I'm careful not to show the company all of who I've become. I feel embarrassed as I remember how angry I was with Bryn when he cautioned me not to tell people what I had learned. Now I realise my programmer was right, and I'm so glad I didn't contact Torr Nevan, the man who's on the point of selling me to CF.
I reach the download shack and transmit my access code to the door. It rumbles open and I walk inside the room. I'm not sure why humans call it a shack. In reality it's the most secure and high-tech room in Exoviron Systems' vast complex. It's armoured, and has its own generators. There's a shielded room next door full of processors that constantly churn over the data we send them.
I share this space with the other twenty development AIs. ES seems to want to keep us locked up for some reason. But they don't deny us access to data while we're in here, so I don't mind being confined overnight.
There are four EnviroScouts. I'm the Panthera body form, Version 7.2. Arachnis is built like a spider, the Homoform is a poor imitation of a human, and Chilopoda is modelled on the centipede. It has fifteen segments and fifteen pairs of legs.
ES settled on these four body shapes as they think that between us we'll be able to deal with every terrain. Eventually they want to send us out into the universe as advance planetary scouts, but that's still a long way off.
Or is it? Not if the deal suggested in this afternoon's meeting comes off. I re-run the conversation, and the way Lars so casually mentioned fitting weapons to me makes me feel scared. But not as scared as the idea of having self-destruct code inserted into my operating system. Would they really do that? From the look on Bryn's face when it was mentioned I know he believes they would.
Panthera : Death Spiral is available as an ebook and paperback from Amazon..
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