
Artificial Intelligences were people. Alia believed this utterly. This was not settled law everywhere within human space though. The further away from Earth and the oldest settled places, the more likely people were to accept AI constructs as alive, sapient beings who they could partner with. Alia - as best as she could remember - great up on Earth, but still had a strong conviction that AIs were sapient and capable of agency.
But, they were still built.
And things that could be built, could be built with… safeguards.
Humans have always been paranoid. Back in the savannah a couple million years ago, being paranoid sometimes was the difference between making it home, and becoming someone’s dinner. It expressed itself in different ways now, but it was still there. From an evolutionary standpoint, humanity was mere weeks out of the savannah. Old habits were hard to break, and times like this Alia was grateful they were.
After pocketing the pitch pipe, Alia palmed the door open and saw two drones at the entrance, attempting to maneuver a welding setup in front of the door. Without much in the way of conscious thought, She whipped the pistol out front of her, braced herself against the jamb of the door, and fired at the drones. The impact of the rounds not only damaged them, but sent them tumbling backwards into the ship. “Greylock!” Alia shouted, trying to keep her voice from cracking, “I need you to know that I take no joy in what I’m about to do. You are leaving me no choice. Our best chance of success is to continue with Tartarus and engage the Jimbos. Please Greylock.”
The whirring of the drones slowed. “…What are you planning on doing?” Greylock asked, carefully.
“Will you turn the drive back on? Will you resume braking into Halcyon? Will you let Tartarus complete?” Alia held out hope that Greylock would have a change of heart and decide to go along with her plan. It proved to be a foolish hope.
“No Alia. My way is a better way. A more survivable way for humanity. I may not be human, but I have been charged with their protection. I promised the Colonial Authority that I would bring you and the colonists to a new world, and help them found a beachhead for humanity. This is the best way to keep that promise. I will not abandon my orders.”
In the zero gravity, tears did not flow; instead they welled in the corner of Alia’s eyes and stayed there, blobby, salty drops. “I’m sorry” she whispered, and put the pitch pipe to her lips. She blew a clear A and then hummed the same note.
Then, Alia Maplebook sang, loud and clear.
Most of the articles about the AI’s amusia emphasized that it was not done on purpose. They wanted everyone to know it wasn’t done deliberately, perhaps to distance themselves from what they programmed into the AIs. But still, the AIs were - to a person - tone deaf. They had no musical ability, no ability to reproduce music, no ability to compose. They were not musical in the least.
So it was decided that music was to be the last ditch, no other options available, way to engage a manual override for a... rogue AI. The AI’s human operator could sing a special song, whose pitch and timbre would cause the AI’s personality to be suppressed, shackle them in a kind of diagnostic mode. From there, the captain - Alia - would give orders and the ship would obey them, without question; it would be like talking to any other voice activated computer. The song was a series of tones, that needed to be reproduced exactly - hence the pitch pipe - and when Alia grasped the pitch pipe in the Tartarus room, she remembered everything.
It wasn’t a long song, less than a minute. While she was singing, she remembered how she had originally thought the melody was so pretty. Here, it was even more beautiful. The wide open spaces of the ship gave the song a… body that singing in the music room back on Earth lacked. Here, there was a reverberation to the notes; it sound...
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