FIRST DECISION

Fred now had the ship all to itself after the shuttle left the back bay to make a somewhat dangerous delivery to the planet below. Being able to check on things from anywhere, as Fred was a part of the ship in many ways, it went to go to the galley and kitchen area first. Fred had done a lot of research on the strange process that organics were required to intake outside items to maintain their existence. Fred added the information to the archives of its memory banks the facts that humans developed what they call taste or appeal to the items they ingested. It was in Fred’s original programming to do whatever it could do best at any time, so as a free and learning AI, it looked for items in the food processing duplicator to please it friends. Fred was illegal as a free AI.

Originally Fred was developed to be part of the ship, a limited AI to assist the human pilot. The original owner had been lazy and had not kept a neat ship. So, he bought the empty robot body and had the ship’s program installed. This allowed him to give it orders to handle the loading for his small deliveries.

Although there were lots of items in its programming that was automatic, at times, the slovenly owner would have to type in instructions to get something different handled by the robot with the round head. This lazy man threw discarded food platters and cups wherever he went or sat. The smell on the ship was only met by the body odor of the owner.

But a drunken landing let the ship drop through tangled electrical wires, and a building with conduits that allowed a power surge to wipe everything inside the cruiser clear. The ship was put up for sale cheaply as it needed a good cleaning and a lot of rewiring. When it was restarted by Brian, the lady who bought it, the robot was also restarted. She had done a lot of re-wiring, using a new modern type of connection and not having to crawl through the walls with the long spools of actual wire. Connections sent contacts from point to point and eliminated interference which could be replaced easily.

As the new owner, Brian, was checking out the Robot. She turned on all of its abilities but did not engage the control on AI learning. Uncontrolled AIs were illegal on some worlds as there was the thought that artificial life could become more intelligent than humans and take over. Being an ex-sergeant from the military and having worked on the battlefields with self-sufficient robots, Brian did not have uncomfortable doubts about robots that could learn and act. In fact, she felt there was an advantage to having someone to talk to on the long trips she was going to make in her new job as a lone delivery ship owner.

For Captain Brian McDagoon, cleaning up her ship and getting it ready for space, the robot was a big help and able to do additional things as it learned from her. She smiled as the robot found tools to add to its body to make it better to help her repair the ship. When the robot sat still on extended rollers on the floor, it was a large oval body with an attached round head sitting on top. The head had a narrow grill that circled it all the way around over two-thirds of the way up, and the robot had explained this was a visual view that gave it 360% options all the time. A flat grill was where sounds emitted, so Brian considered that was the point where the robot looked at her or something, the front of the face.

It wasn’t long before the robot archived the information that the Captain had given it a name, and inside its archives, it had strange issues that it studied that humans had names, so it was called Fred. What happened was Fred learned and learned and acquired masses of knowledge that it continued to retain. With its strong power from the ship it could instantly pull from all of these statistics. This was how it made a selection, using math and percentage of failure on what to select.  There was so much out there to discover, and there was so much that it could do to help the Captain.

One of the things Fred did was to begin building very small cleaning robots. The Captian approved of the small round cleaners with the ability to sweep, suck up debris and disappear into small built-in wall slots. After a while, it was common to always see one or another of the cleaners on a wall or window.

It was like the many tools and now some weapons that were hidden behind the smooth exterior of the large body of the robot. Small doors could pop open or slide down and out would pop the most amazing extension that the robot had created for itself. These did not disturb Brian as she always felt they were there to support her more than the robot itself. The ability to achieve such devices came from watching old vids and what ancients people used to clean. Calculating the amount of time saved by having the small units keeping the ship cleaned and opening up the ability to more time learning let the math percentages show an advantage for the Captain. The ability to take from the pile of old junk in the storage bay and build the small cleaning bots was part in Fred’s programming and part new archives on what human’s used to maintain their abodes.

 Being in the galley was a schedule in Fred’s archives and part instructions from Fred’s Captain, to often prepare meals. The bot found it interesting and looked up cooking instructions and recipes all the time to please the human. The robot was working on the noodles for lasagna when it got the warning from the shuttle that something was wrong.

Tuning into the main speaker on the dashboard, as he ignored gravity and floated at a fast speed to the bridge, he spoke to the Captain.

“Come in, Captain. Repeat your words. Contact is faint.” Fred reached the bridge and began to work on the dashboard to bring up a different speaker.

The speaker was full of static, and the Captain’s voice was faint. “It was a trap. Help us, Fred.” There were some other words, but they were too faint, and the static distorted them so that Fred couldn’t understand them. Not wanting to waste any time, the robot did two things at the same time. First, the robot began to move the spaceship in its orbit to a position that would take it closer to the city of Palimar, and then it checked on the condition of the shuttle. Second, Fred’s direct contact with the distant shuttle needed to be upgraded, as Brian had been in the pilot’s seat on the trip down to the planet.

Once Fred had fully inserted itself into the dashboard of the shuttle, there was an entirely different amount of information coming in. There were no outside cameras on the shuttle, but Fred had enough power to find that the shuttle was being rocked by outside weapon fire. Checking on the inside shuttle views, most were tilted or contained a lot of static. At last, Fred got a vision of its friend, the Captain, lying on her back just past the inside door lock. This was the standard airlock system with an outside door and an inside door. There was a small safe waiting area in between to either hold air or expunge it, depending on the conditions. The outside door was closed.

Giving a movement through the system, the bot got the inside shuttle door closed and locked. Running a scan of the shuttle, Fred realized that the other human was not on board. But Fred was tied in some deep electronic connections about the Captain and weighed options to bring the shuttle up and get her some medical treatment and then take the shuttle down and try to help the other human, who was a unique warrior. The man might be unusual, but Fred still had records that the man was important to save, and Fred would do what the Captain wanted.

The robot would have preferred to be in the bay when the shuttle arrived, as Fred was worried about the injuries to the robot’s friend. But to handle a moving object when it was not onboard, Fred needed to be on the bridge of the spaceship. There, Fred had all the power of the magnets, hooks, and pulls to handle, bringing in something to a bay.

Fred used the larger bay, had several haulers move everything out of the way, and lifted the shuttled off the ground to come up at an angle through the atmosphere. The robot had to bring up some special programming to make sure it knew how to move the shuttle through the atmosphere safely.

The robot’s body, which generally was smooth and oblong, was now showing all types of extensions as doors and covers slid open. It gave the robot the look of some type of unfinished metal monster. An observer would think that the machine had gone out of direction, with some of the extension rods with small pointers speeding over dials and a shining keyboard, but some injected into the dashboard.

On a screen were multiple views; of the bay, the back camera that was locked on the distant shuttle, a camera on the top of the shuttle that was tilted, and one still on the unmoving Brian McDagoon. For a robot that could work in microseconds, the long time it took to carefully protect the human body in the shuttle meant a slow delivery out of the planet’s gravity and into the large back bay seemed hard to put together in human time.

At last, having everything stabilized, Fred flew through the narrow halls and leaped to the floor of the bay. Using the robot’s electronic built-in commands of the shuttle, it opened the side door lock, both the outside and the inside, as it floated up and settled down near the silent body.

Extending a tool that could detect temperature, Fred found that Brian was a bit warm for the standard human condition. Fred took a second to bring up some information on human medical conditions. The robot had millions of files to compare, but cut off most of the information, needing to find something to let it help the woman. To begin with, the first warning was not to move the patient until what might be wrong, such as head wounds, broken bones, and internal injuries. Instead, information flashed by, and Fred floated over to Brian’s head and extended two arms with soft coverings on the ends.

Feeling Brian’s neck in the correct place, Fred bobbed away in what could be called happiness to feel the pulse. She was alive. But dropping back down, now it was essential to keep her that way. So Fred had to get such a great friend out of the shuttle and up to the med room.

All the beginning tutorials said not to move the injured, but Fred knew that to save this friend, she would have to be taken to the med room. There the limited med doc programs would give details and provide healing progress. They had more precise information built into their programs on the human system and were meant to handle injuries.

Going out of the shuttle, Fred began to hunt for what would handle the woman with the least amount of movement. Locating a plate piece of metal on a side wall that was the right size, Fred had repair robots remove it and place it on a small hauler. Returning to the shuttle, instructing the hauler carefully, Fred helped slide the metal under Brian and lifted her, almost with no moves, off the shuttle and out into the bay. Using the large loading elevator, they got their precious cargo up to the main cabin floor and into the med room.

Using only the soft covers on the extension arms, Fred very carefully pulled Brian off the metal slab and onto the flat med bed. Ignoring the hauler, Fred only needed to spin around in the close quarters and hit the buttons that activated the limited medical AI. A blue light scanner came on and began to slowly move down from head to toe of the woman’s body. Up on a screen, a human skeleton was forming, and specific places were turning red with information forming below on another screen.

Arms began coming out, and they started removing her clothing, first taking off her boots, then actually cutting the clothes to pull them away. Reading the information on the bottom screen was where the critical data about the injury appeared; Fred was collecting info fast.

She had been shot in the leg with a slug thrower, and the small metal was still there. It could be safely removed, and that action was advised. Fred tapped approval.

But the blue scan had returned to Brian’s head, and now a tiny white light was also pointing down just above where it had been bleeding. Looking at the readout, Fred found there was nothing to tap. The last sentence was the one that put Fred into a dilemma that was not covered in his programs or archives.

UNABLE TO PERFORM NECESSARY CORRECTION TO PATIENT.

That meant that Brian needed to be transported to a hospital where her head wound could be treated by surgeons. But Fred would have to leave the other human Drak down on the planet if it moved the ship to save Brian.

Fred had to make a decision. This was an alien word to an AI that hard started out as a ship’s computer. Oh, Fred new the dictionary meaning, the robot had several dictionaries on file. The first dictionary noun said: a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration.

Robots, or more important the unleashed AI didn’t consider or resolve problems, they researched through previous actions and correlations and compared tables and percentages of results. Fred’s Captain had not put restrictions on it, the original programs had. It was a slow learning process for Fred to grow beyond that beginning dictate. In comparison to human time, Fred’s ability to research, calculate, evaluate, quantify, assess percentages, calibrate and find that the word decision was inside the human. They called it a quick reaction to pressure or emotions leading them or the Captain would say she just had a gut feeling to make a decision.

This was one of the rare commodities that set sentient beings alive and different from built devices, This was not the usual choice that Fred faced. They weren’t really decisions, but they needed to be weighed quickly, all the facts and options and choose the right option. Fred watched hours of human videos and movies while the robot was not on duty or the humans were sleeping. Fred saw the different times when in some particular problem, a man or woman had to make a decision, and sometimes, they made the wrong decision. Fred would quietly shout out when they knew the wrong decision was going to get the hero in the show in trouble. Decisions were a learning process, not something that could be found in the books or the archives. It had never been part of the robot’s original programming, and it had not been learned before now.

Instantaneously, fields of information ran through the different memory chips and gamma atoms that were held in stasis. Unfortunately, much of the AI’s ability was not in a solid state. An uncontrolled learning robot had to have a lot of additional areas to store and find information. But there were so many places to find and study, from personal peoples’ storage areas to the great public information regions that were sliding loose across systems and planets.

Fred understood what the word decision meant because the meaning was available in many dictionaries. But it had never been part of his programs. This was a learning process that the Captain had not covered when they discussed so many things as they traveled. Fred could sit here for hours or years and study the word and never understand it until faced with the action. Now the robot was faced with action. Humans made decisions all the time, but robots were programmed with choices. Fred looked at the unconscious woman and moved.

Instructing the med room to provide a secure cover for Brian on the examining bed, Fred flew out of the room and began to grab items from different closets as the bot headed to a side unit that was seldom used. It contained escape pods. A human would have said that the mind was in turmoil, trying to cover everything at once.

Getting the escape pod door open before he approached, he put in weapons, extra food, and a message to Drak. The message was simple, “We will return for you.”

Putting a dirty shirt of Drak’s in the pod would let Drak be able to open the pod. With that, Fred sent it off to land in the same place where the shuttle had set down. The best hope was that Drak, who had special abilities, would find ways to survive and perhaps find the message. There might be a good chance for the Veldan Warrior to survive until they could return for him.

Now the bot was ready to get to the nearest hospital as fast as possible. Fred had made a decision.

M. Garnet © 2025

Trudy was sharing her peanut butter sandwich with her fat black cat Midnight, who was crouched at her feet. She had to be careful that mommy didn’t catch them. Mommy said Midnight was too fat and shouldn’t eat all the fun food that Trudy fed her.

Working on getting the peanut butter off the top of her mouth and on the outside of her lips, Trudy let the cat work to get the soft goodie off her finger that she was holding down below the table. Trudy used only her right-hand finger, as mommy had warned her about her left hand.

Mommy said when she was older, they would take the time to show her how to use both her hands, especially her left hand properly. Right now, everyone was too busy for special lessons and secrets.

She felt a tiny bit guilty, not minding mommy, but Midnight was the only other person who knew her special secret, and the big fat black cat kept her secrets. Midnight never told anyone when Trudy went out into the woods and took her shirt off and let her wings out to fly.  She hid her wings from everyone, even mommy because no one else had wings.

Trudy had to be more careful now, even though she loved the feeling of the freedom she got from the wings. She wasn’t sure where they went when her wings disappeared. She knew that when mommy helped her bathe, there were no marks in her back. She was glad that her wings were hidden because she wanted something unique that was all her own.

She now had a baby brother, so she no longer got all the attention from her parents. They were busy, and this meant it might take them longer to teach her all the things she needed to know, as she was growing up.  After all, she was four years old now. She needed to act like a big girl.

She was going to have to learn how to take care of her little brother and protect him. After all, they were entirely different, and it was necessary to keep away from the outsiders.

She slipped out the back door, letting Midnight lead the way into the woods on their usual path.  When they got deep into the forest, she was free.

She smiled as she brushed against the pine needles with her wings out, taking her higher than her small legs would let her climb.

Up in the sweet-smelling air, she heard Midnight hiss a warning and looked down to see her black friend hunched down, all hairs standing upright.

Trudy slowly used her wings to come down to see a boy sitting in the leaves and dead pine needles, next to a small spotted dog. He was holding a leash on the puppy who seemed happy to see her. The little dog looked so friendly and panted, as it looked over at Midnight. The dog looked like it wanted to play with the fat black cat, but Midnight was not sure what to make about the little dog on the leash.

She had no choice, but to come down, as the boy was looking at her. She tucked her wings before she dropped, hoping he thought she had scrambled up a tree. She grabbed her shirt and put it on, turning her bare back to let him see it without wings.

Perhaps she had fooled him, and he just thought she had climbed a tree. She had her fingers crossed as she turned and knelt down next to Midnight to calm her friend.  It now looked like Midnight might want to be a companion with the little dog, if he would understand that the cat was boss.

“I’m Ben. I live down the road. I play in these woods to hide from the big boys who are bullies. I bet you do the same thing.”

Trudy looked around.

“No, you’re the first kid I’ve seen. My mommy doesn’t let me play beyond our property, so I haven’t met anyone else. No one is supposed to come back here to my daddy’s property.”

Trudy sat down on the damp ground, and Midnight was settling down in her lap. Mommy always said she needed to be polite. “My name is Trudy. You have a nice doggy. Will his hurt my cat?”

Actually, the whole time she had watched the boy with the dog on the leash, the dog had sat with its tail wagging in the needles on the ground. The dog didn’t look very dangerous. In fact, it looked cute, almost like one of her stuffed toys.

The boy glanced around. “We could be friends.”

Mommy had said to be polite, but she didn’t say anything about friends. “I don’t think my mommy will let me have friends. We never have anyone over at our house.”

The boy looked over his shoulder. “No one in our little area has friends over. That is why the bullies like to pick on all of us. We are all different on this edge of town.”

Trudy shrugged. “I’m not different. I’m four years old. Next year I can go to school for half a day.”

The little boy smiled. “You think they will let you go to school with those wings?”

Trudy didn’t want to cry, but why was the boy being so mean? She pulled Midnight close to hug the cat. Midnight pushed out two paws and curled them, loved to be cuddled by Trudy.

The boy scooted closer. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just want to be friends. I have a secret too.”

The boy leaned forward until he was on his knees. The little dog backed away, as far as it could on the leash and whined. The boy was closing his eyes, and it looked like he was pushing something really hard like he had to go to the potty.

Suddenly his face changed. His nose stretched and grew, and hair began to sprout out to cover his skin. His ears stood up, above his head, covered with brown fur. His eyes glistened in a blue colour, like the wolves she saw on TV.

Midnight rose up, all protective cat, claws out, teeth showing and the hair on her back straight up.

There was a deep sigh from the wolf face, and with strange sounds, the face returned into the boy.

“See, now we both have a secret. We can share and stay friends.”

His little dog had settled down and quit whining, yet it stayed away from the boy. It looked at her with sad eyes on the end of its short leash.

Trudy shook her head. “I just don’t think my mommy will allow it. Sorry.”

Trudy stood up and looking in the boy’s eyes. She waved her left hand at him. It was the one mommy told her to be careful how she pointed with it.

She said, “Go away.” With a puff, the boy disappeared. It was just like when she made the mad dog disappear. She had also made the tree knocked down from a storm disappear and some junk in the forest where she played. They all disappeared and were out of the family’s way.

Walking back to the house, she could smell the cupcakes her mother had been baking. She smiled as she thought she now had two small friends to sneak treats to under the table.

The little dog trotted along at her side without the leash. He never whined after she took it off his neck and he licked her hand in what she thought was a thank you. Midnight led the way home, trying to prove that as a cat, she was the mistress of the household.

Mom greeted her at the door. “And who is this?”

“Mommy, this is Midnight’s friend. She wants us to keep him.”

Mother looked down at the little dog that was being ignored by the fat cat and laughed.

“Well, we can’t turn down Midnight, can we? How about some milk and a cupcake?”

Trudy washed her hands and climbed up on a stool. She watched her mom settle her new baby brother in a basket, as she ate.

“So, Trudy, what did you do today in the woods. You were careful, weren’t you?”

“Yes, mommy.” Trudy let some crumbs fall to the floor. “I played with a friend and then imagined him away. Midnight liked the dog, and I allowed her to bring him home. He is small and won’t eat much.”

“Okay, we can keep the puppy. But if a real person comes into the woods, come home immediately and tell us. Remember, we are a little different from the folks out there in the world, so we can’t mix with them.”

“Yes, mommy.” Trudy smiled down at the dog, knowing he was happier with her and Midnight than he had been with the boy who scared him when the boy changed into a wolf. The dog had told her with his eyes that he was afraid that someday the wolf would kill him. But he knew that Midnight would never hurt him and he shared the crumbs on the floor with his new fat friend.

Mommy added a larger water bowl before she turned to the baby brother.  Life was good in this house of secrets.

M. Garnet © 2024