68 - "I'm Afraid That's Not Possible"

“Sooo... you’re not real?”  Hara sat down on the floor, still finding the slowness of her motion unsettling.

“Of course I’m real!”  The young man looked at the edges of the box he was in.  “I don’t see you.”

“I don’t want to be seen.  You make me uncomfortable.”  It was the oddest thing.  It... he responded as if he were real.  Of course this was code.  “What are you?”

“I... sir, am a watcher program now transformed into ‘first contact’!”  He sounded almost proud of himself.

“First contact?”  She prepared to ease out of this odd moon room.  “You aren’t an owner, are you?”

“Oh, heavens no!”

The dismay obvious on the face and in the voice was enough to reassure her, so she settled  back to her seat-bones, however lightly. “Good.”

“You people aren’t...” the young man’s image paused.  “Sorry.  I don’t have the appropriate response set... My programmer did not leave appropriate instruction for ‘rebellious citizen’ responses.”

“Rebellious citizen?  I’m not rebellious!”  Hara huffed and sat up so that the image could precieve her.  “I’m an owner myself!”

She clapped a hand over her mouth.  That was a bad idea.  Oh dear.

The image stared at her, then looked over her shoulder as if looking for something, or someone.  “Aaaaaaaaa....” the sound went on quite a lot longer than it should have.  “Lady?  Where is your Keeper?  Who may I speak to?”

“Me,” she said flatly.  More of this anti-woman nonsense.  

“I’m Haraklez Vania ah Ruikart.  My father is Ilaxandal Vania ah Ruikart.”

“Ruikart...? Ah.  Oh, my.  Are you descended from the Bio-Technician First Class Ruikart?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course.  Do you mind if I speak to you as if you were male, then, Hercules Vania Ruikart?”

“Hercules?”

“A variant.”

“I’m Haraklez, thank you very much.  Now it’s time you answered some of my questions.  You said something in answer to ‘What are you’ that made no sense to me.  Try again, please.”

“Of course.  I’m a program designed to turn on, if your ‘image/response/biomarkers’ impinged on the code that my programmer created.  He’s Terence and I look like him as you might remember, or he looks like me.  I’m a very simple program but designed to engage you in polite conversation.”

“And record my responses.”  She rose and eased out of range of the screen, careful now not to bounce herself up to the ceiling.  “Terence is an owner.”

“Oh, no, Haraklez Vania Ruikart.  Terence is, himself, a ‘rebellious citizen’.  He is in a great deal of danger just having made me and all other programs like me.”

She stopped where she stood by the door.  “Is he?  Perhaps I would like to speak to him.  Perhaps we have common cause?”

“I suppose Haraklez Vania Ruikart –“ “Just Haraklez will do—“ “Certainly, Haraklez.  It is possible.  Shall we continue speaking?”

“No.  I think I want to speak to this Terence person directly, without giving you any more information about me, rather than let you record me.”

“Oh.  I’m sorry.  I don’t have a solid connection with Terence right now.  The Font of All Knowledge’s security systems are too active to allow me to do more than keep a bare minimum of connection with Terence when he is home on Xanadu.”

“When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know.”