TGoaW-3

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==Chapter 3 - The Glow of a Worm inside a Child's Eye==
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Grant Sithers-Deen 623 stared out the viewport...
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"You don't know what you found, do you?" he asked.
"It's a Lola?" His guest asked, "mostly intact..."
"No, you found a Caspar. M-5, from the hull configuration, one of the first four runs in the series-an early model...is the computer core dumped or something?"
"It's...it can't be, those were unmanned."
"Did you find any food in the galley?" he asked, "You also didn't answer my question, yah?"
"The built in management systems seemed to be working, and it was all unlocked..."
'Unlocked my ass." the senior man shook his head, "Your 'find' is cooperating, because those things were made to be sapient."
A chill circulated in the small bridge office of the JumpShip.
"What do you want to do?" someone asked.
"Well, before we haul off with a sapient creature, we might want to find out what IT wants." Grant stated, "You know, because if it's as intelligent as they were supposed to be then scrapping it is tantamount to murder and using it without its consent is slavery. We're Rockjacks, we stand against slavery and always have, ever since the bad days of the Rimjobs."
"It hasn't said anything..."
"Then we ask it." he said. "We find out if it's a danger we have to put down, or a refugee we should shelter and aid...or if it's less than an animal, running a computer algorithm, because if there's anything you learn digging into the past, it's how insane the exaggerations were."
"And if it is?"
"We take it to the Duke's brother, and let him make the call." Grant stated, "but first we find out if we found an asset, a collection of raw materials, or a danger to every spacefarer in range."
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