Evolutionary Liberator

"What do you mean, how do we take it out?" laughed the man who claimed to be his father. "I've spent the past 200 or so years hiding from the damn thing!"

"I don't intend to sit on my a.s.s, watching everything I've done in the past fifteen years disappear into smoke," growled Dustin, standing up. His fists were clenched tight.

His father stopped laughing and looked serious for a moment. "Look, I don't have a f.u.c.k.i.n.g clue how to take out that AI, or I would have done it years ago. I lost your mother, all of my people, and I thought you, because of it. Trust me, if there was a way, I would have done it by now."

With a deep breath, Dustin was able to get himself to calm a little, and he turned and left the room. He wasn't sure what he was going to do just yet, but he wasn't going to waste more time hiding here. All thoughts of just drifting in space, were gone. He was fired back up, and thinking again.

"Where do you think you're going?" called his dad.

Dustin stopped. What if this was another trick? Every time he thought he had everything figured out, something would happen to reveal that what he thought was true, was actually wrong. What if the AI had sent this guy to try and convince him not to go after it? His timing in showing up, and the fact the AI hadn't followed them was very coincidental.

Turning back towards the man, who was struggling to get out of his chair, Dustin asked, "What's your name?"

Giving him a perplexed look, he said, "What?"

"My dad had two names. One that he was known by everyone, and one that only his family knew. What is your name?"

Understanding bloomed on his face, and he laughed. "My public name is Keith, but my family name is Kitteral."

Relief surged through Dustin, as the doubt was erased from his mind on who this person might be.

"Why do you ask though? What has happened in your life to make you doubt your own father?"

Dustin's face darkened, "Josagn."

His father's face darkened as well. "Those creatures are worse than trash. Though…"

He turned and rummaged through a box that was shoved under the console, finally bringing out an old paper folder shoved full of papers.

Dustin was amazed it had survived in his father's ship, and still be readable.

Ruffling through the papers, Kitteral finally pulled one out and handed it to Dustin with a flourish, as if he had just solved all of their problems. Taking the yellow paper gingerly, Dustin looked over it, and saw that it was a list of aliens.

"What is this?"

"This is a list, that I was able to put together, of aliens the AI absolutely hates. They are deemed not worth contacting, according to the AI, and might be of some use to us. The Josagn are at the top of the list, which is what reminded me of it."

Dustin scrunched his brow as he handed the list back. "I don't know how that will help us. Just because the AI doesn't want to contact any of those races doesn't mean we can use any of them to kill it."

"Look, you are the only Uz'En born with any technological knowhow since we left the planet ages ago. If anyone has a prayer of figuring out how to take out the AI, it's going to be you. I don't mind helping, if you can prove to me whatever plan you come up with will work, but I'm not going to be much help in planning the attack."

"I know how to reverse engineer just about anything. Tell me that it's possible to do something, and I can probably figure out a way to make it happen. But taking out an AI that's entrenched itself into every system in the galaxy, and has a planet sized processor somewhere out there, is a bit out of my league."

"Wait, a planet sized processor? How do you know about that?" asked his dad, excitedly.

"Well, I dived into the system, and saw it when I followed one of its programs back to the main system, to report. It's kind of confusing to explain."

Kitteral gaped at him in surprise. "You dived into the system? Like went into the computer and looked around?"

Dustin shrugged, "It didn't take me very long to figure out how to do it. I just plugged myself into an access port and messed with electrical pulses until I found one that worked."

"You make that sound easy! I've tried to figure that out for ages! But, why didn't the AI spot you and come after you?"

"I had the feeling, and the impression, that it couldn't see me at all."

"Well, there you go. Dive into the system and kill it at the core. That's how you take it out."

Dustin shook his head. "I'm not sure how to do that. It would probably figure out a way to attack me, and I'm not sure what would happen if I was hurt while dived. Would I get separated from my body and not be able to get back?"

"Then we distract the hell out of it, while you prepare to attack it at the core. Then once you've done the deed, hightail it out of there. We need to know exactly where the thing is, though, so we can have a physical attack while you're diving, to add to the distraction."

Dustin looked up at the ceiling in thought. "If I dive again, I might be able to look around, and see what the stars around it are, or maybe I can find its location in a stored file, somewhere. But it might notice if I start rummaging through its files. Regardless, I'm going to need a lot of processing power, to pull all of this off."

"Do you know where any large computers might be?" asked his dad, slumping back down into his chair.

With a smile, Dustin said, "Actually, I do."