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If I had been on my own, I could have handled this myself.
Caring about what humans thought was so frustrating. And stressful. I didn’t used to care what any humans thought of me. Now I had to care what at least seven humans thought of me. It was mortifying. And legally tangled. (I didn’t used to have to care about laws either, except for the one where if the company found out I had hacked my governor module, they would scrap me for my mechanical parts and then probably feed my organic parts to livestock animals.)
But now I cared enough about what Dr. Mensah thought of me that I didn’t want her to find out about this. And I cared enough about what Pin-Lee thought of me that asking her for help was still difficult, and when I caught her smirking I said, “You promised you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I’m not!” she said. “I’m not. I promise. This is a moderately compromising situation and I understand why you’re concerned for Dr. Mensah’s household.”
Pin-Lee was a solicitor and a legal professional, and she was the best among the humans I knew at putting her emotions aside to solve problems reasonably. Too few humans had this skill. I still caught the corners of her mouth twitching. I notice everything. They should know that by now.
“Can I see the actual message that DisNigh sent you?” she asked. I hesitated for .31 seconds, then obliged by forwarding it to her feed. She blinked and her head moved slightly in surprise. What was a hesitation for me looked like an expressionless immediate response to her. Good. I like Pin-Lee better than I like most humans, but it’s always helpful to remind any human that I’m not human like they are.
Her eyes unfocused slightly as she read it in her feed. “Okay, this isn’t too much to worry about,” Pin-Lee said. “It’s a pretty standard cease-and-desist. That’s…” She raised her eyebrows. “That’s a lot of media they’ve said you’ve illegally downloaded from feed-piracy servers. Do you really watch all of that?”
It was barely a fraction of the media I had (dubiously legally) downloaded even just during my time on Preservation. I had only gotten caught over a mere handful of serials and movies, comparatively. I decided not to admit that. “I don’t have a security job anymore. I watch a lot of media.”
“That’s right,” Pin-Lee said, nodding. “You always did, even when you had a security job. I imagine that must have been endlessly boring, and can hardly fault you.” I could tell she was glancing into the feed again. “But all of this? It’s no wonder you got caught eventually.”
“Hey,” I said defensively, “I’ve been downloading media from the company entertainment feed for 30,000 hours, and I’ve never gotten a cease-and-desist letter before.”
“Never?” Pin-Lee asked. She tilted her head in a way that indicated a slight challenge.
Oh, fine. “I got caught once,” I said. “But just once. And it didn’t matter. When the message came in, I let the humans on the mineral survey team argue and accuse each other of media piracy through the HubSystem feed. Everyone used it, so they couldn’t prove who it was. Two of the humans were also pirating media, anyway. I didn’t care if they or the company got in trouble.”
“Ah,” Pin-Lee said. “But now the C&D is coming from the Corporation Rim to Mensah’s household feed.”
My performance reliability dropped a percentage point. I didn’t bother to run diagnostics on why. I didn’t want to confirm that it was embarrassment. I didn’t want to confirm what I knew: that I might have unintentionally put Dr. Mensah in danger again, and this time from a corporation with an even nastier reputation than GrayCris. “It’s a different context. The last thing Dr. Mensah needs right now is more trouble from Corporation Rim entities.”
“Incredibly true,” Pin-Lee said. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to solve this by just… ceasing and desisting? Not illegally downloading any more media?”
“No.”
“It was worth a suggestion.” Pin-Lee straightened her shoulders, but she didn’t seem disappointed or concerned at all. She looked determined. I liked that look. “I’ll draft a response letter. You update your… anti-tracking programs. Your digital privacy shields.” Pin-Lee was a legal expert, but she wasn’t a computer expert.
“And this will be settled without Dr. Mensah having to know about it?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s no reason for Dr. Mensah to have to worry about any of this,” Pin-Lee said.
Once I was confident that Pin-Lee meant it, my performance reliability started creeping up again. “That’s good,” I said.
Pin-Lee smiled. “You’re welcome.”