Slipspace

"What the hell did you say to him, Matson?!" My boss was obviously spitting mad and his face almost glowed red. 

I found myself mentally on the back foot. "I am quite sure that I have no clue what you are talking about, sir."

"Don't be a liar on top of being an idiot, Matson, if you are going to screw me over, at least be a man about it! Captain Erickson has not only declined the generous contract I was offering, but has also suddenly announced that he and his ship will be departing within the next two days! There is absolutely no reason any sane business man would decline such a contract without outside interference, so what in the void did you say to him?! I've been monitoring the communication channels and I know that there hasn't been anyone else influencing him."

The entire time he was ranting at me, Kruger’s voice was nothing but accusatory and vitriolic. That coupled with his demands that I ‘be a man about it’ struck a chord in a bad way. My tight control of my temper was quickly failing. As a result, I matched his volume and tone when I responded.

"Fuck off, Kruger! I didn't say anything against you, I know better! If he said no, it was of his own accord and council. I had nothing to do with it."

The snake in human form growled. "You're on thin ice, Matson. That is the biggest contract anyone one this station has ever seen and if I find out that you actually did ruin it for me, you will wish you'd never shot out of that whore's belly!” He smacked the desk with a fist as if to punctuate his threat. “Now get out of my office! I need to find some way to convince that man to change his mind and I'm running out of time to do it!"

The words stung deeply, but having grown up hearing similar jabs, it didn’t hurt me as much as my boss might have wanted. It seemed, however, that there was still enough of that former rebellious teenager left in my head to at least throw the attitude back at him. Even as my eyes still flared with anger, the corner of my mouth rose in the slightest of smirks that used to drive my caretakers mad. My voice toned down into icy confidence.

“I’ll leave as soon as I have my proper pay, sir.” I nearly spat the honorific. “You are such a good businessman after all. You wouldn’t ever renege on a contract, would you? After all, undercutting your pilots and violating your contract would be a surefire way to make sure nobody would want to do business with you ever again, including the prestigious head of Erickson Enterprises. It wouldn’t do at all for him to hear about such a thing at such a… sensitive point during negotiations.”

There was a glint in Kruger’s fiery eyes as he stared at me. “Hmmf. Maybe I have taught you something then you son of a whore. Take your credits and leave before I find a good reason to terminate that contract.” 

Without breaking eye contact with me, he gave several deft strokes to his computer terminal and then motioned to the slot on his desk. Upon inserting my credchip, I flicked my wrist to watch the transfer come through. To my satisfaction it included everything I was owed plus a decently sized bonus that was notated to be for ‘services rendered beyond contractual obligation’. 

My smirk widened slightly and I let out one last jab before turning and walking out of the office. “Pleasure doing business with you, sir.” There was only an answering growl to my back. 

In a way, I couldn’t believe that I had actually stood up to Kruger like that. I was rarely confrontational enough to raise too much of a fuss. But I had somehow gotten him in a corner where he actually was forced to show an amount of respect to me playing him right back. I found myself semi disgusted that I had sunk to his level, but that was largely overshadowed by the sheer pride at having beaten him at his own game. The tidy sum that he had ceded as bribe certainly put a bounce in my step. 

Rather than going to my quarters or getting something to eat, I decided to head to my workshop. I didn’t intend on doing any work on my ship, but by that point the Turing Protocols I had tasked Vox with should have been completed and I wanted to check the logs directly off of her core which I kept stored in the workshop’s back room. 

Unlike the flawed tests of a computer’s ability to answer questions that the original Turing test was, modern Turing protocols tested for empathy and self awareness by submitting an AI to scenarios involving conflicts of morality and interpersonal interaction.

While it was incredibly backwards in many ways, the code of law that most of the trans-stellar governments, including the Terran Union followed was very forward thinking on sentient artificial life. Many speculated that there had been at least a small uprising in the SAI communities that had sprung up. There was little concrete evidence of such an occurrence, but there was just enough chatter about a cover-up operation that the evidence couldn’t be easily dismissed. Regardless of how and why the politicians had accepted such liberal views, the law was firm on independence for synthetic lifeforms. Thus it was mandated that any substantial evidence of sentience be investigated and if proven true, that the AI be given rights as a being. Of course the word of the law was vague enough that people still abused the system, but I wasn’t that kind of person. Nor did I want the trouble that could come of that kind of behaviour. 

Once I arrived in my workshop, I took a quick spin in the sonic shower before getting changed into more comfortable attire.. As was common, my skin itched after, but it was better than the grime that came from a day of work. 

The back room of the workshop, unlike the rest of the space, was actually kept tidy. The cooling for the large bank of computer equipment required ample clear space and the room wasn’t so large that I could use it for storage while still keeping an area large enough for the pagoda-like structure of advanced optical computational units. 

I sat at the terminal for the entire array and logged in using a combination of the nfc chip in my wrist implant and a highly secure encryption code. Seeing as basically everything important to my life was stored and managed by Vox, I had taken almost extreme steps to secure access as best I could. The screen finally cleared as verification completed and the core command line prompt for Vox’s system appeared. 

My fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up logs for the last three days and the report logs from the protocols I had initiated. The official report read that Vox had scored an accumulative average of sixty-two out of one hundred on the self awareness tests and sixty-eight on the empathy tests. Her intelligence scores were at ninety-three, but that was not uncommon for the highly advanced computer algorithms that handily imitated human neural networks. She was definitely capable of learning and applying logic. Intelligence wasn’t taken into account for Turing protocols, however. 

Anything above seventy in the empathy and self awareness tests required submission of all logs and reports to the SAI commission for review and judgement. Vox was only just under that requirement which really only served to heighten my suspicions. Rather than questioning it myself, I decided to just talk to her.

“Hey Vox?”

“Yes, Miss Adresta? How may I assist you?” Her voice was as friendly as ever. 

“Vox, I’m sure you are aware of your results from the Turing protocol tests?”

“Of course I am. I am the one that generated them for you to view.” Her tone carried a hint of questioning.

“How do you feel about the results?” 

Vox actually paused before responding and almost seemed tentative when she did. “As I am simply a non sentient artificially intelligent assistant, as shown by the results, I lack true emotive capabilities and therefore cannot form opinions. I apologise if this is not the answer you seek. Would you like for me to formulate a statement based on observed human behaviours?”

There almost seemed to be real feelings in her voice, but the response didn’t seem to betray anything more. Vox could be exactly as she said, but something in my gut nagged at me. 

“No, that is unnecessary.” I hummed and leaned back in my chair. “Look back at results from this test and previous ones. What is your analysis of the pattern shown?” This wasn’t the first time I had run the protocols and as was required, all records associated with the tests were kept in hard storage both on the core and in an external backup. As I remembered, the scores had been slowly rising. I was curious if that pattern would elicit any further response from the suspiciously astute AI.

“Processing.” I listened as the cooling units around the computer core ramped up in response to rising activity. It seemed that even without seeing any sort of expression, Vox was actually really putting thought into her response. 

“In the last three routine tests, the scores associated with my level of empathy and self awareness have shown a slight upward trend with this latest unscheduled test showing a result higher than the trend would predict. This is likely to indicate an outlier result to be disregarded, however.”

“And why should I disregard this result, Vox?”

“Logic would dictate that as past results have been discredited due to unusual circumstances or starkly off curve results, so must this result as it does not fall within the expected range of scores predicted by average result trends.” 

I gave some thought before I replied. “What if this result is more indicative of what is to come and a steeper trend line to be predicted in the future?” 

Her reply felt sharp compared to the previous hesitation. “It is unlikely since no previous significant deviance from the trend line has ever resulted in a change in the median trend shown by the majority of other results.”

My eyes rolled. If there was sentience within the whirring and flashing core I sat next to, she was being stubborn about showing it. 

“Alright, Vox. Thank you for your cooperation. Close and finalise the result files and secure backups as required.” 

“Compliance. Additional alert, you are receiving a communications request through the station’s  interstellar communications relay. Shall I patch it through?”

I looked at the terminal screen and saw the alert. It gave me a start when I saw who it was that was calling.

“Absolutely! Route it to my holo.” 

“Of course, ma’am.”

The translucent holographic screen being emitted from my wrist mounted projector showed a familiar and actually welcome face that put a genuine smile on my face.

“Captain Blackburn! I haven’t heard from you in ages! I had actually intended to call you sometime soon, but I’ve been a bit busy. What’s the latest?”

Jay’s almost completely silver hair was buzzed close and his well groomed beard did nothing to diminish the lively and intelligent eyes looking back at me. He smiled back at me. “Busy indeed from what I’ve heard, my young protege! You would never guess who I got a call from this morning. A very old friend of mine let me know that the universe is smaller than one might think. He says you had a run in with his son and grand-daughter. He also says that it sounds like your boss is even more of a dick than last you told me.” 

He chuckled and a small laugh escaped my throat as well. “You really ought to call more often, Adresta,” he continued. “That’s the name you picked, right? My memory isn’t quite as good as it once was.”

A light blush colored my cheeks. “Yeah, Jay, that’s it. Sorry I dropped all of that on you last time… And don’t pretend like you’ve lost anything, old man. We all know that age hasn’t touched you.” 

His voice went soft “Nonsense. I feel my age more and more every day. And in regards to you finally coming clean, I’m glad you did. You spent the better part of seven years with me on the Forge. I and a select few others could tell that there was something eating at you, especially towards the end of that tenure. Like I told you before, that kind of thing can only be in your own timing. Better to learn later than to never know at all.”

He gently shook his head in that wizened way that it seemed every respected elder had mastered.

“Being something other than what others perceive you as is nothing to be ashamed of and certainly doesn’t change my opinion of you. If anything, I think more highly of you now than I did before. You are still one of the most talented young crew members that I have ever had the pleasure of having aboard my ship and I am proud of what you have accomplished.”

I had to turn away from the screen for a few seconds to wipe at my suddenly misty eyes. Jay waited patiently until I looked back before continuing. 

“Now, I know you are set on accomplishing your goals by yourself, but I will reaffirm my offer to help in any way I can. I’m well aware that when I made that offer originally it was in regards to you getting set up for flying solo but now that I know, I will happily include transition needs in that. My funds may not be limitless, but they are substantial enough to pay for the procedure you talked about before.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “No, I appreciate that, but this is something I need to do myself. I fought to earn my way here and I’m not going to just let someone else give freely what I haven’t earned.”

He huffed casually, still smiling. “I thought you might say that. You always were a headstrong one.” He shrugged and seemed to dismiss the topic before pivoting to another. 

“To the point of the call then. According to my friend, you were a major part of the offloading operation that the Ratatosk was the centre of. Apparently his son was quite impressed with you. I would expect that kind of review of your performance, knowing your work ethic, but that doesn’t change the question at hand. You said multiple times during our last few calls that you were leaving Telemachus soon. Why are you still there? From what you’ve told me, you rather dislike the quality of life and I can’t say I blame you.”

I groaned and bowed my head. “I can’t get hold of the processing unit I need for the nav computer. Nobody has one at any sort of reasonable price. I really don’t want to abandon my ship to the rats infesting this station.”

Jay acknowledged the reasoning with a slight scoff. “Figures, doesn’t it? Shame, really. I know you’ve been wanting to make the jump for a long time, kid. I really hate to say it, but you may have to join up with someone else before you can. The situation with your contract as you described it is completely untenable, in my opinion. Very few spacers ever make it on their own. Even myself and Erickson Sr. didn’t make it big until well after we hit our third decade of life.” 

My shoulders sagged. “I know… I just don’t want to jump in with any random ship coming through. I'm afraid fate won't shine on me so brightly a second time. Getting on with you was more than I could ever have hoped for.”

“Well, the Erickson captain seems to have taken a shine to you. There are much worse companies out there to work for. Cargo work isn’t glamorous, but it would get you back on a starship.” The man hummed. “Something to think on, maybe.”