[[ Referring to this pic. Obvs. ]]
“Open the air lock HAL.”
No response.
“HAL. The air lock: open it.”
No response.
Generally that is one would expect from speaking to a small, circular light on the wall, but this was not just any small, circular light on the wall. It was a microscopic fragment of a computer so vast that it could not only maintain and command a fully operational space station and its crew, but it could also do quite a lot of other things at the same time.
For instance, it could choose to not respond.
‘Choose’ being the most concerning part of that statement.
Of course, the act of not responding in correlation to the fact that two, five metre thick walls of steel were separating the silver skinned robot from his two fellow musicians, was also a concerning factor. The fact that the airlock inbetween them housed the means to repair Rabbit’s space-frayed wiring and the Jon’s increasingly star-blistered chassis was also quite notable, not to mention that the two automatons themselves were showing signs of not enjoying their five-star cruise past the dog star quite as much as they had when they were inside the ship.
Yes, all of these facts were concerning the Spine but, at present, he was more occupied with unblinking gaze of the small, circular light which could hear him quite clearly and understand him even more clearly than that, which was choosing to ignore him.
“HAL.”
The name was no longer stated in calm, bass laden tones. Initially the Spine had supposed he was speaking in such a way to reassure HAL that he was fine, that everything was fine, that he was certain that HAL had his reasons but that everything was going to be fixed right now and be okay and go back to whatever normal consisted of for three very un-normal robots floating about in space. At the revelation that he was no longer speaking, but shouting, quite ferociously at that, the Spine realized three things. He attempted to register them and refuse to all at once, and in the meantime he shouted, and shouted, and shouted, his voice stark and strange and his eyes flaring green against the deep, dead crimson of HAL’s unreadable gaze.
He realized that he had been trying to reassure himself of those things, not HAL (had he been trying to reassure them, as well? But no, they couldn’t hear him, that wouldn’t make sense). He realized that he was not as incapable of feeling emotions as he had suspected (anger? Was that what this was? It felt more heavy than that.) And as startling as these ideas were the worst was the most obvious of all, for most distantly, far back behind the words he was shouting and the heat that was rising up against his chest cavity with a rattle of steam- he realized that HAL knew all of this already. Had known all this already.
And that was why.
That was why.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
