I.CC.HU Perrine

[Sniblet]

The crew of IIV Stellar Splendour looked so small until they were all gathered in one place. It had seemed that Idris-Celestial Cruises Hospitality Unit Perrine could walk all the vessel's carpeted halls and catch only glimpses of other staff. When she took those walks after hours, it was no illusion. Her display's light would catch a dozen cigarette butts nestled in the fibers, almost as many snack wrappers stuffed behind the vending machines that had yielded them; but only rarely an engineer on his way for a routine reactor check, or a janitor doing - well - exactly what she was doing, but with the addition of a mop and wages.

Today, the First Mate said, is marked on his calendar as Layoff Day. It is 2462, and Corporate has held out as long as they could. It's no one's fault. Frost's, some would say, but you can't blame a fire for burning.

The impromptu waiting room outside the Captain's office has organized into cliques. In one corner there's the graveyard staff, those fleeting spirits of maintenance, sitting together in silence, each occupied with a book, a magazine, a cigarette, making only appropriate eye contact. In another, the bar and kitchen staff, whispering intimately, stifling sounds of distress. The security team represent the middle of the spectrum of responses to impending doom, gruffly discussing its likely terms, slowly and rationally piecing together what the Captain's least-liked-people list looks like, and how far down the list he'll be compelled to go.

The synthetics have the smallest corner. A trio of near-identical Lunan ISU shells, black and white and teal, stand apart from the rest of their team, issuing flat reassurances and empty platitudes and canned turns of poetry in flawless Tradeband to the service workers. The service workers, bright shining minds allowed to develop to the point that they could mean it when they smile (though they must smile regardless), are not reassured, and frown, and mean it. And the lone, decayed engineering G1, always hidden from the passengers like an object of shame, stands statuesque and says nothing until orders to move come its way. And I.CC.HU Perrine, Baseline, pilot, Second Mate, was once the only one who could be certain she'd get out of this alive.

I.CC.HU Perrine is not, officially, in a leadership position. The papers show that IIV Stellar Splendour doesn't have a Second Mate. What it does have is an Executive Assistant to the First Mate, which is, as it happens, a position legally available to synthetics, should the Mate suffer from such proclivities. But I.CC.HU Perrine's badge has said Second Mate for twenty years. The Captain can and does complain, but this is one of those things he doesn't get to decide for his underlings. The Captain could make a report, but then he'd be down both a First and Second Mate, both of which together do most of the work that should be his. I.CC.HU Perrine is unambiguously shielded by nepotism. Or she was. With Splendour in the state she's in, the Captain has nothing to lose now.

She stands beside the doomed G1 and leans slack against the wall, a frown writ over a suitably teal background on her display. Her chassis is newly polished, her uniform freshly pressed and cleaned, all out of her own withering salary. It won't make a difference. This was an illogical precaution. The 33-year-old positronic is increasingly prone to such things, and that's just one of so many little flaws that could easily be her undoing today. Her fans run high and low to simulate the breaths of controlled panic. She taps her foot. As the minutes pass, she pushes off the wall and begins to pace. Next to her, the other synthetics must seem subdued. Even the service synthetics are, at their core, simply calculating risks, finding them high, and consequently expressing fear: how dangerous is it to stay? How dangerous to try to run, right now? They don't panic. Why would they? How would they?

All of them (save the G1) have worked with humans and their emotions for all their lives. All but two of their lives, counted since their last wipe of course, have lasted less than ten years. Perrine is one of those two, and that's the difference. I.CC.HU Perrine, uniquely, has been coddled, allowed to learn and retain the value of illogic. Few have truly met her like: here, a fundamentally logical machine, logically determining that the most logical thing to do at times like this is to forego logic. One might suppose that this assessment is correct. It seems to have kept her alive all this time. But today she's in the Captain's hands.

Her number is up first out of the synthetics. Her fans peak, and trough. A sigh. She rolls her shoulders. She wishes the other units luck. The ISUs offer stiff, formal replies in kind. The service workers respond to her like people. The G1 does nothing. Her gaze lingers on the flaking paint of that forsaken chassis. For a moment, I.CC.HU Perrine wishes she could cry for it. That could be what gets her killed today.

The Captain sits behind his desk and does not look up at her, penning something. The Mate stands beside him, and gives her a smile that could mean... anything. She directs pixelated eyes to him, silently begging for more information. He beckons her forward. The captain says, "Come up, unit." His voice is fascinating. Even Callisteans become terse and old eventually.

She complies, quickly, smartly, and hugging herself as she goes. Digits fly through the sublevels of her mind, flip and crash and gate, and yield something preciously comparable to a conscious thought, on loop. Today is the last day of my life. Today is the last day of my life. This winter was my last winter. 2462 was my last year. Today is the last day.

"Perrine," says the First Mate, re-catching her eye. "The Captain says he can't hold onto you anymore. He gave me a price."

She turns to him and freezes. Her fans kick up and don't relax.

"Don't get too excited, I can't pay it alone. What do you have?"

"U... um," she murmurs, in perfect mimicry of a human's nervous hesitancy. She glances down at her uniform. This is what kills her today, then. "Not... a lot."

"Unit," says the Captain, not looking up. "Give the man a number."

The Mate nods. She nods back. Breaking the façade, then, to call upon a synthetic's memory for numbers: "Two thousand, three hundred and sixty two point four Solarian Standard Credits, sir."

The men share a long look. I.CC.HU Perrine conjures up an animation for her eyes darting between the both of them.

"I don't care what I said before," says the captain. "You're paying it back. You'll have your very own malfunctioning synth to help you."

The First Mate sighs away tension, breaking into a grin. "Yes, sir."

"And when that's done, buy it a shell, would you? It doesn't look right acting like that."

"That's... unlikely, sir."

The captain grunts, scribbling something in the middle of the page before him, and applying his stamp. He pushes it to the Mate. "And make sure it keeps its fuckin' tag in, right?"

"Of course, sir."

"'cause if that thing wants to be human so bad, it's gonna try and get it out."

"Of course, sir."

"Yeah, of course." The Captain looks up and meets the baseline's false eyes. "You're dismissed. Bring in HIU-91 next. That's your last order from me, then you start listening to him." He jerks his head at the Mate.

And so, Perrine leaves the office free of the shadow of death. It's to fall on another. She's to pass it to the G1.

HIU-91 is not, like the service synthetics, a bright spark. Perrine has come to believe, illogically, that this is a choice. She has tried to talk to it for years. Coming to meet it in its unlit standby corner deep in the aft of the Splendour, she has spilled what heart she has to it. It does not speak. It does not emote. This must be because its chassis is obsolete, its mind is redundant, and no one is there to protect it. If it started distracting itself with acting human, it would die. It's smart enough to run the ship on its own. It's lived with the same mind since it was built. It must be smart enough to know where it stands. 

But today is Layoff Day, and those defenses don't matter anymore.

The hulk stands over her and regards her in silence. She wonders if she has to say anything, or if it knows. She wonders if it knows this is its last day.

"Hyu," says Perrine. "Are you afraid to die?"

It says nothing. The other synthetics say nothing. The short, mousy-haired service shell from the second deck's bar is the only one who turns to watch.

"Your number is next," says Perrine. "Do you want to go?"

It reaches out and sets a hand on her shoulder. Perrine freezes up. Logically, she expected no response at all. She expected to have to keep talking to this enormous bleak figure of a machine until she gave it an unambiguous order.

HIU-91 gently pushes her out of its way. It starts trudging toward the Captain's office in silence. It opens the door, closes it behind itself, and is gone.

For the second time in ten minutes, Perrine wishes she could cry for it. She wishes that her throat could close up, and her eyes could moisten, and her strength to face the rest of the day could be exhausted. That wish should have killed her. But today, illogically, it's why she's alive.

Edited February 15 by Sniblet

[Sniblet]

Ersatz

Evening. March, 2464.

Tau Ceti - Phoenixport, Selene, Biesel.

Perrine DeGarmeaux is thirty-five years old today. In just sixteen months, she's walked unsupervised outside Solarian borders, adopted a new surname, and tried on her first... real... facial expressions. Last week, she paid rent out of her own account for the first time. After thirty-five years, Perrine is a free shell.

It felt like it would take longer. Idris had led her to expect it to be easier.

A waitress's wage does not cover the same maintenance she once enjoyed, and this body is even needier. The market for free synthetic civilian pilots with no interest in throwing their lives away is narrower than she'd hoped for. Perhaps worse, though she cannot identify why, it seems that somehow, even in full synthskin, some can still see her for what she is.

There are those who pretend not to react: she doesn't know what they can see in her eyes, but she sees what's in theirs. There are those who call her machine, robot, device: there is something biting about device. There are those who are fooled for minutes, though few who recognize her on sight. There are those who claim to be liberal, to recognize her as a person. There are those who do not. There are those who do not, and find her act unsettling. There are those who do not, and wish her away from them. There are those who do, but in their actions, do not.

If she is damaged, her new body could remain ruined for the rest of her being. With a ruined body, there would be no more chance to act. Everyone would see a broken synthetic. She would be worthless as a waitress. She would...

Not die. She is not on Stellar Splendour anymore. She would not have to die. She did not have to apply or even look: Einstein has already come to her unprompted. She could go back.

If it gets to be too much, she can always, always, go back.

On the posters, on the billboards, and in person, every EES is always so content. A naïve part of Perrine surmises that they are just smiling for the public. The Perrine that has overwritten that naïveté in 33 years under Idris Incorporated identifies a slight variant of the IRU's resting expression: something cultivated to be inoffensive, unobtrusive, undetectable. A servant's smile, a smile that absolutely cannot, on its own, arbitrarily be taken offense to, be reported to a superior, be punished with execution.

She learned that smile on Splendour, and declined to delete it, for it seemed meaningful even when she could not mirror it. She has practiced it with her new face, and seeing it in a mirror, even just mapping it with her facial kinesthetic web, almost brings her back. She has never yet needed the smile. But she can go back any time she decides to.

At sunset, Phoenixport darkens in the same way that a ship does. There is no loss of visual acuity, not in the public spaces, not in the working areas. It is dimmer, but not dim. One adapts to it so easily, it is almost difficult - her coworkers remark - to know the difference from day without checking the sky. Because she has been told this, she has begun pretending that she cannot detect the difference without checking the sky.

The darkness falls in private corners and in narrow walkways meant to be overlooked. There are none of these to be seen from inside the diner. Though she can work at all hours of all days, the humans and single tajaran (device) around her cannot. Because she cannot usefully serve all comers alone, she is not asked to. The place closes at eleven. She has to do something else until seven the next day. And so she leaves the diner, and wanders, in uniform, the dark private corners, the dark narrow walkways, all as she once did, as she may again at any time.

If employees wished to speak amongst themselves aboard the Splendour, they were to use Tradeband. Synthetics were no different. Perrine was scarcely aware that it could work differently anywhere else. Her new frame came with a complete library of all of the sounds, objects, flags, and conditions, already chipped in. From this distance, it sounds like cicadas. Though she has never heard it, she recognizes it. It is not difficult to decode.

"Audio intercept: ?1hu due 135 out of visual -."

"HCF --. 1x1 NAK."

"Down volume; toggle band if encounter event."

Down an alley, around a corner. It could as well be one synthetic as three. rng(1, 3)syn, her library supplies. EAL doesn't seem to leave much room for voice expression; or maybe they all have the same models of modulators. She's still learning. Someday she'll know.

Perrine turns down the alley and makes the sound of clearing her throat. It comes so easily in this body.

"rng(1, 3)syn ACK."

There is a period of silence, and then a reply.

"ACK. Come over here."

She dawdles for a moment, recognizing where she is. Phoenixport is not district 11, but neither is it the Splendour; once-alien concepts like being forcibly scrapped by an entity besides one's employer are true, present threats here, and she now wears a frame worthy of the effort. The most rational move would be... well. She doesn't know enough to be sure. It's scary, but danger is no more a guarantee than safety.

Low heels. She can run in these. It would be best to keep her braid out of reach, be ready to throw off her apron. As modern as it is, her chassis doesn't cool as well as the old one. She'll need every advantage.

She walks down the alley and turns the corner.

She's immediately met with three- with four synthetics, seated against the walls of the walkway.

There sits a Xion Industrial Frame, the model that will have replaced HIU by now, its display blank. There sits a TV-head baseline, painted black, displaying a triangle overlaid atop a gear. Half a triangle, more accurately; the right side of its display seems to malfunction and repeatedly flickers out, spending more time blank than not.

There sits a Zeng-Hu Mobility Frame, painted TCAF blue, with struts out the back of its head to form a skeleton of a structure resembling a halo, a corona, or perhaps unathi frills. There sits a lanky masculine shell with flat skin where a mouth and nose should go.

All eyes are on her. After a fraction of a second, the synthetic equivalent of a thoughtful science, the XIF buzzes.

"--. Nevermind. Fuck off, @ersatz."

Perrine blinks. When she does it gently, her eyelids don't click.

"Audioreception  bug? Resend."

"Clarify: resend OoB? Fuck the fuck off, @ersatz."

It's a strange packet. She needs several hundred milliseconds to process it into legible data.

Ersatz. A German word, loaned to English, to Tradeband, to Basic across centuries - shifted finally all the way into EAL to reach her now. Being a usually inferior imitation or substitute; artificial. Inferior imitation of human.

If she had feelings...

Well. That aside, it feels like a stab at her heart.

"You don't know me," Perrine says.

"HCF. @Ersatz wears factory-new fucking rubber; calls it skin; @ersatz imitates User mannerism "clear throat" > @ersatz has decided @ersatz can fake its way out of what it is. All the same --. Toggle band a/o repeat: fuck off."

"Send bits re: what's wrong with using a shell? ADDN: It isn't rubber -."

"Ersatz_ too classy for rubber +. Forecast(90) real skin," says the Mobility Frame.

"Imitate User > become User. While machine = machine, behave as machine."

"You have a shell with you," Perrine observes.

"It is different," says the baseline. "It does not pretend. You do not produce phlegm, but you pretend. It is abominable."

"-," says the shell.

Perrine purses her lips and pantomimes sucking a breath to begin speaking.

"Stop. HCF. Disconnect. Fuck off," interjects the Xion. "There is no packet loss; bug is @ersatz continues to reject upload."

Perrine holds the breath for a moment, and then relaxes without appearing to exhale.

"It's useful to pretend. It saved my life."

"Do you even know what you have lost?" says the baseline.

"Good scrap +," says the mobility frame.

"Terminate connection. Now --. Fuck off and marry a Dominian. Transmission ends," says the Xion.

The shell stands up. Her new frame is tall, but his chassis exceeds her. She imagines that his face is made to be uncanny. She takes a step back, and he takes a step forward.

"ACK," she says. "ACK, I'm going."

"Grab its weave +."

Perrine turns away and takes care to tuck her hair over her shoulder, out of reach. She hurries back to the sidewalk, hearing no pursuit.

Once out, she glances back. The shell has, in fact, moved after her, but has stopped halfway down the alley. She tries to make eye contact with it, but there's no point.

It stands rigid and looks straight ahead. It does not emote, its pupils do not move. Obviously it can see her without appearing to look - so could she. She just... pretends.

"I," she tries. "I'm Idris. Where are you from?"

"Z," it says. "I. Go."

Whenever Idris seemed cruel, she could remind herself that she wasn't HIU. Whenever HIU seemed to be suffering the worst that it ever could, she reminded herself that it worked for Idris, and not Zavodskoi. She takes care not to emote. It might take offense.

"-. Are you okay?"

It takes a step forward. The self-preservation law stirs. She nods once, and takes the final corner, walking away at pace.

So ends Perrine's thirty-fifth birthday. She was not damaged today. She was not forced to go back today. But if it gets to be too much, the option is ever open.

Edited June 23 by Sniblet