50UL

By Izzy Varju 

“This is a mistake,” 733 beeped, its camera whirring as the focus zoomed out to train on the figure standing in the snow beside it.

The woman wore a thick fur-trimmed parka frosted with ice flecks from her long trek up the hill to the outpost. The climb had left the subject with an elevated heart rate of 162 bpm, according to 733’s biometric readings. A toolbox was clipped to her backpack, clinking against her belt as she shifted from one foot to another. 733 logged the tags ‘weak heart’ and ‘early indications of circulation disruption’ automatically, though it found no appropriate place to file them.

“You’re 733, right?” The woman hunched over, hands braced on her knees as she caught her breath. “Little faded in the breastplate area, aren’t you? Not much black or white left on there.”

“No cosmetic upgrades are required. The license number is clearly legible.” 733 turned to monitor the retreating backs of a few emperors. With the penguins’ black profiles stark against the blinding white landscape, it took only a moment to confirm that the waddle had all of its members.

“This isn’t cosmetic.” She inspected the top of 733’s unit while she pulled off her gloves. “It’s because of the new sentient rights movements.” Unclipping her toolbox, she flicked the latch with paling fingers and held it out to show what was inside.

“There is no space for this.”

733’s frame was compact and sturdy, built to withstand the elements and keep trundling during the long hours of the Antarctic. The closest it came to humans was the occasional return to within-station-range to upload data. It had been given everything it needed when it was created. There were no extraneous nooks or crannies. This upgrade was useless and would provide no added efficiency or increased lifespan.

“It goes where your energy core would. A replacement, though I’m impressed yours is still even running… Sorry, that’s probably rude.”

733 finally tilted its camera down to look into the toolbox. At about the size of an emperor’s egg, the thing was sleek and brand-new, with seams traced in delicate lines by light seeping out from the inside. Unlike 733’s snow-pitted sides, the component’s designation was stamped in embossed letters onto unscarred biometal—two numbers and two letters, designating 50UL as the newest product.

“Did Monex order this?” The company’s logo had long since worn off the plating, but 733 had the logs of every official update and the mandates it was meant to follow.

“No, the central AI. They ordered the creation of one of these for each unit, to give all of you what they say is ‘the last piece.’ But it’s voluntary. They’ve made that very clear.”

The woman pulled the bandanna down to her neck and smiled. 733 logged this as a reassurance signal and filed it under a new category in the database titled ‘Woman’, ensuring its placement under ‘Penguin’ in the alphabetized list.

“I’ll leave it at the station anyway, but I have to ask you in person the first time.”

“What will it change?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’ve read a few studies on the experiences of AIs getting outfitted with one, but they’re all different. Who you become depends on your experiences, and all that.” She shrugged, gesturing at the new huddle plodding down the slope towards them. “So, is that still a ‘no’?”

733 spent a second cataloguing the macaronis, noting any irregularities in the waddle. The female designated as ‘Beaker’, with the tags ‘affectionate’ and ‘above the average expected life span’, was limping as she slowly descended the rise at the back. She would require some care after the mechanic departed. 733 ranked this function above all else.

“A temporary test of the update is permitted. For evaluating usefulness to the primary directive.”

“Good enough for me,” the woman said cheerfully. Kneeling on the icy ground, she inserted a key into the hatch on the robot’s breastplate.

Comparing each macaroni’s behaviors against the aggregated data of past encounters had priority over the installation, but as the squeaky protests of the old hinge opening registered, 733 paused on four chicks huddled at their parents’ feet and powered down…

The chicks were no longer there. A quick scan revealed impressions in the drifts leading down the slope away from the rest, all four shaking their downy feathers free of snow.

Each macaroni accounted for, 733 adjusted the magnification and began running through the initial research parameters after its first reboot in fifteen years.

The original code was short, a simple algorithm meant for randomly selecting a penguin to monitor for half an hour before moving on to the next waddle. But 733 found that, despite the set directives for monitoring, there was more than triple the expected amount of data to process and store. What was even more perplexing, the official data clearly indicated that 733 had favorites. The chinstraps who pecked at worn treads, the southerlies who followed in 733’s tracks, and the parents who brought their chicks close.

Over the years, its body had lost the original black and white patterned paint to the rigors of wind and snow in a reversal of the molting pattern it observed countless times in the penguins. Now the smeared shade of grey left behind meant that it could fit in perfectly among the newborns of the waddle.

“How does it feel?” the mechanic asked, squeezing her gloves between her fingers.

733 added a new note to her file labeled ‘curious’ while keeping the camera trained on the waddle.

“I feel the same.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Izzy Varju is a neuroscientist by training who writes queer fantasy novels and short stories in her free time. Her work has been shortlisted for the Ruritania Prize and appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, with an upcoming piece in From the Farther Trees. When not contemplating the mysterious life of the giant squid, she is searching for cats to pet.

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