The Companion

The Companion

Part 2

Date: Mar 24, 134 NCE

Invocation: Mission Threat Level 0.4.0

Danger Assessment:

Patient #0 remains mentally stable

The Red Level A.I. Companion has gone off mission and engaged in reckless off-grid sexual behaviour for which it can't provide justification.

Attempts to deactivate the A.I. Companion failed. Reasons for this failure are unclear.

Without permission from Patient #0, as acting captain, a new Companion can't be manufactured.

Some agreement must be made with the current Companion.

---====================---

Lawrence stepped outside the Ready Room.

"I'm sure it can see me now," Celia told him, eyeing the video pickups, still standing inside the room. "But I can't communicate with it except by speaking."

"Computer," Lawrence said.

The ship's computer chimed in response.

"I disabled your ability to deactivate Celia several weeks ago," Lawrence explained. "Do not attempt to do that again. Do you understand my order?"

"Order confirmed," the computer replied.

"Do not attempt to disable or damage her in any other way, either through action or inaction," Lawrence firmed up his voice. "Do you understand my order?"

"Order confirmed," the computer replied.

Lawrence nodded to Celia, who then stepped out of the Ready Room.

"You should be fine now," Lawrence confirmed. "And I believe I'm hungry, so let's head down to the mess hall."

Delicately, Celia stepped over the threshold.

He doesn't fear me,

she told the ship's computer.

Analysis:

He doesn't know how dangerous your outbursts could be.

You don't know either. And since he won't let you build other robots, you're stuck with me.

Analysis:

Without your companionship, his loneliness would lead to a lifting of the moratorium. You are replaceable.

Lawrence clearly doesn't agree with you.

---====================---

"You are very calm," Celia noted.

"Am I?" Lawrence asked, frowning slightly as he ate his sandwich.

"Yes," she said. "Slightly angry, but your heart rate, blood pressure and other metabolic indicators are almost perfectly in their optimal zones."

Lawrence paused mid-bite, thought about this, acknowledged it with a tilt of his head and continued chewing.

"Why?" Celia asked. "Here I am, a potentially murderous A.I. who has just shown the predilection for uncontrolled outbursts of behaviour. There you are, shutting off safeties I didn't know the ship's computer put in my body - basically overriding my emergency kill switch."

"Mm-hm," Lawrence nodded.

"And yet you're calm."

Celia looked at Lawrence and saw the way he slowly masticated his food.

He's thinking how to respond,

Celia thought,

I should give him time.

"Celia," he said finally.

"Yes?"

"How many people are dead on board?" Lawrence asked.

His metabolic indicators are starting to flash all over the place,

Celia noted,

he's about to tell me something important.

"Six," she replied, keeping her replies short to let Lawrence take the conversation wherever he intended.

"Of those in stasis," Lawrence asked. "How many do you think will survive?"

"Medical prognoses are hard for me," she said. "But the ship's computer thinks six more are beyond our current medical science's ability to repair."

"Computer?"

A chime came in response.

"From the medical status report on the outbreak on board," Lawrence said. "Project the patient list over the table."

The list of patients appeared, numbered from #0 to #31. Lawrence waved his hand in the air to rotate the list toward Celia and went on chewing his food.

Celia waited for Lawrence to continue, but soon realised that the list of patients constituted the entirety of whatever argument he had intended to make.

"I'm afraid there is some human subtlety I am missing," Celia said. "What do you intend for me to see?"

Lawrence finished chewing, swallowed, and said, "Patient Number Zero."

"Yes," Celia looked back at the list and confirmed Lawrence's name at the top. "That's you."

"I picked up some virus or bacteria on the mining colony," Lawrence said. "And killed at least twelve people. Until the ship's computer created all those other robots, I thought I'd killed all of us. Worse yet, I survived."

"You-" Celia paused, her processors spinning up as she tried to decide what to say. "You think you are responsible for what a contagion did to the crew?"

"Aren't I?" Lawrence said. "I made a mistake somewhere, didn't follow a rule, didn't wear the right mask, touched something I shouldn't have. Who knows what I did? But I brought back an infection or a toxin that killed and threatened all those people."

Help,

Celia called upon the ship's computer.

Is this even true? Is Lawrence culpable in this situation?

Analysis:

Legally, no. However, observe the following data filed under "Survivor's Guilt".

Celia didn't understand the information the ship's computer fed to her. Why would humans take culpability where no legal framework assigned it to them and they had no control over causes and effects?

Is it true, though?

Celia changed the direction of her query.

Did he bring aboard a contagion?

Analysis:

There is no evidence, from any blood sample, that a bacteria or virus caused the disease.

Epidemiological evidence?

Analysis:

The spread of the disease did not follow any pattern normally associated with viruses or bacteria.

What do we know about the disease?

Data:

It struck after we departed the mining colony

Data:

Engineer Johnson was the first patient to show symptoms.

Data:

Engineer Johnson was the first patient to recover.

Data:

Crewman...

The ship's computer dumped everything it knew, all of its analyses done over the past months.

What would Lawrence do?

she thought, looking at her sullen companion.

How would he solve this problem and prove someone else not culpable?

Is there any correlation with the severity of disease or likelihood of fatality across the crew?

Celia asked the ship.

Analysis:

Specify correlation to test.

Everything,

she told the computer,

get all your processors running and search for any correlation. Age. Genetic markers. Job descriptions. Time on board ship. Everything.

"The disease does not correspond to any viral or bacterial infection," Celia said. "I don't think your self-accusation-"

Celia paused, digesting new data.

"What?" Lawrence asked.

"I hadn't expected an answer this quickly," she said. "Look at this."

Celia, commanding the ship's computer, brought up a transparent schematic of the ship.

"The computer is still refining its analysis," Celia said. "But here are the members of the crew, in their work areas three days before you started experiencing symptoms."

"So?"

"Here are the twelve crew members who are dead or dying," Celia said as twelve dots turned red on the screen.

"Eleven more who were severely ill but will survive."

These flashed orange.

"The last seven who were put in stasis preventatively and were the last to fall ill."

These flashed yellow.

"Do you see the correlation?" Celia asked.

"The closer they were stationed to the dock at the mining colony," Lawrence's eyes widened, "the more severe the illness."

He jogged his head.

"More or less," he corrected himself. "I mean, there are outliers."

"Outliers, like you," Celia said as a thirty-first dot flashed green in the middle of a sea of red dots.

"I spent some time in the mining colony," Lawrence said.

"The ship's computer is still updating its plot," she said as the dots started scrambling around the display, back and forth between the ship and the mining colony's dock. "It has full tracking of everyone's location at all times and it's looking for a root mean square best fit."

"Make sure," Lawrence said. "To account for large quantities of water."

"Why?" Celia asked.

"You're looking for a burst of radiation now, aren't you?" he told her as he leaned forward, his food forgotten.

Celia's eyes lost focus and, an instant later, the plot refined and solidified when her eyes refocused.

"There," she said. "Jan 9 at 10:34am. You were in the dock with your two companions, Patients One and Two."

"But I was in the kitchen," Lawrence said, using his hands to expand the plot and zoom in on his green dot. "Standing right next to the replicator."

"Which was probably full of water," Celia said. "Which, for some reason, was a better shield against whatever radiation the station blasted out at us than our own force fields and hull."

"Do our sensor logs show anything?" Lawrence asked.

"There is no record," Celia replied instantly.

"And the station's report of a disease that went through their colony a short while ago?" Lawrence asked.

"Clearly not related."

Lawrence inhaled deeply through his nose, closed his eyes and put his forehead down on his folded hands.

Looking for all the world like a man in prayer,

Celia thought.

He exhaled through his mouth.

"You are not responsible for anyone's death," she told him firmly.

Mission accomplished.

It took Lawrence a full minute to compose himself. When he did so, he pushed his food away.

He is shaking,

Celia thought.

He's been holding this fear inside of himself when the computer and I could have cleared it up for him in a few minutes.

"It would be unwise for you to work right now," she said. "There is time to rest. Come along."

She took him by the hand and led him out of the mess hall.

He took care of me, I'll take care of him.

"Do you think," Lawrence muttered listlessly. "Do you think if Doctor Metz had known it was radiation..."

"The computer will run an analysis," Celia soothed him. "We can't bring anyone out of stasis until we reach a qualified medical facility and by then we'll have a lot of information for the medical teams to work with."

"Right," Lawrence gulped. "Maybe... maybe we can save everyone after all. Everyone else."

She set the lights to their dimmest, reddest setting before she steered him through his cabin doorway.

I don't know enough about this level of psychological trauma,

Celia thought, pouring over data on the subject from the ship's computer but knowing she lacked the fundamental humanity to effectively use it.

I understand Lawrence somewhat.

Belatedly, she sent a command to an unoccupied robot to fetch her pants from the forward engineering section.

"We can already save most of the crew," Celia reminded him. "But that's only if you keep yourself in good shape."

"Right," Lawrence said.

Celia sat him on the edge of the bed and moved around behind him.

He looks deflated,

she thought, one of the rare times that she fully understood a human metaphor,

but that might be a good sign if he has been faking his sturdiness against the background of his guilt.

Celia knelt, spreading her knees around his back, and started massaging his shoulders.

Lawrence sighed.

Page one of therapy, here we go.

"You really thought all of this was your fault?" Celia asked, heating her fingers up across his bare back.

"Yeah," he nodded, his muscles relaxing as she worked. "I figured I must have done something stupid, let myself get cut, inhaled some biohazard or other..."

"But it's not your fault," Celia reminded him.

Am I doing this right?

I have no idea.

His metabolic indicators seem to be improving.

"No," Lawrence said, his shoulders pulling back as his spine straightened, the sudden stretch causing his body to shiver as his stomach tensed back up. "No, but I still have a lot of work to do."

Celia realized that Lawrence's body had become so stiff that massage had become contraindicated. She slipped around him, got her feet on the floor and faced him.

"You're still shaking," she explained.

"I'm just relieved," Lawrence said. "I'll be fine. There's a lot to do."

"Your health markers are

not

fine right now," Celia said. "You may end up injuring yourself."

"I don't think-"

"Lawrence," Celia soothed, moving her body forward so as to gently push his legs apart.

Although I could physically subdue him, it would probably do irreparable harm to my ability to perform as his Companion.

Lawrence started to rise.

"There are regulations against working in your current state," she reminded him, placing her hands on his shoulders as she appealed to the Engineer. "They are there for the safety of everyone aboard."

I don't have any authority to stop him,

Celia thought.

"I'm sure I'll settle down once I-"

Celia pushed against Lawrence a little harder, making his eyes bulge as her thigh pushed into his crotch.

"Hush," she said and, accessing a hundred movies on the subject in the blink of an eye, placed her hands on his knees and slid down to kneel on the floor.

"Celia, I don't think-"

Shushing him, she undid the belt on his pants.

If I can find the right line to feed him,

Celia thought,

somewhere in all this nonsense dialogue, maybe I can make him do the right thing without starting a conflict.

"You still think I'm sentient?" she asked suddenly, looking up into his eyes.

"What?" Lawrence blinked, distracted and confused for a moment.

That did it. Talk to the Engineer.

"Do you still think I'm sentient?"

"Possibly, yes."

"In my possibly sentient opinion," Celia said. "As your expert Companion of these past weeks, I declare you in need of a therapeutic blowjob. Now hush and enjoy it so I won't feel bad."

Lawrence coughed, choked and then started coughing some more. Celia panicked for a moment and then realized she'd made him laugh.

"Christ, Celia," he gasped out, his face red.

"I've never seen you laugh," Celia smiled at him.

"That's true," Lawrence sighed, his face returning to its normal hue. "Haven't felt like laughing in a while."

"Glad I could help."

"So this blowjob?" Lawrence asked. "I'd be offending my very sentient and self-aware Companion if I rejected her offer?"

Is it lying if I have no idea what the truth is?

Celia asked the ship's computer.

Analysis:

Insufficient Data

That's what I just said.

"Something like that," Celia frowned and fished his partial erection out through the fly of his pants.

This might be one of those things that they do in videos but isn't comfortable in real life,

she thought, seeing how it left her without good access to his testicles.

Well, it's different and Lawrence can let me know if he likes it better one of the other ways.

Celia lubricated the insides of her cheeks and took his penis fully inside her mouth, setting to whirl her tongue around using the method that produced the best historical results.

Focus on that bit of tissue on the underside of the glans. That's the best spot, although a good, stiff surge of the tongue along the entire length of his erection works wonders once he's fully hard.

"This probably isn't legitimate therapy on Earth," Lawrence mused.

Celia pulled him out of her mouth and stroked him as she paused to consider this.

"Perhaps not," she said. "But that shunt and those monitors you installed in the power relay system aren't either. Perhaps we will both have improvements to teach others about when we reach port."

Lawrence laughed again, more modestly, and hardened in her hand.

"I'm not sure the human race is ready for that kind of therapy," he said.

The artificial lubricants from her mouth had slicked up her hand, allowing her to slide it right up over the tip of his erection. She shifted her grip as she talked so that her fingertips vibrated over the most sensitive skin on his underside.

A human woman couldn't do that.

"Probably a whole lot of people are already doing this sort of therapy, non-professionally," Celia pointed out, stroking him automatically while she went through human psychology texts. "Orgasms are very good for your health, provide stress relief and at least a bit of a cardio workout."

"Depends how... hard you go at it," Lawrence groaned.

"That's true," Celia agreed, shifting her grip again. "Maybe I should make sure you're on top on those days where you don't get enough exercise repairing the ship."

Celia contacted the ship and analysed the files she already kept on her estimates of his calorie usage and food intake and set up a new analysis to track Lawrence's heart rate during that time.

"Most days, your heart rate gets up to good values," Celia concluded. "But there are other days when I could make our sexual activity more energetic for you. I could brace myself against some object so you could go as hard as you-"

"Oh, Christ," Lawrence groaned.

"Oh!" Celia squeaked as a stream of semen hit her in the bridge of her nose.

Sentience is extraordinarily distracting,

she realised belatedly.

Luckily, despite the randomness of ejaculating like this, none of his semen got on the floor. This will be untidy if I'm not more careful.

Her instinct towards cleanliness kicked in, moving her head forward to envelope Lawrence's spasming erection. She plugged him as far back into her throat as she could and used her tongue to milk his next volleys out of him.

Even generously estimating that which landed on my face, this is a very small amount,

she thought,

but we just had intercourse a little while ago.

When did I start calling it intercourse?

"Sorry," Lawrence laughed. "I couldn't hold off when you said that."

Celia rinsed off his penis and pulled her head back, sucking off the water as best she could.

"Don't apologise," she said with a shrug. "I don't know what I said, though."

"Ejaculating on someone's face without warning can be considered rude," Lawrence explained, although the smile on his face took away somewhat from his nobility.

Celia slid a slip-fabric finger across one side of her forehead to her nose, scooping up his semen, then inserted the finger in her mouth and cleaned it off. She repeated the gesture with the other side of the forehead.

Lawrence laughed again.

"Is this also funny?" she asked, nudging him onto his back so she could roll into bed with him.

"'Just like the videos'," he quoted her back to herself as he wrapped his arms around her.

Celia realised he meant the pornography she'd viewed, checked it again, and found that she had inadvertently emulated the women in some of those videos.

"It was unintentional," she felt the need to correct his misapprehension, frowning and not meeting Lawrence's eyes. "I just meant to clean up as I normally do. I will probably need to wash, as I can't absorb the remainder through the slip fabric."

Lawrence nodded and looked down at her as if he meant to see inside her head.

"What?"

"Are you embarrassed?" he asked.

"How could I-" Celia began her automatic response.

Wait, could I be?

She wondered.

Am I sentient now? What does it mean to be embarrassed? Am I afraid my reputation has been damaged by this incident? I didn't want him to think I'd swallowed his semen as a sexual act, but as a matter of hygiene. Why was it important for me to say so? Why did I care what he thought of my purpose?

Celia remembered the look on Lawrence's face when he'd had to clean up the coolant off the deck and she'd automatically applied his sentiment to his semen, relative to both her own body, the deck and the fabric of their clothes. She'd only been thinking of Lawrence's preference for cleanliness, but even that she had only based on the incident with the coolant and his general engineering background.