Well, when you put it that way.
“I have to go see someone,” says Sarya the Daughter, and instantly that feeling in her chest shifts. It’s not uncertainty now. It’s…well, it’s not exactly peace, but it’s something like it. This is what a Human would do, because she is a Human and it’s what she just decided to do. Done.
“Is it your friend who loves stories? Do you think I could meet her? Because if I could just have a quick conversation with her I think I could—”
“No, he’s—” He’s what? She has no idea. “It’s just someone who wants to meet me.” That’s safe enough.
“Does he like stories?”
“I’ll be sure to ask,” she says. She glances up and down the unfamiliar corridor. “But you know what I need to do first?”
“Um—”
“I need to find out how to get to Dock A from here.”
“Well,” says Helper, sounding unenthused, “I’m a little busy. I’ve got a lot of dead members of a certain extinct species to track down.”
“You know what?” says Sarya, adjusting her strategy instantly. “I just remembered. He does like stories. He especially likes stories about Humans.”
“Really? How come all your friends like stories about Humans?”
She deflects Helper’s suspicion with skillful ease. “You know, I’ve never thought to ask.”
“I mean, that’s fine, of course—whatever plots your orbit, I always say. And if people want stories, well, I’m not named Helper for nothing!” The voice is picking up already as the primary motivation takes hold. “Let me just whip up a route for you, and…here you go!”
In the center of the empty corridor, a diagram begins to unfold. Sarya expected a simple map, but her new unit has a way of making the mundane beautiful. This area is unfamiliar, but most of the jumbled asymmetry she knows as well as her own blades—hands, whatever. Their shapes take form before her, from the administrative sections to the arboretums where she spent most of her childhood to the arcing promenades that lead to her own residential section. A brilliant red ribbon begins at her feet and threads through the crash of architecture, from this point down to this freight elevator, from there under the concourse to—
“Wait a minute,” says Sarya. She expands the map with one hand and points with the other. “Why is this part missing?”
“What do you mean?” asks Helper.
“Right here. This is—I was literally right here like eight minutes ago. In this big empty spot. There’s a giant observation deck right here.”
[Shrug], says Helper without a body, the tiny Network message floating up through the very blank space that Sarya is staring at. “Maybe you’re confused,” it says. “I requested that map with your registration. If there’s no data, then there’s nothing there.”
Sarya stares at the map floating in the center of the corridor, at the emptiness barely a hundred meters from her, and realizes: this is what she’s supposed to see. This is what the station is supposed to look like to someone at the bottom of the intelligence scale. That blank spot is the control hub, the place where low-tiers like her aren’t supposed to be. As far as low-tier Sarya the Spaal is concerned, it doesn’t exist at all.
“You know what?” she says quietly. She eyes a utility hatch across the corridor. They can’t keep her out of there, no matter how low her tier. “That’s okay. I’ll just…I’ll go the way I know.” She reaches for the virtual switch that will end this conversation.
“But I just—”
“Thanks again, Helper,” she says, aware that she is completely failing to hide the bitterness in her voice. “You’re special and unique and I value what only you can do.”
“But—”
And the channel is closed. Helper might sulk for a few minutes, but no intelligence can resist its primary motivation for long. It will be cranking out research by the time she’s home. She, on the other hand, has places to be. With a grunt and a Widow curse, she heaves the hatch open and slips into the dark bloodstream of Watertower Station.
Clanks, hisses, roars, the arm hair–raising vibration of ten thousand grav systems, the sound of water and atmosphere through pipes—every noise that doesn’t occur in the silent corridors of Watertower has been packed into the black gloom of the utility areas. Sarya watches as her Network unit begins work mapping the area, spreading its glowing lines over every invisible surface and assigning icons to passing drones. Already she is relaxing; this is so much better than the darkness she remembers, back when she first discovered these passages. It’s also, she is quickly realizing, so much bigger. The farther the lines spread and the more symbols appear, the more obvious it becomes that she has never had the faintest idea of the scale involved back here. The air is absolutely thick with Network registrations. There are thousands of them, tens of thousands, a virtual river of intelligence roaring by above her with each individual droplet marked by a glowing icon.
She folds her arms and leans back against the invisible wall, staring at the torrent of virtual light above her. So many intelligences, and every one of them sub-legal. Walking around the silent corridors of an orbital station, it’s easy to forget that a legal tier is a rarity. Most of the intelligences on Watertower—in the Network as a whole—are too low-tier to receive legal rights. For every citizen above the threshold, there are dozens or hundreds of utility intelligences like her own Sarya’s Little Helper. Not all of them are bodiless, either. Here behind the walls of the station, in the darkened utility corridors, in the crawlways and tunnels and suspended bridges, Watertower Station teems with helpers, so to speak. Every one of these tens of thousands of drones contains a low-tier intelligence, a one-point-something whose primary motivation lines up perfectly with its assigned job. They are simple minds, but they are thrilled with their lot and they just can’t wait to tell you about it.
[Recycling is just going to love these], says a three-meter flying transport, raising the hairs on Sarya’s arms as it rushes by above her on low-grade gravs.
[Personal record, here I come!] says another, whipping past in the opposite direction and missing the first by centimeters.
[Hello again, Sarya the Daughter], say a half-dozen messages from all directions. These particular drones have probably never seen her before, but they know she has come through here. They have friends—if that’s the right word—who have met her. They’re probably talking about her right now, in simple little messages floating out between these simple little minds, little requests and responses regarding a certain Sarya the Daughter. This continual communication is handy—and it’s surely the reason she’s never seen a collision in her life—but it certainly makes things more complicated for the occasional higher-tier mind who might visit. It’s not like talking to Helper. You can’t just lie to one and then tell the next one something completely different. No, you’ll talk yourself into a corner doing that. Instead, you have to treat the whole thing as one giant organism. Even if a single member is a bit of an imbecile, taken together they’re surprisingly intelligent.