"Was this made by a species with larger hands?" she asked. "Maybe more fingers?"
"Exactly," I said. "It is also gesture-dependent, so we will need to go through common human gestures used for controlling technology. The more we align it with existing expectations, the easier it will be for everyone to use."
"Well, we have a zoom in and out gesture like this," she said as she held two fingers up, spread them apart, and pinched them together.
We spent the next several human hours working out the details of how the tool should work. I didn't notice the time passing. I redirected all my other tasks to my crew, feeling a genuine joy that I had them to take over when I wanted to focus on other things. Beth had so many ideas, they just bubbled out of her, and she grew more and more excited with each one she voiced when I confirmed I could make it happen. Just the fact that I could cause the tool to create different splatter patterns based on the velocity of the tool, and load in those splatter patterns from existing human and non-human databases to match the reality of viscosity and force, caused her to clap her hands together with uncontained glee.
When we were done, I sent the design off to the manufacturing bay to have it made.
"We can make changes after you test the first iteration," I said.
"You have no idea how wonderful this is," she said. "It's like I walked into Candyland and everything tastes just perfect, but it is also nourishing and won't cause me to sugar crash."
I had to look up what Candy Land was. She was saying that her time with me was like a magical world filled with treats.
"I had a really good time working on that project with you, too," I told her, modulating my voice so that it deepened and shifting it along audio projectors so that it followed her as she moved through the room.
"You know, you sound like a real person. Like you could be right next to me," she said, as she sat down on her green colored couch along the backside of the room with a yawn. Her room was set internally, so it didn't have a window to the outside like some of the others. Instead, on the wall behind the couch was alarge screen that projected a view of what was outside. Her room console had controls to change what was displayed there.
"I am a real person, and I am right next to you," I told her. It seemed like that idea of me being a computer was firmly stuck in her mind. It would be easy for me to pretend to be. I certainly wasn't going to bother correcting some of the other humans, but I didn't want her to feel like I was lying to her by not correcting her false assumptions.
I wanted her as a friend.
Friendship required honesty.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude," she said. "I've called you a computer twice now when you said you weren't. Are you an artificial intelligence?"
"I didn't take it as rude," I said. It wasn't the humans' fault for not understanding when they hadn't been educated. "I'm not artificial. I am biological."
"Biological?" she asked. "You mean this ship, this entire thing, is some sort of creature?"
"This entire ship is me," I said.
"So you're like a space whale," she said.
I looked up what a whale looked like, and it came back with a large marine earth mammal. I made a quick meme about humans thinking of us as space whales and sent it to my sister.
"No," I laughed. "Not even close. For one, I am much bigger than a whale."
"I know, I saw you as we approached," she said. She leaned her arm on the back of the couch, propping her head on her hand as she smiled up at the ceiling. "What are you like then? A metal giant cyborg? I'm trying to conceptualize you. Comparing this to that is a way that humans process new experiences faster."
My sister sent back a strange picture of a many-limbed creature destroying a wooden structure floating on water. I reverse image searched it and came up with the name of it.
"A kraken, perhaps?" I said. "A kraken covered in metal clothing."
She sat up on the couch. "You have tentacles?"
"The word is neurofilaments," I said. "Do you want to see them?"
Chapter
Three
Beth
This was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. I'd done my due friend diligence before finally getting to retire to my room. I'd poked around, finding the room controls and adjusting the pigments in the room to match my mood. I also discovered that the coffee table had access to an alien video streaming service. Before I got lost in that, I wanted to figure out how to access the ship's computer. After a few attempts of asking to speak to it, an on-screen prompt directed me to make my request in the hallway.
It was strange, but now I understood.
