Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

ART reran another one of its favorite scenes, this one involving time travel. I said, You told your humans about me .

ART knew exactly what I meant. I told them I helped an escaping SecUnit get to RaviHyral. I didn’t tell them about Tlacey and her employees in the shuttle .

So you lied to them and made me sound… I didn’t know how to put it. Sound like the person Tapan, Maro, and Rami thought I was, and not like what I actually was . You made me sound safe.

My humans are not members of a survey team from a non-corporate polity who have only recently begun to understand how dangerous corporates can be. Our missions are always calculated risks, and my humans must take steps to defend themselves, and occasionally me.

Then it said, I have completed the removal of the contaminated code and started the process to return your consciousness to your body. While that completes, I have a proposal .

I thought it meant that it wanted to watch all of World Hoppers again. Or that it had found a new series. Instead, it said, There is an upcoming mission under discussion where your help would be invaluable .

Uh. I said the first thing that occurred to me, which was I don’t think your humans are going to like that .

I will discuss it with them.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even make a crack about ART’s idea of a discussion and forcing everybody else to do what it wanted.

I didn’t know if I trusted ART’s humans or if I even wanted to try. But no one had ever rescued me before except Dr. Mensah, when she went into the DeltFall habitat after me, and ART had been willing to wipe a colony off a planet for me, and watching the security vid of a group of humans strategizing how best to get me out of there was… a lot, for me, considering the whole reason for me/constructs being created was so I/we could be abandoned in an emergency.

ART said, I know you have difficulty making decisions so you don’t need to give your answer right away .

I do not have difficulty making decisions, ART, you’re full of— I said, but it had already dropped me back in my body. And of course, my performance reliability crashed immediately and I had a forced shutdown.

When I came out of restart, I was on the platform in Medical. I was back on the feed, with five drones left, including the one retrieved from the space dock, and camera views all over the ship. Martyn, Karime, and Turi were still in Medical isolation in a nearby cabin, but they were on the feed with the other humans. Ratthi and Thiago were in the galley lounge with Seth. Overse was in the engineering pod with Matteo, Tarik, and Kaede, going over the scans of what little was left of the alien remnant from ART’s drive. (Basically ART was going to need help from its University’s decontam team before it could go into a wormhole again, which was not good news. If Barish-Estranza reinforcements showed up, we were in trouble.) Arada was in the control deck with Iris. SecUnit 3 was in the galley lounge, too, lurking in a corner and listening to the humans talk.

Amena… Amena had carried a chair over next to the platform, and was browsing through the Pansystem University catalog in the feed. I said, “I’m back online.”

She smiled. “I’ll warn everybody.”

I sat up. The MedSystem had finished what the humans had started and my performance reliability was up around 98 percent. I was wearing the kind of soft smock thing that injured humans wear, but my drones spotted my clothes, cleaned and recycler-repaired, folded on a gurney. Before I could think about it too much, I said, “ART asked me to join its crew for a mission.”

ART, as usual, was listening, and this was my way of telling it what I was thinking. It was easier telling Amena, for some reason. Maybe because she had somehow managed to put herself in the middle of my and ART’s quote-unquote relationship.

Amena paused her feed and frowned. “For how long?”

“For the duration of the mission.” But I had the feeling that ART meant for this to be the first step in a longer… association.

Amena’s forehead indicated suspicion. “Just the one mission? Kind of like asking someone to come stay with your family for the break between the work seasons, to see if they all like each other before you get serious?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. I was noticing ART hadn’t jumped in to tell her how wrong she was, and I knew it would have, if she was wrong. So she wasn’t wrong. “But yes, maybe.”

Amena thought it over. “I guess I’m not surprised. How do you feel about it?” My expression must have changed because she rolled her eyes. “Oh sorry, I used the f word there.”

Again, I have no idea why ART likes adolescent humans. “I don’t know,” I told her.

“So… what do you think second mom will say?”

I had no idea. “What do you say?”

She snorted. “I was just getting used to you.” My drone watched her eyeing me. “I don’t think it’s a terrible idea. Except… ART works in the Corporation Rim sometimes, too, right? It’s not all missions out to these lost colonies.”

“That’s a factor.” Though I wondered how often ART’s solo “cargo missions” were actually gathering intelligence in a way no corporation would ever suspect.

Amena didn’t look happy about the idea of me going back to the Corporation Rim. I wasn’t wildly excited about it, either. She said slowly, “I think ART cares a lot about you. You should have heard… the only reason it went ahead and sent your killware to the explorer was because it thought if it didn’t, the only way to get Iris and everybody back was to send you. That sending the killware would mean you wouldn’t have to do something dangerous. Of course, you were already doing something dangerous but we didn’t know that at the time.” She hesitated, and added, “I don’t think it would invite you to come with it if it didn’t think it would be good for you, you know.”

No, I still didn’t know.

After three more cycles, the rest of the humans were able to leave Medical isolation. The Barish-Estranza crew were sent back via their shuttle to Supervisor Leonide’s supply transport. Nobody tried to hold anybody else hostage, which was unusual for this situation, but then no Barish-Estranza reinforcements had shown up yet.

The supply transport was still repairing its wormhole drive and hanging out within range of us just in case anything else showed up to attack. Also to make sure we didn’t somehow steal the planet out from under them. Which ART and its crew totally intended to still do. If they could manage it. The humans all spent most of their time talking about what to do about the colonists, how to handle decontaminating the colony site, would they/could they move everybody if they had to. ART wouldn’t be there for that part, but its crew would make recommendations about it when the university’s decontam facilities teams arrived.

The one big problem was that because of the alien remnant contamination, Karime said the legal case prepared by the university no longer applied, so they needed help before they could contest Barish-Estranza’s claim. Barish-Estranza had sent a message buoy through the wormhole to their corporate base of operations, and ART had sent one to the University. So we were waiting to see who showed up first.

Also, there was this whole thing where we had a rogue SecUnit aboard who wasn’t me.

It was mostly doing what it had done on the Barish-Estranza explorer, which was to stand around on guard and patrol occasionally. Except ART had made it give up its armor and weapons and I suspect had given it some details about what might happen if it even thought about shooting any projectiles out of its arm.