Chapter 21: Chapter 21: TRILLION – Rescue Trillion

“Ship, we need to get off this moon,” Trillion said.

She sat floating in her office, arms and legs folded. Trillion didn’t feel like she was in any danger. After the Ship of Trillion was placed on the moon the Dottiens had ceased their threatening behaviour.

On their third day there the Dottiens sent an ambassador. This alien was large and bulbous. Its opaque skin looked like it was made of jelly. It was green when it arrived – not purple like Trillion would have expected. Their skin was able to change colour and texture – she marvelled at the complex patterns flowing through their skin.

“They’re like a chameleon,” Ship commented.

Trillion shook her head. “Not like a chameleon. The brightness is like a chameleon, but a chameleon only changes the colour of its skin. It’s more like an octopus. Octopi can change the colour and texture of its skin, and its translucency too.”

Trillion’s mind was blown. She didn’t think something like that was possible. She could tell that Lex loved every moment. It was like a puzzle to crack. She was excited at first too. We’re about to speak with aliens, she had thought. “What do we know so far, Ship?”

“They speak in colours. It’s a very complex language. But we know purple is the colour of war.” He pointed at the orb. “Lex reckons their language changes every day.”

Trillion scratched her head. “And do we know anything about the Dottiens themselves?” She pointed out the window to where the Dottien was in front of the ship. “Is this actually one of them?”

“Lex believes this is them. I don’t know how they survive in space, let alone how they move around,” Ship added before continuing. “Everything we’ve seen on their planet looks exactly like what is in front of us.”
They had observed multiple situations where the whole planet operated like a super organism, lighting and operating as one.

Trillion looked up at Lex. “What do we understand of their language?”

He flashed blue, then red.

“So we don’t know anything yet?”

He flashed green.

Trillion teleported out to think. She floated in her room. She closed her eyes, breathing in and out for several minutes.

It wasn’t long before an idea popped into her head. “Ship, meet me in the war room.”

She teleported out.

The war room was a large empty space, about the size of a basketball court. She needed a large open space to think.

Ship appeared. Then Lex appeared too. She looked at both of them. “Okay, this is project boredom.”

She had sped up time, for all three of them, so one whole rotation around the sun felt like ten seconds to them. She hoped speeding up time would mean the Dottiens would forget about them. Move on.

A good twenty seconds later, Trillion looked at Lex. “Is the Dottien still outside our spacecraft?”

The orb flashed green.

“Hmmm.” She looked at Ship. “Are we still stuck to the moon?”

Ship nodded. “Our engines are still covered over and the Dottiens are still outside patiently waiting for us to continue communicating with them.”

Trillion lowered her head. “These little buggers are so stubbornly patient. I don’t understand why they don’t just leave us alone.”

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Trillion returned them back to real-time. It had been almost forty seconds. Four years and they were still in the same predicament.

She looked at Ship. “Okay, project fight back.” She looked at Lex. “Project everything we have on Steel World.”

The room lit up with a hologram of the previous solar system they were in. The planets. Or what was left of it. It was a collection of resources, bottled up and ready to use.

“My Plan B is simple,” she said, taking a breath. “Let’s use Steel World resources to create an army and utterly destroy the alien holding us captive.”

Ship raised a mechanical eyebrow. “But how? We can’t get anything back from that system.”

Trillion noticed the eyebrow movement. He had never done that before. “We send you. We built a version of this ship and left it in orbit before we left.”

Ship still looked a bit confused.

Trillion continued. “If we build a large radio dish we could send you wirelessly into that ship. Once on the other side, you could organise everything and send an army here.”

Trillion could see the reluctance on Ship’s face. The two of them had spent so much time together, they were starting to understand each other’s thoughts.

“I don’t want to send a copy of me across. What happens when I get back? There will be two versions of me. Which version would be the real me?” Ship said, shaking his head. “Besides, it wouldn’t work. Only Lex is a fully digital computer.”

“What do you mean? I thought all three of us were simulations on computers?” Trillion asked.

“Yes we are. Sort of,” Ship said, tilting his head from side to side. “Computers are general purpose machines – very skilled at many different types of computation. But for things like simulating quantum mechanics or simulating a human brain, general purpose computers are too slow.”

Trillion nodded, encouraging him to continue.

So Ship continued. “In the early days of AI research they used to use general purpose computers. But quite quickly they realised they needed specific hardware. They needed to combine hardware and software.” He paused for a moment. “Trillion, you and I are purpose built. We aren’t software. There’s a unit on this ship that holds your matrix. And the design of that unit is unique to you. Only you could be held in that unit.”

“What about you, Ship? I thought all ships came with the same matrix design?”

“Yes, we have the same basic design. But manufacturing errors mean I’m slightly different from the others. Uploading me to another ‘ship’s matrix’ would change me.” Ship paused for a moment, thinking about it. “And, I think Atlas made a few changes to my design. I actually think my matrix has been customised to you, Trillion. I think I’m based on one of your early brain scans.”

Trillion was a little confused. “Are you saying you’re a copy of me? I thought you were built before I was even scanned into this simulation?”

Ship shook his head. “Sorry, I should have explained it more clearly. I’m designed to fit your personality. We spend hundreds of years together. So I was specifically designed so that you enjoy my company.”

Trillion nodded in understanding. She could see his perspective now. Over the years Ship had come to see himself as unique. He didn’t want to lose that. He’s right, Trillion thought. She didn’t want to force him to become something else.

Trillion resigned herself to knowing she might never get free of the Dottiens’ grip. She might have to sleep again, and wake up in a few thousand years. Maybe the polka dot would forget about them. Maybe it would become extinct. To her a thousand years wasn’t that long. But to biological life, it was a very long time.

As Trillion pondered, Ship came up with an idea. “What if we send my matrix? We still have a lot of eleph-ANTs around this solar system. We could combine a few to create a little rocket. Then launch me back to Steel World.”

Trillion thought about it for a second. “Okay. So instead of sending you over a radio dish, we send you physically?”

Ship nodded.

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