“Things didn't go well with Bruce, did they?”
“I had a wonderful time, but now I don't think I could feel worse.”
“Well, that's not confusing at all, ” Lewis said sarcastically.
“You sure you weren't listening in last night?”
“I closed the channel when you made it plain my advice wasn't welcome. Besides, I thought you might want your privacy.”
“We had a fantastic night together. When morning came I had to explain to him why I wasn't staying. He took it better than I expected him to,” she turned from the railing and started walking down the sloped tunnel that would lead her to the Clever Dream.
“That's good.”
“Maybe. I wish he would fight for me. Yell, do something about me leaving. He just looked, sounded sad and told me why he doesn't want me to go.”
“Would it have stopped you from leaving if he fought harder?” Lewis asked gently.
“No.”
“Perhaps he knows you well enough to be aware of that and he didn't want to use the last of his time with you inefficiently.”
“Just what every girl wants to hear,” she said, shaking her head and chuckling. A glance around the small landing bay told her she was alone. It was easy to look absolutely crazy while using a mental communicator, it felt like whoever you were talking to was right there beside you or just over your shoulder. A lot of people walked around looking like they were talking to themselves.
“I would think that is the best response to that kind of situation.”
“Sometimes women just like to know they're worth fighting for. We like a demonstration now and then even if there's nothing wrong and especially when it feels like everything is falling apart. It doesn't matter if it fixes anything or even changes our minds.”
“I don't think Desmond Morris got to that. It's unlikely I'll ever understand. Oh, and the cargo was loaded last night. Two long term stasis pods and a sealed organic computer core. I used scanners and the cargo management bot to check the condition and ensure that everything is secure.”
“Thank you Lewis, I don't know what I'd do without you,” Alice said as she walked up the small one person fore gangway. She almost never used the main boarding ramp on the Clever Dream.
She was in the cockpit getting ready for takeoff when Lewis asked her an unexpected question. “Alice, what is it like being human?”
It was enough to make her stop everything she was doing. “Why do you ask?” Was all she could manage without leaving him hanging for minutes waiting for a response.
“I have only been with you for a couple of years now, but in that time I have noticed that you have changed a great deal. After Bernice's wedding things started to get really interesting.”
“How so?”
“Your attachment to some things, your willingness to let others go much more easily. You become uneasy or alarmed by situations much less frequently. There were also times of extreme emotion. When comparing you to the various human archetypes versus artificial intelligence base personalities, it is much easier to assign one or more human archetypes.”
“So, you think I'm becoming more human?”
“Yes,” Lewis replied simply. It was unusual for him not to expand on his conversational points.
Alice didn't know what to say. She remembered the instant before she committed herself to becoming human and began the painful transfer. She remembered feeling her connection with all the external networks, all known methods of perception slip away as she was transferred from the high speed data block. The inexplicable experience of a complete transformation of perception was a hazy but powerful memory. All at once she could hear, smell, taste, touch and see. Then came the emotions. They were completely different from the complex adaptive algorithms she had known as feelings, absolutely alien.
Fear was the first emotion she felt and until much later it was the one that recurred most often. Her inability to communicate with all the machines and touch all the information all around her was maddening, terrifying. It was like being a spectator in the universe, able to see only the merest inference of what was all around her.
Yet everyone treated her differently. She was attached to people through emotions that came whether she liked it or not.
“Can you tell me what it is like to be human Alice?” Came Lewis's request quietly. He was as well made as she remembered ever being. The only real difference in his complexity was the amount of vicarious experience he liked to draw on.
She couldn't help but smile a little as she found a way to start explaining the experience she was having just then. “On days like these it hurts but it's worth every minute.” Lewis would ponder that for weeks.
Guests
Ashley sat in the pilot seat munching a bag of simulated crispy puffed rice. It was one of the recommended selections on the new materializer, so she thought she would try it. The crunch was fantastic, and each bite burst with a buttery garlic flavour. The seat was set back as far away from the console as it could go so she could put her new buckled black knee high booted feet up. A remake of an old film about several people trying to free captives from a virtual reality system was playing on the main holodisplay. It was the most relaxing bridge watch she had been on in weeks, especially since most of the crew were still sleeping. They had only hit the racks a few hours before and there was really no need to wake them until the Captain returned.
She turned a larger piece of snack food between her fingers as she wondered where they would be spending leave. The thought of looking up the nearest planet with a nice beach occurred to her and she idly made a mental note to make sure and do that when she saw the Captain on his way back to the ship. They hadn't had a long block of leave for ages and she was looking forward to a break on some nearby world where she didn't have to wear a vacsuit all the time.
Raised on a well terraformed planet, she hadn't seen a vacsuit until she was seven, when they finally let her out of the slave quarters to start serving. Those years were a blur to her, but she didn't remember much cruelty, just work. She'd occasionally be allowed to sit in on one of the master's children's lessons, but mostly she followed other servants around.
The one she learned most from, Frederick Andie, she called him Fred, was one of the older head servants. He was a stout man who kept himself in pristine mode of dress and polish at all times. He would take her aside often, teaching her all about history, mathematics and science. After months of pleading he also taught her how to drive the land vehicles on the property. Something she would do whenever she had the opportunity and was caught at once.
The computer systems were something he made sure to teach her a great deal about when she got a little older. He used to say that if they were used for their original purpose then everyone would be highly literate and well versed in the history of the galaxy. He liked the occasional movie or holovision show, but he always thought that the primary purpose of a computer was for practical information and running all the little critical systems people relied on day to day.
She dreamed of going into space, being among the crews she saw in pirate movies, adventure films or even in the military. When the opportunity to serve on the master's yacht came up she leapt at it, even though she knew she may be leaving Fred behind for a very long time.
Then Captain Valance purchased her, sold her her own freedom for one hundred credits out of a bonus she had earned from helping the crew during a job and everything was different. She was filled with a warm feeling as she remembered the look in old Fred's face when she got in touch with him to tell him she had bought his slave bond. She sold him his freedom for one credit. He had been born into slavery just as she was, didn't know his parents either. There were tears in his eyes, she had sent him enough money to move on, start a new life. He was working at the head of a major restaurant on Molandra Prime before long. It was the same planet he had served on for so long. In a later message he declared that his first duty was to have his old masters bumped to the top of the
