“You want to what!?” Cirrus barked. The Tribunal’s decision to revive Ava had been entirely too hasty for her liking. There was still plenty left to discuss before any further decisions regarding Ava could be made. Orryn’s proposal to advance things without proper consideration left Cirrus angry.

  “I want to make a deal with her,” Orryn said, undisturbed by Cirrus’ outburst. The Tribunal had convened again shortly after leaving Adrian and Tassie back on the ship with the intention of determining their next course of action as quickly as possible.

  “It,” Cirrus corrected. “That thing is a machine, not a person. It’s a hunk of metal. Stop pretending otherwise.”

  “I disagree. From what I’ve seen so far, she” Orryn said stressed, “has the ability to reason, can feel emotions and has wants and needs. To me, that describes a person.”

  “Those could be simulated to make us believe that! How are we supposed to trust a self-proclaimed sentient A.I.?”

  “Who said anything about trusting her? She should be supervised at all times to ensure that she does nothing untoward. Right now we’ve got her locked up, but then what? We have something that understands gru’ul programming. Imagine the advancements we could make with her help! Rather than stumble in the dark, we could be making use of her.”

  “I thought you were against using people,” Cirrus said, arching a brow.

  “I’m against treating people unfairly,” Orryn responded. “Which is why we make a trade. We give her something that she wants and in return she helps us. It’s not so different than what we’re doing with Adrian right now.”

  “It’s not so simple!” Cirrus said, frustrated at the general lack of awareness. “We need to figure out beforehand what we want out of it and what liberties we absolutely cannot afford to grant it. I don’t want this thing anywhere near our machines where it can tamper with them. Just imagine what would happen if it gained control of the flagship!”

  “I have nothing against that,” Orryn said placatingly. “We need to strike while the iron’s hot and take the opportunity provided to us. We’ve practically been gifted the solution to our problems. It would be a waste not to capitalize on it.”

  “What do you propose?” Kaius asked. Many arguments thus far had been made for calls to action, it was time to hear one last proposal before putting the motion to a vote. Cirrus bit her lip as she listened to Orryn speak.

  “I propose we ask for its help and see what it wants. It’s what we did last time when Adrian was involved. I believe allowing her some measure of freedom – heavily supervised, of course – would go a long way. Of course, the only option we offer her is the freedom she gains when she is helping us.”

  “We tried that the last time and look what happened!” Cirrus exploded. “We had to make him a citizen because of his unreasonable demands just to get him to cooperate. Now you want to risk extending that to a machine? Do machines even have any rights?” The entire Tribunal was looking at her. “This is one of the things we risk running into by not treating this properly. We can’t go blindly like we did before.”

  “We need to do something,” Orryn insisted. “This is the best way to see what we can get out of it. By knowing what it wants, we can determine what to do next. But for that to work, we need to ask her.”

  “Ludicrous!” Cirrus said. “Who knows how many simulations that thing is running every second just to get the most out of that deal? That thing is going to come out on top if we’re not careful.”

  “That’s enough,” Kaius interjected. “I believe that by now we should all have a firm idea on what we think the course of action should be. I’m putting the motion to a vote. Those in favour of propositioning the android and then returning to discuss our next move, vote now.”

  An orb of light appeared above Orryn’s head as well as two others. Cirrus looked around the room, alarmed. Her eyes met Elder Maraz’s as he contemplated which course of action he preferred.”

  “Maraz,” Orryn said softly. “Think of what we could finally uncover if we had her help.” Kaius didn’t move to reprimand Orryn for her attempt to influence Maraz. The room watched the Elder ponder for a moment before an orb of light appeared above his head, turning the tide of the vote.

  “I believe that settles it,” Kaius announced.

  Silence reigned as Cirrus regarded Maraz. “Why?” she asked him, mirroring Orryn’s reaction to the last vote. She thought she’d persuaded Maraz into her camp the previous time.

  “I believe it’s as I told Elder Orryn the last time. I believe in helping the many. This is our chance. I’m not going to let it slip by.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Why not wait slightly longer to get better results?” Cirrus asked.

  “Because every second counts. Imagine what we can reverse engineer! We don’t have the luxury of unlimited time to study that facility. Sooner or later it’s going to become contested. The other factions are going to want in on it.”

  “They’d have to find us first.”

  “I’m sure they have their ways of knowing. It wouldn’t surprise me if they knew that one of our flagships is missing from its usual orbit around our home world.”

  “You think their spies are so firmly entrenched in our military to know of such things?”

  “You never know,” Maraz waved. “Point is, we need all the time we can get. If that means shaving off days, maybe even weeks or months here then I’ll take it.” He turned to face Orryn. “May your suggestion to barter with the android turn out in our favour. Cirrus does raise some excellent points in that we should prepare our reactions to any outrageous demands ahead of time. Really, it’s going to boil down to whether or not we grant the machine rights.”

  “A sentient being should always be granted basic rights and freedoms within the scope of our code of law,” Orryn responded. “I believe that if she is able to display true sentience, then we will have no choice but to accord her those rights.”

  “You can’t just unilaterally decide whether or not a machine has rights!” Cirrus spat. “This is going to set precedence for any other machines that might gain sentience. How do we define sentience? How do we know that the machine isn’t just extremely sophisticated programming? You’ve seen the wonders the gru’ul can produce. This is just another one of them.”

  “Then we simply decide what to do with the android after we listen to her demands. The entire point of this decision is to speed things up. We could spend months debating whether or not a machine has rights. Unless she asks for something specific pertaining to them, then we don’t need to make that decision just yet. It can wait. The facility cannot.”

  Cirrus wanted to pull her hair out. She felt like the only sane person in the room. She tuned in to the small discussions amongst the other Elders, hoping to find support to her cause. From what brief snippets she heard. It was clear to her that she would have no support in her stance. Shoulders drooping, she sighed.

  “I’m telling you all right now that we’re going to regret not having taken the time to properly work things out now when we need to make a time-sensitive decision regarding the android later,” Cirrus said.

  “Thank you for your input, Cirrus. We’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Kaius said. His tone was that of a parent consoling their child. It was not lost on Cirrus, who glared at him unhappily. “Now that we have decided on our course of action, what remains is to decide how the interaction will occur.”

  “Time is of the essence. None of us will be able to go speak with the android in person. We can’t afford to waste three weeks travelling. As such, we will need proxies,” Maraz pointed out.

  “Do you have anyone in mind?” Kaius asked. The list of qualified individuals for the negotiation that had a high enough clearance level was very short. Even more so when looking specifically for candidates already present on sight. He had a feeling he already knew the answer to his own question but posed it anyways for the benefit of the others.

  “We should leave the interactions with the machine to Commander Cyrix,” Maraz proposed, stating the obvious choice.

  “We can’t just leave everything to Cyrix!” Cirrus said. “He has an entire base of operations to run. He can’t afford to waste all of his time playing nanny to the android.”

  “Surely he can spend some time questioning the android.”

  “She has a name,” Orryn interjected. “It’s Ava. I feel that we would be well served to call her by it rather than constantly refer to her is as ‘the machine’ or ‘the android.’” Cirrus rolled her eyes, annoyed by the semantics. “Cyrix won’t be the one working alongside Ava if we enlist her help. I believe that Irric should take part in the negotiation, or at least be present, so that things run smoothly when it’s time for them to work together.”

  “You want a random soldier to sit in on negotiations? Preposterous!” Cirrus said.

  “That random soldier currently has some of the highest security clearance in our entire military,” Orryn reminded her. “He’s more than qualified to be present and provide his input, given that the matter will be directly impacting him.”

  “Are there any other propositions as to who will be responsible for overseeing our interactions with Ava?” Kaius asked. When the room remained silent, he put the motion to a vote. Unsurprisingly, it passed. Every Elder in the room knew that they had extremely limited options with regards to who would handle interactions with Ava. Orryn’s proposal was sound and not even Cirrus could deny it.

  Cirrus didn’t know whether she should be annoyed that yet another of Orryn’s proposals was passed, or if she should be glad that some modicum of effort was being made to take proper precautions. “Who’s going to guard Cyrix and Irric while they interact with Ava?” she asked.

  “I believe we can leave the guard detail to Cyrix. He knows better than we do who’s best suited to the job,” Kaius said. Adjourning the meeting until they had news about how the negotiations went, he dismissed the Elders so that they may return about their business.

  The Elders winked out, one after another, until only Cirrus and Kaius remained. “That’s the second time now!” Cirrus said. “Why haven’t you reprimanded Orryn for influencing the vote’s outcome?”

  “My job is to oversee the proceedings. I only cast my vote in the event of a tie. I didn’t reprimand Orryn because Maraz’s vote would have made no difference with regards to the outcome,” Kaius responded, admitting his stance on the matter. Cirrus stared at him wide-eyed. It was very rare to hear about Kaius’ personal stance on matters that he usually held no say in. “Besides, I remember you also speaking to Maraz the last time to influence him to vote in your favour.”

  Chewing her lip, Cirrus debated what to say next. “I only did you so because you made it clear you were allowing it. It shouldn’t have mattered whether or not the vote would make a difference. She shouldn’t have spoken to begin with. Once was enough, but this is twice now that she blatantly flaunts the rules. Please ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Kaius said with a dismissing wave. “Was that all?” Cirrus nodded her head. Kaius bid her goodbye and forcefully ended the meeting, causing both holograms to wink out of existence. Kaius hummed to himself when he exited his meeting room. Sitting down at his desk, he pondered how best to make use of the new development.