Paradise (Expeditionary Force, #3)

by Craig Alanson

expected that any psychologist would have told UNEF that they had no way to usefully examine the psyche of an alien artificial intelligence. I underestimated the arrogance of psychologists. Despite having exactly zero frame of reference for what constituted ‘normal’ behavior for an Elder AI, the psychologists plowed ignorantly ahead. “It went better for me than for them,” Skippy chuckled. “You know what, the experience was actually mildly entertaining for a while, until I got bored with it. One of them had a nervous breakdown. Another one started crying and ended the conversation, he’s in therapy now.”

Skippy sighed. Or imitated a sigh, it was convincing. "Joe, I have studied all the literature about human female psychology, read all the books written by and for women, downloaded every blog, every Instagram or Pinterest post, watched every program on the Lifetime channel, listened in on conversations between women, and have chatted online with billions of your females. With all of my processing power, over the equivalent of millions of years of analysis, I have come to one simple conclusion about human females." "And what's that?" I asked eagerly. "Bitches be crazy."

Joe, Joe, Joe,” he lamented. “Do you do this sort of thing just to humiliate me?” “No, Skippy,” I assured him, “of course not. Humiliating you is a bonus.

Every day is a Good Day to Die in Battle lived up to her name by dying in battle that day.

“I’m mortal,” I reminded our friendly alien AI. “I can leave my helmet off, force the airlock doors open, and embrace the sweet, sweet release of death. You, on the other hand, would be stuck right here in interstellar space until the end of time.”

“Exactly.” Me, in a dropship, with only two companions. Skippy, and a tactical nuclear warhead. Between the two, I was beginning to prefer the company of Nukey, as I called it. According to the United States Air Force, Nukey had a variable yield of between 3 and 20 kilotons. Figuring that if I was going to nuke something I might as well go big, I had cranked up the dial to ‘20’. Nukey didn’t say much, it just sat there strapped in behind the copilot seat, emitting neutrons every once in a while. Nukey was the strong, silent type.

“All I said was that I hoped the last ship was the right one,” I protested. “Yes, and the universe heard you, and because the universe hates you, it was the wrong ship.

“Skippy,” I said slowly, and almost never finished the thought. “Oh no.” He groaned. “Oh I hate my life. The universe hates me. This is so unfair.” “What?” He had me alarmed. “You’re going to tell me one of your brilliant freakin’ ideas that I should have thought of with my ginormous brain power. And I am going to sink ever lower and lower into ultimate despair until I long for the gentle embrace of death,” his voice trailed off.

“Joe? You do realize that I control things like our reactors, missile warheads, and the pile of nukes we have in a cargo bay? Such a nice ship you have here. It would be a shame if I lost the will to live and my concentration slipped, if you know what I mean.”

“Huh? Wow. This is truly a breakthrough. Joe, that may be the dumbest thing you ever said. We should have a cake to celebrate the occasion. A banana cake.

“Hey,” Jesse offered a fist bump and Ski accepted. “Brother,” Jesse said with a wry smile, “first hobos on an alien planet. That’s got to count for something.”

I had to laugh. “You are such an asshole sometimes. But I love you anyway.” “And I find you mostly almost tolerable, Joe.”

I think my favorite thing about these books is Joe and Skippy's cute friendship

“Wait! Joe, I said that I can’t do anything obvious. I didn’t say that I couldn’t do anything at all. Come on, Joe, it’s Skippy the Magnificent you’re talking to here. Trust the awesomeness.” “Trust the awesomeness? Will that be your new slogan?”

“I saw that!” Skippy laughed. “Dr. Friedlander, just think of how proud you will be of your accomplishments, when you figure out how something works on your own. And, hey, you almost are able to understand how Thuranin doorknobs work.” “Skippy,” I retorted, “that wasn’t funny. These people-” “He wasn’t joking,” Friedlander said as he shook his head sadly.

“Your species is maddeningly clever, especially you, Joe. I speculate that when you don’t have big teeth or claws and can’t fly, the only way your species avoided being eaten by leopards is by becoming clever. Anyway,” he sighed again, “go ahead. Tell me your brilliant, clever, innovative monkey-brained idea and let’s get my humiliation over with, shall we?”

“That is not entirely my fault, Joe. In my matrix is a processor that keeps track of time and events; as you may have noticed my occasional absent-mindedness-” “Ocassional? Occasional?” He ignored me. “-this processor is perhaps not functioning optimally. The truth is, this processor simply cannot believe any of you lesser beings could be smarter than me about anything. It can’t happen, therefore my processor assumes that the data input is garbled, or that I am hallucinating. In order to acknowledge you having any kind of a good idea, I have to manually override this processor. So, emotionally, it is new to me each time.” “Wow. I’m sorry that-” “Also, on my time scale, so much time passes between you having a good idea that it is an exceedingly rare occurrence. Like, every couple hundred million years, an asteroid crashes into Earth. But that kind of thing is not in a typical five day forecast, you know?” “The one constant is that you are an asshole.” “Yes! See, Joe,” he said happily, “there is order in the universe. So, getting back to the subject, what moronic ideas do you wish to waste my time with?”

“My purpose is not merely to understand what happened on Newark. My purpose, I have realized recently, is to punish. My purpose is plain and simple revenge, Joe.” Now he was glowing a bright angry red. “Revenge on behalf of a species who have no one to speak for them. I am pissed, Joe. Someone out there in the universe destroyed an innocent, backward species that was not capable of harming anyone. I am going to find the motherfuckers who did that, and I am going to hurt them,” he said as his surface glowed a red so dark it was almost black. “You have never seen me angry before. I have never seen myself angry before, in my memory. It is odd, and frightening to me, to learn that I am capable of such depth of feeling. Such dark feelings. You know how I have come to question who I really am?”

“Yes, it is like that, Joe, but more. What I am experiencing is more than simply a faulty memory recall function. I can only feel around the edges, but there is something inside me that is actively blocking my access to memories. And blocking access to my full abilities. It is maddening, Joe. Something, someone, did this to me. I don’t know who, I don’t know when, I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. What I do know is that when I learned the truth about Newark, whatever is blocking me got knocked back a bit, and it hasn’t fully recovered. Listen, I said that I don’t want you to be scared of me. Maybe you should. You might be, if you knew what I know.”

“Wrath of God type violence?” “Worse, Joe. Wrath of Skippy. God has mercy. I suspect that I do not.”

“Oh, crap,” Skippy grumbled. “Get ready, Chocula, this is where the magic happens. I use the term ‘magic’ because there is no logical reason for why Joe’s brain has ever come up with even one good idea.”

“Damn it! See, this is what drives me absolutely crazy!” Skippy fairly shouted in frustration, and the sides of Chotek’s mouth curled up in a brief smile. “I have all the information that you have, I have way more information that you have. In terms of brain power, my brain is a supergiant star, and yours is a raisin. A small, dried-up moldy old raisin. I should be able to figure out what you are going to suggest, but I can’t! I just can’t! Aaargh! I hate my life. This is so unfair.” He broke down into gentle, defeated sobbing.

“See, Chocula?” Skippy said. “I’ve said before that Joe is an evil genius, and I meant it. Joe, that is a brilliant idea. Damn it! I still have no idea how you dream up stuff that I should have thought of. Maybe my deviousness subroutine is offline.