Chapter 16
Where does it all go, when it’s no longer here?
What does it become, when it is no longer itself?
From the unedited records of embedded companion AI construct
Handler: Iris [last name unavailable]
Blinded for a moment, the fourteen-year-old Iris blinked furiously as Dr. Rahi passed the light back and forth a few more times, from his left eye to his right and back.
He then had Iris stick his tongue out, inspected his tonsils, drew some blood, measured his blood pressure, and performed another half-a-dozen tests before he looked the boy up and down and sighed.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Iris,” Dr. Rahi said.
“You’re not running a fever, you don’t have a concussion, and all your tests keep coming back normal. You might just be tired.”
Iris scratched the back of his head, pausing over the scar where the AI implant had been inserted. “I don’t remember things as well as I used to. Mother Nova’s mad. I keep messing up with my scriptures.”
Dr. Rahi looked at him thoughtfully, twirling the penlight in his fingers.
Iris was a tall, wiry teenager, a bottomless pit for any food and drink that was given to him.
He could sleep for an entire day if he were ever to be presented with the opportunity.
Discipline was wasted on teenage boys like him.
“Iris, there’s only so much we can do for you without replacing the AI.
After your incident, it hasn’t been functioning properly and as a result, neither have you. ”
Iris’s eyes shot up to look at him, filled with latent fury. He watched Dr. Rahi take half a step back, carefully eyeing the spot where Iris’s hand clutched the edge of the gurney. “I’m still well ahead in my studies,” Iris said, the hue of his voice betraying his forcibly calm face.
“Imagine how well you could do with a functional AI.”
Iris sensed his construct move in the back of his mind. A sharp electrical current passed through the base of his brain stem, and he winced.
I want to leave.
We’re almost done, Iris soothed the electronic voice.
“And there’s that,” Dr. Rahi added, awfully aware of the wince.
“Iris, in a few years, you will begin working as a Vessel, and you will be required to travel and perform funeral rites all over the galaxy. A functional AI will assure your safety, will remember different customs for you, translate languages; it will be your guide in this journey. Without one, you can get lost, you can even get in trouble.”
“How did people travel before AIs then?” Iris bit back.
Dr. Rahi sighed, turned away, and began filling Iris’s prescription.
“Before, they weren’t travelling across the galaxy.
Before, they didn’t memorise a thousand years’ worth of scripture.
Life was easier before. Times changed, and we didn’t, so we need the constructs to help us keep up.
Here.” He handed Iris a pillbox. “Take one every night before bed. It’ll improve your circulation and hopefully help with both memory and the pain. ”
“Is there any way to help my construct?” Iris asked.
Dr. Rahi raised a furry eyebrow.
“The best thing you can do is replace it, the best thing for both of you.”
Iris thought for a moment. “What will happen to it once it’s no longer with me?” He winced at the sudden surge in his brain stem. Don’t worry, we’re almost done, Iris thought softly. Just this one thing, and we can go.
Dr. Rahi shrugged and nudged Iris with the pillbox. “Who knows?”
Jesi had finally cried herself to sleep, and with her went the last sound that disturbed the quiet.
Yan had managed to override one of the doors and severed the corridor between them and whatever had killed Eli.
Having scrubbed his face of Eli’s blood best he could, Iris idly listened to water drip from the ceiling as it lulled him into a shallow meditative trance.
He watched Ishtan and Yan move about through half-lidded eyes, failing to care about either at the moment.
This was as much peace as they would get.
“Poor child,” Ishtan said, his back resting against the wall, his gun in his hand.
He was remarkably calm given what had transpired.
Too calm. This sort of terminal calm often came before the bitter end, in Iris’s experience.
A lucidity, a clarity that often ended in death.
Yet another imminent emergency Iris would have to attend to.
He cursed internally at the callousness of his thoughts, but he couldn’t stop them.
“Jesi’s resilient,” Yan said, his voice low. “She’ll be all right, if only we can get her out of here.” He didn’t say “get us out of here,” and Iris gave him a side glare. Ishtan didn’t notice or noticed but failed to care about the laden if.
The archaeologist chewed his lip in silence, thinking.
His thick, grey brows furrowed together.
“Seems like the vines reacted when I suggested we remove the mural,” he muttered.
“Almost like they overheard me. Makes me think that as long as we don’t discuss meddling with the ship, we should be safe, for now. ”
It was Yan’s turn to glare at Iris. “Vessel here has a theory about that.”
“There’s a chance the ship may be alive,” Iris said before Yan could interject with another remark. He had to talk quickly before Yan discredited him. “There’s a chance it has an AI system running it and it’s—it doesn’t want us doing whatever it is we’ve been doing.”
Ishtan raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t it too old to have an AI?”
“That’s what I fucking told him,” Yan grumbled, picking up his thermos and shoving it at Iris. “Drink. You have to keep drinking if you’re not going to eat.”
Iris begrudgingly took the thermos. Yan’s care was growing a shade aggressive, but the engineer kept persisting, reminding Iris to drink, reminding Iris to step back and meditate for a few minutes here and there.
Iris would never openly admit it, but he was grateful.
“And I have explained that the AI system probably formed in-flight,” he said softly, between sips of warm water.
“I think the AI is interfacing with the organics on the ship, all the vines and the moss and the shrubs, and the, the—”
“And I already told you that’s impossible,” Yan said, declining the thermos when Iris tried passing it back to him. He shoved it into Ishtan’s hands instead.
“It’s not impossible.” All three turned towards the meek voice coming from where Jesi lay on her side.
She stared ahead with hollow eyes, through them, towards something beyond any sight.
The shock of losing Eli had rendered her emotionally flat, but maybe that was best for the time being.
“Remember the experiments they did with the mada-ekresku worms, Yan? That interface worked.”
“That was over a hundred years ago, and it wasn’t an AI, Jesi. No ethics board would let you shove an AI into a worm. That was a simple bot.”
Iris heard relief in Yan’s voice. Jesi wasn’t completely broken. There was still hope for her. Yan was right. No matter how awful the world, Jesi was resilient. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of them.
“What about tecra-gel?” Jesi asked.
Yan snorted. “Tecra-gel experiments were somewhat prominent not fifty years ago, when there was still interest in producing AI/organic interfaces. They were stopped when it was deemed unethical to place fully developed AI systems into what was nothing more than jelly. They could exert themselves in so far that the jelly made shapes, but that was about it. From there, everyone just left AI constructs to their inorganic homes in ships and stations and moved on.”
Iris tapped his big toe against the ground, channelling his growing frustration into movement. “You’re all forgetting that I successfully interface with my AI and have been for decades.”
Three pairs of eyes focused on him.
“Well, yes,” Ishtan said. “But you’re a monk.”
Iris pursed his lips. Whatever the hell that meant.
“The problem with interfacing isn’t the organic/inorganic bond.
It’s time. The inorganic component has to learn its way around the organics, the way the organic system sends its signals.
Only then can it mimic them. Nothing has had more time than the Nicaea. ”
Three pairs of eyes turned to Yan. He only rolled his eyes. “There is no precedent.”
“This can become one,” Jesi pointed out.
“Vessel has a point. The Nicaea has been floating through space for a thousand years. Yan, you have to admit it, we are all out of our depths here. All of us were attacked by the vines. All of us heard the voices. Nothing makes sense anymore, which means anything is possible.”
“Not anything.” Yan pulled out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and, seeing how it was dripping with moisture, whipped it against the ground.
“You want to imagine all sorts of fairy tales about ships coming to life? Fine. I don’t care anymore.
It’s picking us off one by one, whatever the hell it is.
Ship or not, if both Jesi and I go next, then what?
Does Ishtan or the Vessel know how to override airlocks?
Do they even know how to call Station for help?
” He glared at Ishtan, who sheepishly turned his eyes to the ground. “Thought so.”
“If only Tev were alive,” Jesi said softly. “He’d know how to talk to the ship, you know?”
“Well, he’s not,” Yan spat out and got to his feet. “And bringing him up won’t help us here.” Without another word, he stormed down the corridor and turned the corner, away from everyone’s pitying eyes. The three remaining fell into a mournful silence.
After several eternal minutes trickled by, Jesi was the first to crack. “I should go apologise,” she said. “He’s hurting. I should know better.” She groaned and sat up, but Iris stopped her.
“I’ll go. I’m already getting on his nerves. Maybe it will be easier for him to get angry.”