trans_9 | A Tisket, A Tasket, A Mystery Casket [closed & bendytimed]

She eyed him consideringly; he did look a little overworked. However (just like herself) she suspected that he preferred to do everything himself, because only he could do it just right. Was Med Bay that short of people?

"I hope not," she said, clambering after him and turning sideways to squeeze between the piles. "That enzymatic stuff tastes terrible once it goes bad, and who knows what sort of environment it was stored in before it got here?"

"Oh, god, you don't mean people seriously make that? Gross." Howard's pulls his best 'icked out' face, which is pretty icked out.

"Anyway, it's this thing." He undoes the lock on his pantry and opens it up to reveal a black box. A morbid mind, like Howard's, would think it could easily fit a human head. "I got it running for like a minute, and it told me I wasn't qualified to open it and called me names. I think you asked me about something like this once."

"It's disgusting," she confided. "It's supposed to break down the proteins before they stick to your teeth, but the taste isn't worth the results."

She earned those proteins, and she wants to enjoy every one!

Anwei's mouth shaped a silent O, and she pulled out an elaborate flashlight and shone a glaring light on the box. She leaned close, carefully examining its rough surface without touching it. Then she turned off the light, turned to Howard and just beamed.

"It is. It is, it's a Ninth Empire storage box! Howard, you're wonderful! Can I have it? Should I open it now?" She kept grinning all through this quick-fire interrogation in a slightly unsettling way.

"Maw, have you ever learned when to drop a subject? Because when I make this face," he repeats his earlier icked expression, "that generally means drop the subject of getting blood off your teeth."

Howard was hoping for a flicker of recognition on Anwei's face, and is rather taken aback at the glee. He looks for an instant like he isn't sure how to respond.

"It's all yours, Maw. We should probably take it outside, though. It threatened to blow me to kingdom come for being a dirty alien." He curls his lip a bit. "I'm not even dirty."

"Sorry," she said contritely, and she was. It was so hard to read expressions on human faces when they all had such teeny-tiny mouths that barely moved! (At least, in comparison to hers)

Anwei has all the subtlety of a brick when she gets excited about something.

"Oh, don't worry about that," she said, carefully brushing her fingertips against the side of the box; a hint of blue lettering flashed on its surface on her touch. "This is a civilian box, not military, and almost certainly not a full AI. It isn't authorized to blow you up."

A beat, and then she clapped both her hands over her mouth. "Oof! Oh, I mean, it isn't going to blow you up, nobody is going to blow anyone up! And you aren't dirty!"

The box burbled a few random syllables, in which the only understandable phrase was 'talking-meat.'

"Think of it as your welcome home gift."

Howard gives Anwei a skeptical look, but it's tempered by a smile. Anyone else would just get scorn for such giddiness, but this is the alien lady who gave him candy and pens, so he can cut her a little slack. "That's right. I shower every day. Sometimes twice."

Still, he doesn't feel comfortable tampering with the thing in his kitchen. "So what are you going to do with it?"

There wasn't room to bow or to curtsy, so she gave a mock-bow, hands folded. "Thank you, Howard. It's the best gift I've received in a long time." To herself: "And I don't even have to smash it..."

And when had Stacy become home for her?

"Well," she interlaces her fingers and squeezes, "first I need to establish my identity to this box. Then, since I'm activating it in an environment that isn't thalient, I have to convince it not to lock itself down and go inert on me. Then, I can get it to open."

Carefully, she takes the box down and holds it balanced flat on one hand; with the other hand, she starts touching the top and sides of it, and blue sketch-strokes seem to spiral under its surface as she does. "This may take a while..."

He is glad she likes it, really. In a way it makes him feel as if he's paying back the gift of the pens she left him, and the candies before he went to Galilee.

"A while like a few minutes, or a while like a few hours? Because if it's going to be a few hours I'm drafting you into helping me clean this place up." He finds a pen and starts chewing on it, watching her intently, wondering how to mimic what she's doing if it's something clearly based on species.

"What do you think's in it?"

Oh, Howard. This could pay back for everything - depending what's in the box.

"Probably a few minutes - if it's too low on power to respond, I'll put it somewhere to charge and work on it later." Her fingers have stopped spiraling and are now moving to trace lines across the top of the box, feeling for controls that are only the faintest roughness-on-roughness of the box's surface.

A faint, tinny voice said, "-ore me to the Empire or face the wrath of-" and then went silent.

"Well, that's good. At least I can verbally interrogate it, since I don't have any appropriate equipment to probe it with." She'd thought it too much of a long shot, building a diagnostics rig for something she might never find.

She shook the box between her hands, and felt no motion, heard nothing. As she suspected: the innards of the box were probably frozen in a stasis field. "Personal property, maybe: clothes, tools. I'd like it to be full of information-stores and weapons. Or-" she held the box out, studied it. A box this size shouldn't have any transspacial qualities, but you might be able to fit a baby in there. A toothy, dangerous Living People baby.

"Just in case," she stepped back and sat on the back of the couch, "I think I will take this outside and open it. Come along if you like. Bring a hammer."

"So that's an AI, right? I mean, I'm guessing that's not what I'm looking for when I'm looking for Horanckk for you."

He finds a hammer, trying with minimal success to study Anwei's face. She isn't telling him everything, but that's typical. No one ever does. He's alright with that, because it means people expect him to know less than he does, but Anwei knows him well enough to know that he's generally more aware of things than he lets on.

He follows her outside to the backyard, still scorched by a few experiments gone wrong (oh hai roller fridge). "Better question. What are you hoping is in there, and what's the hammer for?"

"Well no, technically, this is an LMI - Limited Artificial Intelligence. It probably isn't much smarter than a Earth rat, but it has language and can use it within certain rules. I'll have to see if I can make it smarter," she says, the corners of her mouth twitching. "Horanckk couldn't fit his code into a box this size, I think; even if he could, he'd never trap himself in something that couldn't move. I'd expect him to be wearing a really powerful probe-body, with lots of manipulators." Or, alternatively, to just park himself somewhere in Stacy out of sight, and stealthprogramcharm his way into her good graces.

She settles in the backyard facing the wall, holding the box in front of her. She frowns faintly, but her hand keeps moving in its regular circuit over the box. "Ideally there's be a big fat data file called What The Ohm Are Up to, or Where Horanckk Is Waiting For You. At least I hope there's something to repay for your efforts in finding the box. But if something comes out that looks sort of like a large tailless monkey, but with a really big mustache, and I can't grab it - whack at it with the hammer. it's non-sentient, it'll go for the motion instead of for you, and then I can pin it down."

Anwei's School of Infant Care, Lesson One: Bring a Hammer.

"Uh, big difference. Rats can't threaten to blow people up, whether they mean it or not." He makes a mental note to second-guess any Iron Mans he sees.

"The Ohm aren't our problem. Me and a few other people got in contact with them and it turns out they're just idiots. The Daligig are the ones you need to watch out for." He figures Anwei's a good enough person to trust with this information. "We used a dead Ohm shrike in the medical bay to build a rapport, but it's too strong to do for too long. They don't even understand that we're in a war."

Great. Mustached monkeys. Howard clenches the hammer and takes a seat.

"I'll apologize in advance for anything foul it says or threatens - simply because if I apologize after it's fully awake, it may go mute on us."

She turns to Howard and her jaw drops, her hand freezing on the box's surface. "You contacted the Ohm? And they don't know they're in a war? Now what does that mean - that they haven't even noticed that people are fighting them? Or that they're doing something they don't think is a war?"

They're clearly building a hyperspace bypass, silly!

The box takes this chance to bray like an outraged bugle, "Your children's children will be flayed alive for this insult! Unhand me, you filthy, verminous-"

Anwei's fingers ripple, and the voice suddenly drops in volume to a tenth of what it had been. It was still talking, or rather yelling, but they can barely hear it.

"Well, at least I found the mute button."

"I think their general idea is that a war is something that happens between people. What they're doing now is more of..." He bites his lip and folds his arms, staring at the hammer's head. "Pest control, I guess. The same way we'd feel about killing off too many feral animals that were dangerous."

He leans in a bit closer to the box. "You're sure you're still able to make out what it's saying like that?"

She makes an angry squeaking noise between her teeth - the equivalent of spitting, maybe. "So I suppose when Dhianeila said they felt sad and angry, it was the anger you'd feel at an obstruction - not an enemy. That's going to be a challenge - how to convince the person mowing the lawn that the grass is sentient, and doesn't want to be mowed."

She tilts the box a little bit; her right hand is still flat-tight against the bottom of it, as she silently pulses signals from the chips in that hand. "I think..." and she slides a finger along the top of the box.

The box's 'volume' goes up, and its tone is suddenly different: whining, groveling even. "Madam, I abase myself! My ignorance of your presence is inexcusable! I plead with you, do not destroy me-"

She turns down the volume again and suddenly sniffles, loudly. If Howard looks, he'll see that her eyes are suddenly a little too wet.

"Sorry," she says. "He just - has the standard AI voice pattern. He sounded exactly like Horanckk for a moment there." Another sniffle. "But it knows I'm Living People, and so now I can get it open."

She glances at the hammer. Get ready, Howard.

"Pretty much. I mean, Sakura was my partner in crime for doing most of this, or we'd have tried to make contact again. She got repodded, though." There's a note of genuine sadness in Howard's voice. Sakura was, oddly enough, someone he actually connected with.

And as such, with that on his mind he makes no mention of Anwei's temporary overflow of emotion. He gets it. He doesn't like that he gets it, but he understands.

He clutches the hammer close. "Ready when you are."

"I'm sorry. I liked Sakura, she just seemed to fit so well here." The way that Anwei never quite had. "Maybe you should write down what happened, just in case."

In case what, was pretty obvious.

She turns her head and speaks to the box, and her voice immediately changes: it is haughty, condescending. The voice of an aristocrat speaking to someone - or something - barely worth speaking to. "I am Anwei Ayles, of the Ayles family and the White Line. Do you acknowledge my power over you?" Her arm was tensed, ready to throw the box as far as she could, if necessary.

The box murmurs, and she turns its volume back up. "I submit myself," it moans, and Anwei makes a grimace of distaste, narrow tongue flicking out over her bottom teeth.

She intones, "You will display, accurately and completely, the definition and nature of your contents to me, now."

The box's top suddenly seems to swirl with spirals of jagged text, like a mouth with infinitely receding teeth, and Anwei visibly relaxes as her eyes swerve to read it.

"I don't think we'll need that hammer, Howard. Box, open."

The top of the box seems to sink down and vanish, and inside is nothing but impenetrable blackness.

"She was the last good part of med bay. After you left, that is. And after Rory turned out to be a backstabbing fuckhead." Not that that was Rory's fault, but Howard refuses to believe he's being unreasonable about someone being repodded against their will. It's clearly a betrayal of the highest order and no amount of logic will stand up to the absolute tidal wave of hurt it caused.

"I have a journal, you know. If I drop dead one day you have my permission to find it, read everything written in orange pen, and burn it. And then don't read anything else." If Anwei can find it, that is. It's hidden in his room at the Inn. "Everything I know about the ship and the war is in orange."

He does not, however, let go of the hammer, watching the letters. Wow, way to trigger a massive headache, looking at those. He switches to looking at Anwei instead.

She looks at him with one eye; the other eye remains locked on the box. "Rory too? At this rate you and I are going to be the only ones left to run Med Bay."

Howard can steal the patients' belongings, and Anwei can take care of any amputated limbs!

"I'll burn it if you want. Hopefully I'll never have to." Hopefully Howard will be around, scheming and hoarding and totally, vitally alive, for a long, long time.

Her eyes stop spinning. She didn't think this LMI was smart enough to be used as a trap for her - besides, what were the changes of the Empire setting traps in a box randomly salvaged from a decaying universe? Unless there had been other Living People here, and they set the trap...

Slowly, carefully, she reaches into the box, and feels cold metal, elaborately engraved. She gives a deep breath (almost a sigh).

What Anwei takes out of the box looks like what a Cenobite showgirl would wear in Hell's version of Las Vegas. A high silvery crest threaded with veins of red gold, every vein distinct and individual, and capped with a grinning Living People face, clenching something in its teeth. From this crest streams hundreds of strands of gold beads, gleaming or frosted or carefully granulated, and all running through a broad golden ring studded with faceted red chisel-edged spikes the color of blood. The beads flow like water, and when she shakes the thing (the unforgettable ting-ting of gold on gold) the bead-curtain hanging from the ring shows a pattern for one instant – and then it's gone.

She takes the thing in two hands, turns it over and looks inside it (the spikes flash red as she does, like rubies) and then looks at Howard with a glum expression.

"Howard, I don't think this hat is going to fit you at all. Do you still want it?"

"He came back. And that douchebag Dr. Beckett joined up for the sole sake of harassing me and calling Security on me whenever he's having a bad day." And this clearly has nothing to do with Howard stealing from the Medical Bay and hoarding things away.

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.

She arches one eyebrow. "How unpleasant for you. I hope that Dr. Hussein knows what is going on." Because if the harassment was unjustified, she'd stop it surely. And if it wasn't, well, she hopefully would at least minimize it.

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?"

"I'd rather she didn't." And that's as close as Anwei will get to an admission of guilt.

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.

She purses her lips at his words, a single wave rippling from the center of her mouth outwards and back. It sounded like Howard had been Up To Something, but she couldn't shake the feeling that if he'd been doing anything particularly bad, the ship's AI would have stopped him.

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."

"It's not like I'm going to be entering myself in any beauty pageants, don't worry. Maybe if someone in the City starts putting on drag shows I can sell this thing." He pokes at it. Precious gems don't have much use on Stacy, but on shore leaves they can probably fetch a handsome sum.

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."

Edited 2012-04-28 06:26 (UTC)

"I'd make sure you get a good price for it. Play up the lost relic angle."

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.)

"Unfortunately, I don't look like much of an antiques dealer. No one's going to take my word on that, but you can tell a ruby when you see it. I mean, if you're a jeweler, at least."

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.

She considers - rubies weren't particularly valuable on Fle, which was why they were on this thoroughly undistinguished hat. "They're big rubies, too. Mind those front edges, they're sharp. You could probably cut off half of each one, leave the rest still attached, if you weren't selling it in one piece." She snaps her fingers. "You know who knows gems? Maridian, here on board. Armored fellow, great sense of humor, long ears - he can probably cut them if you want."

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.

"No, I don't know him. I guess I'll have to find him as soon as ID what most of these gems are." He takes the hat off, walks in and sets it on the kitchen table, on top of a bunch of newspapers and a dismantled blender, before he comes back out.

"Oh, God. You with a robot. This is only going to end in tears, isn't it?"

"I expect they're all some sort of corundum. Your basic aluminum oxide gemstones. A more expensive piece would probably have asteroid gems, like spinels. Anything so long as it was red - or maybe pink." Pink for marrow.

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.

He finds a trashbag for the hat. Something nice and innocuous to hide it in, so that whomever stealing his stuff won't notice it and take it. He really needs to set up another trap for that person, they've somehow evaded the last few and he's been losing countless hours of sleep fretting over his food supplies.

"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.

A better hat would have an audio chip to warn if it was stolen, and a built-in scalp massager, and a memo-taking system. For Howard's peace of mind, perhaps it's better that the hat will remain a passive object, part of his horde.

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.

He nods. In a way it's comforting to know that Anwei has that sort of perspective on things, and he has to agree - friendship is not a set of personality traits that happen to be compatible, but a shared history. Like what he has with Orc, or Zouichi, that could not be replicated without the circumstances that led to them. Or even what he has with Anwei herself.

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."

She even has perspective on why she prefers AIs to people, sometimes: people die, and machines don't. You can't hold an AI captive, because they can just duplicate themselves. After how love had been used to beat her flat, she was determined to never let her heart be held hostage again.

"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.

"Hope it works too. For your sake, so you don't spend too many late nights staring at your computer screen. That's super bad for your eyes." He gives Anwei a little mock salute and disappears into the house.

A Tisket, A Tasket, A Mystery Casket [closed & bendytimed]

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