>Do you actually have to doom the oculoids? You said you can grow the chemical at your discretion. How much of it do you need?
You feel rather put on the spot and try and sidestep the question, asking if it’s really necessary to take
all of the chemical and leave the oculoids none with which to sustain the planet.
“
Yes, it
is necessary. The chemical growth rate is incredibly slow. The more we have, the faster we can grow it exponentially. I don’t want a new unlimited energy source years from now, I want it
today. Stop changing the subject and choose.” The doctor is getting rather fed up with you.
The oculoid seems to have lost interest in your backpack and is staring at the fading light trails in the air.
Say –snip-
As the last of the globe swirls off into the ship, you try to explain that she is prematurely writing off the oculoids as non-intelligent by way of ignoring their psychology.
She is most certainly angry now. “There’s nothing to study! They respond animalistically to physical stimuli, their screeching sounds don’t have any sort of pattern to them, and touching them just gives off a sort of fear-inducing pheremone, presumably made by some internal gland to scare off predators. There is
nothing to
study.
"I’m getting a bit tired of your stalling, robot. I’ve got somewhere to be that I’ve dearly, dearly missed these last two years.”
You are now in the center of the chamber, as best you can judge. The other spheres have been drawn towards the ship, and are beginning to come loose themselves, all at once. The light waves stream towards the ship from all directions.
Commune with the oculoid and direct it to commune with Feringus.
Getting low on options, you pick up the oculoid. It seems to be enjoying the cold winds and pretty lights flashing by you. You direct it to talk to Feringus and greet her in a friendly manner.
Before you can put it down and let it crawl over to her, she stops you.
“Don’t let go of that thing.”
You feel your arms freeze up, oculoid still well in hand.
“Okay, robot, it was fun pretending you had a choice, but the short of it is that you’re coming back with me whether you like it or not. Now are you going to get over your faulty sympathetic artificially-generated personality issues and get rid of that creature of your own ‘free will,’ or am I going to have to teach you a lesson in obedience and
make you?”
You flinch.
“Do it, robot. Put your hands together and kill it. Crush it! Pop its eye like a grape!
Do it! That’s an
order, robot,
kill the oculoid!”
Author
Topic: [ISG] Adventure Guy! - Epilogue (Read 517541 times)