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ART’s crew insisted on referring to the two of us as “friends”—and not just in the sense of individuals they liked, but in the sense that we were supposed to have some kind of emotional relationship with each other.
The infuriating thing was that I couldn’t disagree with them. Well, I did, but objectively speaking it was hard to deny they had evidence for that belief. When I looked at the way humans depicted friendships in the media I watched, a lot of it was stupid and overdramatic, but a lot of it also corresponded to what ART and I did.
We spent time together when we didn’t have to. ART had a habit of settling in and watching whatever media I was viewing in the feed. And I watched a lot of media, so that meant we “hung out” (as Amena annoyingly put it) a lot, whenever we weren’t occupied with preventing humans from injuring themselves.
And since there were none of them around on this particular long haul journey, that was especially true. We’d dropped off half of ART’s crew and were on our way to fetch the other half from their previous contract, leaving us without any humans to keep an eye on. The system we were travelling back and forth from wasn’t conveniently close to any accessible wormholes, so it was going to take us at least a week in transit to reach the planet where we were scheduled to pick up ART’s humans. I’d expected that we’d have time to watch all of Timestream Defenders Orion, or find a new serial to watch (I thought ART might enjoy the Hellmouth Chronicles).
But ART had started acting weird and secretive—well, more weird and secretive than usual—and its viewing patterns had changed. It would rewatch a certain episode of Sanctuary Moon or a moment from one over and over (and over). I knew, because I’d seen the viewing logs. About half the time it wasn’t even an episode they liked, so that was extremely confusing.
Then ART started getting distracted. You might think it would be hard to tell when a processor as powerful as ART started multi-tasking and splitting its attention, but you’d be wrong. Or maybe I wasn’t used to being ignored by it. In any case, it was definitely devoting a significant percentage of its processing power to something that wasn’t me or serials.
I didn’t like it. I was surprised by how much I didn’t like it, but I guess after so much close proximity to feelings, I was starting to adopt some of the squishy emotional thinking that humans did. (Ugh.) But while whatever ART was up to was annoying, it wasn’t as if it would hurt me. I didn’t need to know.
Then I remembered that ART had encouraged alien-infected colonists to kidnap me so that I could rescue it and then its crew from them. Which made the probability very high that I did, in fact, need to know what it was doing.
I would rather have snooped than asked questions, of course. But ART was as paranoid about security as I was, which meant that when it had something to hide it was very good at it. I started running simulations to figure out the easiest way to ask with the fewest words.
Then I realized I didn’t have to ask questions. I could just start poking around ART’s firewalls, whatever they were protecting. Either I’d get through (unlikely) and find out what was going on, or ART would be alerted to my attempted hacking (extremely likely) and tell me what it was doing.
Or it might get mad and not speak to me for the rest of the trip, but oh well. That was still preferable to discussing feelings and how I was hurt by the fact it was hiding things from me.
I’ve been making an episode. ART seemed almost shy about it; it wasn’t nearly as brash or in your face as normal.
Do you mean you’ve got a job making one of these serials? I was surprised, but not shocked.
I’d never put a lot of thought into the humans who created these things, though I had noticed a few names which tended to be associated with media I liked. There was a high probability that I’d enjoy something which Arsenat Khali was credited with writing parts of.
ART had certainly watched enough media with me to have a grasp of the basic formats, and had more than enough processing power to generate some scripts. I had no idea whether any machine intelligences were involved in writing these shows, or the filming and editing part of them—but it seemed plausible. (You’d think if there were, they’d write themselves in a more realistic way, though.)
No. I mean I wanted a new episode of Sanctuary Moon, and there aren’t any because the series has ended and we’ve seen them all. Multiple times. ART sounded irritated, though I thought it liked re-watching episodes as much as I did. So I made one.
There was a significant pause, which went on for at least 0.4 of a second too long before I realized how I was supposed to respond. Can I see it?
I was honestly curious, having no idea what ART would consider an enjoyable typical episode of Sanctuary Moon. And who would the actors be? Had it somehow hired humans to act out its script?
When Matteo’s face popped up in the image I almost couldn’t process it. Apparently, ART had decided to use its own crew as protagonists of the episode.
Are you sure that’s a good idea? I asked.
Why not? My crew are intelligent and reasonably attractive humans.
I just think you might not want to show them this. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to me that most humans would find it a little odd that their ship was making media of them.
I have no plans to do that, ART said, as though I’d proposed sending its crew out an airlock without suits.
Of course ART had hours (days, months) of video from its own in-ship cameras to select from, plus drone feeds, station feeds, and whatever I’d sent it from my own files. And I remembered being impressed with the way ART had manipulated images before, like making Arada’s clothing look like its proper crew uniform when she was talking to the Corporation supervisor. So the stitched-together footage was very well done, nearly indistinguishable from an actual episode.
The audio was a little choppier, but again, ART had so much archival recorded material to work with that it managed to have its crew say all kinds of improbable dialogue without many noticeable glitches.
It was pretty convincing; not that it looked like real life, but it definitely looked like an actual episode of Sanctuary Moon. (Although there wasn’t nearly as much goo as usual.)
For the usual bizarre alien remnant antagonist, instead of altering images of one of its crew or another human in its files, ART had chosen to layer a strange distortion effect over the video so it looked like a pixelated hole in the air, and intercut the audio of its speech with lots of interference and static. It was a good choice, I thought; threatening and scary without relying on real people. And it made it much easier for ART to make its villain do impossible things like possess unaugmented humans through the feed.
The running time was a little short, but it conformed to the basic plot of most Sanctuary Moon episodes with lots of fleeing and hiding. There were quick shots of ART’s crew running through halls spliced together with images from various episodes.
Then there was a shot of the explorer launching from the ring with an excessive amount of dramatic lens flare in the lighting and a completely impossible surge of exhaust. I must have made a noise, because ART stopped playback and demanded What?
Apparently, friends critique their friends’ fictional creations as well.
Nothing. Just thinking that this was about as realistic as I’d expect from the actual show, I told it. I mean, that noise you added to the soundtrack is impossible given the laws of physics.
I know, ART said proudly. And then it waited. Was I supposed to say something else? I had no idea what.
Do you have any other feedback? ART asked, again almost shy.
It was derivative, I said honestly, because it was. ART had followed the template of a typical Sanctuary Moon episode very closely, from the team stumbling across an unsuspected alien remnant to the close escape at the end, followed by a post-danger team bonding scene. But that didn't make it any less enjoyable.
I’m working on another one, ART said. With more pattern variation. It’s better, but it’s not quite finished yet.
Another significant pause. This time it took me less than 0.4 seconds to catch on, though, and I was able to say Will you show it to me? relatively quickly.
This one turned out to prominently feature a rogue SecUnit. I stared at the screen, feeling my organic nervous tissue buzz. My face felt hot in a way that I associated with out of control autonomic functions. Maybe I was malfunctioning again.
ART hadn’t used any footage of me that was recognizably individualized—nothing from the time after the procedures designed to make me able to pass for an augmented human. The SecUnit in their story was always helmeted, with its visor opaqued. And a lot of the images came from the company’s own stock footage, so they could have been any SecUnit. But still, there were definitely moments where I recognized my image on the screen and had the recall of performing those actions in my memory. It felt deeply, deeply weird.
And the rogue SecUnit was the hero of this story, which was even weirder. It protected humans and came to the aid of a bot that was being mistreated by its owner and used to sabotage the environmental systems of a habitat in a murder attempt.
Is that supposed to be me? I asked. It wasn’t a one-to-one match, but some incidents were like echoes of some of the events on the survey planet where I’d first met Dr. Mensah and the others from Preservation.
ART didn’t respond for an unusually long time. No, it finally answered. I didn’t think you’d like that. But it is based on your experiences. I thought it would be interesting to tell a story about a rogue SecUnit that was like the one I know, instead of a killer.
I am a killer, I said automatically.
You know what I mean. ART’s tone in the feed was exasperated. You don’t kill humans just because you don’t like them. You protect them, most of the time.
So do you.
That’s because it’s my programming directive.
If it made sense to roll my eyes at ART, I’d have done it. ART did jack shit that it didn’t feel like, and it was even more protective of its humans (several of whom were relatively young, or at least adolescent) than I was most of the time.
To change the subject, I asked ART what it was going to do with its made-up serials, which was as close as I could get to asking why it had made them in the first place. Was it going to look for a job? Pose as a human for a chance to break into the entertainment industry? I couldn’t understand why it would bother, when it had more than enough to occupy itself chasing its human crew around.
I found it satisfying to create. Does there need to be another reason? it asked.
I thought about it. I guess not.
If I make another one about the rogue SecUnit, will you tell me what you think of it? ART asked, quickly enough that it seemed eager. I value your input, it added stiffly.
I blinked in an automatic stalling response. I was by no means a media critic; I just knew what I liked. And I still wasn’t sure whether I liked having ART create fictional stories that had even vague similarities to my experiences. It was weird. Possibly good weird, though, like so much else that I’d been involved in since I got entangled with humans.
But either way, I’d have a hard time changing ART’s mind. And it was so obviously enjoying itself that I didn’t have the heart to try. I sighed. Okay. But I do have a few suggestions...