Chapter 3 #6
While AI systems occupied many different roles, they mostly did so independently.
Only pilots and monks now strolled around with AI constructs firmly embedded into their bodies.
Pilots, whose reaction time and processing speed could never be executed with only human capacity; and monks, who lost touch with the outside world for so long, and so frequently, and needed to carry such obscene amounts of information that they would be helpless without a competent companion riding on their shoulder.
This agreement was considered a necessary evil in human/AI interfaces.
Otherwise, an AI companion such as VIFAI was deemed unethical and cruel, having no ability to exert itself on the world the way a station AI could.
VIFAI and other AI constructs like it were, at worst, slaves to the whims of whoever’s brain they shared.
At best, they were treated as glorified secretaries.
In either case, as separate as they remained from the people they inhabited, they had little agency of their own.
“Let’s go back, then,” Iris offered. He wouldn’t press, not yet.
If any real danger came, he trusted that his electronic companion would alert him.
He pondered VIFAI’s sentience some more before he was reminded it was privy to his every thought.
Caught up in the realisation, Iris blushed and cowardly turned his thoughts towards naming every apple variety he could spot.
VIFAI said nothing, masterfully ignoring both the explicit thoughts and Iris’s endocrine response.
Maybe it was unethical to carry an AI in one’s mind after all, to deprive it of its own body, its own will, a means for it to act on the world.
A station AI could boot you out of an airlock if it so pleased.
Ship AI systems could fight, destroy entire planets if they so desired, if they were pushed to.
What could VIFAI do if it was mistreated?
Maybe Iris had been far crueler than he had ever realised.
Iris knelt by the console, a dozen apples scattering from the folds of his robes.
Having carried them from the third deck orchard down to the communal space, he hoped the academics would enjoy their unprocessed and unmanufactured nature as much as he had.
Neither he nor VIFAI had uttered a word since their encounter with the mystery ping, their silence weighing heavier by the second.
Iris was growing concerned that the exchange, if one could even call it such, had left his own inorganic companion shaken and upset.
He gathered the apples near the console into a neat pile, wiped the dirt from them with his robes, turned their unbruised faces forwards, and leaned back, judging his work.
Proud of yourself?
There it was, the familiar tickle of electronic laughter. What a relief it was to be on speaking terms again. Iris’s shoulders relaxed, the worry seeping away. “Dr. Alo was kind to leave me some sandwiches. It’s the least I can do.”
That’s not an answer to my question.
It wasn’t, but he didn’t want to outright lie to VIFAI, especially when such a lie would not go unnoticed.
Same as his thoughts about AI ownership—he hated that word—hadn’t gone unnoticed.
The subtle tone fluctuation in VIFAI signaled irritation, anger even, and rightfully so.
Their relationship had never been strained before.
In Iris’s younger years, they fought about which books to read and which trails to take back from the mountains—small, inconsequential things.
But something about the Nicaea was putting them both on edge.
With a hint of worry, Iris tried and failed to remember how much time had passed since his arrival on the ship.
The artificial lighting made it impossible to keep time.
A few hours had been spent aimlessly assembling skeletons before Ishtan introduced himself.
Then there was an hour spent talking and drinking tea.
Maybe another few had passed while he explored the ship.
“When did we sleep last?”
Thirty-two hours ago.
Unsteady gait, clouded judgment, and his unfiltered thoughts should have been a clue.
Normally, VIFAI would send an alert when Iris had been neglecting sleep for far too long, but currently, it was distracted by its own concerns, often disappearing into the feed to retrieve a piece of information Iris wasn’t privy to.
He could have, of course, asked VIFAI to explain itself, but he had decided against it, to avoid straining their fraught feelings any further.
“I’ll lie down in the cargo bay then,” Iris said and pulled out the last sandwich from his robes. A midnight snack to end the excitement of the day. Taking a reserved bite along the crust, he headed out from the common area. “How many hours will I have before the guards and the academics return?”
Five hours.
Curt, distracted, and still a little angry, then.
A familiar trio to Iris. Just as he had been awake for thirty-two hours, so had VIFAI, awake and operating at its maximum capacity to attend to Iris’s every need.
It had generated and projected maps, searched up biographies of the academics through their socials, monitored Iris’s vitals, and perused a directory of poisons.
Albeit the last one was not on Iris’s request. “Why don’t you shut off for a while? I’ll be all right on my own.”
An unfiltered, electronic vibration of surprise. It was angry if that was its only reply. No words now, no human words; it was making Iris do the work of understanding.
“I’ll be all right,” he reassured it.
VIFAI acknowledged the suggestion and blipped out of awareness.
Immediately, an overwhelming urge to call it back rose from the darkness of his mind, so suffocating was the silence of Iris’s own thoughts.
The human mind was far too expansive to be subjected to itself and itself only.
Alone, Iris finished the sandwich with a final bite, licked the crumbs from his fingers, and picked up his duffel bag from outside the cargo bay.
Solitude was never real solitude with an AI construct sharing the confines of his mind.
He hadn’t been truly alone since VIFAI took residence in his cerebellum when he was still a child.
The in-between silences when VIFAI rested were rare and increasingly uncomfortable.
Without the AI to monitor his state, Iris’s thoughts roamed free, unfiltered and untamed.
They raced through quick successions of anger, admiration, irritation, and wonder.
Riyu’s smiling face came to mind first, the way she had extended her hand on meeting him, with no reservation, no hesitation.
Surely she wasn’t a particularly superstitious woman, or maybe she was just well immunised.
Her warmth and energy were both contagious, and Iris found himself innately drawn to her, the way a blossom turns to the rising sun.
His conversation with Ishtan had been a pleasant surprise.
The man would surely come for him again, with more questions about Iris’s strangeness, thinly veiled as genuine curiosity about the Starlit.
Even the short exchanges with Jesi and Tev had left a warm feeling brewing in his chest. They had all been kind, reasonable, accommodating.
With his poorly managed anger and misfortune, even Yan had been pleasant enough to be around.
If not for the engineer’s deep resentment for Vessels, they could have been much more cordial.
After fumbling around in his duffel bag, Iris produced a palm-sized white orb.
He drummed a short pattern across its surface, and the orb came to life with a soft glow.
Then with a light touch along a cracked switch panel, he dimmed the lights in the cargo bay until the glow sphere in his hands was the only source of illumination.
The mountain of bones cast long shadows along the walls of the hangar, climbing as high as the ceiling.
Iris had been afraid of the dark when he was a child, a time when what lurked in the shadows was far worse than what was waiting there for him in the light of day.
But that had been some time ago. He had long put away those childish worries.
Placing the orb down on the ground, he rested on the mossy floor.
A tibia shone white just to his left, a reminder of the work to come another day.
Iris looked up at the starless roof of the cargo bay as his eyes fluttered shut.
With nothing but the silence of death around him, he drifted off into a peaceful sleep.