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ART had decided that it would like to visit an art museum.
My first question to it was whether this was all just an attempt at being humorous. ART's attempts at humor were never quite to my taste; my taste in humor when it came from sources other than my latest choice of media was usually none, humans being as dreadfully unpredictable as they were, but there was something particularly atrocious about it when the hopeful comedian was an enormous transport ship. ART could commit pranks on a scale I could never match. It was unfair from the start, particularly on long trips when I was technically living inside it.
(This was a topic of periodic discussion. ART said that none of us were living inside it, that would be ridiculous and made it sound like it would have the bot version of horrible indigestion—that is, unless it was grouchy and wanted us to "display a spot of gratitude for protecting us against the vacuum of space" or some other such nonsense.)
My organic matter is prone to digression. When that digression is not related to The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, I am grateful for my inorganic components.
ART insisted that no, it had not acquired a sudden affinity for wordplay. I was very grateful for this: Either of us could access more efficient language processing capabilities than the average human, and thus a bout of dueling puns could prove brutal indeed. (Not that I would ever engage in such behavior, of course.)
I inquired once more after ART's motivations. I should have learned by then that this was frequently fruitless effort, and still worse one that it often enjoyed (at my expense), and yet I found myself doing it anyway.
I have never been to an art museum before, it simply said. New experiences are supposed to bring cognitive benefits. I mention this new experience specifically because I have been informed that Preservation Station has recently opened a small museum of its own.
I'm not sure what any of this has to do with me, I said.
You consider it so unrealistic that I would simply wish to share an interest of mine with you?
Yes. I was very emphatic on this point. ART did, of course, make conversation on occasion, when it thought that it would be a mutually comfortable activity. Its topic of choice was usually the latest serial we were watching, however. It was definitely up to something.
You are correct on this particular occasion, but do not take that as a general statement.
I would, of course.
Art is designed to be viewed from the perspective of an individual, it continued. I do not believe that simply hacking a number of the security feeds would convey the intended experience. I would be very appreciative if you would be willing to attend an exhibition there and allow me to borrow the vantage point of one of your surveillance drones.
I do not believe that art is intended to be viewed with surveillance drones, either, I said. Had I unintentionally acquired an artistic opinion with this statement? I could only hope that I hadn't.
Would you prefer I instead view your own visual feed?
I recognized that tone. It was the one that ART used because it didn't really have limbs, so it didn't have fingers to poke me with. It liked to poke me verbally instead. I supposed that this was technically an improvement, but it was still a distasteful one. I would not answer.
Some would say, said ART, now philosophical, that your serials are a form of popular art.
Some would say fucking everything is art, I grumbled.
I believe they would, yes. To return to the original point, however—you would say that you are a frequent viewer of serials. A serial viewer of serials, if you will.
I'd once encouraged ART to try building and operating a humanoid mechanical body. I had done this solely so that I might have something convenient to punch when I wanted to—walls and instrument panels were simply less satisfying. I found myself revisiting this idea.
ART continued, Someone could therefore put those two pieces of information together and describe you as quite the connoisseur of the arts, whether you want to recognize yourself as one or not.
Having this pleasant conversation through the verbal equivalent of hand puppets is ridiculous, I said. Please state your point. It was so not good at that when it wanted to be.
I am merely trying to communicate that you might not find this venture as onerous as you imagine. I won't force you into anything, of course, but I would appreciate it if you would consider the proposition.
I most certainly would not.
I most certainly had. This was an unavoidable fact. I was approaching the oldest section of Preservation Station, where a couple of compartments had been converted from historical museum to art gallery. I was doing so of my own volition, for some reason. It had been many cycles since I had last been on Preservation Station, and I had been meaning to return anyway. This was simply an errand—something to do first, unaccompanied by any members of PreservationAux, to get accustomed to the place once again before I made my usual visits.
I was going to be looking at art. As if I hadn't been getting my fill of ART for most of the last hundred cycles.
I had chosen a time for our little expedition that I thought would minimize my chances of encountering anyone else. It was early in the morning—so early, in fact, that it was nearly still the previous day. I knew that Preservation's policy of leaving public spaces open at all hours was not specifically intended to benefit me, but very frequently it did.
I detected ART beginning to hitch a "ride" on one of my drones. ART was more than capable of making its monitoring invisible to me, but as a matter of course it did not hide itself in my systems. On second thought, I wouldn't necessarily know if it were sneaking around—maybe I was assuming it had better manners than it actually did. Maybe all the times when it did make its presence obvious were simply cover for all the times when it didn't.
Sometimes it pays to be paranoid, and sometimes it (unfortunately) does not. I grudgingly decided that this was in the latter category.
I entered the historical section. I would have decided at that point that I almost definitely wouldn't have to encounter anyone else, but that would have only made it that much worse if I had. It was unlikely, though.
The station map I was viewing showed the way to an old bulkhead door with a sign next to it reading, "Preservation Station Art Gallery—Welcome!" I had yet to figure out how I felt about the concept of Welcome. To humans the word seemed to be a reflex in certain social situations, which to me indicated that it should have signified very little at all, but if you swapped Unwelcome into your phrasing instead you tended to become exactly that.
On one wall of the first of the two compartments was a mural that some local students had been brought in to create. This information was helpfully supplied to me by ART, who unlike me actually wanted to be where I was and so had done its research. They had painted a stylized, colorful collection of some of the flora and fauna to be found on the planet's surface. If I were suddenly presented with a real-life version of the painting my threat assessment capabilities would be thoroughly occupied—it wasn't that the fauna to be found on the planet were unusually threatening on average, but that humans for some reason tended to find themselves attached to the ones that were.
This is not very good, I said. Some of the motifs were reasonably presentable, but many others were not. Some students seemed unable to consistently paint between the lines, or had painted animals with uneven limbs, or had somehow thought that slapping bright pink and orange on a plant's leaves was an acceptable choice.
You're having an opinion about art! said ART. That's good, even if I very much disagree with it.
I'm always having opinions about ART, I said, and you never pay attention to any of them. I'm not having an opinion about art. I am simply making an observation.
ART ignored me. I believe the purpose of this mural is not to display artistic talent, but to be an exercise in creative expression and a chance for students to develop their skills while enjoying themselves. The fact that constructs don't need years to gain their abilities does not give you an excuse to be judgemental about it.
I'm the judgemental one of the two of us?
On second thought, said ART, maybe the construct 'childhood' extends far longer than previously thought.
I thought about hitting it with an energy weapon, but that would have required shooting down my own drone, and I wasn't quite willing to do that. I would be soon, though.
I moved on—physically, at least. I was now looking at a series of sketches—charcoal on smooth wood—depicting the various stages of construction of the station. They were surprisingly intricate, yet blended so that they seemed to rise out toward the viewer. There was a note beside them crediting them to a longtime station resident. It continued on to point out that charcoal, one of the early artistic materials that humans would have had available to them, had been specifically chosen to contrast with the technological advancements the station represented. It was intended to invite reflection about whether 'we' (I assumed by this it meant humans) were really that distant from our roots, and how superficial changes wrought by technology might be.
I took a long look at the drawings. There were many details in them to look at, I told myself, as well as the historical interest of seeing how the station had been expanded.
The next room contained something jarringly different from what we had just viewed—a vivid, active hologram figure in a stylized holographic depiction of one of the station's common areas. The figure was going about a circuit of everyday tasks—carrying a large package on an errand, sitting quietly and waiting, reviewing messages from the feed, that kind of thing.
The point of interest was the figure itself. It switched form with each circuit. First, it was a human like many I had known, curious eyes, deep brown hair to the shoulders, honey-brown skin, and dressed in practical clothing like they would soon depart on a planetary trip. I nearly moved on—I had seen this sort of person doing these sorts of activities so many times before. I did not understand the purpose of this display, but it was this very lack of understanding that kept me firmly rooted in front of it.
The figure changed—it was now a cargo transport bot. That was odd. Was the intention for the human viewer to personify the bot? It would be a stupid little artistic exercise. Bots were not automated humans.
But it was not the figure alone that changed. The package had become a standard pallet used to ship cargo—I thought that before it had been a squarish suitcase. The cargo bot "waited," sure, but it was clearly on standby mode, not just standing still. Its status lights and sensor displays changed. Whoever had constructed the holo had taken great care with their technical details, I noticed.
The note hanging on the wall beside the holo said that the artist's goal had been simply to observe patterns of behavior with similar functions, not to forcibly assign commonalities to the subjects. The artist had spent a day in the common area depicted and had done nothing but watch those who passed through. The artist invited the viewer to draw their own conclusions, but emphasized that the goal should not be trite sentiments of shared "humanity" (featuring in text form the quotes my thoughts had always given that word).
I knew it was coming. With my security duties, I was a frequent traveler in the station's corridors, and I knew that any careful observer would note my presence. It was still a shock when it came.
A SecUnit appeared. It was not me, per se, but it was clearly a SecUnit. The artist had noted many of the aspects of the algorithm I ran to escape detection as a construct. I had observed myself many times through hacked security feeds and my own drones, of course, but I had never really seen myself as I appeared when filtered through someone else's eyes.
My organic parts revolted. This was fucking mortifying to look at. I hated it. Something modeled after me was in the fucking art gallery and people fucking looked at it. It was oddly transfixing, though. I stayed where I was.
You bet I cut ART's access to my drone feed, though.
I was a long time standing there, thinking all the while of how far I could have gotten had I chosen to run instead. I didn't know what to think.
I must have said that last part aloud, because ART said, With art, I'm not sure that you're supposed to know exactly what to think at first. You're understanding this piece exactly as you're supposed to, I think—better, even, than a conventional audience. You're not one for the trite sentiments and tidy conclusions the artist warns against.
The worst of it was that an objective observer probably would have decided that ART was right.
And for the record, continued ART, I didn't know this was here. This was not intended as a set-up.
Yeah, fuck you, I said. But I stayed. I stayed and I watched the holo as it cycled, from human to bot to SecUnit and back.
The art made me feel things, which I figured ART would say was the point. But I'm a SecUnit—I hate feeling things. Things about myself most of all.
Later, ART said, Thank you for the trip to the art gallery.
I didn't say anything.
Even later—much, much later—I said, It was an interesting trip.
Extended time delay or not, ART seemed to know exactly what I was referring to.