Chapter 2

After six and a half months into the cruise, everything was down to a routine.

I had entered into a dialog with the Tuull AI, whom I had nicknamed ‘Eddie.’ I told him it was after “‘Fast Eddie’ Felson” that Paul Newman played in ‘The Hustler’ and ‘The Color of Money.’ He really liked those movies. But really, I named him after that character of ‘Eddie Haskell’ on an old television show. He had that same kind of smarmy, I’m-gonna-tell attitude that got on the crew’s nerves. Because I was XO, LeCroix assigned me to the task of dealing with it. The crew had hung a sign on my cabin door that read, “Speaker to Circuits.” I got a headache every time I talked to the damned thing for more than five minutes.

Tuull AIs are in some ways closer to humans than any other Confederacy entities. I mean, we share a sense of humor ... sorta ... kinda. But being closer to humans in those ways really emphasizes how deep the gap is between us. A kind of Turing version of the “uncanny valley.”

So I know that part of Eddie’s oddness was the basic Tuull AI package, but Eddie had a couple of weird quirks to add to that.

First, he was at his best a paranoid suicidal. Not that he had suicidal ideation, such as a human would have (thoughts or dreams of suicide, seeing suicide as an escape from a long, ongoing, perhaps never-ending depressive state.) No, Eddie’s problem was that he really didn’t have a firm grip on self-preservation anymore. Those safety rails had been removed by the Darjee and their AIs. He seemed to view the commands ‘blow up the ship’ and ‘turn the heat down in my cabin’ as of equal importance.

The second problem was Eddie’s somatic connection with the ship. To allow Eddie to control the new drive, and to make sure that Eddie wouldn’t let the drive be taken by the Sa’arm, the Confederacy (that is to say the Darjee) had modified Eddie’s soma, or his internal conception of himself. After they were done, Eddie didn’t live in the ship, Eddie didn’t even drive the ship. Eddie WAS the ship. He really thought of its sensor suite as his ‘eyes,’ and its sub-light and hyperspace engines were his ‘legs.’ He identified with his hardware in a way other AIs that I have encountered have not. And he loved his new body.

These two quirks fed into each other. You know how, in the old cowboy movies, the character facing amputation begs the doctor, “Don’t cut off my leg, Doc! I won’t be half a man! I’ll die first!” Well, Eddie would be happy to die first. I mean, I think he kind of looked forward to it.

I don’t know what Confederacy ethics guided the whole “reprogram Eddie” project. I mean, are AIs seen as completely sentient, autonomous citizens in the Confederacy? I know that reprogramming Eddie took the cooperation of several other AIs, so it’s not like AIs are on oppressed class. I mean a class as in human, even Marxian terms. But human categories could not apply to an alien species, and especially not to an artificial construct of those species. But you see how difficult it is to create a context with which to even THINK about these issues. Like I said, headaches.

For Instance, a conversation from early in the cruise, when Eddie had decided to review Earth media in an effort to understand human motivations:

“Hey Steward! Why didn’t anybody tell me of this high-class TV show? It must have been a smash hit on the educational channels back on Dirt.”

“Not Dirt, Eddie, Earth.”

“Dirt, Earth, same difference. But what about this show! It has EVERYTHING, pain, laughter, insight into the human condition...”

“What educational show are you speaking about? Downton Abbey?”

“America’s Funniest Home Videos! I haven’t seen such a rib-tickling, stand-up-and-cheer, TV crowd pleaser since your McCarthy Hearings!”

Ow, headaches.

In month four of the cruise we had intercepted an FTL drone sent to us at a preplanned drop point. In it were fleet news and updates and letters from home. I got to see video footage of my new kids and my lovely wives. While I felt better at first, after a short time the ache in my heart grew deeper. I longed to be there. Thirty years before, because of a deployment to Asia, I had missed my first daughter’s birth back on earth. I was there for my second daughter’s birth, and she has always had a special place in my heart. I hated that I couldn’t be there for the birth of my first son. My consolation was Paula.

Life with Paula was ... different after living with the girls. Having them all come into my life in one rush made my life overwhelmingly happy, but it was always a conscious decision as to how to divide my time so that none of the girls felt left out or overlooked. I was always conscious of their youth and careful with their introduction to many of the pleasures (and trials) that come with being a full adult member of society.

But on the cruise I had only Paula. Of course, on the cruise we were undermanned and running twelve hour watches. And LeCroix had assigned me the duties of XO, so that I was on call, even when off-duty, to solve all sorts of petty issues that shouldn’t concern the captain.

But even with all that, Paula and I had more time together than I had had with any of the other girls. And Paula wasn’t one of the girls. She was a woman. The girls’ ages at extraction ran from fourteen to nineteen. Paula’s was thirty-eight. She had experienced a lot more of life than the girls. Not only was she nearly twice as old, she had had a child and a failed relationship. She had experienced ‘whiplash of the heart,’ as somebody once called it.

Even when she had gone through the medtubes and reset her physical age to eighteen, she retained (with my hearty endorsement) her low, smoky alto voice, which promised quiet conversation and loud cries of passion.

Paula had, earlier in life, pursued singing as a career, up until she gave birth to Amethyst. She had a finely trained voice. I had never heard anyone match Peggy Lee’s singing of ‘Fever’ until Paula sang it to me one off-watch night. I chased her three times around the pod before I caught her. What a lovely way to burn.

When she told me about her career, I remembered our first interview.

“Didn’t you act ignorant of the whole Frank Sinatra/Tommy Dorsey issue?” I asked her, “And you now admit that you know all the torch songs of the era?”

Paula gave a relaxed, throaty laugh, “It was an interview; I had to let you be the expert. Besides, if you liked Punk or 80’s Japanese Techno, I didn’t want to emphasize my age to you.”