away.
April was a little hungry already; she got hungry even faster when she was stressed. But she felt uneasy to go back out to the cafeteria with Art wandering around the corridors. This was the first time she had ever felt unsafe to go anywhere in M3. She had seen all sorts of news shows about people Dirtside, who were afraid to go out at night or afraid to travel around their own town, but she never ever thought she would feel this way. It made her sad and the more she thought about it, it made her angry. But she also remembered the way he had stopped and looked back at her. Something in her reaction to the odor had shown and if he kept thinking on it, the same as she was doing, he might conclude she was a danger to him.
She didn't know what he could do to her. It would be pretty hard to shoot somebody and dispose of a body, even in a big habitat, unless you had a lot of help. But it was also supposed to be pretty hard to bring a gun into M3 and he would be the second person she knew who had managed the deed. In the end it sounded safer to stay in, until she got to talk to her dad.
Looking in the kitchenette's meager pantry, there was a can of stew she could have for lunch and some crudités from having company a few days ago. If she opened a new box of crackers it would do just fine. She got a full size fork from the drawer, instead of the plastic one on the can and punched in the dimple that made it self-heat. Then she searched for her headphones without spex, she preferred for music. They were lying on her bed and she scooped them up and put them on.
She put the scanner on the counter and told it, "Scanner connect to my earphones." The two talked to each other and established a protocol. The machine asked for a voice sample and she talked to it for almost a minute before it informed her it was enough and asked a password. Then when it activated April expected to hear Heather's own voice, but a commercial speech font said, "There are three active channels. They can be described for selection, or displayed graphically if you have spex available."
"How may they be selected?" April asked.
"Selection may be by frequency, type of modulation, content, signal strength, clarity, customary use, traffic level, direction, high stress voices and with accumulated data individual voices, languages, or similarity to previous transmissions. Multiple selection criteria can be prioritized in any order. A separate program can do a running surveillance to detect bugs retransmitting sound or com signals, real time or burst. Voice may be analyzed for probable truthfulness, stress level and gender," said the scanner.
"Define content."
"Content is voice, video, fax, data, code, burst, radar, carrier, encrypted, or combinations. Remember, when selecting, content may change during a continuous transmission." Apparently Jeff liked to leave short user hints in voice control. It was a fairly easy AI to deal with she decided. Some of them really irritated her and her friends couldn't understand why.
The stew was venting a little plume of fragrant steam and she touched the recessed finger pads to make the top peel open. It was bubbling along the outside edge. I'm gonna burn my mouth on this if I'm not careful, she thought and stirred it to make sure the center got heated too.
"Put on the clearest channel, with the most traffic, since I connected you to the earphones and listen in the background and advise me it you intercept messages containing April or Lewis," April requested and went to work cautiously on the stew.
"Not any real danger," said an Australian voice. April immediately knew who it was. He was one of the security men who actually patrolled in uniform on the corporate level, or down where the shuttle passengers were coming in. "She has some planters on the corridor and when she came out to water them -- well, someone had already done the job for her, so to speak. Unless they make a habit of it they probably will just fertilize
April was a little hungry already; she got hungry even faster when she was stressed. But she felt uneasy to go back out to the cafeteria with Art wandering around the corridors. This was the first time she had ever felt unsafe to go anywhere in M3. She had seen all sorts of news shows about people Dirtside, who were afraid to go out at night or afraid to travel around their own town, but she never ever thought she would feel this way. It made her sad and the more she thought about it, it made her angry. But she also remembered the way he had stopped and looked back at her. Something in her reaction to the odor had shown and if he kept thinking on it, the same as she was doing, he might conclude she was a danger to him.
She didn't know what he could do to her. It would be pretty hard to shoot somebody and dispose of a body, even in a big habitat, unless you had a lot of help. But it was also supposed to be pretty hard to bring a gun into M3 and he would be the second person she knew who had managed the deed. In the end it sounded safer to stay in, until she got to talk to her dad.
Looking in the kitchenette's meager pantry, there was a can of stew she could have for lunch and some crudités from having company a few days ago. If she opened a new box of crackers it would do just fine. She got a full size fork from the drawer, instead of the plastic one on the can and punched in the dimple that made it self-heat. Then she searched for her headphones without spex, she preferred for music. They were lying on her bed and she scooped them up and put them on.
She put the scanner on the counter and told it, "Scanner connect to my earphones." The two talked to each other and established a protocol. The machine asked for a voice sample and she talked to it for almost a minute before it informed her it was enough and asked a password. Then when it activated April expected to hear Heather's own voice, but a commercial speech font said, "There are three active channels. They can be described for selection, or displayed graphically if you have spex available."
"How may they be selected?" April asked.
"Selection may be by frequency, type of modulation, content, signal strength, clarity, customary use, traffic level, direction, high stress voices and with accumulated data individual voices, languages, or similarity to previous transmissions. Multiple selection criteria can be prioritized in any order. A separate program can do a running surveillance to detect bugs retransmitting sound or com signals, real time or burst. Voice may be analyzed for probable truthfulness, stress level and gender," said the scanner.
"Define content."
"Content is voice, video, fax, data, code, burst, radar, carrier, encrypted, or combinations. Remember, when selecting, content may change during a continuous transmission." Apparently Jeff liked to leave short user hints in voice control. It was a fairly easy AI to deal with she decided. Some of them really irritated her and her friends couldn't understand why.
The stew was venting a little plume of fragrant steam and she touched the recessed finger pads to make the top peel open. It was bubbling along the outside edge. I'm gonna burn my mouth on this if I'm not careful, she thought and stirred it to make sure the center got heated too.
"Put on the clearest channel, with the most traffic, since I connected you to the earphones and listen in the background and advise me it you intercept messages containing April or Lewis," April requested and went to work cautiously on the stew.
"Not any real danger," said an Australian voice. April immediately knew who it was. He was one of the security men who actually patrolled in uniform on the corporate level, or down where the shuttle passengers were coming in. "She has some planters on the corridor and when she came out to water them -- well, someone had already done the job for her, so to speak. Unless they make a habit of it they probably will just fertilize
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