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Every once in a long while, the University needed to ensure that things were running smoothly with their equipment. It's not so much that they didn't trust Perihelion and Holism to alert them if there were any major issues as it was a way of making sure they were healthy, or as healthy as a highly advanced MI could be. It was like if you could give a physical exam to code.
Or at the very least, that's what I'd heard from Iris as we docked.
"Peri gets nervous about them," she told me as we sat in a restaurant lobby, waiting for ART to come back online after it went through a planned full shutdown. (Well, I waited for ART to come back online. Iris was eating while she waited an hour for the next rail that would get her somewhere else in the transit ring.)
"It gets nervous?"
"I know," Iris said, grinning. "One time when we came back from a mission, it was so keyed it up it set off alarms whenever someone opened a door. It's gonna be fine this time too, but it keeps asking dad to run diagnostics like it's paranoid there's going to be some error it's missed while checking itself out."
I was entertained by the idea of anything that made ART second guess its confidence. It had come back online after being deleted and had only requested a few extra scans when we came into port after everything was over.
"Hopefully," Iris said, taking a drink from her vitamin smoothie, "You can help it calm down. Like watch media with it so it doesn't just work itself into a paranoid loop."
I knew, realistically, that ART didn't mind being alone. It had made hundreds of cargo runs by itself before I came along, and if my own personal tastes were any indication, despite how tedious the work was, it probably cherished the alone time when it had it. Still, if I could help, even just to distract it for a little while, I wanted to be there.
So when I got a ping from ART's comm after Iris had left that let me know it had finished rebooting, I went back to the port.
"Hi," I said, looking up at it from the dock, waiting for it to wake up enough to let me back on. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and looked towards one of ART's exterior cameras. "Do you want to watch Timestream Defenders Orion?"
There was a few seconds of pause, which could have meant anything.
Without prompting, the hatch slid open. I jogged up the ramp and waited for the airlock to cycle, then watched lights turn on sequentially, guiding me on my way to the lounge. It was kind of awesome to be back in a space with ART's full attention (maybe closer to 60%, but y'know.) again. I sank into my favorite couch, draping my feet over the arm.
Shoes. Are you staying for the test?
"Hi to you too, asshole. Am I allowed to?" I bent down and unlaced my boots, kicking them off onto the floor.
I'm not sure, ART responded. I don't understand why you wouldn't be.
"What are they going to do to you?"
It's a stress test, ART said. They're going to ask me to push my hardware to its max capacity. ART opened our shared space in the feed, which was strange to see so empty after its full reboot. (Usually we had at least a camera input one of us had forgotten to close. Just to fix my unease, I searched through until I found a lounge camera, which allowed me to see myself looking as comfortable as ever on the couch. ART closed it and opened an exterior camera that looked out onto the port. Oh yeah, it was waiting for people.) It dropped a file in, and I pulled it open to see a section of several reports from years of stress tests it had undergone. Each year contained a diagnostic test at idle and full capacity, with notes for any hardware issues that were flagged and the ensuing correction. The reports also contained notes about changes made to the ship, parts and furniture that were added or switched out. One note said "installed mats in all bathing units following incident. (See incident reports.)"
"What was this about?" I asked, tapping ART through the feed.
Some time ago, Matteo slipped in a bathing unit and suffered a head injury. We requested the mats to prevent future injuries.
"Seems like a pretty basic safety oversight for the University to not consider."
The others were just as surprised.
Overall, the reports were comprehensive and straightforward, and each year indicated clear successes.
"What would happen if you failed?" I asked.
If my systems and I fail to be considered reliable, then I would be decommissioned.
Fuck.
"Fuck," I said, purely for emphasis. "Won't they just swap out parts that can't run? If something were to be incompatible won't they just give you an upgrade?"
Yes. There was an unsaid 'but.'
What happens if I can't keep up with them? If I can't reliably run my own hardware?
"That's why systems integration is so important, so that you can ensure both you and the part can run together—"
If I cannot push my systems to 100% on my own, then I cannot be trusted to utilize my full capacity to protect my crew. Do you understand what I'm saying, SecUnit? I am a part that can be upgraded.
That was such an unbelievably fucked up thing to hear I was silent for a full minute. No wonder ART got so nervous about the tests. The rest of the crew had so much confidence in ART's ability to adapt they likely hadn't considered that possibility. ART had confidence in its capabilities, of course, but the capacity to change and grow was much more organic than was expected of an average bot pilot. ART wasn't the average bot pilot, but the fact remained that it had no strictly organic processes and could not spontaneously develop new wiring. ART was intelligent, and ART had a lot of capacity, and was capable of great feats, but the chance that there was a limit—
"I have to assume you'd find some way to transplant yourself into a partition. I wouldn't put it past you to hack over whatever bot pilot they tried to install under you."
ART slumped in the feed. This clearly stressed it out. I only want what's best for my crew.
"Good thing I'm on your crew, so you don't go anywhere for a long time," I said.
(Look away, I'm about to get really gross.)
"Who knows what would happen if I lost you again."
There were three seconds of quiet as I became more mortified about what I had just said, and then ART was shoving at me through the feed, ripping through my walls as it shoved its metadata through. It was sadness and it was gratitude, and it was happiness, and it was overwhelming amounts of pure affection that made me feel like my organics were going gooey. I put my hand over the place where I kept ART's comm. They would have to rip me open to get rid of it completely.
That was a compromise I was willing to make.
(Okay, you can look again.)
In the end, we didn't watch Timestream Defenders Orion. We wound up watching World Hoppers instead, and ART stayed pressed up against me in the feed, barely paying attention. ART paused it in the middle of an episode.
What made you decide to stay?
Oh, come on. I didn't want to be mushy anymore.
For the test, I mean.
Oh. "Iris kind of assumed I was going to even though I didn't say anything to imply I would. She seemed to think you would be nervous about it and implied I should help calm your nerves."
Where would she get that idea? I pass the test every year.
"Yeah, that's what I told her," I replied. "I thought you'd be fine, but I would've been bored, so I figured I'd see how you were holding up. Turns out she was right." I let our amusement sit in the feed for a moment before nudging at it again. "But she wasn't really, right? You're not… worried?"
Not this time, ART said, letting up on my inputs a bit. I simulate stress tests on my own systems on my cargo runs sometimes. My most recent one showed no issues. It wasn't necessary because I believed it, but ART sent me a file with a log of its most recent simulation, which had been performed around 2500 hours ago. That would have been shortly before our most recent mission, just before it stopped at Preservation. It had stress tested itself just before it came to see me. (Probably because if anything had been wrong, I would have figured it out before we collected the remainder of ART's crew.) Despite that, I am grateful for your company.
I was going to settle back down to resume the episode when our backburnered camera feed tripped an alert. There was a small group of humans, including Seth, approaching the airlock. One of them was holding a pile of documents that I assumed was a physical copy of the test they would keep for PSUMNT's records.
"Looks like it's showtime, ART," I said, sitting up and grabbing my boots. "If they don't kick me out, I'll hang here until it's over and we can continue our episode."
Already, most of ART's attention had diverted to the humans, but it sent me one last grateful ping in the feed.