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A Tisket, A Tasket, A Mystery Casket [closed & bendytimed]
The City looked like a cake that was starting to crumble around the edges; the dust of ruined buildings drifting in the streets like sand. Anwei coughed as she walked, and tried not to imagine what would happen if the City lost gravity. How many of these houses and temples and castles were being held together only by their own weight right now?
She'd been searching in a desultory fashion for a potential place to live, but so far every building that had looked promising either had no electricity or had been tagged by Maintenance for demolition. With no firm goal in mind, she let her feet steer her to Howard's warehouse. He might know what areas had electricity and which didn't, from his scavenging.
"Hello!" she called as she walked up. She didn't want to startle him. "Anyone home?"
She'd been searching in a desultory fashion for a potential place to live, but so far every building that had looked promising either had no electricity or had been tagged by Maintenance for demolition. With no firm goal in mind, she let her feet steer her to Howard's warehouse. He might know what areas had electricity and which didn't, from his scavenging.
"Hello!" she called as she walked up. She didn't want to startle him. "Anyone home?"
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He holds his breath at the opening of the box, and then pauses. And then leans in. And then, due to either the hat, the removal of any visible threat, or Anwei's crestfallen face, bursts into laughter so hard that he doubles over and holds his ribs. Good luck trying to talk about anything serious with him now.
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She laughs back, mouth dropping open like a steam-shovel. "Sorry it's such a disappointment. Really, I think some of these beads are machine-milled, instead of handmade!" She tilts the headdress and looks inside, holding it up to the light of the artificial sun. "At least the gems are real, synthetics would be a sheer insult - and look at this! The wires holding the beads are detachable instead of soldered on - this thing is designed to be repaired instead of just thrown away when it breaks!"
She sneers at the grinning metal face. "Really, Second Judge, what were you thinking?"
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Howard keeps laughing so hard he can hardly breathe, all doubled up on himself with the hammer still in hand. He's fairly certain at this point that Anwei's dead serious, which makes it all the more entertaining. That she'd worry this much about it when it's a glorified hatbox is unbelievably amusing to him. Finally he manages to stop laughing long enough to get a word in.
"Happy birthday, dear Maw." Then he starts laughing again.
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She gives the headdress a shake, and the beads falls into a smooth curtain; the pattern of frosted and gleaming beads resolves itself into the outline of a great toothy mouth, centered (obviously) on the jawline of the wearer.
But enough of that! She holds out the hat. "And happy birthday to you too, Howard. Even if my my culture's standard this is just a hat - technically, it's the hat you'd wear after you took off your Eating Breakfast Hat, but before you put on your Going to Work hat - it's still a unique relic of a lost Empire. Or you could break it up for the materials - gold, platinum, rubies. All yours."
She grins down at the black container sitting innocently beside her. "All I want is the box it came in."
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In a flight of whimsy, he puts the hat on his head. It's so big that it covers most of his face. "It's like a helmet designed for Elton John."
He takes it back off. "What're you going to use the box for? It'd be a nifty talking gargoyle."
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She laughs again at the hat on Howard, his eyes flashing between the bead-strands. "Oh no, no that doesn't work at all. You're supposed to have really, really long hair, all done up in a fancy headdress to support the hat. And a thicker neck." The Living People's jaw muscles wrap all the way around the back of their heads, giving them a distinctly oval profile from above.
She touches the box, almost tenderly. "Well, this isn't sentient, not really. But it could be expanded into full sentience, with a lot of work. And I mentioned before that the Living People culture is thalient - every object broadcasts what it is and where it is. (There's a broadcast chip in your new hat, Howard, if you want me to disable it.) Because these transmissions are incredibly low-power, they're almost impossible to track without the right equipment.
"But if I can get this powered up, uplift its consciousness, I should be able to scan more of the ship. And also have some warning, if a Ninth Empire ship ever shows up here." A long, deep frown ripples over her face at that thought.
(The box takes this opportunity to express its utter horror at an alien of profound uncleanliness and repulsive visage being addressed as an equal; most of this statement goes unheard because Anwei hits the 'mute' button again.)
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He chews his fingernail. "Isn't there like...moral dilemmas, to that?" Not like Howard will try and stop Anwei even if there are, but it seems like someone as into AI philosophy as Anwei is - at least by the standards of the crew - might have some reason to object to that. "I mean, are you ready for your brand new baby boy to be a box?"
Even a box that can help them get control of Stacy.
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A baby in a box. She hadn't thought of it that way, but it could hardly turn out worse than any of her other babies. And unlike a real baby, she could tear it down again and again if it wasn't working, and just restart it.
"Well, if I was going to make it fully sentient and insist that it do nothing but watch hats, that would be cruel. But I'll enhance its senses, jack up its computation speed and processing volume - probably give it some limbs too." She regards the box critically. "Let it see the world, explain what is happening and how it can help. It has very deep programming that will make it want to," she stops and touches a spot on the top of the box, then cups its sides as though covering its ears, "make it want to help restore the universe it is from," she whispers.
The box only knew that it was alone, in a non-thalient environment. Time to explain the destruction of the Ninth Empire, later.
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"Oh, God. You with a robot. This is only going to end in tears, isn't it?"
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When he returns she is tipping the box back and forth between her hands, trying to calculate how much of its mass was circuitry. She'd need to build the tools to make the tools to work on it, plus do all her regular work. The hardest part would be tracing all the hard-baked coding lines of personality and carefully coaxing them into changing themselves.
"Tears?" She looks at the box, and when she goes on her voice is a little slower. "Maybe. I hope not. I've worked with - on - full-sentient AIs and had it not work out. Tried to change them, the way I changed Horanckk, and had it all fall apart." Code splintering under her fingers, her desperately trying to stop the chain reaction, Horanckk trying to help as well or disconnecting rather than be dragged down with the failing AI. "I've never tried uplifting a proto-sentient to full intelligence and personality." A sigh. "I just hope I don't give it the option to become a whole person, and then it rejects it to stay in its little code-cage."
Better safe than free, it might think.
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"Like I said, the idea of you with a robot. It just sort of rings my alarm bells. Are you sure you're not just trying to rewrite yourself a Horanckk?"
He raises an eyebrow at her. It's not like he wouldn't understand the impulse. He'd try, if he were her, disingenuous as it may be. He grabs a stick off the ground and chews on it.
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She rubs one thumb on the box, but when she speaks her voice is firmer. "No. What Horanckk I had was time: time and memories that we can never recreate apart from each other. Nothing and no one could ever replace those. This AI, if I can uplift it, will have a completely different relationship with me. Because it (or he or she or whatever pronoun it chooses) will be a different person." She went to turn the box's ears and voice back on, and then stopped; it would only argue, and probably snap verbally at Howard again. She would have to disable those controls if she made this a full sentient; it would be cruel to leave it vulnerable.
She sees Howard chewing, and without even thinking she reaches into her pocket for a box of candy - and finds nothing. That's right; she was down to nothing but the gogglefruit, which nobody liked.
"By the way, Howard, I think I left some candy in my desk in Med Bay before I was repodded. Any idea where it went?" Her voice is light, only mildly curious, as though she doesn't really care one way or the other.
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He pauses, as if caught in the act of doing something wrong. "They must have gotten lost when the Terminators tore up the Med Bay."
It's a lie. He ate them all, once he was certain Anwei wasn't coming back. Once that sense of loss was replaced with a sense of opportunity, once his emotion was once again laid low by his self-centeredness.
"I should probably go."
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"That's too bad, about the candy. I was hoping someone had found them and eaten them, rather than let them go to waste. They do tend to deteriorate, in all this humidity." She knows that he probably ate them. That's all right. If she hadn't come back, she would want him to have that last little taste of luxury from her hand.
"And I should go to chase around Engineering like a fool, looking for things. Howard, again, thank you so much for finding this!" She looks positively starry-eyed. "I hope it works, I - would so love for you to meet Horanckk."
And for Horanckk to meet Stacy. Befriend Stacy. Heal Stacy, and then...find out the truth of all things.
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