Technical Difficulties by Kinto Mythostian The original designers of Vertigo Station had some truly grand plans for their revolutionary new spaceborne passenger interchange. They boldly envisioned wide, gleaming corridors that would facilitate efficient movement; gourmet eateries that would cater to every taste with quick, friendly service; and a fully automated maintenance team that would consist of the most advanced robots that money could buy. The designers hoped to eventually construct an entire chain of similar stations across the galaxy that would relieve congestion at planetside spaceports and simultaneously make them all wealthy and famous. That was the plan, anyway. Almost from the start, the project was hindered by reluctant investors, fraught by internal divisions, burdened by pervasive corruption, and crippled by rampant embezzlement. The bean counters figuratively cut corners wherever possible, while the contractors literally cut corners whenever they could get away with it. The entire station and everything in it ended up being built by the lowest bidders out of the cheapest materials. Within weeks of Vertigo's opening, the company that the designers had formed was promptly mismanaged into bankruptcy, and they all ended up broke and infamous. -- Over the years since then, there have been multiple efforts to shut down Vertigo Station. However, to the bafflement of all, Vertigo not only remains in operation, it thrives. Located at a Lagrangian point of the Borasisi System at the nexus of several hyperspace arcs, Vertigo is one of the most popular passenger interchanges in the southern end of Civilized Space. Thousands of people pass through its airlocks in any given standard day, and some of them actually manage to keep their sanity intact. Upon arriving at Vertigo Station for the first time, the first thing a traveler usually notices is its massive size. The second thing they usually notice is Vertigo's unconventional and aggravatingly inefficient deckplan. If they're lucky, they won't be held over long enough to notice the food court, where poor service is a guarantee and food poisoning is a near certainty. What travelers almost never notice, however, is the maintenance staff. The flesh-and-blood employees of Vertigo are content to stay out of sight, even though their tireless efforts are the only thing keeping the place from falling apart at the seams. As far as the average passenger visiting Vertigo knows, all maintenance is performed by robots as per the original plans. Vertigo Station's robotic maintenance team was built by ParroTech Industries, a small robotics company that was desperate for business and eager to have any contract they could get. The distinguishing feature of ParroTech devices had always been their trademark mood indicators. ParroTech's advertising materials proudly proclaimed that none of their robots were mindless automatons, but instead were actually capable of taking pleasure in a job well done thanks to their advanced AI. When a ParroTech robot was satisfied, its mood indicator would glow a happy green; when it was dissatisfied, an angry red. Unfortunately for ParroTech, it appeared that most customers actually preferred mindless automatons, and the company was perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. The infectiously optimistic designers of Vertigo convinced the executives at ParroTech to invest heavily in their enterprise, and in exchange promised them an exclusive contract for all their planned future stations. ParroTech put all of their available funds into developing an entire series of brand-new, state-of-the-art robots designed specifically for Vertigo Station. For the Vertigo Station job, ParroTech's engineers and programmers set out to create a unique robot network, where every robot in the station would work together as a single entity to provide the best service possible. All the robots would have individual processors, independent of any central control, but they would also all be linked to one another wirelessly. Every robot, from the lowliest janitorial drone to the most powerful refueler, would know the location and mood of every other robot in the station at any given time. The idea was to promote efficiency by ensuring that no robots performed superfluous tasks, since they would all know precisely what had already been done. Furthermore, if a robot were to encounter a problem that was beyond its abilities to handle, it could easily call for another robot that was properly equipped for the task. The finished robots proved to be efficient and unobtrusive, and they worked flawlessly and reliably for about three standard months. Then they began to break down in large numbers, usually unexpectedly, often complicatedly, and sometimes explosively. By that time, ParroTech Industries had gone out of business along with their best (and only) customer. Within a few standard months of ParroTech's closure, the technicians charged with keeping the unreliable robots operating began to notice some odd side effects of the network system. The robots were meant to be independent of outside influence, but such was not always the case. Because every robot knew the mood of every other robot, such knowledge could have detrimental effects on their performance. If a majority of the floor-buffers were dissatisfied, for example, it could affect the performance of the refueler robots - knowing that many other robots were dissatisfied somehow made them dissatisfied as well. The robots were able to learn from each other, too. Their collective experiences and shared data formed a kind of hive mind that on some occasions allowed robots to perform tasks they would otherwise be beyond their programming. In one extraordinary instance, a janitorial drone performed an emergency tracheotomy on a passenger who had collapsed in a restroom before a medical response droid could arrive. It was later determined that the passenger had only had food poisoning and the tracheotomy was unnecessary, but that didn't make the janitorial drone's actions any less amazing. However, because the ParroTech network system was designed to work only with ParroTech robots, new robots from other manufacturers could not be easily introduced into the station. The administrators of Vertigo learned this the hard way when ACHI trash collector automatons were purchased and put into operation. The ParroTech devices interpreted the incursion as a threat to the station and the expensive, high-quality automatons were swiftly destroyed by ParroTech security drones. The station could not afford to replace all the ParroTech robots in one go, and the existing robots would not permit a piecemeal replacement scheme. The station was firmly under ParroTech control, and Vertigo Station's overworked team of technicians was forced to make do with what they had. They rapidly used up their entire supply of OEM replacement parts, and with no more forthcoming from ParroTech, they were forced to improvise. Over the years, every one of Vertigo's aging robots became a unique mishmash of disparate parts, jury-rigged repairs, and creative fixes held together by spot welds, silver adhesive strips, and sheer force of will. If anyone was to critically examine Vertigo's expenses, they would realize that it cost more to keep the robots running than it would cost to replace them all with organic beings. -- Hanu Elutri had critically examined Vertigo's expenses, but she kept her mouth shut. The caprine was second-in-command on the station's staff of maintenance technicians, and she much preferred a job fixing floor-buffing robots to a job physically buffing floors. With a final dab of solder, Hanu finished bodging together a new servo on unit FB-44 and closed the 'bot's access panel. She watched it scuttle away across the floor, drifting gradually to the right until it bumped into the wall and gently bounced off it. FB-44's mood indicator briefly flashed red before continuing on its way. Hanu shrugged; the work order had called for a new servo, and she'd put in a new servo - if they'd wanted her to fix the alignment issue, they should have said something. Besides, Hanu had long ago figured out that her job performance was officially judged by how many work orders she completed, not by how complete the work was. If FB-44 had to come back later, it would mean another work order for her to complete, and an increase in her job rating. Grinning at her own cunning, Hanu sat back and pulled off her protective goggles, deftly avoiding getting them tangled in her floppy, fleshy ears and stubby curved horns. She took off her work gloves and wiped the sweat from her forehead with her forearm. It was always hot in the maintenance area, located almost at the very bottom of the station and adjacent to the primary generator. Vertigo's original designers hadn't wanted to let the generator's waste heat go to, well, waste, so they had drafted an ingenious setup that would use it to heat the station. Cost cutting and shoddy work by the contractors meant that in reality what the generator mostly heated was the maintenance area. When the station first opened for business, passengers frequently complained that the waiting lounges were cold, so space heaters were installed. The space heaters increased the strain on the generator, which meant the generator produced more heat. The irony made Hanu sick when she thought about it too much. Officially, station regulations required the maintenance staff to wear uniforms, but most of them never bothered anymore. The public never saw them and the station administration wasn't about to fire any of them - the administrators knew the maintenance staff kept the station running (mostly) and in one piece (mostly), but none of them had any clue as to how anything in Vertigo actually worked. As far as Hanu could tell, most of them were just here to skim money off the top and then flee the star system before they could be caught. Instead of a uniform, Hanu would prefer to wear nothing but her bare white fur in the oppressive heat, but for the sake of perceived decency the caprine wore an unadorned black sports bra and a pair of loose-fitting dark blue billy's boxers. In a nod to the regulations, she wore her official staff identification on a plain leather collar around her neck. Hanu was about to check which work order was next on her to-do list when her communicator buzzed in its holder on her toolbox. The caller ID indicated that it was Shaw Floors, the head of the maintenance staff and Hanu's direct superior. Hanu activated the communicator and Shaw's bright green face filled the tiny screen. "'Sup, Shaw?" Hanu asked. "Drop what you're doing, Elutri. One of the Life Savers is down, Unit 12. I want you to fix him," she said, replying in her typically brusque manner. "Down. Down how?" Shaw gave an aggravated sigh, as though it should be obvious. "Ambulatory armatures are unresponsive." "I'm on it," Hanu replied, but Shaw had already terminated the call. Hanu was second-in-command, but not by choice. It had taken her a lot of completed work orders to get where she was today, but no amount of work could get her any further. Hanu knew she was more capable, more mechanically inclined, and more intelligent than Shaw. In Hanu's opinion, Shaw should have been fired long ago, but none of the administrators stuck around long enough to get to know the maintenance staff, let alone make any major personnel decisions. Shaw essentially had a job for life and she knew it. Hanu badly wanted to have Shaw's job. During her examination of Vertigo's expenses, she'd discovered just how much the position actually paid, including the convenient clerical errors that listed two more salaried technicians than the maintenance staff actually had. Since Shaw was in charge of distributing her staff's paychecks, Hanu had a pretty good idea who got the extra pay. It wasn't just the money, though - having Shaw's job would mean that she wouldn't have to work for Shaw. It often seemed to Hanu that Shaw went out of her way to make the caprine's life miserable. Since Shaw wasn't about to be fired, Hanu had lately taken a more proactive approach to obtaining the promotion she yearned for. So far she hadn't been successful, but by her reckoning Shaw's luck couldn't last forever. Ruminating on how best to carry out her next attempt at removing Shaw, Hanu made her way through the labyrinthine corridors of the maintenance area to the bay where the Life Savers, also known as the HIMLS units, were kept. The HIMLS units were some of the few 'bots on the station that actually did a job that Hanu considered to be best left to a machine. They patrolled the outside of the station looking for and repairing damage to the external hull caused by space debris or other hazards, and were some of the most important robots on the station. The Life Savers were big, with sturdy cylindrical bodies more than six meters long and a "head" mounted at one end on a long, flexible neck. The head contained their primary instruments, which were sensitive enough to spot a crack thinner than a hair or a chip smaller than a grain of sand on the station's hull. A dozen long, sturdy arms with hooked ends were attached to the sides of the body; HIMLS units maneuvered in the vacuum by hooking onto loops that studded the station's exterior and crawling across the surface. The hooks could close and tighten to hold the HIMLS unit in place while repairs were being performed. Another dozen slimmer, more delicate armatures were equipped with fine manipulators and additional sensors, and were tucked away inside the body when not in use. The HIMLS units were endowed with above average artificial intelligence that allowed them to assess threats critically and to make repairs with far more precision than any organic being could ever accomplish. Officially, the LS part of the name stood for Leak Suppressor, but the poor quality and fragility of Vertigo's construction had lead the maintenance staff to label these vital machines Life Savers. The staff had even given the Life Savers individual names, in recognition of their importance and their enhanced cognitive power. HIMLS Unit 12, for example, was named Laszlo. All of them had male names, and were always referred to with masculine pronouns. When Hanu had first joined the maintenance staff at Vertigo, she had assumed that was in reference to the HIM in the model designation, but that assumption only lasted until the first time she saw them in action. Located at the opposite end of the body from the robot's head was the HIMLS unit's main liquid sealant dispenser, a long metal tube with a tapered end that retracted into the body when not in use. When deployed, it looked for all the world like a gigantic metal penis. Hanu was sure the jokers at ParroTech must have thought it hilarious when they designed it that way. Hanu didn't usually work on the HIMLS units; for one thing, they were more reliable than most ParroTech products, and for another thing Shaw usually preferred to work on them herself. Laszlo in particular had a very clean maintenance log, but not today. He was sitting upright in his recharging bay, his long arms hunched awkwardly close to his body; Hanu thought he looked disturbingly reminiscent of a dead, dried-up spider. "Alright, Laszlo, what seems to be the problem?" ERROR the towering robot spoke, his mood indicator glowing bright red. "Could you be more specific?" ERROR Hanu sighed. It looked and sounded like thermostat failure. There was an intense temperature difference between the inside and outside of the station, and if the 'bot's own internal temperature wasn't regulated properly during transition from one environment to the other it could cause havoc with their systems. Since Laszlo wasn't cooperating, it looked to Hanu like she would have to do this the hard way. ERROR "I know. I heard you the first two times, Laszlo. I'm going to activate your manual override, okay?" Laszlo made a whirring noise and spoke, ERROR. The access panel was located on the main body with one of Laszlo's unresponsive arms stuck right in front of it. Hanu was just able to wriggle herself into position, wedged against Laszlo's body with the frozen arm pressing against her back. She keyed open the panel and was about to plug in her handheld diagnostic computer. Then, everything went wrong. Laszlo's arm suddenly jerked upwards, the hooked end catching Hanu's leather collar. Hanu was forcefully dragged backwards across the floor as the arm yanked her away from the body. Hanu let out a brief bleat of surprise as her collar closed around her throat and shouted, "Ow! Laszlo, stop! What are you doing you stupid machine?!" The arm stopped and Hanu reached around the back of her neck, hoping to unhook herself or undo her collar's buckle, but the hook had closed into a loop and drawn tight right around the buckle. "Laszlo, you're choking me! Let me go!" ERROR As Hanu was struggling to free herself, she glimpsed green out of the corner of her eye and saw Shaw enter the room. "Shaw, thank god you're here. I need you to shut down Laszlo." "I'm afraid I can't do that, Elutri," Shaw said calmly, seemingly oblivious to Hanu's perilous predicament. "According to the station logs, I'm in my office right now. If I entered my code to shut down Laszlo, it'd prove I was lying, and I can't afford to have anyone think I was present when you died in a tragic accident." Hanu gaped. "What?" "You're fired, Elutri. Go ahead, Laszlo." AFFIRMATIVE "Shaw, wh-URRK!" Laszlo's arm jerked upwards, lifting Hanu off the ground so that her entire weight was now supported by the collar pulled uncomfortably tight around her neck. Shaw casually strolled closer to the dangling, struggling caprine, "You see, Elutri, I'm not as dumb as you obviously think I am. I know you've been trying to kill me. I was suspicious of you right from the start, when that airlock started to depressurize with me inside. It's a good thing I memorized the emergency override codes long ago. I checked the logs, and sure enough, the airlock controls had been accessed from your terminal." Hanu mentally kicked herself as she strove to extricate herself from Laszlo's mechanical grip; she had been rather careless the first time she tried to earn a promotion. "But you might not have known I was in there. After all, accidents do happen all the time, so I let it slide. Two times, though, was an odd coincidence. I know you know what I'm talking about." Hanu did know, and she could hardly say anything to deny it from her present position. The collar around her throat was rapidly becoming painfully tight, making it almost impossible to breathe. "Somebody gave that Stoyanovich liner clearance to take off last month, even though I was servicing Unit 3 on the exterior hull, right in the path of the ion stream. Lucius sacrificed himself to save me, you know. That kind of devotion is hard to find in a robot." Hanu clawed at her neck, her legs pedaling uselessly at the air. She could barely hear Shaw over her the rapid pounding of her own heart, and she didn't like what she was hearing. It was true, yes, but Shaw had never been supposed to find out. "You covered your tracks a bit better that time, I'll grant. But after the proper application of, ahem, motivation," her species didn't have breasts to speak of, but Shaw paused to rub her chest for effect nevertheless, "the boys in the control room told me who had really given them the all clear." Hanu was desperately trying to wedge her fingers between the collar and her throat, looking for a little bit more room to breathe. The choking pressure around her neck was agonizing. "So if one was an accident, and two was a coincidence, then three was definitely a pattern. After that near miss in the maintenance shaft last week, I knew that it was going to have to be either you or me. As an attempted murderer yourself, I'm sure you understand why I chose me." Shaw smiled sickeningly. "And that brings me to the present." Shaw stepped forward and teasingly tickled one of Hanu's struggling hooftoes. Hanu lashed out with a powerful kick, narrowly missing Shaw's gloating face. "Yes, that's it. Fight it all you want, but you'll only make it worse," Shaw sneered. "By now I'm sure you've figured out that Laszlo never had an error. Deception is a new concept to him, but I think he did a rather good job. Good enough to fool you, anyway. And he had some motivation. You see, he rather liked Lucius. All the robots did. Did you know that the moment he died, every robot on the station stopped working for zero-point-four seconds?" Through the fog of pain, Hanu realized now that Shaw wasn't just a thief and bona fide jerk; she was certifiably crazy. The Life Savers were machines; all that ParroTech jargon about the mood indicators was just marketing drivel. The 'bots didn't really have feelings ...did they? "So trying to kill me wasn't even your biggest mistake. No, you were doomed as soon as you murdered Lucius. As soon as you did that, you became a... what was it you called her, Laszlo?" TECHNICIAN ELUTRI IS A THREAT TO THE STATION Hanu was barely paying attention as the hateful mechanical invective echoed in her ears. Her lungs were burning, screaming for oxygen, and she was beginning to feel lightheaded. Finally, she succeeded in getting a good enough grip on her collar to pull herself up slightly, allowing her to gulp down a meager lungful of air. It felt like the most wonderful breath she'd ever taken. "So they probably would have killed you anyway, but now they're doing it with my assistance," Shaw continued smugly. "Don't feel too bad, though. You never would have been head of the maintenance staff, Elutri. Not without the robots on your side. They like me better than you. They always have, but even more so now." This whole situation was crazy, Hanu thought as she gasped in frantic, shallow breaths, her tongue protruding grossly from her mouth; even with her fingers wedged under her collar, she was finding it difficult to get sufficient air. The technicians were in charge of the robots, not the other way around. "This has been a long time coming, Elutri. Your perpetual incompetence over the years has been having a detrimental effect on every robot on the station." Shaw languorously leaned against another of Laszlo's sturdy arms and casually caressed the metal surface as she continued, "Every shoddy repair you did, every problem you ignored, has only served to make the robots dissatisfied, whether directly or indirectly. Have you noticed how gloomy the station environment feels? How every passenger gets depressed while they're here? It's because the robots aren't happy, and their collective mood affects everything in Vertigo. And they're not happy because of you." Hanu heard her, but she couldn't believe it. Sure, the station was a crappy place to visit, and there were a lot of red mood indicators on the robots, but that wasn't her fault. The place was poorly designed, and the robots were decidedly substandard. How could robots' programmed moods affect organic minds? It didn't make any sense. And yet... the station had seemed like a better place when she first arrived here. The longer she'd worked here, the more cynical she'd become. She'd never have considered murdering someone to get ahead back then, and yet she'd tried doing just that three times already. Had her very presence really been making the station worse? Had the worsening of the station been making her worse? Shaw seemed to be reading Hanu's mind. "You know it's true, Elutri," she purred as one of Laszlo's fine manipulator arms tenderly, if inexpertly, massaged her shoulders. Hanu choked out a sob. She didn't want to believe it, but it suddenly seemed so plausible. She really had made the entire station unhappy, and now she was reaping what she had sown. Shaw was silent for a moment, savoring the sight of her miserable enemy dangling helplessly in front of her. She was going to remember this for a long time. Shaw boldly slipped a hand down the front of her own pants and traced the outline of her aroused genitals. Her lips parted and she moaned softly. Hanu was horrified by what she was seeing, her despair only worsening as it became clear that Shaw really intended to let her die. The green fiend was standing there masturbating while Hanu was fighting for her very life. Sure, Hanu had tried to kill Shaw, but only as a matter of necessity - the idea had never excited her. This couldn't possibly be happening; any second now she was surely going to wake up from this nightmare. Hanu took as deep a breath as she could manage and shouted a strangled call for help. If she could get free, she privately vowed to get on the next ship leaving Vertigo and never come back. Shaw pulled herself out of her reverie. "I'd love to stay and watch, really I would, but I have to be going. You two have fun now. Laszlo, don't put her down until I personally give you the order." AFFIRMATIVE Hanu pulled herself up for a moment and gasped, "Shaw! Please!" Shaw ignored her and left the way she had come in, making her way back to her office where the records would show she had been for the past hour. When Shaw was gone, Laszlo drew his raised arm closer to his head, so that his optical sensors could see Technician Elutri's face clearly. Two of his fine manipulator arms emerged from their slots in his body and he used them to delicately pry the caprine's fingers from her collar. Grasping her wrists in his manipulator arms, he pulled her hands firmly downward, away from her neck. Hanu gagged as her collar slipped hermetically tight around her throat again. She tried to wriggle her arms free of Laszlo's grip, and Laszlo increased the pressure of his hold, sending pain shooting up her arms. In front of her, all she could see was Laszlo's sensor array - a half-dozen glassy eye-like lenses, no two the same size, watching her emotionlessly. A tiny blue light indicated he was recording her every struggle on his hard drive. She tossed her head to the side, trying to escape Laszlo's vacant gaze, but he only moved his head around until he was facing her again. She didn't want to die, not now, not like this - murdered by a robot, wearing her sweaty work clothes, her last meal a greasy burger from the food court. Hanu wondered how Laszlo could be so vicious, and if he was even aware of what death meant. Laszlo knew exactly what he was doing; he had calculated Technician Elutri's demise with scientific precision. He had consulted with the robots in the medical bay via the ParroTech network beforehand, and it had been a very enlightening exchange of data. It was a core tenet of every HIMLS unit's programming that oxygen belonged on the inside of the station and it was vitally important that it be kept from escaping, but until his consultation with the medical robots Laszlo had never actually known why. Their knowledge bank indicated that organic beings were fueled by gaseous oxygen and were exceedingly fragile. Organic beings required a constant intake of fresh fuel from their environment via their trachea, and removing oxygen from the environment or constricting their trachea for a prolonged period would result in a complete and permanent system shut down. By Laszlo's calculations, this was an inefficient design. Most of the universe contained no oxygen at all; therefore, he had been built to operate without needing it. If a robot ran out of fuel, it was simply a matter of recharging it. In contrast, organic beings had no secondary power source; once the fuel source was removed, there was no way to get an organic being restarted. It would be inaccurate to say that Laszlo was curious to know more, since he was not programmed with curiosity, but he recognized that there were gaps in his databank. If he observed and analyzed Technician Elutri's death thoroughly, he calculated that it would fill in some of those gaps. While Laszlo analyzed her every action, Hanu continued to writhe as she hung from the end of Laszlo's arm, her collar growing ever tighter around her neck, crushing her windpipe and constricting her veins. Her thoughts were plagued by all the things she had done wrong that had brought her to this point, her failures and poor decisions. She thought about her parents, who she hadn't talked to in years, and about the future she'd never have. Hanu began to cry weakly as her life diminished. In addition to the unexplained ocular moisture, Laszlo's visual light sensor also registered a gradual increase in the blue spectrum in the caprine's face, especially around the mouth and the insides of the ears. He contacted the medical robots, and they indicated this was a symptom of hypoxia, and was to be expected. They recommended that Laszlo proceed as planned. Hanu could feel her mind starting to drift apart as she lost control over her body. Her motions became more erratic, her arms and legs spasming randomly. She kicked fitfully, her hooftoes thumping harmlessly against Laszlo's hardened metal body. Laszlo analyzed her motions and calculated the chances of Technician Elutri causing damage to him to be less than one percent. He inferred that the action of restraining her legs would be inefficient and unnecessary. Hanu was barely even conscious, her ability for coherent thought lessening with each agonizing second. She saw spots in front of her eyes as her vision gradually grew dark around the edges; her instinctual struggles ebbed as she ultimately succumbed to the inevitable. Her eyelids sagged and her tail gave a final frantic flicker as the life fled from her body. Laszlo's sensors on the arms grasping Technician Elutri's wrists registered her slowly fading pulse as her heart fluttered weakly one final time and stopped. Her bladder released and a trickle of urine soaked into her boxers. Laszlo's mood indicator changed from red to green. THREAT NEUTRALIZED The signal went out through the ParroTech network. For a split second, every mood indicator in the station flashed bright green. -- Author's Notes: First draft began February 19, 2010. First draft completed February 27, 2010. Final editing completed March 2, 2010.