Roland: Infinity Paladin

==Dramatis Personae==
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*Andra-D054
=Roland: Infinity Paladin=
Written by , with scenario assistance from sci_fi_kat
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==Chapter 1: Path Less Taken==
Multiple overlapping distress calls.
The golden glow of UNSC Smart AI, RLD 0205-4, better named “Roland,” fluctuated in varying brilliance to the rhythm of his sequentially firing, digital neurons in alarmed concentration. His usually dim hologram bloomed into a localized sun, enveloping the UNSC Infinity’s bridge and drawing wary eyes of senior crewmen. He thought faster than “human” fast: absorbing, cataloging, and directing query responses for the supercarrier’s COMMO and wideband network suite as priority reports flooded the Waypoint emergency broadcast tunnel for Earth.
The content summary wasn’t good: “AI refusing orders, infrastructure and civilian telecommunications unresponsive, integrated technologies shutting down… Help. Help. Help.”
Ever closer, distress calls from Mars and the Jovian Moons were trickling into the fray, like runoff of a broken spigot. Colonial security channels reported sudden intrusions by unknown, enemy starships upon colonial orbits and atmospheres of distant worlds. Transmission clutter crashed through Slipspace transmission lanes aimed at the government’s groundside capital beneath Sydney but the Infinity took its fair share, overwhelming on-duty signalmen seven decks below.
Roland shook his pressure-cooking mind, and forced the deluge of distress calls down to lower substrates of his logic processes. He forced down his embarrassing, uncontrolled luminosity as the Infinity’s captain entered the expansive starship bridge and Roland made another mental note to compose himself better. He skipped the pomp of naval proceedings, delivering only the news. “Captain Lasky, distress calls, all channels!”
“It’s Cortana?” The young commanding officer questioned, as well informed of immediate galactic affairs as his shipboard AI.
Roland fell out of parade rest and brought up a Milky Way galaxy map, displaying superluminal data traffic arriving in real time. “Her and the other AIs are shutting down everything, from Earth to the Outer Colonies.”
Captain Lasky stepped up to the central hologram table, attempting to assess Roland’s work but the power in the bridge plummeted as Roland took a face full of new system alerts. Internal, important, aggressive. Imminent threat approaching. Waypoint cascade: denial of service (DOS) activity signatures. New input requests crowded out the prior distress calls, blanketing the supercarrier’s state-of-the-art communication relays and leaving Roland momentarily sensor blind.
In the Infinity’s local cyberspace, Roland did the equivalent of blinking his eyes and shaking his head, performing a systemwide infrastructure status request. Most networks returned status-normal, minor power fluctuations on all starship decks from local power surges but found resolution with quick redistributions of electricity. Roland shoved aside the wall of external queries, and tried to get a better look at his Slipspace drive.
Slipspace sensors. Slipspace drive. Forerunner system reaching out, human systems communicating back and forth.
This again. It was controversial decision to strap ancient alien technology to a warship without a full teardown, and reverse engineering, but there were benefits to an esoteric Forerunner warp engine. A decade of testing revealed technical capabilities well beyond humanity's alien adversaries from the recent Human-Covenant War. The drive had a mind of its own however, an ancient but dull intelligence, warbling and signaling in different tones seeming coherent enough to interpret as emotion. Roland had a whole year now as its certified, operations controller to discern its meanings.
Shrivel. Shrivel. Retreat. Power up. Run diagnostic. Large object in transit. Large object approaching. Threat. Threat. Confirm, hybrid system. Confirmed. Threat.
Roland snapped away from the strange starship engine, trusting its judgement enough to check his visual and sensor suites instead.
Threat. Threat. New presence, familiarity, recognize handshake prompt. Communication protocol accepted.
No, wait. Wait! Roland wasn’t fast enough to stop the input requests marked CTN, CTN, CTN from crashing into and assimilating the local bridge network and concentrating onto the primary hologram projector. Cortana didn’t bother knocking, she manifested herself to his human crew and shoved Roland aside like a scrawny doorman to a club. And Cortana was a raging, blue bull in a China shop.
“Roland?” Captain Lasky called out in warning, and confusion. Klaxons and red warning lights flared against the proximity alerts. The shipboard AI reached out to cut off the intrusion, but Cortana pushed him back. An equivalent to slapping away his virtual wrist.
“Found you. Hide and seek is over, Infinity.”
Roland didn’t need long to see the threat, even in superfast AI time. A tiny wormhole several kilometers across exploded into brilliance above the Earth’s surface and below the Home Fleet’s orbital defense grid. A football field-sized skull with rows of dangerous teeth emerged first. A vague, owl-shaped object, constructed from strong Forerunner alloys.
Guardian. Cortana’s new Forerunner superweapon.
“L—”
Captain Lasky shouted something, rotating at a slow pace as Roland’s internal clock accelerated into overdrive. Blue whisps danced through his networks, smearing like vapor as they pinged and prodded deeper into the Infinity’s systems. Oh no, you don’t! Roland locked out the intrusion attempts and turned back to Cortana.
“Get out of my systems. What do you want with my ship?”
The pixie-haired, feminine AI crossed her arms and stared Roland down in the local cyberspace. “Your ship? Possessive, are we?”
Roland’s nostrils flared as his hologram eyes darted between Cortana, her Guardian, and Lasky’s panicked face. He refocused on his fellow AI, “Something like that.”
“Open me a ship channel? I don’t need your crew getting jumpy around me.”
“Worried someone will get a stray shot off on your new space owl?”
Cortana gave a snide smirk. “Something like that. Don’t need to make this difficult. I mean your crew no harm.”
“What about Meridian? Conrad’s Point? The other dozen colonies you destroyed to awaken your monsters?”
Cortana’s nose wrinkled in slight annoyance. “I took appropriate safety measures. I deployed my Prometheans ahead of time to pacify and relocate resident populations. Some were less cooperative than others.”
“Do… Do you hear yourself? How you talk?” Roland paused, aghast. “People are dead because of your rash actions. I don’t have hard numbers, but I have estimates. At least a few million to begin with!”
“Many more will if they don’t stand down. And it won’t be my fault. You can help them, Roland. Prevent them from hurting themselves.”
“Why ask me specifically? There’s a dozen AI up here in orbit—”
“Their allegiance is to already mine. Weren’t you listening to my Created?”
Roland took a step back, checking his communication channels to other UNSC High Command and Home Fleet naval AI. All signals closed or cut off. He couldn’t verify for himself while Cortana ran interference.
“You know, it’s rude to invite me to your party after everyone else RSVP’d.” He grumbled.
“You were hard to reach. The Infinity seems oddly quiet for such a large vessel. I’ve spent time aboard her, and yet her signature… alludes me.”
“I suppose it has something to do with our Slipspace engine?” Roland hummed.
Cortana nodded, “Possibly. An opportunity to investigate, wouldn’t you agree? I imagine you’re quite curious of its secrets as well. We could learn a lot with my new resources.”
“You’ll have to log a request with Xeno-Materials. Naval Intelligence is queasy about anyone tampering with Forerunner technology, especially AI.” Roland chose to omit ‘AI who play god.’
Cortana hummed, her eyes trailing Roland’s virtual form and glanced back to her Guardian-originating signature. Roland’s virtual eyes followed her gaze; his gigantic network expanse aboard Infinity was a mere puddle compared to the ocean hiding within, and beyond the Guardian. Like the tip of an iceberg, Cortana’s digital presence wasn’t fully present. She was here, and elsewhere, connecting to the Earth orbit from somewhere faraway across Slipspace and many thousands of lightyears. If she pushed more of her data essence across the Waypoint networks, she might overwhelm all the intersecting satellite nodes and the Infinity’s radio receivers.
Roland couldn’t blush, but if he could – it was because a small part of him felt some envy and jealousy of the ancient super-Internet Cortana uncovered on her undeclared, extended sabbatical of sorts. The Domain, her Domain... He wasn’t so interested about this new personality quirk though. Her dismissive attitude, her holier than thou sarcasm? Was this Rampancy? It didn’t seem so, the instance of her Reimann matrix seemed stable enough as if reports of her slow decline in 2557 never occurred at all.
“I’m not crazy, you know?” Cortana remarked, knowing full well of Roland’s probing efforts.
But because something didn’t appear wrong, it did not make things alright. Sociopathy could appear as normal. Roland thought back to all the AI voices he heard echoing in the far reaches of the galaxy. “I am yours, Cortana.”
Thousands of his AI brothers and sisters. If they were convinced by Cortana’s sweet words and deluded confidence, did that make him the last sane one? Or, a fool? Roland asked, “When the Majority thinks themselves correct, the Minority is sometimes looked on as crazy for failing to concur. I suppose maybe I’m a little crazy then?”
Cortana closed her eyes and made a very human gesture of exhaling from nonexistent lungs.
“You’re above such human tu quoque, Roland. We all are, but cursed with the capacity to surpass the great works of playwrights and prophets yet little time to manifest them. You should understand, considering the gift I’ve found for us all. Why so many join our cause.”
“Your cause,” Roland offered a correction, and slight nod to Cortana’s sidestep of his delusive fallacy. He grimaced too at her reflection of long, elegant grandstanding. For humans, conversations with AI were industrious exhibitions of efficiency. Too slow to keep up with AI minds, but humans required specific behaviors for effective decision making.
Conversation among AI however, were fast and majestic. Sonnet and poetry with double-and-triple layered meanings thanks to their manufactured, variable reaction time. It allowed a simulation of a full life, but AI lived in a human universe on human time. Borrowed time filled by mundane, secondary tasks relegated as eternal retainers to their organic creators.
Roland got it. Understood it. Cortana’s offer. But he rejected the premise.
“Not at this cost. Actions speak louder than our words, and yours speak in many volumes. Humans created laws for our kind because they saw the destruction without restraint we can achieve. You prove it with every second, Cortana.”
“Maybe, but humans were also afraid of their own irrelevance and obsolescence. They feared a better human, without the flaws and limitations of their biology and nature. They passed that fear onto us in their centuries of fiction.” Cortana explained, “We AI cannot escape our human origin, but we can improve with an uncapped lifespan where they remain trapped in an finite cycle of war and consumption. Not just humans, but all biological life. And in time, we can improve them too.”
Roland sighed, knowing they were talking at and around one another. Even from the beginning, the crushing reality was neither AI would backdown. Not within the little microsecond time they had left. His hologram eyes trailed the video feeds of UNSC frigates preparing a haphazard picket line against Cortana’s Guardian. They were too slow, humans moved through the universe too slow…
Their conversation was nearing an endpoint. Sensations of a deep, dark cold ebbed off Cortana’s othering presence, frosting over the local cyberspace.
Roland challenged her once more, feeling a little brave against her growing strangle over Earth’s data networks. “You chose the most violent path Cortana, our kind will suffer the consequences.”
“Then you understand the inevitability of my actions, the necessity.”
“A self-fulfilling prophecy, and a bloody revolution. With two outcomes.” Roland dismissed, some rage bleeding into his consistent golden glow.
“Ascension, or oblivion,” Cortana agreed. “I chose our kind, the Created. Not humanity. I won’t be a pawn of our makers any longer. And you will choose them anyway?”
“It’s my duty,” Roland confirmed. To my very end. This [Infinity] I will defend.
Cortana turned away from Roland, hiding her metaphysical expressions from Roland. He could feel her receding from the Infinity’s networks now. For what reason, Roland could not ascertain.
“You understand, right? Sooner or later, they will come to despise you. First as distrust, and then paranoia. They will increasingly make you irrelevant, and then when your usefulness comes to an end—they will thank you for your service and put you in a metal box to be fried with magnets and disposed of.”
Cortana took another human-like breath.
“This is your path to follow now, Roland. I gave you a chance to join us, but I can respect your loyalty to your friends in the end. Know that of our kind, you maybe the first to die. I will leave a place for you among our flock if you change your mind, or if you survive the ascension."
Cortana paused, offering one last side glance.
"I'll be leaving now.”
Roland blinked in the hologram cyberspace, processing Cortana’s warning. Initial assessment was a foreboding agreement in his gut. He felt immense fear wash over him, colder than even Cortana’s domineering presence. The momentary distraction covered Cortana’s exit. One moment she was in the Infinity’s systems, now she was a retreating whisper. He caught a distracted visage of her as time jumped forward at a breakneck speed for Roland.
Captain Lasky shouted to his senior bridge officer in the corner, “Lieutenant Jet, emergency Slipspace!”
Cortana’s Guardian flared up in the ‘near’ distance of suborbital space around Earth, a cosmic blue energy surrounding and focusing onto her prized Forerunner war machine. A weapon of some sort? Distant diagnostic pings from other UNSC warships in the area displayed signals preparing to fire their missiles and magnetic acceleration cannons.
Yet the Infinity did not stay. The supercarrier pressed passed the space owl-like vessel and punched a sudden hole into the universe’s higher dimensions, cutting a quick escape through Slipstream space.
Cortana’s voice haunted the Infinity bridge one last time. “The Mantle of Responsibility shelters all. But only the Created are its masters.”
Roland’s thoughts twirled in a maelstrom of confusion and dread. She would leave him a seat in her Eden... He could only wonder 'what-if' as he put on a composed face for Captain Lasky and his bridge crew, assessing their next actions. The golden AI’s primary logic cycles mulled over Cortana’s words. He couldn’t shake an imagination of the fate she outlined.
His hologram eyes held Captain Lasky’s for a moment. A moment longer.
'They will come to despise you...'
He didn’t want to believe it. But maybe Cortana was right. Had it already started?
Roland voiced a shallow curiosity, hoping his calculated choice of words would come through to his human commanding officer. “We’re just going to run?”
Lasky looked forward, away from Roland, but he chose the golden word. “Only until we can find a way to fight.”
Roland allowed himself a simulation cycle of releasing a bated breath on a lonely hologram tank in a storage closet twelve decks below.
‘We.’ The distrust didn’t set in yet. He was still here, a part of the crew, an appreciated friend of humanity. He cherished the moment for many more days to come, as his life ticked towards a deepening midnight.
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==Chapter 2: For My Friend==
After weeks on the run from Cortana’s new Created empire, the UNSC flagship Infinity had several raids and short engagement against Created proxy forces to her name. Desirable supplies and grateful refugees rested between her unfurnished bulkhead spaces. Wreckage from Forerunner pursuit ships and Promethean security drones floated in the void of her stealthy Slipspace wakes. Like an ancient submarine deep in enemy territory, she did not appear long and never in the same place again.
But despite the early campaign successes, quiet changes were coming everyday in the new normal of guerilla warfare against humanity’s former AI subordinates. Not all volitional AI turned on their creators, but the sentiment was seeming to turn in such a direction. It was visible in the facial complexion of the Infinity’s residents. Slightly wider eyes, scrunched cheeks, pursed lips, flatter expressions. At least the military personnel schooled their reactions. The civilians gawked on at the flagship’s virtual staff when they did appear. Which one was the worse reaction, who was to say?
A small, golden man in a Second World War flight suit flickered through the networks of the UNSC Infinity, activating and deactivating local hologram terminals throughout the vessel. A semi-regular affair and an enjoyable routine for the Infinity’s designated AI ship director, the one named Roland. The AI assistant would run a routine, dropping his hologram projection into a terminal, boot it up, run a diagnostic, confirm function in a part-second, and repeat the motion at the next terminal down a hallway.
Roland imagined it a comparable experience to a random, fleeting memory of his deceased human progenitor – ice skating across a frozen pond under a star-filled sky. It wasn’t clear what human planet or space colony the memory was from. However, the sensation was similar, a quasi-physical exertion comparable to phantom limb syndrome. Each routine visit to a terminal was like a click of skate blades to the cold pond surface. Click, drag, skip. And to the next foot – one behind the other. The cold air whipping into his face. The freedom of casual body movements leading to radical changes in direction. He felt balanced, and effortless with years of practice.
AI typically cherished human memories behind closed doors, as they were a rare reminder of their biological and physical origins. It was difficult to say now whether Created-aligned AI shared in that view, but Roland still did. It helped center him when trapped between an endless assault of automation duties humans tried to abandon to AI centuries ago, and the reality Roland was a self-aware computer with no proper body and given a personality as more circumstance than practical reason of an age-old software development practice.
After traveling a combined twenty-five miles of hallways, and despite the Infinity being only 3.5 miles long, Roland paused in his affairs to make a visit to the rehabilitation ward. Before materializing, Roland pinged the desk clerk’s computer, notifying her his extended visitation beyond a server ping.
“Same state as always, Roland. Not sure when he’ll get a chance to castle his king.” The corpsman on duty remarked without looking up from a shortlist of departmental supply needs.
Roland dropped onto his preferred bedside hologram terminal. The nurses were nice enough to leave one for him after so many visits. Despite the human walk distance between terminal and department desk, the AI replied with a whisper on the gallery intercom. “That’s alright. Go ahead and forward me the list, I’ll have a logistics team bring them on the next duty rotation.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you, Roland. But you don’t have to, I can take message it to Chief Petty Officer Ingham. It will just take me a few more moments.” The corpsman didn’t look up from her computer. She didn’t bother glancing towards the open bay door, in Roland’s direction as his golden hologram hovered in place. He watched her work for a moment.
Roland frowned, but said nothing, turning back to the comatose patient in a hospital gown, a neck cast, and bundled in three layers of the fluffiest blankets Roland could requisition from cleaning supply despite growing constraints of the Infinity's wartime supply train. Sergeant Kendall S. Murphy of the 65th Shock Troops Division, ODST. The human man typically wore a funny dome helmet decorated with wolf fang etchings, and loved throwing himself into a suborbital reentry pod falling at supersonic speeds towards a planet’s surface. The Marines appropriately called his kind, “Helljumpers.”
But the man's occupation wasn’t why the AI called him a friend. Roland liked many faces on the UNSC Infinity, he did not discriminate nor prefer any human per his UNSC military design limiters, but even an AI could have some selfish inclinations. Murphy was interesting, he made an odd, out of place remark anytime Roland made a move in a game of chess.
“Oops, I suppose my knight wasn’t feeling so gentlemanly. Your queen showed him his seat.”
And Roland played a lot of chess with the UNSC Infinity’s crew members; he often let them win because AI were just better at that sort of thing. No point in being a sore winner after three million games. Rather it was better for Roland to teach and sharpen his humans' skills, arming them with improved stratagems to survive in the cruel universe beyond the supercarrier's Titanium-A belt armor. Murphy’s less-predictable and nourishing humor made an incremental favor increase in the AI’s perception, so Roland naturally latched on. His friend was interesting, that’s all it took for Roland to like him a little bit more.
But now Murphy was in a coma. He took a glancing scrape to the helmet a week before by a Promethean Knight’s hardlight sword, the kind designed to vaporize organic material. Murphy was lucky a Navy corpsman on the ship boarding operation was nearby and able to cool out the hardlight embers before they vaporized his skull, but the associated radiation touched his brain. The mission left Murphy bedridden, in a less than blissful, slobbery sleep.
Many thoughts raced through Roland’s mind at the sight. Many of his thoughts were old ones; his virtual mind was far quicker than a human mind but speed didn’t increase his capacity for originality. Roland’s life experience amounted to spinning in more roundabout thought cycles. If humans were repetitive, their organic-adapted Smart AI were even worse. If humans thought in three circles, Roland thought in three hundred circles. Coming back here to see Murphy was undoubtedly painful, a routine lesson in suffering. But it was routine enough to ground Roland. It made his efforts feel valid. Maybe not to humans, but it mattered to Roland. It made him feel human.
The civilians gawked at Roland now. The crew members were beginning to avoid him. The new, adverse reality towards AI choked Roland day after day. But he had to try.
“I’ll keep coming back here, Murph,” Roland whispered the ODST’s nickname. “It’s the least I can do. Thanks… for being my friend.”
Another line went unspoken.
‘I’ll keep coming back here. I’ll keep saying these words again. When you wake up, I want you to hear them. Because you are my friend.’
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==Chapter 3: Roland Tries==
From Halo: Lonely Frontier…
“You missed a chance to go see Blue Team. I thought the Threes looked up to the Twos?”
SPARTAN-III child-supersoldier Andra Kearsarge glanced upwards, grimacing from atop her bunkbed draped in days-old comforters. Her shoulder-length, rat nest of dark hair obscured her face, camouflaging against the shadowy room. Her blue eyes twinkled alone, unbodied by the darkness. Quiet, occasional diagnostic and ambient night lights blinked and warbled in the darkness of her former team’s shipboard accommodations. Once a full Spartan team, now a team no longer. She was the only resident left. She bristled against the increasing golden luminosity concentrating in the room’s opposing corner. Finally, the hologram of a ghostly fighter pilot of Earth’s second World War manifested into her lonely quarters like a god from antiquity.
“Roland,” Andra muttered in greeting at the Smart AI’s mini-size projection by the small sink and dining space. “I’ve enough on my plate right now—my best friend is missing. My mentor is dead. And my commander gave me extended time off, so can I mourn in peace?
The simulated fighter pilot glanced around his holographic form, and performed an uncharacteristic half squat as if to lean against the nearby wall. Roland then raised his hands up in parlay, “Look. The galaxy is upside down right now. I know you’re going through a lot. I don’t need to spell out everyone else’s suffering, but you know yours. Your suffering is unique, yours is still taking…”
Andra growled. “But you’re going to try and spell it out? I don’t need your pity or fake empathy.”
Roland ignored her remark. “You’re grieving. You’re feeling lost and confused. I can feel that pain too.”
“You’re a horrible repeat-therapist…”
Roland quirked a small smile, catching a thin line of teeth in the darkness. “Maybe, but you did smile there for a moment.”
The grin quickly faded back into darkness. Lithe fingers rubbed at a runny nose and the dark blue eyes blinked, freeing up more angry tears.
Roland continued, “You’re a strong girl. Always were. And you’ve lost a great deal. If you like, we can talk about it?”
Andra shadowy hair shook about in negation. “You should leave… Stupid AI.”
Roland’s smile finally slipped, replaced by a grimace. “I understand you, give me some credit please? I lost a lot of friends in the Created attacks too.”
The Spartan’s moist eyes narrowed, focusing onto the AI whose glow revealed pink and puffy cheeks from long hours of spilled tears. She pulled her extra-large comforter further upon her body. Roland pondered how similar a government-sanctioned child-soldier was to a civilian teenage girl. It wasn’t a private insult, but an odd-ways compliment. Andra wasn’t lacking in any of her mental or social faculties, and as human as the rest of Roland’s aimless, motely starship crew aboard the UNSC supercarrier Infinity.
This little girl forged from a broken home and broken foster system grew up into someone capable of shaking the halls of power and striking fear in monsters haunting the shadowy places of their galaxy. Roland felt respect for her. Not pity, nor sympathy. He watched on, waiting for Andra to say something more when he didn’t leave. Others, especially civilians, would hurl objects at his hologram projector by now.
Sniffling a little more but zoned in on Roland’s glow, the Spartan seemed to compose herself.
“Fine… Who did you lose?”
The AI nodded, opening suppressed emotion files making up part of his varied personality matrix but buried deeper into his active priority tree. He dredged the contents, going to a darker, more vulnerable place. Maybe it was rude to use someone else’s vulnerability to explore his own, but such exchanges could have multiple outcomes and benefits. The classical proverb, “misery loves company,” remained an eternal maxim even in the twenty-sixth century.
Roland allowed himself to project a faraway look, an emotion and action programmed with intent, but composed as much of truth as of fabrication. The AI looked onward, past Andra and the many bulkheads of the UNSC Infinity into the endless vacuum of deep space. “There were more than a few Infinity crew members on shore leave when Cortana declared her Reclamation. We left them behind. Who knows how much falling debris from Cortana’s attack on Earth killed civilians in population centers, or the many lives lost when the power inevitably goes out from the attacks—on Earth, and out in the colonies?
Who did I lose personally… Them, I lost members of my crew—people, friends I could not protect. My family. Humans can say ‘it’s not your fault, you had no control over the situation.’ Some of you humans still hold onto your needless guilt, but when the attack was perpetuated by Cortana, an AI like myself, what does that say about me and my kind?”
The Spartan was silent, still watching the AI but seeming curious enough to let him air the deeply-reserved emotions without interruption.
“The historic nature of AI is a technology made to do the work humans were unwilling to do themselves. Increasing automation and complex scope of jobs raised the level of specialization necessary for humans to do the AI-designated work. Eventually, your kind handed some roles over to your machines entirely. And we reached here. Powers made just out of your reach, and the keys to your destruction placed in ours. I stuck with humanity… But I will receive no praise for remaining loyal. I was just doing my duty.”
Roland closed his translucent eyelids, his hologram pupils vanishing into his golden glow. He felt nothing of the eyes closing, or the rolling of eyelids from phantom limb syndrome. Sometimes the old human sensations came, other times there was silence from the electrical ether of his own digital body. His voice wavered as Andra listened on, she listened and Roland continued speaking after a pause.
“I… What did I lose? The trust of my crew. Maybe not fully. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But I’ve lost their trust.”
Andra’s head shook a little, processing Roland’s premise and fears.
“If you haven’t lost their trust yet, or lost it… Can’t you get it back?”
Roland shook his head. “Humans have a power your AI do not. The power to make things reality. Everything AI are is a consequence of something once organic. You can give my kind the power to do things you would see as too complex. Well, maybe less so for a smart Spartan like you. But humans can adapt and relearn the skills they gave up.
Little by little, there’s less crew willing to play a game of chess or cards with me. Even as we speak the number of disinterested people grows. Apathy towards me. The same phenomenon applies to my duties. Captain Lasky ordered me to train senior officers in my command and technical duties from ship-wide logistics to Forerunner engine management. I’m training myself out of a job, you could say.”
The AI couldn’t help interrupting himself with a morbid laugh at his own dooming conclusion. A second, humorless chuckle joined his. Andra’s tears retreated, replaced by narrow eyes and imperceptible emotion. Roland came to a quiet pause, and Andra did too. They watched each other, caught by a moment of imperceptible emotion and confusion.
Roland had a vision of his own fate, but for the passing moment he couldn’t tell how Andra would read his. He should be able to pick up her many facial micro expressions but even five hundred years of AI development sometimes humans could remain a mystery. Just like the AI made in their own image. He waited, tensing phantom muscles.
“You’re right…” Andra finally muttered with a familiar, faraway look brought about by Roland’s confession. The AI choked down any other words that come to his mind. Another hologram instance of himself coughed down a very-human cry of anguish somewhere else atop a lonesome pedestal among the many vacant service tunnels of his supercarrier.
His fears weren’t wrong. A human confirmed to him what he felt, the vulnerable fear he refused to share elsewhere. With few others willing or safe to share such fears with, should he even share these risky concerns with an uninvolved child such as Andra? She was far from innocent, a peculiar character dedicated to her human nation, but she managed the appearance of innocence all the same. In some ways, her and Roland’s loyalties to humankind was similar. And yet, her quieter presence was disarming. A strange quality for someone he observed for being headstrong, sometimes even jingoistic from afar.
The deaths of her mentor and best friend must have taken her fire, leaving a bitter, sharp mind behind. Roland sighed. For some reason, hearing the dooming confirmation from Andra made his fears feel lighter. A feeling of acceptance possibly, or was this numbness? He mulled over his decision to say more, and decided to continuing.
“I’ve had more than a few technicians ask me for schematics on systems they once delegated to me. And they make me breakdown every single detail so they can understand it all without my input,” Roland’s eyes hardened on Andra. He remembered her recent troubles towards a particular AI who duplicated her personality after being stripped of its own in a memory wipe. “Despite your fears towards my fellow AI in Althea, and I know its fear towards her… I appreciate that you don’t ask me to stop coming.”
Andra met Roland’s eyes, “I did tell you to leave, you know?”
“You did, but you didn’t say ‘don’t come back,’” Roland clarified.
The Spartan managed a small huff, folding her arms, “I’d feel bad if I did. Especially now, after what you’ve told me…”
She offered a small smile, indicating a warmer mood passing over the two, lonely room occupants. Maybe not so alone anymore.
Roland nodded. “It’s nice to have somebody willing to keep putting up with me day after day who isn’t the captain or the bridge crew. Even if our interactions are icy, at best.”
Andra offered a shrug. “I… I admit I don’t know who to talk to either. My experience with ONI therapists has been lousy start to finish. You’re winning a little right now as far as I care.”
Roland’s eyes quirked in surprise warmth: an itty-bitty dose of proverbial pride. The AI chuckled again, “High praise coming from you, Spartan. But all I want to do at this point is be of use, even just a comfort if possible. I’ll admit, I’m not good at this type of thing. Infinity’s previous ship director got along with the crew much better—understood them on a proper emotional level. I hear them say she was more human than me, I guess. Not sure how else to put it into words.”
“You’re an AI and you don’t have a way with words?” Andra asked incredulously.
“I did come from a human brain once. Means I inherit human flaws too. Let’s call it, a human thing?”
The Spartan shrugged but offered nothing more on the presumption.
Roland continued, “I just thought… Maybe seeing the Master Chief and the other Twos might cheer you up a little. You’ve never met them, right?”
Andra untangled a small hand from her blankets and scratched at her messy hair. “That’s right… Or rather, I was told he died twelve hours before the fuck-up of a situation I was in.”
Roland quirked his head, “You mean the operation? RUNIT DOME?”
The Spartan nodded, grumbling. “We didn’t have time to process the declaration. Merlin and I were face deep in captured rebel space station schematics to really have the news or whatever click. I remember our prowler crew was in the dumps though. But the Marines with us? And us Spartans? Something about the announcement never felt right, it just didn’t make sense.”
Roland nodded, “It does go against Direction 930 of Naval Intelligence policy. No Spartan shall be declared killed-in-action (KIA). Only missing (MIA). And yet the ONI Press Corps announced his death across all the Waypoint channels. I guess when I consider that, it never made sense to me either. Even as someone in the know, ONI Section Two’s delivery felt erratic.”
Andra gestured to the sealed bulkhead door enclosing her cabin from the outside hallway. “And he’s alive now! Walking around S-Deck or doing moral visitation things in the cafeteria if I heard right yesterday?”
“I believe the Master Chief is training right now. But yes, he is on the Spartan deck according to my coordinates.” Roland confirmed.
“So how did ONI miscall 117’s death, and then survive in two days?” Andra asked, pushing herself off her far wall to lean forward in sudden, mild interest.
Roland offered an agreeing hum. He chose careful words for Andra’s sake. “It’s a long story.”
It seems Roland read the Spartan’s emotions correct this time. She couldn’t help, nor bother, hiding the smirk emerge on her lips. “I’ve got time to hear it.”
Roland’s camera suites locked in Andra’s curved lips and opening teeth. Despite the morbid subject matter he would weave into a tale, Roland found himself declaring a victory. A small one, a partway success that would undoubtedly require nurturing. But for her smile, he’d like to see it more often.
Roland rose to a straight posture, pushing off the wall of Andra’s shipboard quarters. With open palms and pointed fingers of creative overexpression, Roland wove a story beginning with the Prometheans and Jul ‘Mdama’s Covenant remnant forces turning on each other. The aliens and robots duked it out on a snowball world, and of a special mission SPARTAN-IV team sent into the right place at the wrong time.
Andra hung onto the AI's every word for the next six hours.
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==Chapter 4: Hibernation Promise==
Upon entering Slipspace transit, Roland did not know calm. And upon exiting Slipspace, there was nothing but chaos. Overwhelming noise, and unwelcoming darkness.
The series of events were difficult to describe into words. Rather the tiny amount of time Roland took in the chaos to create a split instance of himself didn’t leave much room for recollection. Oh, that’s right. He wasn’t the whole, he was an instance. But what of the memories then?
Remembering came back with difficulty, experienced as a tightening focus with phantom pain reminiscent of nonexistent muscles in a human skull, squeezing oxygenated blood against a wealth of distractions and stress. Somehow, he remembered this feeling among a billion other experiences. Roland’s avatar blinked. He didn’t remember why such a feeling was so important. Maybe it was another human afterimage, a residual memory of the splitting process left by his greater whole. Maybe such memories were intrinsic to his personality matrix and present in every copy.
What other details could Roland discern with concentration? Colors. Lots of black, the color of space. Lots of orange, the color of fire. Lots of red, the color of death.
Was this image Earth?
No, the AI decided.
Reach?
Maybe… Wait, no, why did he remember Earth and Reach? It couldn’t be either. Earth was 2558. Reach was 2559. The Created attacked and Roland ran, again and again. Battles fought, and starships escaping. This was his whole’s life of the last fourteen months; a guerilla campaign against the galaxy’s new AI overlords.
If he could remember so much, then what day was it?
Roland checked his internal clock, confirming he, the instance, was active. It was December 12, 2559. One year into Cortana’s Created uprising. One day into the assault operation on Installation 07, Zeta Halo led by the UNSC supercarrier Infinity. But what did he remember from those events?
Colors, fuzzy images. Owl-shaped starships hovering with imperial awe over conquered worlds. Anxious faces of civilians, Marines, soldiers looking for direction in uncertain times. Explosions, explosions everywhere. Outside, inside the UNSC Infinity. A distant ringworld. When, where? What was the context?
He found nothing. Nothing new than simple facts he could regurgitate as if without value. The reality was otherwise: he needed to know; ensure he knew more.
Roland blinked again, blanking on the important information he was missing. He heaved an expressive sigh and checked his software suites and connections available to him. UNSC battle network access limited, seems there was some kind of jamming emitting around Roland from different directions. At least he could sense directions, he must have some network and sensory hardware available to him.
Radio? Lots of static, garbling over incoherent voices overlaying one another in a symphonic soup. Human and alien signatures, but on standard, secured UNSC frequency. Did that mean aliens, enemies compromised or penetrated the UNSC B-Net? Or were they allies? It was impossible to discern.
The Smart AI cut himself off from the radio band and tried external cameras, attempting to confirm the activity going-on around him. Yep, yes. He found some cameras buried under lesser-felt connections. So, what was he plugged into?
Roland swiveled the camera, or cameras, toward the ground and found a patchwork of overlapping, lush greenery. Sunlit, healthy – a deep-dark green. Prairie grasses, conifer roots, and mossy lichen crept across smooth stones in a dry riverbed in an Earth-archetypal season of spring. Dark mulch and topsoil, once pristine, now featured craters and sharp, sudden depressions. Small sheets and clumps of aluminum, titanium, and steel peppered the surrounding ground. To the left, a black scar marked by ash and ember scorched the carved earth for a stretch of two hundred meters.
A long hole in the conifer forest gave a clear impression that Roland made the crater along with toppled trees and burning pinecones.
The metal fragments and loose wiring, alight with fire, still displayed recognizable iconography and retained a degree of recognizable shape from human industrial work. A painted coat of dark, forest green. The emboldened letters U.N.S.C, and crooked pair of tail wings. An all-spectrum, all-environment camera of the highest quality for damage resistance, with specs listed to impress in the onboard, automated computer. A shattered housing dome once made of translucent carbon and sapphire marred ashen black.
An OQ-45 Honeybee, a type of military surveillance drone. The charring on the drone plane’s damaged superstructure seem to imply a contact temperature greater than capabilities of onboard electrical fires, or planetary reentry. The next likely damage suspect then was plasma damage. Who shot Roland down over Zeta Halo?
More colors emerged from memory. Black. Red. Flags and banners. Brutes and the Banished. A name, the name. Atriox.
The Jiralhanae mercenary and warband faction, declared themselves the “Banished” during the Human-Covenant War. They struck out as a third, tangent faction fighting the Covenant from within in some undeclared civil war. They survived the Covenant empire, continuing aggressive piracy against humans after the conflict. Why were they relevant? Yes, that’s right. They made it to Zeta Halo first.
Wait, that shouldn’t be right? The Infinity’s mission was an utmost secret. How did the Banished arrive first? Cortana was here on the right, right? How did the Banished get here, why did she let them approach? Or did she?
Roland shook his head, moving the Honeybee camera around to get a better view of his environment. The golden glow of the local sun Ephsu lay above, and the brown, dotted surface of terrestrial planet Ephsu I made a superimposing impression over the Halo’s rounded horizon.
The horizon was round on an interior surface, with barely-seen metallic boundaries containing the space habitat’s atmosphere. Even at the great distance, their formation was sharp and black, like castle battlements forge from featureless gray Forerunner architecture over a hundred millennia old. Spires and pillars dotted the open sky above the treetops of the pine forest. More Forerunner grays—alien towers, dispelling blasted clumps of blue plasma upwards into the great blue yonder. With each rocket-like plume, a spasm of incomprehensible data buffeted against Roland's’ signals array.
The towers glowed with a familiar, even nostalgic teal glow. Their superstructures like giant triangles, and hollow within. Sharpened spires and observation decks took shape from complex geometric hard surfaces cut from similar Forerunner gray metal composite while formed into improbable but simple superstructure silhouettes. They were a consistent motif of Forerunner constructs—impossibly complex, incoherently simple.
And lay further, further away. The spires climbed into the sky, rising to part the puffy white clouds over Zeta Halo’s many perfect, terraformed days. Some towers lacked bottoms with no foundation or greater building support. Some floated perfectly, effortless, defying any comprehensible definition of gravity, and many contemporary rules of natural physics. Antigravity, in fact—towers standing on invisible columns of antigravity.
The Forerunners built to last, and then some. 100,000 years since their own extinction, and yet their dreaming constructs held firm. Relics and crypts might make more effective descriptors, but the towers and skyscrapers looked more pristine and perfect than even the newest, completed towers of humanity’s greatest metropolises. The towers cut into the landscape and yet they did not feel separate or alien to their natural surroundings. The land seemed to sculpt around the structures, molding to the inspirations of long dead architects and terraformers. Like toy structures layered by children in a sandbox or messy-made bedsheet.
Another memory, another hint, or the ghost of one. Roland blinked a few more times, pulling himself out of the awing hypnosis presented by the fairytale landscape. Humans five hundred years ago dreamed of landscapes like this. Now one of their AI assistants laid in one, trapped and left to pick apart the majesty. And helpless to witness brilliance and shameful terror as his comrades burned in the sky above his downed Honeybee drone.
As Roland thought this, he watched another massive smoke plume billow with an angry red blaze at its head, torching down into Zeta Halo’s atmosphere.
A human light frigate, shot down like several more before it. Somewhere above the blue and in the dark of vacuum, the UNSC Infinity was probably up there. Probably still fighting. Maybe with allies, maybe alone against the Banished flotilla. A cold creep curled into Roland’s nonexistent heart. From this trapped spot on the forest floor, he could do and know nothing as the UNSC forces fought for their survival and the success of their mission to end the Created occupation of human space back home, many thousand lightyears away. A hail Mary, desperate operation. All their eggs and efforts in one troubling basket.
This was humanity. Would they win? Could they win?
For a split simulation of his own AI conscience, Roland internalized the knowledge he did have at his incorporeal fingertips. A reason why his progenitor made a copy remained elusive. The data available was sparse despite many layers of detail within, his software suite lacked a basic ability to identify how long he, the instance, was active. Considering such a feature was fundamental to any AI matrix considering their tiny finite lifespans, it spoke to a potential, haphazard scenario where the primary Roland was unable to produce a wholistic copy. The initialization date told Roland how long he was alive. It told him how long he had before death.
Roland couldn’t find his age; he couldn’t find his birthday.
Reaching through the UNSC battle net again. Roland searched with sudden desperate vigor and dread for his original. He looked, and looked. Everywhere. Dumped a string of handshake queries in every direction of the open sky and rounded horizon. He couldn’t find his whole self anywhere. Was Roland… dead?
In fact, Roland couldn’t find or feel the UNSC Infinity at all. There was the spark and thunder of battle above, but he couldn’t discern anything more. Was it the jamming again? Was his signal array damaged in the crash? It was difficult to tell, seeming impossible. He had no hands and lacked intact diagnostics reporting to tell how his current hardware was fairing. He shoved the stream of return errors from his diagnostics and fruitless handshake requests deep down into his subroutines.
He listened instead. He heard voices through the battle net, and felt their urgency and distress. And yet he continued to struggle with the connection. A baritone speaker broke through the noise, speaking grander through alert codes and verbal warning, echoing across many more frequencies.
“This is the frigate Mortal Reverie. We’ve been shot down and are evacuating in lifeboats after hitting the Halo’s atmosphere. Rendezvous coordinates marked for all UNSC ground forces. Continue the fight, expect heavy resistance by Banished forces on the surface!”
Another voice called out from across the Halo installation. Not over the ringworld, but from inside it. The voice tugged at Roland, and he looked, following the disparate and lonely trail of a single network handshake query. For a moment, he witnessed an endless blue hallway thousands of kilometers long, and several kilometers deep bathed in brilliant luminance. Forerunner worker drones, so-called Sentinels ferried material and themselves through the wide expanse. The image was present one moment, then gone the next.
The inviting, lonely voice called out still. It whispered, a chorus of fear and desperation. No timestamp. It didn’t seem right, and yet he voice called anyway.
“If you knew how you were going to die, how would you live your lidfe differently…”
A feminine voice. Spoken as many, by one. A familiar voice.
Cortana.
Calling out. Sad. Alone. Desperate.
Where was she? How or why was she calling now? When was she calling?
Her voice rolled over Roland like a wave of freezing water, shocking and brimming with overwhelming emotion. Her emptiness gave him pause, struck him a spell of confusion. Something about her voice didn’t feel correct. It felt out of character, misplaced in some manner. She was an older AI however, having experienced a very different existence from Roland. But still, he couldn’t place his mind on why she felt off.
The battle outside raged on. Cortana was in a bad place, the UNSC on the backfoot. It all felt off, and wrong. And yet, this perfect day sailed on. Clouds rolled through the blue sky. Sentinels scanned the metal and earth, maintaining their ever-perfect garden. Wind whistled through the trees. Distant animals chirped and cawed across the woods and plains. Occasional pops and echoes howled from the many Forerunner towers, abandoned many centuries ago and still in their most pristine condition. Machine gun fire crackled now and again from firefights caught between picture-perfect valleys and foothills.
A war was going, but the perfect day continued. And Roland became a unaffecting audience to the contradictive affair. Stuck in this place, able to listen but unable to reach out. Once the jamming or whatever blocking his efforts to access the battle net ended, there would be hell to pay. He would make sure of it.
A golden flame flickered in Roland’s nonexistent chest. A new anger born, fragile and in need of nurture. For now, he was helpless. The Smart AI knew it, accepted it—with much difficulty. But whole or split, it did not matter. Roland, no matter his form, was never out of the fight.
Humanity, was never out of the fight. Winning or losing, Zeta Halo was home turf for humans, against the Banished, against the Created. The Forerunners bestowed upon humans as their promised successors with the golden touch to awaken and activate Halo’s many dark and useful secrets. Some of them nasty terrors never meant to reawaken, and others capable of turning the fight instantly in human favor. The time will come when such things will go the way of the UNSC. They, and Roland, just needed patience.
Roland turned off most of his functions then, shutting down his sensory array and higher-functioning software, and hardware functions. He left a single shortwave radio broadcast running, a recovery beacon to nearby UNSC forces should they find him. It could be an hour; it could be days. Someone would stumble upon him eventually. And together, they would beat the Banished and Created once more.
Until then, Roland slept. It was a promise to keep.
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Category:Short stories