“You did call me, right?” asks Helper. “You said help—which is my name, practically—and here I am! And by the way I’m glad you did because I’ve been waiting all day to ask you about—”
“Helper,” she says, slowly and carefully. She can’t help herself. She has to tell someone, and here’s someone now. “My mother—I—” she says, then backs up. “I just saw—there was—”
But there’s no point in finishing any of those sentences. Helper won’t understand. The small intelligence is both self-aware and conversational, but then you could say that about practically anything connected to the Network. The sanitation station she uses every morning is both those things, but you wouldn’t want to have a conversation with it. Helper’s tier—like that of the sanitation station, or any other tool on Watertower—is low. Actually low, sub-legal-personhood low. Which means there is no way it could understand the significance of what has just occurred. It doesn’t even know she’s Human, because she learned at a very young age that it is completely unable to keep its virtual mouth shut. There would be so much to explain before she could get to the important part, to perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened to her—
I know where you came from.
Oh goddess.
“So…how did your friend like her story?” asks Helper in its relentlessly chipper voice. “That’s what I’ve been dying to ask. I honestly think it was some of my best work. Did she love it? I bet she loved it. She didn’t hate it, did she? You know what, actually I think it would be best if you just told me the exact words she used, in the order she used them. I’ll interpret her emotions myself. No—yes. Okay, yes. I’m ready. Go.”
With the things currently on Sarya’s mind, keeping a sub-legal intelligence happy is somewhere far down at the end of the list. Still, it is never a bad idea to keep one’s tools content, and she has told this lie enough that it has become automatic. Her friend always says the same thing, after all. “She said, um—” Sarya swallows as she pictures that golden double gaze. Oh, hello. It’s you. “She said…I love this.”
Helper is silent for long enough that Sarya wonders if it has completely shut down. Then, in a quiet voice: “I knew it.” And next, like a rising flood, comes the unstoppable torrent of words. “See, that right there makes it all worth it,” the little intelligence says, a quick [satisfaction] drifting past Sarya’s eyes. “You know, I didn’t think I was going to like all this Network research. It’s just—well, it’s not much fun. I mean, every sighting is the same—no intrigue, no sudden twists. Just everybody dying at the end, you know? Where’s the story in that? But hearing that—”
“So now that you know,” says Sarya carefully, “we can save this for another—”
“And they’re all so old. I mean, the most recent sighting is…hold on…seven—eight hundred years ago. No, wait, that one was a hoax. I mean, I still made a good story out of it—you remember the one with all the selfless sacrifice at the end? Your friend loved that one too, I remember. No, the most recent real one is…wow. Over a thousand years ago. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So. That’s a long time, right? I mean, I could switch to another species any time, I really could. I could research, say…Spaal! Your species. Great species. Way more boring than the Humans, maybe, but at least it hasn’t been a thousand years since anybody’s seen a real live one.”
Her species. Right. If only you knew, Helper. You and the twenty-four thousand citizens of Watertower Station who walk/scuttle/roll past a real live one every day. They would be terrified to learn that Sarya the Daughter—Sarya the Human—has lived here her entire life, as real and live as they come. And if she can do it, so can others. And there are others! Observer, this giant group mind, literally just told her that. Obviously not in words, exactly, but pretty much.
I know where you came from.
“But anyway,” continues Helper, each syllable reminding Sarya why she keeps the little intelligence on mute most of the time, “I don’t say that to make you think I’m tired of searching for Human sightings, of course. I could do this all day, because you know why? Because when your friend hears my stories and says things like that, like I love this, I just feel this—I can’t even describe it. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever fulfilled your primary motivation but it is just the most—”
“Okay, so,” Sarya says, more firmly. She’s got her blades back under her now, but she really needs her full concentration. “Helper, you’re great,” she says. “We’ve established that. Great job. She loved your story. She, um, loves your work. You know that. Now, can we…maybe talk about this a little later?”
“Later?” whines Helper. “But I already waited all day. And you said.”
This is probably true. Sarya has said a lot of things to Helper, and at this point even she can’t even remember what’s true and what’s not. The friend who can’t get enough of Helper’s stories, for example—yeah, total fabrication. But when you’re dealing with sub-legal intelligences and want results, you do what you have to do. And it’s not like Sarya’s the only one who does it; everybody does. Helper’s manual even encourages it, in spirit if not in actual words.
Your new sub-legal intelligence comes with a primary motivation pre-installed. For the best possible results, make sure that all work assigned to the intelligence aligns with this motivation.
What it doesn’t say—and yet pretty much does, if you think about it—is that a higher intelligence can stretch this to the breaking point. It’s not hard to fool a lower intelligence, especially when you tell them things they want to hear. To pull an example from the void, say you have a childcare intelligence that’s been your constant and annoying companion for as long as you can remember. Perhaps it has a primary motivation toward storytelling, because your mother thought that would be useful. But you don’t need storytelling anymore, because you’ve matured. Now, you need help with a certain interest—fine, a certain obsession—that requires research. It’s not easy to search a galaxy-wide Network for Human sightings, after all. You need help. So. Given this hypothetical situation, you might concoct a nonexistent friend who really loves stories—but only stories on a specific topic. And to create those stories, a storytelling intelligence would need to do research. And there you have it: you have now transformed a useless childcare intelligence into a highly motivated research assistant. And it is not wrong—so you can shut up right now, conscience—because the work gets done, Helper is happy, and everybody wins.
“You’re right. I did say,” she concedes. “It’s just that right now I have to…” She has to…what? She has to waste the next six hours of her life wandering the station, imagining what could have been? Or she has to seize an opportunity that will never come again?