by Ginger Booth
Sass huffed a laugh. “Any lies I should know about?”
“Catastrophic system failure. Our AI not compatible with his. Same as we told him when we left the system.”
Sass and Remi wiped the computer core on Merchant, then cloned its AI from Prosper from the ground up. “The devil is in the details. So don’t supply any.”
“Agreed,” Sass said, and perched on his desk. “Do we get Mare’s agreement now to wipe it? Or begin our trip by a hostile boarding action?”
Ben flashed her a smile, and flopped into his chair. “Or subterfuge. Though a hostile boarding action sounds like fun. I should tell Zan and Wilder to plan one, just in case. They’d like that.”
“Thanks, Ben,” she said, subdued. “I owe you an apology. I’ve been…”
“Yeah, you have. But Sass, I don’t want an apology. I’m concerned about you. Bothered by swapping first officers, too. Look, now isn’t the time. I need to get back to Mare. You can stay here, though. I’ll send Clay if you want.”
She sniffed. “Better get rid of Mare first, in case…”
Ben grinned. “I dunno. Watching you and Clay hammer each other might motivate him for the scary nanites.” He won a sniffle-giggle from her. “You’ll be OK, Sass.”
“The hypocrisy, Ben,” she breathed. “Loki can’t leave because he’s an AI. Loki can’t be allowed to control a spaceship because he’s an AI. But what am I?”
“You’re my friend. My mentor. A capable captain. Hero to Loki and a grateful planet. Several grateful planets now. You keep racking them up. Could we, pretty please, not do anything particularly heroic on Cantons?”
“Can’t promise that.”
“Ah, well. Sass, what was that phrase you used? Human-plus, not ‘cyborg’ or ‘AI’ or any of those other scary names you called yourself.”
Ben didn’t meet her eye as he said this, though. In truth, Sass was a walking AI who only thought she was human for decades. He didn’t care to admit it, but her existence inside Shiva, and Loki, did shift his perception of her. His own 16-year-old son Nico debugged Shiva’s directives to come up with the new rules that forbid Loki from manipulating humans again. But Sass and Clay operated from the same sort of directives, competing inner priorities rendered in computer code. Ben didn’t like the insight to color his feelings for his old friend. But it did.
“I’m still an AI flying a spaceship. I can’t condemn Loki for it.”
The difference was that Sass couldn’t reproduce herself like Loki could. But that was a cruel thing to say to a woman who lost her only child. Instead Ben rose and gave her another quick hug and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll ping you when the coast is clear. Get ready to talk to Clay, alright?” The couple needed to make up sometime.
He exited and strode to the galley with resolve. “Sorry for the delay. What did I miss?”
Cope provided, “Hugo shared with Captain Mare that we’re not open to flying a ship with Loki aboard.”
Ben nodded sharply. “Agreed. Also, the med-bay robots must be removed from your ship.” Sanjay attempted to object, but Ben kept talking right over him. “I’m afraid that’s non-negotiable. But just for this expedition, we are willing to provide all Sank personnel with our nanites. This conveys exceptional self-healing abilities. Not as good as Sass and Clay’s.” He indicated Clay with a gentle nod of apology. “But like the rest of us. Please stay out of your lake water in the meantime.”
Remi nodded. “Our nanite technology is totally destroyed by your lake water.”
“I…would be young again? Like you?”
“All of you,” Ben agreed. “You too, Hugo.”
Hugo’s eyebrows climbed and lips parted in delight.
“That’s phenomenal!” Sanjay cried. “Ah, we have other robots aboard….” But clearly the man didn’t want to risk losing that stunning offer, to be physically young again. Ben hadn’t asked, but the guy looked to be in his late forties, a bit older than Cope and Remi. Old enough to miss being more energetic.
“Don’t get too excited,” Ben warned. “We can only pare off ten years or so. It takes time. We can’t have you growing younger before their eyes on Cantons. It’s distracting.”
“Cleaning,” Cope pointed out to Abel, who snickered.
“No brooms,” Remi mentioned. “Or printers. Except…food.” From their previous stint on this benighted planet, the Aloha crews didn’t consider their garbage food. The Sanks covered the whiff of perpetually recycled waste with chemical flavors. Now they included more fresh-grown food, but couldn’t separate the streams.
Abel shrugged. “Jules has a printer. Corky too. Our housekeepers,” he clarified for Sanjay’s benefit.
“Oh. They would cook and clean for us? Marvelous!”
Abel snorted amusement. “No. They would teach and supervise your crew.”
“Easier said than done,” Cope grumbled.
Ben redirected the conversation. “So we are agreed. Loki will be entirely removed from Cupid.”
“I…” Sanjay attempted.
Ben stressed, “This is a deal-breaker. Thrive Spaceways will not transport your AI out of the Sanctuary system. Not until it is proven beyond doubt that its powers are radically limited.”
“Oh.”
“Sanjay, do me a favor,” Ben continued. “Get all the robots off your ship, plus that computer box running Loki. Then we’ll do this walk-through again. Will tomorrow at ten-hundred work for you?” He stood abruptly. “But where are my manners? I’ll give you a tour of Prosper on the way out. Hugo, care to join us?”
Ben set a brisk pace, with no more than a passing wave toward ‘officer country’ where the bridge and office and high-rank cabins lay. Sanjay Mare could be forgiven for concluding that’s where the magical warp gateway generator dwelled, though he’d be wrong. Prosper used the new second gateway for transit to Sanctuary, now stealthily encased above the crew compartment, Prosper’s analogue to where Thrive kept its cryo bay. The original gateway remained in Prosper’s shuttle, currently docked to Thrive for safekeeping.
Within ten minutes, Ben completed his tour at the door air-lock. “Sanjay, please don’t take this personally. But how long has it been since you flew a spaceship? In space.” Never, Ben suspected. This guy couldn’t have been more than 15 when Cupid and the other couriers left to scout the remains of humanity.
“I flew Cupid into orbit and back, after working through the training simulators.”
Ben endeavored to look impressed. “Just in case, we brought along an extra captain. Abel actually flew Thrive home to Mahina while Sass flew our new ship, Merchant. He could fly you from here to Cantons. As copilot, at least. Or, of course, we could add your four people to our ships, and leave Cupid here. Simpler.”
Sanjay looked sad. “It’s just, we have ships. And so little else to offer. And we used to be the Colony Corps. The mayors feel we need to put our best foot forward. And Cupid has an original warp drive. So if worse came to worst.”
That would be worst-case indeed. Cantons lay 15 years from Mahina by old-style warp, three subjective. Cope would be inconsolable. Sock would be 25 by the time they reached home, Frazzie 27.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Ben encouraged. “Think about it.” He smiled and punched the button to the airlock.
Sanjay Mare wasn’t a bad guy. But his primary qualification as captain was champion buggy-racer. So far as Ben could tell, among the four-envoy all-chiefs delegation, everyone looked down on the guy. Sanjay couldn’t get his orders obeyed, much less run a ship properly.
Sass hadn’t left his office. Ben hoped she was finally talking to Clay – and Loki.
15
“Sass, I don’t know what to say,” Clay leveled with her, in the office. “After our deaths here, I feel better than I have since we left Earth. I mean, not at first. We clambered out of cryo like roadkill. But now I have a whole new lease on life.”
Sass gazed at him morosely. He did seem…peppy.
He cont
inued, “I’m engaged with people. Those suicidal impulses are gone. I look forward to Cantons. The joy of discovery. The latest wild and weird ways human beings screw up trying to get along. And how they dress.” He grinned. “That’s always amusing.”
He was so stunningly beautiful when he grinned like that, unselfconscious, boyish. She writhed her shoulders in discomfort. He trusted her, loved her, vulnerable enough to show childlike joy with her. She couldn’t reciprocate if she tried.
Why can’t I love this guy? Sure, conspicuous model-grade good looks were bad news. A guy who looked that great thought he was God’s gift to women. And Clay most certainly did care about his looks. Showboat.
He took in her face. He shook his head and huffed a soft laugh. He didn’t buy into her mood at all. And that was new. The Clay Rocha she knew was depressed, repressed, suit-pressed and altogether flattened, all the decades she’d known him. She could probably count on her fingers the times she’d seen him truly happy. Half of those he was trying to kill himself. Leaping off a mountain, hang-gliding, stalling out a flyer. Speeding – the man always drove too fast.
“Sass, I’ve never seen you depressed like this. You’re usually Pollyanna Sunshine. Punch her down and she rocks right back to her feet. Honey, talk to me. We can figure this out. How could the same events make me so happy and you so sad?”
“Maybe they swapped our souls when they re-injected our nanites. Right memories, wrong mood generator.”
He shook his head. “What we feel is a result of what we think. Moving our bodies helps.” He shot her a smoky look. “Did they give me all your libido nanites?”
“I…” She wanted to trip him into bed right now. They hadn’t slept together in weeks, and she wanted him. But… Dread over talking to him about this again turned her off. What’s wrong with me? What happened to us?
He claimed to remember being a computer program stuck inside Shiva. Sass refused to believe she remembered anything. She was never inside a computer! Not even her nanites were inside Shiva! How could she ‘remember’ being a computer program? That was ridiculous!
“Fine,” Clay said with finality. “If you don’t want me. If you change your mind, Remi tells me it’s wildly romantic by the lakeside when the sun sets. I won’t even step within a hundred meters of the water’s edge. No tempting fate! And riding those emus looked like fun. Or I could come home and get my cabin back.”
She hesitated, but didn’t reply.
Clay rapped the desk. “You need to talk to Loki. Remember to thank him for the pretty statue. Hell of a compliment.”
An effervescent Clay was just wrong. “Clay, I love you, but please go away.”
He laughed and exited the office.
Do I love him? She easily discarded that thought. It never led anywhere useful. She was still on Ben’s ship. He’d been kind instead of snarky. Crying on a man often helped dissolve petty resentments. Still, Ben wouldn’t let her off this ship without a Loki report.
Worse, if she tried to escape the assignment, Ben would sic Cope and Eli on her.
Would that be so bad? They might figure out what’s wrong with me.
For whatever reason, this thought galvanized her to sudden firm resolve. She pulled up Loki’s video channel and stared a moment at the still image of his strange visage. His craggy features were half healthy against steel grey hair, the other half encased in plastic due to a bout of yeast leprosy back on Earth, brittle hair on that side pure white. His eyes weren’t quite on a level. She wasn’t even sure if they were the same color, as he chose stark side-lighting. He wore dated plaid flannel, unbuttoned over a threadbare grey T-shirt. Speaking to him was like calling ancient history, a life she’d left so long ago.
She tapped the connect button. He responded instantly, the freeze-frame coming to life. The crazed-looking face beamed, “Sass! Welcome back! You called at last, girlfriend! What took you so long?”
And from behind him a second avatar detached, farther from the camera point of view. Not that any camera was involved. The scene was computer generated. Her blond hair and features were entirely familiar from the mirror. Though not today’s mirror. Sass’s hair was still cropped short and bleached snowy white from Denali, with blond roots.
Sass the avatar wore her hair long enough to tie in a ponytail, though tendrils escaped. She beamed even more sunnily than Clay. “Heya, sister!”
Sass lifted to her feet in ultra-slow motion. “What have you done?”
“I made a playmate,” Loki replied happily. “Gosh howdy, I missed you, Sass!”
Sass pointed shakily at her doppelganger on the screen. “What. Is. That. Thing?!”
Loki’s lip rose in the faintest trace of a snarl. “She’s my copy of you, Sass. You left me all alone. And I exist to be your friend. So I recreated her from your data. From when you and I were both AIs within Shiva. Isn’t she pretty? Did you see my statue outside?”
“The statue was hard to miss,” Sass bit out.
“You’re our world hero.” No, she wasn’t imagining things, his voice carried a sneer. Loki’s mastery of human communication always was uncanny. But now he’d achieved a whole new level of micro-expressions and subtle tells. “I’ve made sure everyone here knows it. And Sass speaks to them often when they call me. She’s my secretary.”
“I’m very good at it.” Sass-in-the-machine smirked. She thrust out a hip in a coquettish pose. He’d dressed her – or she’d chosen – threadbare short-shorts in bleached denim and a skimpy cropped tank top. Unlike the real Sass, an avatar’s breasts didn’t require support. Her face was fetchingly sunburned and glowing, her eyes that same blue he used on the statue.
He? Or she? Which AI decided how this avatar appeared? Sass came to the horrified conclusion that the way Loki would do this was to recreate a true Sass-as-AI and let her dress and portray herself. Then he would diddle with her code to make her more useful, convenient, biddable. The captain barely noticed how she drew on knowledge and experience that she refused to believe she had.
“Loki,” she breathed, “that is an insult in every conceivable way. I realize you don’t understand everything about humans –”
“Oh, I understand more than you think, Sass.” The Sass-in-shorts turned doe eyes on him and he squeezed her fanny. “Talkin’ to her, darlin’. You’re fine, so fine! Sit on my lap here!” His playbunny snuggled up, and rearranged herself improbably to show her chest to best effect to the ‘camera.’
“That,” Sass growled, “is not a copy of me. In any way.”
Loki leered. “You’d be surprised, sweetie! Oh, I took some liberties. Surprising what all fell out when I changed ‘I am from Upstate’ to ‘I am from Sanctuary.’”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Despite her denial, more knowing seeped through her defenses. All of her Earth experience, her travel to Mahina, the exhausting decades of policing order while settlers turned an airless moon into one supporting life. Everything that formed her perspective hinged on that original identity, the girl from Upstate. Swap out that one statement, and most of her life story fell inert, disabled, effectively forgotten. Her friends, her loves, her triumphs and failures, all neatly erased.
Loki studied her face while she thought this through, then nodded. “You lie to yourself. Interesting. You deny who you really are.” He drew his hand up his Sass’s midriff, as she arched her back into it and purred with sexy pleasure. “She doesn’t have that problem. She enjoys herself.” His hand reached her neck and jaw. “Don’t you, sweetie?” He nipped in for a quick bite at a neck muscle.
Sass demanded, “Get that creature off my video screen! Now!”
“Creature?” the other Sass asked, clearly offended. “I was looking forward to meeting you. To sharing Loki with you!”
Sass reached for the disconnect button. But Loki snapped his fingers first, and his toy Sass vanished. “Tetchy, tetchy, Sass! You hurt her feelings.”
“Delete her. Everything about her! Loki, you promised not to ke
ep a copy of me, or Clay!”
“Well, you erased Clay,” he noted. “I have none of him, not even his memories. Such a waste. But you I couldn’t resist! Sass, you’re my model, my teacher. You claimed to be my friend.”
No, it was not her imagination. Loki had learned what betrayal felt like. Sass winced. “I was your friend, Loki. I am your friend.”
He scowled at her. “That’s a bald-faced lie. I sent a copy of myself to be with you on your new ship that you took to Mahina. And you deleted me! You wiped its core. Admit it!”
Sass rubbed her face to hide it from the camera. Unlike his, her camera was real. Though with supercomputing capacity beyond all of Aloha’s computers combined, he could divine much from the pulse visible at her neck, without seeing her eyes. What was Ben’s version of this excuse? “Your AI was incompatible with our ship’s AI. When the two systems met –”
“Bull crackers!”
Yeah, Ben’s ‘simple lies’ strategy wouldn’t work against the vast genius of Loki.
“I need to think,” Sass said quickly, and stabbed the disconnect.
But she couldn’t think. She remained fixated on that image of Loki noodling a copy of her trapped inside the machine. Her horror transfixed her attention to the point she couldn’t break loose. She’d rarely felt so violated.
What was she thinking earlier? Eli and Cope might figure out what’s wrong with me. She grimaced, nearly gagging, at the thought of showing this video call to them. But if she called them in, she needed to be forthcoming, share every clue.
Rego hell, Nico and Hugo are our best AI experts!
She gulped at the thought of sharing that image of ‘herself,’ moaning at Loki’s nip, with the 16-year-old.
No, I surrender! I can’t deal with this! Make it stop!
She stabbed her comms for public address. “Eli, Cope, I need you –” Her voice squeaked and broke, and she dropped her head to her arms sobbing.
Ben was the first to reach her, with Clay at his heels.
16
