trans_9 | There are worse things out tonight than vampires

"I think a polite magician wouldn't perform experiments on an unknowing test subject in the first place," he said. Even if you didn't ask the subject directly, there were still ways of obtaining consent. "I would have been happy to assist."

Magic wasn't really his thing, anyway; technology was something you could trust, and scientific results could be reliably reproduced without... whatever it was that made magic run. Whatever it was, it seemed fickle at best.

She was distracted by the screen for a moment, where an arrangement of priceless manuscripts was being demolished in a fight between the half-vampire and a rather aggressive little girl.

"I agree; I've never seen you be other than generous with your time.

"Sometimes I think this entire ship and its crew is some sort of test: expose us all to each other, and see what happens. Who will thrive, who will fail, who will run experiments on their fellow sentients, who will fight to defend them. Who will fight to rebuild their world at any cost, and who will not."

"I have more time than most people to be generous with," he said, reflexively. Zouichi wasn't used to accepting compliments.

"It seems like an awfully elaborate and expensive test. I'm sure such an experiment could have been run with a few crew members and a ship a thousandth this size." Plus, he just wasn't keen on the idea of himself as a test subject. "But if it was -- what would be the point? To pass judgment on us? If so, it would make more sense to gather up people from a single world, or a wide variety of aliens."

"Still, your efforts should be appreciated." The way that people kept disappearing around here, he could end up head of Security if he just stuck around long enough.

"There's a phrase that you will hear among all sorts of sentients: conspiracy theory. The idea that there is some plan, some script," she gestured to the screen, "that we are all being led along. It can be very reassuring, to believe that there is a pattern to everything; that it all makes sense to someone, somewhere, even if that someone is a mystery."

"I hope you are receiving acknowledgment for your own, actually," he said. "Every time I speak with you, you seem to be working on a new project. Please be careful to look after your health as well as the others aboard the ship."

[Zouichi as Head of Security? Man, that's all sorts of bad idea :D]

"Well, I do believe conspiracy theories have more credence than the idea of 'fate'," he said. "At least the theorists attribute events to people with motives and agency, rather than some unproven abstract concept."

Not big on the whole destiny deal.

She looked very briefly offended. "Of course I'm taking care of myself. I have a schedule worked out." She pulled out her omnicomm and displayed an agenda, reminding her when she should sleep, eat, excrete, and relax. Then she looked at the agenda a little ruefully. "I have to actually, without someone else to remind me." Someone else being Horanckk, of course.

She shivered. "I really, really do not want to imagine that I am fated to be here. For one thing, that would run counter to the idea that we are somehow Thread Walkers, guiders of our own paths. If we can control our histories and futures, how could this be fate?"

She... worked out when to excrete?

Zouichi glanced at her Omnicomm courteously. "It's very... extensive."

"Or other people are destined to march towards an inevitable, planned fate, while only a few 'Thread Walkers' have the privilege of creating their own paths. Although I suppose it doesn't matter much either way in my case."

Imagine the results if she forgot.

"In the absence of other peoples' guidance, I do tend to overschedule myself. And some of my tasks tend to expand to fill all available time if I let them, like my data extraction project."

She looked at him with a quizzical expression. "Why would you say it doesn't matter? What applies to you should apply to all of us."

"I see. So the schedule prevents that from happening." He didn't know too many people who needed to plan out their periods of eating and sleeping. Usually if they forgot those things, they also forgot to plan.

He blinked. "Oh, I merely meant that regardless of whether it is 'fate' or not, my proper course of action is clearly defined."

"Know thyself; it's a human saying. I know that I work most efficiently when I have a schedule to follow. When I know what to do, and when, and for how long. I've got a lot of things to think about here; we all do. I don't want to get lost in one thing and forget something that might be more important."

Something more important...she still hadn't thanked Zouichi for his gift. On Fle the custom was to accept gifts and then immediately destroy them, as a flamboyant gesture of waste and disregard. She certainly wasn't going to do anything like that, but she needed to think of what to say.

"It must be nice to have that hard-coded assurance of what to do," she smiled. "I envy you that. I hope there never comes a situation where you have to set the mission ahead of human life."

Well, that made sense, sort of. "I never really used schedules very often, back on Earth... any plans I might make were invariably changed. But events here seem somewhat more stable"

He looked puzzled. "It is? Alex seemed to be under the impression that it was a negative thing. At any rate, my mission is to protect human life.... or did you mean the battle against the Ohm?"

On the screen, a great metal sarcophagus closed like a mouth on the half-vampire.

"Don't expect this to last," she warned him. "If you go back and review the ship's history in the omnicomm channel, you and I seem to have arrived in a rare stretch of tranquility. Everything could change, at any moment. I should," she thumbed through her schedule, "I should schedule more weapons practice...sometime."

"You know where you stand; a lot of sentients don't. And because you know that, because you have that center to hold yourself in, you can also know when it is time to move on from that stand. When it's time to let people walk on their own paths, even if it ends in their deaths."

"This may sound strange," he said, "But I'd prefer if it didn't. I am not used to long periods in which I am not expected to do anything." In fact, since being released, it had been almost a constant succession of battles before he'd ended up on the ship.

Zouichi didn't really understand what Anwei was saying. Move from that stand? His directives were almost always clear; that was what made knowing when to disregard orders that much more difficult. He'd only done it once, but he still wasn't sure if it had made any difference.

"I would prefer that they not walk off to their deaths," he said, finally. "However, sometimes it is unavoidable."

"Have you heard the saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it? At best, we can certainly expect Stacy to eventually release a new group of people who will need to be told what's going on. At worst - well, worst could be anything we could imagine, I think."

Anwei stared off into space for a moment. "I'm glad to hear you say that. I've met programmed sentients who had 'people must not be harmed' burnt so deep into their programming that it paralyzed them; you could paralyze them entirely simply by threatening yourself. Your makers obviously took more care with you."

He nodded. "Yes, I understand. But I cannot pursue my original mission, I cannot leave the ship, and there is no one upon whom I can "vent"? It's... a little frustrating."

"I'm sure there are people who would be much more comfortable if I were subject to something like the laws of robotics." Of course, he wasn't a robot, but the same principle probably applied. "Are those limitations standard across the worlds you've visited?"

"Do you mean verbally vent, or something more action oriented?" She supposed the Sensoriums could become tedious, when you knew that any threat could be neutralized with a thought.

"There are no standards," she said, shaking her head. "Every world and ship and space station is different. But I would like to say that the overall trend is towards more freedom, not less. For every world that locks down its AIs so they can do nothing but follow the rules, there are two that prosper by letting them become full citizens, able to contribute everything they have to society. There are the occasional AI criminals, but there are also AIs who will hunt them down. It all balances out - I hope."

How to say that you kind of miss leaving your footprint on people's faces without coming off completely violent and unstable?

"Action-oriented," he said, finally. Might as well be frank about it. "I miss doing what I was created to do."

"I see. So may I assume that Horanckk is also granted freedom in his actions?"

"More missions coming up, hopefully? Ones that require a little more firepower? There are recordings in the Media Library of the Ohm attacks; perhaps you could have the Sensoriums recreate them, and join in as a combatant. Or pull up data on weapons you have never used, and get familiarized with them."

Actually she needed to do that too.

"He was scarily free," she said, with a glint in her eye. "I gave him complete control over himself, and despite what many AI experts say and sell, he did not immediately become an amoral machine. If anything," she sighed, "I regret not giving him more freedom earlier." How many things might have been different, if he had been totally free...well, that was all washed away with Time, mostly.

"I was thinking something along those lines. Although I am a little leery of using them for extended periods of time. And there is one other thing -- training with illusions isn't quite the same as real battle."

He shrugged. "If you accept that AIs are people, with motivations of their own, it stands to reason that some of them will be good and some evil. They are the same as everyone else in that regard. But there's no need to regret your actions now, is there? Horanckk is free to choose as he wishes now."

"That's the way it is, a lot of the time. Make do with what you have, hurry up and wait...learning to wait efficiently, maintain your readiness, is as much a part of the fight as the actual combat."

"Yes, but," she looked at the screen, where streamers of blood flowed down white stone walls, "he was given to me with many, many constraints built in. And there are times when I made mistakes that he could not prevent me from making, because of those constraints. It must have been so frustrating for him." Like watching someone drown under glass, and being unable to save them.

Zouichi regarded her with a look of dry humor. "You sound like you're speaking from experience."

He looked curious. "What sort of mistakes are we talking about?" Horanckk's actions would have had to be limited indeed if he couldn't so much as offer advice to Anwei.

"Oh yes," she said, equally dryly. "You run and run and run, to get where you need to be, to take advantage of a moment's weakness...and then you have to wait, on the edge of the action, for the perfect moment. And you can't rest because you need to be ready to move, and you can't move because you'll be attacked...And sometimes you can't wait for the perfect moment. Sometimes you just have to go, or you lock up and die. What this crew needs for practice is a nice game of freeze tag with live weapons fire thrown in for extra stimulus," she joked. Maybe.

"Mistakes," and she seemed to drift, her eyes rolling slightly outwards. Without her appearing to notice it, her hand dipped into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. Twisting and knotting it between her fingers, in a few moments she held a distorted and spiky but recognizable flower. "Mistakes made because I was acting on incomplete information, or on lies, and Horanckk could not tell me the truth." And some of those lies had come from the inside of her own head, oh yes...

"Fuyu was kind enough to deliver your gift to me," she added, looking up from the flower to his eyes. "It's beautiful. Thank you."

For someone who rarely saw combat, Anwei certainly seemed to know a lot about it. She might have been joking, but at the mention of a weapons fire exercise, Zouichi looked thoughtful. "I'm not sure if trusting everyone with live ammunition would be wise, especially those who aren't used to using firearms, but..."

He watched as Anwei twisted the slip of paper. She was quite clearly withholding information, but if she wasn't willing to discuss it, it really wasn't his place to pry.

He nodded almost absently, still frowning faintly at the paper in her hands. "I'm glad you liked it. There isn't much in the way of clothing choices on the ship, and I thought the color might suit you."

Anwei has lived and breathed the mercenary life for close to two decades now; some of their attitude was bound to wear off. "Perhaps not live ammunition, but something to make the sting of failure actually sting...Maybe someone could cook up some permanent skin dye that could be dispersed via a fired capsule? Being painted orange for a few days would be a good incentive to duck."

She wasn't used to withholding information, either. She came from a dimension where all her mistakes might as well be painted on her forehead in blood. But it would probably be better that when it all came out, Zouichi would be able to honestly say 'I didn't know; she never told me.'

"It does. And Fuyu was kind enough to send me instructions on wearing it. Perhaps, if times stay peaceful, I will actually get a chance to wear it." She squeezed the base of the paper flower and it opened, petals suddenly looking like fangs, and then closed.

Semi-permanent paintball. Well, it was certainly an idea, though he had no idea how popular it would be with the rest of the crew. "Is that something that the Mercenaries practice? War games?"

Zouichi watched as the flower bloomed into a thing with teeth in Anwei's hands. "You're quite good at that, you know. If you ever get tired of balancing accounts, maybe you could make a living as a magician."

In the non-magic sense, of course.

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