Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Thinking About Thinking

There was a certain unease aboard the ship, less the unease of danger and more the unease of unanswered questions. The main crew, members of the old guard who had gone through strange occurrences like this before and would continue going through them until the near future, stood in the mess hall in something that sort of resembled a circle, clustered together with their heads bent in, in a conspiratorial manner looking over their shoulders on occasion as if expecting to see someone standing behind them.

Adam was there of course sitting at one of the tables with his heelies propped up on a nearby chair. Sunny stood behind him, lower hands resting on his shoulders, the more serious of the two. Next to them, Krill floated in his aura of usual simmering rage, which was his naturally occurring reaction to unanswered questions. With them stood, Ramirez, Maverick, Nairobi, Katie, Conn, Celex (who for the time being had reverted back to his original form and was sitting comfortably on Waffle's back, where she lay on the floor at her master's feet. Joining them was Etium, a few of their other alien friends, and Dr. Adric, all of the people that had noticed.

"Do you think she can hear us?" Dr. Adric muttered keeping his voice low and glancing upwards as if expecting to see the Empyrean in corporeal form hanging from the ceiling like a spider.

Sunny tapped her foot on the floor, "It seems highly unlikely that she can't. We are basically standing inside her, and when I say basically I actually mean literally."

"Someone could be standing in my stomach talking to me right now and I probably wouldn't hear them." Adric pointed out

Maverick also glanced up, a habit that was becoming all to common for them in this particular context, "I have a feeling that the two situations are not comparable. The Empyrean can control all of her systems down to the nth degree. I crave ice when anemic, so...."

She trailed and offended the group grunted with agreement.

"I mean, maybe we should have expected this.... She is an AI after all. We knew that." Katie said, but her voice was as unsure as her posture.

Krill shook his head, "artificial intelligence and artificial constructs are two different things."

"Ive never heard the term artificial construct before." Adam said with some amount of interest, and a light amount of confusion. He was the one who subscribed to all the weird science magazines, so he would have known if something like that existed.

Krill's antenna vibrated, "That is because I made it up just now."

"Okay.... Than why don't you explain your logic to the rest of us." Nairobi said voice low, though now as low as the rest of them. Even assuming that the Empyrean was alive or something, she trusted the ship with her life and didn't see why they had to whisper at all. If anything talking behind the ship's back like this was kind of rude.

Or if not behind her back than in her back.

That seemed even worse.

"I mean an artificial intelligence is a literal string of ones and zeros that responds to certain programmed off and on commands. You can program an AI to respond in similar ways to real life constructs, you can make it look like they have feelings and emotions, but at the end of the day it is simply responding to on and off signals.

Celex, quiet up until this point shifted in his seat, "Not to ruin your metaphor doctor, but not all computers respond to simple off and on commands if we are going to mince words. Not to mention that, isn't that exactly what our bodies do, memories and though processes either turn on neurons or keep them off creating what is essentially a complex binary system/" Adam always forgot that Celex was a certified genius. Most celex were, at least in areas of logic and science. Their biggest downfall was their low emotion eq and tendency to fight and kill each other before progress was actually made.