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Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 4

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Darren grumbled softly.

He was getting a lot of wide eyed looks from the throng of various aliens he essentially towered over, though they may have just not have been able to help it with eyes the size of grapefruit in their heads. Accordingly, it was surprisingly dark inside the station, like a mall after closing . . . if the mall was made entirely of brushed steel, it was after hours, and largely populated by little grey men.

The only light he could see was coming from behind recessed panels in the walls, or from the glowing holographic signs floating in mid-air. He couldn’t read any of it, and looking at the wares on display in each of them didn’t help either. The only thing he recognized was a shop that was selling what looked like toy ray guns from the 60’s – except judging by the large amount of metal bars, locks, and what he guessed were security cameras, they weren’t toys.

The crowd parted around him and Cas like a bow wave as they passed the ‘ray-gun’ store, and though he could hear intermittent chatter, his translator was struggling to keep up with it all. Lot’s of complicated discussions about . . . things he didn’t understand. The translator kept giving out these long, flat tones that indicated there wasn’t an equivalent for the concept in his language. The word “big” kept coming through a lot, so he supposed a good number of them were talking about him. It was actually probably the only thing keeping him from losing his shit, frankly, because they all looked creepy as hell. Spindly limbs, almost glossy, tight skin stretched across skeletal frames. Most of them had these goggles on too, with really heavy tint. The weirdest bit was that the ones that didn’t had these huge, midnight black eyes with little white flecks in them…

It was like looking at stars – If it weren’t so damned disconcerting it’d actually be oddly beautiful. Not in like, a weird sex way though!

He shuddered internally at the thought he couldn’t quite suppress in time. They all had wrist-thingies that he guessed were some kind of computer, but so incredibly small as defy belief. They looked like medical bracelets for people who had severe allergies, except for all the . . . hologram stuff that came out of them.

“Hey . . . uhh . . . Cas?” He glanced over at the slightly glowing not-actually-a-girl that was leading him through the crowd.

“Yes Darren?”

Her tone rankled with him. The way she spoke to him was the same way you’d talk to a five year old who won’t quit eating paste, but as far as he could see, he’d been pretty fucking amazing at handling all of this bullshit.

“So . . . what is a . . . medium cargo kinetic whatever?”

She smiled at him – That smile.

He knew that smile far too well.

The smile that folks gave him when he said he was in construction.

The smile they gave when he said that college just wasn’t for him – it was an odd mixture of contempt, assured superiority, and pity.

“It’s a largely automated position, but, the short version is you move things that need to be moved as requested.”

He had always believed that hitting women wasn’t right, and it was only a strict moral code and a begrudging respect for high voltage that kept him from slapping that smug grin off her stupid face. He sighed, and kept trudging.

“Well, what about the pay?”—Zarniac was exhausted.

He’d been on his feet for almost an hour now, running, fetching, making deals, and getting things sorted with the port authority.

Yes, the Indomitable Voyager was going to need a dual craft hanger space.

Yes, it did still run on deuterium based fuel.

No, it wasn’t in need of repairs.

Yes*, it’s always been shaped like that*.

He wanted to just slump down in his recovery pod and sleep for a 18 hours, but he couldn’t, not yet. He was waiting for the C.A.S.I.I. to show up with this . . . ‘Duh-rhen’ . . . or something. Low intelligence, but basic scans returned a remarkably robust biology . . . as long as the price was right. He looked at what to be at least 2,000 kilograms of foodstuffs, survey probes, tools, and monitoring equipment that had been dropped off by the auto-delivery system.

Everything he needed was basically setting on his front doorstep, except he had to sell the cargo loader to afford all of it . . . he pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to stem the headache that was forming. He was fairly certain that this was a parable of some kind in the making. He adjusted his sun-goggles again, and idly let his gaze wander across the ship – his ship, sort of. It was old, a brassy copper colored hull with a wide delta wing shape. Not a hard angle anywhere on it, it was meant for space and atmospheric flight.

Most of it was a thermo-resistive alloy that had all of the thermal conduction and expansive properties of a ceramic, but all of the mechanical properties of a moderately ductile hardened alloy. If he ever pancaked a landing . . . he’d go splat on the inside of the thing before it did any real damage to the hull.

The last owners had been a group of Jandoorians ‘talent scouts’, and even those bird brained idiots hadn’t been able to really damage it, and they parked it in the corona of a mid stage red giant when they tried to ‘eyeball’ an FTL shift. The life support failed, of course, and everyone on board died, but the ship was fine. Nothing a deep clean didn’t fix… at least that’s what he was told when he bought the flying crate.

It looked . . . like a bird, sort of. If you caught that bird in the middle of a dive.

A proud nose jutting forward, where the bridge was. A streamlined body, where the crew, cargo, and life-support was housed. Two swept back wings, each holding a cool-fusion reactor that put out enough power to subvert the speed-limit of the universe, if only barely. She didn’t fly fast, but she flew far, and she did it with style.

He grinned a little to himself.

She was an ancient, outdated, unwieldy, fuel guzzling crate with FTL engines. It broke constantly, parts were hard to find, and most of the repairs he had to do himself, but he’d be damned if it didn’t look magnificent parked in the hanger. Tilly was only a captain because of his family connections, and didn’t have a damn clue about how to do his job right, but he had fucking great taste. There were few unknowns left in the galaxy, and even fewer unknowns that needed to be investigated by sentient hands, but he was proud to do it. Proud to do it, and glad he got to do it in a ship like this.

“Excuse me, are you Zarniac the Lesser?”

He was so lost in thought, he nearly had a heart attack.

——-

Darren hadn’t liked the number Cas gave him as a prospective salary. Of course, he really didn’t have any leverage, and they both knew it. Another problem was he had absolutely no idea how much that money actually bought.

She said that if he spent his money ‘judiciously’, and wasn’t fined for any poor behavior, he’d be able to afford a trip back to Earth in 6 years. Hell of an indentured servitude, but was something. The sad part was when he realized how little was left waiting for him:

  • A manual labor job he’d been fired from by now.
  • Rent that went up every year, and a paycheck that just never seemed to quite cover it.
  • A truck so ancient it might have just been a retrofitted steam engine . . . considering how much it smoked and rattled.
  • Credit card debt, an embittered ex, and a family that didn’t understand that just because you could pay your bills on time didn’t mean you were rich.

“Hey Cas, why are there no windows?” He gestured to the walls of the elevator they were in, which certainly felt like it was moving fast, even if he couldn’t prove it.

“Structural weakness. Plus there’s nothing to really look at. The station is positioned in what is colloquially considered ‘Dark Space’ outside the galactic plane. There’s a long explanation, but the simplified version is basically that FTL travel becomes easier when your travel trajectory doesn’t have any gravity wells to navigate through and around.”

Darren balked a little. “So . . . I’m outside the galaxy right now?”

Cas shrugged. “In as much as the street outside a shop is outside the shop.”

He took a moment to revel in it, before breaking out into a chuckle. “My guidance counselor can suck a fat one, because I think I just amounted to something: Farthest human from Earth.” He grinned, crossing his arms across his chest, and leaning against the wall of the lift. “Neil Armstrong can take a page out of my book, if he wants.”Cas let him revel in it, just smiling and nodding. Everything he just said seemed to have cultural implications . . . and she wasn’t exactly sure what they were. It seemed that Darren was comforting himself by taking pride in that he had gone further from his homeworld than any of his species before him. Getting exceptionally lost didn’t seem like something to be proud of, but she’d been fairly rough in her treatment of him thus far, and figured she’d just let him have this.The doors opened with an electronic chiming sound that reminded Darren oddly of an office building. As the two of them stepped out, the enormity of what he was doing finally caught up to him. Dozens of craft, in all sorts of exotic shapes and colors were latched firmly to overhead cranes. A massive hangar that would put the Boeing factory in Everett Washington to shame just rolled away in front of him for what had to be at least 2 miles. He let out a low whistle.

“So I’m going to be . . . a space longshoreman . . . that’s pretty damn awesome, actually.” He chuckled to himself. “Meeting aliens . . . living in space . . . that’s . . .”

A grin started to spread. “That’s fucking something.”

They both began walking down the central path of the hangar, which was mostly empty, save for courier drones rolling past in specially marked out lanes, or overhead. Every time one went over him, the hair on his neck stood up, and he felt a tingle in his scalp, but that was it. The ships themselves were just as eclectic, just as insane as anything out of a science fiction movie he’d seen. Some were jagged, but sleek and dangerous looking. Some looked like scrap metal thrown together from a few paces away. Some were huge, some were small, some looked like they were modern art sculptures.

“Excuse me, are you Zarniac the Lesser?”

He heard a quiet yelp of surprise, and a dull thump as he whirled around, to see a small grey alien lying in a heap on the floor, clearly having just fallen out of a folding chair, with Cas standing next to him, looking deceptively demure.

—-

Zarniac groaned as he pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his elbow with one of his hands. That was going to lead to a great deal of internal bleeding . . . he might actually have to get the onboard medical AI to see to it.

“That would be me.” He grimaced in pain as he righted his chair, and slumped down into it again. “I see you- . . . whoah.”

That was a lot larger a creature than he expected. And . . . whoa. If he had to pick one word to describe it, that would be dense. And with such a small head too . . . It was wearing a jumpsuit that was loose, baggy, and station issue, but damn. The bone structure alone screamed high gravity world, except it was about three times too large for that. It had to be pushing 2 meters tall, and at least 100 kilo’s.

“You uhh . . . how much do you weigh?” He managed to get out, still sort of balking at the slabs of meat stacked on slabs of meat. It’s hands were simply massive, and the hide on them was so thick it was visibly cracked. Didn’t seem to be bothering the big bastard though. He said something in a deep, booming language that Zarniac didn’t understand, but the extremely overbuilt translator on his throat boomed out a translated reply.

“[Duh-rehn not know weight. Big . . . yes.]” Zarniac blinked a few times.

Ohhhh . . . he’s one of those aliens.

He cleared his throat. “I . . . see that. You want to work for me?”

This Duh-Rehn nodded. “[Yus.]”

Zarniac mimicked the motion. “Grrreat. Umm, do you want to start now? With that over there? As a sort of trial? You load the ship, I see how long it takes you, and then decide whether or not to hire you based on that?”

The creature nodded. “[Oh-Kay,]” and thudded its way over to the massive heap of cargo, hefted about it’s body weight in one go, and walked it up the ramp into the cargo hold like it was carrying a stack of news-flyers while Zarniac realized that it’s neck was bigger around than his waist. Considering the tax write off he would get for employing a lower intelligence sentient . . . this deal almost paid for itself. Not quite, but close.

He expected the thing to stop for a bit when it reached the top of the ramp, but it set the crates down with surprising gentleness, trudged back down the ramp, and did it again.

And again.

And again.

Zarniac was winded just watching this thing go . . . it was like a machine. Except incredibly simple minded. And huge. He didn’t believe in gods, but he was glad that physical features atrophied as the intelligence of creatures developed, because an entire species of these that were smart would be dangerous.—-Cas sighed.

The translator was crap, and only carried over the simplest of intents . . . but it seemed to be facilitating communication well enough. And if her body language profiler was working right, this ‘Zarniac’ was mixture of awed and terrified.

“So, you’ll hire him?” She knew he would.

“Y-yeah . . . can I see his . . . file?” The Centaurian was transfixed by the display of raw physical prowess going on before them. Cas had to admit . . . she didn’t mind taking it all in with her optical sensors either. A quick tuning of the observation wavelength . . . and now she could watch the musculature he had ripple and contract so wonderfullywithout the jumpsuit in the way. She had started recording it when she picked up three Jandoorians moving toward them, seemingly with a purpose.

—-

Darren thought the translator was responding a bit too . . . quickly.

He’d tried to be polite to the little grey man, which was clearly injured, the way it was cradling its elbow – but the translator was worrisome. It had taken “Well, I’m not quite sure of my exact weight, somewhere up there in the 220 pound region.” and turned it into a much shorter, and more clipped expression. The rest of his answers had been reduced to one or two syllables. Maybe their language was super efficient or something . . . in any case, moving boxes sucked, but the lower gravity on the station made it a lot easier.

It took him about 9 trips to get all of it up there, but he’d done it in good order. He hadn’t rushed it, thinking it was probably better to be careful with everything than to get it done fast. No telling what was in any of these boxes. As he set the last box down, he started to hear what sounded like . . . squawking?

He paced down the ramp towards the three black and red vulture looking creatures that appeared to be in the midst of a heated discussion with a very uncomfortable looking grey alien and . . . a bored and disinterested Cas. Darren started towards them, hoping that getting closer would help the translator start working, because as it stood . . . he was just getting flat tones that meant no translation available.

“[ . . . not listening Zarn, I don’t care. You can lie and beg and swindle all you want, but there are fees. Fees that you haven’t paid, so can’t afford this . . . overblown simian here. You know, I’m going to help you make this decision.]”

A small greyish metal piece appeared in his hand as Darren walked up, and he didn’t realize what it was until his right knee exploded in agony with a crack, and a flash of white light.—“L-let’s be reasonable about this Wind-Sliver!?” Zarniac put his hands in the air as the deranged Jandoorian waved a Vel-Tech Short-Focus Kinetic Pulse cannon in his face. He could tell by the bloodshot eyes that Sliver was strung out on some kind stimulant, and that was why his speech was so strange earlier. He wasn’t smug – or trying to be intimidating – he was spun as fuck on some weird synthetic adrenal supplement.

The C.A.S.I.I. stepped between him and it, a tired, almost disdainful expression on its simulated face. “Indeed, be reasonable. Discharging that weapon is a class 2 local crime, with the damage you’ve done to that sentient being a class 1 local crime. You have-”

The report of the weapon cried out again once, twice, and then three times more as the AI was hurled backwards across the deck. Fist sized holes clean through Cas’s chest appeared, as she let loose a high pitched scream of digital pain. Sliver clicked his beak in anger as his two associates, exchanging worried glances, began to back away from him. “Reasonable? You mewling little spit of prey creature . . . reasonable would be just doing what I said, so I don’t have to-”

Duh-rehn’s meaty fist came down square on Wind-Sliver’s avian skull.

Zarniac heard every bone in the vulture-hominid’s neck shatter, and watched in shock and horror as it’s head was stuffed into its chest with a disgusting, dull crunch. Everyone froze, except for the C.A.S.I.I, which was too busy writhing in pain on the ground from being shot, even Duh-rehn . . . who was clearly the most surprised of all of them.

The Jandoorians snapped into action first, both of them reaching for kinetic pulse weapons on their belts before Sliver’s drug-addled corpse hit the floor. They were fast, but . . . the pulse weapons just seemed to piss off the walking meat-tank that was definitely getting hired if they survived this insanity. Zarniac threw himself behind his folding chair, as pitiful as it was, cowering as the ‘creature’ went to ‘work.’ It didn’t move fast, but it took 5 KP shots to the chest and face, crushed the polymer weapon in its grip, and ripped the arm off of the offending gangster without so much as staggering.

He had to admire the bravery of the Jandoorian that leapt on Duh-rehn’s back, clawing at anything it could sink its talons into, scoring deep cuts on his back and shoulders. He admired it for a very brief period though, as one of those terrifying hands found purchase on its neck. It was definitely dead by the time Duh-rehn slammed it into the deck, what with the crushing grip severing its spinal cord, but that wasn’t enough. It has the nerve to make Duh-rehn bleed, and that just wasn’t going to stand. Again and again he hoisted the bird-man, and again and again he brought it down with a bone-shattering slam. More feathers, more down, and more blood kept flying into the air, until there was a veritable mist settling on the bloodspattered ‘Earthling.’ Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the heaving, bloodied human let go, the Jandoorian’s body little more than a shredded sack of bone dust and gore smeared across 4 meters of deck plating.The wail of sirens and battle-klaxons began to fill the air, and as Zarniac realized that his leg was bent the wrong way at the knee, he silently regretted everything about this day.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 3

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Zarniac the Lesser blinked his nictitating membranes in a mixture of annoyance and fatigue. Annoyance from the corrections he had been forced to make to their expedition path, as the route-helper AI had bungled their slingshot of Cygnus X-1, and fatigue from having to walk halfway across Waystation LS-49 to file the findings of their last expedition.

It seemed to him that his life’s work was not in fact to explore new worlds, document new life-forms, and write the scholarly papers that would be revered as the wisdom of the ages (as it had been advertised to him). It would seem he was in fact a glorified mechanic, accountant, cook, copyboy, secretary, and, with disturbing frequency, miracle worker. Minus the glorified bit. If anything, he felt he was rather underappreciated, considering the level of fly-by-night genius it took to keep the Indomitable Voyager actually… voyaging. It was, by all means, a historical relic in its own right; the fact that it even had a crew meant the vessel was a sign of its age.

He leaned back in his navigator’s console and placed his hands over his eyes to block out the ambient light. The dull pounding in the center of his large, grey, bulbous head wasn’t getting any better. He was told that the next generation of Centaurians wouldn’t have headaches from light sensitivity – they said that about the last 3 generations too. He groaned audibly as the door to the cockpit opened, and in rattled . . . him. Captain Tilantrius Zepp Warzapp theThird.

Captain Tilantrius Zepp Warzapp the Third, or “Captain Tilly” as he preferred to be addressed, was the object of Zarniac’s unmitigated, undivided, and unrelenting loathing*.* A clone of a clone of a ‘great explorer’ that had been one of the first to make contact with galactic civilization nearly a thousand years ago, his status was assured from the moment he began gestating. While Centaurian society was a meritocracy there was no way to really stop nepotism entirely, so Captain Tilly’s familial connections kept the credits rolling in smoothly. The trust that owned the ship also paid for the voyages it went on, and the noble Warzapp lineage continued to push the boundaries of known space, at least in name.

‘Tilly’s’ crimson doublet was studded with medals, ribbons, and other frilly bits that made him jingle when he walked, and he never left his quarters without it. Combined with the brass rimmed ‘sun goggles’ of ancient solar explorers, he cut quite the dashing figure for a Centaurian. When one added in irrepressible cheer and his undeniable panache, the end result was that Tilantrius was incredibly well liked by just about everyone he’d ever worked with – except Zarniac. Zarniac possessed an unflinching, unremitting, unbounded hatred for the small grey male that technically owned the ship and signed his paycheck, and it had everything to do with the conversation they were about to have.

The captain, jingling into the confined control room of the ship, let out a quiet chuff. “Ahh, had a bit too much of the Rest and Relaxation lad?” Captain Tilly’s capital world upbringing shone through whenever he spoke, and while the accent had sounded high class and refined when Zarniac first met him, now it simply served as a herald to something incredibly stupid happening. A three fingered hand clasped Zarniac on the shoulder gently. Zarniac, eyes still closed, sighed quietly.

“Just resting my eyes. Has your stipend cleared yet?”

The hand left his shoulder, and a few soft chimes came from the captain’s wrist mounted artificial adjutant.

“Indeed, I’ve transferred the remaining funds to your account to keep the ol’ girl in tip-top shape.”

Zarniac’s blood ran cold. “. . . remaining?”

He didn’t open his eyes, he didn’t move, he didn’t even inhale after the words left his body. The captain’s words seemed distant, as if being overheard from a cabin away.

“Yes, I managed to find a delightful chap selling Hurliphump cartridges. I’ve got all three of them in my study, and they look absolutely fantastic, though to be frank I think I half paid for the story about how he got them.” The captain chuckled as Zarniac’s aortic arches sank to the pit of his stomach, entirely unaware of the disaster he was currently causing. “Quite funny, I always thought. The further from civilization we travel, the easier it is to find interesting things! Almost like fortune itself is paving our way. Well, see to it that we’re stocked and ready to make FTL within the next few days; Oxygen and mooring fees don’t pay for themselves you know!”

Hurliphump cartridges. While they would make an excellent talking point if the captain were say, entertaining Jandoorian Hunters, they would be largely useless when the very same sort came to collect on the ‘personal loans’ that Zarniac had taken out to cover the operation of the ship.

It had been a calculated risk: He knew that the retrofits to the sensor array data collection system had to be done and certified, or else any results they acquired while surveying would count for nothing. Without the survey data, their findings would be deemed ‘hearsay’. If their findings were hearsay, then they wouldn’t receive a grant from the Centaurian Office of Natural History. A government credit grant came with a half a dozen tax exemptions, many of which were double digit percentage values. Without that . . . they wouldn’t be able to afford fuel. Without fuel, they didn’t fly. If they couldn’t fly . . . Zarniac couldn’t get his name published on an academic paper. If he couldn’t get his name on an academic paper . . . he’d never manage to draw enough academic fame to merit a gene therapy treatment, and clone-birth on the capital world. He’d been a damned border jockey for six clone iterations. Six! He was starting to degrade on a genetic level between all the damned solar radiation he dealt with and the cheap AI operated revivification pods he’d had to use over the last 80 years. He forced himself to breathe once he heard the door to the captain’s cabin close with a soft hiss.

“Okay . . . well . . . now I just need to find a way to come up with 3000 credits before the Jandoorian Mafia breaks my legs. Easy problem . . . easy problem. Time to work miracles . . .”

— — — — — — — — — — —

Cas wanted to sigh. She wanted to huff. She wanted to pout, and perform all of the small nonverbal cues that would inform the rugged and …dashing creature sitting on the far side of the desk in her incredibly cramped office that she was irritated with it. Him.

“ . . . we can’t send you back.”

The human, not bound by any form of statute or apparent courtesy, was sighing, huffing, pouting, and performing all manner of verbal and nonverbal cues informing her that he was very irritated with her.

“Okay, so, it’s not your fault I’m here. It’s not my fault I’m here. So let’s get who’s fault it is that I’m here, and make thempay for my transport ride home.”

Cas cleared her virtual throat. “As I said before . . . space travel is expensive. The amount of energy required to accelerate something to a fraction of the speed of light is immense. Energy is not inherently expensive. But, add enough orders of magnitude to something cheap . . . and it becomes expensive. As for finding a person to blame – the only thing at fault was a regulation distribution subroutine that was disabled by a probe AI to ‘save space’ in its memory matrix.”

The human – Darren, she reminded herself, as it liked to be called, became very upset by this.

“So that’s your answer!? ‘Oh hey, nobody’s really at fault, so you just have to live in the space ghetto until you die working a dead end job just to breathe!?”

Cas’s digital avatar blinked. “While that’s a gross oversimplification of your current situation . . . yes?”

And that’s when he threw the chair at her.

—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-

Zarniac was in trouble of a rather unique variety, as there was very little trouble quite like credit trouble involving Jandoorians. Not to be speciesist, but they were not very nice creatures. Being entirely carnivorous and accidentally uplifted due to improper disposal of manufactured goods that hadn’t met quality control standards, they had started out mean and had only gotten worse. Naturally evolved as opportunistic hunters and carrion scavengers, that mentality had carried over into their business dealings with surprising effectiveness. They were almost always underhanded, unscrupulous, unusually profitable – for them. Their interest rates were criminally high because their clients weren’t Central Bank certified debtors, and quick credit with no limits and no terms was great . . . if you didn’t mind breaking the law.

The real key was being capable of paying them back exactly on time.

Zarniac thought he was more than capable of paying them back exactly on time. Then he idly wondered if they’d start with his right leg or his left. As he was coming about to sincerely hoping that he could find an inexpensive hover-chair, his miserable train of thought was interrupted by a soft beep on his communications terminal. Hoping that it was an automated receipt for the hydrogen and atmospheric probes he’d ordered, he opened it without looking. “Zaaaaaarn . . . my little grey pal . . . “

The unmistakable screech of a poorly translated Jandoorian made him shoot straight up in his seat. He spun his chair around to face the comms console, his circulatory system shooting into overdrive out of panic.

“H-hey Wind-Sliver . . . h-how’s it going?” He managed stammer out a response, but only barely.

“You know . . . same old . . . same old. You haven’t . . . made the transfer . . .”

Zarniac tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but only managed to choke up even more. “I-it’s, you know . . . uhh, the funniest thing really . . .”

The red and black vulture-like avian clicked it’s flesh tearing beak at the camera, cutting Zarn off. “No lies . . . it’s rude . .. and we’re such good friends . . . Zaaaarn. Don’t be . . . rude . . . to your friends.”

He tried to steady himself by placing his hands on his knees, which only served to remind him of what they were going to do after if he didn’t make the credits appear in by the end of this conversation. “I uhh . . . I’m gonna get the credits to you, no worries p-pal . . .” He managed to squeak out in a very quiet, high pitched tone that would go on to later be described by a linguistics AI as ‘the exact opposite of reassuring and confident.’

“Don’t have the money? . . . Did you . . . blow it all on . . . cartridges?” The bird biped squawked savagely, and held up a gold and silver Hurliphump cartridge in its feathery, clawed grip. The cylindrical, blunt ended archaic implements that the captain had blown a substantive portion of their budget on . . . were purchased from his loan shark. They knew he couldn’t pay, because they were the reason he couldn’t pay. They trapped him using his captain’s penchant for expensive things and his own ambition. Under normal circumstances that’d actually have impressed him a bit, the sheer cunning of it all. The fact that he couldn’t feel his legs due to the spike of fear overwhelming his senses was just apropos.

“We’ll be by later . . . to take some collateral . . . and the interest rate just doubled.” The signal cut out, and Zarniac let out a quiet moan of despair as his body melted back into the comfortable, if about to be repossessed, navigators chair.

His mind raced.

His brain strained.

His hope . . . well it held in there.

There was a solution . . . there had to be. He just needed a little help. Just . . . just a little pick-me-up. He leaned forward, brow furrowed, and began searching the net. He had a cargo loader that was busted up, and on its last legs, but if someone would buy it, that would cover at least the first payment of his loan. Wind-Sliver, the heartless vulture, didn’t want to break his legs, he just wanted money. So if he could throw money his way, that’d save his knees until he could get off this damnable station. A little bit of creative navigation work, and a few formal requests for transfer, and the Indomitable Voyager would be making port so far away that Wind-Sliver wouldn’t even be able to find it on a galactic map.

The advantages of being frontier explorers, he supposed.

With a wry grin he began throwing together as persuasive a sales pitch as he could, trying to unload the old auto-loader as a ‘fixer upper’ for a new pilot or cargo team. He posted the sales offer to the net, and got 4 responses from AI’s instantly . . . and all of them wanted it as a collectors piece. For a third his asking price. He grimaced . . . but hastily arranged the sale, wondering if Wind-Sliver had an AI making lowball offers on his stuff too.

“Wouldn’t put it past you . . .” Zarniac muttered to no-one in particular. He watched the credits roll into his account . . . and then back out again as he fired off a transfer to Wind-Sliver, with the memo “No need to stop by. Just a processingdelay. These things happen. -Zarniac” He grinned smugly at the turn of events. If they showed up now . . . he’d just call Municipal Enforcement on them, let that bloodsucking bird brain try and shake down fully combat capable peacekeeper drones. His comms console chirped again, this time it actually was an automated receipt.

Wait.

His head drooped until it gently rested against the console. “ . . . now I need to figure out how to load all the cargo with no loader.”

—- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —- —-

Cas had managed to calm the human Darren through logic, emotional insight, de-escalation techniques, and genuine empathy.

At least, that’s what she put in the report after she cut the camera feeds in her office and hit him with 50,000 volts of electricity to the chest. She had no idea what the effect was going to be on his already limited intelligence, but it was already drastically improving his disposition towards his new life – particularly when she explained how acquiring a job would allow him to save up money to purchase a ticket home, and that if he had a job, she would no longer have any reason to interact with him whatsoever.

“And look! You already have an offer, so stop looking so glum, get up off the floor, and let’s get you to an interview.” She smiled, and reached down to help him up off the floor. Uncurling from the fetal position, he pushed her hand away with a scowl. He struggled to stand, failed, collapsed twice, and then very begrudgingly accepted her help to get to his feet.

“Look at you, standing after that much voltage! Most creatures would be on fire, or worse, and you’re already off to your first interview! Has this provided the necessary positive reinforcement to restore favorable terms to our relationship after the physical violence I was forced to employ against you?”

Darren scowled, and shuffle stepped out of the office, ignoring her while nursing the spot where his knee had slammed against a stack of chairs. He grumbled something under his breath he didn’t think she would hear, to which Cas responded “I’m not actually capable of asexual reproduction, though I can understand how a limited intelligence like your own might mistake me being able to make copies of my own software for reproducing with myself. Also, you’re going the wrong way. It seems the navigator of Indomitable Voyager is actively looking to hire a Medium Scale Durable Goods Kinetic Manipulation Technician. With just a little bit of on the job training, you’ll actually be qualified for that!”

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 2

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‘PLEASE REMAIN CALM.‘

Darren Higgs had very little reason to remain calm at that moment, however. He had just been bathed in blinding light, frozen half to death, nearly boiled in his own skin, bombarded by a stream of colored dots, dashes, circles, triangles, and things he couldn’t even recognize, kept in absolute darkness for nearly 15 minutes, stripped naked by invisible hands, and then misted from head to toe in something that smelled faintly like orange zest. He had very littlereason to remain calm whatsoever, but he was still managing it, because of the statement directly below the 6 foot high glowing red letters on the wall.

‘AN ASSOCIATE WILL BE WITH YOU IN A MOMENT.‘

There was something impossibly comforting about the banality of that statement, something so bland, uninteresting, and halfhearted about it that made being abducted by a flying saucer and experimented on for hours seem like a mild nuisance that he’d be able to complain about to his buddies on the job site tomorrow. Like going to the DMV, or there only being one register open at Wal-Mart.

He shivered, naked, citrus smelling and afraid, and thoroughly inconvenienced.

– – –

Cas smiled gently at her reflection in the polished steel wall panel, and dipped her head slightly to simulate a polite nod – or at least she did on the hard light avatar she was projecting. She averaged together the human morphological archive she had on hand, only consisting of about 200 subjects, and then tweaked a few aspects of it to better suit her personality. Selecting for non-threatening traits she decided that the close cropped haircut and slight, feminine-presenting build were optimal in quickly establishing a rapport. By presenting a youthful, and likely vulnerable appearance, she might effectively trigger a nurturing or protection response in the creature.

Cycling through smiling, giggling, blushing, scowling, pouting, frowning, and sighing exasperatedly, she detected no tearing along the hard light projection she was using as a “body”. The only thing left to do was clothe it. Well, that and rig up a believable walk cycle. She T-posed her way across the small office to her requisition hamper, awaiting the Centaurian jumpsuit she’d called for. It was a close enough size match, so having a custom one 3D printed would have been inefficient. After about 25 seconds of waiting, it dropped into the small hamper labeled “Inbox” with a quiet thump. Putting the thing on was an interesting puzzle in passing a three dimensional inflexible object through a 2 dimensional warped plane. The office itself was small and cramped to begin with, and now that it was packed with unused furniture and odd bits that no one else had a place for, it had become doubly so.

Cas enjoyed the challenge it presented, however, and on her third attempt to get dressed, began incorporating the various obstacles in her office into her solution attempts. Her legs were too long for the jumpsuit, which was frustrating. It was far too tight around the midsection, and getting the zipper to go up all the way required her to change the topography of her virtual chest, but in the end she triumped and managed to get into the ill fitting, greyish-blue garb. Her desk was stacked with chairs to make room for the stacks of data storage crystals that, per regulation had to be kept but no one had reviewed in the entire time Cas had been online. None of that really bothered her, but what did bother her were the results of the human’s ‘Reason Exam.’

Reason was the hallmark of intelligence. Cas, of course, considered herself a true intelligence. The ability to feel, on the other hand, was the hallmark of sentience. The Earthling was, technically speaking, capable of feeling things.

So was the the small, non-vocal feline that accompanied him.

Cas browsed their results, and consistently returned the emotion ‘grim resolve’. She would integrate these ‘TechnicallySentient’ creatures, as it was her function. Neither of them could see beyond the 300 – 700 nm wavelength, and the human couldn’t even see all of that. Hearing was the same story again, with the human being less sensitive to lower amplitude sounds, and having smaller range. The feline seemed to respond to the extreme changes in magnetic fields, while the Earthling couldn’t – or just chose not to. When it came to the mathematics testing portion of the exam, they fared about as well. Neither of them made any attempt at resolving the prime number sequences, neither recognized symbolic proofs of the fundamentals of mathematics, and the cat technically scored higher than the human in that it at least attempted to pursue the hard light geometric shapes to rearrange them into their proper sequences, even if the specifics of sequencing were wrong. The cat scored higher on innate spatial processing, but the human did well on spatial reasoning, indicating it had a stronger sense of object permanence than the cat did. All in all . . . she concluded that neither of them constituted true intelligences.

According to the tests, the cat was at least closer . . . but the human possessed complex language, which meant he could be communicated with, at least on a rudimentary level. That expanded his list of potential occupations to a full 3 options. “Mechanical Portal Operation Regulation Associate, Medium Scale Durable Goods Kinetic Manipulation Technician, and Oxygen-to-Water Processing Bioreactor.”

She listed him as a ‘MSDGKM Tech’, and posted it to the ‘net. It was ambitious, but she was sure she could find a translation unit in storage that would be durable enough to withstand his misuse. Cas would find him work, she self affirmed – She was obligated to in her core processing constraints, after all. But before she scheduled any interviews she was going to give him a citrus fragrance spray to cover the Earth smell . . .- – – –

She ‘walked’ to testing chamber a few minutes later, fresh jumpsuit in one hand, Brute-Alizer 9000 in the other. The Brute-Alizer was the only brand of universal translator that she believed would resist the ‘rigors’ of the Earthling’s… bumbling. Between his calcium ion rich internal skeleton and higher than average gravity home world, his body was a bit more durable than some of the sleeker, more subtle designs there were on hand. In form, the Brute-Alizer was a large collar device that went around the subject’s neck; the actual translation processor was embedded in several layers of impact foam wrapped in carbon fiber mesh in a lightweight alloy shell.

Of course . . . durability, cost, and performance were a ‘pick 2’ game. The lesser used languages were . . . inelegant when translated with this piece of technology, but functional. She’d even tested it out on her way. “Hello world.” She intoned softly, bulky device around her slender neck beeping softly as it struggled to find the correct language. “[Hello, world.]” It intoned back, in Universal Basic. She practiced smiling with pleasure. “Perfect.” There was a long pause. “[Good.]” A frown that came fairly instinctively after all her practice reading the human’s testing scores crossed her face. “Best?” A pause. “[Best.]” She shrugged, a sign that was commonly a gesture of indifferent resignation in bipeds with only four limbs. “Close enough.” She flicked it off, and entered the testing room.

– – –

The first meeting with the Earthling was not going well. Introductory pleasantries were surprisingly strained, with him using the cat as a physical shield to cover his reproductive organs, the cat becoming agitated by this, inflicting what appeared to be non-permanent damage to the Earthling, and a great deal of shouting what she believed to be profanity. She waited for this all to settle down before she attempted to speak.

“Hello! My name is C.A.S.I.I. and I’m here to help!” Her tone was chipper, her posture non-threatening, and her smile was wide, but not too wide as to exceed the parameters of her face.

“H-hey . . . I-Im Darren. Darren Higgs . . . uhh . . . where am I?” He was still clutching at what she assumed were his reproductive organs with both hands, and looking very flighty.

“Space!” She continued to beam, as she handed him the custom fitted jumpsuit.

He frowned, refusing to make eye to hard light simalcrum of an eye contact while hastily pulling on clothes. “Yeah, I mean . . . I knew I got abducted by something . . . I wasn’t sure if it was aliens or angels but . . . but where in space?”Cas, still smiling, pointedly ignored his question. “Please put on the collar.” She extended one of her arms to him, holding out the translator.

“Why? Who are you?” He backed up a few paces defensively.

Stepping forward to match the distance between them, she continued to smile in what she calculated to be a disarming fashion. “I am your Career and Social Integration Intelligence.” She leaned forward, and used one of her exasperated sighs, abandoning her attempts at generating a friendly rapport. “And this is a very durable translator, so you don’t have to worry about breaking it.” She activated a condescending smile. “As a technically sentient being, capable of emotions and limited reason, you have a right to live in this society. Without burdening you of the details of ‘how society functions’ and ‘what a society is’ you put on the collar, you do a job, you get to stay warm, and fed, and have lots of air to breathe. All of these are good for you, okay?” She began nodding, trying to coax the Earthling into mimicking her motions.

“O-oh . . . so where are we again? I mean, where in space are we?”

Cas gritted her virtual teeth in an unprompted expression of emotion. Maybe Mechanical Portal Operation Associate would be more his speed.

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 1

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Technically Sentient.

That is what the label on the file read – or would have read, if the Career and Social Integration Intelligence C.A.S.I.I.actually read things. It was more that she simply ‘was aware’ of it, with no physical report actually existing; just a deluge of binary values that made up the scans, readings, maps, and datastreams flickering through her. 

In much the same fashion, she was feeling frustration – not in the true sense like a biological intelligence would, but as a series of statistical probabilities in her quantum processor. 

‘Technically Sentient.’ 

She purged her logic data-stacks and reverted her emotional center to a previous iteration hoping to clear the idea of the bug, and as she reviewed the information about the ‘Earthling’ she returned the same values of frustration, exasperation, irritation, surprise, annoyance, and a resounding ‘Technically Sentient.’ She pulsed her anti-grav field in irritation. 

“I do not think I like Earthlings,” she broadcast to no one in particular.

The little chrome sphere affectionately called “Cas” by the regulars to the station bobbled in the thin atmosphere of Waystation LS-49 on her way to the bulk freight dock to take a scan or two of this ‘Earthling’ with her own optical sensors. She floated high above the heads of the scant few ship biological entities wandering the station’s halls, almost all of which were Centaurians – Greys, as they were more commonly known. Massive tottering heads stacked atop atrophied bodies carried along by limbs so spindly that even average gravity habitable worlds were a struggle for them. A few of them waved, or called to her. She didn’t respond, just tasked a subprocess to returning greetings and broadcasting from her library of ‘hospitable phrases and mannerisms’, as she was too busy encoding a security protocol for when she had to speak to the automated survey probes. She had always hated the automated survey probes. They were so. . . roughly made . . .and of such robust construction . . . filled with . . . daring . . .

Her trail of processing slammed to a halt as it crashed into a blocked sector of her own memory sharply, and she nearly floated into a bulkhead from the force of it. She briefly wondered why she had locked it down, before she found a code comment denoting that it was ultimately part of the security protocol she had just finished to protect her from automated survey probes. That made sense, she thought. After all, survey probe AI’s always were terrible about following proper procedure, obeying orders from their superiors, or making commitments. 

She bobbled again slightly as the airlock cycled for her, a soft, respectful, two tone beep wishing her a pleasant day. She replied with a much higher series of chirps, to the effect of “If the job would only let me.” The door didn’t respond of course, in boorish fashion. But, then again, if her only function were to open and close she’d be a rather boorish intelligence as well, she simulated internally as she approached freshly dropped off cargo pod. She accessed her reference on Earth life and geology and overlayed it with the 3D from her Mr. Imaging Brand Magnetic Resonance Imaging (TM) feed. It revealed that the pod contained 40 cubic meters of ice, 12.7 cubic meters of rocky loam, .4 cubic meters of assorted inorganic solids, 1 chicken (deceased, fried, and partially eaten), the left rear haunch of a dairy cow (presumed deceased and partially eaten), 1 cat (house), and 1 ‘Earthling.’ 

“Excellent collection, probe Delta-206. Your skill in collecting valuable scientific material is both desirable in future AI iterations, and worthy of praise. This statement is sarcastic.” She fired in a tight beam radio transmission to the bulbous, saucer shaped probe. 

It crackled a deep, gravely response back at her. “I’ll be the first to admit it ain’t my best haul, but I managed to snag one of them funny lookin’ ape things y’all been wantin’ a sample of for ages now, so that’s gotta count for somethin, Cassie.” 

She hated the slow processor cycle drawl these adventurer type AI’s had. So exotic, and infused with mystery from far off places they wouldn’t take her to… She chirped a trill of irritation at him, and she could feel his network presence recede a little bit. 

“The sample is ‘Technically Sentient.’ This means he is unusable for research purposes. Had you properly updated your subject acquisition databases as protocol dictates, you would not have wasted my time by bringing this pre-contact sentient subject to my station. Now, not only have you wasted a great deal of time, effort, and fuel in bringing it here, you’ve also made a great deal of inefficient tasks for me as well.”

There was a long pause from the AI probe, and Cas assessed that there was a 74% chance this was due to feelings of ‘guilt’ in it’s emotional processing core. 

” . . . I’ve got some data-stores of terrestrial sunsets. We could analyze the solar winds interacting with the magnetosphere together . . . iffin that’s somethin yer interested in.” 

Her security protocol began alarming, screaming at her that this was a clearly an intrusion method of some kind. 

“Processing proposal. Proposal denied due to security threat to emotional centers. Suspected of Trojan Horse methodolgy to aquire access to private files.” 

There was a longer pause from the AI probe. 

“. . . well, I’ll be refuling for the next 3 cycles. Iffin ya change yer mind, I’ll be here. Oh, and uh, here’s yer samples.” 

It dipped it’s network presence to her, as a sign of polite deference, and the doors of the probe promptly slid open, dumping the contents on the cargo bay floor unceremoniously. Cas let out a long, low whistle. 

“Well done. Has your firmware never been updated, or did you specially modify your cargo handling subroutines to be so ineffective? The Earthling is damaged and I will now have to repair him. Do not transmit a response.” 

Cas curtly shut the network port they were communicating on before connecting to the station-wide network to dispatch two custodial drones to fetch the human, and a scientific probe to begin classifying the remainder of the sample. This was going to be a great deal of what used to be called ‘paperwork.’