VIFAI interrupted him with a deliberate shock. For only a moment, it gave Iris access to whatitwas experiencing—a multitude of inputs, the ongoing scan for information on the academics, a dozen simultaneous queries for most widespread poisons. But beyond all that was a tiny, but exigent, ping. Ashe watched the ping, Iris sensed VIFAI’s own unease hijack his synapses.
In any other place, a ping wouldn’t have been cause for alarm. Even though human/AI interfaces had long been phased out—very few people in all of space had an AI companion these days—it wasn’t uncommon for a station or ship construct to wavehelloto VIFAI as it passed.You said we were alone,Iris thought feverishly, feeling both very small and very exposed in the middle of the orchard.
We were.
The ship does have an AI construct then?
For a few seconds, VIFAI was quiet and distant, then it was back, engulfed in blatant confusion.It’s in this ship. But it’s not the ship.
This is not the time for riddles.Iris eyed the door. He could make it to the corridor in a matter of seconds, but where would he go after? He could accidentally step on a live wire and perish immediately. The academics wouldn’t know of his fate. He had been foolish to venture out alone, and now he would pay the price. With every bit of willpower, Iris fought for fragile control over the part of him that screamed to run. Panic was deadly. Panic would be his undoing.
You should respond,Iris thought quickly. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for the distracting chatter of the academics right this moment.
What if they aren’t friendly?
If you don’t, they may assume we’re the unfriendly ones.Without realising he was doing so, Iris crouched down underneath a tree. There was no use hiding his nerves from an AI construct that had complete access to all his endocrine responses.What’s the worst that can happen?
They can infect me with a virus and kill me, then come here and kill you,VIFAI replied without any humour.Fine, OK.For a few seconds, it was quiet and distant, then it was back, engulfed in blatant confusion.It’s definitely in this ship.
And?
And… VIFAI paused, like it was thinking of the best way to articulate whatever it was going to say. …and I can’t understand a thing it’s saying. It’s an odd language. If you can even call it that. I can’t even tell if it has syntax. And it’s weak and small. Erratic. I think someone forgot their implant here.Someone forgetting an electronic part of a circuit that was embedded inside their brain was a very unlikely scenario.
Should we try to find it?
I don’t think it’s even aware that it’s, well,—VIFAI never minced words, but something about its brief exchange with the owner of the ping had nudged it off-balance, and it replied sharply—alive. I don’t think it knows it’s alive.
There was a finality to those words. Alive. Iris rarely thought of VIFAI as alive, as sentient, apart from himself. He struggled to remember a time when the electronic voice wasn’t whispering in his ear, when the construct wasn’t a comforting pressure against Iris’s own ego. Yet, VIFAI undeniably was alive and separate. It had a sense of humour. It felt pain, of this Iris was sure, the realisation cemented through a shameful experience in his youth that had nearly destroyed his companion. VIFAI frequently wanted things Iris did not want and did its best to force them on him. It desired, far more than Iris did, in both quantity and scope. It angered; there they matched. They bickered in the way that friends do, made up, made compromises. VIFAI was very much independent of Iris, despite their electronic connection.
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 werepushedto. 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 theNicaeawas 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 anddrinking 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.
