Chapter Text
The man crept through the corridor, his fast, panicked gasps the only sound in the darkness. The light attached to his projectile weapon created a tunnel of visibility.
“Sam?” he whispered desperately. “Sam!” He repeated the name over and over in a hoarse mantra.
The structure was old and filthy, full of trash and broken glass. He peered around a corner—a light flashed and he ducked back before he realized it was his own reflection in a dirty bathroom mirror. He passed the room and crept to the next door.
Creeeeaaak!
The man recoiled, gasping.
Nothing moved. Slowly, he peered past the rusty door.
Blood dripped down each step of the staircase.
“Sam!” The man slowly climbed the stairs.
He found the dead fauna at the top of the steps. One wide, terrified eye stared up at him.
The man moved past the corpse into the room beyond. The camera circled him, revealing the hoard of zombies standing in his blind spot.
I paused the media. “How is it?” I asked ART.
Hmm. The background audio/music interpretation matrix appears to be functioning as intended. But the visual stimulus translation needs some work. The darkness is distinctly evocative for you and the code is not matching that degree of response.
I pulled up the algorithm and reviewed its output.
“You’re right. It should be spiking more when he turns the corner here.”
I was sitting in my favorite chair in ART’s lounge. We were working on the code patch to help ART interpret media without me. It was turning out to be more complicated than we expected. Apparently, my neural tissue was contributing more than we realized.
I was glad we had the time to dedicate ourselves to the code. It was kind of relaxing. We were currently on one of ART’s “unmanned cargo routes” through the Corporation Rim that was actually a reconnaissance mission. The cargo route would take us through some of the most egregiously oppressive corporation sectors in the Rim. But risk assessment for this mission was comfortably low because I wouldn’t have to leave ART.
When we stopped at a station, ART would dock, allow cargo haulers to unload and/or load cargo modules, and then we would leave. (According to the Corporation Rim standards, I was simply an onboard security appurtenance, so by their definitions we weren’t even lying to them about the “unmanned bot-driving transport.”) Simultaneously, while it was docked, ART and I would scrape the local feeds for public and private data that we could analyze for evidence of impending corporate conflict.
There were two purposes for gathering this intel: first, a team of faculty at the University of Mihira and New Tideland was conducting research on their hypothesis that the Corporation Rim was an unsustainable system as evidenced by increasing intra-corporate violence. Second, a joint venture by Preservation and the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland wanted to plan a mission that would use the conflict as a distraction to free indentured laborers within those corporations.
I was incredibly relieved to have so much time with no humans to protect. I could just enjoy the entertainment feed and ART’s most comfortable chair.
ART ran an analysis of light-related visual stimuli in its media storage. I reviewed its results and tagged each one with the relevant emotional connotation. We inputted the new dataset into the algorithm and it turned out better results this time, but I thought we could still improve on it.
ART exited the wormhole and we made our approach to the station.
I backburnered our coding as ART reached the feed and began pulling its news channels and public data. Because ART could multitask much better than I could, it was also helping me begin a careful extraction of private data from the station. I focused on the SecSystem, since that was the section that interfaced with me most readily. The digital walls had top-of-the-line encryption, but I kept adjusting my queries until I was able to spoof one of the system’s internal security components. As it incorporated me into its relays, I started poking around the admin system interface. There were a few pitfall traps hidden in the code that would trigger an alarm if anyone tried to hack their way inside. It would require a delicate approach to slip through without getting caught.
Our progress was slow because we had to ensure we didn’t leave any traces. It wouldn’t take very long for the cargo modules to get swapped, so we were only pulling the data for now; ART would have plenty of time to analyze it while we made our wormhole trip to the next station.
So when I felt ART shift 68% of its processing power from the external data collection to internal analysis, my risk assessment made a nervous hiccup.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
ART didn’t respond, which made risk assessment even more worried (I was fine. It was risk assessment that was worried, not me). I quickly scanned the data we had gathered so far, but it all seemed like regular news updates and admin feed messages. What had caught its attention?
“ART, talk to me.”
The sudden weight of ART’s full attention felt like having a hauler bot pin me against the wall and stare me straight in the eyes. (Hauler bots don’t have eyes, but you know what I mean. It was really uncomfortable.)
Vedette Y’twala is in danger.