Chapter 4
Sarya is somehow able to stumble a good two hundred meters down the corridor with zero awareness of her surroundings. She is trembling, hands crammed in pockets to keep them under control. The bright new world of the Network is an out-of-focus mishmash of brilliant irrelevance.
I know you, Sarya the Daughter.
She stomps through advertisements and throngs of fellow citizens without taking notice of either, taking turns at random. She has no idea where she is going and she’s never cared less. It’s happened, the thing she has most desired—and the thing her mother has most feared. For the first time in her life, Sarya has been recognized. And not just her species, which would be notable enough, but her own personal identity. This Observer knows as much about her as her own mother—
No. He knows more.
He knows where she came from. Her mother has told her—angrily, and more than once—that not even she knows that. Only Sarya’s dimmest and most distant memories give her any kind of direction, and they are so faint as to be useless. She remembers… warmth? Light? She remembers—no. She remembers nothing, and her mother knows nothing because she said so and Mothers do not lie to Daughters, it’s right in the Widow proverbs, and this has been the greatest frustration of her life—
It’s too much to think about and she slows to a halt in the first empty corridor she comes to. She backs against the wall, feeling for it with quivering fingers. Still shaking, heart still thumping, she sinks into a crouch and slides hands into tangled hair. She very nearly pulls up her Network interface to send a message to her mother, but then she remembers that her mother is asleep and halts that line of action immediately. One does not disturb a dormant Widow, not even for matters of life and and/or death. And now that she’s thinking about it, this would be a terrible thing to tell her mother. She knows how her mother takes Human-talk—having barely escaped discipline just hours ago—and this is the worst Human-talk of all: talk of discovery. Her mother would be—well, angry is best-case. Worst case, well… people could literally die.
But that’s exaggeration, points out another part of her mind. Surely it’s the responsible thing to do, to tell her mother. It’s only, let’s see, six hours until her mother wakes. She’s waited six hours to go home before. It’s practically the story of a Daughter’s life, finding things to do until it’s safe to go home. She’ll just avoid Dock A until she’s sure this mysterious friend is gone—and of course avoid her apartment until Mother is awake. It’s not like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, right? Giant group minds recognize Humans they know every day—
Listen to her, says yet another part of her mind. Mewling like prey instead of seizing opportunity like a hunter! Is she not the daughter of a Widow? And what would a Widow do in this scenario?
What would a Human do?
She sinks farther toward the ground, her mind flipping between extremes. “Goddess help me,” she whispers, and the empty corridor swallows her words.
“Finally,” says a voice in her ears.
And she is on her feet like a shot, glancing up the corridor in both directions. No one.
“And here I thought you’d forgotten me!” says the voice.
She can feel her heartbeat accelerating again. What powers does this Observer have? He can communicate telepathically across a billion minds. He refers to the central intelligence of Watertower Station as low-Tier. He clearly has staggering mental capabilities. Can He insert His voice into her mind from the observation deck, from that giant ice ship? And why does He sound so familiar? It’s as if she’s heard this voice her entire—
Oh.
*[Sarya’*s Little Helper online]**, says the corner of her overlay.
“I was getting super worried about you, best friend!” says the more-than-slightly grating voice in her earbuds. “How do you like hearing me outside your room, by the way? You’ve got nifty ear thingies now! Now I’m in this ear… and now I’m in this ear! It’s very comfy in here, by the way—very roomy. I just felt like I didn’t have enough space to think in the old one, you know what I mean? Sometimes you’d ask me a question and by the time you got to the end of it I’d have forgotten the beginning. Not anymore though! Go ahead, try it. Ask me the longest question you can think of.”
Sarya leans against the wall again, attempting to slow her heart manually. Thankfully, amidst the clamor in her head, she finds she has capacity for a bit of good old annoyance.
“You did call me, right?” asks Helper. “You said help—which is my name, practically—and here I am! And by the way I’m glad you did because I’ve been waiting all day to ask you about—”
“Helper,” she says, slowly and carefully. She can’t help herself. She has to tell someone, and here’s someone now. “My mother—I—” she says, then backs up. “I just saw—there was—”
But there’s no point in finishing any of those sentences. Helper won’t understand. The small intelligence is both self-aware and conversational, but then you could say that about practically anything connected to the Network. The Sanitation Station she uses every morning is both those things, but you wouldn’t want to have a conversation with it. Helper’s Tier—like that of the Sanitation Station, or any other tool on Watertower—is low. Actually low, sub-Legal-personhood low. Which means there is no way it could understand the significance of what has just occurred. It doesn’t even know she’s Human, because she learned at a very young age that it is completely unable to keep its virtual mouth shut. There would be so much to explain before she could get to the important part, to perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened to her—
I know where you came from.
Oh goddess.
“So… how did your friend like her story?” asks Helper in its relentlessly chipper voice. “That’s what I’ve been dying to ask. I honestly think it was some of my best work. Did she love it? I bet she loved it. She didn’t hate it, did she? You know what, actually I think it would be best if you just told me the exact words she used, in the order she used them. I’ll interpret her emotions myself. No—yes. Okay, yes. I’m ready. Go.”
With the things currently on Sarya’s mind, keeping a sub-Legal intelligence happy is somewhere far down at the end of the list. Still, it is never a bad idea to keep one’s tools content, and she has told this lie enough that it has become automatic. Her friend always says the same thing, after all. “She said, um—” Sarya swallows as she pictures that golden double gaze. Oh, hello. It’s you. “She said… I love this.”
Helper is silent for long enough that Sarya wonders if it has completely shut down. Then, in a quiet voice: “I knew it.” And next, like a rising flood, comes the unstoppable torrent of words. “See, that right there makes it all worth it,” the little intelligence says, a quick [Satisfaction] drifting past Sarya’s eyes. “You know, I didn’t think I was going to like all this Network research. It’s just—well, it’s not much fun. I mean, every sighting is the same—no intrigue, no sudden twists. Just everybody dying at the end, you know? Where’s the story in that? But hearing that—”
“So now that you know,” says Sarya carefully, “we can save this for another—”
“And they’re all so old. I mean, the most recent sighting is… hold on… seven—eight hundred years ago. No wait, that one was a hoax. I mean, I still made a good story out of it—you remember the one with all the selfless sacrifice at the end? Your friend loved that one too, I remember. No, the most recent real one is… wow. Over a thousand years ago. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So. That’s a long time, right? I mean, I could switch to another species any time, I really could. I could research, say… Spaal! Your species. Great species. Way more boring than the Humans, maybe, but at least it hasn’t been a thousand years since anybody’s seen a real live one.”
Her species. Right. If only you knew, Helper. You and the twenty-four thousand citizens of Watertower Station who walk/scuttle/roll past a real live one every day. They would be terrified to learn that Sarya the Daughter—Sarya the Human—has lived here her entire life, as real and live as they come. And if she can do it, so can others. And there are others! Observer, this giant group mind, literally just told her that. Obviously not in words, exactly, but pretty much.
I know where you came from.
“But anyway,” continues Helper, each syllable reminding Sarya why she keeps the little intelligence on mute most of the time. “I don’t say that to make you think I’m tired of searching for Human sightings, of course. I could do this all day, because you know why? Because when your friend hears my stories and says things like that, like I love this, I just feel this—I can’t even describe it. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever fulfilled your primary motivation but it is just the most—”
“Okay, so,” Sarya says, more firmly. She’s got her blades back under her now, but she really needs her full concentration. “Helper, you’re great,” she says. “We’ve established that. Great job. She loved your story. She, um, loves your work. You know that. Now, can we… maybe talk about this a little later?”
“Later?” whines Helper. “But I already waited all day. And you said.”
This is probably true. Sarya has said a lot of things to Helper, and at this point even she can’t even remember what’s true and what’s not. The friend who can’t get enough of Helper’s stories, for example—yeah, total fabrication. But when you’re dealing with sub-Legal intelligences and want results, you do what you have to do. And it’s not like Sarya’s the only one who does it; everybody does. Helper’s manual even encourages it, in spirit if not in actual words.
Your new sub-Legal intelligence comes with a primary motivation pre-installed. For the best possible results, make sure that all work assigned to the intelligence aligns with this motivation.
What it doesn’t say—and yet pretty much does, if you think about it—is that a higher intelligence can stretch this to the breaking point. It’s not hard to fool a lower intelligence, especially when you tell them things they want to hear. To pull an example from the void, say you have a childcare intelligence that’s been your constant and annoying companion for as long as you can remember. Perhaps it has a primary motivation toward storytelling, because your mother thought that would be useful. But you don’t need storytelling anymore, because you’ve matured. Now, you need help with a certain interest—fine, a certain obsession—that requires research. It’s not easy to search a galaxy-wide Network for Human sightings, after all. You need help. So. Given this hypothetical situation, you might concoct a nonexistent friend who really loves stories—but only stories on a specific topic. And to create those stories, a storytelling intelligence would need to do research. And there you have it: you have now transformed a useless childcare intelligence into a highly-motivated research assistant. And it is not wrong—so you can shut up right now, conscience—because the work gets done, Helper is happy, and everybody wins.
“You’re right. I did say,” she concedes. “It’s just that right now I have to…” She has to… what? She has to waste the next six hours of her life wandering the station, imagining what could have been? Or she has to seize an opportunity that will never come again?
Well, when you put it that way.
“I have to go see someone,” says Sarya the Daughter, and instantly that feeling in her chest shifts. It’s not uncertainty now. It’s… well, it’s not exactly peace but it’s something like it. This is what a Human would do, because she is a Human and it’s what she just decided to do. Done.
“Is it your friend who loves stories? Do you think I could meet her? Because if I could just have a quick conversation with her I think I could—”
“No, he’s—” He’s what? She has no idea. “It’s just someone who wants to meet me.” That’s safe enough.
“Does he like stories?”
“I’ll be sure to ask,” she says. She glances up and down the unfamiliar corridor. “But you know what I need to do first?”
“Um—”
“I need to find out how to get to Dock A from here.”
“Well,” says Helper, sounding unenthused. “I’m a little busy. I’ve got a lot of dead members of a certain extinct species to track down.”
“You know what?” says Sarya, adjusting her strategy instantly. “I just remembered. He does like stories. He especially likes stories about Humans.”
“Really? How come all your friends like stories about Humans?”
She deflects Helper’s suspicion with skillful ease. “You know, I’ve never thought to ask.”
“I mean, that’s fine, of course—whatever plots your orbit, I always say. And if people want stories, well, I’m not named Helper for nothing!” The voice is picking up already as the primary motivation takes hold. “Let me just whip up a route for you, and… here you go!”
In the center of the empty corridor, a diagram begins to unfold. Sarya expected a simple map, but her new unit has a way of making the mundane beautiful. This area is unfamiliar, but most of the jumbled asymmetry she knows as well as her own blades—hands, whatever. Their shapes take form before her, from the administrative sections to the arboretums where she spent most of her childhood to the arcing promenades that lead to her own residential section. A brilliant red ribbon begins at her feet and threads through the crash of architecture, from this point down to this freight elevator, from there under the concourse to—
“Wait a minute,” says Sarya. She expands the map with one hand and points with the other. “Why is this part missing?”
“What do you mean?” asks Helper.
“Right here. This is—I was literally right here like eight minutes ago. In this big empty spot. There’s a giant observation deck right here.”
[Shrug], says Helper without a body, the tiny Network message floating up through the very blank space that Sarya is staring at. “Maybe you’re confused,” it says. “I requested that map with your registration. If there’s no data, then there’s nothing there.”
Sarya stares at the map floating in the center of the corridor, at the emptiness barely a hundred meters from her, and realizes: this is what she’s supposed to see. This is what the station is supposed to look like to someone at the bottom of the intelligence scale. That blank spot is the control hub, the place where low-Tiers like her aren’t supposed to be. As far as low-Tier Sarya the Spaal is concerned, it doesn’t exist at all.
“You know what?” she says quietly. She eyes a utility hatch across the corridor. They can’t keep her out of there, no matter how low her Tier. “That’s okay. I’ll just… I’ll go the way I know.” She reaches for the virtual switch that will end this conversation.
“But I just—”
“Thanks again, Helper,” she says, aware that she is completely failing to hide the bitterness in her voice. “You’re special and unique and I value what only you can do.”
”But—“
And the channel is closed. Helper might sulk for a few minutes, but no intelligence can resist its primary motivation for long. It will be cranking out research by the time she’s home. She, on the other hand, has places to be. With a grunt and a Widow curse, she heaves the hatch open and slips into the dark bloodstream of Watertower Station.