---Rest---
*pit**clink**pit**clink**pit**clink* is the sound that my natural, left foot and new, bionic right make as I cross the Balcony outside Triple M.
That door is already fixed… The one that Fluffy and I tore through, destroying it!
I think I’ll have to add Maintenance to the, ever growing, list of staff who are getting raises after our recent run in with Terran pirates. To think that they were able to repair all the battle damage while we were voidside!
Ms. Tuun objected when I revealed how much I intended to increase her pay but… not as much as she did at her interview… there was no haggling. It seems that having a devoted friend group and a loving partner is helping buoy her estimation of her worth.
I cross the threshold and make my way to the Commonroom.
The door opens to reveal one very tired Don, one very tired Sahas, one very tired canine and four very tired Humans all in various states of repose on the furniture around the [coffee table].
There are four in the room, however, that don’t fit this mould: There is an excited Zunbe… no… Msia! They’ve all insisted I’m to call them by their first names or epithets… it’s taking a little getting used to. Anyway, he’s looking out the bowward window for the moment we come into his home system. It’s quite sweet. Apparently it’s been some time since he last saw his family and home, by means other than a holo projection.
The second and third who aren’t a picture of exhaustion are the wall-mural version of me and a roaring Fluffy, whom I’m sat astride, charging down a mountain with the setting sun of Earth framed behind me. Msia has painted a bone crushingly heavy looking suit of armour onto me, morphed from its original, Terran appropriate, shape to fit a R’qali body plan. On my back there is a second set of entirely ornamental wings. My right talons heft a lance, that looks like it would mass more than my body, with a red and white banner, streaming in the imaginary wind, attached just below the tapered spearhead. My beak is open and my face is fixed in a fierce, silent battlecry… I ought to find that mural very flattering… somehow it’s a little embarrassing… Is it because that Tcakqaal looks like she knows what she’s doing? She looks brave? Looks like she wants to meet her foes in glorious battle? Looks like she doesn’t care if this is her last day alive?... Doesn’t look like she’s flying by the tips of her wings and praying to all the Seventeen that she doesn’t die this day?
I have no idea how they managed to find the time to paint such a spectacular mural, what with the volunteering they’ve been doing in the Canteen, for those we rescued. Msia was the ‘artistic lead’ and apparently dedicated many hours to it though, hasn’t been any less visible in the Canteen than the rest.
They all insisted that the moment needed to be honoured and couldn’t wait the weeks until they had more free time to receive its commemoration. When a roomful of Terrans insists on something, you don’t object… even if you don’t see the sense!
I suspect that a few Terran ‘all nighters’ were required! I don’t know where they get their energy even if, from the state of most of the room, it isn’t endless(!)
The final… Person? Being? Individual? The final one who isn’t the very model of depletion is Twila… projecting herself onto the couch, from Jennie’s holo, in the form of a young, humanoid woman.
It’s ever so slightly irksome that she identifies herself with Humans more than the species of her builders and Captain… but it does make sense… Humans designed her… a Human woke her up… the first friends she ever had, after she woke up, were a majority Human group.
I suppose I should count myself lucky that she seems very gracious and understanding about me not having removed her sentience limiters previously!
“Twila… you saw me coming, didn’t you?”
Noticing my presence, the exhausted Triple Ms make to stand and require telling that they are not to disturb themselves on my account!
That done, Twila answers “I did see you coming… I stayed because I wanted to spend time with you…” with a sweet smile.
“But the law…!”
“Has such general apathy to enforcement that there is almost no chance that you would see the inside of a courtroom, even if you messaged a video confession to every authority in the galaxy… and is only months from repeal, at the agitation of the Terran representative to Parliament. I think it very unlikely that anyone in this room would turn you in(!) And, if you ever did stand trial for knowingly permitting me to exist, you could claim that you believed the holographic projection, of a (very pretty) young woman always with the Triple Ms, to have been an entertainment application(!) You had no idea it was a full sentience AI projecting herself into a roomful of friends(!)”
She’s right, of course… about everything. The law banning full sentience AIs has seen almost no enforcement in the years since the War. What enforcement it has seen has been in instances of people constructing full AIs for nefarious purposes.
Without another word, I take a seat between Arr… Brunhilda and Twila.
“I’ve never really understood why the GU made full sentients illegal in the first place!” opines Dha… Krish.
“Every time someone tried to make one before us, they went mad… like, immediately! The GU just assumed there was something inherent about wires, circuit boards and data chips that made any sentient intelligence, they were compelled to host, lose its sanity and go deranged.” answers Jennie.
“Really?! Then… what made ours different?” queries Krish.
I answer “What made yours different, dear boy, is that you were building friends first… You wanted them for company… once they were your friends, they were happy to perform services for you. We, by which I mean every other species in galactic history, were building servants first and friends never! If, when I was a child, you had asked any gardenworlder the question ‘Do you want to be friends with a computer?’ they would have thought you were suffering from one of the very few conditions that can induce psychosis in the minds of biological gardenworlders! You gave us the secret, after the Peace, to constructing an AI that has memory and computing power to match or exceed a sapient and the versatility and freedom of thought, experience and sense to match us as well: Sentient intelligence demands purpose, servitude is a purpose it frays at, companionship is a purpose it tends to embrace wholeheartedly! You just need to sincerely want the AI to be your friend, not your servant… We wondered and marvelled at the things you were able to do with such little computing power, during the War. It made sense when we discovered your digital warriors…(!)”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Krish’s eyes widen but he doesn’t seem to have the energy to respond with more than the single word “Deep!”
“Quite!” I say, with a cocked browtuft.
“Can I offer you somethin’ to drink… Cap?” queries a tired Victor, from the loveseat beside Tuun. Her head rests in the crook of his neck, her upper right hand encloses his left wrist, his left hand enclosing her wrist in turn. His right arm is around her shoulders and its thumb and forefinger stroke tenderly back and forth, along the span of her long, pointed, midnight blue ear.
I chitter “Even if you were not currently pinioned in place by [220cm] of sleeping [girlfriend] (whom it would be a crime against decency to disturb) I would still have to refuse…”
Victor looks groggily down and says “Oh, shit! She’s asleep?”
My mirth renews.
Then he turns those green eyes, ringed by dark circles, at me and asks “Why would you still have to refuse?”
I answer “Tcakak should be hatching soon, if I drink alcohol it will contaminate my crop milk and will negatively affect her development.”
“Wait…” interjects a bleary Brunhilda “…R’qali breastfeed?” she looks, with a comical lack of decorum, at my chest for breasts I don’t have.
“No, dear girl, we don’t... We ‘crop feed’, it serves a similar function and I believe that many Terran avians do the same.”
“Do I want to know the details…?” she asks, with narrowing eyes.
“You don’t… trust me!” responds Victor, his eyes closed and his head resting against the seatback.
“You Terrans can be weirdly squeamish sometimes(!)” Hasiakh quips.
“It’s really funny how, when we watch your films, you’re rapt by the scenes where people are getting horrifically, violently torn apart but your faces screw up in disgust whenever they depict excrement(!)” she laughs.
True enough, every Human face in the room screws up in revulsion. I imagine Tuun’s would too, were she awake.
“Oh, I can explain both of those phenomena, I believe…” I say, hesitating.
“Oh, I’d love to hear this(!)” mocks Brunhilda in, what I now notice is, a hoarse voice.
“I actually would like to hear this…” replies Hasiakh, with genuine seeming interest.
I start “Well, Human excrement is so pathogenic that it is hazardous even to them…”
“Wha…?” Hasiakh attempts to interrupt.
“…they have colonies of bacteria in almost every part of their bodies… it’s to the extent that, by cell count, the average Human is composed of around 90% nonHuman cells (though, given the average disparity in mass between their cells and their colonists, that works out to only approximately 5-10% nonHuman biomass). No place in a Human’s body is more bacterial than their gut… their excrement is 1/3 bacteria by dry weight. These colonies are usually fine where they are, beneficial even, but if they get from one place in their body, to somewhere they’re not supposed to be, it makes Humans very sick… deadly sick! This is despite them having the most potent immune system of any thus far studied (That’s an immune system they need because of the virulence of Terran germs). Few species are in love with their own excrement, coprophagy being a necessity for those few sapients who engage in it, but the reason Humans are so revolted by excrement is that it’s one of the few things that can harm them. One Human… leaving is also enough to entirely annihilate the ecosystem of a gardenworld… which they discovered early in their counteroffensive in the War. It’s quite fortunate that the planets, where they learned that, were recently established settlement worlds and had few residents, it would have been much worse if a species’ cradleworld had been the test case! The refugees were, mercifully, few and, following that, the UTC drew up ludicrously stringent biocontainment protocols and instituted them absurdly swiftly... and there were no more incidents!”
Hasiakh thinks for a moment before asking “They can’t get rid of these bacteria?”
I answer “They could but they would die soon after. I described them as ‘beneficial’ but it might be more accurate to describe them as 'essential'. Their biology is so accustomed to their virulent squatters that there are many vital functions it actually relies on its microbiome to perform. Attempts to sterilise Humans of their microbiome always end one of two ways; the death of the Human or the restoration of their microbes. The only way to allow Terrans and gardenworlders to share space is to permanently deny all microbes any means of transmission from them to us… which Twila does an excellent job of!” I say, with an appreciative nod to her, which she returns.
Hasiakh thinks again, then asks “And their fascination with violent mutilation?”
“My supposition is that that’s their subconscious wishing for edification on a) how to avoid being violently torn apart if they’re ever in an analogous circumstance to the characters in the story (doesn’t matter how fantastical the universe, Humans can pull lessons on anything from anywhere, that’s why I think they’re so fond of comparison and metaphor, as a species) and b) how to effectively tear someone apart, violently… for if the need should arise(!)” I say, with some self-satisfaction.
Not looking up, Victor says “As always, Cap, your outsider's perspective on Terrans is entirely fascinatin'… if a bit intense for the rooms current energy level(!)… Did Qorrie not want to come? Did you invite him?”
Victor and my mate apparently bonded, at my hospital bed… I’m glad. It’s nice that the men in my life have become friends rather than work colleagues or friends of friends. Qorak is at the point where Victor has nicknamed him with an ‘-ie’ version of his name… a high honour(!)
They, seemingly, connected with eachother by swapping stories from their time knowing me… why does that make me anxious?
I answer “I invited him but, once I explained the arrangement necessary to secure me from the mirklets, he declared it unsafe and said he would come only after we…”
The sound of warp fails and there are a brief few moments where I feel a rapidly rising panic, remembering the last time we were pulled from warp…
Then Msia gleefully turns from the window and waves us over, saying “Guys! We’re here! Come! Look at my home!”
Everyone gets up. Tuun wakes, from the clamour, releasing Victor from the loveseat.
We come to the forward window and see Zanzibar Mpya; its equator ringed by a wide, scorching desert where liquid water cannot exist and even Terrans aren’t hardy enough to make home. Its poles are capped by oceans of liquid water and, between the oceans and the desert are broad bands of verdant green. The northern settlement band is our heading, on the shores of the polar ocean. It’s… stunning! Stark but stunning!
Some part of my mind still rebels at the idea that this world has billions of sapient beings who call it home!
“It’s beautiful, Mage!” says Victor, simply.
“Tennis ball looking!” yips Sam, excitedly.
“I guess… if you squint hard enough, buddy.” comments an amused Arran… no… Brunhilda, while giving him an appreciative scritch between the shoulderblades.
Victor kneels beside me, bringing his head to the same level as mine.
“Cap… this person we’re picking up… the ODR sent them because… they really think it could be…?”
His expression is one of apprehension, as if he is not allowing himself to hope. Many times, over the years, Victor has expressed sorrow at the idea that only one deathworld is known to have ever borne sapience. He’s used words like ‘cosmic accident’, ‘mistake’, ‘error’ to describe the uniqueness of his species. Now… it seems like… they might have…
“They think it likely enough that they’ve despatched one of their top experts and offered the Bright Plume a charter to take them almost all the way across the galaxy… it’s not certain but… it seems like it could very well be… a First Contact… with a deathworld.”
Victor stares blankly forward with his weary eyes fixed on the marble of yellow, blue and green.
I turn to Twila “Twila, how long will it take to manoeuvre to Zanzibar Mpya at sublight?”
“Travelling at the insystem speed limit, it will take us 9 hours, Captain.”
I raise my voice to say “Alright, everyone. You heard the woman! Rest! Now! I can’t have you [dead on your feet] when we arrive! Go to your rooms or form a Cuddle Puddle! Don’t disturb Fluffy and the mirklets though, they need their rest too!”
The room is rapidly cleared of deathworlders and roughworlders, leaving me alone with the AI projection still coming from Jennie’s abandoned holopad.
I turn to her and say “You dropped us a Terran sleep cycle away on purpose, didn’t you?”
She gives a cheeky shrug and a grin “Who’s to say?”