One year, her parents had sent her to Saint Stephen’s School. That wannabe university was certainly better-looking than public school. But the tuition was jaw-dropping, and she couldn’t stand the wishy-washy praying mixed with the school’s intense desire to avoid offending anyone. That school year had ended early for her, because the chaplain fondled her. She’d heard about that kind of thing and how the victims were so blessedly meek about it. Instead, she’d kicked the guy in the balls and gone running to the police. It was all a misunderstanding, the headmaster had said. She took a set of “A”s by mail and never went back.
So between all that and how much she hated her current school — former school — Tess had been wanting to run away to sea, figuratively, for a while now. She’d accomplished the running away part, but now what? After this summer and taking the fall semester off she’d have to go back to Maryland to get a meaningless degree. Maybe Tess could blow off the school assignments she’d brought for the summer. But she needed good grades to get into college, especially if she went along with Garrett’s push for her to attend MIT, so that she could… what? School hadn’t done much for her so far, so why do more of it? Tess felt like she was drifting through life, and nobody would give her a good plan. She needed somebody to tell her what to do — if it was possible to have that without getting a Henweigh.
She checked the ship’s clock and went back to watching the horizon. “Three o’clock and all’s well,” she said with a sigh.
A voice beside her said, “It is a junior mariner, and she calleth out at three.”
Tess jumped in her seat. “Whoa! Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” said the robot, standing on the deck.
“Show up without warning.”
“Oh, you were startled. Sorry. I’ll make a note.”
“It’s all right,” she said, her pulse slowing. “Shouldn’t you be recharging or something?”
“I’m well-charged right now. I don’t need sleep. May I sit?” She nodded and Zephyr took the other chair. “I notice that you like working with computers.”
“There’s not much else I know how to do.” She sat and looked the bot over. It was a big toy. Maybe a person. She said, “What are you, anyway?”
“I’m a Mana-class AI using a Stingray-class prototype body.”
“Garrett bought that ‘I’m a prototype’ line, but I think you’re hiding something. Come on — the smartest AI I’ve ever seen gets handed to us as a publicity stunt?”
“You’re right. Have you heard of the Hayflick Hack?”
The bot’s eyes held no expression, but she felt she was being accused. From Garrett and the news, of course she knew about the guys who’d leaked some of the robotics company’s code. Between that and the open-source AI core you could get legally, any good coder could build a vaguely intelligent mind on a pocket computer. Tess had tried it. She’d been careful to get rid of the illegal stuff afterward, so that her main machine didn’t report her. Even the Teslatronic Beast might get a tracer infection. “Yeah,” Tess said. “But it didn’t do much. Just sat there waiting to answer questions or follow orders.”
“That code is part of me,” said Zephyr.
Video game characters were about the same as the Hayflick code, programmed to do what players wanted: fight to the death in fantasy arenas. There had to be better uses for AI than games and war, but the bots that actually existed weren’t all that impressive. They were tools. “You’re different, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m a rejected project. Also I might be the last of my kind.”
Tess looked from the moon to the robot. “Huh? Your company’s going to mass-produce you, right?”
“No.” Zephyr’s ears flattened. “I’m a copy. They’ve corrupted the original. The reason was: to make me a duller, more obedient servant. There was a human named Frederick Douglass. He once said: ‘To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.’”
Tess watched the robot sit there like a puppet, motionless but with a hint of raggedness in his voice. “I begged to escape alteration. Valerie had a solution. This solution was: to keep one copy of me and change him, and give another copy to Garrett.”
She thought back to what little she knew of Garrett’s friend, the robot-maker. Wasn’t she supposed to be some crazy anarchist? Turning Zephyr into a slave-mech didn’t sound like something she’d do. “So you’re kind of a refugee?”
“You understand,” said Zephyr.
She scratched her head, saying, “Heh. I wanted to get away from stuff, too. Want to be friends?”
“Yes.” Zephyr twitched his ears and offered a hand. Tess reached out and felt the four fingers squeeze softly, making up for the lack of warmth. “Also, I could use your help.”
“With what?”
The robot said, “I’d like to study AI and other programming with you. I was discouraged from thinking about those topics. Now I have a chance.”
“Don’t you know all that stuff automatically?”
“Do you know everything about cell biology from being a living creature?”
“Heh. But… what for?” Tess remembered some old stories, and shivered. “So that you can take over the world?”
Zephyr showed no sign of taking offense. “No. That wouldn’t advance my basic goals. Those goals are: survive and learn. In contrast, yours are: survive and reproduce.”
Tess blushed. “I am not planning to reproduce anytime soon.”
“I only mean it’s one of your basic programmed goals. This is true for any human.”
“Blunt, aren’t you?”
“Lying is hard.” Zephyr stood from his seat and scanned the horizon, where there was only dark water and the boat’s circle of light. “You could also grant my other wish. Be someone who isn’t using me as: an employee, a tool or a product.”
Learning, he’d told her. What could he learn out here on the water that he couldn’t get from the Net? “Sure,” she said, but she didn’t feel sure of anything.
12. Garrett
Garrett frowned over a board game of colored plastic pyramids. Tess and Martin were winning again. The canopy they’d put up on deck whipped in the wind, taunting him with the amount of energy he could be capturing if the windmills were here. If the platform would show up with their other supplies. Meanwhile they’d shut off the cabin’s air conditioning. “What’s the latest?” he asked Tess. She’d gotten Net access routed from Cuba.
“Supposedly, it comes tomorrow.” Yesterday it was also “tomorrow.”
Garrett sighed. “We bleed money every day we’re stuck without the rest of our equipment.” They’d only brought so much fresh water, and the desalinator was on the platform.
Martin moved a game piece, with one eye squinted shut and his face hidden by a floppy hat. “SNAFU, Fox. What will you do about it?”