###Chapter 19
Auggie didn't ask her question right away.
That alone made both Keshin uneasy.
She leaned against the edge of the table instead, fingers resting lightly on its surface, eyes unfocused in the way Auburn was beginning to recognize as dangerous. Not distracted. Processing.
Moss mistook the silence for compliance.
Auburn did not.
"So," she said eventually, gaze lifting, "who gets to say no?"
The room stilled.
Not theatrically. Not dramatically. Just enough that the ship's ambient hum flattened into a single, attentive note.
"Clarify," Moss said.
"In your hierarchy," she continued calmly. "When a system change is proposed, when risk is identified, when an action is possible but undesirable. Who gets to say no?"
"That depends on scope," Moss replied immediately. "Authority scales with consequence."
"That wasn't an answer," she said gently.
Moss's tendrils tightened.
Auburn shifted his weight.
"She is asking about veto power," Auburn said, after a moment. "Not responsibility."
"Yes," Auggie said. "Exactly that."
Moss considered them both.
"Veto authority resides with the Collective," he said finally. "In practice, it is delegated to specialists according to domain. Incident response for containment. Strategic command for coordination. Optimization councils for long-term impact."
"And individuals?" she asked.
Moss hesitated.
"Individuals do not override the system," he said. "That would be chaotic."
Auggie nodded once.
"Okay," she said. "Follow-up question."
Moss made a small, weary sound.
"When the system is wrong," she said, "who notices first?"
Silence.
Auburn felt it land in his chest like a dropped weight.
"That premise is flawed," Moss said carefully. "The system aggregates perspectives. Error is corrected through scale."
"That assumes the error is legible," Auggie replied. "And that the harm shows up in your data."
Moss turned toward Auburn, seeking reinforcement.
Auburn did not give it.
"In our military structures," Auburn said slowly, "failure is often first observed by those closest to the ground. Not command."
Moss stared at him.
"That is inefficient," Moss said.
"It is," Auburn agreed. "And yet it is how we survive."
Auggie watched the exchange with open interest.
"Let me try this another way," she said. "If I had been injured adjusting gravity, who would be at fault?"
Moss answered instantly.
"You," he said.
Auburn winced.
"And if I had died?" she pressed.
"The failure would be categorized as insufficient containment," Moss said. "Corrective measures would be implemented."
"And would anyone ask whether I consented to the risk?" she asked.
Moss paused.
"That would not be relevant," he said.
There it was.
Auggie exhaled slowly, not in frustration, but in recognition.
"Okay," she said. "So here's the overlap I'm seeing."
She straightened, posture shifting subtly from conversational to precise.
"Auburn trusts the hierarchy because it distributes moral weight," she said. "You don't have to decide alone. The system carries it with you."
Auburn did not argue.
"Moss trusts the system because it suppresses harm," she continued. "If no one gets hurt, the outcome is correct by definition."
Auburn noticed it first.
Not the word itself, but the way Moss reacted to it.
"- Moss -" the human said casually, gesturing toward the Incident Officer without looking up.
Moss froze.
Not the sharp, alarmed freeze of an active response. This was subtler. A process hitch. A half-cycle delay where nothing quite lined up.
"That," Moss said carefully, "is not my designation."
She glanced up. "No, I know."
Silence.
Auburn felt it ripple through the space between them - a tiny, unexpected disturbance.
"Then why," Moss asked, "are you using it?"
She considered. Really considered.
"Because it helps me track you," she said. "You don't feel like a function. You feel like a person doing a job."
Moss made a quiet, unsettled clicking sound.
"We are not persons," he said. "We are roles."
Auburn shifted.
"That is… mostly true," he offered, then hesitated. "But not entirely."
Moss turned toward him slowly.
"You have also named me," Auburn realized aloud.
She smiled, unapologetic. "Yeah."
"What designation did you assign?" Moss asked.
Auburn paused, then said, almost embarrassed, "Auburn."
The word sat there.
Unrequested. Unvalidated. Persistent.
"That implies," Moss said stiffly, "individual continuity outside function."
"Yes," she replied. "That's usually what names do."
Auburn felt something strange settle in his chest. Not discomfort. Not pleasure.
Orientation.
"We do not name ourselves," Moss said. "Names are inefficient."
She shrugged. "So are emotions. You still have those."
Moss opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then, very quietly, he said, "This will complicate recordkeeping."
She grinned. "Welcome to humans."
Auburn watched Moss recalibrate in real time and thought, with a flicker of something dangerously like amusement, that this might be the first incident the system had never trained him for.
Moss's tendrils lowered a fraction.
"And neither of you," she finished, "have a clear mechanism for when the system causes harm by removing agency."
The ship listened.
Auburn felt it.
Moss did too.
"That harm is speculative," Moss said.
"No," she replied. "It's cumulative."
She gestured vaguely around them.
"You don't notice it because your people opt into the system from birth. You are trained into trust. You never have to ask whether you're allowed to refuse, because refusal was never part of your model."
Auburn felt an unexpected tightness in his thorax.
"And you?" Moss asked. "You would allow individuals to override collective safety?"
"No," Auggie said. "I would allow them to inform it."
She met Moss's gaze squarely.
"Consent doesn't mean everyone gets their way. It means the system accounts for the cost of compliance."
Moss recoiled slightly.
"That would slow optimization," he said.
"Yes," she agreed. "That's the point."
Auburn let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"This is why humans are difficult," Moss said tightly. "You introduce noise."
"We preserve meaning," Auggie corrected. "Noise is how you know something living is still in the system."
Silence again.
But this time it was not adversarial.
It was… evaluative.
Auburn felt the shape of the argument settle into something actionable.
"If we were to implement informed autonomy," he said slowly, "the hierarchy would remain. Authority would remain. But refusal would generate signal rather than violation."
Moss's tendrils twitched.
"That would require logging dissent," Moss said. "Modeling noncompliance as data."
"Yes," Auggie said. "Not as error."
The ship's lights shifted, barely perceptible.
Auburn noticed.
Moss did not.
"And when dissent identifies a fracture?" Auburn asked.
Auggie smiled faintly.
"Then the system adapts," she said. "Or it admits it can't."
"That is… uncomfortable," Moss said.
"It's also honest," she replied.
Auburn looked between them, something settling into place that he had not known was missing.
Hierarchy was not the problem.
Silence was.
"We need a protocol," Moss said finally. "A controlled framework."
Auggie nodded.
"Maps before walls," she said. "Questions before locks."
Auburn inclined his head.
"And escalation paths that allow refusal without collapse," he added.
Moss was quiet for a long moment.
Then, reluctantly, he said, "I will draft a provisional model."
The ship's hum shifted again.
Not approval.
Acknowledgment.
Auggie relaxed slightly.
"Good," she said. "Because I wasn't planning to stop asking."
Moss looked at her with something dangerously close to respect.
And Auburn realized, with a clarity that left him both steadier and more afraid, that hierarchy had not been challenged here.
It had been clarified.