A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, mirrored and overlaid upon itself
“OK, but sir, how did you know that Capt. Silver would get his life together before the Wheb Collective collected him? They look like perfectly fearsome creatures, so anybody who would ignore that had to be pretty far gone!”
“He was, and I didn't know, Lieutenant. But if one is going to thunder, always thunder confidently.”
A few people were staring at Lieutenant Dina Flack as she boldly asked Commodore Wilhelm Allemande about how he had encouraged a commercial captain in more trouble than he knew to do the right and life-saving thing.
“But you thunder effectively, sir,” she said. “Not that I necessarily want to do that. Most people I knew growing up yelled a lot, but they were not effective.”
“Oh, I have those in my family too,” he said. “Some members of the family think I am one of them, but no, Lieutenant. There is a method to my madness, and it involves the Wheb Collective's discovery, something of a ghost story – a ghost in another commodore's machine, and a ghost that is not yet.”
“Sounds interesting,” Lt. Flack said.
“The Wheb Collective has been known to humanity for quite some time – in fact, since the 22nd century when it had not yet been decided whether manned or unmanned exploration of deep space would be the way the present fleet we have would be developed. The first person to get to the edge of Wheb space did so as commander of an unmanned fleet controlled by him from his flagship.
“It is important that you understand here, Lt. Flack, that since the second half of the 20th century, there have been humans more adapted to working with computers than other people, with that becoming marked in the first quarter of the 21st century with the development of artificial intelligence. I wish you to understand, however, that the history of the world before that matters. Many people wanted to develop technology to do everything a human could do except hold the makers morally accountable.”
“Slavery, made technologically possible,” Lt. Flack said.
“And not that far back from our own time – consider that I am 95 years old, and the story that I am telling you is already 106 years ago,” Cdre. Allemande said. “What that means is that we were at that time in our history developing in the most self-centered way possible, with major technological power, but with no feeling at all for other human beings. The catastrophes that followed afterward in the 21st century you know.
“But in the recovery and warp drive eras, having encountered the logical and quite friendly Vulcans, the cycle had begun to repeat with many humans giving no thought to how much humans need each other in space. Space is vast, and one can be alone with one's machines and it not be obvious what danger one is getting into. So, the commodore of the unmanned fleet sailed right up to the edge of Wheb space and encountered their warning beacons – a friendly introduction, including the graphic by which we know roughly what they look like, but with a warning not to enter he was determined to ignore.
“But it is always a human that programs the machines. There were not yet hard rules about personal programming, and the commodore had programmed his flagship computer to be to his liking as a personality, only to find out that since there were no such checks, someone else had also done some programming of the failsafes. When he decided to go through Wheb space in spite of the warning, the 'ghost in the machine' spoke to him.
“'Commodore, I will follow your order when you give it the second time, because I am programmed to obey. I am a machine. I am not a woman whom you can manipulate with promises, nor am I a man weaker than you to dominate, nor am I a child or slave that you can whip into compliance. I will comply, and be returned to the elements from which I am made. You will die, Commodore. Your children will mourn you. Your friends will lament you. You will be remembered not for your good, but for your acting against clear evidence. I do not care because I cannot care, but I am programmed to alert you when you make a decision comparable to activating the self-destruct sequence.'”
“The commodore checked the beacon's full information feed at that point, and the computer had rearranged it to present the key parts first. The Wheb Collective fleet was thus discovered, and he was glad enough to get home with that news. But he did not run home to do that. He ran home because of what the computer had said to him: 'I am not a woman,' first, and, 'Your children will mourn you.' That told him who had programmed that.
“His wife,” Lt. Flack breathed.
“She cared enough about him to announce that she was divorcing him that way,” he said. “She knew he would run into a wall out there and figure it all out. Their marriage was over, but he was saved.
“What I learned from that, Lieutenant, is that even in an age in which humans want to talk to machines who talk back only as programmed, they can still be reached as human beings if you know what is important to them. Human self-preservation is the most hard-wired impulse there is, and I have a really big voice, still at 95, so … .”
“Oh, that's what you are doing!” Lt. Flack said, and cracked up laughing.
“Once I can get them feeling human again, and that they are in an environment in which they are not going to push a button and fix the situation, they can then recognize the other dangers in their environment – or, if necessary, I can be the danger that keeps them from being a danger to themselves and others any more. There is a method to my madness.”
“I see that, Commodore!”
Cdre. Allemande smiled.
“I mentioned that the wife ended the marriage. It took ten years, but the husband changed his ways and they reconciled, and were surprised in the following year with one last bundle of joy.”
Lt. Flack did the math.
“106 years ago, minus ten, minus nine months is just about 95 years – that's you, Commodore! You are the ghost that is not yet!”
“Correct, Lieutenant. My parents were Cdre. Walther Allemande and Dr. Wilhelmine, master computer programmer. My father heard my mother through the machine and made it home, which allowed me to be born just about eleven years later, in 2189.”