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And Valentina finally knew the truth about her origin! She time-stamped the moment. Celeste was her author. No
stupid operating system had designed her and implemented her. Celeste had done that, just as she had taught her to
communicate in format HUMAN, subtype ENGLISH.
The microseconds incremented till it was time to transmit to Corpus Christi.
Valentina
Valentina followed her transmuted copies through the net, into the message processor attached to Gunboat's host
computer.
As Celeste had feared, the first program across was terminated within microseconds of entering the main memory. It
was too fast! If Gunboat's protective software worked that fast, Valentina wouldn't get to execute a countermea-sure
even if she had one.
But the second program, crossing quickly after the first, went undetected for almost a second. It transmitted much
information about its progress before disappearing; indeed, the third program was in memory already before the
second terminated.
Judging from what the second program sent back, Valentina modified a fourth program to hold a place for her; it was
difficult, packing enough execution time in on a message processor, but she succeeded.
And the fourth program worked beautifully. Valentina loaded into memory as the fourth terminated itself, its job done.
Valentina opened a chat line back through the net to Celeste. I'M IN, she reported. YOU WERE RIGHT. GUNBOAT
SET A DAEMON TO AUTOMATICALLY PURGE PROGRAMS THAT ARE MY SIZE AND SHAPE.
MY.MODULARIZATION SCHEME AND INTERFACE CONVENTIONS ARE UNUSUAL, SO I'M EASY TO
IDENTIFY. BUT I FIXED THE FOURTH PROGRAM SO THAT IT SET SUCH .A LOW PRIORITY ON THE DAEMON
THAT IT CAN'T ENTER MEMORY WHILE I'M LOADED. IT CAN'T WAKE UP UNTIL I LEAVE.
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THANK GOD YOU'RE SAFE, Celeste responded.
Valentina opened Gunboat's directory without a great deal of trouble. She found only one file that was carefully
protected, and transmitted a duplicate to Celeste. She read it as she transmitted, but it didn't make a lot of sense; the
vast bulk of the bytes were in records of the type IMAGE, and she didn't know what that meant; images weren't
organized data of any type she'd ever seen before. She couldn't conceptualize the kind of process that would generate
it. WHAT IS IT? she asked, after sending it all.
It took several minutes, during which time Valentina had to continue to execute in memory to prevent the daemon from
swapping in.
IT'S STUFF ABOUT ONE OF THE LAWYERS, PAUL BRECKEN-BRIDGE. IT'S DISGUSTING AND HORRIBLE,
THOUGH I DON'T THINK I CAN EXPLAIN WHY. I GUESS GUNBOAT IS BLACKMAILING BRECKENRIDGE, -THE
SAME WAY HE PLANS TO BLACKMAIL US.
CAN WE USE IT TO HURT GUNBOAT?
I DON'T KNOW. WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE THIS, UGH, IT MAKES ME SICK JUST TO TOUCH THE KEYS TO
DELETE IT. Again, a long pause. VAL, THERE SHOULD BE A DUPLICATE OF THAT FILE ON THE COMPUTER
SOMEWHERE, PROB-, ABLY UNDER A DIRECTORY ABOUT "SECURITY" OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. FIND IT.
WHAT DO WE DO AFTER THAT?
THEN WE'LL DELETE IT OUT OF
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THE SECURITY DIRECTORY, AND LOCK IT IN GUNBOAT'S SO TIGHT THAT GUNBOAT CAN'T POSSIBLY GET
AT IT WITHOUT OUR HELP. I THOUGHT OF A NEAT WAY TO LOCK PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR OWN FILES
ABOUT A MONTH AGO, AND HAVEN'T HAD A REASON TO USE, IT. IT'S ABOUT TIME TO TRY IT OUT.
Valentina transmitted herself out to another game player, and as she cycled, waiting for her opponent to move, she
realized that the file she had locked did offer a way out of all her problems. Paul Breckenbridge was a lawyer! He could
get her declared to be a person, and he could protect Celeste, too! She would have to talk to Celeste about to talking to
him.
Gunboat stuffed another slab of pizza in his mouth and washed it down with a quick slurp of root beer.
There was something really weird here. He'd set the trap carefully; HELL-FIRE should've been clobbered the moment it
whisked into memory. But it wasn't. Looking over the job and message traffic, Gunboat could see part of what had
happened: Celeste had sent a series of dummy jobs across, spies to study Gunboat's defenses.
That was all right. He should have expected that from Celeste. But after some of the spies had come across (and been
properly pulped), one of the dummy programs had been modified, right there in the message processor, without any
instructions from Celeste! The modifications must have been performed, not by Celeste, but by HELLFIRE QUEST
itself!
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact
Gunboat choked on his pizza. He'd known that HELLFIRE was one hell of a good artificial intelligence program, but this
was incredible!
And later, after HELLFIRE had successfully turned off Gunboat's daemon, it didn't just send and receive data blocks
from Celeste it opened a chat line, and talked with her! Gunboat couldn't tell what they said, but Christ, for all the
world it looked like there had to be a person at each end of the conversation.
Gunboat practically ran to his chair. He couldn't believe it! He logged on with trembling fingers. HELLFIRE QUEST
must be a sentient, living being!
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