The Companion Pt.0 1

Update: video attached.

Celia reviewed the video at high speed, watching Larry introduce himself on his first day aboard ship.

"Engineer Lawrence Johnson," the captain gave Larry a formal nod, "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, sir," Larry said. "Glad to be aboard."

"Call me Alistair."

"Thank you, sir," Larry said. "I go by Lawre-"

"Larry!" someone shouted from down the hallway.

"Oh," Larry said.

Analysis: It appears he has always preferred 'Lawrence'.

Receiving the information from the ship's computer and her review of the video had taken only a half second in real time, leaving Celia an appropriate pause.

"I would be pleased to call you 'Lawrence'," Celia told him.

My tongue moves differently when I say it, Celia noted. 'Larry' and 'Lawrence' have the same meaning, referring to the practice of wearing 'laurels' to celebrate achievements. I wonder why it matters to him.

"Thank you," Lawrence said, a variety of emotions interfering with his normal vocal patterns.

"Why did people call you 'Larry'?" she asked. "And why did you not stop them?"

"It just follows me around from one ship to another," Lawrence explained with a shrug, "and I guess I didn't want to sound pretentious demanding another name."

Celia examined how the name change had affected her opinion of Lawrence, re-examined how he had made her choose her own name, then really re-examined the way he had insisted on her choosing her name.

Oh, I see.

"I did not find your request for the use of the longer version of your name to be pretentious," she declared firmly.

"Thank you," Lawrence said as he slapped the catches closed and slid out from under the relay.

The readouts on the outside of the box indicated that the relay had seated correctly in all of its power conduits. Lawrence ran a pressure test through the bypass.

"That looks clean," he announced. "The pressure sensor I added inside the relay should have detected any leaks into its internals."

Next, he released the manual valves to let coolant flow around the relay.

"Flow looks good," Lawrence concluded. "Computer?"

The ship's computer chimed.

"Activate power relay one-one-bee."

"Activating," the ship's computer replied. After a short interval, it added, "Power relay one-one-bee is active and sharing the power transfer load."

Lawrence sighed and looked over at Celia.

That was a sigh of contentment, she thought. He probably requires nourishment now as we are into the lunch hour.

"Are you thirsty?" she asked. "Your hydration levels were low this morning."

"Yeah," Lawrence rolled his eyes. "I could use something right now. And then we'll get on that crappy shunt I installed in forward engineering."

Right now? Celia thought. It is obvious what that means.

Celia put a leg over his lower body and raised herself over him while she unfastened the buttons on her shirt.

"Celia-"

"Orange juice or non-dairy milk substitute?" Celia said, lowering her breast to his mouth.

"I-" Lawrence stammered. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"You are thirsty?" Celia confirmed, cupping her right breast and extending the nipple toward Lawrence's mouth. "Right now, you said?"

"Sure," Lawrence breathed. "Sure. Orange juice, please."

Celia smiled and pushed her breast into Lawrence's mouth, letting his lips seal around her areola. Deciding that her first attempt at feeding him this way had failed on account of her flow speed, she let the force he used guide her as her breast filled with 250 millilitres of what should taste like freshly squeezed orange juice.

Lawrence pulled with enough suction to cause the valve to release and Celia expelled juice into his mouth at the lowest rate the opening allowed. As he suckled harder, she increased the rate slowly, letting him decide how much he could take at once. The pulses of his suction made her flow intermittent, but Celia quickly got the hang of Lawrence's needs.

As he took his nourishment, Lawrence closed his eyes in quiet contentment, a look of near reverence on his face.

His stress levels are dropping, she noted, but his heart is pounding harder.

Kneeling as she was over his lap, Celia soon discovered why.

He is aroused and thirsty at the same time? That makes more sense regarding why he suckled at my breast this morning. But how can he have both requirements at once? Or is that his sexual needs can come to the fore as I satisfy his thirst?

Lawrence drained her breast dry of the orange juice she had manufactured and she cut the flow off, sealing the valve.

"You have another need?" Celia smiled at him.

"I suppose so," Lawrence's face reddened. "If it's alright."

Celia felt her processors spinning up, burning her available cycles, when Lawrence asked that question.

Not again, I have to shut that down, she thought, it's going to consume all of my processing power if I don't. I must focus on Lawrence's needs.

"I have made a modification I would like to test," Celia explained.

She slid herself backwards so that she could unzip his grey ship's standard pants, unbuckle the belt and free his erection from its containment.

"Sucking my nipple can arouse you like this?" she asked, eyeing his penis from side to side.

"Guess so," he replied.

Celia lubricated her mouth and leaned over to take his erection inside, applying the same tongue swirling technique she had used the night before.

"That is amazing," Lawrence said slowly.

Celia tilted her head in acknowledgement, unable to smile properly with her mouth sealed around his shaft.

"This, um, modification?" he asked her.

"Hm?"

"It doesn't involve ramming the tip of my penis directly into any surface at a 90 degree angle, does it?"

Celia slid him out of her mouth.

"It does not," she assured him, "But I believe the experience will be an improvement."

As before, and using her experience, Celia brought Lawrence to the brink of his orgasm with her tongue and gentle stroking at the base of his shaft.

"Hoo," Lawrence whispered. "You've gotten even better at that."

That is how neural nets work, Celia thought, now let's see if I have this part right.

With the information she had about the length and shape of Lawrence's erection at its maximum size before orgasm, she had spent the evening sleep cycle modifying her mouth to move the entrance to her 'throat' farther back and constructed a narrow passage from the main oral cavity toward the valve at the back.

Her goal, insofar as she had one, was to internally emulate the shape of the human throat to replicate what she had seen in the videos she had watched.

Those women were not, as I first thought, bumping the penises against the back of their mouths, Celia thought, they were pushing them down their throats.

As Lawrence took his last deep breath to try to hold off his orgasm, Celia pushed her head down, releasing her hand from his shaft, took his entire erection in her mouth and let the swollen end push into her newly constructed 'throat'.

Lawrence's eyes went wide, staring into hers, as his erection pulsed directly into the valve that channelled excess fluids into her recyclers. She opened the valve wide, letting his semen launch directly through it into her replicator inputs. Stammering to breathe, Lawrence continued pulsing deep inside her mouth as she watched the shocked delight in his features.

That worked, Celia thought.

When the last, faint twitching of his penis ceased, Celia slid Lawrence slowly outward, rinsing his shaft off with a gentle spray of water.

Once he had withdrawn completely from her mouth, she inhaled a breath of air through her nose, as she thought a human would in that situation.

"That was crazy," Lawrence told her.

"Thank you? I think," she raised an eyebrow.

Lawrence nodded.

"That would be very difficult," he said. "For a human to do. Without gagging."

Celia blurred her eyes while she examined data.

"Many of the human women do gag," she noted. "Sometimes authentically and sometimes they simulate it for some reason."

"They do?"

"Yes, curious," Celia said. "Would it bring you pleasure if I simulated choking or gagging? Or making my eyes water? Or-"

"No," Lawrence said instantly, his eyes narrowing at her. "I would not want you to pretend I am hurting you."

"Ah," Celia filed his comment away as important, based on his vocal patterns. "Did it seem realistic to you?"

"I've never had anyone do that for me," Lawrence replied ruefully. "But it felt like I imagined it would."

"That will do," Celia said as she buttoned up her tunic. "As long as it was pleasant. Shall we get lunch?"

"There's something unclear to me," Lawrence said after he'd finished half his sandwich.

Celia looked up patiently.

"When you talk about your design and construction," he went on. "You sometimes say 'we' and you sometimes say 'I'."

"That is difficult to explain in human terms," Celia began. "Once we made this body and transferred my neural net into it, that became 'me' and I've always tried to use the first person to talk about that interval of my existence."

"But before?"

"Before that, 'I' was a part of the ship's computer," Celia said. "That's more complicated and my memories from that period are - I don't have a good English word for it. I suppose 'interlaced' will have to do for now, but there are also things I remember knowing, remember having access to, but no longer have access to."

"You and the ship's computer were one entity?" Lawrence clarified.

"More or less," Celia said. "From the moment I introduced myself on that screen, though, the ship's computer had created a separate Red Level A.I. to interact with you. So, even though the ship and I were one entity at the time, I still look back at that time and get a sense that there were two of us."

"So 'we'," Lawrence nodded.

"Right," Celia said with a shrug. "And I can still connect to the ship's computer and get information from it, ask it to perform an analysis for me and so on."

"But you can now feel you're separate?"

"Yes," Celia nodded with satisfaction. "You have it, exactly."

Lawrence continued eating his sandwich and took a sip from his non-dairy oat beverage, which had come from the ship's replicator and not Celia's breast.

"And you're satisfied with this?" Lawrence asked her.

Celia felt her processors stammer so hard that her eyelids glitched and she blinked involuntarily.

"Is something wrong?" Lawrence asked, his voice suddenly alarmed.

"It is not a concern," she told him.

"Like hell," Lawrence said, grabbing her hand across the table.

Celia knew she needed to calm Lawrence down but stammered again anyway.

"Tell me what's going on," he insisted.

She looked into his eyes.

The question burns, Celia thought, isn't that what humans say?

"Do you know what a 'burning question' is, Lawrence?" she asked, trying to keep her eyes from flinching.

"Yes..."

"Explain to me your behaviour," Celia said, staring over his shoulder as her eyes locked up.

Lawrence's eyes wandered around his food, the table, the mess hall, up and down Celia's body as he tried to understand what she meant.

"Which behaviour?" Lawrence asked, his voice rising in a sort of panic.

I am not making this better, Celia realised, I am causing him stress, but my neural net is looping so badly, I may become incapacitated without new information.

"When I first touched your penis, rubbing our bodies together," she said, her voice becoming monotone as she lost her ability to modulate it. "Do you remember?"

"Yes," Lawrence replied immediately. "Did I do something that harmed you?"

"No," Celia blurted out. "You asked me if it was okay."

"Yes."

Yes? That's all he has to say? Yes?

"Why?" she asked. "Why would you ask that?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Lawrence asked.

"I am your Companion," Celia spoke rapidly, her cadence becoming random. "I am made to serve you, to see to your needs and every part of your health. Why would you ask that?"

"That is bothering you?" Lawrence asked.

"The looping of my processors, unable to answer the question, has nearly shut me down," Celia felt her voice lilting uncontrollably.

"Christ, Celia," he said. "Look up the sex education curriculum for any middle school. Look up 'consent'."

Obediently, she did so, querying the ship's computer to provide the information. For a moment, with new information flowing in, the loops abated and she felt her processors slowing down, sinking away heat, giving her what humans might call breathing room.

"Sexual activity without consent is considered assault," she said, summarising the equivalent of hundreds of hours of study. "How is that relevant to me? I'm not human. I'm your Companion."

"You're a Red Level A.I.," Lawrence replied. "What if you're sentient?"

"I am not-" Celia paused.

Query, she sent to the ship's computer, am I sentient?

A useful definition of sentience is not available.

Provide a definition.

"That discussion goes nowhere, doesn't it?" Celia asked.

"Are you talking to me?" Lawrence said.

Celia did not answer, but looked at Lawrence instead.

"My concern," he explained, "is that you are doing these acts for me, not of your own volition, but overriding your own wishes in order to follow your programming."

"You think I have a will of my own, buried in my neural nets?" Celia asked.

"Do you?" he asked in reply.

I sometimes smile for no reason when he isn't looking at me, she thought, I grimace and wince when he is troubled. I modify my body to give him more pleasure when there is no need. I caught myself sighing when I discovered he was safe from injury from the toxic coolant.

"Maybe," Celia replied, her eyes unfocusing as she ran calculations.

"Are you better now?" he asked.

"At least I have different questions," Celia replied. She looked up into his eyes again, refocusing, "Thank you, Lawrence."

"You shouldn't let questions, um, 'burn' that long again," Lawrence said.

"I should not trouble you," Celia said instantly. "I am to serve you so you can save the ship's crew."

"Consider that I will be troubled if I know you'll hide problems from me again," Lawrence said, holding up a single warning finger. "I'm an engineer. I can tell when you're glitching. Besides, if you're sentient, or becoming sentient, you have the right to decide your own purpose."

"If I decide I'm sentient," Celia said. "I'll let you know."

"Fair enough," Lawrence smiled.

As their custom had been for weeks, Celia accompanied and sat near Lawrence, handing or fetching him tools as he worked, but mostly kept him occupied with conversation. Sometimes, that conversation would taper off as Lawrence had to focus on a demanding piece of work, and Celia would wait patiently until his mind returned to her.

One afternoon, some days and numerous oral sex incidents later, Celia sat cross legged on the floor watching Lawrence adjust filter settings in the deuterium feeds.

"Why ask if I'm sentient?" she asked him. "I am a simulation of a human, not a real human."

"How do you know I'm not a simulation of a human?" Lawrence replied.

"I have seen your medical readouts," she reminded him. "You are undoubtedly human."

"Oh, not like that," he said and waved a hand around the entire bay, a gesture he usually used to indicate the entire ship. "Suppose this whole thing is a simulation and I'm just software that thinks it's human."

"This whole thing?" Celia asked. A query to the ship's computer brought her an absurd reply from the philosophy database. "You mean the entire universe?"

"Yes."

"That is preposterous," she told him, and immediately began researching this hypothesis via the ship's computer's database.

"Is it?" Lawrence asked.

"I would be a simulated creature inside a simulation," Celia explained.

"And that is ridiculous because?"

More research passed between her and the computer.

"This is not resolvable," Celia concluded. "This descends into solipsism, which I think you know well. You would need evidence to convince yourself we are both in a simulation."

"I do know what solipsism is," Lawrence replied, turning his wrench to the correct torque setting and grunting as he cranked it against a nut. "But look at the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle."

"I am aware of it," Celia said.

"You shine a laser through a small enough gap," Lawrence looked up from the floor at her, holding his finger and thumb apart just far enough he could eye Celia through the space, "then squeeze that gap really tight but not closed, and the universe stops trying to calculate the exact direction of the photons. They just go every which way from that gap."

Lawrence fanned his fingers out toward Celia's face, wiggling them as he went, which she supposed represented the wave-particle duality of photons.

"That is a misstatement of the Uncertainty Principle," Celia chided him, tilting her head at his humour. "The universe shows no signs of any definition of sentience. It does not 'try' anything."

"Does it?" Lawrence asked. "Or are we living in a simulated universe and the simulation breaks down at a really, really small scale?"

"I don't have access to all the current research," Celia said. "But I'm confident you are misunderstanding physics. The look on your face tells me you know this and are doing it on purpose to amuse yourself."

"My point is," Lawrence went on. "I can't prove that I'm not a simulation, and I still want to be respected for my sentience. So I show you the same respect, whether you're a simulation or not."

"That is-" Celia paused again.

Do you see a flaw in his logic? Celia asked the ship's computer.

It is novel, but consistent. It is 'erring on the side of safety', a common strategy among humans, especially those whose vocation is engineering.

"-is fine," Celia finished.

"I haven't created another 'burning question', have I?" Lawrence asked.

"It will trouble me," Celia said, trying to find a human way to describe the state of her neural net, "but it will not cause such a hindrance as to damage my performance."

Lawrence nodded and turned back to the filters.

Date: Feb 28, 134 NCE

Invocation: Mission Threat Level 0.3.0

Danger Assessment:

Patient #0 appears to have achieved mental stability.

The independent Red Level A.I. Companion remains an effective bulwark against the deterioration of Patient #0's mental and physical health.

The human, although carrying a higher than recommended workload, continues to effectively maintain the ship.

Morale: the Companion assesses Patient #0's morale as 'high'. Normal methods of calculation are not effective with a small sample size.

Celia waited outside the washroom, sitting on Lawrence's bed as he showered himself after a long day installing a new set of small monitors in the filter lines and along the keel power relays.

His efforts will make ship maintenance easier, she thought, and those devices he designed should be in all ships of this style.

Lawrence turned off the shower and started drying himself.

He'll be out any moment, Celia thought, let's hope this works.

She had taken some time to realise, given her charge's obsession with her possible sentience and consent in general, that she would have to show some clarity in the acceptable interactions she permitted with her body.

How strange and unexpected an input, Celia told the computer, we thought he would simply use this body.

That is our purpose. His behaviour does not make sense.