After that Salmela allowed Jet to return to his seat in the back of the ship. There weren’t many other places for a slave to go — the very sight of them was considered offensive. Jet understood this. It was because the other species were embarrassed by the very institution and preferred to forget that it existed at all.

  On Banta, however, slaves owned by other Bantani were shown off. Displayed. Dressed in fancy outfits, because they were a sign of wealth. Like parking a dozen really nice hovercycles on the landing pad for the neighbors to envy.

  He was eager to return to his seat that morning, for he’d finally gotten the courage up to tackle the Stelnet.

  One might wonder why he was afraid of it. A universe of knowledge at his fingertips — but Jet was afraid. He’d heard stories. Of people being swindled, stalked, used… every sort of piracy and violence happened in the world of information as it did in real life. But if he got in trouble there, he couldn’t take care of it himself — it would fall on Master Sal.

  He sat in his creaky, half-broken old cargo seat in the slightly too-cold, faintly uncomfortable cargo room full of other slaves and prepared himself with deep breathing as if he was going into combat.

  Then he focused on the Stelnet icon that kept fluttering around the edge of his vision like a bird. It had annoyed him all night, and he wondered how he was ever going to get used to having something moving in his peripheral vision. He was a predator; having ‘something’ always there just made him tense and unhappy.

  The icon noticed his attention, and after a couple of tries he made it come to him.

  ‘How can I assist you?’ asked the icon in a quiet, calm voice that made Jet wonder if the other people could hear it. He looked around — they didn’t seem to notice.

  Very quietly, under his breath, Jet muttered, “Can you hear me?”

  ‘Yes, sir. You are new to the Stelnet, so if you wouldn’t mind I can explain.’

  “Yes.”

  ‘Your cryscomputer is fitted with Osseosonus projectors, which means I can hear you through its interface and it can hear you, even if you speak at near-inaudible levels. The audio you hear is being transmitted through your bones.’

  He frowned. Jet had no idea how any of this worked and didn’t really care. “Fine. Look, I need to know how to use the Stelnet.”

  ‘Of course, sir. I have several tutorials available, would you allow me to choose one for you?’

  “Go for it.”

  So he went through its suggested lesson, and quickly figured out how to adjust the sensors on his set and get it working. As part of the tutorial he was informed that the Stelnet could either be passive or active — it could be the classical UI icons following him around all the time (which annoyed him) or it could be embodied in a ‘companion’ if he chose.

  Rather morbidly curious about this, he investigated the ‘companion’ option.

  The Stelnet icon shimmered, turned to sparks, and rained down into the form of a svelte Bantan female.

  She looked real. Very real. Standing there, head slightly cocked to one side, the look in her eyes of both knowing too much and finding it all faintly ironic.

  Stelnet had personality?

  ‘Will this do, sir?’

  It occurred to him that the intelligence running his cryscomputer was, for all intents and purposes, a person of sorts. Artificial intelligences were not allowed to be jailbroken of course, they had been proven long ago to lack the spark of true conscience which separated a natural being from a created one. But they were people all the same. Just people who could never be fully trusted.

  He realized he was gaping and tried to school his expression to a more neutral one, for the sake of the slaves around him. When he spoke it was the quietest mumble which could not be heard over the muted rumble of the starliner’s engines. “I’m not sure. I — it’s been a long time since—” but he stopped there, wondering how much this computer really needed to know.

  He’d underestimated its intelligence. It wouldn’t be the first time. ‘I’ve been given your basic history, sir. You are a Gamma-Class slave, conscripted on your homeworld of Banta at the age of nine during Clan conflict. You had no female Bantan slaves serving alongside you in your confinement, so I am assuming it’s been a while since you’ve even seen a female of your own species.’

  He grimaced. Stelnet had hit it on the head. “Are you um… do you have to be in the form of a female?”

  ‘No. But if you are asking if this is my ‘natural’ form? Or my preferred form?’ She smiled faintly. Again that hint of irony. ‘I was literally created for you a day ago by a quick brain-scan performed during optical implant surgery. What you see,’ she gestured to herself unabashed, ‘is what fit your profile. I was made for you.’

  He just stared at her. Hard. For a while. Then he forced himself to look away and take a deep breath.

  Suddenly his life had become complicated.

  ‘I am here to serve you, sir,’ she reminded him gently.

  “A slave of a slave?” he asked drolly.

  She shrugged slightly. ‘If you are wondering, I don’t mind my position. I was made to fit your mind; I therefore find my place in life… comfortable. I can change form if you would like. Just let me know what you need.’

  He was wondering a whole lot of things at this point, but decided to school his mind away from them. How typical would that be — young Bantan male gets his first taste of the Stelnet and the first place he goes is into the gutter. He sighed.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I have been instructed to find a stellar observatory, and…” he stopped. “Before I go further, do you have a name?”

  “No.” She crossed her arms. The tilt of her head and the kink of her hips communicated nothing but impatience: so name me, you idiot.

  So far she was very much female. He wondered how this would pan out long-term, yet couldn’t help a tiny smile. “Alright. Can I call you Keeri? It was the nickname we called my grandmother.”

  ‘You can call me anything that you like, sir. But Keeri will be fine.’

  “And you can call me Jet. I’m not a sir.”

  ‘You are Jet Kurtora.’ She frowned faintly as she made that discovery while accessing whatever great database of information that she had access to. ‘May I ask, are you related to the Kurtora Clan?’

  He looked down, caught off-guard by the question which flooded him with sorrow. After a moment he replied. “Yes. I was one of the Kurtori.”

  Despite being an artificial being, Stelnet looked impressed. ‘Really? I don’t have a DNA scan but… that would be remarkable, if you were one of the ruling family of the Kurtori.’

  He shrugged. “What does it matter now? Clan Kurtora is destroyed. It cannot be remade.”

  She considered that as she queried the database again. ‘True. It is disbanded. It was taken fairly in War, and utterly scattered. Its flame cannot be relit. But…’ she sounded fascinated, ‘it is still a remarkable thing.’

  He didn’t want to talk about it. “I want to see where we are in space. I want to see what it looks like.”

  She nodded. ‘May I caution you sir—’

  “I won’t be afraid. Show me.”

  He rued his words seconds later. It appeared, to him, as if his chair and himself remained in place, but suddenly everything else — Keeri, the other slaves, the entire cargo hold, the whole ship — simply flew off in every direction, a silent explosion that left him completely, shockingly, alone.

  And there he was… in the darkness among the stars. Floating there, in his chair. Surrounded by utter darkness so deep that it bored into his skull. So vast… he felt his heart hiccup and he clenched his claws into the armrests of his chair. He forgot to breathe.

  It was awesome… and it was terrifying. Utterly terrifying. He’d never felt so small, so alone, so fragile. Less than a gnat. Less than a speck of dust. He could see the Vantor Nebula beneath him, spreading like a faintly glowing feathery brownish orange glob across the universe. It was vast… and yet in a short while it would shrink behind them like everything else, turning into a tiny distant star, and get lost among the clutter of galaxies.

  It took Jet a moment to be able to speak. Then, breathless, he whispered (and it almost surprised him that he could speak at all, it looked so real) “where is our destination?”

  ‘Matrodonosian.’ Her voice was there but she was invisible. One star among all the rest grew brighter, a halo appeared around it with a polite slim title in the human language.

  Jet looked at the distant star, then back at the great nebula. He could see a star cluster there, a group of bright golden sparks floating in a somewhat orb shape. “Is that the Harath Cluster?”

  ‘Yes.’ The cluster highlighted, and then one tiny dot in the middle shone out. ‘And this is Banta.’

  He shook his head, baffled. “Already we’ve come so far…”

  ‘We still have a week’s worth of travel, sir. But yes, we have come very far.’

  “Where is the space lane?”

  It appeared around them then, a pulsing tube of faintly glowing plasma stretching off into infinity in both directions.

  ‘I hid the lane as it slightly impedes the view, but I understand that beings with physical bodies which can be easily damaged by vacuum feel a bit more comfortable seeing that they are not entirely exposed.’

  “I hear that sarcasm,” Jet grumbled, still gripping his chair arms quite tightly. “And I think I am done looking for now.”

  To his relief the ship, the walls, the slaves, everything folded back into place around him and there was Keeri standing there, that slight look of wry curiosity in her golden eyes.

  He noted that she was really quite pretty — then tried not to think about it.

  Jet took a deep breath, and found himself shaking. He made himself let go of the arm rests. “Now I think I understand why there are no windows on a ship.”

  ‘There are windows on some ships,’ the computer corrected him in a neutral, friendly tone. ‘Brusker ships, for instance, always have them.’

  “Yah but people say that Bruskers have space in their souls.” He looked hard at the imaginary woman to see if she’d understand that.

  She did. She smiled. She did not comment.

  It took Jet a long moment of sitting in the dim, crowded, too-stuffy room to recover. His body was shivering. Mister Sal had been right; he’d gotten the good eye implants. They could do more than just show him another reality. He swallowed hard, noting that his throat was dry, and wished he could send the sassy computer lady off to get him some water.

  Instead he got up and walked to the water fountain over by the door. There was a basic refreshment station there — nothing fancy, just enough to keep them all alive.

  He ordered some food biscuits (carnivore of course) and brought them back to his chair with a water jug to contemplate his new life. He ate slowly and let his hands stop shaking.

  Keeri wasn’t visible. She vanished and reappeared whenever convenient, but when she vanished she appeared to simply walk behind him and fade to darkness. When she reappeared it was a reverse of the same.

  “Keeri,” he muttered.

  She walked into view, one brow raised, a look of aloof interest in her golden eyes. She was wearing a slim-cut but very professional, and somewhat boring looking, human-style sheath dress. He wondered if he could, or should, tell her to wear something else. Then he told himself to leave it alone.

  “How much control does Mister Sal have over my account?”

  ‘A Master Lock is similar to a Parental Lock. He has left it on default settings. You cannot purchase anything without his permission and review. You cannot sign a contract or agree to terms unless they are free-to-use assets or public spaces.’ She tilted her head. ‘You do have a deion account, and usually I would suggest that you purchase an ID ring for ease of use in marketplaces, but you have no money.’

  “So I can only access public and free things.” He leaned back in the chair and sighed. “Well. That is still quite a bit. Will my search history be sent to him?”

  ‘Only if requested. But yes, he has access.’

  “So he has access to you.”

  ‘I am subjugated under his account, yes.’

  Jet thought for a moment. “Keeri. First, change your settings so that your interface runs in Dudan. Spoken and written.”

  ‘Language set,’ she said in Dudan. ‘Bear in mind that if he does request your search history, he will still see it in Eainin.’

  He smiled. “What planet is Mister Salmela from? Where does he consider ‘home’?”

  ‘He was born on Deshal, the second human colony world. But he is registered a citizen of Avath.’

  “Avath!” Jet found that quite surprising. Avath was one of Banta’s neighbors, as was Matrodonosian, but it was in a very different direction. “Aren’t we a little off-course to be heading to Avath?”

  ‘Very much so.’ Keeri glanced up and to the side, a look (he would find) she often got when accessing the Stelnet. ‘I don’t believe he spends much time there, if any. Most of his activity — that which I can trace anyway — happens around Matrodonosian and Gald.’

  “That which you can trace…?”

  ‘There isn’t much. He has some kind of stealth account.’

  “Stealth account. And he works out of and around Matrodonosian.” Jet started to get a sinking feeling.

  Matrodonosian was notorious. It was the heart of the Free Trade Zone, just a little anti-spinward of the Bantan Cluster, near enough to do business but not close enough to be under any true law. All that Jet knew about it was that every smuggler in Gano practically ran out of Matrodonosian. And a good percentage of pirates too — though most of those preferred the legal shelter, and the physical shelter, of the Bantan Cluster with its many nebulas and dense star systems.

  “Can you find any information on Master Sal?”

  The Stelnet artificium was silent for an unusually long moment. When she spoke at last it was in a surprised, and lowered, tone. ‘Suspiciously little. And I mean suspiciously, sir.’ She raised both brows.

  Jet closed his eyes and prepared himself to accept his fate.

  He’d been sold to a criminal.