by E. M. Foner
“Well, look what the Stryx dragged in,” a passing artificial person commented to her companion as he floated by them in the corridor.
Jeeves ignored the pair and rapidly navigated his way through the maze of passages to the section of the orbital where a large number of Sharf-originated AI made their homes. He approached a cabin and knocked on the door with his pincer.
“Come in,” the artificial person broadcast in a modified version of Sharf machine language, employing a weaker version of the encryption used to protect physical access to the orbital. Jeeves floated into the cabin as soon as the door panel retracted.
The eyestalks of the occupant swiveled around to study the guest, though the Sharf artificial person remained where he stood, recharging his power cells through the inductive coils built into the walls of a coffin-like cubby.
“Stryx, I see. Are you here to terminate me for some imagined offense against your opaque regulations?” There was no animosity in the message, just a question from a long-lived AI who knew he had cut some corners in his youth.
“No, 34F9ug21,” Jeeves replied over the same frequency. “I’m here to price a custom order of hats.”
“Then I’m ‘Ug’ to friends and customers,” the artificial person said, slipping out of the charger bay and floating to a workstation on the wall where he enabled a holographic controller. “How much of a hurry are you in?”
“My partners are biologicals,” Jeeves replied. “Humans, mainly.”
“Ah, so you’ll be looking for a rush job,” the AI said, paging his way through a holographic schedule. “Pity about their short life spans. Surprising somebody didn’t design them better.” He turned to Jeeves and dipped his left eyestalk, the Sharf equivalent of a wink. “As it happens, things are slow around here so I can fit you right in. I assume you can provide the tooling-ready plans?”
Jeeves nodded and sent the artificial person the vector-based drawings, calculated down to the last stitch.
“What’s with the two empty loops on the front?” Ug asked after rapidly scanning the plans.
“They’re for a buckle, no real function beyond aesthetics, though they plan to use some shiny metals to differentiate between consumer quality and a bespoke version.”
“And where are the drawings for the buckle?”
“They’ll be making them on Union Station, in some cases by hand forging.”
“What?” Ug was so surprised that his eyestalks stretched like a cartoon figure going over a cliff. “That will cost your partners a hundred times as much as the hats!”
“More for the gold ones,” Jeeves replied, and waved his pincer through a pattern he knew that Ug would register as a shrug. “There’s a Frunge metallurgy student involved. You know what young biologicals are like.”
“That’s why I moved here,” Ug said, turning back to the plans. “It’s your financial funeral.” He paused for a moment, studying the hologram more closely. “I wouldn’t say this to just any customer stopping in to place an order, but I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Stryx, so you should know that these hats aren’t exactly original. My group made quite a large run of something very similar for Horten pirates a couple thousand years ago, the order ran into the tens of millions of units. But the ribbon was extended with a sort of tail that hung down the back.”
“I didn’t realize that Chintoo law recognized intellectual property rights. If I ordered knock-offs from you, would that make me a pirate?”
Ug cocked his head at Jeeves, trying to figure out if the Stryx was toying with him. “The hats weren’t knock-offs, at least not that I’m aware of. Now that I think about it, using part of the hatband as a tail was the idea of a young Huravian AI interning with my group. The pirates were just regular Horten pirates.”
“Now you have me confused,” Jeeves transmitted. “What kind of pirates order millions of legitimate hats from a manufacturer?”
“It was part of a big marketing push we made back after retooling from small arms to consumer goods. We got some of our biological Sharf to act as salesmen along the frontier they share with the Hortens. They came up with a catchy slogan about how ordering from Chintoo was cheaper than stealing, and I recall now that we were asked to intentionally distress some of the products with lasers so they looked like pirate booty. Apparently they sold better on the streets that way.”
“Learn something new every day,” Jeeves mused, wondering what Shaina and Brinda would think of the marketing ploy. “If things are slow, why don’t you give it another try?”
“The ‘cheaper than stealing’ campaign? But we already used it.”
“Two thousand years ago,” Jeeves reminded him. “Most biologicals have trouble remembering what happened two years ago, or two minutes ago in some cases.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Ug asked, flicking a metallic finger against his own temple in a sign of self-disgust. “Thanks for the tip. The downside of sparing ourselves from biological noise is that we tend to forget that they aren’t just inferior prototypes of ourselves with inefficient energy conversion systems dedicated to reproduction.”
“So let’s talk price,” Jeeves transmitted, sensing that his desirability as a customer was peaking. “It’s a start-up operation with limited capital, but they’re planning on expanding into a full line of cross-species fashions.”
“It’s been done before,” Ug replied. “My records show a surge in cross-species fashions every time new biologicals claw their way up off their planet of origin.”
“But they don’t know that,” Jeeves pointed out. “They don’t remember.”
“You give us this job at our standard setup rate and guaranty me first refusal on new products for the next thousand cycles, I’ll do the first run of hats for the cost of materials,” Ug offered.
“How much for setting up the production line?”
“Thirty thousand Stryx creds, but any engineering change orders from these plans will be billable hours,” the artificial person said.
“You aren’t giving your services away,” Jeeves grumbled, but he made the transfer from his internal currency holder and the amount immediately popped up in an ornate frame on the artificial person’s ceiling. “You hacked your register to make a display?”
“I do it with mirrors,” Ug admitted. “Sometimes while I’m in the box recharging it’s nice to look at the latest deposit. Reminds me why I’m exercising the electrons. Hey, I recognize the company name on the transfer—SBJ Auctioneers. One of the Chintoo groups that got burned by a fashion cycle while trying to manufacture on their own account got stuck with a bunch of stretchy products for Drazens and disposed of the unsold inventory through your firm.”
“We barely broke even on those,” Jeeves said. “It did give me a chance to see how adaptable my human partners can be. By the end of the auction, they were cutting up Drazen tentacle warmers and selling them to human retailers as various sizes of knee and elbow sleeves for athletes. Well, I better head back and give the girls the good news. You wouldn’t believe how impatient biologicals can be.”
“How’d you choose me?” Ug transmitted out of curiosity as Jeeves turned to exit. “There are bigger cooperatives than mine on Chintoo and I know you were concerned about timing.”
“A human-derived artificial person who spent time as a graphics designer here suggested you. He did some work on a collection of monogrammed bath towels you produce for the cruise lines.”
“The one who left to become a spy? How’s that going for him?”
“He’s having a ball,” Jeeves replied. “They currently have him working undercover as a newspaper reporter to keep an eye on Grenouthian agents working undercover for the bunny news networks. Humans are a hoot once you get to know them, especially when they’re trying to be serious.”
The relatively primitive Sharf AI and the young Stryx exchanged an electronic handshake, and Jeeves exited the orbital for open space. After a quick look around to fix his position in the galaxy, he began calculating his ro
ute back to Union Station. The unaccustomed exercise in multiverse math gave him an idea for a new business, but he doubted his elders would be amused.
Word Night on Union Station is getting a sequel because I’m addicted to my own series and I need to know what happens next. You can sign up for notification of the next release on my website, IFITBREAKS.COM.
If you believe there is still a place in science fiction for stories that aren’t all about death and destruction, please help to get the word out. Posting an Amazon review on the first book of this series, Date Night on Union Station, will help new readers discover these books, even if you only write a few words.
About the Author
E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected].