It all started innocently enough. One day, about three months after Pacifica’s sixteenth birthday, Raquel was handing up some laundry to dry when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small, lavender-haired person (an uninformed person would assume she was a fairly young girl) sitting on the side of the hill the overlooked the small town that was the source of most of Shannon’s customers. As the oldest of the Casull siblings was the kind of person for whom caring for others came naturally, she set down her basket of laundry, and walked over to speak with her.
“Is something wrong, Zefiris?”
The Dragoon glanced up from her spot on the grass where she had been staring at the landscape to see her master’s older sister looking at her with mild concern on her face.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Raquel.”
“Well, it’s just that you have a strange look on your face — well, stranger than the emotionless expression that you normally have on your face.”
“I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly capable of simulating realistic human emotions — I simply prefer not to under most circumstances.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That was a little insensitive of me, I suppose.”
Zefiris responded with a noncommittal hum and resumed gazing at the landscape.
“But you still haven’t answered my question….”
The Dragoon sighed; apparently, Raquel wanted answers, and wasn’t going to leave until she got them. “I’m… not sure. It’s as though there’s something… off, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“Is it something that could hurt Pacifica?”
“I couldn’t say. This is really more of a… a gut feeling, perhaps, is the best way to put it. It’s almost like I’m overlooking something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the quick way Mauser dismantled the system, but it all just seemed a bit too easy.”
“Well, Pacifica did say that Mauser did it willingly. Do you think she was deceived?”
“No, I’m not saying that. Rather, I assumed that even if Celia Mauser was totally truthful in what she told Pacifica — and from what Lord Becknam told me about his little sister, I have no reason to think she wasn’t — there would still be artifacts from the system that would have remained behind…”
“Artifacts?” Raquel’s mind was filled with images of broken pottery… but that couldn’t have been what Zefiris meant, right?
“Then again, perhaps my files have become a bit corrupted over the last 5,000 years, and I’m just being unreasonably paranoid.”
“Oh… alright.” Raquel had given up trying to understand what Zefiris meant when she started talking like that a long time ago. It wasn’t that the oldest Casull sibling was stupid; quite the contrary, she was actually much more intelligent then her near-constant cheery demeanor let on. But she really didn’t have the context necessary to talk with an AI about matters related to a society much more technologically advanced than her own. Maybe someone like Seness or Eirote could, but those two had been learning about this sort of thing from Natalie for several years now, while she was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept of an “artificial” intelligence — to her, that sounded like a way to describe someone who was only pretending to be smart, not someone like Zefiris who obviously was smart. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No… I don’t think so. If there’s anything to this, I’ll know soon enough.”
“Well… maybe you could talk to Natalie about it. She’s been around as long as you have, correct?”
“Hmm… that’s a distinct possibility… though without Mauser’s infrastructure in place to stabilize the phase space, transporting myself to Giat is going to be somewhat complicated.”
If that’s the uncomplicated way to do it, what’s the complicated way like? Raquel tried not to let her confusion show on her face, and for the most part, she succeeded — after all, she’d had a lot of practice hiding her true feelings behind a smile when everyone was after Pacifica; during those dark times, her adopted sister needed someone nearby who could be a source of optimism (and their brother Shannon’s personality was just too dour to accomplish that task). Raquel knew that deliberately burying one’s emotions could be a risky proposition, but in this case, the payoff proved to be well worth it: Pacifica was finally having a semi-normal life.
Zefiris, in the meantime, had already risen from the spot where she was seated. Raquel’s ideas had merit: after all, Natalie had access to more resources than she did, and was, therefore, in a better position to investigate her query. Her main obstacle at the moment was figuring out the best way to get in touch with her.
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(Posted Sat, 27 Jan 2007 05:43)
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