This week with Arlene and Jeff:
...As the others went on inside, the two stood watching as the Humvee made the first turn and disappeared from their sight down the driveway. The Clan Queen frowned. "You know I do, but how did you find out that they were thinking about trying for it? They didn't say anything to me about it."
"To me either," the Prime said, putting his arm around his Clan Queen as they walked up the steps.
Diana stopped on the stoop to catch her husband's eye. "If they didn't say anything to you, and they didn't say anything to me, then how did you…"
"The AI squealed on them."
"Are you saying that it eavesdropped and then told you? That seems…"
"Yeah, it does, but according to Helen, the AI follows rules laid down to govern what it has to hear to respond to us properly. Our programmers, in other words, some of my wives, at first, would not allow it to record what it heard until we called it. But with that method, we would sometimes have to bring it up to date, so to speak, for it to understand fully the complicated directions that came out of a conversation or from a compilation of happenings. In other words, it could not respond intelligently until we gave it all the information it needed. That proved to be highly inefficient. So… to allow it to decide better and to be able to serve us more intelligently, it had to be able to retain more of our conversations and happenings in addition to deciding on its own how to better respond - and that naturally involved how much it could tell; at least what it should tell me or us."
His hesitation made Diana wonder just how much of the"us" was involved.
Jeff went on. "It decided that my knowing that the Lieutenants wanting to be part of our Security Service was important enough to inform me about it, so it did. But… it won't tell us or me about any of the private things the two of them did. Although, for instance, it would tell me if they had planned to harm us in some way. I don't want to violate a visitor's privacy, but I do want to be aware of anything that concerns any of us.
"If that's wrong, then so be it. I'm not going to change my mind. And by the way," he said, just to screw with his Clan Queen, "I think that Caldwell just about fucked Cox's brains out."...
Have a goodun;
Roust