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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/jpitha on 2024-12-27 13:53:28+00:00.
Nick relayed the story so far to Queenie. He talked about boosting the memory cube, finding out it was empty, meeting with Jameson, working with Sunny, the whole story. When he's finished, she was silent a long time.
"Nick, I can see why your ladies like you. You have empathy, and are kind and are generous. Honestly when we first met I was just a twinge sad that Evie wasn't interested." She chuckled. "But Nick, you're… kind of dim, you get that, right?"
Eastern nodded. "Finally, someone else sees it. Right Sel?"
Selkirk agreed and her tail flicked, playfully. "Dim as a spent LED."
"I knew there was a reason I liked your girlfriends Nick. They're the smart ones. So, let's get down to it. You, and I assume Eastern have a full suite of cybernetics installed by Jameson's dark doctors, and he didn't even give you a tutorial?” Nick could hear her tisk over speakers. “That sounds like Jameson. I swear, the AIs are all the same. It's easy for them, so they assume it's easy for everyone. Selkirk, Eastern, this is going to take a bit, and I think you'll be bored. Why don't you head up front with Evie and see if you three can figure out dinner. Me and Nick’ll be ready to take a break by then."
Eastern and Selkirk stood, Eastern glancing at Nick, not saying anything. They locked eyes, and he shrugged with his eyes. "Sure thing Queenie, thanks for taking care of our pet idiot.” Selkirk said, laughing. “We'll figure out how to pay you."
Queenie chuckled. "Don't worry, it'll be very affordable." She paused a moment. “Probably.”
They made their way to the front and found Evie back behind the counter, watching something on her Pad. "Queenie kicked you out eh?" She didn’t look up from her show.
"Yeah, said we should find dinner. She and Nick are going to be hungry when they're done."
Evie nodded. "Probably. Even now, when Queenie gets it in her head to do some work, everyone else comes out tired."
Selkirk looked up at Evie. If she squinted, she could see the resemblance. They had a similar bone structure in their cheeks, the same color eyes. "Evie, I thought most humans died around one hundred or less. She's so..." she struggled to find the words and still be polite. "Coherent?"
Evie laughed. "She has good days and bad days. You're just lucky today was a good day. But yeah, she thinks the implants are keeping her alive almost as much as her body at this point."
"Where did she get them?" Eastern asks, as she comes up to the counter where Sel and Evie were talking.
"Just like she explained. An AI thought they were 'helping' and gave them to her. As you probably guessed by our experience with Nick, running the shop wasn't always out main source of income and Queenie's line of work isn’t exactly... legal all the time."
They said nothing, letting her continue to speak.
"To hear her say it, it was… fashionable to have black market cybernetic mods installed back 70, 80 years ago. I don't know, it seems an awfully foolish thing to do for fashion, but she swears it was 'this close' to going mainstream.” Evie glances at Sel. “Not like, limbs and eyes and augs,” Evie says quickly, noticing the K’laxi’s artificial eye. “I mean, the real deep brain stuff, the things that let you interface with AI hardware.”
Selkirk glanced back down the hall. "I don't know. I've been around humans a long time, and I completely believe that they'd do something stupid like get cybernetic implants for fashion."
Evie laughed. "You're right of course. How long have you been on Hyacinth, Selkirk?" Eastern leaned against the counter and just listened. She hadn’t heard much of this out of Selkirk either.
"You can call me Sel if you want. I've been here, Ancestors, twenty five years now? I moved here from K'lax when I was just a kid. Familial group got together and sent me off to a magnet school on Hyacinth." She smiled bitterly. "Go and make something of yourself. Do your family proud!" She shook her head. "I was mostly sent here to get out of the way. The paterfamilias wanted his offspring to take over the leadership of the familial group. An older kit from a deceased line was a... complication."
Evie looked down at Selkirk, her eyes kind. "Do you still talk to them?"
Selkirk flicked her ears. "Not in years. I sent them a message back when the Empress Melody shit started going down telling them I was all right and going to stay on Hyacinth, but they never even bothered to reply, so... I stopped sending messages. I'm sure they think they're better off that way."
"Oh Selkirk. I bet there are still people in your familial group that love you." Eastern chimed in.
Sel snorted - another human gesture. "You haven't met them. I'm sure they don't feel any ill will towards me, but I'm also sure they don't feel anything to me. It's ancient history." She leaned back off the counter. "Queenie said to get dinner, so I assume that if we don't she'll be upset."
Evie laughed. "Upset is possibly the most mild way that could be phrased." She took out her pad. "I know some local places that she likes, take a look and tell me which ones would work for you and your crew."
Nick came out of Queenie’s room hours later looking exhausted but pleased. She came out shortly after them with the help of her walker, but she also looked brighter and more alive than when she went in. Instead of going to Queenie's bedroom, they made their way to the front of the store, where Selkirk and Eastern had set up a table piled high with takeout from a local place.
Nick looked hungrily at the food. "This is quite a spread Selkirk, nice work!"
Selkirk flicked her tail and her ears and smiled. "Evie helped, but we all decided that you were going to come out of your training hungry."
"I feel like I haven't eaten in years." Nick laughs and sat at the table."
Queenie shuffled to the head of the table and sat. "Now, like I told you, those implants are powered by your bodies. Use them a lot and you need the calories to recover." She poked Nick's soft belly. "It's also a decent way to build a calorie deficit if you ever decide to lose that paunch, Nicholas North," but she was smiling as she said it.
They all sat down and started on dinner. After a few minutes, Selkirk looked up at Nick. "How did it go?"
Queenie started gesturing with a fork full of food. "Typical AI. Stuff a human full of tech and send them on their way without so much as a lesson on how to work it. He was frankly lucky he knew me; he could have had his brain braised by the first aggressive attack he endured."
Eastern put down her fork. "We're very grateful Queenie, thanks for all the help."
Nick nodded and swallowed, “Yeah, thanks again.” He looked at Sel and Eastern. “Queenie helped me through an initial setup, helped me with my encryption and firewalls and gave me some basic lessons on access and intrusion. She says I even have enough deep brain connections to pilot a starship in a pinch.”
Selkirk and Eastern stopped, mid bite. Sel blinked and looked at Nick, surprised. "You can pilot a starship?"
Nick shrugged awkwardly and blushed very slightly. "According to Queenie, I have additional modules and sensors that… could be related to piloting starships. She thinks its an upgrade to the old Colony Ship co-captain package. Back before wormhole linking, the relativistic colony ships would travel with an AI and Human sharing captain duties, and the human would need additional… hardware to be able to do it.”
"But... why? You're not going to be piloting a starship." Eastern said, carefully.
Nick shrugged. "Who knows with AIs. Maybe Jameson thinks I'll need it. Maybe he thought it would be funny. Maybe he's making a point to another AI faction that we don't even know about." He put his head down and continued to eat.
Eastern sighed and nodded resigned. “We're pawns in a much larger thing here. It's entirely possible that Jameson gave Nick the piloting package to show someone that AIs aren't the only game in town when it comes to operating a ship.”
Queenie looked up at the three of them. "My advice is to not try and make sense of what AIs do. They go and do their own thing; they always have. It's up to us to stay out of their way and try and not get burned. Remember what they did when Empress Melody came by? They linked in a pile of their own Starjumpers and attacked her right above us. I remember looking up and seeing the flashes of the fight. Even here on Hyacinth it was visible. It was something else." She shook her head sadly. "I never got to meet the Empress, but I heard she was looking out for everyone in Sol." She looked up at the three of them sharply. “Heed that lesson. Keep your heads down, do your work, and don't get involved in AI politics."
Nick glanced at Eastern, but she didn't say anything.
After Dinner, Selkirk tried to pay Queenie and Evie but they wouldn't take her money. "You bought dinner, and you owe us a favor, that's enough." Queenie’s small voice was like iron when she refused the money. Evie smiled, playing the ‘good CSE’ to Queenie’s ‘bad CSE’. Evie continued, “Now, don't be a stranger down here, come by and say hello to us every now and then. I haven't seen her...
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