Roidon activated the location scanner, its readings were being fed through Harvo-Beta a metre away in the garage. Harvo-Beta was using his own neural net as a comparison for the original’s molecular signature, which, Roidon acknowledged, could be replicated ad infinitum.
‘I have a location.’ Harvo announced. ‘I believe it to be a B’tari research institute.’
‘Of course. Where else would a temporal anomaly be held?’
‘It’s logical,’ he affirmed.
Roidon contacted the high commander.
‘The AI is currently being studied,’ the B’tari commander informed. ‘You are welcome to visit and study it for yourself.’
Harvo-alpha was now a mass of exposed circuitry hooked up to various monitors the likes of which Roidon had never before seen. The AI was still functioning on some level, situated on a white semi-circular desk in the grey and white lab.
A B’tari technician got up from his console towards Roidon. Roidon looked back down at what remained of the original Harvo, his erstwhile companion, and felt a curious sense of sorrow tinged with guilt. ‘I hope you’ll one day understand, my friend.’ he muttered, just as the technician had arrived.
The deceptively human-looking B’tari said, ‘This has been our best kept secret for over sixty years, since the moment it appeared beside the original.’
‘I doubted it was possible two could exist simultaneously. How could you tell the difference?’
‘Since this is a lab, we keep some very sensitive quantum flux detectors. The anomaly only lasted three point two picoseconds before it returned to a normal state.’ The scientist looked from the dissected Harvo-alpha to Roidon. ‘It is something of an anomaly that they didn’t fuse together. After all, that is what clearly has happened to our chief astronomer. It seems in this case there was a violation in the conservation of energy... if only for a billionth of a second.’
‘I believe the complexity of Harvo’s processor array – the parallel forcing subroutines – interfered with the TE process.’
‘Certainly: branching out to other parts of the quantum superposition state could have caused a disruption in the eradication. Alternatively, it could be that what your device generated was not exactly identical to the real wave.’
‘I replicated the genuine wave to the nearest micrograv. Let us both accept we don’t really know all the answers. But if you still have the record of Harvo’s entry point---’
‘We do indeed, but as you point out, it can’t be the same for an AI
Then there’s only one solution. I’ll perform the experiment on myself.’
‘The commander will not allow that.’
‘Then what do you believe the commander would have me do?’ Roidon’s voice had the affected calm of muted anger.
‘I will put him through to you, if you wish.’
‘No thank. I know my remit. If he is concerned he can contact me.’
***