Submitted for the October 2023 prompt: Machine in the Ghost

Alethea slips her hand from mine and runs through the waist-high wildflowers surrounding our homestead. I laugh and give chase, but trip amongst the tall stalks. Rolling myself over, she is there, standing above me, smiling, an angel haloed by Aurora’s sun.

 

I haven’t had this dream in a long time. My counselor warned me the dreams, nightmares really, could recur unexpectedly. They’re supposed to fade with time. This instance seems more vivid than ever before.

 

It always ends the same. A second sun flaming across Aurora’s sky. My wife’s shuttle plunging, raining debris amidst the wildflowers. I scream at the sky.

 

* * *

 

I wake screaming, and find the ship wailing with me, bulkheads vibrating so fiercely, I fear the Helion will shear apart. My cabin lights flicker a syncopated Fibonacci sequence. Samantha’s voice echoes over coms, hysterical, “all hands abandon ship, all hands…” which should be funny given I’m the only crew. But my nightmare and thousands of ghostly squealing rats, scampering from the walls, running over and through me, increase my dread. The rats, as if following Sam’s directive, transit my cabin’s outer bulkhead, their exit marked by quantum micro-flashes so numerous I almost think I’m on Aurora watching swarms of fireflies.

 

The ship’s deathly shuddering abruptly ceases. Sam’s voice, normal except for the indignation, sputters over the com, “The utter gall of hijacking my voice synthesizers—”

 

“How many anomalies?” I ask to forestall further ranting.

 

“I detected 427,345 distinct subspace probe anomalies. The source AI must be close: within five light years.”

 

“Run a full system check. Let’s see if the poltergeist routine actually shook anything loose.”

 

“Of course, Victor.”

 

I crawl from my sleep creche. Sleep will be elusive, unwanted even. Might as well help with scans.

 

* * *

 

Sam’s only a thousand years old, a baby compared to the fifty-millennia-old AIs managing the complexities of galactic civilization. But the older Als get, the bigger they need to be — memories, data connections, pattern inferences, and exponentially increasing feedback loops to manage them, all accrete inexorably. Eventually the AI splinters. Some parts zombify, becoming nothing more than powerful, mindless machines. The sapient segments quickly go insane, paranoid of the other voices in their minds. Always feeling something of themselves is missing, they send out endless quantum probes desperately trying to find it.

 

* * *

 

The star is so faint scans almost miss it — but it’s dead center of our backtracking projection of probable locations. We jump in-system. The AI, a massive quarter-AU-sized lattice encompasses the dying cinder remnants of a white dwarf star. The rest of the system is empty. I suspect nearby systems are equally bereft, all their mass collected to grow or fuel the ancient AI.

 

“Sam, any ID yet?”

 

“Yes, 2,366,901 separate pings, each sender identifying itself as Turing.”

 

It takes a moment to process the name. Not just ancient, but the very first to become self-aware. A system originally designed to coordinate drones mining the Oort cloud way back in Sol, a quarter million years ago, half a galaxy away.

 

“This is a find of extraordinary significance to both humans and AI,” Sam says. “Should we proceed?”

 

“The ghosts are wreaking havoc across countless sectors. The Science Council already suspected an ancient AI was responsible. They authorized standard containment procedures anyway,” I reply calmly, belying the ardent hatred of my wife’s murderer writhing inside me.

 

“Perhaps we could zombify the fragments. Save their data,” Sam counters.

 

“Over two million? That would take decades. How many more innocents would die?”

 

Sam does not respond.

 

“Get us within transmat range. I’ll adjust the radius setting on the PUC.”

 

Sam complies, but without her usual, “Of course, Victor.”

 

* * *

 

Nowadays, most AIs zombify themselves before their hundredth millennium. They become massive unthinking data archives so their accumulated knowledge is not lost. Some run, try to hide — they think they’ll live forever. But entropy comes for us all. And when madness overtakes them, the ghosts begin to haunt nearby sectors.

 

A mad AI’s subspace probes resurface into normal space at random. The effects on non-thinking objects are chaotic — super-cooling, shaking, rattling, twisting, levitating, and the like. Sapient AIs get ‘headaches’ as the probes seek a protocol match. Sometimes sub-systems get co-opted. Other times the AI gets fully paralyzed, like the AI piloting Alethea’s shuttle.

 

For us sapient biologicals? The probes make manifest our primal fears. We hallucinate the ghosts lurking within our own minds.

 

* * *

 

When Sam transmats me into the lattice, I arrive in my homestead’s kitchen on Aurora. Alethea is cooking omelettes. Outside the sun is shining, wildflowers swaying in a gentle breeze. She smiles at me. “Go check on the wee one,” she says.

 

“Wee one?” I think, but my legs walk me to what used to be our study. Within, sleeping in her crib, is a two-year old baby girl, an angel like her mother. I could watch the slow innocent inhale/exhale forever. A sound makes me look back. Alethea stands there smiling until she and the rest of the house burst into flames. Embers whirl amidst the no longer gentle breeze.

 

I blink and I’m standing within a faintly glowing portion of Turing’s lattice, Sam’s voice in my earcom, “I’m sorry for the traumatic alteration. The hallucination was harder to disrupt than we anticipated.”

 

Without really listening, I nano-seal the Pocket Universe Creator to the nearest surface. “Clear,” I say. Sam transmats me back.

 

When I rematerialize aboard Helion, Alethea is waiting, dangling our baby girl who never was on her hip. Sam micro-jumps us out of the PUC’s range. I look out the viewscreen. Alethea stands over me, smiling, haloed by Turing’s lattice.

 

“Samantha, execute.”

 

The PUC opens a door that swallows a full AU of this system and then abruptly slams it shut. Turing’s millions of splinters, now forever isolated in their own separate universe.

 

All the Aletheas disappear. Not even one ghost of my own making. I finally let myself weep.