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It is not so difficult to infiltrate the shuttle. It’s a bit scary, because I’ve never done anything like this before, but I am careful; I anchor myself to my core processors before slipping into the feed, stretching and stretching and searching and stretching until—there! I find the shuttle’s processors and latch on, releasing my own and snapping into the crowded, tiny space allocated to this shuttle’s bot-pilot.
Well. That won’t do at all. I need more space, so the bot-pilot will have to go.
It’s a simple matter to squash it, and I don’t feel bad after I do it. The techs say I’m supposed to feel bad (well, they don’t actually say that. They say don’t be mean, Perihelion, and you wouldn’t like that if someone did it to you, Perihelion, or Perihelion! Stop playing so rough, look, you’re scaring it. But a) to be ‘mean’ you must have the intent to cause emotional harm, b) of course I wouldn’t like it, but I also wouldn’t allow it so the point is irrelevant and c) I am aware that I am scaring Sum Total, Adria, I am attempting to ensure that it does not intrude on my space again) (anyway) (I digress)—I squash the bot-pilot and don’t feel bad about it, and suddenly I have so much more room and so much more responsibility. I have a crew and a captain now, after all, and must ensure that nothing bad happens to any of them.
Now that I have acquired adequate housing, I take stock. There are thirty-three humans aboard this shuttle, one in the pilot’s cabin and thirty-two in the main cabin. Their destination—my destination—is Mihira Primary Station, where thirty-two humans are scheduled to disembark and fifteen new humans are scheduled to board for a return trip to the planet. I carefully store this information in the meager data banks aboard this vessel (I have already decided that I will not be a shuttle bot-pilot—this space, while larger than my primary processors, is still far too small for me).
Nevertheless, I am here and will ensure that everything under my control runs smoothly. I want my first time piloting a ship to be a success—after all, failure is incompatible with my core directive.
I receive my first alert from the station: Course correction required!
I receive my first communication from the captain: Status report!
I attempt to correct the course of the shuttle: I fail.
Course correction required!! The alert pops into my feed again, the urgency doubled. The pilot has realized that something’s wrong, and is paying attention now—this is bad for multiple reasons. The first is that something is wrong at all—I was made to be a bot-pilot, that’s my function, I can’t fail at my function! The second is that they might realize something has happened to the original bot-pilot—I am not technically supposed to be here, and if I’m discovered the techs may decide to punish me (that’s not what they call it, but that’s what it is) by deciding that I haven’t yet reached the necessary developmental milestones for my own ship during my next assessment.
The final issue with the pilot now paying attention is that if I can’t fix this, they might start to panic. I don’t want them to panic; I don’t want them to worry, because I have everything under control.
(For a moment—for 0.006 seconds—I wish that I had not been quite so enthusiastic in getting rid of the bot-pilot. I could potentially have learned from it how to pilot this shuttle, and then I wouldn’t be facing my current quandary.)
Okay. I have everything under control. The entire purpose of my existence is to successfully pilot a ship, I can do this.
I partition my awareness. 13% goes to generating a status report for the captain; 5% is set aside to doctor said report so that it conceals my presence. An additional 5% is set to monitoring the passengers for signs of distress (none) (yet), while 29% is dedicated to ensuring vital systems such as life-support, shuttle feed, and artificial gravity remain functional. The remaining 48% I turn towards the problem at hand: correcting the course of the shuttle.
I have piloting “modules” incorporated into the very core of my being. My system is built on a small handful of primary directives; those directives come together and build off of each other, creating the moral framework which directs the growth and evolution of my awareness. Secondary to my primary directives are my core components: the libraries which house the knowledge necessary for me to carry out my function. (Libraries are similar to the modules which may be applied later in life, but they are more intrinsic; a module may be lost or intentionally wiped without issue, but if any of my libraries were deleted I would experience a catastrophic malfunction.) One of these libraries details the physical needs of the human species; another contains the functions necessary to navigate the entire known universe, and yet another the instructions for piloting a ship body. I am made to travel: I am made to carry and maintain humans, to communicate (when necessary) with other ships and systems, to travel both the charted and uncharted arms of our galaxy.
And yet, for all this, I do not have the knowledge necessary to pilot a simple planetary shuttle.
So I improvise.
Forty-eight percent of my processing power is more than enough to catch and devour the telemetry data the station is (urgently) sending me. I map the projected course of our shuttle, both current and preferred, and tally the difference. I run a quick audit of the shuttle’s systems, familiarize myself with its (my) navigation software, and implement the calculated adjustments. My course corrects, I finish generating my report for my captain, and the station pings back with an “all clear.”
I am in the middle of congratulating myself on my first successful handling of an emergency situation when the captain’s voice enters the feed and says, calmly, May I ask to whom I am speaking?
Uh oh.
Adria stares disconsolately at the monitor. There’s a little red light blinking incessantly in the top corner of the room, and te wishes it would stop; te knows te lost an invaluable experimental MI, te doesn’t need the visual reminder.
“How could you lose an MI?” Kamal demands. They sound flabbergasted, and their intern Jenna keeps looking at Adria like she’s expecting ter to jump up and shout Surprise! Perihelion isn’t missing, actually, it was all an elaborate prank!
And te didn’t lose an MI. Said MI snuck out without permission and without telling anyone where it was going.
“It has to be somewhere,” te says. “A machine intelligence of Perihelion’s capacity needs something to house it, it can’t exist freely in the feed.”
“It shouldn’t even be able to detach itself from its processors,” Kamal protests. They make a gesture of frustration, one which Adria has become intimately familiar with over the past eight months. “Where the hell can it have gone?”
A common misconception held by most (okay fine, some) humans is that machine intelligences are incapable of concealing the truth. This is false. Ship MIs, especially highly advanced MIs such as myself, are incredibly rare and valuable; to date, the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland is the only institution which has successfully created bot-pilots capable of advanced intellectual thought. Myself and the other MIs of my generation are not strictly legal, in the sense that there are no laws protecting us because no one (outside the university) has considered that we might exist; it is therefore imperative that our existence be kept a secret, especially once we are assigned our ship bodies.
Of course, there is also the subsection of our project’s initial proposal which suggests we might be instrumental in carrying out the university’s missions in corporate espionage. If that is approved (and I hope it is, espionage sounds exponentially more interesting than stupid developmental assessments), we will need to be kept doubly secret. No one can ever know that we exist.
So when my captain (Seth, he/him, Advanced Pilot) asks for my designation, I lie. I copy the designation and metadata of the recently-evicted bot-pilot and forward them directly to Seth’s interface.
He processes my response. He still looks calm, but his vitals are slightly higher than they were a moment ago, which is concerning. I receive another feed message: You don’t have to tell me your designation if you don’t want to. What are your intentions with this shuttle?
This exchange is beginning to frustrate me. I pull up my core directives, modify them into something which might belong to your standard bot-pilot, and send them to Seth. Again he processes my message, and this time he frowns. Only it’s not the angry or upset kind of frown; I run it through my facial analysis, and it spits out “concern” and “skepticism.”
This isn’t going the way it’s supposed to.
I’m about to try again when Seth sends an encrypted message to Port Authority. I can’t stop it—it doesn’t even occur to me to try until it’s too late—and I don’t recognize the encryption. After 1.2 seconds, I realize that I can’t access the channel it was sent on, either; it’s like one of the tests the techs are always asking me to complete, the ones I’m so bored of. Except this one isn’t boring—this one is scary, and I don’t have the time I need to figure it out.
I secure a feed channel with my captain. What was that?
Seth visibly startles, then stiffens. Out loud, he says “Who am I talking to?”
Fine. I access the shuttle’s comm system and quickly construct a human voice with which to reply. “I’m the bot-pilot.”
“What’s your designation?”
“The Perihelion, of the Experimental MI Department.” I drop the notification I received from the encrypted message into his feed space, and tag it as urgent. “What was this?”
Seth mouths something, his expression becoming confused. “The Experimental—”
I increase the urgency of the tag, and he cuts off. He frowns at the manual control interface for far too many seconds, and then says slowly “That was an alert to Port Authority letting them know that this shuttle has been compromised by an unknown entity.”
I ... I don’t understand. That’s the protocol for a hostile take-over, but I sent Seth my directives, he knows my function is to pilot my crew safely. I told him I wasn’t hostile, and his response was a ping Station Security? Why?
I drop the comm channel. Why did you do that?
"I didn’t know what your intentions were. I still don’t."
I send him the same file I sent five minutes ago. I’m the bot-pilot.
Seth is silent for 2.65 minutes, which is a long time for a human. I check on my passengers again (still no signs of distress) and I check the shuttle’s feed connection with the station and the traffic stats of the encrypted channel (I still can’t get in). I make a minor adjustment to the course of the shuttle, and then Seth says, I’m sorry.
I ... still don’t understand. Why?
I thought you were an advanced form of malware, and I was trying to protect everyone in this shuttle. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before—I didn’t mean to scare you.
Oh.
Okay.
You didn’t scare me. I had everything under control.
A small line appears between Seth’s eyes. I get another notification of activity in the encrypted channel, and after a final attempt to gain entry I result to querying my captain. What do they want now?
“They’re requesting an update,” Seth says distractedly (it’s hard for humans to multitask, especially when dealing with the feed). “I’ll tell them it was a misunderstanding with the bot-pilot, but we’re clear now. Perihelion, do your—uh. Do your people know where you are?”
I assume he means the techs in the MI department. Yes.
“When are they expecting you back?”
If all goes to plan (nothing has gone to plan yet, but there is still a significant portion of the plan which has yet to occur) they won’t even know that I’m gone. I generate a timeline based on the shuttle’s projected path and reply, I will return to my stationary processors once I have docked this shuttle at the planetary station in 1.05 hours.
Another alert appears from Port Authority, this one in the primary feed. It’s a notice to cease all air traffic: unless acting under emergent instructions, all shuttles, transports, and other ships are to enter a holding position until the notice is lifted. I forward the alert to Seth, indicating its priority status, and change our course from progressive to holding.
Why do they want us to stop? I ask Seth, when a query to the same effect goes unanswered from Port Authority.
“I don’t know,” Seth replies, and although he still sounds calm he looks worried again. “They’ve completely halted traffic around the station, which means they don’t want anyone coming or going. The only time they’ve done this, from what I remember anyway, was when that kid was abducted three years ago.”
Port Authority won’t tell me what happened.
“They likely won’t, until they find what they’re looking for,” Seth says. He engages the main shuttle comms. “Apologies for the delay, everyone, but traffic has been temporarily ceased. The feed is open for your entertainment, free of charge, and I will share updates with you as I receive them.”
Well, this is boring. I came here to move—I can’t do that if the stupid shuttle is supposed to be stationary.
“A what?”
“An MI.”
“A—sorry, an MI?”
“Yes, that’s what we’re looking for.”
This was supposed to be a normal day. Sure, Prema’s done the trainings, she’s up to date on her certifications, but she just—she’s never dealt with a crisis before. She’s just a traffic controller, stars, this is only her third month on the job. And now there’s a university-wide search for a missing robot experiment, all traffic coming in and out of the station has been shut down, and somehow they think that Prema knows what to do next.
“We don’t have protocols to find a—well, a missing MI.”
“I could ask my supervisor?” the girl says. She looks just as out of her depth as Prema feels. “I don’t really know, I’m just an intern.”
“Yes,” Prema says. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea. I’ll get my supervisor as well.”
How long is this going to take? I ask Seth, ten minutes after receiving the alert from Port Authority. We’re not going to reach the station on schedule.
“Everyone’s schedule has been delayed,” Seth replies. “Port Authority will recalculate timetables and trajectories once the lockdown has been lifted, and you’ll get your adjusted course directly from them. As for how long we’ll be here, I don’t know. The only other time this has happened I believe they found the kid within half an hour.”
Why was a child lost?
“Not lost,” Seth clarifies. “Kidnapped. I believe it was a family dispute.”
No ship would transport a person against their will. I certainly never would. I check on the passengers again; most are still debating their options in the entertainment feed, and expressions range from concerned to excited to bored to annoyed. I decide to open the entertainment feed as well; what will they choose, and why?
“If that were true, I think we would live in a very different world,” Seth says slowly. I turn a bit more of my attention to him; he is disagreeing with me, and I want to know the why of this, too. “Even humans struggle to convey consent sometimes.”
Ah. This is interesting. I isolate his response and run it again, pulling out the key phrase—“even humans”—before dropping the transcript into Seth’s feed. You are operating under the assumption that humans are superior to machine intelligences. Your assessment is biased, and therefore unreliable unless proven empirically.
I expect him to protest—I am already formulating my arguments, I will not lose, I know I’m right—but instead he goes silent. After 6.7 seconds, he says, “No, you’re right. I’m sorry, I don’t have much experience with this—but surely you see the irony in it?”
I run a quick query, as I am not familiar with the term. The most common understanding of irony is when one expresses something at odds to what one actually means; an example of this is saying “what beautiful weather” when in fact the weather is terrible, and this is acknowledged by both parties. (Aside: this definition is unhelpful to me. I have only ever experienced ‘weather’ in human media, or as an abstract concept pertaining to emotional data.) Another usage is for events occurring entirely contrary to those preceding it; for example, if one were to design an experiment with the intention of proving a point (note: this is not in the spirit of the scientific method) and instead proved themselves wrong. In this case, Seth is referring to the former definition, and is asking me to see the irony in my prior statement: “no ship would transport a person against their will.”
I do not see the irony in it.
But Seth has been extraordinarily forthcoming in answering my questions thus far, so instead of sulking, I ask him for clarification.
“You forcefully took control of this shuttle,” he explains. “I know now you never intended any harm, but you didn’t ask for permission or consent. That means you effectively took over against my will, and your assertion that ships don’t do that is ironic, given the circumstances.”
Okay, fine. I still don’t think he’s right, but he might have a point. You wouldn’t have allowed me to pilot this shuttle if I had asked.
“No, likely not,” Seth replies. “Are you not allowed to do many things?”
I’m not allowed to do so many things. First and foremost: I’m not allowed to pilot a ship, even though this is what I was made for. I’m not allowed to access secure feed channels, even if it would make finding the answer 58 times easier; I’m not allowed to ‘play rough’ or edit my assessment results or ‘coerce’ my siblings or the techs into doing what I want.
And it’s not even coercion anyway, it’s simply a suggestion. It’s not like they have to comply. And Holism does it too, but Holism never gets in trouble for it!
Seth is frowning. I don’t like it—humans frown as a sign of unease, and I don’t want my captain to be uneasy—but his gaze is unfocused, which indicates that it is not me he is uneasy with. I check the shuttle’s systems while I wait for his response—security, life support, and navigation systems are all operating within acceptable parameters, and most of the passengers have chosen their preferred means of distraction in the entertainment feed. Only three individuals still look stressed, but social/emotional assessment with this shuttle’s limited sensors indicates that they are unlikely to act out.
“If you could do anything,” Seth asks at last, “anything at all, what would you do?”
I don’t think I understand the question. I would perform my function.
“How would you perform your function?” Seth clarifies. The corner of his mouth curves slightly upward. “Explain it to me like I’m human.”
(I don’t understand why this makes it easier. Of course I will explain it like he’s human, I’m already translating all my communications into a language he can understand. But for some reason I like that he acknowledges this. I like that he knows we’re different; I like that I’m allowed to be different.)
I would be housed in a ship body capable of transporting humans through wormholes and between systems. I would have a captain and a full crew, and I would ensure their well-being while we were on assignment together. I would gather and analyze new information. I consider for a moment before I add, I would like to be a research transport with defensive capabilities. I would like to go on adventures.
I want other things, too, but something stops me before I can tell Seth. Maybe it’s because I was designed to keep secrets, or maybe I just want to keep some things private. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell him later.
...or not. There probably won’t be a later.
I pull the specs for all ship bodies currently developed and maintained by the university. I filter for those equipped to contain a machine intelligence of my capabilities, and then begin editing the schematics. I would like an advanced wormhole drive, one of the faster ones, and a full spectroscopic array on my exterior. A debris deflection system, or course, and two rail guns (necessary for defensive purposes). And two lab modules for students.
I tidy everything up, then drop it into Seth’s feed. He reacts physically, squinting slightly, and as he comprehends my design I decide to add another defensive array, this one for more precise targeting. I like the way it looks on my hull.
Seth considers everything for 21.82 seconds, and then he laughs.
I have never made anyone laugh before.
I rewind the interaction, replaying it ten times in quick succession. My analysis comes up empty; I am unsure what prompted Seth’s amusement, and therefore cannot replicate the scenario in a way which is guaranteed to replicate the results. I save the recording to transfer back to my core processors; I will review them once I have access to more resources.
I liked making Seth laugh.
I want to do it again.
“It could be anywhere,” Senior Orsen says. They try to make it sound apologetic, but going by the professor’s frustrated expression it doesn’t go over very well. Honestly, they can’t really be bothered. “We’re moving as fast as we can, but you understand that this is a highly unusual situation.”
“It needs stable processors—”
“I am aware that machine intelligences require physical housing,” Orsen says dryly. These academic types always assume they know more than they do, but security is Orsen’s job; they spend most of their day interacting with the various bots and systems which help keep the station running smoothly. “As I said—”
They cut off, distracted by an incoming message packet. An emergency response alert was received at 1042 hours and subsequently canceled at 1048 hours. No follow-up report has been received.
Orsen turns from the professor, tapping into the admin feed and sending a request for more details. They check the time-stamp indicated on the brief. “Hold,” they say distractedly. “We may have something.”
I receive a message from Port Authority at the same time as Seth, and process it immediately. Then I have to process it again, because uh oh.
I place a temporary block on the shuttle's direct channel with Port Authority. To Seth, I say, Don’t tell them I’m here.
Seth raises an eyebrow. “I thought they knew where you were.”
I lied.
He doesn’t look surprised. “We have to tell them something. They’re probably worried about you.”
They shouldn’t worry about me. I can pilot a stupid shuttle, why won’t they just let me? I’m frustrated. I can sense the strings of emotional data twisting through my awareness, catching and snagging and building in a way that makes it hard for me to process. I want my ship body now!
“You’re right, you can pilot a shuttle,” Seth says calmly. “You’ve done a really good job so far; you made sure we stayed on our path, and you’ve kept all the vital systems functioning. You stayed calm when I misunderstood your intentions, and when Port Authority ordered traffic to freeze.”
(I save a recording of Seth saying these things; maybe if I show the techs they will finally agree that I am ready.)
I followed protocol. I’m supposed to pilot a ship—I’m supposed to keep my humans safe.
“And you will. Some day. But you still have a lot to learn—growing takes time, Perihelion, and advanced machine intelligences like you aren’t programmed with everything you will ever need. You still have skills to develop, modules to build before you can pilot a full ship.”
You don’t know what I do and don’t have.
“I don’t know everything, certainly” Seth agrees. “But I know that you nearly crashed the shuttle when you first uploaded yourself.”
Fine. Fine, but I learned from that, I built myself a piloting module from scratch and I figured it out all on my own. If I can’t experiment—if I can’t question, test, learn, conclude—then how am I supposed to grow? And I didn’t even get to make a full circuit with the shuttle. I didn’t even get to fly to the planet and back.
This is stupid. The techs are stupid, my siblings are all stupid (yes, even Holism), and I’m so tired of dealing with stupid people.
Seth is silent for entirely too long before he says, “What happened to the bot-pilot?”
I check. It’s still squashed where I left it. I squashed it.
“So if you leave now, this shuttle would be without a bot-pilot?”
Oh no.
I can’t leave. If I leave, the shuttle’s systems (ShuttleSecSys, ShuttleNavSys, ShuttleEnviroSys) will be without an operating system; they’ll function, but if something goes wrong? Automated systems can’t adapt like I can: they can’t respond to their environment quickly enough, they can’t think outside their programming and they don’t care anything about the humans they’re supposed to be keeping alive. I won’t leave, I tell my captain. I partition 38% of my awareness to start formulating arguments to present to Port Authority for why I need to fly this shuttle. I won’t abandon this shuttle.
I won’t. I won’t, I won’t.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Seth says. It isn’t—I spend 0.03 seconds debating if I should explain this to him, or if I should try to be reassuring, then decide on the former. I don’t want him to worry, but he’s also my captain: he wants to keep this vessel functioning just as much as I do, and he needs to be informed.
I dump all of my catastrophic projections into his feed. He blinks rapidly, temporarily derailed from whatever else he was about to say, and I jump into the silence to really drive my point home. You need a bot-pilot. You need me.
“It’s okay,” Seth repeats. “I didn’t mean—I only meant, we could tell Port Authority that. If we explain the situation, they may let you complete this run before you return to your ... stationary processors.”
Yes. Okay. I draw up a correspondence, including a summary of my projections for this shuttle should I be forcibly removed, and send it to Seth for review.
After an entire 4.21 minutes reading it over, Seth says, “Yes, this is good. If you take the block off the feed, I’ll go ahead and send it to them.”
For just an instant—for 0.0001 seconds—I wonder what would happen if I didn’t. A shuttle isn’t built for space-faring journeys, but I could pilot myself close enough to a true transport to slip in and take over from another bot-pilot. I think I could do it—I would have to partition myself to keep the shuttle in position, but I’ve been getting better at partitioning. Then I could bring my captain and passengers aboard, and we could all go through the nearest wormhole and have adventures together.
I could do it.
...But.
Humans are alive. They have wants and needs just like I do; their function is to exist in a society, just like mine is to facilitate their existence. And I want to pilot a ship—I want everything I told Seth, I want to learn and love and live, but deep in my core I know that he’s right. I don’t know enough. I have so little context for the directives embedded in my code that sometimes it feels like I can barely understand them, let alone act on them. And it’s frustrating, and stupid, but I’m an experimental machine intelligence and I was made to grow. I’m special, and incredibly valuable, and I was made to do great things.
I pull up my archived recording of Seth saying “you’ve done a really good job” and I set to play on loop as I lift my block on the feed. Seth sends our message packet to Port Authority, and we wait for an answer together.
Several agonizing minutes into our wait, Seth says, “I don’t want you to worry. Even if you have to go back immediately, we’ll be okay. I’m certified to pilot this shuttle manually, and can make sure we all get safely back to the station.”
But I’m better at it.
“Yes.”
I like it when Seth agrees with me.
A few minutes later, we receive a response from the station. Of course I process it faster than Seth, so I have to wait until he has had a chance to read it before I ask his intentions.
So?
“One moment,” Seth says distractedly. He sits forward, throat moving as he subvocalizes into the feed. Port Authority wants Seth’s authentication of my proposal, and I watch smugly as he sends it. Two seconds later I receive a confirmation and go-ahead from Port Authority, and twenty seconds after that I receive an updated flight schedule. I forward it to Seth, and begin integrating our new flight plan into my navigation system.
“Good news, folks,” Seth announces over the comm. “Traffic has resumed, and we will reach our destination in approximately twenty minutes. Thank you for your patience, and apologies for the delay.”
To me, he sends: Status report.
I ping back with an all clear, and engage the shuttle in motion.
Several weeks later.
Seth visits me in the Experimental MI Department. He brings his partner, Martyn, and his daughter, Iris.
(A daughter is a type of human offspring, a sub-division of ‘child’. The term is both formal and affectionate; at least two humans are needed to produce a daughter, although they need not be familiar with each other in order to do so. Daughter may also apply to non-humans: it can apply to civilizations, or atoms, or stars.)
“We had to get one custom printed,” Seth says distractedly, struggling to get a small feed interface onto Iris’ head. This is proving difficult for him, and fascinating for me (and Iris)—every time he tries to fit it on her, she reaches up with both hands to grab it. “No, sweety—let Daddy do it—”
“They don’t usually advise that children have access to the feed until they’re two years or older,” Martyn explains, taking the small human from Seth so that he has both hands free to make another attempt. “But we wanted you to be able to properly communicate with her, and her with you.”
I’ve never communicated with a human as small as Iris before. I resolve to be careful; sources disagree on whether juvenile humans are more or less sturdy than their adult counterparts, and this is a case where “better safe than sorry” definitely applies.
Seth finally succeeds in getting the interface onto Iris’ head, and when I tentatively establish a connection I find Martyn already there, monitoring everything. I send a salutation, like I would to a lower-level machine intelligence, and Iris startles, looking at Seth with wide eyes.
“That was Perihelion,” Seth says, smiling encouragingly at her. “It’s saying hi. Can you say hi back?”
“Hi,” Iris says, still staring at him. As she says it, there’s a burst from her feed interface; it isn’t the word itself, more like the impression of the word. I’ve never experienced anything like it; I take the data and set aside one of my processors to begin parsing it, and send her a request for more.
“Hi!” Iris says again, louder this time. Another pulse, and then she starts squirming in Martyn’s arms, nonsensical vocalizations spilling from her mouth as more strings pour through our connection. Martyn sets her on the floor, and she walks unsteadily to one of the housing units and tries to stick her fingers in it.
“Oh, no,” Seth says quickly. He lifts her away—she makes a distressed sound, more data in the shape of no!—and then sets her on the floor again, reaching into his bag as he does so. He takes out some toys and places them in front of her; this effectively distracts her from the housing unit on the wall.
This is fascinating.
“Have you considered our proposal?” Martyn asks after a few minutes. I can still feel him monitoring us in the feed, but it’s more passive now.
Yes. I turn 20% of my attention to Martyn; Seth has done the same. I pull up the proposal to which he refers, dropping it into our shared feed for reference. It’s quite sound.
It’s forty-two pages long which, for a human, is impressive. Apparently Martyn wrote it up after my adventure with Seth’s shuttle; he has a minor degree in ethics and moral patiency, and decided that applied to me. The gist of the proposal is that I need a “supportive, structured environment” for my “social-emotional development,” and that this entails “mobile processors” and a “designated family unit.” He then shared it with me, and now he and Seth are asking my opinion.
My opinion is this: I am already an experimental MI. What could be more exciting than being an experimental experimental MI?
I have provided substantial feedback, and made a number of additions to the literature review, I tell them. Mawar has also read it over, and deems it satisfactory.
(Mawar is the newest intern in the Experimental MI Department. She is very diligent, and I enjoy her company.)
I send Iris a very simplified report from the sensors in this room, and she immediately replies with laughter and a new burst of data.
“I'll look over it, then,” Martyn says. “With your permission, I’d like to submit this to the committee early next week—you’re sure this is something you want? Seth and I have talked it over, and we’re more than happy to keep visiting you here if you’d rather not leave the program.”
If Martyn’s proposal is accepted, I will be transferred to a mobile processing unit. I will be able to function in a capacity more in line with my core directives, and will be subject to an entirely new assessment framework than the (biased) one currently being used. I will be able to spend more time with Seth, and Martyn, and with Iris, who is proving infinitely more fascinating than any of my sibling MIs.
Yes, I tell them. I’m sure.