Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

And ART’s feed filled the ship. In the pleasant neutral voice that systems use to address humans, it whispered, Reload in progress. Please stand by .

Below, the hatch slid open. The Targets started to step inside but Scout Two saw Thiago run into the foyer, bellowing and spraying fire suppressant at them. Target Five turned toward Thiago while Six shoved forward into the control area. Then Arada stepped out from the hatchway and shot Target Five with the energy weapon.

Which left Target Six still armed, with a clear shot at Thiago through the open hatchway.

I grabbed Target Four’s energy weapon and shoved out of the chair, but my legs wouldn’t work right. I collapsed, rolled toward the edge of the platform, and shot Target Six. The blasts hit his chest and face and he staggered back into the bulkhead, then fell over Target Three’s sprawled body.

Target Five staggered and swayed but he pointed his weapon at Arada.

Then ART’s voice, ART’s real voice, filled the feed. It said, Drop the weapon .

Arada dropped her energy weapon and Thiago dropped the fire suppressant. Both held up empty hands. I told it, Don’t hurt my humans .

Target Five shouted something incoherent, then dropped his weapon and lurched sideways, clutching his head. Oh wow, ART must have been able to access Target Five’s helmet, via the code used by targetControlSystem.

Target Five fell over and convulsed once on the deck, then went limp. Thiago started to put his hands down and then reconsidered. He said, “We mean no harm. We’re here because we were attacked by—by that person and others.”

Arada added, “Who are you?”

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland . Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you .

So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck .

Amena ran through the hatch, shied away from the pile of dead Targets, then ran up the stairs. She dropped to her knees beside me and yelled, “Hey, we need help! We need to get to Medical!”

ART said, I can hear you, adolescent human, there’s no reason to shout. I’ve dispatched an emergency gurney.

I’ve always thought that everything ART says sounds sarcastic. If you were a human, I’m guessing it also sounded more than vaguely menacing.

Arada stepped into the control area. Thiago was checking to see if Target Five was alive. (He wasn’t.)

ART said, The intruder is dead .

“Uhh…” Thiago glanced up at the ceiling. “But who are you? Are you a crew member, or—”

Arada reached the top of the stairs and leaned over me, frowning worriedly. She had a cut above her left eyebrow, a first degree burn on her cheek, and her short hair was singed. She said, “Don’t worry, SecUnit, we’ll get you to Medical.” She squeezed Amena’s shoulder.

I guess Amena had never seen a SecUnit hit with an energy weapon that caused them to lose 20 percent of the body mass on their back and expose their internal structure, because she seemed really upset.

I was losing all my inputs but there was one thing I had to say before the gurney got here. “ART,” I said aloud, because ART could silence my feed if it wanted to. “You did this. You sent those assholes to kidnap my humans.”

Of course not, ART said. I sent them to kidnap you .

Then my performance reliability bottomed out and—

Shutdown. Delayed restart .

So, that was another catastrophic failure. (Physically, that is. I was going to make a joke about catastrophic failures in other contexts for the second half of that sentence, but it just got too depressing.)

Waiting for my memory and archive to come back online, at least I knew I wasn’t in a company cubicle. Even with no feed or visual input, I knew that because I was warm, which meant I was in a MedSystem for humans. Once I could access it again, I checked my buffer to see what had happened. Oh right, ART happened.

The last conversation I had picked up on feed/ambient audio was:

Amena, her voice a worried whisper, said, “Are you sure it’s going to be all right?”

ART, whispering back to her on a closed feed channel and somehow managing not to sound sarcastic or menacing at all, said, Completely. The damage to its organic tissue and support structure is easily repaired. Some systems were operating at suboptimal parameters due to repeated energy weapon strikes. The restart should correct that .

I said, “Stop talking to my human.”

ART said, Make me .

I don’t know if I tried to make ART stop but that was when I lost all input again.

Now I was at 34 percent performance reliability and climbing steadily, lying on my side on ART’s medical platform. My jacket and deflection vest were gone and the surgical suite had cut away my shirt to get to the burned parts. I was sticky from all the leaky fluid and blood and parts falling off (yes, it’s just as disgusting as it sounds). But I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I had the last time I’d been here, when ART had altered my configuration.

ART. ART, you manipulative fucker.

Whatever was going on, there was nothing I could do about it now, and that just made me more furious. So I watched five minutes of episode 174 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon . Did that work? No, no, it didn’t.

Tentatively, I checked my inputs. (Tentatively, because I wanted to talk to a human right now about as much as I wanted to lose a couple of limbs and have a conversation about my feelings.) The drones I’d assigned to Amena had managed to survive. Following my last instruction to stay with her before they’d lost contact with me, they had adopted a tight circular formation a half-meter above her head. They had been collecting video the entire time I was out, and I ran it back to see what had happened.

I forwarded through the boring parts with Amena being upset because of the whole me-lying-in-a-pool-of-steaming-blood-and-fluid thing and Arada trying to tell her this actually wasn’t unusual for me, then the gurney arriving. (It was a medical assistance device, designed to either bring casualties to the MedSystem or to carry them off a damaged ship, so its power and functions were autonomous. It was sort of like a big maintenance drone, capable of a certain range of actions, built in the shape of a rack with expandable shelves and arms. How it had survived the purge of ART’s other drones, I don’t know. Unless the Targets just hadn’t known what it was when it was folded up in its inert state.)

It zipped in from the foyer, angled itself up the stairs, scooped me onto itself and clamped me down. (I hate being carted around like equipment, even though technically I am actually equipment.) As it started back down, Amena tried to follow it and Arada grabbed her arm. Looking up the way humans did when they were trying to talk to something they couldn’t see, Arada said, “Hello, your name is Art? Can you tell me if there’s anyone else aboard this ship?”

ART said, There is an additional unidentified human in Medical, but she appears to be an injured noncombatant. I assume the two other humans present there are part of your group. All the intruders are accounted for .

Amena wiped her nose (humans are so disgusting) and said, “That’s Eletra, she was a prisoner when we got here. Ras is there, too, but he’s dead.” She pulled away from Arada to follow the gurney down the stairs.

Arada, with an expression somewhere between thoughtful and alarmed, trailed after her. Arada said, “Thank you, that’s a relief to hear. But can you tell us who you are?”