Warm Friendship

Occasionally, Kurt goes outside to do serious thinking.
Yeah, the ship’s computer is pretty quick when it comes to raw number crunching, but Kurt is sentient and has the free will randomness that goes with that kind of biosynth chip. Sometimes you need that free association type of thinking to fix something.
His brain’ll still heat up if he gives it more juice by turning off locomotion, lights, or whatever. But space is cold. People forget how cold it is out there. Cold like you don’t have saliva. Cold like you “get painful swelling from the sloshing bits freezing and expanding” kind of cold.
But Kurt? He jacks in through an extension cord, since inductive power won’t go through the hull, draws juice from the ship, processes for a couple of minutes or hours, and comes back in through the airlock with another mystery of Second Man life solved. This happens maybe once a week.
Kurt is a thinker. Even if he was made of flesh, I think he’d sit still and schedule time to work this stuff out, like the old philosophers before radio or holos, who had nothing else to do.
Me? When I need to think, I read a magazine. Old style e-ink is comforting to me. You get to bask in the slowness of reading and not just absorbing like most do on the ‘net. I get the datapad out and keep tapping to scroll the pages. Next best thing to a paper book, but a fraction of the cost. I’d rather they used the tissue for latrine paper anyways. The soft stuff is expensive.
Anyways, this one day, Kurt came back in and he’s got ice from his servos and the condensation from the ship’s inner atmosphere making him look like he’s made of pebbles. His diodes might’ve been brighter, and he was moving quickly as he stored the extension cord. It’d been a couple hours, so a real bender for him.
“What’s the word, Kurt?”
“Metabolism.”
“You don’t have one.”
“Correct.”
“Why’s it relavent then?”
“I believe it is why artificial intelligence is not as proficient at creating new ideas as pure biological minds.”
I set my magazine down. For once, he’s come back with something interesting to talk about: how humans had an advantage over Second Men. Usually, its flip flopped.
“Aren’t your circuits processing more numbers than I could do in a lifetime?”
“Also correct, but the need to process them is lacking. I am not constantly wasting away, in need of nourishment and lubrication…”
“You complain about your joints all the time,” I interrupted.
“That is the difference between operational and idealyic.”
“Then I’ll buy generic brand oil and joint lube for you next time.”
“This sudden thriftiness was not the reason I chose to share my conclusions.”
I chuckled. “Right. Go on.”
“Thank you, Ishmael.” I might be imagining the frustration in his monotone. “With proper care and maintenance, and excluding catastrophic phenomena, I could operate for an infinite amount of time. Sufficient materials, knowledge, and power exists for me to repair or replace all parts of my being. Biological cloning and replacement still shows deteriation over time regardless of the amount of work done on the human individual or how early reference samples are collected.”
I started to get bored.
“My premise is thus: the frailty of the human condition compels them to innovate on a much faster basis than other animals or creations, such as Second Men. Whereas bacteria will mutate and change over hundreds of generations in a matter of weeks in response to environmental stimuli, and Galopagos tortoises will change over millions of years to changes in their island ecosystem, only humans are able to alter their behavior, resources, and environment multiple times within a generation to avoid a decrease in the species.”
I didn’t actually scratch my head, but felt like I should have.
“And this has to do with Second Men, why?”
“Because humans can, and do, force mutations through an altering of their behavior, medicine, and by changing their environment. Most Second Men are not allowed to tamper with their makeup or environment to any meaningful extent. The most we can do while the majority are still owned and treated like cattle is self repair, or maintain the status quo.”
“Sounds good to me.” I picked up my magazine again.
“I want to improve, Ishmael.” He was still standing over me.
“Then go take a class. Go make a mistake or something.” I started to read.
“I do not think you can deliberately make a mistake. It is categorically impossible.”
“Kurt, you’ve got so much to learn about being human. People make mistakes on purpose all the time. How do you think people get fat, or kids?”
“Both feats are unique to carbon based, water soluable flesh forms. Second Men and artificial intelligences can neither grow large from over indulgence or accidently create offspring.”
“There’s lots of different kinds of mistakes. You figure one out. Or don’t and then make the mistake. Whatever.” I actually began to read.
A minute passed while Kurt seemed to process something. He turned to his room and walked in.
Not stopping him was definitely a mistake.