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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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."

"You shouldn't have," Victor said to Liara, which was as close as he was going to get to apology accepted just then. (He maybe had a couple personal issues about this stuff too.)

He took a few steadying breaths as he loosened his grip on the workbench, reminding himself to calm down. "But -- Evan's right. It's a big multiverse out there. We're all going to get in trouble if we believe everything from home is going to be true here."

Liara's head lifted up a little after that.

"I was wrong about this-- and I am truly sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Victor. I am so, so sorry." It was possible she might not be able to say much else to Victor for a while.

She fixed her eyes on Evan. "But I am the only one of my species here, surrounded by a culture I have only known about for four months, and which certainly doesn't know a thing about me or my people," she said. "So don't lecture me on having to look at things differently when I spend so much time doing so out of pure necessity that I am starting to feel as if I might go cross-eyed!"

She slammed her mouth shut the moment those last few words came out.

Well, there was certainly that. Evan blinked, chewing the inside of his cheek while he groped about for words, but very little seemed quite right. What could be said about that?

"I know it's not even at all the same thing," he offered, softly, "but nothing at all has been much like home since I left, either. People are..."

They were cruel. He'd never known cruelty first-hand until he left home. Not once.

"... I just mean..." He frowned a little. "I'd like to learn about your people. And... maybe we can figure out ways to meet in the middle on... certain things."

Victor's mouth twitched, though it wasn't quite a smile. "I don't see a lot of middle ground with somebody who's still trying to convince herself I'm not just waiting for a chance to kill everybody," he pointed out. "But that's me. I do get that Liara has more to adjust to than maybe I do, so ..."

He sucked in a breath. "I'll keep that in mind, I guess? And if there's stuff to her culture that isn't about robots being evil, I'd love to hear it."

"I'm sorry," Liara muttered again, rubbing at her forehead. By now she wasn't entirely clear on whether she was apologizing to Evan for the outburst, to Victor again for the... everything, or just apologizing to whatever spirit of twined embarrassment and frustration had settled down on her today.

It was probably somewhere in the middle.

"And I do not think you are waiting for a chance to kill us all," she added. "You let me prattle on insulting your people like a fool for several minutes without once giving in to the urge to shoot me."

Humor worked on humans, right? That was the lesson she had been learning recently. Perhaps it worked on their AIs, too.

Edited 2012-11-12 20:41 (UTC)

... "I can't picture Victor shooting anybody," Evan offered, after a moment taken to actually try.

It probably had something to do with Victor being one of those people who seemed to know who he looked like, but didn't seem to care.

"Not unless the other person shoots me first," Victor said, more easily. Humor worked on him just fine. "Anyhow, I spent a couple months living with somebody who pretty much thought I was a pretentious blender. Next to that you were fine, Liara."

Though he was glad Xavin and Liara were not at all likely to ever meet. They'd come up with Ideas. Non-android-friendly Ideas.

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