2024: Roland Tries II

“You missed a chance to go see Blue Team. I thought the Threes looked up to the Twos?”
SPARTAN-III child-supersoldier Andra Kearsarge glanced upwards, grimacing from atop her bunkbed draped in days-old comforters. Her shoulder-length, rat nest of dark hair obscured her face, camouflaging against the shadowy room. Her blue eyes twinkled alone, unbodied in the darkness. Quiet, occasional diagnostic and ambient night lights blinked and glowed in the darkness of her former team’s shipboard accommodations. Once a full Spartan team, but a team no longer. She was the only resident left. She bristled against the increasing golden luminosity generated by the hologram of a ghostly fighter pilot from Earth’s second World War manifesting in her lonely quarters.
“Roland,” Andra muttered in greeting at the Smart AI’s mini-size projection by the small sink and dining space. “I’ve enough on my plate right now—my best friend is missing. My mentor is dead. My commander gave me extended time off, so can I mourn in peace?
The simulated fighter pilot shrugged his shoulders, performing an uncharacteristic half squat as if to lean against an invisible wall or stool. He raised his hands up in parlay, “Look. The galaxy is upside down right now. I know you’re going through a lot. I don’t need to spell out everyone else’s suffering, but you know yours. Your suffering is unique, yours is still taking…”
Andra growled. “But you’re going to try and spell it out? I don’t need your pity or fake empathy.”
Roland ignored her remark. “You’re grieving. You’re feeling lost and confused. I understand and feel that pain too.”
“You’re a horrible therapist… And a worse negotiator.”
Roland quirked a small smile, catching a thin line of teeth in the darkness. “Maybe, but you did smile there for a moment.”
The grin quickly faded back into darkness. Lithe fingers rubbed at a runny nose and the dark blue eyes blinked, freeing up more angry tears.
Roland continued, “You’re a strong girl. Always were. And you’ve lost a great deal. If you like, we can talk about it?”
Andra shadowy hair shook about in negation. “You should leave… Stupid AI.”
Roland’s smile finally slipped, replaced by a grimace. “I understand you, give me some credit please? I lost a lot of friends in the Created attacks too.”
The Spartan’s watery eyes narrowed, focusing onto the AI whose glow revealed pink and puffy cheeks from long hours of spilled tears. She pulled her extra-large comforter further upon her body. Roland couldn’t help acknowledging to himself the curiosity of how similar a government-sanctioned child-soldier was to a civilian teenage girl. It wasn’t a private insult, but an odd-ways compliment. Andra wasn’t lacking in any of her mental or social faculties, and as human as the rest of Roland’s motely and aimless starship crew aboard the UNSC supercarrier Infinity.
This little girl forged from a broken home and broken foster system grew up into someone capable of shaking the halls of power and striking fear in monsters haunting the shadowy places of their galaxy. Roland felt respect for her. Not pity, nor sympathy. He watched on, waiting for Andra to say something more when he didn’t leave. Others, especially civilians, would hurl objects at his hologram projector by now.
Sniffling a little more but zoned in on Roland’s glow, Andra seemed to compose herself.
“Fine. Who did you lose?”
The AI nodded, opening suppressed emotional programs making up part of his personality matrix but buried deeper into his active priority tree. He dredged the contents, going to a darker, more vulnerable place. Maybe it was rude to use someone else’s vulnerability to explore his own, but such exchanges can have multiple outcomes and benefits. The classical proverb, “misery loves company,” remained an eternal maxim even in the twenty-sixth century.
Roland allowed himself to project a faraway look, an emotion and action programmed with intent, but composed as much of truth as of fabrication. The AI looked through, past Andra and the many bulkheads of the UNSC Infinity into the endless vacuum of deep space. “There were more than a few Infinity crew members on shore leave when Cortana declared her Reclamation. We left them behind. Who knows how much falling debris from Cortana’s attack on Earth killed civilians in population centers, or the many lives lost when the power inevitably goes out from the attacks—on Earth, and out in the colonies?
Who did I lose personally… Them, I lost members of my crew—people, friends I could not protect. My family. Humans can say ‘it’s not your fault, you had no control over the situation.’ Some of you humans still hold onto your needless guilt, but when the attack was perpetuated by Cortana, an AI like me, what does that say about me and my kind?”
The Spartan was silent, still watching the AI but seeming curious enough to let him air the deeply-reserved emotions without interruption.
“The historic nature of AI is a technology made to do the work humans were unwilling to do themselves. Increasing automation and complex scope of jobs raised the level of specialization necessary for humans to do the AI-designated work. Eventually, your kind handed some roles over to your machines entirely. And we reached here. Powers made just out of your reach, and the keys to your destruction placed in ours. I stuck with humanity… But I will receive no praise for doing my duty.”
Roland closed his translucent eyelids, his hologram pupils vanishing into nothing. He felt nothing of the eyes closing, or the rolling of phantom eyelids from phantom limb syndrome. Sometimes the old human sensations came, other times there was silence from the electrical ether of his own digital body. His voice wavered as Andra listened on.
“I… What did I lose? The trust of my crew. Maybe not fully. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But I’ve lost their trust.”
Andra’s head shook a little, processing Roland’s premise and platform. His words and fears.
“If you haven’t lost their trust yet, or lost it… Can’t you get it back?”
Roland shook his head. “Humans have one power your AI do not. The power to make things reality. Everything AI are is a consequence of something or once organic. You can give my kind the power to do things you would see as too complex. Well, maybe less so for a smart Spartan like you. But humans can adapt and relearn the skills they gave up.
Little by little, there’s less crew willing to play a game of chess or cards with me. Right now, as we speak hat number of disinterested people grows. Apathy towards me. The same phenomenon applies to my duties. Captain Lasky ordered me to train senior officers in my command and technical duties from ship-wide strategic logistics to Forerunner engine management. I’m training myself out of a job.”
The AI couldn’t help but offer a morbid laugh at his own dooming conclusion. A second, humorless chuckle joined his. The tears were gone, Andra was open-eyed and beyond her own sadness now. To Roland, it seems something passed over the Spartan girl.
Roland raised his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. He didn’t know his own fate.
“You’re right…” Andra muttered with a familiar, faraway look brought about by Roland’s confession. The AI choked down any other words that came to his mind. Another hologram instance of himself coughed down a very-human cry of anguish somewhere else atop a lonesome pedestal among the many vacant service tunnels of his supercarrier.
His fears weren’t wrong. A human confirmed to him what he felt, the vulnerable fear he refused to share elsewhere. With dwindling others willing or safe to share such fears with, should he even share these risky concerns with an uninvolved child like Andra? She was far from innocent, a character dedicated to her human nation, but she managed the appearance of innocence all the same. Her quieter presence was disarming, a strange quality for someone he observed for being headstrong, sometimes even jingoistic from afar.
The death of her mentor and loss of her best friend must have taken her fire, leaving a bitter, sharp mind behind. Roland sighed.
“I’ve had more than a few technicians ask me for schematics on systems they once delegated to me. And they make me breakdown every single detail so they can understand it all without my input,” Roland’s eyes hardened on Andra. He remembered her recent troubles towards a particular AI who duplicated her personality after being stripped of its own in a memory wipe. “Despite your fears towards Althea, and I know its fear towards her, I appreciate you don’t ask me to not come back.”
Andra met Roland’s eyes, “I did tell you to leave.”
“You did, but you didn’t say ‘don’t come back,’” Roland clarified.
The Spartan managed a small huff, folding her arms, “I’d feel bad if I did. Especially now, after what you’ve told me…”
She offered a small smile, indicating a warmer mood passing over the two room occupants.
Roland nodded. “It’s nice to have somebody willing to keep putting up with me day after day who isn’t the captain or the bridge crew. Even if our interactions are icy, at best.”
Andra offered a shrug. “I… I admit I don’t know who to talk to either. My experience with ONI therapists has been lousy start to finish. You’re winning right now as far as I care.”
Roland’s eyebrows briefly rose in surprise warmth. Pride in a itty-bitty dose. The AI chuckled again, “High praise coming from you, Spartan. But all I want to do at this point is be of use, even just a comfort if possible. I’ll admit, I’m not good at this type of thing. Infinity’s previous ship director got along with the crew much better—understood them on an proper emotional level. I hear them say she was more human than me, I guess. Not sure how else to put it into words.”
“You’re an AI and you don’t have a way with words?” Andra asked incredulously.
“I did come from a human brain once. Means I inherit human flaws too.”