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Lola? Guns? What?

Dr. Landford's mind was a jumble of questions and, as a scientist, he worked well when he needed to answer questions. He began by lifting himself up, steadying his wobbling feet against the console.
"Nobody is going to kill anybody!" Dr. Landford said. He tried to force a tone of authority, but was in no position to do so.
"Colonel, Lola is part of the crew, a civilian researcher. She is not responsible for whatever is going on here." Dr. Landford stated firmly.

For once Lola was grateful to Dr. Landford's presence. "Yes, it's true. It's a long and lovely story and I will be more then happy to tell it to you, after we get everything straightened out. But first can we clean up the dead bodies and figure out where we are?" Sarcasm dripped from Lola's every word and made her accent a little more exaggerated; normally it wasn't detectable except by a highly trained ear and only remembered by a scholar.

When the doors opened Lola spun around and pointed her gun at the woman's forehead. The last thing she needed was for someone to try and attack from behind. Silently she used the weapon to motion the woman to walk into the middle of the room next to Dr. Landford.

Standing slowly, he had his gun lazily trained on Lola. Making no sudden movement so not to trigger a violent outburst, he waited until he had her full attention, then slowly began lowering his gun to his side. An act of good faith, though he was ready to dart away at the first motion of anything hastily done. The gun was still in his hand, but it was not a viable threat at the moment.

"I believe," he began, looking at the other survivor that came into the bridge, "that we all have a tie to each other. I'll accept the doctor's claim on you, Lola. I'll even let you keep your gun under two rules."

He watched her for a moment, making sure he had her attention still. This was going to make or break everything.

"First, you will not use it aboard the vessel. Obvious reasons being that we have no idea what a bullet would do to the vessel. Another being that we've got enough dead people as it is. I'm guessing the rest of the ship looks as bad as the bridge." He frowned a bit, trying to distract his mind from the half a dozen dead bodies laying around the bridge.

"Second, wherever your loyalties fall, they now come second until we figure out what happened and get off this vessel." He was doing what he could to not alert everyone that Lola was, in fact, a pirate. And one of a certain reputation based on her markings. The less those who survived knew about her, the better.

After all, if word got out that she was a pirate, they'd likely blame this whole disaster on her. And, while he wasn't sure that she wasn't to blame, there wasn't any evidence to point to her either.

Dr. Landford straightened out his uniform, pretending not to listen to Lola's last comment.
"Well, now that everyone has agreed to listen to reason, we need to figure out a strategy for proceeding from this point." Dr. Landford said. He was in a much better frame of mind now that there were other living people here.
"It is quite possible that we triggered a security response in the ship, or that the chemical spray was not even intended to be toxic to the crew. This may be one big accident. I think we should work on figuring out where this ship is going and whether we can regain control. If this was all a big mistake, then we could be headed in a random direction away from Earth at a very high speed." The good doctor ventured. He didn't like the idea of not knowing where they were headed.

Dr. Landford groaned. He hated artificial intelligence...they were hardly ever reasonable...or intelligent. And apparently this one could detect their verbal cues.
"Well, I am open to any suggestions that don't get us killed." Dr. Landford said sarcastically.

"The earliest form of artificial intelligence runs, basically, on preset responses and step-by-step reasoning, represented by an algorithm. While some advancement has been made to adapt A.I.s to employ sub-symbolic reasoning in place of this step-by-step process, the fact remains that the computer must compute every possible option and select the most fitting solution. The problem is that complex computation requires astronomical amounts of memory and computational time. Once a problem grows beyond the capacity of the A.I. in question, any number of errors can occur. For the A.I. to have 'heard' us, comprehended our intentions and then select the option of a preemptive warning means that we are dealing with a particularly refined system, like a master chess player who is planning out his next few moves even as we deliberate our immediate plan of action."

Dr. Landford looked around the bridge, uncomfortable and amazed at the same time. This thing had their lives in its hands and it had already taken lives. Even if the initial attack was not intended to be lethal, it was now less likely that the machine would refrain from dealing out more modes of death if it saw that as the best option.

"The real question is: can it learn? If it recognizes new patterns in our behavior, it can effectively predict our own movements. If, however, it can only select from what would have to be a large number of pre-coded response...well, interacting with the computer would be closely related to your method of experimentation, colonel; randomly pushing buttons and hoping it is not the auto-destruct."

Dr. Landford finished his little shpeal and leaned back on the console, thinking.

"What really disturbs me is that it recognizes us as not necessary for ship functions and yet it is maintaining a safe environment for us. Why would it drain its resources and impede progress to its destination in order to keep us alive?" Dr. Landfrod wondered out loud. It did not make sense....it was like a pole-vaulter not letting of of the vault at the climax of his jump.