Network Effect

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.