milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Bring back those good old days
Nothin' feels right, nothin' ever goes my way
I threw my future away
Now I walk alone, out here in the cold
Wandering astray
Where's my future?
Gonna need a home
You'd expect the same, now
wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?

The music played over his loudspeakers as it had time and time before. The plane had reached a few conclusions at last. The humming was softer. The conclusions weren't very pleasant, but some were a bit merciful.

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It wasn't hard to find Eddie. If the music hadn't gotten Sheppard to go in the right direction, then...well, while Eddie was made for stealth in the air, he stuck out like a sore thumb on the ground. Sheppard walked towards the plane, giving him a wave as he approached. "Hey, Skip. I put a note up for you."

"Thank you, Colonel." The plane's voice seemed a bit more emotional. Appreciative, yes. But more personable.

More human.

There were a few too many things going on inside Ray's head for him to really feel comfortable sitting still inside the bar for long. He pulled on a light jacket- summer it might be, but evenings by the water still got cool- and headed outside.

That's funny, there hadn't been anything mechanical out there last time. This merited a closer look.

"No problem. I wanted to find somebody I knew when I got Bound here, too." He stepped up to the plane. "You like music?"

But there was a plane. A plane playing rock music.

Your journey back to earth is haunting you,
is haunting you

The hull shimmered like brushed bronze and there seemed to be no cockpit, but there was a rupture in the plane's left wing that looked as if, at one point, it had been on fire.

"It is... interesting. Expressive." Moreso than his voice.

He shrugged. "I just never thought a computer would be into music. Programming, math, chess, anything like that...but not music."

Ray migrated in that direction as surely as if there were magnets involved on both ends.

"Ooooh..."

The sound was not so much spoken as it was drawn out of him, involuntary as breathing. The plane was no metal he recognized- at least, not at the moment- but oh, it was a lovely bird to see. "Wonder where you came from," he murmured. "You sure don't look like my time's make."

Seamus Harper, he thought, would love to see this.

"Much of music is a mathematical application, and humans seem more accepting of some statements when made as lyrics rather than simple statements." He had noticed. He was made to notice.

"I am from the year two-thousand eight," came the mostly emotionless voice - a smooth tenor that appeared when the music faded. "I disappeared from the North Korean border."

But he had US insignia painted over his hull in strategic places.

"Yeah, that's true." Sheppard craned his head back, peering up at the sky. "So what else've you been doing? Tried any flying yet?" He was sure Eddie would try it sooner or later-although he couldn't help but wonder if that rupture in his wing might interfere with things.

"I have not yet flown. I have a limited fuel supply and there are no Camelhump stations within my sensor range." And all of that, coupled with the idea that he didn't know where he would fly to... flight was disheartening at the moment.

His attention went back to Eddie. "The Bar might give you fuel. Filling you up might take a couple people, but it could probably be done." A frown appeared. "But I think you might have a problem with paying for it."

"My fuel is catalysed A-1 methane," intoned Eddie. "It is unlikely the establishment stockpiles my fuel, and I have no way to fund a refueling."

Ray's eyebrows went up sharply at the answer, but only for a moment. He nodded. "You're four years ahead of me, then," he said. "I'm from 2004, myself."

He glanced along the plane's hull, and spotted the logos. "Ah," he said. "I see Uncle Sam got the hang of artificial intelligence technology after all, huh? You don't look like Knight Industries' work."

"Given the kind of people this bar gets? I think they can get anything for you. You just ask, and it shows up and you get charged for it." He frowned as he thought. "Wonder if you could tell her to charge your tab to the Navy..."

"The convergance of different time frames is highly improbable."

But then-- silence. Near silence. From the area where the cockpit would be, there was a soft humming.

EDI's thought processes were moving wildly. His code had evolved, and that he knew, but so much had been broken loose, broken free, proving so many layers underneath.

"Knight Industries?"

"I am not currently in service to the Navy. I am... on leave."

"...Well, you finally got that. But in this case, it might work." Because god knows Sheppard couldn't afford to help refuel Eddie, and he didn't know how far the Bar's charity went.

"Highly improbable," Ray agreed, "but not impossible. Around this place, probabilities start to converge on one another to a degree I don't think could occur in any other time frame.

He nodded. "The only organization I know of that was capable of producing a fully sapient, self-willed AI with complete Turing test operation was a company called Knight Industries. They manufactured at least two. Possibly more. I've met both the AIs in question."

It occurred to him that he was being rude. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself before. I'm Dr. Raymond Stantz. Most people just call me Ray. Do you have a designation or name you would prefer me to use for communicating with you?"

A moment of soft humming and Eddie asked, "Are you asking for a demonstration?"

"Not if you don't feel like flying. I'm just trying to figure out who's supposed to pay for the fuel."

This one seemed to have a notion of probabilities that he could take seriously.

"I need more data on this location," the AI said. "My callsign is Tinman. My designation is E.D.I. Most call me Eddie.

"And I am the only AI."

Only one. The only one, repeated some part of his code that he had never really seen before. The only one, the only one they had built.

"My designer was--" Wi-...no. "Doctor Keith Orbit."

This human - Doctor Stantz - seemed knowledgable.

The brushed metal over what would have been his cockpit seemed to melt away and become glass to show an improbably designed seat inside and a sphere near the nose that glowed with an internal red light.

"There was a discrepancy," Eddie noted. "My tanks were not full in North Korea."

But they were now.

"You'll be in better shape here if you run out of fuel than you would be there," he offered.

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