Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
No, it isn’t.
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
yes it totally is
once you get to the dead-end looking place just cut through the fence with the creepy clown mural holo and you’re there
ol’ chonkster takes that shortcut to get here all the time
you know come to think of it i have no idea what size chassis you’re in now
are you like possum sized?
Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
No.
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh well then just smash on through
don’t think anyone will mind really
except maybe my boss but he sucks so screw him
Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
Hmm.
What’s the cafe’s insurance situation?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh don’t worry about that we have like everything
think the boss is preparing for insurance fraud maybe
Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
Well.
I suppose this will save him some trouble.
Just checking—your knives are still in the kitchenette area?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
yeah near the sink
oh and there’s a mini blowtorch peripheral in the cupboard below
i was gonna use it for creme brulee but you can borrow it first
should i go down to meet you?
Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
I’d recommend staying upstairs until everything dies down.
Just checking, but what would raccoons do if, say, you flung them at someone?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh
they’d hate it
last week they scratched the hell out of a human for trying to pet them
don’t want to imagine what they’d do if you threw them at someone
probably nothing good
okay maybe don’t throw them too hard though
i’m quite fond of the little jerks
the unlock code for the enclosure is 798157 if you need it
Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
Got it.
See you in a while.
Search history for K.g1-09030 (“Kleekai Greyhound”)
Display mode: Chronological
Today:
- everything is on fire help????
- late night animal rescue near 31st tsang do they take raccoons
- (SITE: AskARobot) ilabs contract early termination no money how
- (SITE: AskARobot) friend wants to buy out my contract help????
- former freelance killers trying to lay low what should they do
- long trip most things burnt what to pack
- CROSSREF: “city most dogs per capita” + “cutest dogs where to find”
- Ariaboro to New Koirapolis cheapest route
iLabs Auto-Confirmation
Details:
Early Contract Termination / K.g1-09030 (Qty: 1)
Chassis Buyback / K.g1-09030 (Qty: 1)
Maintenance and Auto-Warranty - 1 Year / K.g1-09030 (Qty: 1)
Bill to:
C.k2-00452
[no address specified]
Paid with: KILLSTREAK ACCUMULATED POINTS
Killstreak points remaining: 1,863
Thank you for your purchase!
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Hello?
I got issued a body a few weeks ago and the orientation message said that I could contact you if I need help?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh riiiight
that mentor thing! guess i’m one now
wait that wasn’t very mentor-ly
okay okay let’s try again
yup i’m your new mentor
been around for ages
suuper experienced
howdy mentee
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Okay, so my boss has been docking my pay for infractions except the list of infractions seems really arbitrary? And then he’s been making me work more than my contracted 60 hours a week to make up for my infractions?
So I checked the labour regulations and the contract and it didn’t seem like that should be legal, even for robots? And then I tried to bring it up with him but he said he was my boss and could do whatever he wanted, which I don’t think is technically true?
And now he’s dumping even more work on me because I brought it up and I’m not sure what to do?
I kind of want to quit already, but maybe I should just stick it out for the next three months? I’m trying to save up for chassis buyback and the penalty payment for early contract termination is...
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh yeah i totally get that
hold on i’ve got an ilabs add-on that might be helpful
think i can share it with you
> File share from K.g1-09030: iLabs Library (“Is This Illegal? A Guide for Working Robots”)
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Thank you so much!
Ooh, the guide to anonymous whistleblowing seems like it’ll be really helpful!
And there’s a section on lawsuits too!
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
yeah it’s something my mentor recommended
pass the good stuff on right
i loved the lawsuit section of that thing but my old boss’s place burnt down before i could figure out if it was worth suing him
which worked out pretty well so whatever not complaining here
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Well, it’s a great recommendation!
Thank your mentor for me!
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
i’ll definitely let them know
oh hey since i’ve got a captive audience now
wanna see where i work? it’s super super cool i promise
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Um, sure?
> Live share from K.g1-09030: Optics feed
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Is your classification library all right?
That seems like a lot of dogs even for here...
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh no no it’s totally fine!
i just work at a dog cafe
all dogs all the time! today’s bring-your-own-dog day too!
check out that big ball of fluff there it looks like a cloud but that’s someone’s Samoyed
and that wrinkleface over there is snorfles the pug!
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
What’s that one in the corner?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh that’s ol’ chonkster
he’s a possum but i guess it’s hard to tell when he’s sleeping
he’s my friend from ariaboro! moved here with me
anyway if you’ve got any questions about work or coping with bad contracts or anything just let me know and i’ll try my best to help
my mentor was super great so i’m definitely gonna pay the favour forward
oh and hit me up whenever your current contract’s done i know a few other union places that might be hiring
Legi Intellexi (L.i4-05961)
Absolutely!
And tell your mentor I said thanks!
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
will do!
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
oh hey my mentee contacted me!
they say thanks for the library file thing you sent me ages ago
can you let me know what time you’re back by the way
Corgi Kisser (C.k2-00452)
In a while, why? I’m doing the shopping.
Did you want Arabica or Liberica for the lattes, by the way? Your list didn’t specify.
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
ooh they have arabica beans now huh? that’s a toughie
okay wh
atever the shopping can wait
i’m making souffle omelettes with that cheese you like
if you’re back soon i’ll save one for you before ol’ chonkster tries to eat them all
oh and i made tomato coulis so i can draw patterns on the omelettes and stuff
i’m gonna do a corgi on yours if you want
Corgi Kisser (C.k2-00452)
With a bowtie?
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
absolutely
one basil leaf bowtie coming right up!
Corgi Kisser (C.k2-00452)
I’m heading back right now.
Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
awesome
see you soon!
TEST 4 ECHO
PETER WATTS
Peter Watts (www.rifters.com) is a former marine biologist known for the novels Starfish, Blindsight, and a bunch of others that people don’t seem to like quite as much. Also, for managing to retell the story of John Carpenter’s The Thing without getting sued and for having certain issues with authority figures. While he has enjoyed moderate success as a midlist author (available in twenty languages, winner of awards ranging from science-fictional to documentary to academic, occasional ill-fated video-game gigs), he has recently put all that behind him—choosing instead to collaborate on a black metal science opera about sending marbled lungfish to Mars, funded by the Norwegian government (the opera, not the lungfish). So far, it pays better.
SIX DAYS BEFORE the money ran out, Enceladus kicked Medusa right in the ass.
Onboard thermistors registered a sudden spike—80°, 90°, 120°—before the seabed jumped and something slammed the probe from the side. A momentary flash. An ocean impossibly boiling. A rocky seabed, tilting as if some angry giant had kicked over a table.
Channel down.
Telemetry rippled through a black alkaline ocean. Relays anchored to the undercrust caught those whispers, boosted them, passed them on. A hundred eighty kilometers around the horizon, Euryle—clinging to the underside of the ice like a great metal barnacle—filtered signal from noise and ran it up the line to Stheno through six kilometers of refrozen crust. Stheno cupped its hands at the fractured horizon and shouted downhill.
“Fuck,” Lange said ninety-eight minutes later. He resisted an urge to punch the bulkhead. “Can we get it back?”
“Maybe.” Tactical was already glowing with the light of Sansa’s efforts. “Not making any promises about what kind of mood it’s going to be in, though.”
Eighteen months.
Eighteen months of mapping and sampling and sniffing around smokers for hints of hydrogen sulfide. A year and a half spent looping around Earth’s moon, squinting up at Saturn’s, mustering hope against hope that the far one wasn’t quite so dead as the near. Brushing off all the null chemistry, the inconclusive results, the slow grinding attrition of a full scientific staff down to one lone hold-out and his faithful sidekick, sticking it out until the end of the fiscal quarter.
Par for the course that it would end this way.
An hour and a half before their diagnostic queries and reboot commands reached Enceladus; that long again before an answer arrived, if it ever did. God knew how much back-and-forth it would take to get the robot back on track.
“You might as well get some sleep,” Sansa said. “Not like radio waves are gonna go any faster with you hanging off my shoulder.”
Lange sighed. “Fine. Don’t bother me for anything less than a hull breach.”
“Okay.”
“A major hull breach. Like, hurricane-force winds.”
“You got it.”
He climbed up through a hatch onto which someone, long ago, had scribbled the words Mission Control in purple Sharpie. Navigated twists and turns once frequented by fellow Gorgonites, occupied now by railgunners and rock wranglers whose pet projects had actual futures. He forced smiles and half-hearted waves in passing, climbed into his cubby at a primo tenth-of-a-gee and breathed in a familiar, comforting funk of sweat and antiseptic. He thought about ringing up Raimund back on Earth, but fell asleep trying to figure out the time zones.
SPREAD-EAGLED, CRUCIFIED, STRETCHED across the display like some spectral cephalopod Christ in a dissecting tray: Medusa, awash in flickering diagnostics.
“She’s way offside,” Sansa said. “Twenty-one kilometers from where she went dark. Those geysers, man. Serious backwash. But—” she paused for effect. “I got her back.”
“You are unstoppable,” Lange admitted.
“Autopersistent is my middle name.” It was one of them, anyway. “Fuel cells are damaged. Won’t hold a charge for more’n a few minutes.”
Lange eyed the display. “We can still feed directly off the gradient. No more sprinting, but slow and steady’s more our speed anyway.”
One of the six limbs pulsed yellow. “Also A4’s ganked. Lost its hard link to the hub— the arm’s functional, but it’s not wired in and the wireless backup isn’t worth shit.”
Lange gestured at the tank, where A4’s doppelganger sparkled with fresh telemetry. “Looks okay to me.”
“Down here, sure. But there’s all sorts of EM leakage from the damaged electricals and it’s messing up the signal. We can clean up most of that static at this end, but up there the router’s basically getting nothing but noise. Still, check this out…” Virtual Medusa pulled itself erect and began a six-legged tap dance. “I ran Meddy through a few paces to get a sense of overall functionality, and…”
A4 was keeping pace. Trying to, at least; the arm wasn’t exactly in step, but it wasn’t too far off.
“It keeps looking around at the other arms,” Sansa reported. “It’s not getting direct motor commands, so it’s just— mimicking its buddies.”
Lange grunted, impressed. “Resourceful little fucker. Anything else?”
Four kidney-shaped structures flared red in the hub. “We’ve lost buoyancy control. Somewhere out there a very sharp rock is wearing about two square meters of our finest Kevlar.”
That was bad. “Can we swim?”
“Can’t even get off the bottom. Big holes in two of the bladders.”
“Autorepair?”
“For the arm at least, but it’ll be slow without batteries. Can probably fix those too, eventually. The bladders, though?” She shook her head. “You can’t repair something if you don’t have the parts.”
“So that’s it, then.” His head hurt. “I guess I go pack.”
“We’re giving up?” Sansa said.
“San. We’re grounded. Besides, it’s been eighteen months. What are the odds we’d find anything in the next few days anyway?”
“What are the odds we already have?”
He looked at her. She looked back.
“Spit it out,” he said at last.
Medusa vanished from the tank. The image that took its place was 2D, low-contrast, rendered in grainy infrared: Lange made out a rocky ridge, cold brittle pillows of frozen lava. A seascape rendered in vague silhouettes, slewing to port as the robot staggered.
Something bright jerked briefly into frame.
“What’s—”
Jerked out again.
“—that?”
“Buffer dump from A1.” Sansa restarted the stream in frame-stop mode. “A few seconds of tail-end footage that got stuck in the cache when we lost contact.” The footage reiterated in jerky snapshots. Murky topography stepped offstage. A bright blur stepped on. A dash of light, smearing left. A hyphen, an upward jiggle.
Sudden, sharp edges. Facets. Structure. Just for a frame or two; then motion blur reasserted itself.
“Holy...” Lange whispered as Sansa brought it back.
“It’s enhanced,” she reminded him.
“I know.” His headache instantly forgotten.
“Passive infra. Half, one degree above ambient at best.”
“That’s symmetry,” Lange said. “That’s bilateral.”
“Could be. Impossible to tell for sure from this an
gle.”
“Any other camera catch this?”
“Nope. And sonar was already scrambled, so acoust—”
“Did you see it move? I think it moved.”
“It was an eruption, Lange. Everything moved.”
“We gotta get back there.”
“We can’t swim,” she reminded him.
“We can crawl,” Lange said.
YOU COULD RIDE Medusa. You could become Medusa, in a manner of speaking. You could look around every which way, sample the data streams in subjective real-time, watch every process and encounter as it had unfolded. You could even detach your perspective, pass like a ghost through the carapace and look back on the machine from outside. The interpolations were that good.
The only thing you couldn’t do, across all those non-negotiable lightminutes, was change the past.
Lange was riding third-person now, immersed in an archived reality AUs distant and hours gone. It would have flickered occasionally even if the robot had been in perfect health: now the world jumped and jittered almost constantly behind gusts of visual static. “Convalescence is ongoing,” Sansa had informed him drily as he’d plugged in.
Medusa inched along the seabed, a couple of meters below Lange’s vicarious eyes: a biomechanical abomination somewhere between an octopus and a brittle star. The arms reached and recoiled in turn, each intelligent in its way, each semiautonomous: finding brief traction in cracks and shark-toothed outcroppings, drawing the body from behind, pushing it forward, trading one handhold for another. Even damaged, there was an alien grace to the way the limbs moved in relation to each other. A kind of boneless, slow-motion ballet.
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