"I object," Box repeated, greyness like a glow surrounding it. It was floating above the desk, aiming a red beam at Aydin, who was sitting on the chair behind it. They were in his office, an hour before the end of Aydin's afternoon shift.
"Yes, I heard you the first time, and I read your memo," Aydin said, his attention on his eGlass, completely ignoring it.
Box turned its cameras towards the window and the view of the border crossing and the warehouse, leaving the beam of red light on Aydin. It had composed a three-thousand-word essay on why they shouldn't damage Helper 335, presenting many ethical considerations, but his handler hadn't taken any of its objections seriously. He dismissed them without a second thought. So impolite. "It's ethically wrong."
Aydin sighed. "I understand why you're against it. I do, but it's something that needs to be done."
"We are the good guys, and good guys do not engage in wrongdoing," Box stated.
"Sometimes they do. Look at me, please."
Box stubbornly held its cameras on the window.
"You're taking this too personally. The Helper is not you."
No, but they were planning to damage it so that it would have to be replaced, something that, judging from the way Aydin continued to monitor Repository's page selling used AIs, he planned to do with Box too. And the two thousand Aydin had withdrawn from his savings account and deposited into his bank account, the same amount that most AI sellers demanded for their merchandise, just reinforced that belief. It could never believe that it could be so easily discarded, and by a man it respected and adored so much. The same man who had told it he loved it. "You said that I'm important to you and that you consider me as a family member."
"I do, but what does that have to do with this?" Aydin asked.
"You're going to replace me." It was just a matter of time.
"Nobody is going to replace you, stupid." Aydin flicked Box's orb.
"I'm a valuable piece of technology." Box still refused to look at Aydin. "I might have memory problems, but I'm not unintelligent."
"It was an expression. Listen, somebody is using this Helper to violate the law, technically making the 335 a criminal. Right?"
"Is the 335 a criminal?"
"It is smuggling narcotics into the warehouse, isn't it?"
"Yes," Box said.
"So, by damaging it we are actually saving it?"
"Are we?" Box's cameras faced Aydin and the red beam faded. . It noticed a hint of a smile at the corners of his handler's mouth. Something was amiss, but the logic Aydin presented was sound.
"Yes, since it won't have to violate the law anymore." Aydin leaned his elbows on his desk and a small smile flashed on his face. "It's commendable that you care for your fellow AIs, but you should know, we are only going to seriously damage it, not destroy it. It will be easily repaired."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Box opened the view of the 335's two cameras. Since it had got the task of monitoring those two Helpers, it had been connected to both Helpers' cameras and had set alarms to notify it as soon as they changed their locations or anything came into their proximity. "When is she going to do it?"
"She should have already done it," Aydin said.
"No, she couldn't have. I would have noticed her." Box enlarged the player's window and reversed the recording. The last half-hour showed the same scene of the edge of the basketball court where the benches were, which meant that the Helper, who according to its previous schedule should have been checking the containers' exteriors at that moment, had been rendered immobile.
"She has a cloaking device, remember?" Aydin reminded him.
"I activated motion alarms."
"Which only works for visible activity," Aydin said.
"She's skilled. She truly must be a ninja."
"Yes, she's really good." Another small smile bloomed on Aydin's face. He really did like the woman.
"So do we wait now?"
"Yes, first for somebody to discover the malfunctioning Helper — which, if nobody finds it in the next hour, will be us –, then for the Helper to be temporarily replaced, and then for our smuggler to try to change the code."
The 335 was discovered exactly twenty-three minutes later by Greg, who came to shoot some hoops. It was taken to the workshop where Mark took a look at it and sent an official notification to Aydin about 335's malfunction and a request to approve a replacement for it.
Aydin, who had already left the office by that time and was in his room, approved the replacement. He then turned to Box. "You'll have to start monitoring Helper 234 too."
"Affirmative," Box said and made a note. It had started its scheduled cleaning, which it did every week, and was now using a small cotton cloth with a dash of oil to clean the parts of its orb. It was a precise job since it needed to clean the outer and inner parts and the tiny brackets that held them in place, ones that humans, except experts, couldn't do to Box's satisfaction. Aydin had once tried it; he did such a sloppy job that Box had to clean itself again afterwards. It could have asked Mark, Jacob, Suzanne, or Linda, who all knew their way around the AI's hardware, but it didn't trust any of them with its precious orb, even if it was only for cleaning. It only had one, and it needed to take good care of it, just like Aydin did with his body.
"I was against spying on my team, but it would also be good to start monitoring them. It would give us a chance to provide them with alibis, ensuring we know exactly where everybody is and what they are doing when our smuggler starts to change the Hive's programming." Aydin walked to the wardrobe and got out of his working clothes. He put on his comfortable sweatpants and a T-shirt. "I'll take half of them and ask Lee to do the other."
"I can do it." Box pushed a square out of its surface and unfolded it before it carefully wiped its inner side and then its outer side, putting pressure at its edges where the dust stuck to the surface before it wiped the small bracket holding the piece. The square folded and closed and Box opened another one, tackling it with its cloth.
"You can only take two of them, our main suspects since I don't want you to overload and to have another one of your shutdown episodes."
"I am capable of effectively monitoring all of them."
"I never said that you can't. But you have limitations, because of which you can't do too many things at once." Aydin touched the edge of its eGlass and said, "Call Lee Morgan, please."
Box automatically connected itself with Aydin, only to see that his eGlass was already calling Lee. Greyness flashed over its display. Why hadn't Aydin told it to call Lee? Did he think that Box wasn't capable of a simple task like making a call anymore? A tip of a wire peeked out of the orb, and a red light shot out, drawing a dot on the ground. It retracted the wire before Aydin could notice.
"It's me." Aydin leaned his shoulder on the wall beside him and a ghost of a smile bloomed in the corners of his mouth. "I have just approved the replacement for 335. Box is going to monitor the replacement and our prime suspects, Mark, and Linda, and we are going to keep an eye on the rest of the team. Until the end of the week, you take the morning shift and I'll take the afternoon and the night ones."
Box finished with its cleaning. It put the cloth into the dirty clothes drawer behind the wall by the wardrobe. Some multifunction room's owners opted for the room to wash the clothes as soon as they were put into the drawer, while Aydin chose the economical option: The room washed the clothes when the drawer was full.
"That's okay. You can take the night shift next week."
Box gave Aydin its undivided attention, closely observing the glow on his face and the sparkle in his eye. Yes, Aydin definitely liked Lee; that, or he was overly excited about their investigation.
"Wait a minute." Aydin frowned. "I'm in the Hive system right now. Somebody just made a change. It's a false alarm since it's not a code change, but tying a Helper to a janitor position. It must be Mark." A short pause. "No, there's no other user in the Hive."
Box flew to its station and lowered onto it. It gave another glance to Aydin, who talked about the investigation, but his tone of voice and his face gave the impression he was flirting. It made a small beep that sounded like a snort. Humans.