The Sons of Kilroy

[Dracos]

Kelly ignores all of the programmer notes reaching the conclusion it was probably legitimate.  Checking the deletion logs, he sees if the captain deleted any large set of messages within the last few months in close proximity.

Dracos

[Brian]

The captain didn't seem to delete any messages on a set schedule, but started doing it a few days after the ship left the Congressional Sphere of Influence, as far as the logs reflect.  There is a trend of increasingly frequent deletions as time goes on, though.  Nearly half of all communications that were for the entire crew were deleted, by the time that everyone died.

[Dracos]

"Hum...Hey hale, let's see how good our data recovery tools are, shall we?"  Kelly got to work trying to recover anything that could be recovered from the deleted captain's logs, knowing it'd take a long time but figuring it was worth the attempt.

Dracos

[Brian]

Normally, deleted data is just marked to be overwritten, not deleted.  But the truth of the matter is that for archival purposes, deleted data isn't backed up.  Since Hale's database was restored from a backup, there's no retrievable files ... only the entries that the captain either didn't know to delete, or didn't care about.

[Dracos]

Kelly shook his head and decided to check how bad the damage was on Hale from here since he couldn't think of anything much more productive to do on that note.  He tried to calculate a general time frame it'd take to get Hale from where he was now to complete functionality.

Dracos

[Brian]

All in all, Hale is surprisingly complicated, as AIs are not really solid state.  They only really exist in holistic or holographic memory, as they're usually terrabytes in size.  Currently, of the allocated total memory of the system, Hale uses about 3.6%.  1.5% is used by everything else, including the code that Hale was compiled from.

Mindie was compiled from the same information, but obviously in a better environment, and (after checking) without about 400,000 lines of code missing.  Luckily, AIs are built with multiple fail-safes, fail-overs, and redundancies, but not parity.  Whatever's missing, is missing.  And it's so missing that Hale can't figure out what it is.  Finding out could take weeks, at the very least days, with luck.

Unless the module could be recovered, of course.  But there would be no way to integrate the missing code into Hale; a new AI would need to be compiled.  This is probably why Hale suggested that he should be deleted when he was asked about the ship's status.

Using the rod-logic records instead of working through Hale will go much faster -- the missing information could be identified in hours instead of days or weeks.  Additionally, the rod-logic records are built with parity, so the most important code should be recoverable, probably over half of whatever was gone, at least.  Implimenting it, of course, will still require recompiling the AI.

[Dracos]

Kelly shook his head and got cracking on those rod-logic files, figuring the sooner they had that info, the better.

Dracos

[Brian]

The rod logic is all intact, but arrayed in a much more complicated system than normally utilized for backup system.  This is partially due to the parity checks, which is good, and partially do to whoever set this backup up showing off, which is not as good.  The entire job looks like it's going to take about twelve hours.

While Kelly is studying the rod logic, the bot finishes its examinations of the room, and clambers up the ladder, leaving the access hatch open.

[Brian]

Some hours later, Kelly has given up on manually decoding the rod logic, and instead created a new program that does it automatically.  The system of encryption and parity used by the former coder is sadistic at its deepest levels of complexity ... but ultimately, about 60% of the missing data can be recompiled onto a new module.

The automated program itself is still going to need about another twelve hours to finish.

[Dracos]

Kelly, brushing his forehead and standing up, decides to get some sleep while it's working, heading back to his quarters and muttering about overfancy parity systems.  Once he gets there, he gets some rest.

Dracos

[Brian]

Kelly's path to his quarters takes him first, to the bridge.

Kelly now returns to Sifting Through the Ashes.