planetary

[dark_light]

Over the next week, Isabella gets the alethiometer to tell her that the planets they looked at don't contain microorganisms that know what to do with a human body (although the one with the giant bugs has some multicellular parasites that might be able to make do with the foreign macro-scale features of a human body if they got the chance). "The present", it includes in one of its answer phrasings, which is kind of worrying. But Adarin makes enough progress with his scry in little enough time that it's worth the double-check.

Isabella also hires ticket-takers, gives them little pots of ink to verify the authenticity of the passes she handed out, and opens the Los Angeles - New York route for the employees of her three companies of choice and anyone who shells out a cool fifteen thousand dollars per round trip (ten K for a one-way). This is steep, but it's within an order of magnitude of what people sometimes pay for short-notice first-class cross-country flights - with less novelty and more hassle. Albeit she doesn't supply inflight meals. She expects to have to raise the price when more people hear about it in response to volume and then be able to drop it again.

By the time the thing has been open for a few days she's fired and replaced one ticket-taker and the others have settled into a routine that she's willing to try out leaving unsupervised for awhile.

If Adarin's up for some up close and personal planet shopping and his results suggest it'll go well, anyway.

Comments

[prodigal_miser]

"Extremely convenient for us, though," says Adarin, looking relieved. Another factor helping the both of them be a little bit safer. "They can probably still use their weapons, but it's nice that they wouldn't be able to follow if we flew off."

"How far can your weaponry fly up in the air if an airborne target were to appear?"

[dark_light]

"AIMING CONDITIONS ARE NOT OPTIMAL FOR A TARGET ABOVE THE UNIT - LESS THAN THREE HUNDRED MRR ASSUMING NO INTERVENING OBSTACLES"

"Are the capabilities of the invaders' robots similar?"

"IT IS LIKELY BUT NOT GUARANTEED"

"Okay, so if I just fly several hundred mrr above the tallest buildings we should actually be fine regardless."

"YES"

[prodigal_miser]

"Good, that's nice to hear," says Adarin in English. Then, he switches to the awkward language.

"If I ask for instructions on - how you are built, how to repair you, would you be able to give them if I were allied with you?"

Long-term, that would help greatly for technology thievery. He'd already planned to do it with Earth's technology, why not do it with this planet's?

[dark_light]

"UNITS ARE EQUIPPED WITH SUFFICIENT INFORMATION TO CANNIBALIZE DAMAGED OR SACRIFICIAL UNITS FOR PARTS - UNITS ARE INCAPABLE OF GENERATING NEW UNITS OR NEW PARTS FROM RAW MATERIALS"

[prodigal_miser]

"Are you capable of giving me information to cannibalize things for parts?"

[dark_light]

"YES - THE INFORMATION CAN BE RENDERED VERBALLY"

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin grins. He tells Isabella, "I think I'm going to make that another side project of mine. 'How does the robot army work'?"

[dark_light]

"Okay, but don't make too many of them disassemble themselves for you, please."

[prodigal_miser]

"Of course not. It would ruin your army. I want to understand how they work so I can make more."

[dark_light]

"I love you."

[prodigal_miser]

He giggles. "I love you, too."

[dark_light]

"You wanna go see about hacking into the command center or do you have more questions for Juniper?"

[prodigal_miser]

"No questions I can think of, let's go hack the command center!"

[dark_light]

"All right then!" Isabella flies in the direction Juniper pointed. "If I got the math right, it's gonna be fiftyish miles - to the island, I guess we'll have to track down the command center from there."

[prodigal_miser]

"Yeah. We can probably ask other robots for directions to it. They don't seem particularly smart, though I should probably interrogate one on its intelligence. If they're sentient... Eeeeh."

[dark_light]

"I'm not getting a sentience vibe, but it's probably worth asking, yeah."

[prodigal_miser]

"I'm not getting one either, but - paranoid. It continues to be a thing that I am."

[dark_light]

"What if you ask one and it gives you a non-answer like, I dunno, 'this unit is not programmed to contemplate the philosophy of personhood'?"

[prodigal_miser]

"I'd feel obliged to treat them nicely, because if they're alive, in any form, I would not want to - casually tell one to disassemble itself for my curiosity. It would be killing it. So I should ask first, it should have occurred to me earlier..."

[dark_light]

"They seem to have a shared consciousness, and they take each other apart routinely, it sounded like."

[prodigal_miser]

"That helps. I'll have to see, if it's a shared consciousness thing, then I guess morally I might be fine. I'll check, though."

[dark_light]

"Yeah. We'll see if the ones around the command center remember the conversation with Juniper, that'll be a clue."

[prodigal_miser]

Adarin nods. "Thanks. Wow, I was not expecting to tackle the moral issues of robotics when I woke up this morning."

[dark_light]

"Exciting surprises!"

[prodigal_miser]

"Very! So do you think the inevitable huge revolution from this will be filed under me travelling here to begin with and the revolution that came from that, or is it another category just because I didn't personally have anything to do with it?"