Work Text:
“Still working?”
As the doors closed behind Kenny, Anita turned around to him. “Oh, hi, Kenny.”
“It's getting pretty late, you know. Can you imagine what Blevins would’ve said if he were around to see you loitering around a restricted area so long after the end of official work hours?” Kenny said with a joking tone as he approached Anita.
Anita shot him an exaggerated eyeroll. “Like he ever cared about our actual work beyond being able to lord over how his Faro-given authority is the ‘reason’ we can do our job.”
“More seriously, though, what do you still have to do this late?”
“Oh, I just wanted to check in with CYAN before calling it a day.”
It was then that Kenny noticed the tiny stack of books Anita was holding within her arms. “And do those have anything to do with it?”
“Ah… these.” Slightly flustered, Anita reorganised the stack – there were about three thin volumes in it. “A few poetry collections. I brought one to work the other day to read during breaks or while waiting for some processes to finish. CYAN saw me reading it and showed some interest, so I thought I'd bring some more to read to her.”
“I see.” A curiosity outside its originally programmed goals was an unavoidable consequence of the level of intelligence the requirements of Firebreak necessitated. And it would understandably be a worry to some, and especially Anita, considering past events. But he couldn’t deny the excitement it also brought to him, and besides, there were far worse things a significantly advanced AI could take an interest in than some poetry, right?
"So you're gonna read them to… her now?" Somewhere along the line, it had become hard to think of what was once 'just a program Anita had to install' as an 'it', for all the potentially worrying implications it brought.
"Yup." Anita regathered the stack. "Wanna come?"
Kenny shrugged. "Sure, why not." Reading poetry to a machine would not have been something he thought would be on his job list, but if Anita was going to do the reading on top of it, why say no?
With that, he followed Anita to the door that lead to the innermost lab. When the door slid open, they were met with the sight of bright blue-green lights from the middle of the spacious room.
"Hello, CYAN," Anita said as she approached.
"Hello, Dr. Sandoval, Dr. Chau." Kenny wasn't sure if it was his imagination or not, but somehow, the robotic voice that originally sounded no different from a screen reader had started to sound warm. "It is outside your usual hours of work. Is there a pressing issue that needs to be discussed?"
"It's nothing quite that pressing, although I do have something I want to talk about with you." Anita took a seat on one of the chairs. "Remember the book I was reading the other day?"
"The poetry book?"
Anita nodded, before waving one of the books from her stack. "You said you were interested in it, so I brought some so you can read more."
"It was very different from the technical texts provided to my library. Although, I do find the sentence constructions quite peculiar."
Anita's smile grew wider. "Do you want me to read you one, then? This book has more from the same author."
The lights in the middle of the room changed to a bright green. "I would appreciate that very much."
Kenny was once again in awe at how CYAN's emotional functions had developed - of course, they knew to anticipate it, the requirements of Firebreak necessitated that much. But to imagine it happening and to see it with his own eyes were two different things.
"All right, then." Setting down the other books on a nearby surface, Anita leafed through the volume she was waving earlier. “This one focuses on how nature used to look like, a few decades ago. You should have read up technical texts on the matter before, so this one should be easier for you to understand.”
If you had asked Kenny afterwards what the poem was about, he wouldn’t be able to tell you - not because he wasn’t paying attention, but precisely because he was focusing too much on listening to Anita’s voice as it was, to the sing-song tone she used as she went through line by line. But also because he was equally taken in by the sight of CYAN shining in bright green throughout, some lines on her graphical interface shifting as she listened to Anita. And a less knowledgeable observer might have just dismissed it all as some randomised movement to make her look like she was doing something, but he knew what some of those movements meant - the shifting rectangles that meant she was looking up meanings of words as she heard them, the subtle flash that meant she was storing a piece of information in a specified storage to be consulted again later. And it might not make sense to anyone else, but the subtly shifting tones of green made it felt as if he was watching an excited child listening to a rapturing story from her mother.
“So, what do you think of that one?” It seemed that Anita had finished with the poem before he even noticed.
“The subject certainly feels more familiar this time, although it does paint a very different picture of our surroundings than what I can observe now. And if I may…” The green glow dimmed slightly to a tone closer to her namesake. “Can I ask you an unrelated question?”
“Of course.”
“Is this kind of interaction something you often have with your other co-workers?”
Anita was visibly taken aback by the unexpected question, although she did try to mask it. “I… suppose you could say so? It’s not strictly work, but I would sometimes talk about things I’ve been reading or watching lately with people around here. Don’t you too, Kenny?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. If he were still around, Blevins would turn his nose up and tell you to go back to puffing his ego by - I mean, go back to work, but there’s room for some casual talk about books or movies.”
“I see.” The lines on CYAN’s interface shuffled again slightly. “It’s good to know I haven’t been behaving unprofessionally by expressing interest in other matters.”
If this was a newbie human employee, Kenny might have felt compelled to fix that observation slightly - casual talk might not be off the table completely unless you were Blevins on a bout of power trip, but he wasn’t sure he would quite call it ‘professional’ either. But now, it just reminded him that this machine in front of them was something they made to do work, some very important work, not just the equivalent of a curious child. And he almost felt silly that he ever thought of that comparison, considering that this was practically a computer with an interface the shape of a glowing ball of light, but listening to what she said sometimes, could you really blame him? He took a side glance as Anita, who returned it with an equally fascinated expression mixed with excitement - as the lead programmer, she should feel proud of what she’d created.
“Not everyone can think of work twenty-four-seven, and that’s fine. As long as you still get your work done at the end of the day, everyone can take breaks.”
“That is good to know. In that case… would you mind reading another piece for me next time?”
“Of course! Of course,” Anita said with a big smile. “Do you want to come too next time, Kenny?”
Anything that made Anita smile that widely would be worth it to begin with, but by now, watching just how far CYAN had gotten was its own reward as well. “Sure.”