A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2)(47)

She watched Pepper as she worked on the same project she’d been working on at the shop all day, the same project she’d been working on one-handed through dinner, the same project she’d been working on when Blue kissed the top of her head and bid them both goodnight. Sidra felt unkind in thinking it, but this was one of the things she enjoyed about Tak’s company. She was glad to have met someone who liked to read.





Feed source: unknown Encryption: 4

Translation: 0

Transcription: 0

Node identifier: unknown



pinch: hey, got another question for you guys. this one’s just out of curiosity. if you wanted to expand an AI’s memory capacity, how would you go about it?

ilikesmash: expand by how much?

pinch: a lot. enough to make her comparable with an organic’s ability to learn new stuff indefinitely tishtesh: are you talking about an intelligent sentient model? you know that’s why they have linking access, right?

pinch: let’s say linking access wasn’t a possibility nebbit: you’d need to install additional hardware to whatever housing it’s in. extra storage drives.

pinch: let’s say that that wasn’t a possibility, either tishtesh: uhhhhh okay. you’re f*cking stuck then ilikesmash: you could pare down its cognitive processors to limit how much info it wants to access. slow the deluge a bit.

tishtesh: then what would even be the point of an intelligent sentient model AAAAAAAA: limiting processors would be cruel

ilikesmash: how is it cruel? you’re taking away the protocol that’s causing the issue. would make for a more stable installation.

AAAAAAAA: you’re taking away a crucial part of xyr cognitive processes. would you get rid of your own curiosity if it made you more ‘stable’?

tishtesh: stars, can we not

ilikesmash: ah, i see. you’re one of those. come back when you’ve realised they’re not people nebbit: friends, we have a separate thread for ethical arguments. please stay on topic.





JANE, AGE 10


She still wasn’t sure about the mushrooms. They tasted okay – more interesting than meals, anyway. They filled her up real good, and Owl said they were good for her, too, but making them into food was not a task Jane liked very much. Fixing scrap was much better. But like Owl had said, she couldn’t fix scrap if she didn’t fuel herself first. So, mushrooms.

As she cut up that morning’s handful of food, she wondered what other people ate. She wondered about other people a lot. Owl had explained that the planet they were on – which was still weird to think about – had lands on all sides of it, but the lands were separated by lots of water. The land on their side was where all the scrap went, and where all the factories were (there was more than just the one!). The land on the other side had cities. The cities were where the scrap came from. The people in the cities didn’t like scrap or think about it much, but they liked stuff, and since they didn’t talk to other Humans or species, they couldn’t get new stuff, or materials to make new stuff (they’d already used up everything they dug out of the ground, Owl said). If they wanted new stuff, they had to make it out of old stuff.

‘What do the other people on this planet do?’ Jane asked.

‘I don’t understand the question. What do you mean?’ Owl said.

‘I mean . . . what do they do? If the girls on this side take care of the scrap, what do they do?’ Jane was still trying to figure out the point of a city. And of most things. The more questions she asked, the more questions she thought up.

‘The same things people do everywhere, I suppose,’ Owl said. ‘They learn things, make families, ask questions, see places.’

‘Do they know about us on this side? Do they know we’re here?’

‘Yes. Not you and I specifically, but yes.’

‘Do they know about the Mothers?’

‘Yes. They made them. They made the factories, too. And the girls.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they don’t want to clean up their own messes.’

Jane thought about that. ‘Why don’t they just have the Mothers clean up instead?’

Owl’s eyes moved away from Jane. ‘Because making girls is cheaper, in the long run.’

‘What’s cheaper?’ Jane asked. She turned the bits of mushrooms so she could chop them smaller.

‘Cheaper is . . . it means it requires less materials. Machines like the Mothers take a lot of kinds of metal that people here don’t have much of. Girls are easier for them to make.’

Jane remembered her face smashing down red and hot against the treadmill, a metal hand on the back of her neck. ‘Are the other people on this planet bad?’

Owl was quiet. Jane looked up from her pile of mushrooms to the wall screen. ‘Yes,’ Owl said. ‘That’s not a nice thing of me to say. But yes, they’re bad people.’ She sighed. ‘That was why my last crew came here. They wanted to change them.’

‘Change them into what?’

Owl’s forehead crumpled up. ‘I’ll try to explain this as best as I can. My last crew were two men. Brothers. Yes, I’ll explain about brothers later. They were . . . they called themselves Gaiists, which are a type of people who – who believe Humans shouldn’t have left Earth. They go around the galaxy and try to convince Humans to come back to the Sol system.’