Network Effect

The shuttle wasn’t a model I had been in before, but the configuration was similar to a standard transport shuttle. It was small, sized for ten humans at most, no cabins, a toilet facility that folded out from the bulkhead (ugh). The individual seats were in a spiral in the main compartment, so they would have to be cycled around to release each passenger for disembarking. It was obviously meant for short trips between ships or from ship-to-station. The cockpit had a seat for a human pilot next to the currently absent bot pilot’s interface console. The upholstery showed signs of ordinary wear and tear. The single passenger compartment was generally clean but there were scuff marks on the panels and padding. There was only a .01 percent chance it had been constructed as a trap by an alien intelligence. (It was a theory, okay.)

On our private feed connection, Amena said, Is it empty? Is there anything strange in it? Can I come closer?

You can come to the hatch, but not inside. I started searching for physical evidence. I would need to check all the storage compartments, anywhere there might be a hidden space that could conceal something. The drive housing still had the factory seal from its last maintenance check, so it probably hadn’t been infected with illegal alien remnant technology. I’d have to break the seal and do a visual inspection anyway, just to be certain. I also needed to pull the logs, but I’d have to do it via a display surface. Even with an inert operating system, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Amena came up to the hatch and leaned inside to look around. “If you need me to do anything, I can do it.”

I pinged her feed to acknowledge.

She watched me search for seven minutes and forty seconds, then said, “Can I ask you a question?”

I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always “no” or just give in to the inevitable? I said, “Is it contract-relevant?”

Big, adolescent human sigh noise. “I just want to understand something.”

I gave in to the inevitable. “Yes.”

She hesitated. “Right, umm. So my second mom really didn’t ask you to break up me and Marne?”

I had answered that question already, back when it happened. I could get mad at her asking it again, but granted, I do lie a lot. “I wasn’t lying to you. She doesn’t know anything about it unless you told her.”

I finished the search of the cabin and pinged ART. It generated a display surface with a disabled feed interface so it couldn’t transmit anything that might be in the shuttle’s systems to ART, me, or anything else.

Amena still had questions. “Then why did you do it? You didn’t—you don’t—care about me. You didn’t really even know me then.”

Why does ART like adolescent humans? This was exhausting. “I have files on all the members of Dr. Mensah’s family and their associates. I alerted on Marne because I ran threat assessments on all humans and augmented humans attempting to approach or form new relationships with Dr. Mensah or her family or associates after the GrayCris incident. Marne registered as a threat to you.”

Amena thought about that while I made a connection between the console and the sequestered display surface. Then I started to run the shuttle’s raw log files on the display, filtering out anything that wasn’t text. I was recording the information visually, and then I could convert it back to data fields and search it more quickly. That way we’d get the log information without any underlying code that might be hidden in it. (There are visual elements that could cause me problems, but I could screen for those and granted, the chances that the log file might be protected against a SecUnit doing a visual download were running under 5 percent.) (I know, I’m paranoid, but that’s how I’ve avoided being rendered for spare parts all this time.) Amena said slowly, “I guess if he wasn’t … He would have wanted to explain himself, instead of running off and refusing to speak to me again.”

As far as my threat assessment was concerned, running off and never seeing her again was an excellent result. I was pretty sure Amena wouldn’t want to hear that, though.

She continued, “I thought he was nice. I’m not … I know at the time I said I knew what I was doing, but I’m actually not very good at meeting new people.”

I knew from threat assessments on Ratthi’s associates that he had a lot of relationships with all genders of humans and augmented humans and he and they all seemed very happy about it. Amena should ask him for advice. I didn’t think she wanted to hear that, either.

Then Amena said, “Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.”

I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.”

Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.”