ART said, For now.

10

Well, this was just great.

The humans started to disperse, Arada and Overse toward engineering, Ratthi going back to Medical to get the pathology suite ready. Amena helped Thiago clear the meal trays off the table. He touched her shoulder. “My daughter, are you sure you’re all right to speak to this corporate?”

“I’m fine, Uncle.” She was exasperated and did this shrugging shoulders-flopping arms thing that illustrated that very well. “I don’t think Eletra would try to hurt me. And she knows SecUnit is here. And ART.” She glanced at me, guiltily. “It said I could call it ART.”

Of course it did. I felt the hinge of my jaw grind.

Thiago squeezed Amena’s shoulder. “Just be careful.”

“I will,” Amena told him, already heading back into the prep area where the nearest recycler was. “I’m going to get her some fresh clothes, it’ll give me an excuse to go in there.”

Thiago looked at me and I looked at the wall. He said, “I want to thank you for everything you did for Amena.”

Was it grudging or was I just in a terrible mood? I don’t know, I have no idea, so I didn’t respond.

Amena came out with a packet of clothing from the recycler and I followed her down the corridor toward Eletra’s bunkroom. From ART’s camera view, Eletra had gotten up to get another container of water from the bathroom, so it was a good time for Amena to casually stroll in and offer the clothes.

Then ART secured a private channel with me and said, I don’t need your help.

That’s not what you thought when you kidnapped me, I told it.

I meant, you don’t have to speak to me if you don’t want to.

Fine, whatever, I don’t care. I said, Do you want the fucking help or not?

ART dumped its archive on me and I was immediately drowning in the giant mound of data that comprised its second-by-second status checks. Fortunately, after keeping track of the company’s shit-tons of mined data, I knew how to deal with it. I started by defining what the gap in ART’s memory archive might look like, which I was guessing would be a giant interruption in the constant incoming reports from subsystems like life support, navigation, etc. It was tricky, because for ART these were not like discrete reports from connected systems, but more like the sensory input I would get from the pads on the tips of my fingers. It was a lot more complicated than the way my own archives stored data. But once I had an idea of what I was looking for, I constructed a query.

I stopped at the top of the bunkroom corridor and let Amena go on alone. I didn’t want Eletra to see me or to realize I was lurking out here, since I thought that might impede Amena’s ability to get her to talk. Amena reached the hatch and sent Eletra a note on the feed: Hello, I brought you some spare clothes, can I come in?