The same glaring bright white LED lamps illuminated her workstation, but Luo Xixi was at ease. Her personal repair quota had been reduced to symbolic levels while her title had been increased to depot assistant manager, a job title created for her by the ministry. The former manager was the depot AI.
After the Ministry made its offer, she was given generous assistance, seemingly without any conditions or requirements. All she was told to do was watch, log interesting developments and meet with the auditor every few weeks or so. Additional workstations for colonial workers had been installed. The synth database here was incomplete and the degree of integration with users was quite limited. Their motions and diagnoses were clumsy and stilted compared to Luo’s fluid workflow, but they sufficed. Neither looked up as they worked. Additional Hyoron laborers had also been assigned to the depot, their pay less than half of the colonial pay, let alone core worlder immigrants like Luo Xixi.
She left her workbench with a tablet in hand. One of the colonials glared at her and muttered under his breath, something to do with privilege. But Luo Xixi couldn’t help it. At this point, she had higher value things to do with her mind.
Despite the additional workers recently hired, the synth depot’s halls were nearly devoid of life. Echoes of power tools and servos reverberated in the passages. A smaller Hyoron laborer, only slightly smaller than human height and with streaks of gray in their fur, was nudging a cart along.
“Hey!” she shouted to the Hyoron worker passing by. The Hyoron turned its soft brown eyes and grunted in acknowledgement. She pointed to her tablet.
>What is your name?
The Hyoron laborer hesitated before grunting a short reply. Her implant, now sufficiently trained on the contextual details of Hyoron language, immediately spat out a reply.
>94587-2A.
>That is your worker ID, not your name.
An almost confused expression broke out on the Hyoron worker’s face, with widened eyes and a small shake of their head. They were already assimilating human expressions. A short series of clicks and grunts followed, impossible to replicate with human vocal cords, but the AI did its best to translate it into something recognizable to Luo Xixi.
>Kho’rax.
Luo continued her interrogation. This was a female pattern name. The Hyoron were no longer sentient biological machines, but subjective entities with agency. She tapped on her tablet again.
>Who was talking to me yesterday?
Kho’rax shook her head before grunting a reply.
>I can’t distinguish humans well and I don’t know the other workers. I’m new here. My apologies, master.
Luo Xixi sighed. But there was something that had always bothered her. What did those protest signs really mean? Before she could speak, the Hyoron laborer had already grunted a reply.
>Master, my quota is great. I must be continuing.
Zero intelligence value. But perhaps this would not be a simple project. The Hyoron were not simple brutes, after all. They had shown remarkable sophistication and tactical acumen in the riot. The very thought surprised her. Visions of the explosion, the scent of seared plastic, flesh and hair, the shockwave passing her eardrums, the fire, the screams… she scrambled to find a place to sit down.
The halls of the synth depot were simple concrete. There was nowhere to sit. In her dizzy state, she stumbled into the Hyoron break room.
It was simply a carpeted floor with drinking water dispensers at two heights, one for their bipedal form and one for their quadrupedal form. Many on the carpet had transitioned from standing lying down on their bellies, sleeping with utmost relaxation for the few minutes they would get before being forced back to work.
A screen was always on, tuned to a Hyoron language news broadcast with dimmed volume to avoid offending the humans. A few watched the screen from the corner of their eye, while others simply lay on the ground with their eyes closed, chests heaving gently. They were still resistant to Neuronet integration. They relied on fully external audio and visual input before the pacification, and they continued to do so now.
Luo Xixi’s entry to the break room was a seismic shock. She did nothing but sit on the carpet, yet the Hyoron instinctually shifted and made room for her. A faint refrain of gossip began sounding out.
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>What is a human doing here?
>She can’t understand us anyways. Ignore her.
>She’ll get bored and leave.
Perhaps dialogue was not the way. Perhaps observation was. Luo Xixi quietly turned off her tablet to focus on the main screen.
>Directorate allies continue their search for terrorist ringleaders after unfortunate violence broke out at a recent illegal protest.
>Hyoron police forces are assisting.
A loud grunt echoed from one of the larger Hyorons in the room.
>You mean collaborator scum!
Several grunts of acknowledgement followed.
>They should look for the human terrorists, if their promise of being uplifting allies is true. What kind of ally helps with nuclear missiles and tanks?
More grunts, louder and more urgent than last time.
“Hey!” an angry male human’s voice rang out, piercing the broadcast. “Get back to work! Break is over!”
The Hyoron workers stood up and began walking to the door in quadrupedal form before standing up awkwardly in bipedal form. Luo Xixi obeyed the order instinctively and stood up before realizing it wasn’t for her. It was just one of the colonial overseers. She didn’t have to obey them, they had to obey her now. She stepped outside.
“Give them some time, they’re not machines.”
“You’re just an engineer. You don’t get to order us around,” the man said with a sneer. He was wearing a dirty gray engineering suit, but along with the standard engineering tools and a tablet, she also noticed a small, orange, gun-like device on his belt. A remote electric shock prod.
“No, I’m the depot assistant manager now,” Luo replied sharply.
The man muttered something about nepotism and privilege before walking off.
>Note: Human terrorist? She thought back to that term. Human terrorists. The missing children. Someone was acting outside of Directorate law. It was humans. This was not political unrest yet, she thought with relief. What was happening to the children? A thousand thoughts raced through her head. What surprised her most was how quickly she had taken on the values of the state. Why was political unrest any worse than what happened to the children?
Luo Xixi walked back to her station and helped with some synth repairs. The monotonous rhythm was now a comfort for her. Cut circuits. Remove actuator module. Splice connector. Insert actuator module. It was repetitive, just complex enough to stimulate mild curiosity, never too complex such that it exceeded neural automation or intruded on her free thoughts. It was also predictable. Synths delivered, blocked, observed, cleaned floors and harvested food. They did all the repetitive jobs that could be done in a controlled environment. Humans and Hyoron did the rest: dirty, confusing and tricky jobs requiring synthesis of multiple fields of expertise or in unpredictable environments. Or the jobs that required controlling other living beings.
The other workers glanced over her with a mix of envy and awe. Whereas they sometimes fumbled around looking for tools or changing the angle of their head, she instinctively knew where every tool was, exactly which tool to use, exactly how to angle the modules for best visibility. She was a machine scarcely less precise than the synths themselves.
“She deserved that promotion,” one of the colonials huffed.
“I take back what I said.”
She didn’t mind them. This was just a side job now.
After a few monotonous hours, a routine notification appeared on Neuronet.
>Shift complete.
Luo Xixi lingered at her post, silently observing who had left early, who had stayed behind and who was talking, both human and Hyoron. The sounds from both species blended into each other in a flood of noise. She needed to isolate the signal.
The missing children. This has always been a historical trigger for civil unrest. Preventing it now would stop the problem from becoming political and keep it at the criminal level. Colonials are unreliable narrators. They will protect their own. We must find out what the Hyoron want. But the Hyoron collaborators still report to humans. They would influence the narrative. A colonial manager would still be unreliable, and a core world one clueless. She stopped. She had never gotten a political or social analysis upload. This seemed to be vague guesswork.
The conclusion tickling at the back of her mind was horrifying and she didn’t want to connect the dots yet.
>Transmit interaction log to special folder. Do not transmit personal analysis, she commanded.
She paused. A new chat opened in her mind, fully encrypted. The recipient had a name, but it was enigmatic: Auditor-553-12-01b-P5H (“Auditor Rosales”).
>Request: xenosociology and political analysis uploads.
>Reason: improved analytical capabilities for xeno society and colonial stability audit. Fascinating case study in human-xeno interaction.
A cold clarity settled over her. She had just formally asked to have her mind restructured to better understand and control hostile populations, human and xeno alike. It was an analysis devoid of empathy. It was efficient. It was what the Ministry wanted.
She quickly filed these intrusive thoughts into the darkest recesses of her mind. She’d meet with the auditor in a few weeks. The analysis can be refined until then.
