fandomhigh | SCIENCE! Club, Monday After Classes

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!club: science

SCIENCE! Club, Monday After Classes

Today when the Science! Club members walked into the Danger Shop, they'd see the place was set up to resemble a biology lab... in the middle of a greenhouse. Every which way they looked, there were plants of all persuasions, from a towering sycamore to the lowly potato.

... Sorry, GLaDOS.

"Hey, guys," Evan greeted, looking about as chipper as always. "Today we're going to do things with plants. Um... pretty much anything you can think to do with them, actually. Since they're, you know, plants and all."

That was helpful, Evan, thank you.

"I am not an expert on biology," Liara supplied needlessly. "But I believe there are several experiments we could focus on. For example, we could use the microscopes to examine the structure of Earth plants." She glanced towards... Evan, yes. Not GLaDOS. Evan. "I also have reason to believe we could turn certain vegetables into batteries..."

"Which we can, um... you know, do." Evan? Was looking at Liara. And also not at GLaDOS. "Because we brought the stuff." A beat. "Or you could poke toothpicks into an avocado pit to try to grow a tree? You know. If you don't want to make a... vegetable battery."

Nondescript vegetable, right there. Yessir.

"Yes," Liara said, looking terribly earnest. "Also, I believe that if you put certain types of Earth flowers in liquid infused with color, the blossom assumes that color. Sometimes even several, if you slice the..." She glanced down at the sheet of paper in her hand. "Stem?"

Seriously! Not a biology expert!

"Stem," Evan agreed, smiling an earnest smile to match. "Or, if you don't want to do any of that, you can just feed bugs to the carnivorous plants for the rest of the meeting. And take one home with you if you want. No, you can't make a potato battery out of those, though."

... Wait! No! He hadn't meant to actually say that!

"Vegetable battery," Liara said ~~very quickly~~ sagely.

Battery of nondescript vegetable.

[Open!]

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"Ohthankgoodness," Evan replied, all in one relieved exhale. "I don't even want to think about how things could go badly in here if they weren't."

Neurotoxins? Trees growing legs and stepping on people? Giant, man-eating, rock-and-rolling venus-flytrap-avocados from space, perhaps?

"I suppose there are some things even my biotics would not be able to protect us from," Liara mused. "But thankfully we will not have to find out. I hope. We may have to employ more precautions next time we have one of these meetings..."

"Like no talking about, uh, root vegetables?"

That would have been a good precaution to have taken before, Evan.

There was a brief silence.

"...Yes," Liara said.

"Though I am not sure how I feel about being bullied by a root vegetable."

"She's a root vegetable that can give us detention," Evan replied, his voice hushed. "I'm not really thrilled about that, either, but I guess it'd probably be for the best to be polite about her... condition?"

Was being a potato a condition? Evan had no grounds for comparison, here.

Liara's eyes darted towards GLaDOS. "Artificial intelligences are illegal in my time for a reason," she muttered. "Condition or not."

"We have AI back where I'm from," Evan noted. "And some of them are really good people, and others are... really not."

Danger was one of the X-Men! That was a good sign, right? And E.V.A., his Uncle's ship... she was good, too!

Ultron, not so much.

"I think maybe GLaDOS is one of the not-as-nice ones, though."

Liara shrugged lightly. She had never actually experienced artificial intelligences herself, having been born after the quarian Morning War.

"My universe has only known bad examples," she said. "She is not doing anything to change that."

"She's not," he conceded, worrying at his bottom lip for a moment with his teeth. "Is that why you were so uneasy that day we made little robots?"

He remembered reading up on the geth at the museum during the field trip to the Citadel a few weeks back, but decided to keep his opinion about what he'd read to himself. He was pretty sure that he'd have the unpopular opinion on that one, and now didn't seem like the time to start rambling about a sentient being's drive to continue living, artificial or not.

"It is a taboo in my universe, and for good reason," Liara said. "I would rather not see us all killed by an artificial intelligence. Though I have to admit that until GLaDOS came along, I had not met one myself..."

It might be a good idea to come clean some day, Victor.

"I've met a few, mostly from back home," Evan offered. "Most of them have been nicer to me than other students from back there."

The line was so fluid between organic and mechanical artificial intelligence back home too, though. He had no idea if Ultimaton was a robot or a man, or if E.V.A. had been built or born. Or. Or.

So much 'or.'

"But if any of them were to rise up and actively start trying to hurt people, I don't think they'd get too far. Not around here, at least."

"That is what the quarians thought as well," Liara said.

It sounded more like an observation than anything else.

"Well, we're not using the AIs that come through here the same way the quarians were using the geth," Evan replied, biting the inside of his cheek and sounding painfully neutral, himself. "We're not building people to serve us. It's... a totally different situation. And... um..."

He glanced GLaDOS's way.

"Potatoes aren't really renowned for their prowess at war."

"She appears to have more control when she is in her own environment," Liara observed. "But I suppose she has not actually tried to kill us yet..."

Well, maybe 'tried' was the wrong word, there.

"She's not really a good person," Evan offered. "But there are plenty of people who aren't machines who aren't good people, either. There's just one of her, she can't go far without a potato, and besides Topher," who clearly had a deathwish, "I don't think that many people are crazy enough to actually step into her office."

"Just because there are people who are capable of evil does not automatically invalidate the idea that artificial intelligences are dangerous as a rule," Liara observed. She glanced towards the potato again. "You are right, however. She cannot do us harm."

Evan sighed, poking a finger at his venus flytrap and letting the little hinged leaves close lightly over his fingertip.

"Choosing to hurt people is just that... it's a choice, and it can be made by anyone, whether they're machines or not. We just have instinct where they have programming, but it's still there, built into us, biologically or technologically. People are dangerous as a rule. That's what 'intelligence' means... that we're smart enough to make the decision to help or hurt. Some might be predisposed to make more hurtful choices than others, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be set in stone, always. What people are and who they choose to be... it's different."

Evan had feelings on this topic. Really, really strong ones.

"I can't justify believing anything else. All AIs are dangerous, all mutants are dangerous, I'm dangerous because I look like someone who hurt a lot of people..." Deep breath. "Be careful around people who are different from you if you want to, if that's what makes you feel better, but until people actually choose to commit a crime, they're not automatically criminals. That's not how people work."

"I fear you may be trying to apply organic motives to synthetic creatures," Liara said delicately. "All evidence in my time points to another explanation. But I would be happy to revise my opinion if I ever do meet one of your benign synthetics... if they are out there."

She was a scientist at heart; emotional pleas and hearsay didn't hold a terrible lot of weight against the burden of history. Empirical evidence, on the other hand...

"They're out there," Evan mumbled, all ranted out and feeling tired, now. "Maybe not where you're from, but they are where I am. The Vision is a hero... so is Warlock, and Deathlok, and... there are plenty. Deathlok teaches at my old school. He recalibrated his own programming to learn how to love."

And seemed more afraid of Evan than most of the other students. Which wasn't malicious, but it... it hurt.

Well, this was all officially too much.

"And me," Victor said, glancing up from the workbench he was gripping with white knuckles. "Not to spoil your prejudices, but I'm still a cyborg and I haven't gone deaf in the last half-hour or anything. Evan, you're awesome."

Liara blinked rapidly.

"You are an AI?" she said, genuinely taken aback in... a lot of ways. "I'm sorry, I had no idea--"

That he was one. That she already had the empirical evidence she required. That she had apparently been talking about this with him right there.

Could GLaDOS kill her? Now?

Evan blinked up from where he'd been seriously fascinated by his flytrap, and then gave Victor a little smile.

"See," he said, both relieved that Victor had handed him some hard evidence that AIs could be good people, and kind of awestruck that he'd stepped in to speak up in the first place. "People. Just like everyone else. And good people, even."

"Yeah, it can be hard to tell when we aren't downloading our personalities into potatoes," Victor told Liara. He wasn't exactly enjoying her obvious discomfort, but neither was he going out of his way to comfort her. "Look, I know there are some whacked-out AIs out there, but there are some real jerk aliens too, and I don't go around telling everybody aliens can't behave themselves."

"I'm sorry," Liara repeated. She had had her reasons to believe as she had - but ignorance and cultural influence were not sensible arguments to put forward to someone you had just offended, and anyway, she mostly just wanted to soothe any hurt she might have caused.

In shorter terms, she was flailing.

"I should not have said that."

It wasn't Evan's place to accept that apology. He'd been carrying half of the conversation until Victor had spoken up, and was relieved as anything that the more hurtful parts were over, now. But the apology was Victor's to accept, not his, even if the conversation had brushed against a few personal issues that he was probably going to have to cuddle a puppy over, later.

"None of us are home right now," he said, instead. "A lot of things here are different from anything any of us are used to, right? But maybe that just means that we have to... be willing to look at things a little differently than we're used to, too. Something isn't always true just because you've never found an example to the contrary. It's a really big multiverse out there."

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