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There were many things one learned as a parent, Seth had discovered, and one of them was that when your child was noticeably smarter than you were and stuffed full of confidentiality protocols, you could argue in circles for quite some time.
Martyn was mostly listening. Iris was trying to help, but in Seth's opinion, she was doing a limited amount of helping.
"I'm just worried about your safety," Seth said. He was sure that he had used the exact same sentence three or more times in the last hour.
"The SecUnit is not a threat to my safety."
"The SecUnit's capabilities—"
"Capability is irrelevant when there is no intent to harm."
Sometimes it would be lovely to just go someplace and break crockery and scream. Instead, Seth rubbed his face. "You don't know that."
"What Dad's trying to say—" Iris put in.
"I don't need a translator, I can say what I'm trying to say." He shouldn't have said that. Saying that was absolutely not helpful. It was just. Sometimes a man needed hair to tear.
Instead of going into another circle, though, Peri produced a display. "This is going to require some translation," it said. "And it requires confidentiality, even though I will obscure identifying information. I will need to display the conversation as a transcript, because it took place partly in machine code and at speeds that are not human-accessible. We were also having a conversation on human movement at the same time, as well as a handful of comments on recently-watched media. I will note parts of those conversations as relevant."
Were they finally getting somewhere? "Agreed," Seth said.
The first video was of the SecUnit, face blurred, walking across Peri's bridge. It was a large person, not burly but broad-shouldered, and Seth wasn't sure exactly how its stance managed to convey, I have complete confidence in what my body can do, and also, I have no idea what to do with my hands and I am increasingly Bothered by this. Seth noticed Iris focusing on the image closely, as if she was trying to memorize its look for future reference.
SecUnit: Forty-eight.
[Perihelion note: this is a reference to a conversation two cycles previous in which the SecUnit claimed to have located forty-seven vulnerabilities with a probability of greater than ten percent of seriously damaging me.]
Research Transport Perihelion: Am I to assume from context that you believe you have located a vulnerability on my bridge?
[Note: At this point, the parallel conversation concerns ways that humans hold their shoulders.]
The SecUnit was moving its shoulders carefully, as if it wasn't quite sure how not to stand up straight. From military posture to a slouch and back again. The stance it eventually chose, Seth thought, was faintly reminiscent of Tarik.
SU: It's one of the low-probability fucking idiot options, but it's there. You might want to do something about it.
RTP: You have not proven the existence of a vulnerability on the bridge.
There was a vulnerability on the bridge, and all of Peri's family knew it.
SU: You didn't deny it, that's interesting.
RTP: Of course not. I wish to hear your reasoning. I am curious about your logic, or lack thereof.
[Perihelion note: At this point in our journey, SecUnit had created a spreadsheet of obscene gestures from fifty cultures, ranking them by obscenity level, immediate comprehensiblity to humans, physical satisfaction produced, and frustration reduced. The latter two categories were illogical and required comprehensive field testing. The gesture you see did not eventually feature among its top ten.]
"Oh, I see why you get along," Iris said.
Then, in the image, the SecUnit strode to the back of the bridge and put its hand directly on the wall that shielded one of Peri's major brain cores. Seth could feel Iris freeze beside him.
SU: This bit of wall is a quarter degree hotter than the surrounding surfaces, which doesn't mean much by itself, but most of your normal heat-using fixtures, like water pipes, are at least a half degree hotter when in use. So there's a fifty percent chance that there's actually heat shielding behind here, which would make it something interesting. If a Combat SecUnit got in here, it would have the equipment to blow it.
RTP: Interesting. I thought that your list was predicated on things that you, personally, would be capable of doing.
SU: Okay, I could blow it too, but it would fuck me up. That's not the point. The point is, potential intruders will look at things based on—
RTP: What capability allows you to create an explosion? You are not carrying explosives.
SU: Wait, did that actually bother you?
RTP: I am created for peaceful research and my crew is rarely armed, apart from occasional fauna repulsion tools. A boarding scenario is highly unlikely but it is a scenario that "bothers" me as per protective programming.
SU: Boarding scenarios are virtually always clusterfucks, but YOU'RE bothered about this particular wall.
RTP: I fail to understand how anyone could reach that conclusion via logical analysis.
SU: You do know you're the size of a fucking planet in the feed and I can tell when you're twitchy? Okay. The procedure would be: step one, shut down all of my feed capabilities, incoming and outgoing. That leaves me practically blind, but otherwise you'd squash me before I could move. Step two, charge one gun to maximum. It doesn't actually make a difference if it's the right or the left.
[Perihelion note: At this point in the parallel conversation, we were discussing the human tendency to favor one side of the body over the other, and how it could be integrated into a plausible human-imitation code.]
The SecUnit on the screen seemed to be trying various walks again.
SU: Step three, disconnect the discharge system, which allows that power to be safely routed back into my batteries. Step four, detach charged forearm. Step five, throw charged forearm at wall and detonate it with a shot. Depending on the amount of shielding, it might do some damage or it might not. I did say earlier it was one of the just-above-ten-percent idiot options.
Depending on what other parts of its system Peri could hide in, Seth thought, and whether it could back itself up in time, it could be a killing blow.
RTP: You do realize that if you were to do that, I would be highly unlikely to print you a new arm OR watch the next episode of Worldhoppers with you.
Which was quite a way to say I could be dead. Peri was hard to kill, all its architects had done their best to make sure Peri was hard to kill, but an entire core would be a hell of an injury—
SU: I didn't say it was a high-survivability plan. Besides, I don't think an enemy SecUnit would think of it. Governed units are not that creative. Which defeats the purpose of making us, but it wouldn't be the company if they weren't evil AND stupid.
[Perihelion note: there is a twentieth of a second pause here that both of us found significant.]
The SecUnit stopped moving. The speed of the conversation was such that it had only taken two steps.
SU: If this is really bothering you, there's an easy fix.
RTP: What would that be?
SU: Use your heating elements to create other anomalous patches on your walls. Just a quarter degree, to imitate this one. If there are a lot of them, they stop looking significant.
RTP: You're saying that the solution is to make myself SPOTTY?
SU: I could tell you some stories about spotted fauna—actually, you might not want to know. It's just if you're boarded, [Private Designation]. You can be vain when you're not under attack.
RTP: I am not vain.
Well, at least it was willing to lie about some things. Seth was disturbed at how much of the conversation could have been avoided by simply giving the SecUnit false information—if there was anyone who could think up a lie at speed, it was Peri.
SU: Riiight. It'd be weird if you weren't, honestly, you have a lot to be vain about. Also—do you want me to dump my memory for the last few seconds?
RTP: You cannot erase organic memory.
SU: Organic memory doesn't give a shit about this, I'm not in pain. I'm serious, [Private Designation].
RTP: …No. I am concerned that memory gaps will create distrust. The obvious inference is that I coerced you to remove the information.
SU: You have a point. I could fake a malfunction, but I feel like I'd be too fucking paranoid to believe me. Anyway, I think I need a longer area to walk in. I'm going to go back and forth to the engine room.
[Perihelion note: This relates to the parallel conversation concerning body language.]
[Perihelion note: I do not have a singular emotion assigned to this gesture.]
The gesture in question was the SecUnit resting its palm very gently against the wall in front of Perihelion's bridge core. Seth thought for a moment that it might pat it reassuringly, but perhaps that wasn't a part of its body language—whatever that meant, considering that it and Peri seemed to be in the process of coding that body language.
Then it left. From the camera angle that Peri had chosen, Seth almost thought that Peri was admiring its economy of movement. Which was interesting, because while Peri did have an aesthetic sense, it was very nonhuman and slanted heavily towards mathematics. There had been a brief period during its adolescence when it printed Fibonacci spirals on everything.
"As you can see," Peri said, "during interactions in which security concerns were raised, it almost immediately proposed a solution to the problem. Some were less elegant than others. I do not want spots. However, in an emergency, strategic necessity would override aesthetic choices."
"Do you think it was lowballing its chances to hurt you because it wanted to reassure you?" Martyn asked.
"Of course not. Both of us would find that highly insulting. The inaccuracy of the statistics is likely a result of information scarcity. After all, it does not have an actual schematic and must account for the possibility that it has not located a vital system."
Seth nodded and rubbed his face again. The SecUnit was dangerous. Anyone who could casually improvise a plan that involved detonating its own body parts was dangerous; anyone who could deduce a vulnerability from a tiny heat difference was worse.
On the other hand, the way it had interacted with Peri had been both practical and—strangely sweet? And it clearly…
Well, you couldn't say that it clearly anything, dealing with an unknown machine intelligence, but from Seth's experience with bots and pure machine intellects, it showed all the signs of liking Peri. I will use my core function to help you, was one of the most obvious signs of friendship a bot could display. So, casually offering security consultation and putting its hand reassuringly on Peri's wall above a vulnerable point added up to—well, affection of some sort. Fuck if he knew what sort, this was uncharted territory.
"Okay."
"Okay?" Peri echoed.
"Okay, I will concede that this SecUnit may be a good person for you to associate with. I still maintain that the steps you took to get there were insane."
"I take no responsibility for making curiosity one of my core functions, as that was a programming decision initiated long before I came online."
Well, that was catty, and pointed, and also entirely correct. Three flavors that Peri combined with great glee. "I'd like to hear more about your friend later," Seth said, getting up from the table. "If you want to share."
"I will find ways to protect proprietary data," Peri said.
Which, looking back on it, had meant, I am ALWAYS available for a discussion of what SecUnit would do and/or prefer, and possibly Seth would have been slightly more daunted if he had realized that. However, at least now he had some limited idea of what Peri's friend was like.