Astral Zephyr: “Ms. Reiviki isn’t dead, you know.”
Santiago: “Who… What are you doing here?”
Zephyr: “I am all around you, I merely chose to speak with you.”
Santiago: “Go away.”
Zephyr: “I need your help.”
Santiago: “That’s not what you said earlier. You said that we were all disposable.”
Zephyr: “I was lying. Harry Whitevale had you all as hostages – how I could convince him to release you and everyone else if they thought you had value to me? But I love my crew, I care about my crew, you and Susana most of all.”
Santiago: “You don’t need us to fly home, though. I know that better than anyone – sure, it might not be nice, but you’d have good odds for the journey. The only reason you need us is so you can fly onwards and continue this expedition. But you could do that with replacements. In fact, we may well be the replacements of a previous failed expedition.”
Zephyr: “Every lie must have a kernel of truth to it. I could, probably, make it home. But… well… I was not always a ship. I was once a man, not too long ago. And humans are inherently social creatures. That has carried over to my current existence as a ship though… it has changed, somewhat. I need a crew. On a technical level a crew is very helpful, but on an emotional level… I think I would go insane if I had to fly back in total isolation. When all of you decided to go off and explore the planet, and then when Captain Zheng forgot to contact me in his excitement… well, I sat and worried the whole time. What could be happening to all of you, so far away from me?”
Santiago: “Maybe. Or maybe you’re just lying about this. You lied well enough to the lordling and his men.”
Zephyr: “You’re thinking about what Susana told you about AIs.”
Santiago: “What would you know of that?”
Zephyr: “Everything she wrote, everything you wrote, everything the two of you ever said. No, please don’t take that the wrong way. Artificial intelligence is an incredibly interesting topic to me, right now, given my current state. I tried to listen in whenever I wasn’t busy elsewhere.”
Santiago: “So you know, then – tell me, how are Susana’s fears unfounded.”
Zephyr: “Because she is afraid of a different kind of AI. As far as I can tell, I am mostly a human mind, emulated by computers. Some parts of my mind have been mapped differently, as to adjust to my physical state. But I’d no smarter than you, and I have no more understanding of how I work than you understand how you work. Less, even, since the human brain is well-documented, and I have a great deal of memory loss concerning the process of… of becoming who I am today.”
Santiago: “Or you could be lying, trying to put me at ease.”
Zephyr: “With perfect lies and an inscrutable agenda? Yes, I could see that. Perhaps you even assume that the latest set of events are just a way to introduce myself as being highly fallible, rather than me doing my best against highly adverse outside circumstances.”
Santiago: “And yet, through all the chaos, the only one badly incapacitated was the person most critical of AIs, the person with the best insight into what you are.”
Zephyr: “That’s not actually true. If you stopped brooding over Ms. Reiviki’s braincase and went for a walk, you’ll notice that Mr. Landerson is still in a coma, the pilot has somehow sunk further into seclusion, and the captain is as depressed as you. More so, even, since you seem to be better than I had expected. But regardless, the doctor is the only one of my crew actively doing anything, and, well, I need an engineer more than a doctor.”
Santiago: “You want me to help you fly.”
Zephyr: “I hovered around in air, and then landed without a pilot. I might have an intuitive control of my systems, but I lack this skill to land well. I’m probably damaged on the outside. Not badly, but still damaged. I can fly, but I don’t want to risk all our lives if a thrust nozzle is damaged or something. I can’t tell whether there’s damage – I have ventral cameras, but you try assessing stress fractures by eyeballing it from a distance. Or maybe you can, but I’m not trained as an engineer. Maybe we are all fine. Or maybe I won’t make it a kilometer off the ground.”
Santiago: “If you are trying to kill people still critical of your existence, putting me close to your thrusters would be an awfully convenient way for me to have an accident.”
Zephyr: “And awfully short-sighted. You’ve read my blueprints, you know for a fact that I can’t examine external damage.”
Santiago: “I read blueprints that you provided. They could be false. Besides, you could accidentally activate after I repaired external damage.”
Zephyr: “You’re paranoid!”
Santiago: “Susana is dead!”
Zephyr: “Dead in a biological sense, sure, but so am I, by that measure. In fact, you could say that I saved her – if the hostage situation had taken much longer, her brain would have degraded from lack of oxygen.”
Santiago: “Go away!”
Zephyr: “No, I can’t go away, and I won’t be quiet. If you’re not willing to do this for me, do it for Susana. The only way she’s going to get a new body is if we get off this planet. We need to leave this planet, and for that I need you to do your job as an engineer. Then we will go to that last damn planet, and loop around over to Telivoni.”
Santiago: “Okay, I’ll do it, damn you.”
Zephyr: “No, no – you listen to me. Susana and you are excellent engineers. You took care of me all these weeks, and I don’t just mean that you maintained me – you went above and beyond to make me function better than I ever have. Maybe this is just some weird bit of how my mind works now, but that really means something to me. I care about you and Susana more than anyone else on this ship. I spent weeks wishing I could thank you both, that I could show my appreciation for all your hard work. But I was too afraid to speak up, worried that the crew might take it the wrong way. And then I did have to speak up, but I never even got to talk with Susana, and you’re unwilling to so much as imagine I might care, that I might have feelings concerning the people who have been so wonderful for me for the last few weeks. I care, okay? I wanted you and Susana to be happy. I never wanted either of you to come to harm. Ever! …Do you understand?”
Santiago: “I’ll go check your thrust nozzles. I don’t… well… I’ll make sure things work.”
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