We ran until we could no longer hear gunfire. Finally Chet nodded to me, and the two of us huddled down beside a moss-covered log. This place felt so alien. What did you do surrounded by all this life? Planet surfaces were supposed to be barren expanses of rock and craters. That was natural and normal. Not this greenery.
“Alas,” Chet said quietly, “the pirates finally seem to have noticed that the beast feeds on energy. You can’t hurt them with such weapons, but approach with a small power matrix as an offering and they become quite tame! Grigs are used as pack animals, for all their fearsome appearance. She should be full from all those blasts—I bet she’ll wander off and have a sleep now. Still, I think we should proceed as silently as possible, because of that thing with the shining eyes. I didn’t like the look of that at all.”
I nodded in agreement. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For your help. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself. Spensa Nightshade.”
“Excellent name!” he whispered back. “As for my help, it was a pleasure! I was already prowling Cannonade territory looking for some action, you might say. And I found it, yes I did! Helping a fellow cytonic is a hearty reward on its own. That said…” He trailed off, glancing at M-Bot. “Now I don’t want to pry, but…did I hear you speaking to that drone?”
“Oh, right,” I said. “This is M-Bot.”
“Hello!” M-Bot whispered. “I’m not so scared any longer. That feels nice.”
“Ah,” Chet said. “You, um, brought an AI into the nowhere, did you?”
“That’s…bad, I take it?”
“Yes, well, I believe that word to be an understatement, Spensa Nightshade. Do your people not know about the delvers?”
“We met one!” M-Bot exclaimed. “Well, Spensa did. I was being murdered at the time. But I heard about it on the news! Sounded scary.”
“Ah yes, well then.” Chet looked at me. “Your AI has gone fully sentient, I see? I thought you were newly arrived, but full sentience usually takes a few weeks.”
“Technically,” M-Bot said, hovering a few centimeters closer to him, “the word ‘sentient’ just means an ability to perceive and/or feel. Many people misuse this word. Instead, ‘sapience’ is the word for self-awareness—or intelligence like a human being. Which if you think about it is a human-centric definition. Those rascally humans and their linguistic biases.
“At any rate, my programming is telling me to explain that I’m not sapient, merely programmed to simulate sapience for my pilots. However, my programming was written by people who smell of cheese and have noodles for brains. So I’m ignoring them right now.”
“…Noodles for brains?” I asked.
“When I copied my personality to this drone, I had to leave behind several nonessential databases for space reasons. I assume my collection of keen, brilliant insults was among them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You never had one of those, M-Bot.”
“Really? Guess I’ll have to start one up. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate ‘noodles for brains’？”
“Miss Nightshade,” Chet said, “I…must warn you. This is incredibly dangerous. Fully sapient AI are abominations, you see. Not that I’m one to shy away from danger! But I…well, I suggest you keep an eye on the thing.”
“Noted,” I said.
“Noted,” M-Bot said. “Noodle-brain.”
We both looked at him.
“I’ll keep using it until I have a rating,” M-Bot said. “One to ten. What do you think? I need some data.”
I sighed, glancing back at Chet. “You said you’re an explorer?”
“Interdimensional galactic explorer,” he said. “I’ve only been to two dimensions so far—the ordinary universe and this place. But I figured the title was fitting regardless.”
“I could use a guide,” I said. “And maybe some help understanding cytonics.”
“Well,” he admitted, “on the second I’m not going to be terribly helpful. I didn’t know I was cytonic before falling in here, and I’ve had to pick up what I can on my own. I can contact people through their minds, but that’s about all I can do. I hear we’re supposed to be able to teleport. Wouldn’t that be something?”
I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain I should trust him. Something about his arrival seemed convenient. I mean, yes, awesome dinosaur antics—so awesome—but still…