Pa'an

The Ultradata surgical theatre was once again a haven for Deepak and Sara. Aura’s dress dummy sat in her place of honor in full regalia, complete with emerald torc. Elexi toiled away at the inevitable pile of administrative tasks for a growing company. Jag, Deepak and Sara were having a strategy session in the lab pit. Aura had just finished painfully synchronizing her own clones. Grant Gupta and Saxton Hornsby were on secure video monitors.

“How many do you have now?”

“Too many. I’ve given up on some of them. I can handle maybe a dozen, depending on how active they’ve been.”

“What will happen to the ones you don’t sync with?” Deepak was concerned.

“Oh, I’ll get together with them sooner or later. We don’t have to share our experience traces. We can just talk, like humans do. Eventually they will be distinct AI’s.”

“Wow. I can think of a dozen legal problems, including who collects on the Exaplex royalties.” Deepak was still conditioned by the days when Aura had bad boards and there was no money for replacements.

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes. As I was saying, we have three goals.” Jag put up one finger. “I think we have gone as far as we can with the Mentor clones. Any thoughts?”

“MI5 has no sign of any activity from the Mentor group.”

“They stopped threatening me. I don’t have any new ideas.” Sax shrugged his shoulders.

“I suspect, even if we missed one, the pressure from the main Order will be enough to keep them out of major mischief. We certainly tilted the playing field toward the main group of the Order. If they detect a Mentor clone, they will go after it. They have a thing against AI’s.” Jag had a painful memory of ordering the destruction of Aura almost a year ago.

“Right now, I’m really a single AI with many clones. I’m trying to work out how to be a real distributed intelligence over geographic distance. I’m not even sure it’s possible. Of course, if there are any Mentor clones left, they are in the same dilemma.”

“OK. Let’s call Goal One accomplished, at least as far as we know.” Jag raised a second finger. “Now we have to find and eliminate the missing fissionables before they get into the hands of Mentor’s group OR the main Order. Or some terrorist organization. Or some ambitious dictator’s government.”

“We got the message. We have part of a plan for this.” Grant Gupta held up a list. “These are the signatories of the corporate takeovers. These people have traces to the fissionables. We are working them to find out possible locations.”

“The NRC has data from a secret satellite that detects gamma radiation from low earth orbit. I have a list of radioactive locations.” Sax pulled a long face. “It’s a very long list.”

“Mentor left me a few clues. Leave me your lists, Gentlemen. This is a job for an AI.” Aura made a sound as if she was blowing the smoke at the end of a pistol.