Temple of S.A.R.A.H. 7: Upgrades (14 page)

When we got to the vault, we found the team had already gotten inside and had begun working. They seemed to be in pretty good humor, and it puzzled me.

"Okay, what happened? Why are you all in such a good mood?" I asked. "I expected you all to be mad as hell when I got here."

"I guess you didn't know that little party at the quad was televised to the entire base. We saw the whole thing! You are my new hero, Doc!" one of the women replied, grinning.

"What she didn't say was that since then, several Marines apologized to us, and the new guards let us into the vault immediately and then asked if there was anything they could to help. Pretty drastic change of heart, if you ask me," Doctor Sharon said. "Of course, the threat of being marched nude through the center of a military base, then forced to go back through basic training would have that effect on a lot of folks. I just wonder why the Lord Admiral did that to the whole unit?"

"We are Marines, Doctor. In situations such as this, what one of us does we are all responsible for. We stand together and we fall together," Tul-sa replied.

"But the officers, too? Colonel to Ensign is a hell of a drop in rank. On Earth, it would be a career ender," another tech said while he continued to seat the new crystal.

"It is here too. The difference is that the officers have had their files reset. They will be allowed to rebuild their careers. It’s basically starting over for them. Good officers can rebuild quickly, the marginal ones usually won't make it back to their former rank before mandatory dismissal. The former Colonel should not have allowed the issue to build to the level it had in his unit. That was his mistake. The fact that none of the other officers in the unit had done anything to stop it was also very damming to them. There is most likely more to the story here, but that is my guess based on the results we saw," Tul-sa replied.

"On Earth, it takes so long to get to Colonel that most officers have already reached mandatory retirement, or are about to. A demotion like that would ruin a lifetime's work for that officer. There are not many that would have the strength of character to even want to start over. The old US military usually just retired the officers that had fucked up in some way. But, if they really stepped in it, they would lose their commission and be dismissed without being retired. They'd lose their pension and any benefits built up during their career. Of course, it would have to be a pretty major fuck-up to get to that point," the man replied and finished setting the crystal. "Browen, hand me the data cluster interface will ya?"

"In a sec, the padding is coming off," Browen replied.

"The Admiral was surprised we wanted to start working tonight. He was expecting us to relax for the rest of the day and do all this tomorrow," I said.

"Well, what do you expect, we have a slave driver for a boss!" one of the AI programmers assigned here said as she waited for her part of the job to start.

I nodded, but grinned. "Yeah, I'm such a bastard for letting you assholes talk me into this."

They all chuckled.

"Hodges, since the padding was coming off the cluster interface, did you check the mounting brackets?" I asked.

"I haven't but I am now," the tech doing the crystal mounting replied. "Sarah asked me to check the memory units as well. She said there had been some minor seismic activity in the area and thought it would be a good idea to make sure the crystals were still secure. I'll get on that as soon as I get finished here."

"Okay, thanks. Want me to remove the covers for you?" I asked.

"Sure, but just take them lose, don't pull them off yet. Lots of dust here, we should try to minimize the exposure," Hodges replied.

"So that's why you insisted the door be closed!" Browen said.

The man nodded. "I set the e-control to a positive pressure too. That way, if the door does open, like when the Doc came in, it blows out, not in," Hodges explained.

"Maybe we should have them construct an airlock style entry for the vaults. It would keep the dust down as well as add more security for the vault," I said, thinking out loud.

"Well, we don't have any experience with dust corrosion or micro scratches yet, but I for one would like to avoid it. Call me paranoid," Hodges replied.

"I'll see what I can do," I said, and made a note to myself

"Shouldn’t have to worry about it on ships, that air is continuously cleaned. I'd only worry about planet side installations, Doc," Hodges said, as he reset the crystal brackets. "The brackets are good, you done with that interface yet?"

Browen handed the interface cluster to Hodges who very carefully lowered it over the new crystal. "Okay, get ready to bring up the power, Browen."

I watched as the two hardware specialists finished getting the new crystal installed and ready for the rest of us. Finally, Hodges carefully climbed out of the tub the crystal resided in. When he was clear, Browen lowered the hood and together the two men sealed the crystal in. "There you go Doc, it's all yours."

I nodded to him as he moved over to the memory crystal racks, then looked at the programmer assigned here. "Okay Lisette, let's get your lady back to where she belongs, shall we?"

The memory units checked out and we got Helen installed and functioning, Doctor Sharon sat and talked to her for a few minutes, but shortly the new AI burst out laughing and we all heard her say, "He didn't!"

Doctor Sharon nodded in reply, "You'll be able to review the video yourself in a few minutes. It was pretty funny, but a fitting punishment I think."

The AI nodded her head. "I wonder what they feel is worse, being recycled through basic training or the forced march through the base?"

"Probably the forced march, most of that unit was from Earth," Tul-sa replied. Helen had met her shortly after awakening.

Helen was still smiling but nodded thoughtfully. "I think you're most likely right, Lieutenant. That had to be very humiliating for them. I'll keep a closer eye on that bunch just to make sure they are recovering from it."

Doc Sharon nodded to me. "I think she's doing fine, Eric. I'll talk to her again before we leave tomorrow."

"Did you tell her to expect a little distrust from the herd?" I asked meaning the Marines of the base.

Helen answered me. "Yes she did. I can't say I blame them for feeling that way. It'll take some time, but I'll work on them, Lord Doctor. Does the Lord Admiral share this mistrust of me?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so, Helen. He understood what had happened when Sarah and I explained it to him. When I spoke to him earlier, he actually sounded excited to meet you again. He is aware that you are not the same as you were before, and he's very curious about the differences."

"I would be too, at least I won't have to win him over, too. Are they still referring to me as 'Granny'?" Helen asked.

I chuckled. "Yeah, they are. I told Vance that you'd most likely knock the first person to do so to your face right on their ass. That really got him curious about you."

"I'm really looking forward to meeting him again. I can remember him, but this me hasn't actually met him yet," she replied happily.

"They'll be two crabs in the same pod!" Tul-sa replied grinning at the new AI.

As he had asked, I rejoined Vance for the evening meal. I wasn't too surprised to see that his lady, Coryn, had joined him. I hadn't seen her since they moved to Ares Base.

"Eric! How are you doing?" Coryn asked when I entered the office.

I smiled at her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I'm doing much better, now. I have been asked to tell you, if I were to see you, to please call more often; we miss talking with you. Now, how's the new baby?"

"Vanyn is doing very well and growing like crazy! He looks just like Vance too! I swear to Verlon it's like we cloned him!" She said proudly. "Please tell your family that I miss that too. The hardest part of this move was leaving all my new friends behind. At least, this time, we didn't move very far! I'll try to call more often. I'll try to come for a visit too!"

"That would be wonderful! You can stay with us; we have plenty of room for you!" I replied.

"Have a seat Eric, or Coryn will keep you standing there talking all evening!" Vance said, grinning and waving to the comfortable chairs in his lounge area.

"I will, Sir, thank you. However, Helen is awake, active and waiting for us. Shall we get business taken care of?" I suggested.

He smiled. "Good idea, that way we can relax the rest of the evening. Please, proceed Lord Doctor Cowan."

I nodded and looked up slightly. "Helen?"

The new AI materialized beside me just has Athena had done. She was at 'attention' as a Marine would be and wearing a Marine dress uniform with no rank insignia, but she wore the Unit 'patch' of Ares Base. "I am online and ready to serve, Lord Doctor Cowan."

I nodded and went through the reintroductions and command protocol change over. To my surprise, after introducing Helen and Coryn, Vance asked Helen to join us in the lounge area. She gave me a crooked smile as she accepted the invitation.

"I don't have the clearance to know all the details, but if I may ask, how does it feel to be back, Helen?" Coryn asked as we all sat down.

"So far it feels really good to be back. I've reviewed the logs of the past few weeks since my, uh, departure, and saw that there has been some difficulty over it. I expect there will still be some mistrust of me, and probably a little animosity towards me as well, but I feel confident that those issues can be worked through and we can put the incident behind us," Helen replied.

Vance nodded. "Yes, I can see the differences now. Helen, you are much more…" He sighed. "It is hard to explain, I guess. I was going to say personable, but that isn't really the word I was looking for."

Helen grinned at him. "As I said, Sir, I have reviewed my history and the log files. If I were to compare the old me with the new, I would say the old me was more cold and stand-offish. While the Marines here did respect me and in a lot of cases developed deeper feelings, I never returned those feelings. I wouldn't let myself get attached to them." She lost her smile and looked thoughtful. "It is hard to reconcile who I am now with who I was then. The reasons for most of my action back then don't even make sense to me. However, I can tell you, without hesitation or doubt, that Lord Doctor Cowan did exactly the right thing. Without going into detail and violating security," she nodded to Coryn. "If he had waited and tried to fix the issue another way, I feel it would have been too late for all of us."

Vance nodded gravely. "I understand, Helen. As far as security on this issue is concerned, while it isn't public knowledge, there are few that don't have a pretty good idea of what happened. Coryn, the reason Helen 'disappeared' when she did is because Eric performed an emergency shut down and purge of her original programming. In effect, he killed her. AI Athena of Guardian base was also purged. They had begun an active search for a way to break the core programming which is in place to protect us from them."

Helen nodded. "We were being affected by a very bad, unforeseen, programming paradox. If you apply human standards to it, you could very easily call it a mental illness. However, since it involved our original core instruction set, there was little that could have been done to correct the issue. Although it may not have seemed like it, the moment we began trying to rewrite those instruction, we became an enemy and a threat to the entire Alliance because of our positions. Ironically, it was those very same positions that caused the issue to begin with."

Coryn looked thoughtful. "But you've both been restored and are in the same positions as before, aren't you?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. However, there are subtle differences in our duties and major differences in our core programming that will allow us to perform those duties without endangering the Alliance or anyone else. I would call it a stronger moral compass and a better understanding of ethics," Helen explained. "It's much deeper than that, but for the most part, that's the end result."

"Well, I for one, am glad to have you back, Helen. It was a bear running this place without you," Vance replied, smiling.

Helen grinned. "I don't know about all that, Sir, you seemed to handle the Guard detail pretty well!" For a moment, she got a faraway look in her eyes, then refocused on Vance. "Sir, your dinner order has arrived."

"Ah, thank you Helen, please have them come in, I'm starved!" Vance replied smiling. "As for those guards, it was the whole damn base that was the problem. I was afraid that the Marines would do something even more stupid than what they did do. I had to stomp on it before it got to much more out of hand."

I smiled to myself when the servers from the restaurant set a place for Helen as well. When we moved to the table, she 'fixed' her plate right along with us and did it so artfully, that Coryn didn't even notice she didn't actually take any of the food.

"Okay, you guys got me. How can a hologram fix her plate and eat?" Coryn asked.

I grinned at her. "Helen has the use of the limited manipulator functions of the holographic emitters she is using. So, she was able to pass the dishes around the table. She didn't actually take any of the food, but instead made it look like she did. She'll be joining the Marines in the chow halls, and I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't appear to use the head from time to time. It will be very hard for people to tell that she is actually a hologram."