Free Interrogative 01: Tiago and the Masterless by Charles Barouch Page A

the lights. After all this time on the ship, he treated many things as passive, because the ship did it all.
    "Local. Lights. Audra, what's the plan?"
    "I thought you would have figured it out. Life support is working. That isn't a simple process of pushing air through vents. Life support has to know how much to push and where to push. Someone shut most of it down," Audra said.
    "Yeah, I did. I see. If there's no air, they can't be there. We can just choke them out. We just shut all of it down except for the hydroponics and this room," Tiago said.
    "No," Audra said. "If that fails, we've given them the idea to do it to us. We use this place passively. Where they are, the air will be cycling more."
    Tiago liked his plan better, but he accepted her wisdom. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. He was letting a sim do the parts which required imagination and assessing how others might act.
    "Local. Turn on main console. Local. Display current air cycle, peak usage only."
    Three areas were displayed. On level ninety-nine, there was a small increase, which showed the two of them, in the hydroponics section. On level one hundred, the command level, there were two adjacent areas. Both were just outside the maker unit bay. Since he knew there were fifteen sims, not counting Audra, he could estimate the distribution. It looked like one in the left-hand area and all the others to the right.
    "One of them is scouting ahead," Tiago said.
    "No. Look, the positions aren't changing. That's a fight. The Masterless are fighting with each other," Audra said. "That can only help us."
    "If they are fighting and they aren't next to each other, they are using distance weapons. They're shooting up the ship."
    "Even if those are projectile, they are only near interior walls. Besides, that's command deck. It has over a mile of buffering between the outer walls and the hull," Audra pointed out.
    "Still don't want them shooting up the ship. Also, I don't want the winner shooting us. With fourteen to one odds, this won't last long."
    "Fourteen to one… The Masterless aren't fighting each other. The Masterless are fighting Government sims," Audra exclaimed.
    "That's how Nellie created them so quickly. She built them as-is. What she got was something the Masterless couldn't control. She built her own enemies."
    "Unmodified means they have whatever default weapons that sim was assigned," Audra said.
    "Weapons that were just for show when they were holos or screenies, but the maker knows which weapon they were assigned and the maker would have accessed the weapon plans the same way the maker accessed the clothing plans to create them fully dressed. So, weapons and locals, because a local is part of the standard uniform definition. Good thing they don't know about the locals. Wait. Why in the nine hells would the maker have access to the weapon plans? I need to review that code."
    "Unless one of the sims was designed to teach safety," Audra said, quietly. "Several of us were designed as teachers for various subjects."
    "So, if there were say, two safety teachers, just to guess a number, we have a one in one hundred and eight chance they know about locals," Tiago said.
    "If she only made one model. If all fourteen are different, the odds slide down to a little worse than one in eight," Audra concluded. "We have to assume that they – the government sims – can use the maker if they can get there. They can make an army."
    "The government sims are not likely to be fond of either of us. You're an extreme mod and I stole this ship."
    "Are we rooting for the Masterless? Is that what we're left with?" Audra asked.
    "We can stop them all, from here. Don't give me that look. I won't kill them. We have options," Tiago said. "Local. Access directive sixteen sixty-one. They need a nap."
    "Directive sixteen sixty-one is a medical judgment. These crewmen are healthy," the local chirped.
    "Nothing is ever easy on this ship."
    "Can we access the maker from