Chapter No. 93. Test

Existence is existential!

The next day, I was at my usual engineering station on the command deck. The others were at their stations doing their things.

"Did the Tyco data indicate any other possible proto-human planets?" I asked Molly.

"Yes. It talks about another habitable planet in this galaxy. I'm surprised about that because this particular elliptical galaxy has a very active supermassive black hole that spewing out lots of deadly radiation while it consumes lots of dust and even entire stars.

"Maybe that's where the real genesis proto human species lives."

"That's not how its recorded in the data, but you might be right."

I sighed. "I'm not sure if I could take another disgusting encounter with a crazy human species."

She chuckled, "Like you said before, you never know what we're going to run into out here in the big universe."

"So far, it hasn't been what I expected."

"Yeah, but we're bound to get lucky eventually."

I stood up. "Okay, see if you can fine more information about this system. I'm going to go down to engineering to check up on some new engine modifications."

She nodded. I trotted off to the elevator and descended to the engineering deck where I found Queen and her assistants busy studying engineering drawings.

"How's it going?" I asked as I approached.

"We have done the calculations for the new modifications, Jason," Queen said. "They are ready for deployment."

"That's great! How soon can they be applied?"

"We would require at least twenty-four hours."

"Good! I'll check back with you."

I left engineering and went up to the agricultural/recreational deck where I found Ben, my android assistant, and Jerry, his buddy, in the Black Hole bar. As soon as I entered and sat down at their table, a barmaid came over with a glass of beer.

"Thanks," I told her.

She sauntered back to the bar while swinging her caboose in a provocative manner.

"I didn't realize that you guys came here this early," I said to the two male androids.'

"Time is relative," Jerry said. "We don't have a schedule."

"What about you?" Ben asked. "Do you maintain a schedule?"

I shrugged. "Not really. I usually check engineering status on the command deck, but we're in a lull right now until Molly comes up with a new destination."

"Hopefully, it'll be better than the last one," he said.

I shook my head. "I hope so too."

One of the barmaids was in the process of bringing Ben a new glass of beer when she suddenly stopped in mid step. I looked at her and couldn't understand what had happened to her. Then I realized that neither Ben nor Jerry were moving. They acted as if they were frozen.

Something was wrong, but I couldn't understand what it was. I got up and hurried up to the command deck. The instant I came out of the elevator I knew that something bad had occurred.

I noted that everyone had ceased moving and were frozen in place. In fact, it was an eerie silence, as if time had stopped. I looked around and saw that Judy was also not moving.

Yet I was still moving, which meant that this had to be a system malfunction that didn't affect me. I used my ability as prime mover to sense the main computer system, but I couldn't locate the problem. It had to be something serious.

A thought crossed my mind. Could this be an attack from the outside? If it were, I would have to locate the anomaly in literally trillions of lines of code, and I had no one other than myself to do it.

I had to think this through logically. If this were an attack from an outside source, the most logical point of attack would be in the central processor core code. That code is responsible for regulating the processors' computing chores. Shutting down the processor core would literally stop everything and everybody.

But that didn't make sense in this case. Our vessel was still functioning normally, and I was still able to think and move about. Whatever this was, it wasn't affecting me.

Or was it? Could it be that I was the only one affected and through me the attackers were disabling all of the other androids? How could I discern attack code in my positronic brain? I needed an auxiliary assistant.

This was not going to be easy!

I walked around the ship trying to think of a way to get out of this dilemma. I kept coming back to the assistant idea, but who would that be? All of the others were affected.

Then, as if a miracle, I heard a baby cry. I ran to Molly's quarters and went to a bedroom that had been converted to a baby's room where I found the infant Edward lying in a bassinette crying his eyes out because his mother wasn't nursing him.

The fact that he was still moving meant that his positronic brain had not yet been synced to the android collective, at least not completely. Or maybe it had but was not considered a threat. If I could make contact with his brain, I could get through to the central processor core.

I paced back and forth while Edward bawled. I had to figure out how to make contact. Then it came to me. Physical contact was baked into androids, especially in the case of infants, whose only physical contact with others was through actual touching.

I picked Edward up and cuddled him and he instantly stopped crying. I established a link to his positronic brain, which in turn gave me a path to the central computer core array, but I wasn't sure how that worked.

There were billions of lines of code in the core programming. I had to purse through them as quickly as I could, but it would take some time to find the errant code.

After an hour, I finally located the code that had been inserted into the main processor core programming. Now, the next task was to purge the code and then reboot the entire system. That would require a lot of intense work.

The break came when I was able to quarantine the attack code. Now, the next step was to reboot the system and hope that it was not permanently damaged.

Then, something happened that shook me up big time. I wanted to go to engineering and suddenly I was there. How did that happen? It was as if I had teleported. Was this an ability that androids have that I was not aware of? I didn't have time to think about it. I had a more important problem to solve.

I found that Queen and her assistants were frozen in place, I went to the main console and began the process of rebooting the main system. I had to enter several passwords and pins to get into the core program. It kept asking me if I was sure that I wanted to reboot the system, warning me that it could result in lost data and so forth. I kept hitting the Enter key and reciting Psalm 23, hoping that one or both would work.