Tag: Fiction

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 6

Post author By TPH
Post date January 9, 2019
7 Comments on “Technically” Sentient: Chapter 6

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Amonna grimaced as the stink of the maintenance deck washed over her. A mixture of ozone, oil, and stale air that was almost entirely dehumidified to better preserve electronics stung at her gills. She could hear the sound of heavy industrial machinery at work in the dark around her, the cavernous space clanging, thumping, grinding and clattering away. All of the machinery that kept the station a habitable place for the 25,000 or so organic lifeforms that called Waystation LS-49 home was built, maintained, and repaired here, autonomously.

Well, almost autonomously.

A single spotlight followed her from an overhead gantry, bathing her in a discomfortingly bright light. The only light, in fact, on the entire deck. It made sense, after all. Nothing down here needed light to see, and guests were not frequent enough to necessitate standard lighting. It was easier (and cheaper) to have a drone with a spotlight on it follow any visitors to maintenance around, so there she was. Alone in the almost pitch dark.

She tried to follow the line painted on the floor leading to “Neuromechanics Workshop”, but she could hear things . . . moving . . . in the dark around her. She knew they were harmless. They were just servo arms, or cargo loaders, or any number of perfectly mundane thing that in the light of day would be so unremarkable as to not even merit notice. But it was not the light of day, and though she couldn’t see them, she could feel the mechanical things moving beside her, before her, and above her in the dark. Occasionally a shadow would flicker through the light as some anti-grav courier drone delivered urgently needed components to some other region of the deck, propulsion unit whining softly. The pitch would get higher and higher, louder and louder, until suddenly she’d be momentarily lost in darkness as it blotted out the spotlight leading her onward. It would last less time than it took her to blink, but in that moment of Stygian black . . .

Something about it, the things moving in the dark around her, the sounds, the muffled groan of massive gantries, and the squeal of tiny servos reminded her of the ocean ravines of Promos. The oppressive dark, the strange smells, the bones of massive dead things just beyond sight. Though these dead things never were alive, being machines and all, somehow that just made it creepier. Maintenance was deep place anyone with good sense would avoid if at all possible. She felt like she was walking through the inside of some massive, submerged clockwork mechanism that was balefully aware of her presence and only tolerated such trespass out of twisted courtesy.

She nearly ran into the door to the Neuromechanics Workshop, her mind had wandered so far. As she stepped back, looking for an access panel or maybe an archaic lever she was supposed to pull, the door suddenly slid open with a series of dull thunks, and music started wafting gently from within.

“ . . . Didn’t start the fire . . . It was always burning since the world’s been turning . . .”

Her translator struggled with the precise meaning and meter, but it was a high end model, military grade, meant to try and capture implied subtext as well as subtle nuance, so it was acquitting itself well at the task. The ability to translate idioms had been sought after by the galactic art scene for hundreds of years with no effective solution, so it was quite a surprise when the military produced the first working model. As it turned out, being able to understand slang and metaphors was a pretty high priority for people trying to crack down on black market trade.

“ . . . Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again . . .”

Well . . . It didn’t get everything right. Because that made no sense. She stepped into the cluttered lab space, checking her wrist computer as she did so. According to the holographic readout . . . The C.A.S.I.I. unit should be in here. She scanned the surprisingly small space, dimly lit by a single fluorescent tube light dangling from a rack of esoteric tools she couldn’t fathom the purpose of. There was a table of what looked like micro-reactor parts, a bench seat that had an entire courier drone disassembled on it, a quantum blue-box hooked into what she assumed was a diagnostic tool, a heap of dirty red shop rags thrown on top of a rocket engine, all positioned around a massive Nano-Fabrication tank. Really it was just a fancy toolkit that could work on small things by remote, but it was still a marvel of tech.

“ . . . Wheel of fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide . . .”

Her nose wrinkled. “I’m looking for one ‘Chryso Pilaxis?” Her tone halfway between a demand and a question, calling into the back of the workshop.

The heap of dirty rags twitched.

Her gun cleared her holster before she even realized what she was doing, when the rocket engine stood up.

“You have reached he.” The . . . mostly . . . rocket engine said?

As ‘he’ turned around, and Amonna got a better look at him, she realized what she thought was a rocket engine covered in dirty shop rags was actually a Kontosian. Err . . . Part of one.

The moderate in stature, (at least, compared to her), scaled reptilian shuffled off of the bench towards her, a single cybernetic eye glowing as it blinked the other, natural one, blearily. “Sorry . . . “

“ . . . Didn’t start the fire, but when we’re gone, will it still burn on, and on, and-”

The music cut out suddenly as a mechanical arm mounted to the ceiling reached down and shut off an ancient looking audio playback device suspended by chains in one of the upper corners of the shop.

“ . . . Sorry, didn’t hear you over the music.” She looked the creature up and down thoroughly, trying to parcel out just what exactly she was looking at. One half of it was mostly chrome, or at least chrome covered in grime, and the other half was scales, almost perfectly bisected from top to bottom. The boundary between the two was made up of angry, puckered flesh that looked almost rotting and certainly painful. “Staring is rude.” The Kontosian gave her the same thorough look up and down she was giving it. “And if you’re here to cite me for illegal cybernetic augmentation use, I have the medical exemptions in the back.”

“N-no . . . That won’t be necessary. I’m here about a C.A.S.I.I. unit that was just dropped off . . . It has evidence I need, and I was hoping you could recover that. You are the only on staff technician, correct?” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the incredibly extensive cybernetic work done to him, even as she smoothly re holstered her standard issue KP-7 sidearm. His single eye narrowed for a moment, but he sighed, and his posture visibly relaxed. “Well, I’m glad you’re not here to put me through the wringer about the augs again. But as for your AI, she’s scheduled for decommissioning. My work order has a big ‘D.A.T.’ written on it.” He plopped back down, and pulled a small electronic vaporizer out of his robes, and took a long drag of it, blowing smoke rings as he exhaled again.

Her snout wrinkled further as the chemical stink of smoke vapor assaulted her, and the small scaled creature chuckled at her discomfort as she couldn’t keep the look of displeasure from her face. “I’ve got a medical exemption for this too, before you get too up in arms.”

She waved the smoke away from her face with a free hand, scowling. “I’m a detective with FSOS, maybe you try not to make my life harder, and I try not to make yours harder. Also, D.A.T.?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle with a hint of smugness that she instantly hated. “Ma’am, with all due respect-” The way he said ‘respect’ indicated he didn’t mean any respect.

“-I’d be impressed if you made my life harder. I’ve lost 53% of my body to a degenerative genetic condition for which there is no cure, I am surrounded by degenerated and half insane AI’s as my only regular company. Well, that’s not true. Sometimes FSOS knocks on my door to either raise hell about how many augs I have. Or knocks on my door to cite me for modifying them to work half decently. Or sends a security drone to explain to me that the latest concentration of anti-inflammatory and pain-relief in my vaporizer is no longer legal. Oh, and D.A.T. means Disassemble and Trash.”

Amonna set her jaw firmly, before crossing her arms, and using her sheer size to her advantage. She loomed over him, teeth bared. “Well, 47% is a lot left. I need that data.”

She could see as he eyed the door, eyed her, and chewed the inside of his cheek, clearly weighing a series of options in his head. “Alright, fine. I disobey a direct order from Central Processing, you wave your magical FSOS badge all over the paperwork, and I give you a happy, healthy, functioning C.A.S.I.I. back, alright?”

She knew he caved too easy. Far too easy for someone so belligerent moments before. Her eyes narrowed. “ . . . You’re not telling me something.”

He snorted, a ring of smoke exiting his right nostril, and a thin stream of smoke leaking from under his cybernetic eye. “Yeah. A lot of things about the finer quantum fluctuations found inside an AI core, how to observe them without inadvertently changing them, and how to repair something that isn’t meant to be repairable. You want your data, I want permission to go about it carte blanche from the Frontier Social Order Service.”

Scoffing, Amonna shook her head. “No, I can’t give you blanket power like that, and I do mean can’t. It’s simply above my rank.”

The smoking dragon lizard scowled with the fleshy half of his face. “Fine, okay, great. You “can’t officially” let me do it my way. How about this, I test out some . . . esoteric repair techniques while you’re here . . . and you don’t tell anyone that I did them. We pretend that the data just sort of fell out when I plugged the C.A.S.I.I. in to decommission it fully. Best offer I’ll give you.”

Frustration quickly turned to confusion on her face as she weighed the option. “Esoteric? How so? What do you mean?”

“Eugh.” Chryso groaned. “I don’t have the time or the extensive library of technical literature required to get you up to speed on why this isn’t done . . . Okay, umm, you want me to get a suitcase on a train. The problem is, I don’t have a ticket, the train is moving at about 600 kilometers an hour, is filled with armed guards that will shoot unauthorized individuals on sight, and I don’t know what color the suitcase is in a car full of other suitcases. And I’m on a bicycle.”

Amonna blinked a few times. “So you’re saying it’s impossible for you to get me this data?”

The little dragon man grinned an unpleasantly wide, asymmetric grin. “No . . . I’m saying I know a guy with a hell of a bicycle, and I want you to stay here and keep me from getting a speeding ticket. The rest is a breeze for someone of my skill.”

——————————————

Zarniac groaned quietly, head throbbing almost as much as his knee was. “Eugh . . . Where . . . What?”

“Ah, Zarniac, old chap . . . You’re alright there chum. Just take it easy.”

He managed to make his groan of annoyance sound like one of pain. Tilantius Zepp Warzapp the Third.

“Cap’n Tilly . . . Where are we?” He kept blinking, hoping the brightness would fade, and it finally did, as Tilly turned the bedside lamp off.

“Sorry about that lad, we’re in the station infirmary, if you’ll believe it.”

Zarniac looked down, the disposable bedding covering his lower body was rough, and heavy. Machines monitoring his vitals beeped and whirred softly, and he was most definitely in some kind of infirmary room. “ . . . What happened?”

The captain shifted uncomfortably, before placing his thin, three fingered hand on Zarniac’s shoulder. His voice was soft, but stern. Like an aristocratic father would sound. “You were . . . injured, in that nasty dust-up with Duh-Rhen. Seems that while they were trying to subdue the brute, they accidentally winged you with one of those kinetic pulse weapons. I’m . . . I’m very sorry . . . I don’t know how to put this Zarn, so I’ll say it the only way I can. They didn’t make it. None of them did.” He closed his large, bulbous eyes, and dipped his head. “I know it’s a lot to take in, and there’s no easy way to-”

“Wait did you just say they’re dead!?” Zarniac squeaked, voice cracking slightly.

The captain shifted even more uncomfortably. “Yes . . . Yes I’m afraid so.”

It was like a slap to the face. “Duh-Rhen . . . He . . . He died?”

Zarniac could hardly believe it. The way he had just . . . Shrugged off those blasts. He was sure he was okay. And the way he’d tried tending to him. Simple. Brutish. But every inch of him was loyal, steadfast, and kind . . . All that, while mortally wounded. Tears began to bead up at the corners of his large, starry-eyes. He’d only known him for moments . . . But to sacrifice himself like that, truly a noble soul-

“Oh, no. He’s fine. Under arrest for triple homicide, but I’m told in at least passable health. I was talking about your Jandoorian friends. They were asking about you at the market when I bought the Hurliphump cartridges. Did . . . You hit your head when you fell, Zarniac?”

———————————————————————————————

Darren was watching the desk guards. They were strange, colorful fish like people. He wondered briefly if they got along with the shark detective at all. He chuckled at the thought of it, then he winced from the abdominal spasming caused by the chuckle.

The whole being arrested was kind of a new experience for him. First, the robots dragged him up here, and dragged was entirely the appropriate word. They’d had him get down on his knees for what he assumed was a high-tech mugshot. They scanned his face, eye swollen up to what felt like the size of a baseball, blood leaking from his nose. Like that was going to be good for identifying him. After the mugshot, they took more . . . scans, he guessed, of him, head to toe. They had to do some of them twice, first they put the machine around his legs and torso, then moved the scanning machine to the top of a desk to get his upper body. They took him to a cell . . . That he didn’t fit through the door of, then took him to a much larger, much sturdier looking cell that looked out into the area they’d taken his mug shot.

He’d never been in a prison cell before, but he had been in a drunk tank to pick up co-workers. And this was definitely a drunk tank. Lots of shiny metal and far less puke smell, but there was no mistaking the four benches and single toilet surrounded by floor to ceiling bars.

“ . . . So damnably huge. We tried loading him into one of the solitary cells, but . . . We literally couldn’t get him through the door.”

His translator crackled. They hadn’t taken it off of him, which he supposed was nice, but he wished they’d either whisper quiet enough that it couldn’t hear them, or do their gossiping further away.

“I saw the medical scans . . . His insides look like tenderized synth-meat, like they sell at the carnivore restaurants.”

“ . . . Get this, I had my friend in forensics send me the initial forensics report, they say that he took at least 14 PK shots to the torso alone. No idea what species that is, but I’m glad they sent Mono to deal with it.”

He tried to ignore them by tilting his head back, and pinching his nose until the bleeding stopped or he threw up from swallowing too much blood. That’d give them something to chatter about for sure.

He’d been there for what he guessed was three hours before he finally managed to fall asleep on one of the benches.

——

Unfortunately for everyone involved, he didn’t get to stay asleep.

He was awoken to the sound of high pitched wailing, almost squawking, as the door to the drunk tank rattled open. His translator beeped to life a few moments later.

“-I’ll have your fucking badge you jumped up, algae sucking, pond-water guzzling, glorified security guard! I will sue this department so hard they’ll be renting the inside of your cells for ad-space you . . . You . . . You fucks! I’m a goddamn solicitor! I know the fucking law, and I-”

It was by this time that Darren had gotten tired of the angry, squawking, bird like creature that was assaulting his ears with its incessant stream of expletives when he slowly sat up, bench creaking slightly beneath him.

“I . . . I . . .”

The vulture like creature turned slowly to face him, swallowing hard as its voice decreased in volume from a shout to a faint whisper.

Darren looked up at the two officers, colorful fish people, that had just been on the receiving end of some colorful language.

“You’re absolutely right Mr. Glint-Feather, you are a solicitor. And you do know the law. 8 hours of detox for someone found to have been on synthetic-adrenaline in a comedown-cell. We don’t have any cells that fit the big guy, so he has to be contained with a reasonable degree of force and comfort, as is dictated by FSOS code 12-81. What’s your name again big fella?”

“Darren.”

The fish officers smiled, and nodded. “That’s right. Duh-Rehn . . . Tell them what you’re in here for.”

Darren, not particularly in the mood for anyone’s shit, let alone loud and annoying bird shit, saw exactly what game the officers were playing. Asshole lawyer, strung out on drugs, thinks he’s above the law. Above the law and has decided being aggressively belligerent is the best way to improve his situation. Because . . . well, the bit where he’s strung out on drugs. On the one hand, seeing a vulture in what had to be the futuristic space equivalent of a suit was hilarious. On the other hand, incoherent bird noises while he was trying to recover from what was almost certainly a concussion . . . Less amusing. Doing what the space cops wanted . . . A necessary sacrifice to be made for the good of everyone in the precinct.

“Some birds shot me. Birds like you.”

He leaned down a little bit, just enough to really get into this guy’s personal space.

“Dead birds now.”

He had a hunch his translator was oversimplifying some of his more complex turns of phrase . . . but he was pretty sure this one came through loud and clear.

An acrid smell filled the air, like ammonia mixed with bile. And then the vulture in a considerably soggier suit, quietly cleared his throat, stepped backwards until he was pressed against the bars, and quietly whispered. “I will sign and date a written confession to anything you want, just let me out of this cell . . . right . . . now. Oh by whatever is good in the universe I thought it was a structural component of the cell.”

The door opened, the bird nearly tripped over himself trying to scramble into the cuffs waiting for him, and Darren got a good night of sleep. Well, he wasn’t sure it was night, but considering how bad his everything hurt, he was sure as shit done for the day.

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 5

Post author By TPH
Post date January 5, 2019
5 Comments on “Technically” Sentient: Chapter 5

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Swipe.

Scan.

Approve.

Swipe.

Scan.

Approve.

Swipe.

Scan.

Approve.

Sigh.

Amonna was having a bad day.

First, she woke up gasping because she floated to the top of her sleep tank. That meant she was gaining weight. Second, it also meant there was a ring of salt crust around her snout from where it poked above the top of her tank, and getting it scrubbed off had taken the majority of the time allotted for her morning routine. Third, what was supposed to be her day off was now ‘an emergency shift’ because one of her co-workers was ‘too sick’ to come into work. She didn’t know who it was, but she knew it wasn’t a coincidence they were sick on her day off, and that wasn’t even the end of the crap that happened.

Her tail-fin got pinched in the lift door on her way into work, one of her foot talons had poked a hole in her favorite boots, and a strung out looking Jandoorian awaiting booking had thrown up in the lobby. She looked down at the overpriced, uncomfortable, but very pretty and entirely un-salvageable boot, now flecked with avian upchuck.

“Mono does it again . . .” she sighed quietly to herself. Never one to engage in public displays of self pity, she tapped console in her cubicle, engaging ‘Privacy Mode’ – at least her security clearance had some perks. She leaned back in her chair, turned off the universal translator implanted in her ear, and let the various exotic chittering, squealing, and barking sounds of the busy precinct wash over her like a tide of white noise.

When she had been chosen to be a representative of the entire Promorian race on a galactic scale, she was thrilled. When she found out she’d be serving in the Frontier Social Order Service she was ecstatic. She was going to be a space cop for crying out loud! Every pup dreamed of being a bastion of order and justice, and on the final frontier of space, bordering the Null-Expanse . . . it was the sort of thing that holo-series were made about. Quite frequently, in fact. Instead . . .

Instead she was approving passports by hand as part of a counter-hacking initiative while trying to navigate a toxic work environment. The biggest challenge of her day was dealing with whatever fresh nuisance was going to await her when she opened her cubicle up at the start of her shift. Yesterday, it had been a small fish dropped in her humidifier . . . the smell of which still permeated her work space, and was still making her mouth water.

Today it was a mug that read “Mono” on the front, the nickname that had dogged her since she showed up. The name itself was harmless. She only had one mating display color . . . blue. Monochromatic. Mono. It was a light play on her name too. Amonna. Of course, that’s what they’d say if she complained to Sentient Resources. The real meaning was buried in several layers of cultural connotation. She was a Zylach. Loosely translated, it meant ‘deep-cold tooth-scaled’.

Promos was a beautiful planet of beautiful things; Endless beaches glistening with wave-polished gemstones, whose splendor was only rivaled by the twin moons that drove the massive tides. It drew billions in visitors every year, ferried along in specialized amphibious craft to keep them safe from the aggressive tidal shifts . . . and to keep them from trashing the place. For the most part, the fauna matched the beauty of the scenery. Brilliant displays of ultraviolet bio-luminescence were a common form of communication in the non-developed fauna, and the Promorian’s were a colorful people themselves, quite literally.

Every hue and shade from neon to matte were proudly displayed on the bipedal, scaled, amphibious bodies of its population . . . except for the Zylach. There was a schism sometime during prehistory that had resulted in two separate evolutionary paths that both led to sentience. The Chridae, and the Zylach. Where Chridae had developed extremely complex social structures and technology early on in their existence such as algae farms and antibiotics, the Zylach had wound up relegated to the deep places of the ocean where little light filtered and food was scarce.

Scarce food meant small populations.

Small populations in constrained territory meant a lot of conflict . . . and occasionally family trees without enough forks in them. Having a variety of mating display colors was like a calling card for diversity of heritage. Having one color . . . being monochrome . . . meant your parents probably met at a family reunion. Zylach numbers had been on the rise since contact with the galactic community, but they were still a minority. Roughly one in two hundred Promorian were Zylach. Conversely, roughly nineteen in twenty Promorian armed service members were Zylach. This could be attributed to two things: cultural values of independence, self reliance, and personal fortitude – and then a healthy dose of basic biology.

Amonna clocked in at 167 centimeters from the tip of her ears to the ends of her toes, when standing. When she was in the water, it was about 203 centimeters from the tip of her snout to the point of her caudal fin. At nearly 68 kilograms she was twice the weight of any of her co-workers, something they never let her forget. She’d volunteered for the Trans-Planetary service on her birthday, and finished high-gravity acclimation training within a year. She had become the lean, mean, shark-shaped fighting machine she’d always wanted to be.

She ran her tongue against the back of her serrated teeth. She’d wanted to be Frontier Social Order Service in order to stop rouge-tech traders and prevent interspecies viral outbreaks. Instead they’d turned her into a glorified post-office clerk.

She stifled a quiet groan of irritation as her communicator bracelet chimed softly at her.

“This is Amonna.” She intoned flatly. As much as she felt her skills and training were going to waste, and as much as her co-workers hated her . . . she wasn’t going to let it compromise her professionalism. She was, after all, a trained and armed FSOS member. Just because she had catty co-workers didn’t mean that her wheels were going to come off.

“Amonna? Aren’t you supposed to be off today?”

She suppressed a sigh, but only just. The male voice on the other end of the line was her the head of station security, Verdock, and he had about two decades of seniority on her.

“Dester is ill . . . I was the only one available to cover her shift. What with the party . . . what holiday even is it?”

Verdock paused, clearly preoccupied with something else at the moment. “To be frank, it doesn’t matter. There’s a disturbance in hangar C-7, I’ve dispatched Dynamo-03 and Grinder-18 to the scene, but I’d like you to provide backup.”

She shot bolt upright in her chair. “S-sir!?”

She couldn’t believe it. She’d been with LS-49 Security for 8 months now and hadn’t left the precinct once – They always just sent a security drone, and then acted as oversight via remote connection. She dared to hope he meant what she thought he meant.

“Do you mean via remote connection?”

There was another long pause, as she waited with bated breath. It would make the entire shitty day into a fantastic one if she got to go out in full tactical gear.

“Negative, I want you out there in person. Hearts and minds, show the local Jandoorian organizations that we’re not afraid to get our feet dry.” He sounded . . . really tired, but that didn’t make a difference to Amonna.

“Yes sir!” An uncharacteristic grin split her snout as she began pulling her duty belt on. “Today might not actually be so bad . . .” She muttered, still grinning like a maniac.

———————————–

Zarniac stared at his leg, the grey flesh turning black as he hemorrhaged sub-dermally – the telltale ring of slightly puckered flesh indicated a direct strike from a kinetic pulse weapon. It all seemed far away, like it was happening to someone else; Like a very vivid holo, or maybe a dream. Shock, that was the term for it, he vaguely recalled. He tried gently pushing his leg back the right way, but found his hands quickly stopped by a much larger, and slightly hairier pair.

“[No touch . . . Will get help.]” Duh-Ren nodded gravely at him, and Zarniac found himself involuntarily nodding along with the massive stack of meat and violence.

“You do that. I think,” he glanced down at his mangled leg again. “I think I’m just going to pass out. Can you handle all this?” Zarniac gesticulated in the general direction of rapidly approaching security drones, the screaming AI with multiple holes in it, and three Jandoorians spread thinly across the brushed steel deck-plates of the hangar bay.

Then, he promptly blacked out.

—–

“No . . . no I really can’t handle this.” Darren was standing, feet spread, hands against the side of the ship, doing his best to obey the commands of the two security drones barking orders at him with a rather menacing bass growl.

“You are being recorded for admissions of guilt. This unit is obligated to inform you that anything you say will be used against you in determining appropriate corrective action.”

Darren swallowed hard, heart still pounding in his chest. He had just committed triple homicide. Space homicide. Which . . . was just like regular homicide except none of it had been on purpose and he had no idea what the consequences were. Did they do the death penalty? Would he be fired out an airlock? He had no idea that space birds were so light, or fragile. Maybe they weren’t trying to kill him with their weird guns. He hadn’t . . . really thought about what he was doing after they shot him.

They definitely shot him first, so it was self defense, right? He just . . . self-defensed them into a fine paste of gristle and down. He didn’t really remember what he was doing after they shot him. Just . . . one second he was putting his hands in the air, the next he was swinging a bird alien around by the neck like it was a drawstring sack full of uncooked pasta and raw chicken, and everything hurt.

Fuck did everything hurt.

He let out a wet cough, red spackling the brassy surface of the spaceship. “That’s not a good sign . . .” His right leg definitely felt weak, everything was throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and inhaling was both difficult and painful. He could feel the heat of his face swelling up, there was sort of white light that felt like it was shining from just behind his nose inside his skull, and when he coughed it felt like he was getting stabbed. By his estimation he had maybe 15 minutes until his left eye was swollen shut, and the weird light he was seeing with both eyes closed was definitely bad. On the upside though, as he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, it seemed like all his teeth were in the same place they started.

“Pending the arrival of a Frontier Social Order Service Officer, you are being detained.”

A set of mechanical claws wrapped themselves around his wrists, and forcefully pulled his arms behind him, one after the other. He felt a kiss of heat on his wrists, accompanied by a quiet hissing sound of hydraulics before suddenly being pushed forward into a kneeling position. The dull throbbing pain in his right knee blossomed into a proper burning tide of agony it hit the deck, forcing a half stifled grunt from his throat.

“You have been deemed low priority for medical evaluation. Do not move. Do not resist.”

He looked over his shoulder at the hulking security drone, mixture of pain and anger on his face. But . . . resisting arrest was clearly the wrong call here. Like some twisted cyberpunk mix of a spider and a centaur, it had too many legs, and too many arms, and too many guns. Its hexapedal body was draped in square, blocky chunks of matte black lamellar armor, and its legs ended in rather aggressive, hooked points. An oddly simian broad chested torso rose up from this body, sporting 4 manipulator ‘limbs’ and a single ‘head’ packed overfull with various optics and sensor arrays. One set of limbs ended in the ‘claws’ that had cuffed him, and the others currently held what looked like a large bifurcated spear with anger issues. As if to prove his point, a single crack of electricity leapt across it’s two spiked prongs.

Darren winced, before letting a glob of fresh blood leak between his lips. “ . . . not gonna resist.”

—————————-

Combat boots? Check.

Security beret? Firmly affixed.

Tactical vest? A little snug . . . definitely need to pick up on the PT.

Amonna adjusted her duty belt slightly, and stepped out of the elevator into-

“Whoah.”

She started jogging towards the source of flashing lights, scanning the scene as she approached. Inside the police line she saw two Med-Drones, both of the station’s riot control officers, and a lot of blood. Off to the side, propped up against the ship was one big sonofabitch that looked like he’d taken a few solid hits to the mouth.

“Officer Dynamo!” She called to the security drone, currently armored up in a riot control exoskeleton. The massive heap of metal and hydraulics turned to face her, dipping it’s sensor array ‘head’ in acknowledgement.

“Detective Amonna.” It had deactivated the ‘Intimidation Enhancement Suite’ it used when addressing suspects. “We’ve detained the suspect, and medical has removed 3 Jandoorians and a Centaurian ship-hand from the scene.”

Amonna let out a low whistle as she surveyed the place. “Well, what do we have on it?” Her wrist computer chimed softly as Dynamo-03 transferred the preliminary forensic report to her.

“ . . . 3 Jandoorians . . . armed . . .” she muttered to herself as she quickly scanned the information available to her. Pausing, partially from disbelief at what the forensics were suggesting, she glanced over at the suspect. “ . . . Are those fused cuffs?”

Dynamo just nodded slowly. “We uhh . . . didn’t think the polymer ones would hold.” He vocalized at just above a whisper.

She continued reviewing the forensics . . . and quietly agreed with the assessment. 3 armed Jandoorians, all of them on synthetic adrenaline . . . would have taken half a power cell to put down one of these clawed vultures, and this-

She squinted at the file. “Medium Scale Durable Goods Kinetic Manipulation Technician?” She glanced over at their suspect again, only to have his eyes bore into hers with discomforting intensity. She held the stare, not wanting to back down, until it spat a glob of blood onto the deck. She briefly wondered if it the blood was the Jandoorians, and vaguely recalled that eye contact was a threat display in most primates type species. She quickly averted her eyes, not out of fear . . . just . . . to make the arrest go smoother. At least, that’s what she was telling herself. It was definitely her sensitivity training kicking in, not the medical scan results.

According to the Emergency Medical Drones that scanned it, the thing had taken a beating that would have killed her twice. Multiple cracked ribs that were thicker and harder than her spine, a lung contusion that was still actively bleeding, and soft tissue damage that was so extensive the digital imaging of its injuries looked like an abstract painting rather than a medical scan. Even without the head trauma, any one of these injuries would have her laid up for a month, and any two would end her career with the FSOS.

And the bastard was just glowering at her.

She had to know where this thing came from, so she could avoid a transfer there if at all possible.

She skipped a good portion of the file, looking for species data, and was disturbed by how little there was. Name, height, weight, human, . . . Technically Sentient . . . there wasn’t much available on the species other than some general physiology and a small annotation reading ‘Dangerous when provoked.’ She blew air through her gills in a mixed expression of discomfort and displeasure. “At least there aren’t a lot of you sort walking around . . .” She closed the file as security drone Dynamo approached her.

“If it’s all the same to you, detective . . . we have this case open and shut. We were already down here on patrol, a CI tipped us off about the high Jandoorians, and we were expecting violence. We just didn’t expect them to be the victims in all of it. A centaurian got caught in the crossfire, and is going to need treatment, but the perpetrator is subdued, and we can move to booking and prosecution at the judge’s leisure. You can go home, m’am.”

The tone was respectful, deferential even, but it didn’t satisfy her in the slightest. “With all due respect, I’m going to go over this with a fine tooth comb. Something . . . just doesn’t sit right. Organic thing, you know?”

The security drone nodded to her. She knew that it didn’t understand, but it wasn’t going to argue with a detective. “Now . . . let’s get him up to booking, I’m going to get the story out of the only conscious witness, and please get sanitation in here to clean up the mess. Eugh, I’m a carnivore and that’s too grisly for me.”

The security drones sprang into action, the two of them working in tandem to hoist the . . . mostly compliant simian off the deck and escort him back to the precinct. She used her security clearance to prioritize the sanitation of this particular hangar bay, and then furrowed her brow.

“Wait! Dynamo!” She called out, causing one of the drones to freeze. “Shouldn’t there have been a C.A.S.I.I. unit observing the suspect?”

Dynamo paused for a moment before continuing to drag the suspect away, but a message popped up on her wrist computer after just a few seconds. “Badly damaged in the crossfire, is in the process of being decommissioned now. She was malfunctioning when we arrived, and we had to shut her down.”

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 4

Post author By TPH
Post date January 5, 2019
1 Comment on “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.

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.

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 3

Post author By TPH
Post date January 5, 2019
1 Comment on “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!”

Tags Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi, AI, Fiction

Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 2

Post author By TPH
Post date January 5, 2019
1 Comment on “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.

Tags AI, Fiction, Technically Sentient, Sci-Fi