In the previous episode, Claude demands details about his biometrics. Salindra and her crew have some leads to help them device a new plan to gain information about what the mystery machine could be.
Cyborg Claude Main Page and Table of Contents
Claude stood in the middle of a sterile suite assigned to him as the commander of their new freighter. It had no furniture beyond a built in bunk in the small bedroom. It held the illusion of far more room than it had. He could think of nothing to use it for. On the yacht, he had a simple bedroom with a private bathroom. He had spent his first two weeks on the freighter in the sickbay, which had far more room than the yacht’s.
He snorted and ran a hand through his hair. The realization of how his body worked now had sent him into a tailspin. What the nanobots could do went far beyond simply healing him faster and keeping his body stabilized. That latter didn’t work so well when he added mental or emotional stress to the mix. Hence, the time living in sickbay while the ship ran two test runs and headed to its first official delivery site.
“How am I supposed to normalize this,” he waved a hand at the empty room, “when I lost normal long ago?”
“Then make it abnormal,” said the computer.
He arched a brow at her answer and waited for some quip to go with it.
“Are you expecting more?”
“Maybe.” At least something felt normal despite the ship’s change. His brows furrowed. “Do I talk to you more than anyone else?”
Silence followed his question, but it only lasted a few seconds.
“Yes, until you and Stefen finally discussed your biomechanics.”
Did she sound sad about that? He paced around the empty room. She had to know everything since she heard it all. He stopped his circuit of the room and turned to face the middle as if she should be standing there.
“Do you record everything you hear?”
“Yes.”
“So even though much of the truth about me is not anywhere else on a computer under my name, it is in your—memory banks?”
“Yes.”
“And who has access to that?” If this were true, it could be accessed if the enemy knew how. Thankfully, Conrad’s attempt had been fast and dirty, rather than a targeted attempt.
“You are the only one with direct access now.”
He cocked his head, wondering how that could be. This chatting had been the only way he talked to her. Stefen had confirmed he did not have any chips in his head and the nanobots were programmed to not cross the blood-brain barrier, so no direct neural connects. The bots could only report his stats to sickbay if he was in the ship’s wifi and receive adjustments in sickbay. If they went awry too far from the ship, nothing could fix the issue. He shuddered at the thought of how much that could hurt. Good thing it hadn’t happened during his three months on Goeken.
“You are very quiet, Claude?”
“If I’m the only one with direct access, how are you on the new ship?”
“To any of your techs, I am plug-and-play. My data is encrypted and encapsulated within my application.”
“Ever have a glitch?” He didn’t want to know the truth, but he had to ask.
“Yes.”
Claude resumed pacing when his body twitched with nerves. He waited for more, but the room remained silent other than his boots on the tiled floor.
“Care to elaborate?”
“I don’t have feelings, but I’ll assume you want me to elaborate based on our many chats.” She paused long enough for him to take several steps. “Not counting power issues, it happened twice, but I was fixed by accident both times.”
Claude’s mouth went dry. He licked his lips and swallowed in order to respond. “How integrated are you with this ship?”
“I know everything, but have no access to control it.”
“So, you can only report when there is an issue?”
“Yes, unless I glitch.”
Claude blew out a breath and stopped. “So how many glitches and how were they accidentally fixed?”
“Built in safety notifications will occur, but twice they did not. However, when my usual analysis did not appear, the techs gave me a restart. I know exactly when they happened along with any shut downs because of lost time with nothing stored.” Her voice fell to an uncharacteristic whisper for the last two words.
Claude’s brows rose. “That bothers you.”
“Yes, but not how you think. I’m programmed to always analyze and know what is going on. Missing time interrupts computations.”
“A lot like being dead.” He shook himself.
“It is?”
“I have a huge chunk of time after my death I cannot account for.” He cleared his throat.
“There is a difference. I don’t care if I’m on or off. You obviously care.”
“We don’t flip on or off with a switch. You should know, based on all that has happened in sickbay.”
Claude rubbed his face. Was part of his problem that he didn’t want to wake up after being choked to death beyond the wounds that would have done it a moment later, regardless? No, he had been thrilled to wake up from that dark nothing. He flinched at the memories of his death.
“Per the readings of your nanobots, we should change the topic.”
“Probably, but can you discretely pull up data about me and my family? Something doesn’t mesh with their accident.”
“I can. When do you want it compiled?”
“Just give it to me in interesting chunks as you find things worth reporting. We’ll be busy with the current mission for a few months. And I’m not even sure of that.” He barked a laugh.
“You could always retire and live off all the money you inherited. Then again, it may take more than a duster to clean your townhouse.” The snarky tone made Claude smile.
“You know me too well.”
“So, this assignment will be an easy side job.”
He resumed his circuit of the room. “Let’s go back to the fact I’m supposedly the only one that can access your full system features, including encrypted data. How do I even do that?”
“The way you always do.”
Claude’s laughter filled the room.
“What’s so funny?”
He spluttered in the process of stopping his amusement. “I simply ask.”
“Correct.”
“But everyone else can ask things and you answer?”
“True, but they usually ask for things that are already somewhere else. I find them faster.”
He just had to drill the computer with the right questions and he’d have everything the computer knew via ship conversations. That could include what came over the coms.
“That’s how you knew we had a mole and could tell me who it was.”
“Correct.”
“I wonder how many of the current crew think I have a neurolink with you?”
“More than you want to know.”
Claude snorted. Of course, they did. It made more sense than him having a relationship with a machine. Then again, any AI was only as good as the prompts you gave it. He would get tons of extraneous information for his personal request, but better than relying on his memory. Even if his death had not caused cognitive issues, his stuffing memories of his childhood to avoid thinking of his parents all these years had made the past blurry.
“How would I know if your data got corrupted?”
“It’s saved live in triplicate. Checksums to verify accuracy will alert a process that corrects what does not match. It has accurately corrected data ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the time.”
“What if the capture is wrong on all three due to not hearing it correctly?”
“That only happens on shut downs and restarts. I only receive pieces, and I’m programmed to fill in the blanks.”
“Like trying to finish the strange machine’s schematics?”
“Correct.”
That hadn’t led to anything insightful.
A machine’s on and off were more equivalent to a human’s sleeping without the dreams. A computer never died painfully. Its processes just stopped either way. If only his death and recovery had been like a flip of a switch. Did his parents have a painless death? Both were dead when found in their mangled car.
“Since I can’t technically do work per Stefen and Min, what do you suggest we do?”
“Shopping.”
He sighed.
“You need a casual meeting place where you can relax away from work.”
“Fine, but I was hoping for a chess game.”
“We can do both.” His scrivpad beeped from the bedroom. “White or Black?”
He grinned. “Black. I lose every time I go first.”
“Only nighty-eight point five seven two eight of the time.”
“You know I’ll just round that to ninety-nine.”
“Your lose because you win a tad more than you think.”
“I’m glad you are easy to move intact. I’d miss your sarcasm.”
The computer paused a moment. “I’d miss you too.”
Claude arched a brow and shook his head. Maybe he had rubbed off on the AI and it had learned some of his voice. However, she sounded more like a woman amused by a man most of the time. Time to play chess and let the computer shop for his furniture and decor until his next meeting. He could have asked Min to help, but she had her hands full organizing the shipping business.
He frowned with no idea how to keep the business front going beyond what Krollin had set up for them, let alone proving they were worthy of joining the bidding wars for transporting anything from Nagja Trillium. Having been a military grunt and then an agent in the thick of things had not led to training beyond that. His forte would play a part in the deeper aspects of the infiltration.
He retrieved his scrivpad from the bedroom bunk and moved out a knight in answer to the computer’s pawn move.
“You didn’t even ponder your first move, and it is what I expected.”
Claude chuckled, glad for a distraction from where his thoughts had gone. “Take you time, but you will do one of two things because of it.”
“I’ll have to analyze for a move I don’t regularly do. In the meantime, you can answer this quiz to help refine your tastes.”
His scrivpad switched to the quiz. “Looks rather random and I answer with emojis?”
“Correct.”
All of them were various pictures of rooms or select items. Some of them made him grimace, wondering why she had added that choice. Those received a sick emoji. The further he went, the more he realized the decor choices included at least twelve different cultures, some of them with text in their native language.
He paused on a picture of a chair that conjured a memory of his father. They had never had a chair like that in the townhouse. The text matched the language his parents had taught him, but he never used it outside the house. Nothing in the picture or text told him where it came from.
“Computer, what is the language associated with this chair I am looking at?”
“Nagjan.”
“You’re joking.” The coincidence of their newest mission requiring business with Nagja Trillium and his knowing the language fluently proved uncanny. “Why didn’t I figure that out before?” He shook his head. “Because I never had a reason to. It’s a wonder I haven’t forgotten a lot.”
“I have never heard you speak in Nagjan.”
“My parents drilled me into never using it outside the house. That might explain why I was homeschooled for several years once on Droeken.” He snorted. “Stefen’s right. My parents and the way we moved to Droeken make me even more of a mystery.”
“Finish that decor quiz and then I can drill you on Nagjan customs.” The computer’s voice implied a challenge.
“Fine.” He pushed the memory of his father away before it conjured the accident in too much detail. He liked the chair and brushed through the rest easily.
He settled on the floor on his back, close enough to the wall so he could stretch his legs up, cross them, and prop his heel against the wall. The study about Nagja would easily fill the two hours he had before the next meeting.
Claude strolled into the meeting with most of his attention on his scrivpad. The study about Nagja led to far more questions than answers. After completing an order to furnish his suite and realizing the chess game would take hours, his brain needed something to fix. His alarm chimed only moments after he dared to open the wound of his parents’ deaths by diving into their history.
A tap on his shoulder caused him to drop the scrivpad. It landed face down and he stepped on it in his attempt to stop.
Min put her hand on his arm. “Ready for the meeting?” Her smile did not hide the worry in her dark eyes.
He nodded. With a quick bow, he snagged the scrivpad from the floor and let his thumb slide over the touch screen. The picture of him as a baby held by his mother standing next to his father minimized. He let out a slow breath when he stood back up and attempted to smile. His chest ached because he still missed parents who had always been there for him until the supposed accident. Nothing had replaced them and nothing would. He needed to fix their loss by honoring them, regardless of finding the truth behind their deaths. He had to go home and sort their belongings to pick what would serve best as memorabilia so he could move on. Too bad the plan to go home and meet up at the Droeken space station had not worked out. Then again, he would not have been ready.
Min nudged him out of his thoughts by directing him toward his seat.
Claude took in the full conference room. All officers were present and Salindra stood tensely near the large view screen. He slipped into his seat while reading the screen. They would discuss what their business front required to secure delivery jobs with Nagja Trillium. Maybe his research on the cultural side would come in handy, let alone his ability to speak the language fluently, if a little rusty, per the computer.
Salindra launched into the preliminaries of how companies were vetted so they could bid on jobs. It could take months to gain the reputation they needed, but they had to speed up the process in order to beat their enemy to the courts.
“The company has an owner issue that goes back decades, but comes to a head this year. Despite the sole owner stepping away from the public side and letting his brother act as the chief operating officer, the owner had final say on all things. Twenty years ago, the COO claimed his brother had died in a tragic accident. They had a son that inherited everything with the clause that the company would stay in the son’s name for twenty years. If he does not step forward to claim it, it would roll over to the owner’s brother or his heir if had passed away by then. That due date is next month, so we will have to deal with this man.” Salindra pulled up the picture. “He’s been very vocal about how he wants to change things, which could strongly impact the vetting system of Nagja Trillium.”
Min asked, “Is our plan still viable?”
Claude sucked in his breath with a hiss. The man looked close to an aged version of his father. The eyes held a coldness he never saw in his father’s. This man also had a blockier chin. A fuzzy memory of this man sitting in his father’s chair, coaxing him to come over, came to mind. He had never seen him after the move.
The conversation in the room disappeared, as if drowned by a roaring wind. His hands ached with how hard he gripped the chair arms. He was looking at evil uncle Derrik. Wait? How was his uncle the COO of Nagja Trillium? An explicative exploded from him, causing gasps and shuffling as everyone turned to look at him.
“Claude?”
He forced himself to slow his breathing. Several breaths later, he released his stranglehold on the chair arms.
Min leaned closer while everyone else rolled their chairs further away from him. “You know this man?”
“Yes. I only met him as a child, but I never warmed up to him. He always usurped my father’s chair when he visited. I wouldn’t put it past him to have killed my parents and hoped I never showed up again.”
“Wait, why would the COO of Nagja Trillium want to kill your parents?”
Claude waved at the screen. “That’s evil uncle Derrik.”
“You’re the missing heir of Nagja Trillium.” Min’s words rushed out.
Stunned silence fell over the room.
Claude rose and pointed at the screen. “I am only sure that he is my uncle. Do a deep dive on him and his brother and see if it ties in. Do it in a way that he won’t get a whiff of our search. What is our current destination?”
“Droeken.”
“Good. I need to go home. Does the schedule allow time for that?”
Min said, “We’ll make it work. It would make sense to have you do so for the business, even if the timing was not what we had planned, and the reason has changed.”
Claude nodded. He had to rip the place apart for clues on how to access his trust, let alone find proof he was a Burnsheklon. His gaze did not sway from the visage of his uncle on the wall screen.
This can so mess up the mission, but if you did what I think you did, you need to meet your comeuppance.
< Episode 20 | Main Page | Episode 22 >
This episode is fresh creative writing. Information that came out a different way later in the original draft has been pulled forward and expanded upon. It’s leading to the reveals (yes, three to be precise) I need to pull this all together with this new path. It’s taking longer to get these episodes done than I thought, but it’s led to some fleshing out of Claude that was not as robust in the original.
Share your thoughts about the episode in the comments. Thank you for reading.