trans_9 | There are worse things out tonight than vampires

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.

"Practice makes perfect - and knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied. Unfortunately I think a lot of the crew aren't really motivated to practice, or to train. And I don't think I am the one to inspire them." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Too short. You, on the other hand, I can definitely see leading the troops into battle."

She looked down at the flower in her hand as though she wasn't quite aware of having made it. "Oh? Somehow I doubt I'd hold my own against the magicians here." She flexed her fingers again to make the flower gape and close. "This actually is used as a sort of wrapping paper. For giving tiny presents."

He shook his head. "I appreciate the vote of confidence, Anwei, but I doubt I'd make a good leader. I'm too impulsive. And there were Synthetic Humans far better suited than me for such a job." There was one other thing -- he wasn't sure he wanted to take responsibility for looking after anyone else, at least not in an official capacity. He'd feel doubly at fault if anyone were harmed.

"Maybe. But in worlds without magic, I'm sure you'd be quite a hit. Where did you learn it?"

She gave a toss of her head that was not quite a shrug. "If you're looking for leadership training, though, you have a fascinating group of people to choose as role models."

Her fingers started to unravel the flower as she spoke, turning it back into a crinkled sheet. "Oh, I learned all sorts of little skills from my parents. Little skills, not big ones; very few of them turned out to be practical once I left Fle. That's a problem with old, entrenched civilizations; they teach their children only what they think is useful, and no more. They even teach them that they are the only civilized ones." Her fingers smoothed the paper, folded it in thirds, and tucked it back into her pocket.

"Little skills can make quite a large difference, though," he said. "For instance, being able to read body language, or determine when someone is embellishing the truth. Even whether or not you can trust an individual."

He thought back to Howard -- maybe if he'd grown up in the presence of more human beings, he'd have been able to put his finger on why Howard's speech sometimes made him uncomfortable. Judging a person's character, of course, not was he'd been raised to do, but outside the confines of his mission, it was something he had no doubt he'd have to do much more often.

"Is your expressiveness one of the things that they taught you?"

"Body language takes a long time to learn - and it varies from species to species, individual to individual. You might see me standing with my back stiff, and interpret it as rage - while it might actually be fear, or simply that I have a sore back. Some people never learn to read it, and some people lie with it very well."

She laughed almost silently. "A lot of Living People expressions don't carry over very well to humans - too much lip, literally." She yawned as though to demonstrate, her white smile opening like a snake's and then closing. "No, I was taught to act by my parents: to pretend to be sad, be happy, be content. I gave up a lot of that when I left, and I don't really regret it. I'd rather be myself, as I made myself, and not as they made me."

He shrugged. "Among humans at least, I hear it's harder to fake one's emotions. Many aspects of body language are involuntary. For instance, I was told that a sign of honesty was baring your palms to the person you're addressing. But people who make use of this gesture to deceive often end up telling the truth significantly more often than if they'd never tried to deceive the listener at all."

Anwei certainly had a wide smile. "That seems to be a common sentiment among the people on this ship. A wish to be true to oneself, regardless of upbringing or circumstance."

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