An uneasy correspondence

Communication proves to be the hardest challenge you've faced so far.

You begin attempting to draft communication with Samus, guided by Balthazar in what you should do to get what you want. He is both useful and unhelpful simultaneously. He can keep you on track, ensure that you don't use headers or sentences that will read as automatic, but he lacks a sort of fundamental creativity. It's not that he can't lie, it's that he sees lying as a logical process. There are times where he complains or corrects your messages on the grounds of being illogical. If you were to ask him to come up with a hundred reasons why he was late to a meeting, he would say traffic every time. It's an old standby, and perfectly logical, but it ignores a few basic rules of the art form. Firstly, that repetition of a believable lie draws more critique and suspicion than a series of less believable ones. Secondly, that many would begin in time to ascribe the lateness to your inability to avoid traffic and not the traffic itself. And thirdly, that traffic is a poor excuse in the context of space travel. He fails to account for impatience, external perception, and context in that order. These three things are both the core of good lies and the bane of bad ones. When he previously said that his virtual life was one more defined by limitations than capabilities, this is likely what he meant. Working with him as your editor, each message is built as a slow and arduous process, each line written and re-written a dozen times. All of this for something that, allegedly, should not be hard to convince the person you're lying to do.

When you finally send the labor of a message, he reads it out for her as she's sitting in the tub.

"Excuse me Samus, you have a job offer."

She groans, "Who is it?"

"Sender: Government of Nova Gamma, Priority: Urgent. Subject: Phazon Cleanup-"

"Deny, I don't do cleanup."

The computer pauses for a moment, "Are you sure you don't want to hear the body of the message?"

"Nope, and block them if they don't take the hint." She responds cooly, then mutters under her breath "I don't care if it's Phazon, I'm not a janitor."

The computer pauses again before clicking off and leaving Samus to her bath.

Well, that went poorly.

Balthazar seems somewhat humbled, "I admit, I had accounted for the possibility that this may take some work, but I did not expect the first attempt to be received quite so coldly."

It was a bad approach, but it was a learning experience.

"Perhaps, if you'll forgive me a moment of indulgence, I would like to dictate the next message and have you filter it for "human" checking. I feel that I know the subject the best and would be the most capable of applying to what she will react to."

He's pretty clearly telling you he's not the problem, but you don't take it personally. If it works, it works, if not, you can try the reverse, where he gives you as little oversight as possible.

"I agree to your terms, if you prove more successful than me, I shall analyze your approach and begin augmenting my future advice. Now, begin dictating for me."

"To: Samus. From: Federation Collection Offices"

"Subject: Advance Pay Opportunity"

"Samus Aran, our records show you to currently be overdrawn in regards to a Federation Account. We will be willing to overlook this, but we are sending you an opportunity to both clear the debt and recieve an advanced payment. This would be spendable as you desire and untaxed, as the mission you would be asked to perform bears a considerable danger. Please reply to this message in the next 24 hours if you desire to pursue this, otherwise, your account may be further penalized. If your account acrues enough penalties, you may have your federation license revoked and be forced to re-take the application exam."

You do your best to make it read like it wasn't auto-generated, but you can't do much without Balthazar insisting your changes go too far. You agreed to play by his rules, so you play nice and do everything you can to make it go through before hitting send. To your surprise, and Balthazar's delight, it does go through. Not too shabby for a blob sitting at a computer terminal.

"Excuse me, Samus, you have another message."

She groans louder and longer, petulantly. "If it's any priority under Urgent, I'm going to run a bunch of foreign executables next time I use you."

"It surpasses Urgent, it is a timed message, Samus."

She says nothing but waves her hand as if to signal Balthazar will be allowed to read it to her, just this once as her majesty allows. Balthazar gets about halfway through when she cuts him off.

"Stop! Stop! Are your spam filters broken?"

Balthazar pauses, "I do not understand your meaning, Samus"

"This is transparently a spam message, how did you not catch it?"

"It made it through the filtration systems, it appears to be written by-"

"Lots of these people get humans to dictate their messages to avoid the filters, but you're supposed to filter the stuff that makes it through the filter. This is obviously one that got through, how did you not notice?"

Balthazar pauses for a very long time, as Samus sits waiting for an answer, you feel something like anxiousness emanating from him. Finally, he gives a meek, "I did not notice anything wrong with this message, please point out the signs of fraud so that I may better filter in the future. I am sorry for the inconvenience."

She looks up at the camera shrewdly, then shrugs and seems to accept a machine error over the possibility that she herself is wrong.

"Well, for one, the Federation doesn't give advances or gifts. Any message claiming to be from the Federation that promises anything should immediately be put under scrutiny. Also, my account isn't overdrawn, I checked this morning. Even if it was, they wouldn't warn me about it, they'd just fine my ass and move on."

Balthazar quietly clicks off without responding, when you come back, he's even more humbled than before.

"Curious," He sounds almost dejected. "I accounted for the majority of pressure points in my psych profile of the superuser, I do not fully understand the error."

It's hard to pinpoint because once it passed filtration, you had trusted Balthazar's better knowledge of "the subject" to be enough. With how ready she is to needle any work message, you'd almost assume she doesn't want to work.

"Financial stability has proven to be both a key motivator and foremost stressor. I calculated that any inaccuracies in the message would be overcome by an invocation of the negative aspects of financial instability and a promised remedy."

Money doesn't seem to be the problem, Balthazar's message was cut off before he even got to read out the threat of having to re-apply for the Federation. If you were to guess, the problem is somewhere else. The issue is that you don't know how.

"A troubling issue, considering the next message is your responsibility, as agreed."

Well, look at it analytically. You have a good history on her, why not use it? You ask the computer to pull up messages she's accepted in the past to compare against ones she rejects.

"An analytical approach," Balthazar responds cheerily, "But one I have already employed far more efficiently than you will be capable of."

That's where your idea starts, if Balthazar is defined by his limitations, realistically there are things you should be able to recognize even in a short time of reading messages that he missed.

"An interesting approach, and one that could very well work. Would you like me to lead with the messages I have noticed the most consistent trends in?"

No! If you're going to go for what he might have missed, best to start with the messages he has the hardest time understanding.

"Understandable, but you should know that there have only been two outliers that have measured below a 40% acceptance expectation rate and received acceptance. In both cases, you will likely find there was an extenuating circumstance."

A pair of messages pop up, one of them is in a garbled alien language that defies universal translation, the other is a fairly short and seemingly flippantly casual note.

"The message in the indecipherable language rated at a less than one percent acceptance rate. It was accepted entirely on accident, hence why it has been treated as a numerical outlier and disqualified from most analysis."

Accepted on accident? How?

"Beginning playback."

In a moment, he plays back an audio recording of Samus's voice "Yes, accept all."

Balthazar's in response, "Are you sure? Some of them rate very highly probable as spam."

"That's an order."

The playback stops, Balthazar returns to the present.

"Accepted on accident, when follow up was sent, in the same language, superuser reported that the first message had been accepted in error and reprimanded me for not disobeying her command."

Accident indeed. The other one, then.

"The other message is a personal correspondence received from a fellow bounty hunter over a non-business discussion program. At the time, it was not regarded as an actionable message fit for analysis, but has since been included considering the task inquired about was completed. "

"Subject: Blank"

"Heyyyyy Sammy, heard you were having some money trouble at the moment. If you're as pinched as you say, I know some guys who need a security guard and I can get you a good rate from them. Consider it a favor for what you did for me at Delta Seti.

P.S. Hope you're getting along with your VI. I usually set mine's voice to "seductive."

Interesting, how helpful it is would be pretty debatable, but it at least tells you some things.

"In retrospect, the message measures at a lower acceptance expectation than even the indecipherable one. She has a policy against doing security work and accepts it 0% of the time excluding this one. I regard this as an outlier due to her relationship with the sender, the use of the language "favor" supports this theory."

Interesting, willing to break her policy to do her friend a favor is a telling character trait.

"Correction, the policy did not exist at the time. She put it into effect upon return."

Less helpful then.

"Ignoring requests you can qualify as security, since her acceptance rate is consistent with those and they no longer provide useful data. Her ratio of accepting jobs that include the word favor, as well as the acceptance of jobs from the sender of the previous message, rates higher than standard in all categories. It indicates either a sense of responsibility or a proclivity to helping friends."

This, in a way, is useful data. Pretending to be Samus's friend, spoofing the address of the messages from her, should be effective. However, if you're going to promise a reward, as seems to be necessary to make Samus act, it makes this a technique you can only ever apply the one time before she wises up. A good emergency fallback, but not useful in itself. It would be good to compare this message against low-end non-outliers, see if you can find a pattern.

"There are over three dozen messages that qualify as non-outliers that are still notable for the low expected acceptance."

You flip through them. Most of them, even if they promise bad pay or take her far out of her way, both of which Balthazar records as substantially lowering acceptance acceptability, are generally consistent in what they are and what they want. They're all non-business messages, usually proclaiming the sender to be in danger. One exception is one written with very poor spelling and grammar. It appears to be a child asking Samus to come to her school for show-and-tell. The reward offered is a stuffed animal.

"I tend to consider that an outlier, since it meets most of the low acceptance criteria, but I've noticed a certain sentimentality in the subject that has since changed my calculations."

You wonder if she kept the stuffed animal.

"She did not accept it, but she keeps the picture of her and the children on her wall."

You start to formulate an idea, when Balthazar asks what it is, you tell him to compare these messages against the highest acceptance expected messages she's declined.

"I have ten messages that match these criteria. The highest expected acceptance she's declined registers at a 51% expectation."

That's... low, really low.

"The highest expected success I have ever recorded was 63%. For as good as my metrics are, she turns down so many more than she accepts that I consider anything above 65% acceptance a statistical error."

What percentage of offers does she accept generally?

"12%"

No pressure.

The ten messages declined show exactly what you thought they would. The majority of them are excessively formal, even the ones that aren't lean less on the side of asking and more on the side of telling.

"A distaste for authority has been a long-recorded psychological aspect. Unfortunately, I am more or less completely incapable of observing tone outside of word choice and sentence structure."

You can feel pieces beginning to slide into place, there's no promise this idea will work, but you have faith in it.

"Should I prepare another email to begin drafting?"

Instead, you ask if he could spoof you an account on the chat service.

"It will be possible, though I should warn you, direct and extended contact measures by my estimates as more than a dozen times more dangerous than a simple message."

A risk you're willing to take, you let the machine try things his way, might as well try the opposite route.

For now, you and Balthazar simply wait for Samus to get out of the tub, which she doesn't do for an almost concerningly long time. Now would be a good time for research, or really anything productive, but the nervous energy you find filling you zaps your mind of any other impulses. The foolishness of it only gets highlighted more when she finally leaves her tub, goes to her computer, and you remain sitting on your hands. Five minutes pass without you acting.

"Is there a reason for your extended delay?" Balthazar finally asks. Despite his flat, synthesized voice, you are almost certain you can make out impatience.

It's best to let her settle in, you reason. If she gets the message the second she's out of the tub, she might get suspicious.

"But she has now been at her station for five minutes, I would expect the suspicion period to have concluded."

He's completely right, and on some level, you're just stalling. It suddenly dawns on you how apprehensive the thought of what you're about to do makes you. Before you can give in fully to anxiety, a quiet and observing chime from Balthazar pushes you to make your message.

"Samus Aran, I need your help."

It pings her terminal and you sit in hesitation for a moment. She opens it disinterestedly, but when she sees a fully blank name field, her face shows some confusion.

"Who is this?"

The response back feels quick, testing, her finger hovers over the block button. You need to act fast, but you also need to say a lot of things. Luckily, so long as the notification shows you as typing, she doesn't hit the button.

"For a few reasons, I need to remain anonymous. I hope you can understand. I can pay you if you chose to help me. If you decline, I will respect your wishes, but you should know that I do not believe anybody else in the galaxy capable of helping me."

"How did you get this account?"

Finger off the trigger, but still ready to move it back on.

"You have a reputation."

"Why me?"

"You have a reputation."

She hesitates, then "What do you want?"

"The Federation is fully aware of what they're up against, but they won't admit it. They aren't getting ready for the Metroid threat, they don't think the space pirates are organized enough to cultivate them, you and I both know that isn't true."

She leans forward, but answers professionally "You shouldn't believe everything you read online."

"I know what happened on Tallon 4."

"Enlighten me."

"The space pirates had intentionally exposed Metroid larvae to Phazon, the result was a new species. You made very certain to get rid of all of that, but clutches of Phazon-fed Metroids keep popping up."

"Where did you read that?"

"I know about the nest you found on Perseid. I know about your concerns should a phazon Metroid reach maturity and find access to a Galactic Net terminal."

"And how do you know that?"

"One of them has."

She freezes, Balthazar makes a series of concerned beeps but doesn't interrupt you. You can see her eyes narrow, focus shifting fully to your chat.

"Where?"

"At the moment, we are still trying to answer that question. We need your help."

"What do you need me to do?"

"I have been in contact with your ship's onboard computer, it has a scanner sufficient to study Phazon. Metroid, even intelligent ones, are animals. Everything they know, they learn from the energy source they nest on. Bring a sample of Phazon to be analyzed, I will contact you again when we receive the data."

She sends you a few follow-up messages, but the blank profile reads offline on her screen. Eventually, she gives up and leans back, staring into space for a moment before clearing her throat.

"Computer."

"Yes, Samus?"

"Do we have technology sufficient to capture and scan a Phazon sample?"

"Yes, Samus. I have also scanned the nearby planets and found Phazon signatures on one of them, would you like me to plot a course?"

She winces for a moment, part of her wishes it had been a hallucination and that her computer wouldn't know exactly what she was talking about. One more shred of privacy down the drain.

"How fast can we be there?"

"The journey will take two days at standard speeds, around thirteen hours if we hurry, Samus."

"I want to touch down in less than twelve."

"Understood, Samus."

As the ship begins to hum to life and make preparations for a hard sprint to Arcturus-Seta, you detach from Balthazar and slide to the ground, nestling against an engine power cable. The warmth and flow of raw, unassuming energy lulls you to sleep as Balthazar chirps happily.