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If you control the narrative, you control the future—too bad no one can control time, said ART abruptly.
I was of course ready for this.
I said, “Timestream Defenders Orion, episode 76, Argus.”
ART admitted, Correct.
I said, “Scores?”
ART said, SecUnit five points, Perihelion three points.
I could sense ART was a bit miffed, which gave me more satisfaction.
The game of Spot the Quote, or whatever. It started eleven cycles ago when ART started its cargo-run from VelCorinNax station to DaeliThyra hub station which takes twenty-nine cycles via wormholes. ART’s massive processing power goes idle during solo cargo-runs, making it bored, so, it often requests my company. I enjoy them as we get to watch lots of media together without having to worry about humans getting into all sorts of stupidly dangerous situations. I don’t tell ART, but it knows that anyway.
As ART has disengaged itself from the lock and moved towards the wormhole, it said, At the last field trip, students were playing a game that did not require instruments, and I think we could try it with some modifications.
“A human game?”, I said with as much enthusiasm as if I was asked to participate in a small human’s birthday party (happened once, once too many), thinking of the games I have seen young humans play in media, and also on Preservation. Humans taking turns talking about something they have never done (what is the point), listing two true things and one lie, where others must spot the lie (too easy), a human makes up nonsense language and the others guess the meaning (a bit interesting to watch but don’t want to do), humans having incoherent debate while on intoxicants (exhausting just to watch). I don’t want to do debates with ART even with simulated intoxications, as it always wants to win and must have the last word.
Please, said ART, poking me in the feed, I am not suggesting a sort of game young humans play while being intoxicated. (How the fuck… No, ART is not reading my mind. It knows me really well.)
Then ART explained to me that the students from the last field trip for deep space mapping were all fans of a series called Chronicles of Steller Cartographers where the cartographers in a secret society solve mysteries while they chart unknown star systems. The students started asking questions based on this show to each other, like, in which episode the main character discovered a little fauna hidden in the cupboard that led to the discovery of the crime. Then moved on to quotes, who said the quote [ ] in which episode, etc. If the answer was correct, the student who gave the correct answer received one point, if the answer was incorrect or nobody could answer, the student who asked the question got one point. The loser was to buy a meal for the winner after the trip.
That sounded a bit interesting. Except, obviously, I am not interested in the prize of getting a free meal. (I don’t eat.)
I said, “But humans are really slow and their access to their memory archive is unreliable. For us, it is difficult to set a question that either of cannot answer.”
Obviously, said ART. As I said, it requires modifications for us to play.
We argued for the next twenty-three minutes over what would be a suitable way to modify the game for us, and came up with our rules:
- Select a quote from media we have watched together
- Quote must be unique enough to be found only in a particular media
- Do not mix it within other speech, giving it at least 2 seconds of pause before and after
- One point is given to the responder if answer correctly within three seconds
- One point is given to the questioner if answer is not given within three seconds or the answer is incorrect
- Correct answer must include the name of the show and the speaker of the quote
- The game is reset when one of us get ten points
- The winner of the set gains right to select the media to watch when in disagreement (once)
I won our first set. You may wonder how I beat the omniscient machine intelligence in basically a search task. First of all, ART partitioned a part of its massive processor for this game, instead of using anything that is available (even then it is a lot faster than me.)
Second, ART tends to look for some obscure quotes from the shows we have watched only once, or from the ones it knows I don’t like. This actually works in my favour because I had over 35,000 hours head start in watching media, and ART still does not watch much media on its own. I can immediately spot quotes from our favourite shows, so I have put aside the shows ART is likely to choose from as a database to run the search first.
Third, I select quotes that I am likely to say myself. For example,
Me: Stop backseat driving every time I’m trying to work this shit. Don’t you have a better thing to do?
ART: (offended) I wasn’t backseat driving. Only trying to point out the error in your code there.
Me: I know. Timestream Defenders Orion, episode 76, Gallagher. One point to me.
ART: Oh. Shit.
But soon, ART got the hang of it, (of course), and started to select more subtle quotes.
ART: (Choosing a moment when I was engrossed in sorting my new media collection) I understand you are occupied with matters of superior importance, but would it be possible for you to grace us with your presence in the bridge?
Me: What? Oh, World Hoppers, episode 7, Jos.
ART: Damn.
Me: (after our argument) For fuck’s sake, ART. (pause for 2 seconds) You just have answers for everything! You will outlive everyone trying to have the last word!
ART: Nice try. Lineage of the Sun, episode 17, Carlo.
Me: Fine. You get one point. It doesn’t mean I didn’t mean it, though.
ART: Feel free to have the last word, then. What’s your counter-argument, again?
Me: I’m not playing this game with you anymore.
Our humans eventually got to find out about our game, and were quite amused. ART tells Iris almost everything, and I slipped to Ratthi who doesn’t keep secrets unless strictly told to do so. Each group of humans even started playing the game with their variations. Ratthi wanted to do a media quote game like ours, but nobody else could keep up, so they settled with something more academic, like Preservation history and things related to their surveys. The winner can ask anyone to perform a task once. (Gurathin has been winning, but he cannot make up his mind what to ask, so he is saving his wins.)
ART’s humans have been doing more standard quiz in a set time instead, in preparation for the upcoming quiz match against Holism’s crew. (Obviously, ART’s been helping to drill them.)
One night-cycle, during a short mission to a moon near ZorinPvra station, Iris came up to ART’s control deck with a cup of some hot liquid, yawning. Others were taking a rest period.
“Hi Peri and SecUnit. What were you two watching?”, Iris asked. We were watching Maps of the Void which was the new spin-off of Chronicles of Steller Cartographers. It has become even less realistic than the original. Just the way we liked.
“Oh, I haven’t seen that one.”, said Iris, when ART told her. “Is it any good?”
“Yes.”, I said. “Do you want to watch it with us?”
Iris said yes.
I said, “I know you can watch media in the feed, but isn’t it easier with a display? We can move to the crew lounge, if you like.”
Iris shook her head. “Turi is sleeping there, and I don’t want to disturb them.”
ART said, my holo-display has been upgraded, so I can play the media on that.
Immediately, a large holo-display appeared in front of us with vivid colours and enhanced 3D imaging.
Annoyed, I said to ART in our private feed channel, You fucker, you never told me that you had a display this good.
ART replied, I only got the upgrade twenty days ago, which was after our last no-human-crew run. You do not watch media on displays when there are humans aboard.
Fair point.
So, three of us started watching Maps of the Void from episode one. The story follows Tephra who has appeared in one episode of Chronicles of Steller Cartographers, where she saves the cartographers trapped in an abandoned mine. She was a lone traveller, making and selling mechanical tools to humans. She mistrusts machine intelligence because her brother got discredited because of it, and had disappeared. So, she is travelling to find him. Not surprisingly, she meets a half-broken bot, which she initially refuses to help. But eventually, they form a reluctant but steady partnership.
After the fifth episode, Iris started to doze off, so ART turned off the holo-display. I marked the point up to which I knew Iris was alert enough to follow. Then, I pulled the show into our shared workspace to view in our feed.
ART said, A true companion does not require words, and makes the tedium of long hours fade, even in the eternal void.
I frowned. “Is that from Timestream Defenders Orion? If you are quoting from episode 31, it’s wrong. Hadel’s line is…”
Iris interrupted me, without opening her eyes, “That wasn’t a quote.”
“What?”, I said in confusion.
Iris smiled, still with her eyes closed. “It meant you, SecUnit. Pretending to have misquoted.”
“ART?”, I asked.
ART said nothing, but I could tell it was talking with Iris in their private channel.
Then, Iris said to me in our private channel, Peri forgot that I was still in the same feed!
After a pause, she said aloud, “Okay, okay, Peri. I need to get some sleep!”, and settled more comfortably in the chair.
ART remained silent, pretending to be running diagnostics, while I scrambled to pick up the inputs I have dropped.