Deathship (The Outsider Series Book 1)

Deathship (The Outsider Series Book 1) Page 8

by Steven Oaks

  I sat astride the rope as was requested with the wrapped up bike against my rear, almost sitting on it. I took a deep breath and said, “All set here, pull when ready.”

  She started out slowly. I could feel the rope grow taut. In short time I was being dragged slowly along with the now submerged bike hauled along the bottom of the lake. Clouds of dirt filled my vision, and soon I could not see to either side, nor behind, but being pulled along, the cloud was always behind me. I scooted up the rope to keep from being pulled underwater with it.

  “Athene, you might want to pull faster otherwise we are going to leave a large furrow behind us in our wake,” I said loudly as the water rushing to either side of me sounded in my ears.

  “I was just going to pull you in as fast as you were swimming, but I see what you mean,” she said.

  Suddenly I was pushed back by the force of the pull. I tightened my grip to make sure my hands were securely locked on to the rope. Had I slackened in the least I would have fallen off immediately so strong was the tug. Luckily with the increased speed and the buoyancy of my suit I mostly floated near the surface. I was very glad I managed to hang on, I really was not in any shape to swim any distance. I was still tired from the first time, and the exertion from dragging the bike to the water had not helped.

  “Whew, now we are talking. I’ll be there in no time,” I said, over the din of noise from the increased pace being set by Athene.

  “You should be nearly here. I will slow down momentarily. You will have to assist me in getting the bike in, just so I do not damage it,” she explained.

  “Yay, more work. I should sleep great tonight,” I said.

  “We can only hope. I think we have done well today. You will need your rest if you are approved for tomorrow’s collection,” she said.

  At that point I saw a large dent in the water in front of me. I could only assume it to be Athene herself. The rope disappeared into nothing above the water’s surface near the edge of this anomaly. Soon the light of an open doorway revealed itself as I was slowly pulled out of the water. The tow line was spooling just above the door and was making its own racket of squeaks as it pulled its load upward. I noticed the pull was beginning to slow as I approached the entrance. At this point I began to sink again.

  “As thrilling as this bobbing up and down in the water is, I’ll be grateful to be back inside again,” I grumbled as I sunk under the murky water.

  “You are almost here. Just a little longer and you will be able to prop your feet up and relax on the trip home,” she said.

  “Which will last mere minutes. I can’t wait to unwind in my room back at the hotel, no offense,” I said.

  “None taken,” she said, oddly quiet on the subject.

  I began to rise out of the water once more. The rope pulled far enough out of the water allowing me to firmly plant a foot onto the frame of the opening. I untangled myself from the rope, kicking my legs out to make contact with the more secure deck. I finally let go and walked back into relative safety.

  “Now please pull the bike in. I shall slacken the rope as needed until you have drawn it completely in,” Athene said.

  I reached out with my tired arms to pull the silly contraption into the ship, trying to set it upright.

  “Are you sure this is okay?” I asked as I maneuvered the bike inside. “I’d hate to get all your things wet in here.”

  “Do not worry, look at the floor now. You can see that it is porous and will drain the water away,” she said.

  I looked down and could see the floor had small octagon holes spaced evenly throughout the entry way. Why had I not noticed that until now?

  “Well that’s convenient,” I said, setting the bike on its side once more. I unhooked the carabiner and began unwrapping the bike. I wanted to check and see how wet it had gotten.

  The rest of the rope reeled away and disappeared outside. The door quickly closed, nearly clipping the end of the rope as it exited. I thought it was sudden but I did not say anything. I was far too intent on getting the bike free from its plastic encasing.

  I had gotten the tarp peeled off of the bike and was working on the trash bags when Athene suddenly announced, “We will be back at the hangar in a few minutes. You may want to remove the suit before we return. Also please place the tarp and bags into the wall nearest your right. The suit you can set on the ground.”

  “We’ve already taken off?” I said, startled. I had not felt anything. Then I remembered I had not felt anything the entire time we had been flying around earlier. Any feeling of motion had all been in my mind, like I was experiencing a projected roller-coaster ride in a room. If I was not looking I would not realize there was any movement occurring.

  “Correct. We are currently rising into the outer atmosphere. Soon we shall be traveling nearly as fast as we did to reach Japan,” she said.

  Feeling I had better get this mess cleaned up, I tore the remaining plastic off the bike, bundled it all up with the tarp, and pushed it at the wall—which when pressed opened to reveal a receptacle that I took to be for trash.

  “What about the bike?” I asked.

  “Remove your suit and place it near or on the bike please. You will see,” she said mysteriously.

  So I stripped off the well used suit. I wondered how much air I had left in it, or even how much power remained. Old habits die hard. I always found it difficult to rely on anything other than my own power. Now having been sealed inside a ship, then a space suit, I still continued to worry about accidents, or defects in construction.

  Pulling off the suit, I folded it up like I would any piece of laundry, and set the helmet down on top of the folded mess, and placed it all onto the bike. I waited for a moment for something to happen, but when nothing did I looked around for a place to sit.

  “Now Michael, please step back. You should mostly be dry, but please feel free to take a seat on one of the chairs,” she said, apparently understanding my desire to rest.

  I walked over to the nearest one and flopped down. When I looked back to where the bike was, it had disappeared.

  “Athene, the bike is gone! What’s going on?” I asked startled.

  “I told you the floor was porous,” she said in an amused tone.

  “I didn’t see any holes big enough for a bike to slip through,” I protested.

  “Oh, I am made of very a flexible material. Much like your suit, but with finer control of shapes and sizes. I have just moved both the suit and bike into storage. Did you even think about how the suit had gotten placed on the very chair you are sitting on?” she asked teasingly.

  “I was distracted by other things. Such as going faster than any person has right to go and being chased by French fighter planes,” I said, slightly agitated.

  “You did not realize how hard it would be for a space suit to be set out by a ship with no manipulators?” As she said this a pair of hands grew from the floor a few feet in front of me, and waved gaily. They looked like a pair of white plastic mannequin hands, yet they were as flexible as any person’s would be.

  “Whoa!” I shouted, jumping in my seat. I felt my stomach try to come up into my throat. Watching a pair of hands grow out of anything is an experience to give anyone chills for days. “Okay, warn me when you are going to do stuff like that! I said I was going to sleep well tonight, now I’m not so sure. That is nightmare fodder.”

  The hands slipped back into the floor and Athene laughed. “Serves you right,” she said. “You need to be more appreciative of my abilities and not be so accepting of things. The chair and peddles in the control room were made of similar things you know. Those did not freak you out nearly this much.”

  “Well, I wasn’t aware of that. I just thought maybe the were designed to emerge from the floor like that,” I said sheepishly.


  “Then we shall have to give you an education on my full capacities. I think you have passed today’s flight and the reconnaissance test. You will be stuck with me for awhile—at least as long as you wish the job,” she said.

  I cocked my head to the side and said, “You mean this all was a test? Sure, I understood getting the hang of the controls might be something of a test, but not going to a foreign country to riding a silly little scooter. How is that a test? That was just dumb, or dumb fun, depending on how you look at it. Personally, it was mostly stressful and tiring.”

  The memory of the whole day was feeling more and more like a strange dream as time passed. Watching the floors grow arms added to the dream like quality. The idea I was being expected to score some points by going to a country to break laws sounded close to insanity.

  “The Outsiders needed to know how you might react to a multitude of stimuli. So a series of events were constructed for you to complete, but also they were to make you uncomfortable. You were able to complete the mission with relative ease. You adapted and even gave input when you thought the situation could be better streamlined,” she said with an excited voice.

  “So are you the one who is to make the judgment of whether or not I’ve passed?” I inquired.

  “Well, no. But given the data I was able to compile from this experiment, I would say it is a near impossibility for you to not be considered for the position,” she said eagerly.

  “Okay, so should you be telling me this? I mean you’re not the final arbitrator of my fate on this subject,” I said.

  “Well… Perhaps I should not have. Lets forget we have had this conversation. I shall edit out that part from any records that I shall hand in,” she said quickly.

  Her naivety on certain subject matters was perhaps part of her charm and I found myself liking her more and more because of it. Though it did make situations harder at times. With the vast resources she could call on, she still had trouble discerning her opinions from those of others. She felt her calculation of a situation would always be the right one.

  “I’ll try to act with genuine surprise if I’m confronted with the knowledge this whole outing was a farce to test me and my abilities under different circumstances,” I said with a sarcastic lilt to my voice.

  “Do not worry, you will be fine. I have absolute confidence based upon the collected data,” she advised.

  “Have you heard the phrase ‘greater than the sum of its parts’?” I asked.

  “I have. Are you saying you are even better than the data collected will show?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is while you would think the data you collect may show one thing, the truth is there is more than the data you have. My emotional responses given in this instance are not the entirety of me and my character. Nor would I judge you just on your library of knowledge. You are reacting differently than what one would expect of someone who has the extensive knowledge you are able to draw upon. I mean no offense to you when I say this—as I am coming to like you very much. But of course when saying they mean no offense, it could certainly be taken that way. But I digress.” I tugged at my hair uncomfortably, realizing I was rambling and not saying what I wanted to say. “You appear to have all of Earth’s digital knowledge, yet it seems you lack perhaps the comprehension we have developed over the years, thinking about the information that we contain in our own heads. While we do not have the immediate access you posses, what we do have is integrated into our own thought patterns. You seem to lack that. You take it on faith that what information you have, or that you can calculate, is absolute truth. You must remember that you can be wrong.” I finished with the tone of a dull lecturer. To this day I am not sure what stimulated these thoughts. Perhaps it was my interest in developing AI, something that we humans had been trying to create for years. Or perhaps I was just irritable after an exhausting outing.

  She was silent for a moment. I wondered if she was really contemplating the statements I had just made. When she finally said something it was once more in the quiet tone of a shy child. “But if I think I might be wrong, how am I to do anything? I am flying this ship now. If I am unsure as to my trajectory, I could cause us, or even others in our path to die. If I have doubt, how am I to react at all?” She sounded very confused and frightened at the idea.

  “There are plenty of things that you can be mostly certain about, and in that, you react accordingly. But all things can be doubted too. It seems that I am here talking to an AI. Is that the case? Or am I locked in a room somewhere talking to myself, deluded into thinking otherwise? Now that is not directly what I was talking about. You are still young, or at least were activated shortly before you and I met. Your personality was fashioned to match my own. What this means is together you and I can see if we can work out any growing up you might need to do. More to the point, you think the data you have is all the data there is or can be. Certainly, you should react to the data you have, but do not forget about such things like external opinions and experiences which you will have no way to know completely.” I crossed my arms. “Take for example, maybe I did something that made Adam dislike me. He would have informed the Outsiders I am an inappropriate candidate, even though all the testing you are aware of points that I am acceptable. The world is not controlled alone by data, but opinions of that data seem to have more of a sway. Humans are not logical, though they think they are. Justification for their illogicality can seem quite rational, but that does not equate to logic.”

  “So you are saying as long as the data points out the logical conclusion, I can at least react in the logical sense. But when it comes to things that are opinion controlled I can not make a reliable calculation?” she concluded.

  “That sounds about right. If I am to be with you for a long time you should be able to predict my behavior and opinions most of the time. But currently you do not posses the data to predict anyone’s reactions. You have the data perhaps to predict a mass opinion, as we react differently in groups, but that has more observed study than you will ever have of any single individual,” I said.

  “Then I shall continue as I have been—except when it comes to subjective subjects. I can tell you I like certain types of art. But what you are saying is that I would not be able to assume the art I like would be liked by everyone or anyone else. The art I currently find myself liking is that which others have liked. I have not yet seen a piece that has not already been judged,” she said.

  “I could see that. How would you gain access to art that someone hasn’t seen before. Perhaps I’ll have to draw you something and see if you like it. Mind you, my own opinion of anything I create is not always positive. But I do want to ask you a question. You said you did the decorating of the interior of this ship?” I asked.

  “Yes, I found pieces of art, furniture, and wallpaper I enjoyed and combined them in a way I found pleasing,” she said with pride.

  “Now, do you have a record of this combination of decor in your repository of knowledge?” I asked.

  “Just a moment.” The moment was short. “No. This is a unique collection as far as I am able to discern. The furniture and wallpaper are of the Victorian era. I created copies of the examples I found while researching. As for the art, they are just pieces I found pleasing. I simply placed them at certain spacings so they would not obstruct each other.”

  “And you said you find this layout pleasing, correct?” I asked.

  “Yes, otherwise why would I have it like it is?” she asked, a little confused.

  “Well my dear, you have done two things. One of which you didn’t think you could. Number one, you created art. Room design can be considered an art form. That is why interior decorators exist, to assist those who can not get a room to feel the way they want. Number two, you found enjoyment in a unique piece of art. It i
s your own opinion. Congratulations, you are an artist and a critic in one. But again do not expect others to share your opinions. I just happen to like this room very much, but that might have something to do with the fact you were programed to be a compatible companion for me,” I surmised.

  “Can I even create art, when, like you said, I am programed to be your own desired companion?” she asked.

  “Certainly. How would they have had enough information about me to formulate a frictionless companion that did only as I wanted at all times? The fact we are having this conversation already shows you are not the companion they would have designed. I find you pleasing, but I also find you, no offense, lacking. And the lacking is not a fault I can place on you, it is placed on the limited time you have been aware. You will mature soon enough, so don’t panic. But may I ask, if there is time in a situation to ask me about the appropriate responses, please do so. Eventually you will understand and not need me for that. Maybe that’s part of the reason they are pairing us humans with AI’s in these ships. Perhaps they have yet to understand how to produce you already matured. That all being said, I find you incredible in your abilities already, and am excited to watch you grow,” I finished. Even as I said it I found it a little condescending as she was a fully functional individual. Yet I could not help but think she was lacking certain things. Maybe this is why I did not have any friends. After ruminating about what I had just said, I sounded a bit like a know-it-all jerk.

  “I almost think what you find lacking in me is just discretion. You seem to think I cannot discern when to do and not do something. That seems to be the source of the complaints you talk to me about. But remember the whole outing to Japan was a formulated test to make you uncomfortable. I would say you are lacking data to formulate an opinion on me then, as it is based not on my normal interactions with you, but of a planned uncomfortable experience for you personally,” she retorted. I could not tell if it was in jest, or if she was truly offended by my observational remarks.

 

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