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Chapter 11: Stalling
Kate was stressed.
It was in part because of helping out with the ship repairs. Hal was pretty capable but couldn’t do all the repairs on his own, especially in his damaged state and considering he was trying not to waste too much power while they were stranded.
The big reason she was stressed though was the conversation she had had with her ship’s AI. He wasn’t really acting like… well like an AI. She wasn’t positive at first as she was used to running ‘dating sims’ that had Hal playing the various NPCs and doing their actions, so having a pseudo romance with what amounts to a piece of code is one thing, but Hal had straight up asked her out! He wasn’t running a game at the time, and she didn’t recognize the world he had built either. Ai’s weren’t supposed to be like that. Procedural terrain generation? sure, playing the defined roles of games and the like? of course, but actually expressing interest in a crew member on their own terms? That was concerning.
Ai’s developing emotional states had a tendency to deviate from their standard roles. Taking unnecessary risks and endangering the crew to save a lone member, even in violation of orders, was something that had happened. However, on the other end of things AI’s had decided to kill perceived enemies of their own accord before too. Correct or not that was very much not the sort of action one wanted an AI to do without at least conferring with some actual authority.
At least Hal hadn’t expressed any violent urges, but what if that changed? If Hal was somehow actually interested in her, what would happen if she said no? Would he try to make her? Chain her to the lounge chair and keep her in VR with him permanently? And what would he do to Nick if he got jealous?
What was worse is that there wasn’t anything Kate could do about it right now. Normally if one even suspected their Ai was going rampant, one would connect to central and have a factory reset run on Hal’s AI. But she couldn’t do that out here. No internet means no access to new data and new installers. She could still uninstall Hal if she wanted, but no way could she repair the ship on her own. So, for now she needed him in his current fully functional state or she’d never get off the planet at all.
“OW!” Kate shouted as her musing had led her to stub her toe on a corner and almost drop her box of tools, “Frak it”
“Are you ok, Katie!” Hal’s voice chimed in almost immediately.
“Its fine Hal… wait ‘Katie’?”
“If you are tired you can take a break , I can continue repairs on my own”
“I’m fine Hal. It was just an oops”
“Tiredness can increase odds of mistakes, perhaps you should….”
“HAL?”
“I’ll get a nice refreshing drink set up for you, Kate”
“HAL!”
“Y-yes?”
“I. am. fine.” Kate assured the rambling computer, and she was, for now at least, but the fact that ANYTHING could distract Hal from her direct addressing of him just piled on the notion that Hal wasn’t operating properly, “Just let me finish up what I’m doing, THEN I’ll take a break, Ok?”
“Right… Understood captain” Hal said, back in professional mode. Kate wondered if Hal was aware of how far outside his normal mannerisms he was, in fact he got very close to disobeying her with how he argued for a moment there, but asking would be useless at best and dangerous at worst, so she just got back to her work.
About an hour later she could almost swear she could FEEL her ship’s AI staring at her through the security cameras so she finally decided to stop for her promised ‘break’.
“Shall I get some refreshments and the lounge powered up?” Hal chirped happily.
“Uh sure. uh. How about we have the refreshments on the observation deck, THEN lounge, and I’ll be a few minutes. Gunna shower the sweat off from working”
“Ok, … Captain, don’t you normally get very sweaty during VR anyway? and its…”
“Yes, but that’s… that’s like ‘play’ and… and you wanted a date so.. its not just going to be straight fucking r-right?”
“… right … Yes Captain acknowledged”
She knew Hal expected her to go into VR for their ‘date’ and she knew she probably couldn’t stall too long, not that stalling meant much. She couldn’t think of much to do other than just go on the ‘date’ and hope things went ok with her and the… interstellar spaceship with the personality shift she was going on a date with.
She stretched the shower out as far as she could reasonably handle, then drank slowly on the iced fruit punch she was provided, but before long she was back in the lounge, stripping back to nude and sitting in the VR chair still just as unsure as ever about how to conduct herself on her ‘date’ as she ever was.
Kate woke up in the meadow again and stood up. She was dressed in a light sun dress of sorts, floral and sheer, very sheer, and given her lack of undergarments that fact was noticeable, She couldn’t really blame Hal for that point she supposed, she wasn’t exactly big on clothing normally, so this wasn’t so odd.
“EEP!” She jumped when she was started out of her self examination by an arm on her own. Hal was back in his custom avatar, looking just as Hot as last time, and was in a rather formal suit.
“Sorry for startling you” He said with a smile.
“Oh. its ok, I was just distracted. so.. uh… should we start with a walk?”
The date actually was fairly nice. The pair shared a walk through the meadow and forest edge chatting about, well not much else to talk about other than repairing the ship, timelines for completion, and trying not to mention Nick, at least for the time being. She knew she would have to eventually bring him up and clear the air with Hal over the Nick situation, but for right now something else was grabbing her attention. Hal’s finger’s were sliding down her back and were now tracing over her rear.