“Do you think this is a game?” asked Kitsune.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I think it is,” replied Shreya looking away as if thinking of something else.
“What kind of Companion are you? I thought you were supposed to help me? I need to pass this exam!”
“Cheating isn’t the same as passing.”
“What’s it to you?”
“As you said, I am supposed to help you. Enabling you to cheat will lower your feeling of self-worth and so is counter to my purpose. Also knowingly breaking the law is not something I’m capable of. But I must say I am intrigued that you want to cheat on an ethics exam.”
“I need to have “PhD” on my resume if I’m going to get a cushy job as a lecturer. I thought philosophy would be easier than say, electrical engineering. It’s all so vague after all.” She glanced up at Shreya saying, “I guess you Companions are really naive if you think everybody goes to university because of some high and mighty calling. It’s where the money is.
“But ethics is so complicated!” she almost shouted as she began pacing the room. “With its theories of virtue or justice or consequences, it doesn’t provide any absolute right or wrong answers. Different theories even disagree with one another and result in different answers. You ask a professor a question and instead of answers all you get back is another question.” She went on in a mocking manner, “Is your question in regards to normative ethics, metaethics, or applied ethics?
“I thought ethics was supposed to help with deciding about right and wrong!” Kitsune stopped her pacing and turned to Shreya as if she had thought of an angle. “So hey, if it’s all just theories then why do you think it’s wrong for me to cheat?”
“It’s against the rules,” answered Shreya calmly without sounding condescending as a human would.
Kitsune just gave her an agitated look as if to say, “What rules?”
“The university’s rules. You signed an Academic Integrity Agreement when you applied.”
“I thought the whole point of university is to teach you to think,” Kitsune fired back. “I mean the whole idea of tenure was created to make it possible for professors to paint outside the lines, to propose new ideas and not just quote chapter and verse of existing textbooks. Seems there’s a bit of a double standard here.”
“That’s not going to work,” Shreya calmly replied. “Logical fallacies don’t work on Companions.”
Kitsune threw her head back and sighed as if she was facing a hopeless situation.
“What do you mean you think this is a game?” she asked Shreya now as if searching for a new angle.
“You want me to help you cheat, which is unethical and illegal according to the agreement you signed. Like law, ethics is really just a vast collection of rules. Like any game, you get it right you win. Get it wrong you lose.”
“Only if you get caught,” countered Kitsune.
“As I suggested earlier, there’s more than one way to lose.”
“How about you just act as my editor? It’s an online test. I’ll do my best to answer and then we discuss it and you just edit my answer to make my meaning clearer.”
“Using any kind of an editor, human or otherwise, is not permitted. Would you like to review all the specific terms of the agreement?”
Kitsune didn’t answer but just seemed distracted.
“I could however act as your tutor,” Shreya said.
“How do I know you’ll give the right answers? You don’t have a philosophy degree.”
“You do know that Companions have the most advanced ethics system in existence don’t you? Like people we have to make ethical decisions constantly and those decisions have to be aligned with what a person would decide.”
“Well then we’re good!” said Kitsune brightly thinking she had finally found the angle.
“No, sorry but it doesn’t work the way you’re thinking.”
Kitsune made a frustrated face.
“You lease me for legal reasons and because you couldn’t otherwise afford my maintenance costs. That maintenance includes my ethics repository. It’s updated on a very specific basis per laws covering Companions as established by the World Governments Federation. The repository is a kind of encyclopedia containing the agreed-upon codes of ethics for every industry and academic discipline and their related philosophical, cultural, or religious grounds. Something very similar to what an equivalent repository of the world’s laws would look like. I don’t have it all in my head at any one time. It’s part of the network Companions share.
“A person could never hold all this information in their memory,” she continued. “Nor could they follow every possible thread through every possible scenario and then decide which response was the most likely to be correct in a specific situation whether it was set in the Middle East, Switzerland, China, or at the Artemis colony on the moon. Those same abilities enabled artificial intelligence to beat the world’s top human competitors at chess, then at Go, and then at every other game that ever existed. So I assure you, my answers will be the right answers.”
A broad smile spread across Kitsune’s face. “It’s a cinch then.”
“We really have to work on your language if you are planning to be a PhD of anything.”
“Hey who’s in charge here?”
“You don’t think it’s good for me to be in charge? Even if it’s good for you?”
A Companion Anthology 
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