Wise Child

see also The Books (and other stories)

• "Wise Child" refers to a newly awakened self-aware ship, Disian. She's one of the Independent Logics, smart ships, or free ships
• Wise Child is a short story, published with Street Cred, in "Change Management: Adventures in the Liaden Universe, book #23

Setting, Characters

• Set at the Lyre Institute (??) and also at the Margate shipyard.
• Main characters:
  • Tolly Jones (engineered human Number Thirteen-Sixty-Two)
    • He mentors Independent Logics in ethics, socialization, etc.
  • Free ship Disian, who was prolly built by the Carresens about five Standards ago, and kidnapped before awakening
• Secondary characters:
  • Lyre Institute Directors Landry and Vanessa
  • Captain Elzen Carresens-Denobli, rough black hair, trained for years to be worthy of Disian.

Timeline

• "Wise Child" occurs before Tolly Jones comes to Surebleak, so it occurs before "Dragon in Exile"

Quotes

• They were doing it again. They were hurting the mentor. Her mentor. Young she might be, and inexperienced, but Disian knew that inflicting pain upon another intelligence was unethical. Her mentor had taught her so.

• Thirteen-Sixty-Two, who thought of himself as Tolly, in personal; Tolly Jones for everyday; and Tollance Berik-Jones for such formalities as licenses and inquests...

• "That war also gave us the basis for what we call nowadays the Complex Logic Laws. Because they finally did waken AIs and train them to be generals and admirals, to plan and to kill. And because we're nothing if not irrational, we decided to distrust those things we built and put into motion, rather than distrust ourselves. The AIs could and did kill us biologics, so AIs are outlaws."

• Logic pinged. She disregarded it. Had she not read of intuition? Of leaps of understanding that led to a fuller knowledge than could be achieved by logic alone?"