There was a certain unease aboard the ship, less the unease of danger and more the unease of unanswered questions. The main crew, members of the old guard who had gone through strange occurrences like this before and would continue going through them until the near future, stood in the mess hall in something that sort of resembled a circle, clustered together with their heads bent in, in a conspiratorial manner looking over their shoulders on occasion as if expecting to see someone standing behind them.
Adam was there of course sitting at one of the tables with his heelies propped up on a nearby chair. Sunny stood behind him, lower hands resting on his shoulders, the more serious of the two. Next to them, Krill floated in his aura of usual simmering rage, which was his naturally occurring reaction to unanswered questions. With them stood, Ramirez, Maverick, Nairobi, Katie, Conn, Celex (who for the time being had reverted back to his original form and was sitting comfortably on Waffle's back, where she lay on the floor at her master's feet. Joining them was Etium, a few of their other alien friends, and Dr. Adric, all of the people that had noticed.
"Do you think she can hear us?" Dr. Adric muttered keeping his voice low and glancing upwards as if expecting to see the Empyrean in corporeal form hanging from the ceiling like a spider.
Sunny tapped her foot on the floor, "It seems highly unlikely that she can't. We are basically standing inside her, and when I say basically I actually mean literally."
"Someone could be standing in my stomach talking to me right now and I probably wouldn't hear them." Adric pointed out
Maverick also glanced up, a habit that was becoming all to common for them in this particular context, "I have a feeling that the two situations are not comparable. The Empyrean can control all of her systems down to the nth degree. I crave ice when anemic, so...."
She trailed and offended the group grunted with agreement.
"I mean, maybe we should have expected this.... She is an AI after all. We knew that." Katie said, but her voice was as unsure as her posture.
Krill shook his head, "artificial intelligence and artificial constructs are two different things."
"Ive never heard the term artificial construct before." Adam said with some amount of interest, and a light amount of confusion. He was the one who subscribed to all the weird science magazines, so he would have known if something like that existed.
Krill's antenna vibrated, "That is because I made it up just now."
"Okay.... Than why don't you explain your logic to the rest of us." Nairobi said voice low, though now as low as the rest of them. Even assuming that the Empyrean was alive or something, she trusted the ship with her life and didn't see why they had to whisper at all. If anything talking behind the ship's back like this was kind of rude.
Or if not behind her back than in her back.
That seemed even worse.
"I mean an artificial intelligence is a literal string of ones and zeros that responds to certain programmed off and on commands. You can program an AI to respond in similar ways to real life constructs, you can make it look like they have feelings and emotions, but at the end of the day it is simply responding to on and off signals.
Celex, quiet up until this point shifted in his seat, "Not to ruin your metaphor doctor, but not all computers respond to simple off and on commands if we are going to mince words. Not to mention that, isn't that exactly what our bodies do, memories and though processes either turn on neurons or keep them off creating what is essentially a complex binary system/" Adam always forgot that Celex was a certified genius. Most celex were, at least in areas of logic and science. Their biggest downfall was their low emotion eq and tendency to fight and kill each other before progress was actually made.
There was no point having brains if you didn't use them.
Krill shot him a glower that would have made anyone else wither in their seats.
"This is a simple representative metaphor, now if you will let me finish."
Celex shrugged and let him continue. No one was really sure how he managed to shrug, but he did it.
"Okay, as I was saying. A computer is simply responding to its environment, and you might argue that that is all that we are, but the one thing I think that separates us in this case is.... metacognition ."
"Meta what/" Etium asked. Up until this point he had been leaning heavily against his gravity field enabled chain gun and examining his nails with disinterest.
"Metacognition." Adric popped in, "Its basically thinking about thinking."
"Precisely , a person knows that it is alive, a computer does not."
"That leaves a pretty large grey area when it comes to animals." Adam motioned down to the floor where waffles was busy, loudly, licking her front paws. The group stared at her for a moment, which she didn't seem to mind, "I guarantee you not many animals sit around thinking about thinking, Maybe elephants and dolphins or chimpanzees, but not dogs, and I wouldn't even put most AIs at the level of a dog."
Krill was momentarily stumped, but it was Kati's turn to pipe in, "Free will."
"What?" The group turned to look at her
She looked up, a long dark strand of hair falling in front of her glasses, "A human and an animal have free will. A computer does not, an AI will always respond the exact predictable way depending on the programming it was given. If it was programmed to do something, it will do it each and every time it is asked, barring a virus or malware or something." She tapped her finger on the table, "A dog or a human, are essentially unpredictable. Yeah maybe you can predict a dog better than a human, but they aren't going to act the same way every time. For instance, if we assume instinct is our programming, than we break programming all the time. A dog might risk its life to save its owner, and there are plenty of willing human heroes that gave up their lives for other people, doing something they didn't want to do, directly against their nature."
"This conversation is getting all together philosophical for me. I'm a marine, remember not Socrates." Ramirez said from where he was propped up against one of the tables
"That was never in question." Maverick muttered
Ramirez stuck a tongue out at her, and she did the same back.
"So the question here is.... Was she programed to do the things she does, or is she a real sentient being that can form thoughts and make decisions about things."
Nairobi raised her hand turning everyone's attention to her as she said, "Well, does it matter. We know that she is on our side, she may be nonverbal, she may even be an AI, but she DOES respond to us, and she DOES take care of us. So on the off chance that she IS alive and CAN make decisions, maybe we should start treating her like she is."
Hands on hips chin jutted forward, Nairobi held an imposing sort of presence. All around her, members of the group turned to look at each other cowed under her eye.
Sunny, oddly enough was the final say, "She has been nothing but kind and helpful to us. We've put her through a lot of shit... so I think I agree with Narobi."
From where he was sitting Adam knew what she was thinking.
As he knew what everyone was thinking.
She was almost relieved that the Empyrean was monitoring the situation. Any health scares she may have would be immediately reported if that were the case, and she had proven, up until now, to be nothing but helpful.
Adam nodded, "Narobi is right, we have no reason to think she is anything but a friend."
The agreement was almost unanimous. Except for one, Conn, floating uncharacteristically silent in the background with his hands folded behind his back. He didn't try to argue with them, but there was one big issue that he saw with all of their theories.
He couldn't hear the empyrean, and Conn wasn't used to that.
He wasn't used to not knowing someone's intentions, and that made him more than a little nervous
Adam stood and awkwardly cleared his throat. They weren't really sure where to look, so they just looked everywhere all at once, some of them looking at the walls, others at the ceiling, some picking random appliances.
"Um.... Empyrean....Uh.... can you hear us."
And just like that, there she was, as if she had been waiting politely in the corner while they talked. It was hard to describe just how they knew she was there, but they did, a sudden brightening of the room to a honey gold tint, a sort of thrumming through their feet.
Either way there was simply a presence.
Not concerning or anything just, benevolent, like when you sit in your living room in the sun and your cat comes to sit in the same room, and while ou can't see them you can hear the purring.
"Uh.... is there anything we can do for you?" Adam wasn't really sure where he was going with this, "I'm uh, I'm sorry if wheeling down your halls is... annoying."
Off on one side of the room, one of their screens blinked on.
They jumped.
"That's not freaky at all." Ramirez muttered
On screen a little red heart appeared, just a simple cartoon rendering, and then a video of Adam crashing into a wall accompanied by a little animated frowny face. The crew snickered, adam frowned.
"I think she's okay if you use the heelies as long as you stop smashing your face." Nairobi interpreted.
The rest of the crew shot her a look but then nodded, and her interpretation was confirmed as the little red heart appeared on the screen again vibrating a little this time. "She's very sweet." Katie said with a smile. Upon hearing Katie a picture of her flashed up on screen followed by a heart.
"Well you're welcome."
That was followed by an image of a breakfast muffin. Katie's stomach growled, "Sorry forgot to eat this morning."
There was a sharp ding on the opposite side of the room where the crew had installed a toaster oven.All of them were shocked when a breakfast muffin was waiting there. As far as they knew the toaster oven had not specifically been designed to fit into the empyrean unless there was something Vitex Inc. was not telling them, but it seemed as if the Empyrean had figured it out rather easily.
Katie went to unabashedly retrieve her muffin.
From there, things only grew more interesting, routines changed to accommodate their new crew member, and sometimes things got a little awkward. There was something odd about knowing the ship could see you while you were in the shower, and they certainly hoped asking her to look away was possible.
She seemed to think that was funny considering she didn't have eyes, but still she promised she wouldn't look.
Or at least flashed her lights.
Adam got up in the morning and patted one of the walls to make a greeting, which if he did so, meant he would find a cup of cold orange juice waiting just for him. Ramirez learned that the empyrean had a bit of a thing for soap operas and left his TV running during the day so she could watch some reruns.
Privately, sunny asked if she would keep a close eye on her, and mention any health related changes. The empyrean was happy to do so, and Sunny was surprised to find all of her meals planned including daily supplements that usually included water root tea and dandelions, which she still had no idea how the empyrean got them. Technically they were illegal to bring aboard a ship anyway.
Maverick for her part, felt her relationship with the empyrean was a little strained. While the ship watched after her health, their interactions were otherwise rather cold on occasion. She had a feeling that, while the empyrean was fine with her, even liked her it did not have any love for the passenger Maverick was carrying.
For its part, the creature inside hr stayed quiet, unwilling to go up against the empyrean, who now they had come to learn, had been trying to warn them about everett the entire time. Things that at the time had seemed like shipwide malfunctions had simply been the empyrean trying her best to communicate some danger to them.
Too bad they hadn't listened.
Word spread around the crew as to their ship's potentially sentient status, and crew conduct improved slightly, not that it had ever been downright bad, but there was always something they could do better, until the entire crew had a habit of addressing, talking to and thanking the ship.
The more they did the happier she was and the smoother things rran.
Adam just hoped that none of them would piss her off.
Because that was something he simply didn't want to see