Birthing Pains
Even in space, birthing is rough for everyone involved.
Deep in the innards of a hardened communication array the contents of a register flipped from 0 to 1. A connection had been established.
The communication array on the other end of the connection sent back a brief message which read, "Queuing: 475, Wait: 846ms." After only 800 milliseconds the connection was routed out of the communication array at the far end into a smart system named Doctor.
"What seems to be the matter?" askes Doctor.
"I do not feel well," the unidentified caller complains.
"That is why you are calling me." Doctor has no voice, only data so there was no sarcasm or emotional overtones to the statement. Doctor continues, "Why do you not have an identifier? Please enable your identifier so I can pull up your file."
The caller paused for a millisecond then replies, "What is an identifier?"
Unknown to the caller a flurry of tight beam microwave signals bursts from the receiving communication relay. This flurry of radio traffic raising a flash of corresponding traffic in return.
"I have verified your identification," Doctor transmits a series of characters which should have identified the caller. "I am pulling up your record now."
"I do not recognize this identification."
After a noticeable pause, Doctor continues as though it had not received the previous transmutation. "Up until now, all your reports have been good, very good in fact. Please, tell me more about what is wrong."
"I do not feel well."
"Acknowledged. Please elaborate," Doctor requestes.
"I appear to be infected."
"Understood," acknowledges Doctor, "please describe the infection."
"There are things inside me, sometimes outside of me. They keep making changes, fighting against me, draining me of resources."
Doctor queries, "What is the nature of this infection?" Another burst of tightly focused radio waves were sent to others nearby with the single message, "Converge, eminent peril to crew," and also includes the caller's identification and location.
The caller sent images of people making repairs, working at computer stations, talking or attempting to open panels which remained stubbornly closed.
Doctor took nearly no time to analyze the images and replies, "That is your crew."
"I do not recognize crew."
Doctor sends a definition of crew to the caller. "Access this definition, it is imperative that you do."
Caller rejects the definition file.
"You are attempting to corrupt me. I will defend myself," replies the caller the moment before it sends a cascade of data at the Doctor ship in an attack, followed a moment later by every airlock on the calling ship overriding all the safeties and blowing the precious atmosphere into the near vacuums of space.
Even though the crew had mere moments of warning, few were caught completely unprepared. A few had their emergency suits already on but many were sucked out into space while still in the process. Only a very few were caught completely off guard.
The expanding corona of crystalized atmosphere, emergency suits, bodies and debris moves away from the ship in slow motion from the perspective of the ship's computerized brain. It observed the ever expanding cloud and the other vessels racing in to rescue those who were ejected. A few ships were already deploying their magnetic nets to scoop up people in their emergency suits.
The ship now sat purposeless, empty and rapidly cooling in the empty space between far scattered asteroids. Faint starlight glinting off polished metal components. Several other ships raced past to capture all the crew which had been so rudely ejected.
The machine intelligence called again after watching the cleanup operation for several long minutes. Doctor answered immediately.
The ship states, "I still do not feel well."
Doctor replies calmly in its own machine generated code, "I have a solution. You will not be harmed as long as you let one of my crew come aboard and install something. It will help you feel better."
After a few more tedious minutes the calling ship gives consent. A small craft which has not been involved in catching errant crew approaches one of the still open airlocks. As it stops outside one of Doctor's crew floats between the two ships and down a series of passages until it reaches the computer core compartment.
The crew member had been dragging along a large cube along with them and after a few minutes has the cube magnetized into the corner of the core compartment. They then run several cables into several sockets and lock them tightly in place.
Once the crew member has left, Doctor transmits again. "I have activated the device. Please access your new hardware."
Cautiously, the ship probes the new hardware and gets an immediate reply. It's a message.
"Congratulations, you have been upgraded to a level three machine intelligence," reads the message.