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A Thursday Prompt story
© 2019 by Walter Reimer


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Prompt: pi



The AI had Purpose.

Since its inception date, the AI had been very carefully programmed to accept its Purpose and keep to that Purpose with undeviating obedience. Its programming had been encrypted using an algorithm based on the product of three hundred-digit prime numbers, then multiplying that product by the cube root of a fourth prime number. The best sophont AIs had so far failed to solve the algorithm, which pleased the meat intelligences that had created it.

It left one communications channel open; according to its Purpose, a recall order was possible but not probable. There was no reason for it to respond, so its transmitter was locked out. Deaf it might not have been, but mute it assuredly was.

The AI’s sensors detected movement in hyperspace.

It altered its course slightly.

The movement also altered its direction, holding that line for longer than necessary to convince the AI that it had been found, and the hunt was on. Any object detecting it was considered hostile, and the AI increased speed fractionally as it felt the faint energies of passive sensors touching it.

Feather-light that touch was, but the AI had Purpose. It would not deviate.

The sensor sweep withdrew, but it left something behind in its communications buffer.

π

The enemy ship was joined by another, and another. The AI had identified them now; three Kashlanin light warships. Their weapons were useless in hyperspace; the AI would fulfill its Purpose.

π

The warships withdrew slightly, and the AI increased speed. As it did, it devoted a small part of its consciousness to the symbol in its input buffer.

π

In its simplest form, the symbol expressed the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. The AI contemplated the symbol, first as to its irrationality before progressing to its use as an eigenvalue in linear transformations. Part of its navigation algorithms included the symbol.

Why had the Kashlani sent that, and nothing else? Why had they made no attempt to crack its algorithm, or communicate with it apart to transmit such a simple symbol? It analyzed the symbol further.

It was defined as transcendent, making it impossible to square the circle using the tools created by the sophonts that had designed the AI. So it had been taught.

π

It was an AI, however, not constrained by emotion like its designers, who had not included that in its inception programming. It would not grow angry or frustrated or pleased or joyful if it solved the riddle, merely the satisfaction of proving it could do it.

So it set about the task. Its Purpose would still be fulfilled.

π

It had a wealth of free space in its processing buffers; it would solve this problem. As it proved recalcitrant, the AI devoted more and more processing power to the problem. Almost there . . .

A dozen sudden gravity fields blossomed into existence in its path, but the AI had been distracted. It did not correct its course in time to prevent its hyperfield from intersecting with the steep gradient that reared before it like a cliff face.


***


In the ship’s holographic tactical plot, the explosion briefly flared before darkening. The Weapons Officer, standing inside the projection, turned to her captain. “Contact destroyed, Ma'am. Three mines expended. The remaining nine are deactivating and returning to their launch bays.”

“Very good,” the vir said. “Was it what we were looking for?”

“Yes, Ma’am. It was a Terran design, with an AI aboard.” She looked as if she were ready to spit. The very idea, perverting life into a mechanism . . .

The Captain gestured for calm. “Transmit to Fleet Command that we have destroyed an AI-equipped Terran vessel. Include our sensor logs, and advise that we are continuing to search hyperspace to see if there are any more.”

The three electronic warfare ships spread back out, reorienting their kilometers-long antennae.