Network Effect

“You can do that. Or not. You don’t have to.”

“They are your clients.”

I said, “You can trust them.”

I’m sure it thought I was delusional. Hey, I thought I was delusional. SecUnit 3 didn’t say anything because what could you say to that in this situation. Or any situation.

Then it said, “The completed portion of the story.” I finally realized it wanted to ask me for it, but its experience at asking for things that weren’t contract-relevant data was nonexistent. “Viewing it would … help me come to a decision.”

I was pretty sure I knew what decision it intended to come to. My files were a how-to manual for fugitive SecUnits. I said, “I’ll excerpt the relevant portions and send them to you.”

It actually looked almost pleased for a second there. It said, “Thank you for that information.”

In the end, twenty cycles after we had arrived in this system, it was a Preservation ship, an armed station responder, which came through the wormhole.

“They couldn’t possibly have gotten here in this amount of time,” Arada said, after the ship’s ID had been confirmed and the exclamations and arm waving in the galley lounge were over. “Not unless they left only a few hours after we did.”

ART said, They may have. Before I was deleted, I prepared a message buoy, explaining what had happened and asking for assistance, and concealed its existence from targetControlSystem. I set it to jettison automatically when the wormhole drive engaged.

There was more exclaiming. “But why didn’t you tell us?” Amena asked it.

(Yes, Amena is still naive about what a monster ART is.)

ART told her, Because then it would have been harder to force you to do as I wanted.

(Yeah, like that.)

“Can you contact it on comm?” I said. Because I had a feeling who was onboard and if I was right we could save a lot of time and a lot of aggravation. And by that I mean me being aggravated while humans talk to each other for an unnecessarily long amount of time.

Seth gave me a thoughtful look. “We can. Peri?”

Are they likely to deploy malware? ART asked.

“You’re not funny,” I told it.

Once ART secured a comm connection with the Preservation responder, I said, “This is SecUnit. Is Dr. Mensah aboard?”

There was only a four second pause. Then Mensah’s voice said, “SecUnit, I’m here.”

Amena bounced impatiently but I tapped her feed to wait. I said, “Coldstone, song, harvest.”

“Acknowledged,” Mensah said immediately, sounding relieved. “Now will someone tell me what the hell happened?”

Arada hastily took over. Seth asked me, “That was a stand down code, I take it?”

Amena made an exasperated noise. “You have a special code with second mom.”

It was actually stand down, clear, and no casualties. I just said, “Yes.” Now I’d have to change it.

Between Arada and the others on the comm, by the time the responder reached ART all the pesky questions about kidnapping and trying to blow up Preservation survey facilities had been resolved.

By this point, Thiago had convinced Seth and Iris to tell Mensah about ART’s actual mission. I think Mensah on the comm being all persuasive and reasonable had something to do with it. Plus along with the responder’s crew and a security team from the station, Pin-Lee had come with Mensah. Since ART’s crew needed someone who was good with Corporation Rim contract negotiation, the idea of an alliance with Preservation was looking better and better. Whatever, the humans worked it out while I watched Sanctuary Moon. ART watched with me for some of the episodes but the idea of Dr. Mensah coming aboard made it weirdly excited and it had its drones clean its whole interior again and was doing things like yelling at Turi to put their laundry in the recycler.

The responder pulled up to ART’s module dock, and Mensah came aboard with Pin-Lee, and there was a lot of noisy greetings and hugging and exclamations and introductions. There was a lot of talking to me, with Pin-Lee asking me if I was all right, and Mensah thanking me for trying to get Amena off the baseship. Seth, as the captain, formally introduced them both to ART. He told them, “We normally aren’t able to do this, since Perihelion’s existence as anything other than a bot pilot has to be kept secret in the Corporation Rim.”

“We understand,” Mensah said, her voice just a little dry. “We’re keeping a number of secrets from the Corporation Rim, too. I’m very glad to meet you, Perihelion.”

It’s a pleasure to have you aboard, Dr. Mensah, ART said, and actually managed to sound like it meant it.