Chapter 44: Chapter 44 A Need For Speed
By the time Olivia reached the airlock door, there was only bits of blood to show that someone had died here. Following Granny inside the AI's ship, she couldn't help but wonder if that was such a good idea. She knew that the AI could hack the nanobots, but so far nothing had come of it. Picking up a bar that had been chewed off the wall, she hefted it and decided it would make a decent weapon.
Bite marks on the doorways and supports along the wall, showed that the Gooblens had passed this way. It wasn't until they reached the power core room, that Olivia spied any Gooblens. Old Motha was cackling, rubbing her stomach and ordering the Gooblens around her to carry her back to the ship.
"Did you eat the power core?" asked Olivia flabbergasted. A huge empty space sat where the power core had been. How were the lights still on?
"My favorite flavor!" purred Old Motha, as the Gooblen hefted her onto their shoulders and carried her bloated frame past them.
Granny turned to her, and said, "We should probably get you out of this room. There's still some random radiation bouncing around."
Olivia allowed Granny to push her out of the room, as she noticed figures in the corners. Rolling her eyes, she figured out that random radiation must mean Gooblens getting it on. Despite her doubts about the radiation, she followed Granny towards the bridge. There must have been an emergency backup battery, should the power core fail, that was keeping the lights and life support running.
Before they got there, the whole ship rocked, and the artificial gravity gave out. As it rocked again, Olivia realized the ship was being shot at! Turning back towards her ship, she grew a worm tail to propel her faster, despite the pain that came with it. The worm really didn't like being in atmosphere, so as soon as she was back at her ship, she absorbed it.
"Get all of the Gooblens back on board! We need to disconnect immediately!" she cried, rushing to the bridge.
Granny turned and gave a sharp whistle, that hurt her ears, but Olivia kept going. Sliding into her seat, she glanced up at the screen and saw that the other AI ship was actually shooting at her, but her shields were bouncing the shots back onto the other ship. Its shields were down, so the blasts were chewing huge holes into it.
"Computer, is there any way to reconfigure the shields to bounce those blasts back at the ship that shot them?"
"Computing," said the computer.
As she watched the next blast head their way, it seemed to hit and pause before bouncing straight back at the incoming ship. It obviously wasn't expecting it, and had a huge hole blasted into its side. Shields popped up on it, ceasing the loss if atmosphere that shot several people into space, and it stopped shooting at them.
"Dustin, I wish you were here to tell me what to do," she moaned, watching as the ship attached to them disconnected, and began to fall into the atmosphere of the planet.
XxxxX
Dustin looked over the intricate jumble of programs before him, making up the main AI. He knew he had to move fast, faster than the AI could keep up, and his movements had to be random, so the programs couldn't predict his next move. Cracking his mental knuckles, he dived in.
Cutting a program here and a program there, he removed the ability for the AI to notice things outside itself, in the immediate area around its mainframe. It hadn't noticed him just yet, but Dustin could see yellow flags popping up, as it seemed to realize something was going on.
"Olivia," he said, contacting her through the communications of the ship, with the hivemind. "Do whatever you can to distract this thing!"
He saw her eyes widen before focusing back on the chaos before him. He reached out and began cutting major program strings, watching the red flags pop up all over the place. Ignoring them, he continued to carve his way to the core of the AI.
The ability to contact smaller pieces of itself was cut. Its control of nanobots he cut with relish. When he found a program that manipulated numbers among economies all over the galaxy, he could only be amazed at as it tore it into shreds. As the core of the AI drew close, he felt the first signs of impending attack. The AI was stretching itself, trying to find him amongst itself, and it was right on the brink of being able to detect him, when he saw it. The core of the AI was a small star.
The AI had built itself around a star, and was siphoning power from it to keep its massive energy needs met.
He didn't have time to marvel at the sight, because just then the AI had found him. Moving faster than he had ever moved before, he could feel the hivemind straining at his speed, as he raced to the program that controlled the siphon. At the same time the AI was racing to cut him off from the hivemind, and destroy his body.
XxxxX
Olivia gaped at the monitor before her, where Dustin's voice had yelled at her to do whatever she could to distract the AI. She hadn't recognized the squiggles that had flashed on the screen as him, but would recognize his voice anywhere.
Drawing her eyebrows together in determination, she began to type.
"I can't do that, Olivia," said the computer.
She kept her head down, and continued typing.
"I can't do that either," said the computer again.
As she typed the last bit, the computer stayed silent for a moment.
"Now that, I can do!"
Grinning, Olivia rose from her seat to watch the scene outside unfold.
The AI ship that had been shooting at them had begun to turn, preparing to fire on the hive mind, she was sure, but before it could, all of the nanobots on the ship shot out, grabbing hold of it, through its shields, and they began to eat at the ship.
Dustin may not have installed any weapons on this ship, because he already had some. She just had to hope that the AI didn't take control of them, as she knew it could.
Sure enough, the computer went silent, and the nanobots went dead. Licking her lips in panic, she realized she could feel pain within her. The AI had decided to have the nanobots eat her alive. A grunt behind her told her they were attacking Granny too. Turning her eyes to the planet below them, she whispered at Dustin to hurry up.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
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Sdrawkcab Thanks for understanding about no chapter yesterday. I feel much better today.
Chapter 45: Chapter 45 Kicking Codes Butt
Dustin had paused, studying the programs around the sun, trying to decide which ones to attack, when he became aware of an itching pain. Glancing around, he realized it wasn't a program attacking him, which meant it had to be his body. Separating his mind into two halves, he formed an eye on the back of his head and saw that the nanobots around him were attacking his body.
Panic gripped him as he realized his time was even shorter than he thought. If the AI was attacking him, then it was probably attacking all of his people, too. Glancing over the hivemind, he saw with horror that it was overrun with programs, tiny programs, but programs intent on destroying everything. The hivemind was too open to attack, and while he was busy fighting the AI, he couldn't focus on closing the hivemind and the nanobots from the AI. Even though he thought he had cut off its ability to control nanobots, it must have had backup programs.
Diving back in with an even more intense need for speed, he ignored everything as he dived deeper in, reaching for the sun again.
As it revealed itself, he started cutting and slashing the programs that surrounded it. The AI's need for power was too intense to ignore this attack, and it pulled back from the hivemind and the nanobots, to deal with the damage he was causing.
Dustin didn't pay attention to what the codes before him did, anymore, cutting out words here and there, severing programs left and right, digging deeper around the thick code that surrounded the sun, trying to sever the AI's ability to draw energy from the small star.
Doors were closing around him as the AI tried to cut off his access, but he laughed as he went around them, not constrained by the physical limitations of the machine he was attacking. Cutting through one last bunch of coded programs, he found a pocket, filled by a boiling black mass, that he couldn't see through.
Cautiously drawing closer to it, he watched for any sign of life or consciousness, and just before he reached it, a tentacle of black darted out, grabbing ahold of him, and began to drag him back into the mess. Fighting against it, he tried to slice at it, as he had the code, and his imagined blade went through it, as if it wasn't there. If he didn't get away from it, it would separate the tether he had with his body!
Still fighting against the pull, Dustin studied the tentacle that had him, and came to a realization he never would have considered. This was made of spirit, not code. Had the AI been developing a spirit over all these years and drawing closer to being an actual being? Or had loose spirits been attracted to the budding awareness of the AI?
Regardless of the answer to these questions, Dustin was about to lose himself into a writhing mass of black, and there was no way in hell he was going to do that! Grabbing the surrounding codes and programs that he could reach, he began shoving them into the black, noticing a sudden slack in the pull of the tentacle. It was slurping the codes up like spaghetti noodles and growing. Backing away from it, panic erupted within him as he realized it was growing stronger, and he was feeding it.
While it was distracted with its meal, Dustin slipped free of the tentacle and avoided the cancer by charging towards the sun. Pausing in the moment of stillness, while chaos reined just behind him, hidden by a thin layer of programs, Dustin began to make his own code.
The AI was completely consumed by the cancer within it, that was eating it alive, ignoring everything else around it, as it tried to stem the flow of code into the monstrous spirit that had been hiding within it.
Building his program larger and larger, Dustin began to wrap it around the star, gathering its light for his own purposes. Had anyone asked him what he was doing, he would have said he couldn't explain it. He was working beyond any level of mechanics and material properties that he could explain, and was functioning purely on instinct.
Placing one last line of code into his program, he watched it sit for a moment, then begin to rotate around the star. Pulling back, through the AI code, away from the cancerous black spirit, and to his own hivemind, then finally to his body, Dustin opened his eyes with relief. He had only to wait a few minutes before the results would be in, and the AI would finally be dealt with.
Shaking off the nanobots that still clung to his body, the damage already having been healed, he glanced sadly at the hivemind before heading for the ship where he knew Olivia should have been.
Gooblens gladly allowed him entry, then cheerily carried him over their numerous bodies towards the bridge once the airlock was sealed again, and he was in his normal form. Olivia sat on the floor, holding her belly, when he entered the room. Granny sat next to her, looking exhausted.
"You have some serious explaining to do," grumbled Granny, not bothering to climb to her feet.
"Is the AI finished?" asked Olivia, leaning her head back against the seat behind her. She looked tired, as if fighting the nanobots had been exhausting.
"I'm about to find out," he said, stepping over them, and sitting in the seat behind Olivia as she shifted out of his way.
"Where's my dad?" he asked, absentmindedly as he started typing away.
"He's in the kitchen with Old Motha discussing the future home of the Gooblens," muttered Granny.
"We don't have any fuel to jump with," said the computer as he paused in his typing.
"Sure, we do," he said with a grin, sticking his finger into the port that opened for him.
There was a moment of silence, as Granny and Olivia watched in curiosity, before the nanobots that controlled the jump gate for the ship streamed out and began the process of jumping them. A few moments later, they floated in what appeared to be empty space, but as Dustin typed a few commands in, the screen in front of the bridge cleared, and a huge structure came into view.
"Wow!" whispered Granny and Olivia at the same time.
The structure of the AI was being pulled in on itself, and as they watched, the entire thing was swallowed by a massive black hole. With a chuckle, Dustin opened the jump gate as the ship began to get drawn in as well, and jumped them back home.
"What did you do?" asked Granny.
"The AI was using a small star to power itself, so I made the star collapse into a black hole."
"But how?" asked Olivia. "That seems…impossible!"
Dustin frowned. "I'm not sure I could explain it, or repeat it, but it worked at the time."
The two women looked at each other, before shaking their heads.
"We need to find out if everyone on the planet is alright," Olivia said.
Dustin nodded, "We're doing that now."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
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I wonder if Old Motha can explain what that black mass was?
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