Chapter 25
Day Two
(age twenty-four)
It was so easy to talk back and forth with Rosaura, despite the strangeness of this closed-in room and its suited men and its smells, and Conchita there in the central armchair looming over them.
Orlando was Kelli’s favorite thing, and she could talk about him anywhere and forever.
Even if, in the back of her mind, some other part of her was still obsessively turning over its new ideas about styles.
How many styles were there in the world? Was there a list of them somewhere? Could Kelli try and give Ship of Fools a style of its own? That last answer was certainly no. It would have taken too many edits and grayed out the screen.
“You know, that’s what I love about Orlando the very most,” Rosaura said earnestly.
“His na?ve side. It’s the most beautiful, human, incongruous trait for a character like him—really a stroke of genius.
I’d never heard of a na?ve pirate before.
Not that he isn’t clever in many ways, but it’s the little unexpected touch of innocence that makes him relatable as no mere quips or tricks ever could—don’t you think? ”
Kelli blinked at her. The train of infinite words about Orlando briefly stuttered to a halt.
“His na?ve side?” she said. Be polite, Rowan had warned her. “Do you think he’s na?ve?”
“Of course. That’s a huge part of his character. Everyone worth listening to on the fan feeds thinks so.”
“What did he do that was na?ve?”
“Well, for one thing it’s how he believes all the things people say.
A man like Orlando deals with all the worst ruffians of the high seas and he hears his crew’s tall tales and trash-talk all the time, but when someone comes to him with a sincere-sounding story, however wild or improbable, he hears them out.
It usually works out for him, of course, because of how the story is fantasy, and it does lead him into the most delightful predicaments.
Like in Episode Two, when Iro came to him with her sob story, and he believed her even though her own family didn’t.
And then of course the supernatural forces she’d warned him about turned out to be more than he’d bargained for, and. . . .”
Kelli listened in consternation as Rosaura listed every single na?ve and credulous thing Orlando had done.
She remembered supervising those episodes, but she didn’t remember wanting Orlando to be na?ve.
He’d believed Iro because he was clever and perceptive and could see that she was pure of heart.
He’d believed Guangping, the disheveled villager who’d come ranting to him about evil ghosts, because Orlando was a man of the world who’d seen all sorts of things.
He knew very well that evil ghosts, and other magic, were realer than most people thought.
Did all the people on the fan feeds really think he was na?ve?
Fortunately, Rosaura could talk about Ship of Fools just as long-windedly as Kelli, so there wasn’t a lot of need for Kelli to state an opinion.
At intervals, when something that Rosaura said sparked a tangent, she talked; otherwise she listened, bewildered.
She took another couple of cautious sips of wine.
Eventually, Rosaura sat back with a satisfied smile. She looked up at her mother, who’d been watching this whole conversation patiently, occasionally exchanging glances or whispers with the other adults in the room.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said. “This was the most wonderful birthday gift I could possibly have asked for. Now that I’ve met her, I’ve made up my mind. I do want the permanent option.”
A deathly silence fell over the room. From Rowan, in particular—who hadn’t left her side—Kelli heard a strangled intake of air.
“No,” said Rowan, in a tone that she recognized; forced nonchalance badly papering over wild panic. “You don’t want that, hey? The grown-ups who’ve been listening to this conversation don’t want that.”
“Yes, I do,” Rosaura said primly. “And they do. And, frankly, you ought to have prepared for it.”
“For what?” Kelli said. She looked back and forth between Rosaura and Conchita and Rowan, frightened. Conchita spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture and, for the first time since Kelli had entered, spoke out loud.
“I am an indulgent mother,” she explained.
Her voice was a mellifluous alto. “I manage this facility; I command many people; I work hard, and it is because I want to give my daughter everything she asks for. My daughter loves your character, Orlando, more than anything else in the world, and so I have asked myself: what can I do to make my daughter happy? The answer is a feat that only you can perform; and, fortunately, my boy Rowan was able to provide you for the occasion. I want you to bring me Orlando’s character kernel. ”
Kelli stared at her. Nobody moved now, not even Rowan. She didn’t understand.
“Why would you want the character kernel?” she said, more bewildered than offended.
“It doesn’t do anything if it isn’t connected to ScriptGen.
Half of it isn’t even good to read—it updates with values derived from every completed episode, and from the reactions on the fan feeds, and it formats them specifically for the ScriptGen program, not for a human fan. ”
“Well, we have programmers of our own, obviously,” said Rosaura, waving her hands eagerly.
“We’ve got it all worked out. The plan is, we take the standard set of base connection weights, fine-tune them on the character kernel, then link them into a chatbot interface.
We load the fine-tuned interface into a workstation and then just like that, I can speak to Orlando myself, whenever I want to.
And, yes, we could reverse engineer the likely contents of the kernel ourselves, or prompt a standard-issue chatbot to do its best Orlando impression.
I’m sure there are chatbots pretending to be him already, out on the unfiltered Web, riddled with viruses.
But don’t I deserve good things? I don’t want a riddled imitation.
I want it to be real.” She beamed at Kelli; there was something frightening and possessive in that smile.
“I want the real Orlando for my very own.”
Kelli goggled at her, appalled. This was worse than people writing fanfiction where Orlando had weird sex with a kraken. This wasn’t what Orlando was for. It also didn’t make any practical sense.
“Even if I wanted to help you with that,” she said, raising her hands, “I couldn’t, actually.
Script supervisors write the character kernels’ drafts, but we don’t have access to the finished kernels.
We tell ScriptGen to load them but we can’t actually see them, much less export them for use with another program.
You’d need a real hacker for something like that. I wouldn’t know how.”
“I am aware of Inspiration’s procedures,” said Conchita, waving a dismissive hand.
“We’ve already assembled a team accordingly.
Rowan as the pilot, the prompt engineer, and the face of the operation; Ting for locks, cameras, and other physical security; Zhaleh to scramble the comms. You’ll go to the headquarters on Ganymede.
You have high enough clearance to enter the data center with the right assistance, and enough expertise to find the correct kernel in the file system.
That’s all we require from you. The team will take care of the rest, and you’ll be well paid. ”
Kelli swiveled her head to stare at Rowan, who was staring into the distance now, shoulders tight, uncomfortable and expressionless.
Rowan was on the heist team. Which had already been assembled.
Rowan had known this was going to happen.
He’d lied to her. He’d pretended to be kind to her and patient with her moods.
He’d shown her his illegal media like it was a good thing, like it was what the world needed.
He’d gotten her fascinated by it, so involved in their debates about the media itself—by questions like the question of style—that she’d forgotten to ask what other crimes he had his hand in.
He’d tried to get her on his side. Not so that they could be friends again—but so that she’d agree to this.
Kelli’s fist clenched. If she’d been a pirate, she would have dropped her gauntlet and challenged him to a duel to the death, right there.
Instead she sat frozen.
“Well?” said Conchita.
Kelli thought of what Rowan said. Stay polite, but just be yourself.
Tell the truth and say what you think. It’ll be a harmless disappointment.
Had that been a lie, too? Or could she trust him that far?
Had he thought that somehow, by telling the truth and being a slightly better version of herself, she could get out of this?
She straightened and cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think there’s been some miscommunication.
It’s been a lovely evening and I’m so glad to have met you, but I really cannot do this.
Not even for all the money you could offer.
It’s against my principles. Rowan invited me here saying that he needed my help and that it would be only a talk, all gray-market, nothing that broke the law or violated my contract.
That’s the only reason I agreed. I know you feel differently, but I love the law and I love my contract and I think that a character like Orlando is too precious to ever belong to any one person, even one who loves him more than anyone else in the world.
He belongs to Inspiration and he belongs to the community.
Thank you so much for the flight, the food, the dance floor, the chance to talk about my work, and the generous offer, but I really do have to decline in the strongest terms, and I would like to go home now, please. ”
A dead silence descended. Apparently nobody ever said things like that to Conchita Quixada.