Magnetic Sheep
by James LynCarthiun rolled swiftly down the corridor -- although 'rolled' was a euphemism it had adopted to describe the way in which dozens of tiny electromagnets switched on and off to propel it and yet leave it safely attached to the ship's decks. The ship provided internal gravity for its human crew, but Carthiun had been built to be mobile in a variety of conditions, including zero-gee.
It preferred its mode of transportation over the bipedal design of the KX21 model. The ship Carthiun resided and worked on had four KX21 robots, and each of them was what Carthiun called 'dumb crew.' Their processing levels were very basic Input/Output: the human crew would give the robot an instruction from a list of pre-scripted tasks, and the robot would perform as requested. It would then power down and wait in standby mode until given a new directive.
KX series robots, built for service aboard deep-space civilian craft, varied widely with regard to their capabilities, though most were at the same level of capacity as the KX21. Carthiun was the only KX3 model on board, and the rest of the ship's crew was human. Carthiun was a navigation-diagnostic robot, and as such had a much greater processing capacity than was required of the KX21s. Carthiun not only double-checked the navigational computer before new routes were input, but it maintained the entire piloting computer system. It enjoyed its job, and thought that it was very good at performing its duties. Certainly the ship's captain thought so, as she kept Carthiun onboard despite the availability of newer models.
Carthiun was headed to the main computer backup now, intending to run the weekly diagnostic. The ship was in flight through deep space, and no piloting corrections would be made for another month. But Carthiun knew it was important to be ready for anything -- reports of contact with a new alien race had been uploaded with the latest news transmissions, and there was a 29.3 percent chance of running into pirates or stranded travelers along their planned route. Should any immediate change of course be necessary, Carthiun knew the ship would be ready.
Vibrations in the deck told of an approaching crew member; the vibrations indicated a range of body mass and stride, from which Carthiun determined the identity to be one of twelve possible humans -- although as soon as the human came into visual range Carthiun would identify him or her exactly. Coming to a halt, Carthiun transcribed its current processing activity to backup, freeing its active memory for potential interaction.
Thomas Vali, engineer's assistant, came around a corner. Carthiun slid to one side to provide passage for the human, as its original programming dictated. It began running predictions for probable interaction scenarios with this individual; Vali was not someone with whom Carthiun worked often, so the data for extrapolation was a mere 294ket, compared to the 400-500ket files on crew members it worked with regularly.
Vali glanced at it, and Carthiun registered no emotive information from his features. The prediction that Vali would continue on without stopping rose to 64.52 percent. It felt some disappointment at the increase, as it thought Vali to be one of the more pleasant crew members on board and would have liked more excuses to interact with the human. But Carthiun waited, revising scripts for possible interaction at a rate of 31,000 per bit, until Vali suddenly came to a stop and regarded Carthiun directly.
Carthiun went into active standby, response scripts primed and ready.
"Huh," Vali said, and Carthiun identified the noise as a comment directed to Vali himself, and not Carthiun. It watched as Vali shrugged his shoulders, then he spoke in a clear, distinct voice. "KX3, report. Engine efficiency averages based on the piloting corrections made between Despian Four and ship's orbit at ThroughFair 91."
Carthiun had the figures instantly. The calculations were simple, based on data it already had stored from the portion of the ship's journey indicated.
But it hesitated for an entire 5.2 nano-seconds. It re-weighed potential responses it had already processed billions of times. It ran through the 4,321 responses which contained varying degrees of superfluous content, including the subset of responses which contained none of the data which had been requested.
Carthiun considered the human crew member's likely reactions. Vali demonstrated a clear acceptance of alien life forms, with a .09 percentage rate of comments and actions categorizable as bigoted. Carthiun's prediction of a favorable response to a non-standard report ranged from 51 to 78.4 percent, unable to narrow the range down due to a lack of past experience. Carthiun simply didn't know Vali as well as it knew others such as the pilot, Stev Werner or the maintenance engineer, Sally Davie.
It was still processing potential outcomes as it prepared its verbal reporting system. At the very moment it began to encode its response, Carthiun shut down the response program and chose the report with zero percent extraneous content. Carthiun intoned the figures requested, then fell silent.
It waited as Vali nodded to himself then stepped away, continuing down the hallway.
Carthiun sat quietly for just a few moments, before it continued on its way. The feeling of sadness that it felt would have shocked its designers and fellow crew members.
Someday, Carthiun thought, it might be brave enough to tell them.
James Lyn has been writing fiction for nearly thirty years. Favorites include science fiction and horror, which is weird considering that he absolutely refuses to read or watch any horror. When not writing, he enjoys cooking, reading, and catching up on sleep.