Chapter Text
Why does ART like adolescent humans?
Amena (who should have been filling out her registration forms for ART’s university instead of interrupting an otherwise perfect cycle of Saffron Artifice marathons) had ignored the hint I tried to give her that we were busy, come into the Argument Lounge, flopped onto the bigger couch and proceeded to be a whiny, indecisive human at us.
“I barely knew half of these subjects were things people studied. I mean, some of these classes require doctorates!”
The Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland dispensed with the concept of terminal degrees 374 system-standards ago. Even active faculty are encouraged to engage in formal guided study on a regular schedule. Many departments require it.
“Us” included Three, on the other end of the couch from Amena, and ART, of course, who was everywhere, and who apparently couldn’t stop itself from preening about its university. In the feed, it and Three were processing the episodes of the serial into their database archive, which is mostly what Three did now when anyone invited it to watch. I don’t see the appeal, but ART seemed interested. Whatever. It can do both at once and still have capacity left for jumpseat piloting everything the humans were doing.
Amena was giving a running commentary of her feed scrolling, reading out a class or department title every time she found one that looked interesting. It was annoying, but I’m a SecUnit. My capacity to ignore chatty humans is one of the perks (right up there with not needing to ingest crunchy vegetable matter every time I sit down somewhere my governor module wouldn’t have allowed. Which was everywhere). But for whatever reason Three kept examining the courses Amena was tagging and once in a while it became so interested that it paused its process with ART. And then ART paused the show. Since the show was paused, Amena would talk to Three about the classes, and since they were talking, ART kept slapping away my attempts to restart it like Mensah’s partners swatting their offspring away from a third portion of something with sugar in it.
After the third time, I just kept going on my internal feed while the paused still image remained static on the wall display surface and Three and Amena looked at the course catalogue.
“Uganti? Pretkii? I’ve never even heard of these languages.”
They are the two main languages used in the systems of the Divarti Cluster.
“Oh - I see: the prerequisite is ‘Linguistic Developments of the Divarti Diaspora.’ Can you speak either of them?”
I have modules on over 3000 languages, some consisting of 40 or more local variants.
“Modules, right - I guess it’s easy to learn stuff like that when you can just port it into your brain. ‘Pre-Corporation Rim Station Architecture Survey’… I’m surprised that’s popular enough to have seven faculty specializing in it. Some of this stuff seems pretty niche.” I could feel ART starting to bristle in the feed at the thought that any of its university departments could be too specific to have departments or classes, or something.
Three probably felt it, too. “It could be interesting,” it said, drawing up its bare feet to hug its knees, “to see more examples of old stations. The organization of the ones I have seen are so much different from the depictions in the serials.”
“Terrantology… Astronavigational Bot Coding… Intro Corporate Contract Law…”
I started to wonder what kind of cataloging structure was returning such weird results and, oh — for prospective students, ART’s university had a randomizer. Amena had refreshed it 37 times. Three was looking at ART’s knowledge base entries for station architecture. On the ship’s camera feeds, I could see Iris and Martyn on their way toward the lounge area, probably wondering what the rest of us were doing.
ART tagged an entry for me; it was the Astronavigational Bot Coding course. Why would I need that?
Matteo is the instructor for this one - you find them entertaining and I could assist you with your coursework.
I’m not the one looking for classes, ART.
It didn’t answer.
“Shipboard Hydroponics and Biofuel… Sol System and the Ascent of Humanity, Construct Biochemistry…”
She paused a second or two before she asked, “SecUnit, maybe you would be interested in that one?”
For fucks’ sake, ART. “Why would I be interested in that? Because I’m a construct? ART does my maintenance - it’s the one that needs it.”
I have already taken that course.
“But,” Amena hesitated again like she had just realized something. “But I thought you were a secret?” ART’s crew members reached the lounge and ART greeted them with the little audible chirp that bot pilots sometimes use when humans change locations. (No, I don't know why. It's not like ART was more in this room than it was in the corridor.) “Iris told me not even most of the university knows about you.”
Correct.
Iris nodded as she sank into another chair. “Even the whole AI dev department doesn’t know about Peri. If I weren’t on its crew I wouldn’t have the clearance yet.”
Martyn flopped himself between Amena and Three. “Peri says you’re looking at the uni for continuing education?”
“I’m applying, yeah,” answered Amena, even though she was clearly not doing that.
ART tapped her feed to tag the unfinished forms but she didn’t change out of the catalogue. I have every confidence in your ability to qualify, but actually completing your application is an important step.
The rude noise Amena made dragged Three’s attention out of its feed and back into our conversation, but part of its attention was still on the architecture schematics. “Perhaps Perihelion could assist you.”
“Or just - you could do it, right? You have all the information and it wouldn’t even take you a moment.”
A tiny hitch in ART’s feed presence came right before Martyn’s laugh, but none of the humans would have detected it. “Peri probably would, but it can’t.”
Iris was suddenly looking very amused, too. She put one hand over her mouth to hide a smile. She tapped ART’s feed, but when it didn’t acknowledge, she spoke aloud: “Dad- you know that’s a sore spot! Peri doesn’t let us tell that story,” she added to Amena. “Last time Dad told anyone, he couldn’t do anything with text in the feed for a week.”
This topic is not open to continued discussion. It was doing its villain voice again.
My face did something at that, and Iris must have seen. !!! Wait, Peri hasn’t told you, either?!!
Huh. No... “Peri” has not.
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Since ART was being so huffy, the humans went back to the course catalogue, but I could tell Amena wasn’t going to be put off so easily. I didn’t plan on it, either. ART just didn’t get embarrassed. Whatever it was had to be really stupid if it didn’t even want the chance to justify its actions.
Much later in the cycle, once the humans had wandered off again to have a meal and ART and Three were back to looking at station architecture images in the feed, I asked it, Why do you think I’d want to take a class at your university? Not that I’m asking, but if you really want to - you could just give me the education modules.
It answered, Coursework is not like applying education modules. As a construct, even you should be acutely aware of the difference between integrating data and generating it through application. That was true. Even the least shitty of the company’s cheap education modules (figures that it would be the one on addressing clients politely) needed practice to use properly. (Note, the subtleties of navigating supervisor egos are much easier to grasp with a governor module making sure you know in realtime the instant you fuck up.) Besides, it added, learning is its own pastime.
Of course it thought that. It was a research transport. Learning and helping young humans learn was basically its function when it wasn’t hauling cargo or committing corporate espionage. Whatever - taking human classes just seemed like a waste of time and capacity I could be using for media instead.
But then Three had to tap in: I think I would like to try a class. Processing data is an activity that I am accustomed to doing with others, and I… enjoy - am enjoying opportunities to perform my function voluntarily. Like I did now. Like ART had always done.
You will have that option when we dock at my university. However, for best results, it may be necessary to pose as an augmented human and attend classes in person.
Honestly that sounded like a hassle, but Three didn’t seem to be bothered. In our shared workspace, it was tagging classes for consideration, and ART was attaching notes to each of them. It was still watching with me, but it didn’t protest when I paused the media to look at one. They were reviews. ART had given every course Three tagged a comprehensive description of the class lessons, materials, and assessments, which - ok, that made sense. It was like the information packet that the company included with every survey package, so that when the humans completely ignored the safety and security warnings, the company could refuse to pay out their bonds. I had no idea how that would work in a university, though. I’m sure it was different since there wouldn’t be a bond involved, plus the humans even had a separate word for it - you know, since there weren’t enough of those already.
Anyway that’s not the point. The point is that ART didn’t only include the course information packet - no, that’s not it - salubrious? Whatever, I’m not looking it up. But ART didn’t just have that file linked, it also had notes on the experience. It had rated the instructors. It had rated the students. It had rated individual lectures. Each of the ratings was accompanied by at least one comment like “Dr Avendi is competent with the material and incompetent with classroom rapport” or “this lecture was the highlight of the course, in that it was the culmination of two course units hitherto,” and “despite ambitious course title, material is limited in scope and tends toward instructor’s theoretical work on entanglement.” The short notes were accompanied by links, and - holy shit. The links were to comprehensive reports and analysis.
ART could see me looking, of course, and so it explained, Learning environment is important. Student experience and results vary greatly across different manners and approaches, nor is it consistent from student to student.
Wait a minute. I started checking the courses Three hadn’t tagged, and ART annotated every one with the same obsessive level of detail. What the fuck. How did you get all this? This isn’t just stuff from the feeds and archives - even a massive scrape wouldn’t have provided some of the categories of data here.
In answer, ART dropped a copy of its official commission in the feed.
Ok, you’re a research and teaching vessel. Asshole. Oh yeah. It was definitely avoiding something. It hadn’t really answered my question - but I knew it well enough to know that it was hoping I would get bored and stop asking it. Was it not supposed to have access to the data? That seemed like a strange limitation for the university to put on it. Besides, ART was always nosy. It accessed information it wasn’t supposed to have all the time. That was part of its function. The corporate espionage part. So whatever its secret was, that wasn’t it.
-------
At our next station stop, ART was able to transmit Amena’s (finally) completed application for the university. The cargo it was scheduled to pick up required us to stay most of a cycle for it to arrive, and several of the crew had business to conduct. Seth and Martyn didn’t even disembark this time. Instead, they went to their cabin together and ART dropped the inputs for its cameras in there. No argument from me.
Most of crew was staying aboard, and I had new media to sort through, but Amena had been so determined to go wander around in the station that Three eventually agreed to go with her. ART had pointed out that a low stakes opportunity to practice providing security as an augmented human would be useful, which was what made it agree, but it paused by my chair for a few seconds before it went.
“What.”
I spoke in a normal voice, but Karime was reading a physical book(!) in a comfortable cubby space on the other side of the room and I think she’d forgotten I was there. In my drone camera I saw her jump, look up to see what was happening, and then seconds later she was reading again. I’ve never seen a human who could sink as deep as Karime did into reading.
Three was hesitating. “There will be security scans.”
“I gave you the code for those. It’ll be fine. This station is pretty low security for the CR anyway. No one will be looking for SecUnits.”
Three hesitated again, then pinged confirmation as it went to meet Amena at the airlock. ART poked me in the feed, but when I ignored it, it didn’t persist.
------
Ten minutes into the serial I had decided to watch first, I realized that ART wasn’t watching with me. It was still there being the feed, but none of its attention was riding my inputs. It wasn’t unusual for ART to be quiet the first few minutes of something if it was totally new to both of us, but this was excessive. Four minutes later, I paused the video and pinged it.
What are you doing?
I am maintaining life support systems, assisting Iris with research analysis, running cleaning cycles on three of my decks, arguing with Port Authority about one of my cargo modules, repairing two of my larger drones with seven other, smaller ones, directing my MedSystem to assess the status of Turi’s medical concern, drafting recommendation letters for Seth, and processing the so far entirely uninteresting data I’ve scraped from the handful of mid-level corporate polities that use this station as an outpost.
I pinged an acknowledgment but didn’t say anything. For ART, most of those processes were almost autonomic. If it were human, it might have said, “I’m breathing, blinking my eyes, thinking about consuming a meal, and noticing my foot itches, all while changing my clothes.”
Then it added, I am also helping Three fend off station security scans.
That was a surprise. “What?!”
Across the room, Karime glared at my nearest drone.
Calm yourself, said ART on the feed, and sent a (sarcastic) stand down command with it for emphasis. They are proceeding without incident and I am only monitoring as a back up.
Oh. I eased back into the chair and waited. It seemed ART was finally ready to tell me how annoyed it was.
Are you concerned? It asked.
Ugh.
No, because Three is a SecUnit. Amena will be fine. If something happened - which it won’t, it would alert me - even if it was minor, it’d probably send a whole incident report. You know what it’s like. There was nothing to be concerned about. Besides, you’re watching, too.
Because you are not there with them.
That kind of pissed me off. I bet you’re in the cameras, too. Neither of you need me to be there.
Fortunately. It was ART’s usual sarcasm, but now there was some other feeling starting to bleed into its feed presence that I couldn’t identify.
Is this about me not wanting to take a class at your university?
It is your choice to take classes or not. I was simply apprising you of the opportunities available. I cannot understand why, given the option to know more about the universe, you would choose to remain ignorant. Even for you, that is irrational.
I’m a SecUnit.
So is Three.
Three is… that’s irrelevant.
So we agree.
Ugh. You know what? I did want to have a look at the station, after all.