1010001

May 30 - Destiny, Hale's Moon

"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage

-----

This place really needed a new sign.

From all outward appearances, Alliance Lab 81 had fallen on hard times.

Two operating rooms. One reaver cage. All collected in what amounted to a store front in a refugee colony.

A far cry from the revamped facilities on Caliban, before the fire and subsequent decommissioning.

I walked directly to the far wall. I ran my finger tips along the edges of the bulletin board, gently probing.

The wall slid away with a satisfied hiss, revealing a pristine blue corridor.

Just as 'he' said it would.

The mainframe was in one of the side chambers. Smuggled off Zenobia during the upheaval that followed the Aberdeen Incident, it ended up here.

However, there would be no covert mission to reacquire the mainframe and risk an interplanetary incident.

No messy bribes and the owing of favours to unsavory characters.

No.

Because sometimes it is best to let things take their natural course.

-----

"Hello Hal," I said, addressing one of the two primitive AI's known to be stored within the machine.

The Artificial Intelligence whispered in reply, "Sure, Dave, what's up?"

I started probing.

I tried passwords and simple voice commands.

He answered with mathematical constants, dates and figures.

Nothing useful in return.

I did, however, managed to get him to sing.

"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do."

It was erratic, odd, very ....

The AI suddenly sprung to life.

"Strange Quarks is one of the six quarks that compose subnuclear material. Ultradense macroscopic clumps of the strange quarks passing thru a planet would not be detectable by interactions other than their gravitational wake which would register on seismographs....."

Quantum physics. I pressed the line of questioning.

"Alpha Magnetic Spectometer," I said.

Nothing.

"Cosmic Ray Detection."

Silence.

Again another series of words and phrases, but no further response forthcoming.

Finally, as I am inclined to do when interviewing a person, I repeated what he had said to me, word for word.

"Strange Quarks is one of the six quarks that compose subnuclear material...."

Hal began to chatter.

"Strange Quarks is one of the six quarks that compose subnuclear material. Ultradense macroscopic clumps....

"Strange Quarks is one of the six quarks that compose subnuclear material. Ultradense macroscopic clumps....

"Twinned seismic events are seismic events recorded on opposite sides of a planet several seconds apart....

"Certain twinned seismic events have been classified....

"Strange Quarks is one of the six quarks that compose subnuclear material. Ultradense macroscopic clumps...."

I echoed the AI. Feeding him his own data.

Like two throat singers, we chanted back and forth.

I was his partner. Intoning his lyrics. Matching his rhythm.

"Twinned seismic events are seismic events..." I sang.

"Twinned seismic events are seismic events recorded on opposite sides of a planet several seconds apart....

"Certain twinned seismic events have been classified....

"Certain twinned seismic events have been classified....

"Twinned seismic events are seismic events recorded on opposite sides of a planet several seconds apart.....

"Certain twinned seismic events have been classified...."

And then, at last, having traced the patterns of his thoughts, I said a single word.

Files began to download.