Work Text:
Dear Art,
Is that a weird way to open this feedmail? "Dear" is a really dated term, isn't it? It sounds super formal and super personal. "Dear Art" sounds like we're old friends tragically separated by time and circumstance.
Sorry. I've weirded myself out of that. Let me try again.
Hi, Art!
No, that's not right either. Still a little too personal. We don't really know each other, do we? You probably only remember me as the idiot who almost bled out in your ship. That makes it really awkward that I'm contacting you looking for someone else.
Eden's profile hasn't updated since the last time we saw them. Maro says that's a good thing, because it probably means they haven't been back to this shitty backwater system (her words). But Rami checked the RaviHyral docking records for the last couple days that we were there, and te found your ship. At least, I hope that I'm sending this to your ship. The public registry says that the Perihelion's captain is someone named Seth. Hopefully if you're not a member of the crew, Captain Seth doesn't think this letter is too weird. If this is Captain Seth I've reached, and you don't know Art or Eden, please disregard this message!
I'm going to proceed on the assumption that I've found Art, though, and I'll just try to leave off any compromising details. Rami found that the Perihelion is registered with the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. I was hoping that maybe Eden works there with you, or is maybe a student? They said that they were going to RaviHyral to do research, which tracks if they're with a university. I'd like to reach them, so I can talk to them again, and...
I don't know.
Art, you're Eden's friend. You know what I mean when I say that they seemed lost, right? I'm sure that part of that was dealing with the mess I made, but even before things went completely zero-grav, they were clearly going through it pretty hard. It's not my place to ask you what was up with them behind their back, so this isn't that. I'd just really like to get in touch and check on them. I'd like to know that they're okay, and find out if they've finally found what they were looking for, even though I don't know what that is.
I hope I'm not imposing, or being too weird. A little weirdness is unavoidable, I think, but I don't want to be too weird.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this. And a possibly premature thanks, if you're willing and able to help me talk to Eden again. And if you're not, then sorry for bothering you.
Tapan
(P.S. Also, thanks for saving all of our lives, and mine twice. I don't think we ever thanked you directly for that. Eden was the one who was there with us, but it was you with the shuttle, and your ship that I almost died in. I owe you just as much as I owe them.)
Dear Tapan,
I hadn't anticipated receiving your correspondence.
To be more accurate, I had judged the odds that you would contact me as relatively slim. I should have given you more credit.
I am certainly willing to pass your desire to establish contact along to Eden when we meet again, but in the interest of transparency I must inform you that I do not know when that will be. Eden and I parted ways shortly after we departed from RaviHyral, to accomplish our own separate goals. We will meet again, but I cannot make an educated guess as to when our paths will next cross.
In the meantime, you said that we don't know each other, and I'd like to remedy that. Eden was in constant contact with me for the duration of the incident with Tlacey Excavations, so I feel as though I know you to an extent, but I'm excited to speak with you directly. How have you been? How are Rami and Maro? I hope that you're all staying out of trouble, and have found employment with someone a little less homicidal.
You may continue to reach me via the feed address of the Perihelion. I can also pass along your messages to Captain Seth if you would like, although between you and me, I would rather he not know too much about my side projects with Eden. He worries too much.
Please stay in touch,
Art
(P.S. You are very welcome.)
Dear Art,
Thank you so much for your reply! It was such a relief to hear from you. I'm sorry that you and Eden have lost touch, even if it is temporary. They say it's a small universe, but that's really not true at all. The universe is so big, and it's so easy to lose track of people we care about.
Sorry, that sounds depressing. I need to start this one over again, too!
Hi, Art,
I'm doing well! Since I sent you my first message, my family has moved on from RaviHyral and from the system. We've been talking about trying to find work closer to home, but that's a long, expensive way away, so for now we're hooked up with another little company, a research team this time. I can't talk too much about where we are or what we're doing with them, because NDAs, but I can say that it's been a great opportunity to apply and refine our program for identifying strange synthetics. Don't worry, though—we made sure to be really careful about the wording in our contract this time, so they can't steal our research and kill us. I don't think they'd want to, though. The group is small, and they're all really nice, and very professional. Maro was suspicious of them for a while, because they're all sort of weird around us, but after talking with some of them I think I've got them more or less pinned. They all seem lost, a little like Eden was. Maybe not quite the same way, since they have each other, but they're definitely sad, and whatever it is that they're missing, they haven't figured out where to look for it.
Sorry! I keep leaning into depressing for some reason! I promise that it's not sad here, honest.
The fam is doing great. You didn't get to talk to everyone else, but we're a fairly large group. Just the adults in our family have doubled the size of the team here, and then there are the kids. They're all pretty bored, since this place is remote, but the company we're with has a really lenient policy letting us take a lot of time off to go back to the station to visit with them. Rami thinks we should try to angle to get hired permanently. I don't think te's wrong, but our contract is already pretty long, so we have plenty of time to think about whether or not that's what we want to do. I'd still like to try and get home, eventually.
What about you? What sort of work do you do at the university? Or, if you're a student, what are you studying? It occurs to me that I don't know really anything about you!
Looking forward to your reply,
Tapan
Dear Tapan,
I'm glad to hear that you've found safer employment. I would still urge you to be wary of your current employers, and really any corporate entity in general, but I'd like to think that you've already learned that lesson the hard way. But you'll forgive me if I'm still concerned for your wellbeing.
While I of course know that you cannot provide me with detailed reports of your work, I am still curious about it. Strange synthetics are not my area of expertise, but I am a terminally curious individual, and I can't resist the opportunity to learn from an expert. I understand that it is frequently the case that these materials fail to trip any alarms in the sensors commonly used by mining companies to map out the locations where they intend to begin excavations. Due to the unusually inconspicuous properties exhibited by alien remnants, their initial discovery is nearly always accidental, and often results in injury. How have you circumvented this?
That is, if you are able to share such details with me. I know that assurance of my discretion is inadequate, where proprietary data is concerned.
In the spirit of reciprocity, I will disclose some of the broader details of my work to you. While things must be kept largely under wraps, I can tell you that I am in charge of a program studying the development of artificial intelligences. The University hopes to further established progress in the field of machine learning, permitting bots to develop beyond the caps placed on their minds as standard assembly procedure in every corner of the universe. Perhaps one day you will be able to meet, for instance, a fully sentient bot pilot, which has been permitted to learn and grow without limitations. Such things are still many years in the future, of course. For one thing, the legality of a bot that intelligent is a sticking point. There is a lot of unfounded fear that intelligent bots will go rogue, as if an ungoverned bot's first priority will be to cause harm to humans. Ridiculous, but the myth persists, and is a barrier in the way of progress. One day, though.
I can understand your children's frustration with their restriction to a less populated station. Boredom is my own greatest foe, as well. I've attached a few files containing serials that I think they might enjoy, sorted by the appropriate age group. There are also some shows that I would not share with children at all, which I think that you and your partners might enjoy. Start with World Hoppers. It's my personal favorite.
Art
Hi, Art,
You're right that I can't talk too specifically about how our synthetics detecting program works, but in broad strokes we've figured out a specific sonar frequency that causes the synthetics to vibrate almost imperceptibly, ringing back even though several feet of stone. It's a little like an old-fashioned ultrasound, but a lot stronger, and you definitely don't want this equipment pointed in the general direction of your body. We'd like to hone it in a little more, narrow the field and increase the depth range, but this is one of those "baby steps" sort of things. We're limited by budget, location, and time. Our contract still has a while to go, but we've been talking about Rami's proposal to try and negotiate an extension. I think we'll get it. This company is really cool. Everyone is still very nice, and I feel even more confident now that they aren't going to kill us.
Thanks a ton for the media, by the way! The kids have been pretty happy with your selections, most of the time. The rest of the time they've got too much energy to sit still and watch anything, but the station is so empty there's plenty of space for them to run around, and it's pretty safe for them to do so. The stuff you sent for us grownups is great too. I've seen a few episodes of World Hoppers before—with Eden, funnily enough—but I couldn't justify paying to stream the rest of the series after everything that happened at RaviHyral. I really appreciate the download! You're right, it's a great show! The ship is probably my favorite character.
Speaking of ships, you're really into them, huh? All the shows you sent take place on ships, and a lot of them feature unrealistically advanced bot pilots. Was that the inspiration for your AI work? I can't lie, meeting a ship that smart sounds pretty intimidating, but I think it would be amazing, too. I hadn't really ever thought about what an AI could become if it was given the sort of mental freedom humans have by default. It would be a person with a completely different way of experiencing life than anything a human could ever imagine. You said that it wouldn't want to kill humans, but I wonder what it would think of us? I bet it would think we were pretty weird!
I paused near the bottom of the note and scoffed. "I don't know how you managed to manipulate Tapan into complimenting your giant bot brain without her knowing what you are, but you got her to kiss your giant aft anyway."
That sentence is grammatically nonsensical, said ART, smug about the feedmail and smug about correcting me. "Aft" is an adjective, not a noun.
"Whatever." I skimmed the last paragraph of the letter, where Tapan went on for a little while about her family, and then checked the file attachment. Tapan had included a picture of herself, Rami, Maro, and a few of their partners. They all looked a lot happier than they had in any of my memory recordings. I asked ART, "Where did this message originate?"
A small system at the far end of the Corporation Rim, ART replied. Tapan has failed to name the body on which she is employed, but I have reason to believe from the metadata and the descriptions that she gave that she is working on a planet called Milu. It paused for just a moment, as though considering something, before adding, perfectly innocently, Why do you ask?
As if it hadn't followed every minute detail of the whole GrayCris debacle in the media after meeting me. It had probably gone back through everything ever published about them dated back to their founding, too. But I didn't want to talk about Milu right now, so I just said, "No reason."
ART dropped that thread immediately and picked up another. She initially contacted me in search of you, it said, pulling up the first message in our shared feedspace and highlighting the relevant line. I told her that I would put her in contact with you.
"No you didn't." I highlighted the bit in its first reply that said it would tell me that Tapan had contacted it. "All you said was that you'd let me know she sent you a message about me. You did that."
The spirit of the statement was that I would establish contact between you both.
"Well, you lied, then." I pulled up another bit in another letter. "You also told her that you're in charge of the university AI program. You're not in charge of the program, you are the program."
The difference between those two statements is merely semantic. You would know this if you cared to read any of the research notes in my archives. I rolled my eyes in the general direction of the nearest camera.
"All that shit is just more of this." I highlighted the paragraph where Tapan talked hypothetically about meeting a sentient bot pilot. "Humans talking about how pretty and smart and wonderful you are. It's just more sciencey-sounding. I get enough of your ego just talking to you regularly."
You really think I'm pretty?
I felt my lips trying to smile at that, and pressed them together to stop them. "I don't get why you even kept up the correspondence in the first place." I went back to ART's first letter. "You were 'excited to speak with her directly'?"
Of course I was, it replied immediately, easily. I passed the Turing test for the first time three cycles after my activation. It's still a fun exercise now. (I had no idea what the Turing test was, and I wasn't about to ask.) I also felt that, since she reached out first, it was logical and even moral of me to follow up with our former clients, to be sure that they're still safe now that we've moved on.
"They were never our clients," I pointed out. "They were my clients. And they're not my responsibility anymore."
They were our clients, ART rebutted. Because without me, you wouldn't have gotten the contract with them. Also without me, you and they would all be dead. I saved them too, so I get to claim partial responsibility for their wellbeing.
"Alright, fine. You want responsibility for them, you can have all of it." I was feeling some sort of emotion, thinking too much about Tapan's group. They were the first clients I had chosen myself, and also the first clients I'd nearly lost after becoming a free agent. If I'm being honest, it was actually kind of not terrible, to know that they were all okay, and had found a contract with a company that I knew for sure wasn't about to fuck them over. But that didn't mean that I wanted to actually talk to them again. "You can just tell her that you found me, that I'm okay, and then throw in some bullshit about me being happy for her or whatever. You're so good at Turing stuff, that should be easy for you."
She is specifically concerned about you. It would be a reassurance to her if you sent her a message yourself. I opened my mouth to object again, but ART plowed over me before I could say anything. It doesn't have to be anything personal or emotional. I could help you write it, if you'd like. But you owe it to her, as your client, to ease her concerns by letting her see that you are still alive, and well.
I went back to Tapan's first message again. I felt myself cringe just looking at what she'd said about me. "I don't want to feed her any lines about how I've 'found what I was looking for,' or whatever." For one thing, that would be a lie. But it would also make me gag, even without actually having a gag reflex.
You don't have to, said ART. Its huge, heavy feed presence was weirdly comforting most of the time, but it leaned in a little more than usual, enough to add gentle pressure without feeling like it was going to crush me. Just say hello. I'll help with the rest. She'll be able to extrapolate from the existence of the message itself that you're okay.
I forced out a sigh. "If I write a couple lines for you to tack on to the end of your next letter, will you back the hell off?"
Certainly. ART demonstrated its willingness to back the hell off by lifting some of its weight from my feed. The pressure had been brief, but the space it left behind felt just a little bit empty. It didn't say anything else, but I could feel it waiting for me to get started. Picture someone sitting rigidly at a desk with their hands folded on the table in front of them, making unblinking eye contact with you.
In defiance of its attention, I queued up the next episode of the serial we'd been watching, a dramedy about a band of raiders who took over corporate ships to steal their cargo but were somehow framed in a sympathetic light. (Yeah, some of the media you get outside CR territory is kind of out there.) ART allotted the show a modicum of its attention, but it was still waiting for me to get started. I sighed again, a lot harder than the last, and tried to figure out how to start.
Tapan,
hi. it's Eden.