Lovelace thought it best to follow a different line of questioning. She was uncomfortable enough without adding offending current caretaker to her list of troubles. ‘What kind of name would be good for me?’
‘Human, for starters. You’ve got a Human body, and a non-Human name is going to beg questions. Something Earthen in origin is probably good. Won’t stand out. Beyond that, though . . . honestly, hon, I don’t know how to help you with this. I know, that’s a shit answer. This is not something you should have to do today. Names are important, and if you pick your own, it should be something with meaning to you. That’s how modders go about it, anyway. Chosen names are kind of a big deal for us. I know you haven’t been awake long enough to make that call yet. So, this doesn’t have to be a permanent name. Just something for now.’ She leaned back and put her feet up on the console. She looked tired. ‘We need to work on your backstory, too. I have some ideas.’
‘We’ll have to be careful with that.’
‘I know, we’ll cook up something good. I’m thinking Fleet, maybe. It’s big, and won’t make people curious. Or maybe Jupiter Station or something. I mean, nobody is from Jupiter Station.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant. You know I can’t lie, right?’
Pepper stared at her. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘I’m a monitoring system for big, complicated long-haul vessels. My purpose is to keep people safe. I can’t ignore direct requests for action, and I can’t give false answers.’
‘Wow. Okay, that . . . that fucking complicates things. Can you not switch that off?’
‘No. I can see the directory that protocol is stored in, but I’m blocked from editing it.’
‘I bet that can be removed. Lovey would’ve had to have that removed if she was keeping this thing under wraps. I can ask Je— or, well, no.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll find someone to ask. Maybe there’s something in your – oh, I forgot to tell you. The kit’s got a user manual.’ She pointed at her scrib. ‘I skimmed through on the way back over, but you should download it when you’re up for it. It’s your body, after all.’ She closed her eyes, sorting things out. ‘Pick a name first. We’ll figure out the rest bit by bit.’
‘I’m so sorry to put you through all this trouble.’
‘Oh, no, this isn’t trouble. It’s gonna be work, yeah, but it’s not trouble. The galaxy is trouble. You’re not.’
Lovelace looked closely at Pepper. She was tired, and they’d only just left the Wayfarer. There were still enforcement patrols to worry about, and backstories, and – ‘Why are you doing this? Why do this for me?’
Pepper chewed her lip. ‘It was the right thing to do. And I guess – I dunno. It’s one of those weird times when things balance out.’ She shrugged and turned back to the console, gesturing commands.
‘What do you mean?’ Lovelace asked.
There was a pause, three seconds. Pepper’s eyes were on her hands, but she didn’t seem to be looking at them. ‘You’re an AI,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘And . . . I was raised by one.’
JANE 23, AGE 10
Sometimes, she wanted to know where she came from, but she knew better than to ask. Questions like that were off-task, and being off-task made the Mothers angry.
Most days, she was more interested in the scrap than herself. Scrap had always been her task. There was always scrap, always more scrap. She didn’t know where it came from, or where it went when she was done with it. There had to be a whole room full of unsorted scrap in the factory somewhere, but she’d never seen it. She knew the factory was pretty big, but how big, she didn’t know. Big enough to hold all the scrap, and all the girls. Big enough to be all there was.
Scrap was important. She knew that much. The Mothers never said why, but they wouldn’t need her to work carefully for no reason.
Her first memory was of scrap: a small fuel pump full of algae residue. She’d taken it out of her bin near the end of the day, and her hands were real tired, but she had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to get the little metal ridges clean. Some of the algae got beneath her fingernails, which she didn’t notice until later, when she bit them in bed. The algae had a sharp, strange taste, nothing like the meals she drank during the day. The taste was real bad, but she hadn’t tasted much else, nothing except maybe a bit of soap in the showers, a bit of blood when she got punished. She sucked the algae from her nails in the dark, heart beating hard, toes squeezing tight. It was a good thing, that bad taste. No one else knew what she was doing. No one else could feel what she felt.