[Open Broadcast]

[protect_and_serve]

Who: Everyone on the telepathic network (which is everyone)
When: Just after the new arrivals show up.
What: Joscelin attempting to get things organized.

[There’s a lot of chatter going on, literally making it hard to hear yourself think, between veterans gossipping and speculating what the new wave of Travelers means, and accidental broadcasts by panicked new arrivals, until one hard-edged thought cuts through it all.]

Enough.

You all need to stop this before we drive ourselves insane.

Anyone with experience on the Network, I want a few organized broadcasts offering help and information to newcomers. We don’t call them Fools.

If you’re new, stay calm. No-one can overhear you unless you’re projecting. Try to divide yourselves as evenly as you can between the people giving you answers. That much is instinctive, you won’t have trouble as long as you can imagine it.

Anyone who’s been here longer and wants to speculate? Don’t do it publicly. Find your own little corners, or keep it off the network.

New telepaths. You’ll need to find someone more experienced more than anyone else does.

And everyone be ready for a new Jaunt.

Comments

[thezerothlaw]

It has nothing to do with your physical sex, but I do not wish to strike you. The First Law of Robotics states that a robot must not harm a human, nor through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.

[It's not that straightforward. It never is. He's harmed humans to protect greater harm to other humans; it's all a system of weight and comparison, the path of least possible harm. And even if he's gone so far as to formulate one more Law that goes before the First, it still holds, regardless of whether or not he could actually land a hit.]

Merely determining my own strength, which I know, is an insufficient reason to take that risk.

[superieure]

[He can't - doesn't - know that human is a loaded weapon, and her instinct is to snap back so what about a mutant. She is extremely glad there are no mental impressions to follow with the words, and that her stunned silence could merely come off as pensive. She is also glad he's a relative stranger.]

What would be, then? [A half-second later, quickly:] Hypothetical. I'm curious.

[thezerothlaw]

[His answer comes slowly; these are uncomfortable hypotheticals, ones that twist up the positronic circuits of his brain and slow them down, something akin to pain, or as near as he knows it.]

If it were necessary to protect the life of an innocent, or several innocents, or an individual I was given particular instruction to keep safe, then some harm might be an acceptable trade. Ideally, I would not wish to harm anyone. I regret that in the past it has been necessary at all.

[superieure]

[By her standards it is idealistic, and unachievable. His carefulness in answering - more so than he's been doing so - is proof this was a tough question, but Monet rarely pulls her punches.]

You would not harm another even in your own defence?

[There's a touch of wonder in her mental tone.]

[thezerothlaw]

I admit I was given a stronger Third Law than most robots. I would and have resisted my own deactivation because I felt the reasons given were insufficient, and because I felt then that the lives of many depended upon my continuing what I and Friend Giskard had begun.

[That's a huge confession; he believes he was right, but it might not seem to be so from an outside perspective.]

I would prefer not to harm anyone for my own protection. Perhaps there are circumstances where I might feel it would be justified, but I... I do not like to think of it.