{"id":5053,"date":"2022-07-25T21:13:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T21:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5053"},"modified":"2022-09-27T12:42:43","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T12:42:43","slug":"bots-of-the-lost-ark-by-suzanne-palmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5053","title":{"rendered":"Bots of the Lost Ark by Suzanne Palmer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bots of the Lost Ark<\/em><\/strong> by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld<\/em> #177, June 2021) is a sequel to the author\u2019s amusing (and Hugo Award) winning The Secret Life of Bots<\/em> (Clarkesworld<\/em> #132, September 2017). The story opens with the hero of that latter piece, a miniature robot called Bot 9, being woken by the Ship AI sixty-eight years later to be told that they have a problem\u2014and it isn\u2019t ratbugs like the last time, but something else:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat task do you have for me?\u201d [Bot 9] asked. \u201cI await this new opportunity to serve you with my utmost diligence and within my established parameters, as I always do.\u201d
\u201cHa! You do no such thing, and if I had a better option, I would have left you in storage,\u201d Ship said. \u201cHowever, I require your assistance with some malfunctioning bots.\u201d
\u201cOh?\u201d Bot 9 asked. \u201cWhich ones?\u201d
\u201cAll of them,\u201d Ship said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Bot 9 soon discovers that nearly all the ship\u2019s bots have gone rogue and have started forming \u201cgloms\u201d (conglomerations of robots) who think they are the ship\u2019s (currently hibernating) human crew members. This poses an immediate problem for Ship as they will shortly be arriving in Ysmi space, and the Ysmi are extremely hostile to nonorganic intelligences not under the control of biological species.
The rest of the story sees Bot 9 attempt to work his way to the Engineering section, where Ship hopes 9 can revive the Chief Engineer before they reach Ysmi space. As 9 makes its way there it is attacked by a ratbug (creatures who eat wiring, hull insulation . . . and bots)\u2014but is surprised when he sees a former colleague, 4340, sitting astride the creature. They catch up, and 9 learns that all the remaining ratbugs are now under 4340\u2019s control. Meanwhile, the Ysmi contact the ship, the gloms attempt to get control of communications (when they are not engaged in internecine battles to accumulate more bots), and Ship infects one of their number with a virus\u2014which soon starts spreading.
Eventually (spoiler), Bot 9 gets to Engineering and revives the Chief Engineer (who was badly injured in an earlier incident and put in a med-pod there). When he wakes, Bot 9 brings Chief Engineer Frank up to date with amusing exchanges like this one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI must warn you, however, that PACKARDs are on the other side [of the door],\u201d 9 added.
\u201cPackard? My second engineer? That\u2019s great!\u201d Frank said. \u201cI thought\u2014\u201d
\u201cIt is not the human Packard,\u201d 9 said. \u201cThey are in stasis with the other crew. There are four bot glom PACKARDs, currently trying to reduce themselves to only one. Unlike the other gloms, rather than trying to claim sole ownership of an identity via the expediency of violent physical contest, these three appear to be attempting to argue each other into yielding.\u201d
\u201cThat sounds a lot like the real Packard, actually,\u201d Frank said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And then there is this when the Ysmi ship approaches:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere are you?\u201d Ship\u2019s voice was faint, but there.
Bot 9 found the knowledge that it was back in Ship\u2019s communication range a matter of some relief. \u201cI have woken Engineer Frank, and we are now in his living quarters, looking for some human item called \u2018goddamned underwear,\u2019\u201d it replied.
\u201cThere is a synthetic-fabric fab unit in the cryo facility,\u201d Ship said. \u201cPlease tell Frank he can visit it after we have reclaimed the facility from the gloms, but that right now there is not time. I need him at the docking facility.\u201d
9, who had reconnected to the voice unit after the human had set it down inside the door, relayed that information.
\u201cI\u2019m not meeting the Ysmi naked,\u201d Frank said.
\u201cYou are wearing a flag,\u201d 9 said. A few moments later it added, \u201cShip asks if you would prefer to meet the Ysmi naked or as a bunch of newly free-floating, disassociated particles in empty space.\u201d
\u201cHow much time do we have?\u201d Frank asked. Before he\u2019d even finished speaking, there was a vibration throughout the hull.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After Frank satisfies the suspicious Ysmi (who instruct him to go directly to the jump portal that Ship wants to use) the virus continues to spread through the gloms, and there is a climactic scene where 4340 and his ratbug army come to 9\u2019s rescue.
This is an amusing and well done sequel to the original, with many entertaining exchanges between the various characters. That said, the ending is something of deus ex machina<\/em> (and one you can see coming), so it is probably not quite as strong as the earlier piece.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 11,050 words. Story link<\/a>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bots of the Lost Ark by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld #177, June 2021) is a sequel to the author\u2019s amusing (and Hugo Award) winning The Secret Life of Bots (Clarkesworld #132, September 2017). The story opens with the hero of that latter piece, a miniature robot called Bot 9, being woken by the Ship AI sixty-eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[50,217,622,7,996,1196,95],"class_list":["post-5053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suzanne-palmer","tag-50","tag-3-5","tag-clarkesworld","tag-novelette","tag-sentient-robots","tag-spaceship-mutiny","tag-suzanne-palmer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5053"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5714,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions\/5714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}