The humans were all watching my shuttle drone, like it was my face. That’s not disturbing at all. I said, “They’re not all going to be like Three.”
What I didn’t want to say was that even though Three had saved my life, I still wouldn’t have left it alone with my humans, whatever threat assessment said, if ART-prime hadn’t been there to keep an eye on it. We hadn’t known Three very long, and we hadn’t seen it under much stress. It was still learning that it could make choices. We wouldn’t know to what extent it was trustworthy until it made some more choices and acted on them.
Iris had her arms folded, her expression deep in thought. She had grown up with ART, and probably knew a lot about bot relationships. (She probably knew more about bot relationships than ART did.) But SecUnits aren’t bots, we’re constructs, and we don’t have relationships like that. Governor modules don’t encourage that kind of thing.
(And I know Three had talked to Ratthi and Amena about the two other SecUnits in its task group, one of which the Targets had directly killed, and the other they had indirectly killed by forcing a human to order it to stay behind on the drop box station. (SecUnits have to stay within a certain range of our clients or the governor modules fry your brain and it is not pretty.) I know Three felt … whatever toward those two units, but I have lots of feelings toward the imaginary humans on my media, and I am perfectly clear on the fact that those relationships are one-sided. There is literally no way to tell if the feelings among those three SecUnits were reciprocal in that situation, even for Three, because governor module.)
(And frankly, the potential to blame all humans for killing its possibly apocryphal friends makes Three’s threat assessment rise even higher.)
Tarik was slumped back in the pilot’s seat with one knee hooked over the armrest (how can that be comfortable) and his expression was opaque, but I also got the feeling he wasn’t unhappy to hear my reasons for why I wouldn’t be doing the thing.
Ratthi was unhappy. He said, “Yes, but it seems … To not offer one the choice, given the opportunity…” He waved a hand. “I’m sorry, I believe you that it’s a bad idea, but I can’t help talking about it anyway. I’ll try not to, I don’t want you to feel like I’m pressing you to do something you don’t think is safe.”
Ratthi knows more about constructs than any human here.
The problem was, 2.0 had been in a unique position with Three. There was no way to replicate that here, even if I didn’t know that just replicating conditions doesn’t always give an identical or even similar result. I said, “We don’t know if they have a SecSystem or HubSystem, or whatever their branded equivalent is, on their shuttle. If I was willing to do this I’d have to take the controlling system over first to make sure the governor module didn’t trigger during the process. Then I’d have to kill its clients to cover up what I’d done.”
Well, probably. And wiping out even a little part of the reinforced Barish-Estranza explorer group was not an option. Okay, it was an option, but it was not an option Seth or Iris or Mensah or any of the other humans seriously wanted to consider. Both Preservation and the University of Mihira and New Tideland would not be okay with it, for one thing. For the other, it was strategically iffy, now that their reinforcements had arrived. It led to a scenario where, at best, we wiped out the whole task group and then had to hide the evidence and just hoped none of the humans felt bad and reported it once we got out of the system.
Whatever, we’re not doing it unless they try to do it to us first. Just to make sure everybody understood, I continued, “Even if I did free the SecUnit, I might have to kill it anyway, if it goes rogue and tries to murder all of you.”
“I see,” Iris said. She looked like she was thinking through about half a dozen scenarios at once and none of them were panning out the way she wanted. Or maybe I was projecting.
There are no easy answers, as Dr. Bharadwaj says. And this will never be an easy question.
While that was happening, AdaCol2 and I arranged a secure comm connection between Iris and its primary operator, a human called Trinh. Who was more than a little weirded out to be contacted by a second group of new humans so soon after the first contact after years of no contact whatsoever. I could sympathize: it would have freaked me out, too.
I listened to bits of the conversation, but it was just too painful, even though Iris was good at talking. After the introductions she opened with, “I know Barish-Estranza told you they’re here to help you. But they’re from a corporation that is trying to take possession of this planet to claim and exploit its assets, and right now those assets are you.”
Through the translator module, Trinh said, “So you’re saying the same thing as they did, that you’re here to help us.”
Ugh. They had no reason to trust us.
In the shuttle Tarik and Ratthi and ART-drone were strategizing, coming up with plans to try to convince the separatists and looking up stuff for Iris to show Trinh to better explain the situation, including vid clips of the fighting between the different factions at the main colony site. The humans had already sent a request via the pathfinder report to bring in a colonist who was willing to vouch for us and give an eyewitness account of the alien contamination incidents. But they knew that might not help, either, because the two groups hadn’t communicated for however many years. (At least that’s what historian Corian back at the main colony had thought. The separatists may have spied on the main group via AdaCol2’s former connection with AdaCol1. Ratthi had been putting together a feed document on what they might know/what we were certain they did know. The concluding paragraph that he was still working on indicated that he agreed with the theory that there were specific reasons for the split between this faction and the main site that didn’t have as much to do with the contamination incidents as previously indicated.) But basically the separatists had no reason to believe the main group’s opinion of us. “Or to even believe anybody we bring up here is actually a colonist,” Tarik had pointed out, “and not just one of us in a stolen environmental suit.”
Tarik has trust issues, ART-drone told me on our private connection. Yeah, I guess that was related to the whole ex-corporate-death-squad thing.
Ratthi, still with the pinched expression that indicated he didn’t think anything was going well, added, “Yes, and Barish-Estranza may be able to bring in a colonist to vouch for them, too. We know they’re in contact with that group out to the south of the main colony.”
It was a mess and it was getting more messy every second. I keep telling myself I’m security, my job is to protect my humans while they try to save these other humans. There wasn’t anything I could do to help except stay out of it. But no one was attacking us right now and I felt useless.
I wasn’t just standing around, at least. AdaCol2 had given me the location of the Barish-Estranza shuttle and told me the best way to get to it without alerting the separatists or the B-E team. I needed to know where it was in case threat assessment was wrong and they did attack us, and I wanted to take a look at it just to make sure … I don’t know, that it didn’t have a giant explosive device attached to it I guess. I needed to do something and going to stare at their shuttle felt proactive.
AdaCol2 had directed me to a passage heading north, not the one ScoutDrone1 had found. AdaCol2 had confirmed the hatch with the functioning emergency light led into the inhabited portion of the installation. I had left ScoutDrone1 there in sentry mode just in case the Barish-Estranza team or the separatists tried to come through it to look for our shuttle. Due to the scanning blackout on the surface, they wouldn’t know where we were unless they went out and looked, or B-E sent their SecUnit to look.