No One Looks at a Robot...

Posted on Sun 24th Jun, 2018 @ 1:14am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

570 words; about a 3 minute read

Date: MD19, Time: 2000 hours, Location: Intelligence Department

I was finally able to have a good, long conversation with Elizabeth this morning. Considering the long hours I've been working, I felt that I could at least take 45 minutes out of one day to talk with her.

I could go into all manner of metaphors about it being water to a parched desert and the like. Suffice to say it just felt like an ease of intense longing. I've missed her more than I realized.

Her knowing that I work in intelligence is a vast improvement over the days when field agents had to literally live double lives and conceal their work from their families. When I was fresh out of the Academy I could do that, no problem. I had very few connections; few people I knew cared about me, and I could count the number of people I really cared about on one hand. It didn't matter to me if I had to lie to every person I met, to get the job done. And it still doesn't--when I'm in deep cover away from my home. If I had created Corin Durant to live elsewhere, he'd be a completely different, harsher person, depending on the assignment. Here on Vanguard, though, it's infinitely more difficult to live day to day as that shady a character.

Times have changed. Or perhaps I have changed. I've met people as Corin Durant who I want to continue knowing once I resume being Damion Ildaran. I don't know if they'll want to continue the association, though. I don't know if I'll ever be allowed to tell them the truth, given the constraints I work under. In this instance, what is important is that the repair shop remain a functional place of business long after I cease working in it. That has to take precedence over my personal feelings. We need to have a permanent undercover base of operations where we can investigate and neutralize threats to the safety of this station when necessary. I am absolutely committed to that. It's why I've thrown myself into this effort so tirelessly, why I've fought so hard to make it real, not just a facade. Every customer I meet as Corin Durant solidifies my desire keep this place as safe as I can.

And yet, in among all these good people is the ugly underbelly of modern technology--the development of artificial intelligence and the use of it in robots--or humaniforms, as Jade Lantz calls them, for the sake of human convenience.

"No one ever looks at a robot and thinks of emancipation," Elizabeth said to me this morning. Had we been spending the evening alone together, I'd have continued that line of discussion. I didn't pursue it this morning because it is a difficult subject and one I was not ready to delve into. I was craving the sound of her voice and just wanted to talk with her of simple, normal things and to laugh with her. We will talk of this, though; it's too important a thing not to talk of. I can foresee a day when it becomes a vital topic of conversation, not just for us, but for many others, especially if we continue to build AIs of the calibre of Jade's cleaning staff.

I want to write more, but I keep yawning. Time to head back to my pod.

 

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