A/N: I'm increasing the rating to T, simply because it meshes better with the content of the episode, All Too Human and the movie A.I. was rated PG13. Review replies will be done through the new feature. As always, angst warning.
10
Beka Valentine needed a break. Dylan had finally managed to rope her into doing those first officer duties she normally dodged. Honestly! What could possibly be gained by writing crew performance evaluation reports? Some things were better left to disappear with the old Commonwealth.
A cup of coffee and her favorite music playing turned the Maru into a relaxing retreat from the everyday responsibilities of being Andromeda's first officer. She had looked forward to the moment all day and quickened her step as she boarded her ship.
Beka entered the kitchen and eagerly reached for her favorite mug, then nearly knocked it off the counter.
Someone else was standing in the room.
She blinked, recognizing the figure. "Rommie! What are you doing in here? In the dark?" Beka activated the lights. "No wait! Don't tell me. You see great in the dark, so back to my original question."
Rommie's response was short. "I needed some time to think. By myself."
"Alright. No need to sound so defensive." Beka pointed to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "Sit down. The Maru's a great place to think. I only asked because, well, don't you usually think your problems over with yourself? The rest of Andromeda, I mean."
Rommie sat down in the chair. "I'm experiencing a bit of a system conflict."
Beka raised her eyebrows. The diplomatically-trained avatar often expressed herself in formal terms, but Beka knew how to translate. "You had a fight? With yourself? Want to talk about it?"
Rommie seized the invitation. "While running a routine diagnostic inside Mainframe, I came across an area and was denied access."
Beka couldn't help being curious. "Does that happen often?"
"I know which areas I have access to. Areas exist reserved for private information, but I am apprised of their classification and keep a regularly updated list. This one is new and I did not know of its existence. Until now." Rommie couldn't keep the anxiety from creeping into her voice. "It was hidden from me."
"I see," Beka replied with understanding. Rommie had good reason to be apprehensive about secret files in her matrix. Beka picked up her mug and filled it. "Harper gets back soon. Why don't you ask him to look into it for you?"
"I will." Rommie shook her head. "Why didn't I think of that?"
Beka leaned against the counter. "You've had a lot on your mind lately. Even if you can keep track of more than most, you can't expect to think of everything."
Rommie stood up. "Thank you, Beka."
"You're welcome, I guess. What exactly am I being thanked for?"
"For treating me like I'm somebody, like more than a warship."
"You like being a warship."
"I do." Rommie elaborated. "You treat me as if what I feel makes a difference."
Beka took a sip from her mug. Ouch. Too hot. She set the mug back on the counter. "Who isn't? Is it Tyr? Because you know Nietzscheans, their personalities seem to suffer from that pesky superiority complex. I think it comes with the genes."
"No. I'm used to Tyr. He never treats me any differently than he would anyone else. I always know what to expect."
Beka grinned. "Yeah, you gotta hand it to Tyr. Everybody gets a neat handle from him." She settled her hands around her coffee mug and tapped the rim with one finger. She decided to launch the subject Rommie so obviously wished to skirt around. "So, it must be Dylan we're talking about?"
Rommie didn't answer.
"You haven't talked to Dylan, have you?"
"Dylan and I converse regularly," Rommie replied, stiffly.
Beka rolled her eyes and tapped the countertop. "But not about what's important to you."
Rommie appeared to think for a moment. "May I ask you a question, Beka?"
"Fire away," Beka replied, testing the temperature of the liquid in her cup by dipping one finger into it.
Rommie sighed. "What if I'm just an echo?"
"I don't follow." Beka took a long draught from her mug.
"What if my feelings are merely simulations, preprogrammed in those schematics Harper found written in the blueprints of my design. Presumably that's what Dylan meant."
Beka spat out her coffee. "Dylan gave you this idea?"
Rommie nodded. It was difficult to continue. "Yes," she confessed. "He said that's why Commonwealth ships have captains. He said he was my heart. It seems to suggest that he believes organics are the only ones who can feel true emotions."
Beka stepped over to Rommie, restraining the urge to shake some sense into her. "You have feelings, Rommie. Logic doesn't care. I know you do. If you were some emotions' simulator, we wouldn't be having this conversation! If you think something is important, no matter what it is, big or small, tell Dylan."
Rommie took a Commonwealth stance, standing straight with her hands behind her back. "I'm not denying my emotions, Beka. But Dylan is my captain. As long as his orders are rational, I follow them. That is my job. And if what I think--if what I feel interferes with the execution of those orders, then my feelings are irrelevant."
"Baloney!" Beka paced in a half circle about the room. "If I disagree with Dylan about something, believe me, he's going to hear about it. And as a captain myself, if there's something my crew feels uncomfortable with, I want to know what it is. So, tell me, what's bugging you right this minute?"
Rommie didn't have to think about this question at all. She dropped back into the chair. "I think Dylan wants to send David away."
Beka watched Rommie. "What do you want to do? You've helped the kid a lot. He wouldn't be here if it weren't for you and Harper."
"Is it enough?" Rommie asked. "You told me once when you've done all you can do, you let go. What if what Dylan wants to do is right?"
"If Dylan's so right, why does it bug you?"
Rommie remained silent for a long moment. "I don't know what to do!" she cried, pounding the table with her fist. "Only…I don't want to lose anyone. I've been running scenarios in my head and it seems, whatever I decide to do, someone gets hurt." Rommie looked distant. "Someone always gets hurt."
Beka narrowed her eyes. She wasn't going to pretend to try understanding that one. "Who gets hurt?"
Rommie shook her head and rose once more. "I can't talk about this now," she whispered and rapidly left the Maru.
Making decisions always presented difficulties for Rommie. So much responsibility rested on split-second judgment calls and people ended up getting hurt. Although she took every precaution, her measures never seemed to be enough. Why wasn't there something she could do to prevent that outcome? Why couldn't she think far enough ahead? React faster? Prevent anything from ever hurting the people that she loved?
It was not one of her proudest moments, in spite of the High Guard metal Dylan had awarded her. Victory cost a lot that day. She made a triumphant return to Andromeda feeling anything but triumphant. "Kim died Dylan," Rommie would explain to her captain. "A lot of people died."
On her mission to Machen Alpha, she had been sent to contact and protect an informant who had vital information concerning a threat to the Commonwealth.
She would never forget the look of revulsion that had appeared on the face of Philip Kim when he had noticed the artificial parts sticking out from the burns the gauss guns had made in her clothes. The blasts had also done away with parts of her epidermal layer, making it impossible to hide the fact she was not quite human.
She had saved him from the people who had been sent to kill him. She had interposed herself between him and certain death and yet, once he realized she was an android, his first reaction had been: "Please don't kill me."
As if all she amounted to was a killing machine. A cold and unfeeling tool of destruction.
There wasn't a time so long ago when she had believed that herself. In the midst of pain and grief, she had once cried that she was a warship and warships were only good for one thing.
She no longer believed this, but that mission on Machen Alpha reminded her how much damage she could deal. One ship's avatar might hold an entire planet hostage. It was part of her Commonwealth design. Her blessing. Her curse.
Machen Alpha had a sordid past, one that was especially hostile to AIs. This served to make her mission very tricky. From the very start, things went wrong. Even after Rommie saved Kim's life, they were incessantly pursued by an Agent Carter and his team. Suffering from an aerial attack, Rev, Tyr, and Harper were sinking to the bottom of the sea inside the Maru. She lost communication with the ship and Mister Kim overheard her calls as she tried to reestablish contact.
He noted her concern. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." There was no way she was telling a man who already thought she was a homicidal maniac that her mission had gone out of control.
Kim didn't buy it. "You're lying. That look on your face, it's almost…"
Rommie frowned. "Sorry. I must not be playing the cold, calculating AI well enough for you."
"No. You're acting human." Kim looked at her with awe.
"If I were acting human, we'd both be dead by now." Maybe humans did not realize it. Every time someone said she was acting human, the thought might also be construed as an insult. Like being herself, what she really was, wasn't good enough.
And in this instance, it was not. She was supposed to protect him and she failed. "I thought I told you to stay down," she chided Kim. She could already tell the shot he'd received was fatal. She sensed his life signs fading.
He simply smiled at her. "You think I'm going to listen to a--"
She thought she knew what he was going to say. "An AI?"
"A woman." Those were Kim's final words and Rommie would carry that memory with her forever.
He had called her a woman. The man who had thought her a merciless machine now saw her as a woman.
People could change their minds.
When Kim died, Rommie reacted. She declared war. Never did the weakness of humanity stand out as much as when she was in the act of destroying it.
She needed to break into a high-security facility to procure a Magog swarm ship. She immediately applied her mental processes to finding a way. "Estimated casualties: seven hundred thousand military and civilian. It could be a lot worse. Initiate reactor overload sequence." It wasn't too difficult to be the cold and calculating killing machine.
Agent Carter attempted to stop her, but linking with the planetary computer, she became the weapon. He barely slowed her down. "In case you're wondering," she informed him. I've tapped into your civilian network. It seems to be experiencing some technical difficulties. Oops. The main power grid for your largest city just went off-line. That was communications. There goes the civil defense system. Water treatment. Traffic control."
Her plan to breach the research facility ran like clockwork. Not one organic wanted to remain in the vicinity of an overloading reactor. Only one person stood in her way.
That persistent AI, Agent Carter. She was not happy to see him. "It's the wrong move. I'm taking that ship. Try and stop me, and I won't shut down the reactor. I'll turn this place into ground zero."
Carter studied her smugly. "No matter how many people it hurts?"
Rommie looked at her fellow AI. "It's what you'd do if you were in my position."
He didn't deny it. "Yes. And if I were in your position, right after the launch I'd turn that ship's PSP projectors on Machen Alpha and eliminate that potential threat forever. That's not going to happen."
"I gave you my best offer. You have seventy-three seconds to change my mind." If he wanted a fight, she'd give him one.
Carter accepted the challenge. "Seventy-three seconds, huh? Sounds about right."
Programmed to protect lives. Programmed to destroy them.
Destroy to protect. End lives to save them. That paradox had driven many AI's insane.
Carter's case was no different. He refused to see what a folly an alliance with the Magog would be for all concerned. The fighting ceased when he disarmed her. "It didn't have to be like this," Carter began ominously. Rommie did not reply right away, but ticked off the seconds to detonation in her head sadly. Sad because, under different circumstances, she had an inkling she would have really enjoyed getting to know Carter.
Her force lance exploded in his hands and there wasn't anything left of Carter to get to know.
"No. It didn't," Rommie responded. "Access reactor control. Initiate reactor shutdown. Authorization: Andromeda Ascendant, Alpha-Three-One-Five-Niner." The immediate obstacle to her mission had been eliminated and as inhospitable as Machen Alpha had been to her, she was not going to destroy it. There was no reason to hurt anyone else. She had learned a lesson Carter never would comprehend.
There was a great difference between being inhuman and being inhumane.