Miter

[in_extremis]

WHO: Tony, the Agrii Ship AI Sometimes Known As Enide, and open
WHERE: The previously closed off portion of the ship where the AI systems are, and the network
WHAT: Tony interrogates a computer, and relates some of what he finds out
WHEN: Around the crew's arrival on the Agrii ship
WARNINGS: Tony might flirt with the computer


Enide was being suspiciously accommodating. Not enough to make Tony tense; that was the looming hall leading to the shrine of the pod that he could feel at the back of his neck. To convince himself he didn't feel it, he was draped in the generously provided chairs, feet up on the new desk that had been arranged here in the formerly secret hold, his crossed ankles not stopping his toes from tapping restlessly at the air. The phone was still in his hand from when he had brought it out to take photos, but by then it was held against his heart, thumping occasionally to a rhythmic sequence that continued as taps of two fingers against its case, leaving only one hand free to illustrate as he spoke, or draw up for balance when his gesturing made him tip too far back on the two legs of the chair that he was teetering on. The computer's case sat open from where he had pried it, where he watched the wires and boards like they might suddenly shift and reveal some of the computer's processing, like he was watching a date's eyes with intensity for her reaction.

Nothing about the hardware admitted any deception. Even hardwired as it was into the ports lining Tony's arm to search what he could of the database, it sat, inert, as Enide insisted she had learned about privacy, and wouldn't be prying into even the He Row's communications unless formally invited. That didn't mean Tony trusted a word of it. He was forced to pretend they both believed, then, that she heard nothing of the communications that had been unearthed in the sunless maze, and had to elaborate on the question he had been trying to ask her: "What do you know about MLXIV-4?" He used their connection to type it for her, helpfully, casting a wide search through her files. She had given him permission, after all.


[network: text]
[This text is accompanied by a few pictures of some pages on a desk, covered with shaky letters.]

Some of the Agrii are learning to write, along with some engineering skills. I know that's going to get you a little hard, Jon. It doesn't look like the writing from the plants--did you see that sample, in the war room? Don't worry, forget it.

They might be better equipped to tell us how some of this stuff works. What they're doing to us, to bring us here. Send us back. Has anyone got eyes on Ny Ak yet?

I'm talking to the ship. Maybe she'll tell me.

Comments

[trpmods]

Oh he wouldn't need long to find the dark spot. Soon after pouring into the records about Temba he would find them starting to be deleted out from under him, if they were even there to begin with. He'd find slightly more luck with records of Sh'Ka, though even those would seem sanitized of any reference to the Graq or specifics of the build. It was almost like someone, at some point, worried the Agrii would acquire the knowledge in these files and put some things together.

Meanwhile Enide of course made her own records and fed him back.

"Most commonly," she noted aloud, "one will find that Agrii have a population change approximately every seven or eight years. The eldest pass away at this time, the youngest are born even if they take time to leave the waters. There are rare instances of changes in the gap years, but those are almost always one death and one birth. An evening out of numbers. Changes in population growth seem to coincide with certain algal blooms."

[in_extremis]

Tony's hum was barely audible over the staccato tap of his fingers on the desktop then, less of the rolling rhythm that was his restless focus than a driving impatience as he tried to pin down hints of what was being hidden. Some indication of when those structures under the water had been built, and when they had been submerged. To Enide, he pushed, "Keep going. The year they moved onto the ship. The one before that."

[trpmods]

"I shall attempt, but soon my records will become spotty. You begin to ask before my installation date, when this ship was merely for purposes of collections. I was added in the 'retrofit' era."

IT was why some of her records were so spotty, but she did push into her deeper files. This left him free to learn (just before the file was lost) that the submerged structures were an attempt to provide for something closer to appropriate Agrii experiences but done away with rather quickly as they were harder to monitor.

[in_extremis]

None of this seemed to be getting Tony any closer to putting his own fist through an Atroma. He sighed, flipping through the bytes of city planning data that would have been just as boring on Earth, and had to accept the diversion, "Collections?"

[trpmods]

At least he's getting more motivation for putting his fist through the Atroma? Was that something he had needed before?

"Acquisition of new species for study. Or old ones for deeper study," Enide explains. "Thus the inclusion of stasis pods that I have been told about. Those are not accessible to my systems, strangely enough."

[in_extremis]

That was about the answer that Tony expected, but still left Enide in an expectant silence, eyebrows raised. He was evidently going to have to clarify where she lost him. "But the pods teleport. That's where we show up, isn't it? Not just where you stick us to get us out of the way. What's the ship for?" he asked.

[trpmods]

"The transportation function is newer," she notes. "The ship is for collection of samples. I believe the area the Agrii refer to as the Theater used to serve as a charging facility for security droids and drones that handled transportation within my limits."

So she was not always the cutting edge vessel she seems to be.

[in_extremis]

Tony hummed, then asked, "Any other upgrades? Some you can't access, maybe?"

[trpmods]

Oh now that one actually provokes something akin to a sigh.

"Not in the form of upgrades, but there are systems I cannot seem to override the controls to. It was my belief they were on separate systems. Now I wonder. These functions include management of food dispensers, some of the camera systems, and systems that should allow me to perform outgoing messages beyond this system."

So even Enide could not call out on her own.