important that they remain ignorant of that.
The plan was also based on the alien procedure to link all their transport ships when loitering. They had airlocks and passageways that could extend between ships, forming an enormous city in space. This was shown clearly in the records that were discovered in the ships that crashed on Earth and the robotic systems on Mars and Titan, and it was one of the major factors in conceiving the approach for a biological attack.
But there were obviously a number of complicated and risky things that needed to be done to accomplish the plan, and that was where all the efforts were now focused.
First off, Nebula needed to be able to take control of the robotic systems while making it seem that they were still under alien control. This was no easy task, but progress looked good so far. Harry would be a big contributor here, since brain-to-machine links could be covert and could supersede the alien control in subtle ways. The robots could seem to be responding to alien direction, but they could still carry out small tasks directed by the humans. The objective was to have the robots deliver the biological agents which were designed to have relatively long incubation periods, during which they were highly contagious. If everything worked as planned, the contagion would spread across the fleet before any of the aliens were even aware that they had been attacked.
A major problem that had not yet been solved completely was how to take control of the sentry robots at the base without alerting the enemy to the fact that humans were present. Fortunately, Nebula scientists were well aware of the sentries before the first flights to the bases on Mars and Titan, and they were able to duplicate the exchange of signals that the sentries would expect to see when a ship approached. This was all made possible by discovering a sentry that was damaged but almost intact in the robotic ship that had crashed in England. Nebula’s engineers were able to reconstruct the expected challenge-response process and could now fool the sentry into thinking that our ships were friendly ships. But they hadn’t yet been able to take control and still have the sentries behave properly when the enemy ships arrived. That was one technical problem that remained to be solved.
In fact, inserting clandestine, dual behavior in all the robots was probably the biggest technical challenge. All of them had to be under human control but still seem to be responding as the aliens expected. Here’s where Yuri and Ludmila would work with Harry to develop the right software modifications to be downloaded into each type of robot. Their job was to be able to create a stable network among the robots and humans, and that required software that could handle interactions among the semi-autonomous, intelligent systems. Harry appreciated the difficulty of dealing with a single complex, adaptive system. Here they were dealing with multiple, interactive systems, including both human and robotic intelligence, and unless the software could impose stability, the likelihood was that everything would just collapse into a state of chaos. Harry was very happy to know that Yuri and Ludmila would be working on the team, since Yuri was probably the world’s leading expert on interacting intelligent systems, and Ludmila was similarly recognized in the field of computer science.
“OK so far?” Brad asked.
Harry nodded, “Sure, I understand, but it still seems like there are some pretty hard things to do before you can pull this off. You’re also relying completely on a supposition that the aliens will do things exactly as they did before. Like, what if they don’t connect all the ships? How would you spread the contagion?”
“Don’t worry about the connections between ships. They do this for practical reasons, and they always do it the same way. When they loiter, they need to be able to reestablish commerce across the ships. They have specialized
The plan was also based on the alien procedure to link all their transport ships when loitering. They had airlocks and passageways that could extend between ships, forming an enormous city in space. This was shown clearly in the records that were discovered in the ships that crashed on Earth and the robotic systems on Mars and Titan, and it was one of the major factors in conceiving the approach for a biological attack.
But there were obviously a number of complicated and risky things that needed to be done to accomplish the plan, and that was where all the efforts were now focused.
First off, Nebula needed to be able to take control of the robotic systems while making it seem that they were still under alien control. This was no easy task, but progress looked good so far. Harry would be a big contributor here, since brain-to-machine links could be covert and could supersede the alien control in subtle ways. The robots could seem to be responding to alien direction, but they could still carry out small tasks directed by the humans. The objective was to have the robots deliver the biological agents which were designed to have relatively long incubation periods, during which they were highly contagious. If everything worked as planned, the contagion would spread across the fleet before any of the aliens were even aware that they had been attacked.
A major problem that had not yet been solved completely was how to take control of the sentry robots at the base without alerting the enemy to the fact that humans were present. Fortunately, Nebula scientists were well aware of the sentries before the first flights to the bases on Mars and Titan, and they were able to duplicate the exchange of signals that the sentries would expect to see when a ship approached. This was all made possible by discovering a sentry that was damaged but almost intact in the robotic ship that had crashed in England. Nebula’s engineers were able to reconstruct the expected challenge-response process and could now fool the sentry into thinking that our ships were friendly ships. But they hadn’t yet been able to take control and still have the sentries behave properly when the enemy ships arrived. That was one technical problem that remained to be solved.
In fact, inserting clandestine, dual behavior in all the robots was probably the biggest technical challenge. All of them had to be under human control but still seem to be responding as the aliens expected. Here’s where Yuri and Ludmila would work with Harry to develop the right software modifications to be downloaded into each type of robot. Their job was to be able to create a stable network among the robots and humans, and that required software that could handle interactions among the semi-autonomous, intelligent systems. Harry appreciated the difficulty of dealing with a single complex, adaptive system. Here they were dealing with multiple, interactive systems, including both human and robotic intelligence, and unless the software could impose stability, the likelihood was that everything would just collapse into a state of chaos. Harry was very happy to know that Yuri and Ludmila would be working on the team, since Yuri was probably the world’s leading expert on interacting intelligent systems, and Ludmila was similarly recognized in the field of computer science.
“OK so far?” Brad asked.
Harry nodded, “Sure, I understand, but it still seems like there are some pretty hard things to do before you can pull this off. You’re also relying completely on a supposition that the aliens will do things exactly as they did before. Like, what if they don’t connect all the ships? How would you spread the contagion?”
“Don’t worry about the connections between ships. They do this for practical reasons, and they always do it the same way. When they loiter, they need to be able to reestablish commerce across the ships. They have specialized
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