Violet had trouble exiting the elevator, as the way out was nearly blocked by a forest of empty filing cabinets. She stopped the hovercart, and began to unload it.
Throughout the bridge was an ordered series of blue, shimmering restriction fields, horizontally projected by a few field emitters. Stacked neatly on the surfaces of the 'tables' were dozens of metal boxes, bulging with papers. Auto was poking through one of them with a claw, when he noticed her entrance.
"EVE probe 004-"
"It's Violet."
Auto gave her a blank stare. "EVE probe 004, you are late."
Bristling, she said, "Well, I had just a little trouble getting this load in, alright? Anyway, since you've so kindly given me only one MV-R to work with, it takes me a lot longer than it should to move these…" Violet waved at one of the many cabinets in the room. "…things."
"You were unable to perform your task with maximum effieciency due to not having sufficient transportation capabilities?"
"Yes!"
"Why did you not request for additional MV-R units, probe 004? I could have assigned additional transports to you." His processor strips rotated serenely.
Violet spluttered. "Wh- But- Why didn't you tell me that earlier!?"
Another stare. "You did not state that you were having difficulties."
"You know, Auto, you suck."
For a second, Violet felt extremely satisfied to see his utter confusion in response to her remark. Then, clearly deciding that his conversation had gone on far longer than it should have, he changed the subject.
"Regardless, we have enough material gathered here to proceed. We can collect the rest tomorrow." He tapped a button on the temporarily set up console that controlled the restriction fields, lowering their surfaces so Violet could access the drawers resting on top easily.
"Your directive is to assist me in the process of digitizing the papers contained within these boxes. I have already begun sorting the papers into specific categories." He pointed at one of the fields, which already had a bunch of documents piled atop. Violet looked at them, but couldn't see any rhyme or reason for their organization.
She was about to hazard a question, when Auto rolled on with his explanation. "I will be sifting through the boxes that have been set up, and classify them according to type. You will be at this station, where the categorized papers are. You will go through them, and read all of the papers from each category to the shipboard computer. I have already programmed the basic templates of the types of reports that are present, so the computer will be able to transcribe them."
That sounded time-consuming, but not as hard as moving those dumb cabinets had been. "Okay."
Auto glared at her, plainly still unhappy with her lack of respect for authority. Then, with a click, he moved over and began to rifle through one of the many drawers.
Violet hovered over to a report stack. She picked up the topmost paper, and looked it over. Crop statistics, bleh. She had enough of that back when she was helping with the farming, thank you very much.
She gave a small tap to her vocoder, and began reading the statistics aloud.
Auto jerked up, and almost dropped a folder that he was holding. "Stop."
"What?"
He said, in an accusatory tone, "You are not speaking in machine-code. Inefficient. Speaking in anything other than machine-code to the computer adds unnecessary amounts of time to the process of transcription."
"I don't talk in machine-code anymore, Auto. None of us do, anymore." Except for you, you old dinosaur.
"Even the menials? They do not have the necessary equipment to speak in Human!"
"Well, yeah, but they try their best. We don't have a law against doing that."
He was silent for a while. Then a spoke twitched. "Insane. Machine-code allows greater information density, and should generally be preferred when humans are not present. And menials are never in the presence of a human."
"But they are now!" Violet pointed out.
Auto shuddered in disgust. "I had no idea the situation had progressed this far. A menial should not be… mingling with the passengers!"
"Stop calling them 'menials,' Auto. You make it sound like a dirty word." Then she registered the last sentence he had said. "So, why can't they hang out with the humans, Mr. Snooty?"
"It is not proper. The sign of a properly functioning ship is one where the passengers are nearly unaware of the presence of the menials that serve them. Contact is restricted."
"Contact was restricted," she corrected. "And what is this about the ship? We aren't all on the Axiom, anymore, remember?"
"I… yes. You are correct, I was being illogical," Auto said reluctantly, obviously loathe to admit that fact. Then he remembered the task at hand. "Please clarify. Are you or are you not going to use machine-code with the computer?"
Violet folded her arms. "No."
One of Auto's servos ground loudly. "Insane," he repeated.
Seeing how distressed he looked, she relented. Only a bit, though. "Couldn't I just use a BnL link cable, and after reading the info have the computer pull it out of me?"
"No!" Violet backed up, surprised by the vehemence of his answer. "You should never use a link cable with the Central Computer. As it is not a diagnostic system, like the one in the repair ward, you could damage yourself permanently."
After repudiating her suggestion, Auto was quiet again, lost in thought. Then, seeming to come to a decision, he zipped over to one of the ports in the bridge's floor. He opened it, and disappeared down into the captain's cabin.
Violet was debating with herself about whether to follow him when he was gone for more than five minutes, when he returned, clutching something in his claw. It was a datapad, which he handed to her.
"I am amending my orders. You will read the papers, and then type their contents into this datapad. When you are finished, you will upload the data into CentComp. While not as quick as the earlier procedure that I had assigned, this new method will still be within acceptable time constraints."
"Oh. Thanks." She kept floating in front of the autopilot, stationary.
"Well? Why are you not proceeding?"
"I hate to admit this, but… I don't know how to use datapads. Sorry." Violet looked down at the ground, feeling incredibly embarrassed.
"Must I do everything?" Auto clicked noisily to himself, irked. "Do you know of any other person, or robot, that knows how to utilize the BnL Handheld Datapad?"
"Uh… My sister Lily does, actually. Yeah, she always has one on her, for her work."
"Sister? Robots do not have sisters, least of all ones named Lily. Are you certain that your memory banks are functioning corr-" He stopped. "Are you referring to EVE probe 003?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I guess."
Auto dipped, his equivalent of a nod, oblivious to the meaning of Violet's gesture. "Since you are not able to use a datapad, and the knowledge of the device's use is vital for your current directive, I am releasing you early, so as to learn the details of how to operate the BnL Handheld Datapad from EVE probe 003.
"You are to return at 0600 hours, EVE probe 004."
Violet gave a tentative knock on the door of the greenhouse. After waiting for a few minutes, she tried the door. It was wide open, so she went right on in.
A profusion of different kinds of flora filled the building. Lily had always been the probe most fascinated with plants. This, at first glance, didn't seem too unusual. All of the EVE sisters were programmed with basic knowledge of botany, enough to help them in their original directive to locate photosynthetic organisms.
Lily was different. She lived and breathed plants, so to speak. After the landing, she had used the free time she had previously never had to exhaustively study the science of agriculture and gardening. It was with her help that New Hope had even managed to get a crop worth anything, in the first year.
After year four, Lily had decided that she needed a proper experimental greenhouse, isolated from the harsh elements, in order to help her reconstitute the varied plant ecosystems that had once existed long ago. With the help of Bernie, and a whole legion of his friends, her wish became a reality.
Violet called out Lily's name a few times, but got no response. She started wandering the greenhouse, hoping to eventually run into her sister, as the building was exceptionally large. Gossip had it that some parents were already filling their children's heads with stories about groups of people who had wandered into the greenhouse, never to be seen again. What a bunch of hogwash.
At least she was glad for her internal mapping systems. It was quite impossible for an EVE 'bot to get lost, even in a place like this.
She was starting to get pretty frustrated after fifteen minutes had passed, with no sign of Lily, when she saw something completely new, that she had never noticed.
A Venus Flytrap. A really big Venus Flytrap, sitting on a granite table. Some of the plant's 'mouths' seemed large enough to fit her head in.
"Oooo." She reached out a hand to touch it-
"Don't even think about it!" Someone slapped her on the back of the head, lightly.
Violet spun around, chagrined. "Umm… Hello, Lily."
Lily's eyes were narrowed to slits. In one hand, she was holding a large spray bottle. "I swear, first Daisy, then Rose, and now you! Can't anyone read?" She pointed angrily down. There was a sign next to the plant, which said in three huge letters: DO NOT TOUCH.
"Sorry." Violet gave the plant a quick look. "Is it unsafe?"
"Pfft! Is it unsafe, she asks. Here, hold this." Handing the bottle over to the other 'bot, she went up to the plant. With great care, she pulled one of the flytraps blades down, where they could more easily see one of the 'mouths.' It was black all over.
"Daisy did that. Said she was just curious, and wanted to see if they really closed as fast as the cartoons showed they did." Lily gently let go of the frond. "What no one realizes is that Venus Flytraps are delicate. I have a hard enough time as it is keeping the darned thing alive, let alone if people insist on coming in and randomly poking it, over and over. Bottle, please."
"Oh, right." Violet passed the sprayer over, and watched as Lily gave the flytrap a few spritzes. She then reached under the table it was sitting on, and pulled out a large glass lid. After covering the plant with a thunk, she said by way of explanation, "These naughty buggers will dry out the moment you take your eye off them. Have to keep them covered. Always covered."
After giving it a last look-over, she nodded, satisfied. She then grabbed her datapad out of her storage chamber. After reaching up to nab the stylus she kept magnetically stuck onto the side of her head, she jotted down a few quick notes on the pad.
Once she was finished, Lily said offhandedly, "So, is there a reason for you coming here? Or did you just feel like dropping by?"
"Both, actually. I always enjoy visiting you, Lil," Violet said shyly.
"Aw. Well, I like you too, Vi." She clipped the stylus back on her head. "If you have the free time, would you like a look at my latest project?"
"Sure!"
"Okay, just stay behind me." They zipped along, taking several turns before getting to a door marking the delineation between two different sections, and climates, of the greenhouse. Above the entryway was a sign labeled: ORCHARD.
When Lily opened the door, Violet gasped in amazement. Inside the room were what seemed like a hundred different trees, all straining up to the fluorescent lighting. Each was festooned with fruit.
"Apples, mostly," Lily said. "I'm still doing a lot of work on them, as they're the hardest. I got going the citrus fruit seeds we had in cold storage without too much trouble. It only took me a short while to recreate some of the old varieties.
"The apples, though… Some complete idiot who stocked the plants for Operation Re-Colonize conveniently forgot that the main way apples reproduce is by grafting, not seeds."
Violet gave her sister a funny look. "Grafting?"
"Yeah, grafting. In the old days, if you decided you wanted a new apple tree of a certain type, you'd take off one of that type's branches. Then you'd plant a different, but usually hardier variety, and graft the other tree's branch onto it. Voila! You've got your favorite apples."
"Of course, you're probably asking why they did this. They had their reasons. The main one being that while apple trees would produce a very consistent crop, year after year, the seeds were a whole 'nother story. Try to plant them, and, well…"
She flew up to one of the trees, and came back holding a very misshapen fruit. "…you end up with this. They taste like Styrofoam, basically. Bitter Styrofoam. I've had my work cut out just trying to get edible varieties again; I'm not even worrying about trying to make them really tasty."
Violet took the proffered apple. She turned it, over and over. It more closely resembled a potato, than an apple. While examining the lumpy piece of produce, she became conscious of something. "Wait a minute… how would you know how this tasted, Lil?"
"I gave one to John, of course, silly. He'll eat anything, at least once." Pause. "Well, almost anything. After the pineapple incident, his wife threatened to kill me if I fed him something that suspicious looking ever again."
"Pineapple incident?"
Lily shuddered. "Trust me; you do not want to know."
"Ooookay." She gave back the apple to the other 'bot, and then checked her internal clock. It was already getting pretty late. "Lil, I need you to help me with something. It's about Auto."
"Really? That's funny, I was just about to ask you for a favor related to him, too. But you go first."
She whipped out her new datapad. "Can you teach me how to use this thing?"
"Can I?" With a squeal, Lily gave Violet a frame-crushing hug. "Finally, Vi! I knew you'd come around to using a datapad! Of course, I'd be happy to!"
Violet whimpered as her body let out several ominous sounding creaks. "Urk. Let… Go…"
"Whoops." Lily released her sister from her embrace. "Sorry. Alright, I'll train you in how to use a datapad, under one condition."
"Shoot."
Taking out a data storage card, she said, "I've got some concerns about the crop yields for the past ten years. They've been twenty percent lower than the computer projection for every single harvest. Do you think you could have Auto take a look at these reports I've assembled? Maybe he could figure out what's going on…"
Violet put the card into her own storage chamber. "I'll give it a try. Now, what about my tutoring, Professor Lily?"
"Right, right. I haven't forgotten. Let me get my stuff, and we'll be all set."