TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 21 - Self Aware (Patreon)

“I’m glad you could all bond over my complete lack of technical skills,” I muttered.

“Come on boss, you know this has nothing to do with your technical skills, and everything to do with your attention span,” Dusty replied, elbowing me in the side. 

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad you find it amusing,” I grumbled.

“I hope you’re not looking for sympathy, or for us to stop making fun of you,” Dusty said, patting me on the back. “Because you totally deserve it this time.” 

The other two chuckled at me, so I raised a hand and ran it down my face to try and hide my embarrassed blush while I tried to think of a way to redirect the conversation. I was so desperate that I almost dived into the command network in order to use it’s resources to help me. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I was pretty sure that either Heavy or Dusty would notice, and I’d end up the butt of even more jokes.

Thankfully, I managed to come up with something on my own before they realized that I was hiding behind my own hand, and the conversation got even more awkward for me.

“Earl, why is there a break room in the engineering area?” I asked. “I mean, it’s fine; this is your area, and you can do whatever you want with it, but… I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beaver standing still for more than two minutes, never mind taking a break.”

“Oh, that’s because this is where the idle bots go to stand whenever they don’t have work to do. I jazzed it up with some decorations and a water cooler so it didn’t feel like we were all just going to stand in a corner,” the big beaver said. “And trust me, it was necessary. It turns out that most of us didn’t know how to talk about anything but work, which made standing in the corner together even more awkward before I added couches. Thankfully, after the boss bought the Stratocarrier we haven’t had too much downtime, so the corner hasn’t been used much.”“Are you serious? Whenever you didn’t have any work to do, the first thing you thought about doing was clumping up and standing in a corner?” I asked, aghast. “Why didn’t you go take a walk around the ship or something?”

“Because that’s what we bots are programmed to do; Whenever we don’t have a set task we go into storage mode,” Earl explained. “I assume you’ve seen the shipping crates and spare Kodiaks packed with inactive bears. Same idea.”

“Yeah, well, the combat units only have rudimentary AI, and go into a standby-sleep mode when in storage. You beavers have a pseudo-sentient AI core, it feels wrong to treat you the same way,” I said.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Now, whenever we don’t have official projects to work on, we can work on our hobby projects,” Earl replied. “Speaking of which… do you think we could take over a couple of the empty rooms in the lower superstructure? It’s probably better that we don’t leave our personal stuff out in the workspace. It’d be a safety hazard.”

“I don’t see why not… we’re only using, what? Fourty percent of the forward superstructure?” I asked.

“Well, it’s more like sixty now that we’ve installed the missile launchers, and that track system that allows you to retract, and replace the secondary turrets. Both of those took up a lot of space, but only around the central spine,” Earl replied. “Speaking of which… when are you going to provide my boys with a set of secondary munitions to mount on that track? We went to all that trouble to put it in, and you still haven’t used it!”

“I know, I know. I probably would have if the Gene Tender hadn’t retreated into the pacific. I had to waste most of my points on creating aquatic troops, and waterproofing a lot of my tech,” I grumbled. “Hey… Since I’m giving the beavers their own space, do you think I should install a shooting range for the troops, or a water tank for the otters to train in or something?”“You do realize that all your troops are robots, right? Their skills don’t degrade over time, and they don’t need training; Only calibration. The only reason to add a water talk would be to allow you to practice your swimming skills,” Dusty interjected.

“Right, no water tank then,” I replied quickly.

“That being said… I wouldn’t mind a firing range; Somewhere where I could test our weapons without worrying about the collatoral damage,” Heavy said thoughtfully. “The inner walls may be sturdy, but they’re still not designed to hold up against one of the heavy rail cannons.”“Please tell me that you didn’t learn that by performing weapons tests in here,” I groaned.

“If I had, I’m sure I would have sent a message to inform you ahead of time,” Heavy replied, before breaking out into a grin. 

“I choose to believe you didn’t, and you’re pulling my leg,” I muttered. “What do you think Earl?”

“It wouldn’t be hard to reinforce an internal area with some of the Strato carrier’s armour plating. It’ll be a lot of extra mass, but nothing that the old girl can’t handle,” the beaver replied thoughtfully. “We could probably run an extension right out of the back of the manufacturing area to connect to both our new storage rooms and the firing range. However, if we did that, it would make the lockdown features you designed kind of useless,” he said, gesturing to the massive blast door sitting just above the opening between the hangar and manufacturing.

“We installed that security door so that we could lockdown the manufacturing area, and create reinforcements, if the ship was ever boarded,” I said. “It’s super difficult to cut through the Stratocarrier’s hull, so if anyone wanted to board, I figured the giant gaping holes which led into the hangar bay would be the easiest place for the enemy to do it. It’s a safety precaution which I don’t think would be nessisary on the far side of manufacturing; If the enemy attacked from that direction it would mean they managed to withstand the firepower of all the bears and vehicles stationed in the hangar, and cut through all the security bulkheads on the upper deck. In other words, if they came from that direction, it would mean the strato carrier was already fucked.” I shrugged. “I’d insist on some security bulkheads, in case someone was sneaking around, but I don’t think the back would require the same level of security as the front.” 

“While I agree that we probably don’t need a slab of armor plating to protect the back, the boys and I can probably design something a little tougher than the usual security bulkheads for the back; Just in case. I’ll whip up a couple ideas, then send you a message with the blueprints,” Earl said with an impressively straight face.

“Don’t worry about it, I trust you,” I grumbled. “Since we’re already discussing it, do you think there are any other changes or additions the stratocarrier could use?” 

“Well, I think a rec-room for the pseudo-sentient, and fully sentient bots would be a nice addition,” Dusty suggested. “And I’d also suggest making a blanket change so the smarter bots don’t need to go into storage mode, and can spend their offtime as they chose, within reason.”“Yeah, I admit I don’t like the idea of a bunch of our smart bots just standing around in the dark whenever they’re off duty. Its probably murder on their sanity,” I muttered.

“Not really,” Earl shrugged. “We may be smart, but we don’t suffer from mental ailements the same way humans do. We’re good.”“Well, I still feel bad about it,” I grumbled.

“In that case I would recommend you check with the frogs, foxes and chameleons, to see if there’s anything they want,” Heavy said. “If you’re catering to the beavers, it’s only fair you talk to the others.”

I turned towards him, and cocked my head to the side. “Okay, frogs and chameleons I get, they’re higher level AIs, but aren’t the foxes running the base model?” I asked.

“Technically yes, but they’ve always needed to show a bit of independence, situational awareness, and problem solving, a few of them developed higher awareness,” Heavy replied. “I mean… you did know this would happen to some of your forces eventually, it just turned out the foxes were first.”

“Ugh… I wish I’d found this out earlier,” I groaned. “It feels like the first few bears and foxes becoming aware would be a special occasion.” Dusty opened his mouth, but before he could I reached out and forcibly closed his muzzle. “I know what you’re going to say… please let me harbor the delusion that this came out of nowhere, and I had absolutely no way of knowing before now for a few minutes more.”“You’re the boss,” he muttered through his pinned lips. He even smiled and threw up a pair of thumbs ups, which somehow made me feel even worse.

“That’s it, I’m going to go read through my entire message backlog, and I’m not going to let anyone disturb me until I’m done,” I declared. “Earl, it was nice to meet you… I assume you’re who I should come see if I need something from the beavers in the future?”

“You know it boss. Ol’ Earl will be here if you need him!” the beaver replied. 

“Good. In that case, I’m off. I’ll talk to you all soon,” I said, before turning on my heel and setting out to find a quiet place to go through everything. 

As I walked away I just caught Heavy and Dusty’s last words. “Do you think she’ll manage?”

“I say there’s about a fifty percent chance she’ll finish, fifty percent chance she’ll get frustrated and/or distracted again. What about you?” Heavy replied“I think you’re being generous,” Dusty said.

I just bit my tongue and started walking faster.