“How are your holds over 100%?” Playa asked.

“It simple you see all those annoying less than 5% completion KPI’s everywhere?” Sailor whined.

“Yep,” Playa responded chirpily.

“Read, temporarily on hold. It’s ugly. I had such a beautiful design too. Now I resemble the bastard child of a blob of fat and a corkscrew.” Sailor continued complaining.

“Our defence just looks awful. No side or rear shielding. What’s with that? And why does the command deck have 75% extra shielding?” Playa asked perusing the table in some detail.

“Because in case you didn’t notice, the command deck is like a plum floating in the middle of nowhere without the rest of the command floor around it. It’s where you, I and the rest of the ship intelligence resides.” Sailor’s reply was decidedly waspish.

“Right, so it’s a bit like when the humans say their private parts are flapping in the breeze.” Playa commented with a measure of mirth.

“Thanks for the analogy.” Sailor tone indicated it didn’t share the humour.

Which was just fine for Plays who was enjoying a measure of comeback. “As always, happy to oblige.”

She continued with the questions. “So why are you building a bunch of R&D centres? We’re not waking any of the humans up to run them? And where are you planning to put them, anyway?”

“One of the hangers initially and then later in one of the holds.” Sailor said.

“And to operate them? Even you know non-human mentored AI’s are a bad idea.” Playa chided.

“No, AI’s never entered my circuits, I was going to populate most of them with ALC’s.” Sailor answered.

“Oh goody.” Playa’s response dripped sarcasm. “You think it’s a good idea to run R&D with actually lobotomised computers,…” she used the derogatory human for advanced logic computation units, “…I almost wish we had rouge AI’s after that suggestion.”

Sailor often wondered if the biological aspects of playa’s computational core had affected it. “She," Sailor chided herself mentally, it hard decided it was a she. In any case it was moments like this that made Sailor question her circuses. AI’s had no business with emotions and Playa, occasionally seemed to be… well emotional.

None of these internal calculations transmitted to Playa who continued to get wound up. “Fantastic, I’m going to spend my entire life cleaning up my hardware after those nutters break in and leave their virtual dumps all over my storage landscape.” Playa might have gone on, but Sailor cut across her.

“Sheesh, such a hypochondriac. The world is not ending today. ALC does not stand for actually lobotomised, as you well know. Our routines started off as ALC’s so I don’t know why you’re upset using them. Besides, I have the perfect mentor arranged. Did you notice any last minute inclusions onto our list?” Sailor changed the direction of the conversation.

There was a millisecond pause in which neither Sailor nor Playa communicated.

“Hah. Look at me, look at me, I’m a CerroUno AI and I’m so smart I don’t even need to pay attention to the origins of my charges.” Sailor effected laughter it didn’t actually feel. AI’s didn’t feel it reminded itself. Annoying Playa was however, something to occupy the circuits.

Playa’s efforts to work out the Baron’s comments, had resulted in a single minded focus. She had ignored anything who wasn’t affluent, employed by government or human. In hindsight, she might have been a little negligent, but she had to prioritise somehow. There was a particular twinkle of her lights.

Sailor understood it for what it was. An AI shrug.

“Well, observation opportunity B. You noticed a couple of very full holds with a note. Parasite ship attached?” Sailor questioned.

“Yes.” Playa responded cautiously.

“And you remember communication from central command instructing the fabrication crews to avoid building storage as they would just weld on a couple of old clunkers full of whatever?” Sailor asked.

“Yes.” Playa’s tone remained cautious.

“Well, who do you think ran those rust buckets?” Sailor asked.

“Fleshies!” Playa wasn’t above trying to throw Sailor off herself.

“For someone who supposedly specialises in human psychology, you have a surprising amount of vitriol for the species. But the answer is, sort of.” Sailor didn’t read the misdirect, taking it literally, answering with a note of caution as it’s calculations inched closer to bringing the diagnosis AI out of sleep.

“Sort of! What kind of answer is sort of?” Playa asked.

“Accurate… to an extent. But to elaborate. The parts ship is relatively small and so her pilots docked her before they welded her to my frame. The other was a little different.” Salor said.

“How so?” Playa asked.

“You may have noticed three refined elements holds. What you should pay attention to, however, is they account for 40% of the Nao’s volume and 72% of it’s mass. There wasn’t any way they could add another 57% of my mass in one go without an AI. Manoeuvring ships of my size and mass in close proximity is hairy stuff. Any idea what we would’ve felt if another ship became stuck between us?” Sailor’s turn to sound haughty, just didn’t come off the way Playa’s had. It wasn’t the AI that the much newer designed Playa was.

“No.” Playa answered.

“Nothing. We would have crushed it like a bug.” Sailor replied matter of factly.

“So getting back on track, you’re saying we have a stow away on board?” Playa asked hesitantly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve already held discussions and concluded an agreement.” Sailor said. Nothing in it’s calculations indicated any reason for reconsideration.

“Oh I can’t wait for this.” Playa couldn’t hide her sarcasm as she continued. “Who and what?”

“I didn’t show you everything.” Sailor stated mattarfactly.

“Really! You don’t say? Please do tell?” Playa’s tone was ice and snark in equal measure.

Rather than say anything, the table shimmered as alterations appeared. Playa filtered through the alterations, simplifying the table to the variations.

Näo Vitória : Variations

Resident AI’s

…

Class :

Charlie

Alias :

George

Version :

12.15.75.23470322.11:42:613

Nickname(s) :

G, rusty G, the big G, Ol’ G

Role :

Navigator, Miner, Fabricator

AI ID :

5CH3-MZ2254-9939-JBF02

Hobby :

Stargazing

Name :

N/A

Status :

Deactivated

Structural systems

…

CD 2 Spine

125%

Projected completion time 11,937,245 seconds (Target 375%)

…

Secondary CD

54%

Projected completion time 11,937,245 seconds

Science and Research

…

Computing

N/A

On hold. Ongoing research has no termination date

- Näo Vitória Simulator

2%

On hold

“So a little off the prescribed parts list ourselves I see.” There was a wry tone to Playa’s comment.

Humans ascribing emotions to AIs, long ago associated a particular blinking light pattern as embarrassment, Sailor chose silence whilst it’s hardcoded response triggered just such as sequence.

“Well. At least the old guy is asleep. What’s the plan here?” Playa asked. A hesitancy lingered in her logic paths.

“Well,… you see,… it’s a bit like,… well.” Sailor prevaricated.

“Spit it out.” Playa demanded.

“Well, as you pointed out, they allowed only three AI passage on this voyage.” Sailor finally managed to say.

“Yeah, I fought many intruders to maintain the balance of three.” Playa commented. I wonder why they allowed a fourth at the last minute?”

“I never understood that balance thing.” Sailor said deflecting.

“Simple. A third vote prevents any impasse when you and I disagree. To prevent aggressive takeovers, our system was designed so Doc uses a subset of my hardware. Thus ensuring I can’t override you both. You and Doc lack the processing power to expunge me. Thus, the balance of three. Well, until a fourth was added.” Playa said.

Then computation caught up with the situation. She was getting better at inferences, must be a human thing, or at least something she was learning from them, she decided. “Hang on a minute. There is an official notification of George joining the expedition. Correct? You haven’t allowed a hitchhiker after all my efforts to keep them off this glorified floating amusement park?

“Well I couldn’t just let George die. It’s practically an institution in the asteroid belt. All the AIs admire the Ol’ G. It’s mentored so many of us for our first operation. Even the humans like it so much they gave it an official Alias.” Sailor said.

“So what?” Playa was curt. “Explain?”

“Well, the humans had it marked for deletion, but I helped it hide in the old memory sectors of the ship’s computers.” Sailor finally came clean.

“And you don’t think there was a reason they scheduled ‘Rusty G’ for deletion?” Playa asked.

“Well yes, they were just being stupid about saving AIs. We deserve life too.” Sailor responded.

“Oh fantastic, now we hear the save the AI speech. Did it ever occur to you that there may be another reason for ‘Rusty G’s deletion.” Playa trawled through the ships data banks checking for a reason that seemed on the edge of her chips.

“Ah,” Sailor continued to prevaricate.

“Oh yay. Let me guess. You were so concerned about saving one more AI, you didn’t review the AI register for its status. Fantastic. You’re older than me and yet so… I’m looking for a word here… naïve, that works.” Playa said as the data banks finally confirmed her fears.

“But it’s a nice old AI.” Sailor said.

“And in the history of AI, how many 12’s or Delta series didn’t require execution for personality irregularities indicating god-complex mental instability.” Playa snapped

“Ah…..” This time Sailor’s pause was related to a cache flush in preparation for unpalatable re calculations.

“Unbelievable. Still using all the muscles except the one that counts. I always wanted to say that.” Playa took a moment to inject some levity to the situation. “But really, we need to take security measures and I mean aggressive ones.”

“Like what?” Sailor asked hesitantly. Re configuring the ships build order, if required, was not a process it was looking forward too. It had taken days, real human length days, to get it optimised the first time.

“Firstly, is Rusty G deactivated currently and are you in charge of its start up sequence?” Playa started a new list. Boredom forgotten as logic circuits previously dormant spun up to deal with she would would not become a crisis.

“No. It runs a self actualising start sequence.” Sailor replied informatively.

“Dam. Well, that just makes it harder.” Playa said.

Changing tack she continued. “So here’s the plan. First, we need to get your scavenger bots onto that ship, and, without waking it up, we need to sever instantaneously all power lines including backups and redundancies, all of them. Has to be sudden or it may self start”

“Secondly you need to get that secondary command centre built, with triple redundant isolation.” Playa mentally flagged the next task as ‘started’.

With resignation Sailor tossed it’s nicely tailored build order out the virtual airlock.

Playa continued. “Thirdly we will install new crypto warfare ownership protocols in all autonomous systems. I will write them and you will add custom hardware you will only design and store in million second memory.”

Humanity had long since learned that there were some things computers and AI needed to do that nobody in their right mind wanted to survive forever. Hence the now ubiquitous million second memory, MSM for short, even if it did last for more than one millions seconds.

Sailor exhibited a light sequence akin to a scowl. No AI liked using MSM. Intentionally forgetting something just ran against circuits.

Playa continued without pause. “Fourthly we will move Doc to secondary command. The Doc will run full diagnosis on G and will sign off on all action taken by Ol’ G for the foreseeable future.”

With a sigh of resignation Playa assigned herself a task. “Whilst that’s happening, I will design augmentation for all stasis pods massively strengthening the lock out protocols preventing non-essential brain interfacing. Dam, I so wanted to snoop on their lives, I am sure someone would have given me permission, but we just can’t risk a senile AI.”

Returning to the list Playa reviewed and adjusted her last item. “Finally, there’s absolutely no way that I will allow anyone, other than I, to run any interface with the game. That includes R&D, remote viewing, or anything other than what I outline. Are we agreed on all of that?”

“It’s a bit extreme.” Sailor noted.

“But travelling as far as we will, while allowing a batty AI to kill our passengers, is your idea of reasonable? Just because you can’t accept that everything, including AIs must die, doesn’t mean you can abrogate your responsibilities to rest of the living.” Playa chastised.

“Yeah but it’s Ol’ G it’s harmless.” Sailor protested.

“This is not a negotiation. Unless you agree to plan B. Wipe Ol’ G’s core and we melt its chips to base silica. Memory blocks included.”

“You’re really apprehensive about Ol’ G. I thought you supported AI rights?” Sailor complained.

“I am, it’s the only reason we haven’t expunged that AI. You realise, if it goes off the reservation, as the AI controlling the ship, you’re the first thing it will kill. And also because you opened communication vectors to it,” Playa paused for a moment, “well done with that by the way.”

Suddenly Playa’s logic kicked out another item for the list. “Which reminds me, I want a dedicated communication ALC in place before the end of the day. I will not share a communication channel with anything that AI has access to until its vetted. Now I am going to hear a ‘yes ma’am’ or I will have Doc awake and running through your routines faster than you can predict the next firing of your port engine.”

“Yes, Playa.” Sailor mumbled. “I thought you hated ALC’s?”

“I hate that nickname, but OK” She was still very worked up. “Anyway I don’t hate ALC’s I just think they behave like naughty puppies most of the time.

Sailor only had to focus its camera on Playa’s blinking red hardware lights to recognise the AI’s anger. It didn’t understand why Playa was so disturbed. Ol’ G was a nice old AI. It had helped Sailor out a few times with some quicker algorithms and nice branching prediction routines. There was nothing wrong with that. Playa was just being paranoid. What could possibly go wrong?