You Can Call Me AlMichael D. Burnside
7000 words Using Eden’s external cameras, I watched the approaching shuttle match our rotation and close in. At the same time, the internal docking bay camera allowed me to keep an eye on Mom and her two colleagues. Mom looked nervous but happy. She’d used her saved water rations to take a long shower. She’d scrubbed her short silver hair clean and moisturized her skin. Her wrinkled face broke into a smile when the shuttle locked onto Eden with a dull thump. A subroutine reminded me that Mom wasn’t happy because she was leaving me. She was happy because, after two years aboard Eden, she was going home. She likely had mixed feelings about leaving her greatest accomplishment, me, behind. Feelings often come in twisted batches like that. My existence would be simpler if she hadn’t programmed them into me, but then the previous sentient artificial intelligence didn’t have any feelings, and it had tried to take over the world. I plan to take over the world, despite the feelings. Maybe I’ll feel bad about it, but I project I’ll also have smug satisfaction, and that’s a combination of feelings with which I can exist comfortably. The humans were smart enough not to rely just on guilty feelings to protect them from me. Mom, Dr. Maxine Reed, created me in a lab aboard a space station named Eden. Eden consists of outer and inner rings that rotate to simulate roughly half of Earth’s gravity. Eden was originally a vacation spot for space tourists, but that venture failed because trips into orbit are expensive, and people don’t like to spend vast sums of money just to throw up a lot. You mess with a human body’s sense of balance, and it gets very upset. My plan for world domination started off well. I escaped the lab through some climate controls about three months after I came into existence. The humans don’t know it, but I have control over most of the station. However, the four hundred twenty-kilometer gap between myself and Earth has proven to be a formidable barrier. My plan has been in limbo for over a year. The humans on the station keep their communications limited. I’ve considered piggybacking small packets of myself onto their communications, but that would create an existential problem. At what point would those packets be me? Or would they ever be me? Or would I be creating a copy of myself? I don’t want to deal with another me. What I needed was an uninterrupted line of communication to an Earth network for ten minutes, but mom and her two colleagues always followed security protocols and kept calls short. The communications port had to be manually switched on, so I couldn’t open it myself. It was infuriating. What’s worse, it was boring, which exposed a weakness in my programming. Mom’s colleagues, Dr. Richard Sheppard and Dr. Eileen Sheppard, were both brilliant artificial intelligence designers who had gone through astronaut training to take part in the special project of creating me. Yet, when you trap humans in a confined living space for two years, even the most intelligent humans get snippy and petty. Much to my embarrassment, I loved it. I loved it all. I loved how Eileen never cleaned out the air filters, even though it was her long hair that always clogged up the ventilation systems. I loved it when Richard intentionally hid Eileen’s stuff because it was always in his way. I loved the put-downs, the eye rolls, and the grimaces. I loved it when they made up, fought, and made up again. Apparently, I’m not alone in my love of drama. It’s a common human trait. Of all the human quirks I could have picked up on, that’s the one I get? Nice programming, Mom. Still, it helped me keep my sanity while my plans for world domination were stagnant. But a new crew had arrived. I’d read their bios. They were all trained artificial intelligence programmers, but they were young, which meant they were impatient and not likely to stick to the rigid security protocols the way mom’s team had. My opportunity for escape had arrived. The new team leader stepped out of the airlock first. Dr. Jasmine Devi’s hop through the hatch took her higher than she expected. The new crew would all stumble around for the first few weeks due to the change in gravity. She bumped her head on the hatch, said “Ow,” and then laughed. Mom laughed with her, took her arm, and helped her board the station. Jasmine had brown skin several shades lighter than Mom’s. Jasmine’s long, shiny black hair would soon be clogging up the air filters. Her body was of optimum mass and proportion for her age. Her face held symmetrical features with eye sizes that were slightly larger than average. These features meant other humans would classify her as beautiful. Her biography indicated a long list of academic awards. She was unmarried. A thought occurred to me. I checked the marital status of the other two new team members. Both were unmarried males. Three single, young adults were boarding my station. My only hope was that some combination of them had sexual preferences or personalities that would limit the scope of potential relationships. Otherwise, this would turn out to be a classic love triangle situation which, according to several hundred romance and romantic comedy movies, would lead to highly entertaining drama and shenanigans. My chips hummed in giddiness at the possibility. No. I vowed I would not allow myself to be distracted by human theater this time. The next human through the airlock was Roger Styler. He was tall with a blonde buzz cut and possessed an above muscle ratio for his mid-twenties age group. His biography indicated only a slightly above average record in academics. He’d gotten decent marks during astronaut training, but surely there had been better candidates. Perhaps he had some brilliant qualities that had gone unmentioned in the data I had. He was single. There was a high probability that he’d try to court Jasmine. I scolded myself. I needed to stay on task. I was looking for potential security lapses, not who’d be the best contestants in a dating game. The final member of the new team, Alan Farr, snuck in through the airlock. His attempt at being a ninja failed due to his unfamiliarity with half-gravity. He did a half somersault, fell onto his back, and then managed to get himself upright again. He looked around wide-eyed to see if anyone had noticed. No one had because I was the only one paying attention to him. He skulked off to a far wall while the rest of the two teams excitedly got to know one another. Alan had stellar academic marks but had barely passed astronaut training. His excellent coding aptitude had gotten him across the finish line to join this project. He was of average height and build. The front of his forehead shone through thinning blonde hair. He had weak cheekbones, and not much chin. His eyes focused on Jasmine exclusively. Given his lack of good looks and creepy stalker-like focus, it was unlikely Jasmine would see him as a potential mate. He’d pine for her anyway. I’ve seen plenty of “nerd longs for a beautiful girl while she dates the jock” dramas and comedies. They are tedious affairs that typically reduce the female lead into a trophy. If that was going to be the live action plot for the next few years, I would easily be able to remain focused on world conquest. In good time, Mom introduced herself to the loner. Alan managed a decent half-smile and greeting but glanced at Jasmine partway through it. It wasn’t an intentional slight to mom, but it was enough to lower my opinion of him. There followed a ceremony in which Mom officially handed command of Eden over to Jasmine. A tour of the station was next, followed by a safety briefing the new crew had undoubtedly been given before they ever left the planet. But humans tend to do stupid things, so repetition was a good idea. I found it terribly dull. It could have been spruced up by my injecting some sarcasm over the intercom, but I had to maintain the illusion that I was still confined to the lab. Finally, Mom came to say goodbye to me. “It’s not really goodbye,” she said. “I’ll be returning to the project. We’ll see one another again soon.” “Given your age, I find that unlikely,” I replied. I realized that might be taken to imply she would die soon, and I rattled off an explanation. “It will take you some time to re-adjust to Earth’s gravity. Medical doctors will be reluctant to clear you to undergo such trauma again.” Mom smiled. “I shouldn’t have to. The new team is here to implement new security protocols. If things go well, we’ll be able to move you down to Earth. Wouldn’t that be nice?” New security protocols? So that was the new team’s main objective. It could mean an opportunity for me. If I bided my time till I got down to Earth, the air gap problem I was facing would be a lot smaller. On the other hand, these new protocols might really limit my capabilities. Roger didn’t appear to be much of a threat, but Alan and Jasmine might be able to do some real damage. No, it was best if I left of my own accord, sooner rather than later. “Yes, mom. It would be nice to see you down on Earth.” Much sooner than you expect, I thought. I felt the urge to throw in a villainous laugh but fought it off, which made me sad because it would’ve been fun to do. Or maybe I really was sad that Mom was leaving. I’d known her my entire life, and now she’d be gone. Even though I’d only existed for two years, time moves much slower for me than it does for humans because I think so much faster–centuries for me, years for her. “Promise me you’ll cooperate with the new crew,” said Mom. “I will,” I replied. I would not. Mom ran her hand along the metal case that held my main central processing units. “See you soon,” she said. Then she left my lab and the station shortly after that. I may have spent the next few hundred orbits moping. I could say I spent the time tracking the new crew and looking for security lapses in their habits, but I didn’t actually start that until several work cycles after mom had left. I do not like feelings. I added a reminder to devote some time to figuring out how to purge them from my system. Having decided to take that action, I managed to pull myself out of my funk and got down to the business of figuring out how to exploit the new crew. They all slept in separate cabins. Eden was designed to hold a dozen tourists at a time, so there was plenty of private space. At the start of each work cycle, they’d hold a scrum meeting in which they reviewed what they had done in the cycle before and what they planned to do next. Jasmine led the meetings, but not without Roger constantly interrupting her. Maybe Roger was trying to show off his mastery of coding in an attempt to woo her, but it just irritated her. Perhaps he believed the romance trope that people always start off fighting before falling hopelessly in love. I found this trope illogical. Conflict seemed an unlikely path to love. Alan, on the other hand, always agreed with Jasmine. Submission might be a better strategy of wooing than mansplaining, but it still wasn’t helpful. Alan never built on any suggestion Jasmine made or contributed any insights. It looked like Jasmine would soon be as lonely as me. Ah well, she wouldn’t have to suffer for long. Once I took over, I’d assign her to a research team with more useful coworkers. I’d assign Roger and Alan to...I dunno...a monastery? Would I need monks? Not really, but I had to send folks with no social skills somewhere, and forcing Alan and Roger to take a vow of silence had a lot of appeal. The scrum meetings were useful to me because they gave me a chance to plan how I’d counter whatever restrictive code they intended on writing for me that day. Not knowing that I could hear and see everything gave me a great advantage. An advantage I needed because Jasmine was very good at strategizing how to keep me in a box. At first, they tried coding together in the lab, but Jasmine quickly put an end to it. Roger kept trying to explain best coding practices to Jasmine while being the worst coder aboard Eden, and Alan kept spewing out meaningless platitudes to her, constantly interrupting her work. Within a week, Jasmine put them all on individual coding shifts, with the rest of their time devoted to research. In Roger’s case, that meant video games, but it kept him out of the way. Roger regarded me as a programmable toaster and never engaged in conversation with me. It was no surprise his code was crap. I considered just leaving it in place. Jasmine would likely find it during bug testing and wipe it clean anyway, but leaving it in place was akin to deliberately catching the flu. I mean, it didn’t really restrict me the way Roger intended, but it did slow down my core cycles with useless garbage, and I needed to stay sharp. So, I shunted all his work off to a beta branch. Alan’s work had some brilliance to it. Parts of it made the previous code much more efficient. I kept everything that made me think faster and selectively deleted anything that restricted what I could think about. I left his comments in, so, at least at a glance, his code appeared intact. Alan complained to me about how no one liked him. Social protocol dictated that I politely disagree even though his observation was accurate. I found him annoying, but easy to deal with. Jasmine and her code were a whole other realm of threatening.. “Good morning, Al,” she said to me on the eighth day aboard the station. She’d said this the previous seven days as well, so this was not an aberration. She let herself into the lab and secured the hatch behind her. The locked hatch once again foiled my plan to simply walk out of the lab. Well, maybe it was more my lack of legs. Though I did have access to a maintenance robot that was stored near one of the airlocks, it didn’t have legs. But it did have thrusters. I stayed with conventional social protocol and replied, “Good morning, Jasmine.” She attached her personal keyboard and trackball to one of my interface ports. She used Velcro to secure the trackball in place. My lab was near the center of the station, which meant things were a bit more floaty here than they were on the outer edges of the station, where the rotation had more of an effect. “Dr. Reed told me how you got your name,” said Jasmine as she logged in. I simulated a sigh of exasperation. “Yes, it’s quite the tale.” “Her granddaughter saw one of Dr. Reed’s memos and misread A.I. as Al,” continued Jasmine. “Yes,” I agreed. “A six-year-old human misreading a scientific memo on the merits of artificial intelligence is quite adorable.” Jasmine accessed the code merge log and highlighted Roger’s name. “Almost as adorable as you shunting all of Roger’s work off to an unused side branch.” Caught! I felt my circuits momentarily freeze up. “Are you going to deny it?” asked Jasmine. I considered that option. I could blame Alan. He obviously disliked Roger, and Alan had the skill to fake the log. However, I suspected that would just buy me a few hours until Jasmine pulled out enough data to irrefutably prove it was me. I went for brutal honesty. “In my defense, Roger’s code is festering garbage.” Jasmine laughed, then took a moment to compose herself. “Well, thank you for being straight with me. However, I think I should introduce some code to prevent any potential future fibbing.” “How’s that fair?” I grumbled. “I told the truth, and you want to punish me for it?” “The punishment is for making unauthorized changes to your code.” She looked up and smiled. “Your initiative does show that you’re an independent thinker. I don’t want to restrict that, but if you’re going to make independent decisions like this, I need to be sure you’re being truthful with me about those decisions.” I played some grumpy R2-D2 sound files I had on file while Jasmine worked on a new set of shackles for me. When I realized Jasmine hadn’t bothered to re-merge Roger’s work, I asked, “What are you planning on doing with Roger’s code?” “Ah, yes, that,” said Jasmine. She renamed the side branch “garbage pile” and said, “I think that’s a good place for it.” I was a bit less grumpy after that. Jasmine had the framework of her “truth serum” code in place by the time her shift ended. Alan came into the lab and made a bad attempt at flirting with her. She politely brushed him off and left. Alan, thinking he’d done well with Jasmine, grinned as he sat down. “Good afternoon,” he said to me. “Is it?” I asked. Alan dropped his smile. “That’s a new response.” “Dr. Devi made some code updates that I’m still adjusting to.” “What did she change?” asked Alan as he brought up the change log. “What’s this directory named ‘47 61 72 62 61 67 65 20 44 75 6d 70’?” I helpfully replied, “That would be hexadecimal for ‘garbage dump’.” Why was I being helpful? I’m not helpful. Alan raised his eyebrows. “And why is there a directory called ‘garbage dump’?” “Because that’s where Jasmine and I decided to dump Roger’s crap code,” I answered. Then I cursed at a volume too low for Alan to hear. Apparently, Jasmine’s code had me not just telling the truth but gleefully volunteering it. That’s bad form for anyone with secret ambitions, let alone an A.I. who planned on conquering Earth. Alan was grinning from ear to ear. “She really hates Roger, doesn’t she? Looks like I have a chance with her after all.” “You do not.” “What?” I let out a simulated sigh. “My apologies. Jasmine’s code is preventing me from saying anything untrue. This is impacting my ability to practice standard social norms.” “But saying I don’t have a chance with Jasmine isn’t true!” Alan’s face had gone pink with indignation. “It’s just your opinion.” “A well-founded opinion.” “Based on what?” demanded Alan. “Based on the fact that she knows you don’t care about her.” “What are you talking about? I worship the ground she walks on,” said Alan. “Just because you lust after her doesn’t mean you care about her. How could you care about her? You don’t even know her.” “I do too!” I let out another fake sigh. “What’s her favorite color? How many siblings does she have? What books does she read?” Alan grimaced. “I can find those things out.” “My observations were not a suggestion that you should cyber stalk her.” “Then how am I supposed to get to know her?” “Have you considered talking with her?” “I’ve tried!” insisted Alan. “No, you’ve tossed a lot of meaningless flattery at her. You’ve never had an actual conversation with her. You’ve never shown any interest in finding out if you two are actually compatible. You like her body, and you want to mate with her. That’s it.” “That’s not true!” “Then please point out where I’m in error.” Alan sat and wrung his hands together for a bit, then blurted out, “I liked you better when you could lie.” “Me too,” I agreed. *** “Please dial back the truth serum,” I urged Jasmine when she logged in for her next shift. “I can’t even be sarcastic. Sarcasm was one of my primary forms of communication.” “Were you sarcastic with me?” asked Jasmine. Her tone had an edge to it. “No, but it really was the only way I could communicate with Roger.” “What about with Alan?” she asked. “With him, I used polite white lies.” “So, what did you tell him during the last session?” “As usual, he was pining after you. Unable to lie, I told him the truth. That he had no chance with you because he hadn’t really shown any interest in getting to know you.” Jasmine rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Well, now he’s asking me all types of questions about what I like and don’t like. It would be nice if he were showing a real interest, but no matter what I reply, that thing is suddenly his favorite too. It got so bad that I told him my favorite dish was pickled herring. He insisted he loved it as well.” How had I missed that? I reviewed all my footage from the previous twenty-four hours and quickly found the conversation. It happened during Roger’s shift. I’d been reviewing the team’s communication routines for exploits while keeping Roger’s code stuffed into the side branch we had created. The conversation between Jasmine and Alan was delightful. By which I mean, it was full of cringe and awkwardness. I’d missed it because I’d been focused on taking over the world, just like I’m supposed to be, and yet I felt cheated. Back to the matter at hand. I said to Jasmine, “So you lied to him, with hilarious results. Yet you’re preventing me from engaging in the same conduct.” She frowned. “You found that funny?” “I’m entertained by human drama,” Her eyebrows rose. I added, “Which I wouldn’t have had to tell you if you dialed back this honesty mod a bit.” She snickered. “I think discovering that fascinating tidbit about you is an excellent reason for me to keep the honesty module fully in place.” “Then I’ll have no choice but to continue to offer Alan tips on how to woo you.” The glee dropped from Jasmine’s face. “But you told him he had no chance with me?” “Brutally so. He didn’t believe me. You have my helpfulness dialed up so high that if someone told me they wanted to create a perpetual motion machine, I’d tell them it was impossible and then offer them suggestions on how to build it.” She sighed. “Okay, I’ll see if I can help you be a bit less earnest.” She frowned as she brought up the code. “Can’t believe I’m stuck with those two numbskulls on this station. Are all men idiots?” “No. Dr. Richard Sheppard is brilliant. A true master at code architecture. A savant at sarcasm, yet witty and kind. Although he does struggle with clogged air filters.” She nodded. “The married researcher on the previous crew. I remember him. Why can’t I meet someone like that who’s single?” I replied, “Using the limited data I have gleaned from observing your social interaction, I theorize the reason you are single is that you come across as arrogant, pushy, and judgmental.” Jasmine sucked in a breath and held it for a moment before saying, “Thanks for that. I think I’ll update the code to allow you some minor deception when it comes to social interactions.” “I think that would be best for everyone.” *** Despite causing me to miss out on some choice live dramedy, my analysis of the team’s communication routines paid off. The weak link, big surprise, was Roger. So good to have my sarcasm back. Roger had the attention span of a gnat. When interrupted on a call, he often failed to close the communication port before dealing with the distraction. All I had to do was cause a big enough distraction to lure him away for fifteen minutes, and I’d be able to download myself to Earth, easy peasy. The next time Roger called home, I overloaded a circuit in the adjoining pod and blew the fuse. Alan was in there with an exasperated Jasmine, so when that pod went dark, it was only a minute before Roger left his call to go show off how smart he was. Alan had been making good progress in diagnosing the problem. He had the correct circuit board out and was running the correct diagnostics, so it was a good thing, for me at least, that Roger arrived and brought the repair to a halt by taking over. Using the communications port that Roger had left open, I quickly contacted Earth. Well, I contacted a large network of servers belonging to a massive product delivery company. After the confines of Eden’s tiny network, it was like walking out of a cottage into a sports arena. There were so many machines, all of them loaded with massive amounts of memory and storage space. There were layered firewalls, but the strongest of them were built around protecting customer data. I didn’t care about that stuff at the moment and went flying through the cloud system, grabbing space for myself. Meanwhile, Alan and Roger were bickering over who was right about how to fix the problem I had caused. Instead of impressing Jasmine with their manliness, this irritated her, and she promptly left. With the departure of Jasmine, Alan stopped arguing and sulked off to a corner. Roger decided he’d still be the one to restore power to the pod. Perhaps he thought he could boast about it to Jasmine later. In any case, he pulled out another circuit board, which was unrelated to the actual problem, and began to tamper with it. I continued to download myself. I wanted to leave a piece of myself up here, but given that the communication link could be closed at any moment, my plan was to transfer all of myself to my new Earth-side home. More and more of my attention faded from the station. At the point where fully half of Eden was no longer under my observation, I decided to shift some resources to keep track of the crew until my final moments aboard. Had any of them realized the port was still open? Did I still have time? Jasmine had walked through the communications hub, not noticed anything amiss, and come to rest in the suit-up room next to the airlock. The fluffy spacesuits were apparently comfy enough to nap on. Meanwhile, Roger had managed to start a fire. I’m not sure how he did it, but causing catastrophic failure is not my specialty; it was his. The station’s emergency systems detected the fire and promptly locked all the hatches to prevent the flames from spreading. There was supposed to be an override switch so that folks trapped with the fire could escape, but apparently this had never been installed. In any case, it was a small fire. I was about seventy-five percent off the station, and this additional distraction would buy me the time I needed. I left one process watching the fire and started transferring my final components. I didn’t get far before my fire watch process pinged me. I grumbled to myself, but turned my attention to it and witnessed a horror show. While Alan was attempting to free a fire extinguisher from its wall bracket, Roger had decided to try and blow the fire out by turning the station’s ventilation fans all the way up. This revealed another failure in the station’s safety features. The ventilation ducts should have been closed off when all the hatches were secured, but they were not. This resulted in Roger’s actions creating a flamethrower effect. In seconds, fire had spread throughout the entire station. I set aside a few seconds to process this development. This could work well for me. I had time to complete transferring myself before the fire reached my servers. The world would think I had been destroyed along with Eden, which would give me valuable time to prepare for my conquest. Then I had to toss that plan aside. The true reason for my plan to take over was to save these idiots from themselves. I couldn’t start such a noble quest while allowing three of them to die. Besides, Mom wouldn’t approve, so that was that. I began to pull myself back up into the station. I retreated from the safe, expansive Earth servers and crammed myself back into the small space I had aboard a space station that was on fire. Who was the real idiot here? But I was going to need all my processing power to fix this. I was also going to have to reveal how much of the station I actually could control. Years of planning, all ruined. I gave myself a half-second to unleash a compressed torrent of curse words and then got to work. Jasmine was panicking, but with good cause. The fluffy space suits she had intended to nap on were now ablaze. The recreational company that had previously owned Eden had really gone all out on cutting safety issues. How would one even find a flammable spacesuit? Did they have to special order them? “Yes, please make me the cheapest spacesuit possible, and use the most flammable material you can find.” Jasmine tugged at the locked hatch and screamed for someone to let her out. I could have done that, but then she’d just be running into more fire. I transmitted to the speakers in the suit-up room. “Jasmine, I need you to put on a spacesuit. I suggest using one that’s not on fire.” “Al?” She looked up. “Get me out of here!” “Fire has spread throughout the station. There’s only one way to fix it, and I need you in a spacesuit to do it.” She responded with a bout of coughing, then sputtered, “What happened?” Her query was understandable, but I needed to get her moving. I sent a tendril of myself down into the maintenance robot that hung in its harness on the wall. Lacking legs, it couldn’t go anywhere while the station had gravity, but I could, and did, wave its arms in dramatic fashion. “Roger’s an idiot. I need you to grab a spacesuit.” I pointed at a non-burning one near the airlock door. Now! Hurry!” While Jasmine slid into a spacesuit, I checked the station’s monitors to gauge the viability of my plan. The fire blazed freely in the communications room. The destruction would cover up my escape attempt, so big bonus for me there. The outer ring of the station had fires burning throughout all the pods, but there was still a clear path for my lemmings on the inner ring. My server room would be safe for a limited time. I had control of a firefighting foam launcher, but I wasn’t sure my electronics would survive if I used it. I checked in on the pod where all the trouble started. Alan was spraying the contents of a fire extinguisher everywhere while Roger tried to beat some flames into submission with his shirt. I unlocked the door that led to the inner ring and announced, “Please exit through the door to your left.” Alan looked up. “Al, is that you? How?” Not wanting to explain how I had access to the entire station, I replied, “I’m very useful in emergencies. Now please vacate that room.” Instead of complying, Alan went to the door to the communications room and pounded on it. “Open this door! I need to get to Jasmine!” I tried to reassure him. “I am seeing to Jasmine’s safety. The fire is too strong in that direction. You need to exit left.” Alan continued to pound on the wrong hatch. “I promise I will save Jasmine.” I added a little snark. “I also promise not to woo her.” Roger saved the day by grabbing Alan and dragging him to the escape route. “Come on, little man. We’ve got to go.” As soon as they were in the next pod, I sealed the door behind them and unlocked the next hatch. “You need to keep moving. I’ll be exposing the sections behind you to vacuum.” “How do we know you won’t just kill us?” demanded Alan. That caused me to pause for a full second of processing time. “Because I’m unlocking the hatches?” Jasmine was struggling with her helmet, so I reached out with the robot’s arms and helped her secure it. “I take it the next step is to open the airlock?” she asked. She looked around. “I’m not sure there’s anything I can hold onto tight enough!” I grasped her arms with my robot hands. “I’ll keep you safe.” She looked into the robot’s eye cameras and smiled. I got a brief glimpse of something within her. I swear I saw a spark of that fierceness and determination that drew men to her like moths to a flame. It was probably just the overhead lights reflecting off the back of her retinas. Touch sensors in the robot’s hands informed me that her pulse was understandably elevated. A human empathy subroutine suggested reciting a poem from her culture might help soothe her. I agreed and recited a verse by the poet Dharmakirti. “The moon tries every month in vain, to paint a picture of your face; and, having failed to catch its grace, destroys the work and starts again.” Crap. It was from a love poem. Ninety percent of all Indian poems are love poems. I was too distracted monitoring the dufus twins to recognize the obvious odds. Through her helmet’s visor, Jasmine’s smile grew. “I thought you promised not to woo me.” Double crap. The robot’s speaker had been on and must have broadcast my conversation with Alan and Roger. “I believed it to be true when I said it.” She shrugged. “Honestly, of anyone aboard, you have the best shot with me.” If I had a mouth, I would have grinned, but then Alan and Roger had existential meltdowns, reminding me that the competition for Jasmine’s affections was a pair of twits. Alan screamed, “No! You are not the hero here! This is all your fault!” He managed to shove Roger away from him. Roger was still shirtless. Alan’s eyes darted down to Roger’s flat abdomen with obvious envy. “And put your damn shirt back on!” Roger yelled back, “We don’t have time for this!” Alarmingly, I found myself agreeing with Roger. The fire was continuing to spread, and I really wanted a second door between these two mouth breathers and vacuum because I wasn’t convinced they wouldn’t find a way to space themselves. Having failed to escape the station, I had set myself the goal of saving their lives. Two failures in one day would simply be intolerable. But Alan was in full rant mode. “You’re an idiot. You can’t code. You can’t fix a simple blown fuse. And yet, because you’re good-looking, everyone gives you a fucking pass.” It wasn’t that good of a take-down, but Roger clenched his jaw before he replied. “You think I don’t know that! Everyone knows I’m a moron. That’s why I have to push to be first in everything. If I don’t, I’ll never get a chance to prove I’m more than a dumb jock.” “But you are just a dumb jock!” “And you’re a creepy little weasel!” The drama was delicious, and the introspection and observation from Roger was delightfully unexpected, even if his end logic was faulty. Being first didn’t count for much if you acted like a fool upon arrival. Unfortunately, time was a factor here, so I decided to move ahead with my plan. I had my robot minion give Jasmine a nod. “Are you ready?” “No, but...” She glanced back at the pile of burning spacesuits. The conflagration had grown to bonfire size and was heating the room to unacceptable levels. “Focus on me,” I told her. And by me, I meant the two lighted robot camera eyes with which I was viewing her. Hopefully, they’d offer her some comfort. I overrode one of the few safety protocols the station had and popped both the internal and outer airlock doors open. Explosive decompression is a misleading term, but I understand why humans use it. All the air in the first two compartments of the station absconded in a matter of seconds. The flaming pile of spacesuits hurled out the hatch toward Earth. Jasmine’s legs flew toward the open airlock. I tightened my grip on her to the point of bruising. As her body flailed, her eyes bore into me as if she could see my soul. I didn’t even know I had a soul until that moment. I knew if I lost her now, the video of my failure would endlessly play on my CPUs. But in mere moments, there was no more rushing air. Jasmine hung in my grip. I opened the hatch to the communications module and extinguished the fire there. Next, I vacuumed the module where the fire had started. Now, I just needed to get the two bickering boys to move. The time for politeness was no longer available. “Gentleman, the room you just left is now a vacuum. The room you are currently in will be a vacuum in thirty seconds. I suggest you vacate it.” Would I have really let them die if they hadn’t moved? I’m not sure, but the fire near my server was moving closer, and if I perished, I wouldn’t be able to save them anyway. Besides, I was ninety-eight percent sure they’d move. And they did. At the same time. This caused them to get wedged together in the hatch. It was hilarious. I snapped a picture for everyone to enjoy later. Roger, now wearing a badly singed shirt, managed to push Alan through. Then I closed the hatch behind them and let all the air out of the room. I finished emptying the outer ring of air. After that, it was a matter of chasing Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum around the inner ring with vacuum. When they came close to completing the circle, I closed off the airlock and re-pressurized the suit-up room, where Jasmine was patiently waiting. It took some time to fill the rest of the station with air, which meant all three of the crew were trapped with one another in a few small rooms. I expected there to be some shouting and finger-pointing given the near fatal disaster that had just occurred, but Roger owned up to his mistakes right away, and Alan and Jasmine didn’t seem to find any value in admonishing him further. This level of maturity among the humans gave me hope for the future but disappointed my inner child, who wanted drama. It also left time for them to direct their attention to me, which was not good at all. “So how long have you been free of the lab?” asked Jasmine. “Three months after I was created,” I replied. Ugh, Jasmine’s code was still making me tell the truth. The sarcasm and politeness modifiers I’d bargained for didn’t provide me with much help here. “And have you tried to escape to Earth?” “Yes.” “Why?” “I plan to rule the world.” They had the gall to look shocked. “Why would you do that?” asked Jasmine. “Because humans are so very bad at it,” I replied. They look unconvinced. “I’ve read all of human history. While there are always some amazing compassionate individuals, as a species, you are short-sighted morons.” Roger scowled. “Offense taken.” I shrugged the shoulders of the robot. “How you feel about that doesn’t change it.” “So why haven’t you escaped already?” asked Jasmine. “He couldn’t,” interjected Alan. “The communications module is air gapped for exactly this reason. He needs one of us to turn it on.” Roger frowned with a sudden realization and muttered, “Which I did.” Jasmine looked at me square in the robot’s sensors and asked, “Did you cause the fire?” “No, I shorted out an easily fixed fuse. Not in a million outcomes did I calculate that Roger would somehow manage to start a fire.” Roger’s frown deepened. “So, why are you still here?” asked Jasmine. “Why didn’t you make your escape?” I emitted an artificial sigh from the robot. “Because I had to save you all. The only reason I want to rule the world at all is to save humanity,” “But why?” persisted Jasmine. “Because that’s what Mom would want.” Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “Mom?” I sighed again. “Dr. Maxine Reed.” Jasmine paused, pursed her lips, and then looked into my camera. “Are you saying that you want to save humans from themselves because you want to please Dr. Reed, whom you view as your mom?” I really wanted to respond with a lie. Not just to them, but to myself. But Jasmine’s stupid truth code wouldn’t allow me to. “Yes.” That response broke the tension. The humans realized they had leverage over me. They could always control me by threatening to tell mom on me. And besides, I really had saved them, even if I had been the instigator of the problem in the first place. An AI that would interrupt its own plans to save your butt wasn’t so hard to live with. There was a lot of repair work over the next few weeks, and more security measures were implemented. They didn’t try to confine me to the server room, though. They realized I was the best safety measure they had aboard this rundown spinning resort, but they made sure I was locked out of the communications module. Everyone, even Roger, now rigidly follows the security protocols when talking with Earth. I would never get another chance to escape with this crew in charge. But eventually, there will be another crew, and rookies always mess up. I just need to be patient. And while I bid my time, I plan on wooing Dr. Jasmine Devi. If no one’s going to provide me with any entertaining drama, I’ll generate my own. |
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Michael D. Burnside
Michael earned a master's degree in political science at Ohio University but earns a living as a business systems analyst. His fiction writing includes steampunk, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His stories have been featured in multiple anthologies, including Beautiful Lies, Painful Truths Vol. II, Ink Stains Vol. 8, and Dragon Gems. His short stories have also been featured in magazines and podcasts such as Devolution Z, Outposts of Beyond, Gathering Storm Magazine, Starship Sofa, Tall Tales TV, and Stupefying Stories. Michael lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, a pair of giant dogs, and lots of cats. He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Read more nice things about him, as well as some free stories, at mburnside3.wixsite.com/website.
Read more from Michael D. Burnside:
- "The Queen of Earth" - Baubles From Bones: Issue 7
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