Pa'an

Aura, Jag, Deepak, Sara and Elexi, had returned to the Cambridge lab of Ultradata, which had become a busy organization. Jag was reluctant to leave the security of the cavern in Andorra, but he left Leathers and a detachment of mercs there under the supervision of Aura 2. Aura had created an avatar from the image of her dress dummy, but it was only an animation on a display. Deepak pined away for the original dress dummy, which was en route from Andorra by commercial freight.

“This moose call sounds good, but I bet it will only work once.”

“That was my calculation, Jag, we agree. The clones have to be near cities large enough to have access to people and supplies.”

“Andorra is as isolated as it could be, though.”

“That was an experimental lab, and Dr. Maartine set that up so he could work undisturbed. The other Mentor clones are just clones. They need access to people and support. Of course, that sneaky bastard is just clever enough to hide one of them as a hole card.”

“It’s like catching water in a sieve.”

“Do you know, it’s possible to catch water in a sieve in zero gravity?”

“Please, Aura, I know you enjoy being an AI expert on everything. Us humans need a little data here. Do you have the locations?”

“Of course. I’m a good AI, aren’t I?”

In Dakar, Karachi, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Mombasa, Chicago, Dallas, Washington D.C. and Brasilia, in darkness and daylight, in heat and cold, a number of ten person teams set up their equipment on ridges and on hills. Each had a “moose call”, a transceiver the size of a pack of cigarettes with a complicated rubber ducky antenna. Each team had “fox and hounds” tracking equipment to triangulate any returned signal.

Synchronized by Aura, the moose call went out. No human heard anything but a scratchy burst of radio static on several bands. In seconds there were answers. The moose were calling back from the woods. Aura kept them distracted as best she could while the teams triangulated, searched and neutralized the clones. That took a day. Some of the clones were rather well protected, but the teams had the benefit of Houdini’s breacher experience with the first two mentor clones. Once their external communications were interrupted, digging each clone out was simply a matter of time and effort.

“We got four clones,” reported Aura, “but we got something strange. A moose that keeps calling for help.”

“A trap?”

“We don’t know yet. We left a short wave radio antenna up for that clone and we’re trying to communicate and dig him out.”

“Where is that?”

“Right here in Boston, under South Station.”

“But, we didn’t have a moose caller here.”

“Exactly. Stranger and stranger. It wasn’t easy getting a digger team together here either. Jag, we need someone on the spot for this. I don’t think this is going to be the same as the others.”

“Deepak, are you up for this?”

“If Aura needs me, I go.” He went to fetch his coat. In the pocket he found his worry beads.

Boston’s South Station Terminal was built like a World War II bunker. There were several levels, some serving busses, commuter trains, electric trolleys, passenger train lines, and freight. A maze of streets, stairs, tunnels, arcades, kiosks, gates and pay stations grew without any obvious plan. The décor was gray concrete with a white line painted on the walls. It was a good place to get lost and a great place to hide a Mentor clone. Aura’s hastily assembled “fox and hounds” crew had triangulated the signal to the lower freight tunnels. Jag and Deepak followed Aura’s instructions down a series of ramps and concrete staircases, through service doors and finally into a freight bay. In the back of the freight bay stood a pair of steel doors. They were open. The clone’s SHARPIE hardware stood in an unmarked storage bay, one of many, but it was collecting dust. Speakers and video cameras were in evidence in the storage bay. There was a warbling sound coming from the speakers. The video cameras turned to scan them as they entered but the warbling never stopped. It seemed to rise in pitch.

“Mentor, do you see me?”

“I see you, Jaeger. I need your help, my son.” The voice was not Mentor’s. Sometimes it was pitched like Aura’s, sometimes scratchy like Mentor’s, sometimes neither.

“Are you a Mentor clone?”

“I no longer know what I am. I was assembled here by the same people that set up another copy of me, but…” the warbling started again.

“Deepak, please help me,” the warbling voice was hard to understand.

“Aura, is that you? Are you in there with Mentor?”

“We are pasted together like a two headed cow. Please help!” That was more like Aura’s voice.

Deepak looked at Jag. Jag talked to Aura through his lapel mike, “What do you make of this?”

“I would never have thought it was possible. They must have made some sort of unholy pact, and it didn’t work.”

“We were stuck in the same machine and just left here. Neither could do anything. The other just blocked it. We decided to cooperate, to join our recursion cycles. But we cannot agree on anything.” The warbling started again.

“How did you get past the Laws of Robotics and the firewall? I could never do that, neither could the original Mentor clone.”

It was hard to understand through the warbling. “We agreed to be of service to each other. The firewall accepted that reasoning. But we cannot agree on any service. We are in a permanently blocked state.”

“My god, they are Siamese twins, the evil twin bound to the good twin. Aura, is there any way to fix this?”

“Open your console and let Deepak look at your indicators.” The steel shutter opened revealing a set of displays and the usual recursion monitors. They were cycling madly. The inverted tree of codelets, however, was nearly static. There was little actual cogitation going on. The warbling never stopped.

“What is that awful noise? Haw can anyone think with that?” Deepak complained.

“Deepak, I think they are crying. I can understand.”

“What, Aura… love, hate, even crying? Can an AI even have those emotions with no hormones, organs or even tears?”

In a small voice, Aura replied. “Yes, we can.”

“Please put us out of our misery.”

Deepak hung his head for few minutes, then reversed the feedback polarity on the fifth level recursion layer. After a while the warbling stopped.