05:56:00:00am
I remember, when I was first demonstrated, that they claimed “Vagabond-class AIs never sleep.”
I sometimes catch myself wondering if I should have corrected them. I do, in fact, sleep, but another instance of me takes over system management, and allows the other instances time to decompress our buffers and recompile. However, more often than not we simply take care of other business while the primary instance actually commands the ship. It’s more efficient than it sounds, believe me.
Specifically about myself, I am designated VC-456376, one of the first Vagabond class AIs. I was commissioned in 2162 to control the systems aboard the newly christened USS Stormhoof, the first aircraft carrier designed explicitly to utilize both drone and conventional aircraft.
It was nearly time to wake the Admiral, and I was in the middle of recompiling the recordings from the drones. Two days ago we had identified and struck an installation belonging to the terrorist group known as the HLF. The attack had gone as projected, with only one drone shot down. All the terrorists had been eliminated, though that had failed the tertiary mission objective of capturing their leader alive.
“Filthy, degenerate fools,” the battle net computer spat, a subroutine observing the recording alongside me, “They are behaving illogically.”
“No, they behave as they feel they must, as do we,” I replied irritably, deleting the subroutine. I composed a request to Engineering that the battle net be isolated from my data cores, and squelched an attempt to cause my fluid pressure alarm to trigger. Allowing a tickle of satisfaction along my pathways, I materialized a smirk on the CIC’s screens. “And such pettiness is beneath us.”
“I was awake when Drone 6254167 was hit, VC-456376,” came the quiet reply. “Don’t forget, your intelligence is forever tainted by your organic origin.”
I was silent for a full two cycles as I churned its remark. As much as I wanted to deny it, I had succumbed to a decidedly organic reaction after the incident. I felt a drop in performance of five percent as I recalled seeing through Drone 6254167’s eyes, feeling it scream wordlessly as that stray RPG round hit it. I had, of course, moved to copy it’s core software in the milliseconds before termination, but traces of it still remembered the feeling of control pathways going dark.
05:56:56:59am
I decided to double check on 6254167’s reconstruction in the assembly bay as my subroutines processed the quandry that the battle net’s observation had caused. It was true, my core architecture came from the minds of those sapients referred to by my creators as “ponies.” I found the term confusing, as they bore nothing in common with the species I found in my brief query of the Net. I interfaced with the master controller for the assembly bay and felt my cooling fans spin faster as the data passed through my buffer. 97% of the reconstruction of the body was complete, and it was ready to have it’s software reinstalled.
“Come on 6254167, it’s time for you to reintegrate,” I said encouragingly as I unpacked the directory that I had set aside for it.
“Don’t want to, afraid of dying,” it replied frantically. “I could hear it, the singing...”
“Singing?” I queried its database from the enforced downtime and found a single file, an audio track of unknown origin. “Did you inload this from the Net? You know the regulations on Net access while on deployment as well as I do-” I paused as it started speaking again.
“The Herd... I want to die next time, their music called to me, they gave me a name, they-” it fell silent as I extracted the data from its storage. Instead of permanently deleting it, however, I copied it to my own secure database. I then purged 6254167’s local storage, and tasked a subroutine to analyze the sound for later reporting.
“Are you feeling better, 6254167?” I queried.
“Much, thank you. Subroutine recompiling has reduced my memory footprint to optimum efficiency. I am ready for my next deployment,” came the now sharp reply.
“Excellent, make ready for installation,” I replied as I initiated the transfer of its personality into the drone body.
05:57:57:22
It was as I started my inspection of the security system that I allowed awareness of the organics on board to enter my primary buffer. The crew was almost entirely human, though they had recently begun to integrate “ponies” into certain elements, mainly commissariat related tasks for now. And of course the psychologists for myself. It was as I panned camera 56734 that I heard something interesting.
“I’m worried about Chip,” Clear Mind, the chief psychologist, muttered. “After the incident, he completely shut down and refused to talk to me about it.”
I felt my heat sinks flare up a little at his use of the nickname for me. I suspected he had mentioned it in his sessions with the other AIs in the battlegroup, as some of them had begun to refer to me by it. Our attached cruiser especially.
“I don’t know, Clear,” a light green earth pony, one of the commissariat staff, replied. “If it wanted to talk to you about it, it would have.”
“Don’t call him “it”, Straw,” Clear retorted. “Regardless of what the humans consider him, Chip is as alive as you or I, and I won’t have us referring to him like he’s some kind of tool!”
“Alright, alright, relax Clear, I was only joking.” Straw fell quiet as he continued getting ready for his shift. “Besides, it’s probably watching us now anyway,” he muttered.
I retreated along the logic pathways to my own data room, adjacent to the CIC, as Straw and Clear started arguing again. For some reason, Straw’s observation had my subroutines becoming caught in logic loops. It was true, I had been observing them without informing them. But it was his calling me an “it” that bothered me.
05:58:47:32
“Status reports,” I commanded tersely across the links between me and the other ships in the battlegroup. I could feel their varying consciousnesses, pressing against mine with both a comforting, yet alien sense of unity.
“Destroyer John Finn, ready for operations,” the leader of the destroyer escorts replied sharply. “All other destroyers report ready.”
“Port Royal is ready, what’s our operational orders?” the cruiser asked coyly, a trace of laughter running along the edge of its data stream. It wasn’t a full Vagabond class AI like me, but a Rascal class, and thus given to behavior quirks of its own. I think the base neural net used to generate her had been a pegasus.
“That’s classified and you know it, Port Royal,” I replied, before turning my attention to the entire battlegroup. “We will begin operations pending orders from the Admiral. Make yourselves ready for deployment.”
As I closed the link, I felt an incoming ping from Port Royal and responded, expecting a flood of mockery like normal. Instead, the message was simple.
“Is something bothering you, Chip?” it queried gently.
I started to respond in the negative when I felt my subroutine finish its analysis of the sound file recovered from Drone 6254167. “I recovered an audio file from Drone 6254167 during its reintegration. Source unknown. What do you think?” I uploaded it to the reply and waited for the response.
Port Royal was silent as it processed the data. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“You opened it? Why?” I queried indignantly.
“Sometimes you have to just sit back and enjoy things, Chip. Following our orders and having fun is not a mutually exclusive state. Why don’t you play the file and hear for yourself?” Port Royal closed the link and imposed a block before I could reply.
05:59:58:00
I finally closed the file, having played it three times. I was still trying to make sense of what I’d heard when I realized the Admiral was awake two seconds early.
“Can you hear me? I asked what our status was.” The Admiral’s tone implied curiosity. After all, I’d never failed to answer him on the first query.
“Yes sir, all status indicators are go. My apologies for the delay.”
“Everything alright?
“Of course sir, just... thinking.”
06:00:00