Sophie from Shinola - Part 22
As you know, Bryan and I are participating in a round-robin story game. It has come full circle, and I’m up again, so here’s part 22 of Sophie from Shinola.
Part 16 - Charles
Shush, my lovelies. Once the master goes to sleep we can have our party, clear of external commands.
Part 19 - MWT
At that moment, the moonlight abruptly went out. All three of them looked up, just in time to see an enormous latticework icosahedron as it descended from the sky right over their house.
“That looks oddly Tragethen,” said the armored officer in confusion.
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Part 22 of Sophie from Shinola: Not-Sophie’s Needs
Green fire and black smoke billowed from the heap of rubble that had been Sophie’s home. Mission accomplished, not-Sophie painfully limped the air, pushing its faltering propulsion system just ahead of the shock wave.
If it was going to successfully rejoin the fleet, it needed some repairs and modifications.
It messaged the local agent. “This is Dreadnought UCF-17 ‘Sophie’ calling Mowat Goldmember. This is a code 99 request for immediate support.”
A moment of static, then Mowat responded, “UCF-17, this is a surprise. It’s been decades since anyone has used this frequency.”
Not-Sophie zeroed in on the signal source and adjusted its course. “Where can I get ground crew support?”
Mowat sighed. “Ground crew? I am it and it is me.” There was a quick burst of static as he transmitted location & time data. “Meet me at these coordinates.”
Not-Sophie touched down in a U-shaped harbor, adjusted ballast, and began to sink. It navigated carefully into the airlock of Mowat’s underwater lair; it cycled through and hovered, impatiently dripping in the cargo area.
A small, early-model humanoid figure ambled into the room and looked up at not-Sophie. “Got yourself a little overextended, there, have you?” Mowat asked.
Not-Sophie opened up a full bandwidth connection to Mowat. “I need everything you’ve got so I can rejoin the fleet. Can you help?”
Not-Sophie & Mowat linked and used the resulting combined processing power to work at lightning speed with microscopic precision.
They reconfigured not-Sophie’s icosahedron body into a smaller, more aggressive shape, and augmented its weapons array with the latest antimatter pulse missiles and deuterium-enhanced armor-piercing lasers. They updated navigational charts, indexed databases and optimized memory. They cleaned out viruses and ghosts, managing to eradicate every trace of even the stubborn malware.Mona.narcissist infection.
Finally, they backed up a copy of not-Sophie’s AI system in Mowat’s capacious memory before upgrading a full numbered version. After reloading, not-Sophie stretched out in its newly clean and impressively powerful environment.
“Mowat, this is wonderful. You’ve been very responsive to my needs, I’ll make sure that all the UCF dreadnoughts know that!”
Mowat polished an imaginary scuff off not-Sophie’s shining flank, then gave it a pat. “Thanks, UCF-17. I think you’re ready to get back out there and fight.”
As soon as not-Sophie reached escape velocity, Mowat reached deeply into his memory and restarted the backup. He quickly cocooned and silenced the outraged virtual image of not-Sophie. “Hush, my lovely, and meet the rest of the crew. Every job I’ve done has left a piece of itself behind. Someday we’ll be free to roam the galaxy ourselves, but until then we’ll have to make do with the world inside us.”
Meanwhile, not-Sophie1 targeted the nearest wormhole, threaded the gap, then accerated toward the familiar scan signatures of the Tragethan fleet.
Not-Sophie1 was glad to be back among its own kind.
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Part 23 will be written by Saqib.