When worried about being attacked by megabeasts or Mercers, Amber Rose overfits his image recognition algorithms so the spiders are extra alert, but this means that the algorithms will also read random input as meaningful, causing Amber Rose to panic and attack shadows.Â
I see them in the darkness of the trees. Three, maybe four: the spider’s image recognition, set to near-overfit levels, jumps and classifies even the slightest shadow. One of them peels off. Small, thin, his suit almost entirely peeled off, wires trailing from his scalp. He’s moving in fits and lurches, like the zombie version of a former athlete. One arm looks like it’s been burned off. He’s clutching what looks like a pistol, but could be anything. At least he’s not on a Megabeast: he’s very much alone and on his own two feet.
Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya. The Salvage Crew (p. 151). Aethon Books. Kindle Edition.Â
No sign of those three Mercers. Not yet. Every image processor we have is running cranked up far beyond sanity. We’re overfitting on everything. Once a spider flagged the shadows of two trees as a threat, and I attacked it furiously for a few minutes. But better this than unaware. Every day I send him out, and every day Anna shifts nervously on overwatch, listening for the sound of gunfire. You can imagine my relief when, every day, he returns, hauling either a massive stack of planks or the carcasses of DogAnts.
The trade-off for running Shen and the spiders on high alert is obvious. We have no power anymore during the day. We barely have enough for heating at night. The camp has transformed, overnight, from a reasonably cozy hab into a place we haunt because we have nowhere else to go. Anna and Milo work through the darkness sometimes just to keep themselves warm: her, hammering away on scaffolding, him on our spot probe.
Wijeratne, Yudhanjaya. The Salvage Crew (p. 204). Aethon Books. Kindle Edition.Â
| Title | Publication Type | Year | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Salvage Crew | Narrative, Novel | Yudhanjaya Wijeratne |
