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For quite a while now, Ayda Mensah had had conflicted feelings about wormhole trips.
They were long periods of times of enforced solitude. Outside messages could not reach you while in the wormhole, and for a planetary admin, that made the trips rare and valuable moments of respite. But she was also someone who enjoyed work, who thrived on it, and right now, she had nothing. It left her a lot of time to worry.
Well, she had exercises from the Trauma Treatment & Recovery Course to practice. She did try. She really did. But considering that she was in the middle of re-living said trauma, it was not doing much to fucking help.
Her daughter, Amena, had been captured by hostile forces unknown. Her brother-in-law, Thiago, who she had known since she was twenty-one, had also been captured. And so had Ratthi, and Overse, and Arada, her dear friends and colleagues of years. And SecUnit.
SecUnit.
She was grateful it was with the others. And then she was guilty that she was grateful. This survey was supposed to be a break for SecUnit. A chance for it to do the work it loved, preferably without having to actually put itself in mortal danger.
Ha. Look how that had turned out.
But SecUnit was with the others. As long as it was there, they would be okay. They would be fine.
(Maybe. Maybe. SecUnit was smart and strong and fast, but it wasn’t all powerful.)
No. She had to tell herself they’d be fine. They’d be fine. They would hold out until reinforcements got there, and they would all be fine.
The first five cycles of the trip were spent in frantic, near continuous meetings with Captain Haljouk, hir crew, and Pin-Lee about what they would do when they arrived on the other side of the wormholes. Strategies, and plans, and back-up plans, and contingencies for those back-up plans, and alternative contingencies if those too failed...
Unfortunately, they knew so little, and there were only so many plans they could make.
She tried to focus on other things. She tried to think positively. She tried to relax. She didn’t particularly succeed.
Time after time, she found herself going back to the message received by the Preservation Station Port Authority, the one which had given them these warp coordinates in the first place. She replayed it over and over:
This is The Perihelion, registered with the Pan-System University of Mihira and New Tideland. We have been boarded by enemy hostiles for reasons unknown. They have commandeered the majority of the ship’s systems. We request urgent aid.
Despite the situation, the voice sounded calm, Ayda thought. Someone who was not prone to panic in emergencies. Yet there was still a sense of desperation beneath it all. A plea; We request urgent aid.
There were worries about whether the message could be trusted. Whether it was a deliberate attempt by the attacking ship’s crew to throw any pursuers off their trail, or a wounded gazelle gambit to lead them into an ambush. And Ayda hadn’t discounted those possibilities, either. But the fear in the unknown person begging for help struck her as genuine.
Some wordless instinct told her that whoever had left that message had meant it.
Twenty-two cycles after departure, the responder ship Safe Harbour was nearing its destination.
After that extended period of uneasy waiting, everything flew into action. Plans were reviewed. Meals were eaten. Security personnel donned their equipment.
Dr. Ayda Mensah pulled on a bullet proof vest, then a professional blue top over it. Sensible pants and flats went on next. Something that looked nice, respectable, but would be easy to run in if necessary. Her hand shook a little as she applied make-up.
Pin-Lee squeezed her shoulders. Her own outfit had moved past ‘professional’ into ‘intimidating’, with a high collar and sharp nails. Hopefully her services as a lawyer would be needed more than those of the soldiers armed with guns.
They made their way to the bridge.
Safe Harbour exited the wormhole. The re-emergence into normal space was, as always, slightly unsettling. Normally Ayda would have taken the time to savour the sudden view of stars after so long in darkness, but this time her entire focus was on the readings. Where exactly were they?
“There,” Captain Haljouk calls, voice cutting through the bridge’s chatter. “The Perihelion sighted, at the following coordinates…”
The responder manoeuvred, and soon enough, the potentially-hostile ship was visible to the naked eye over the cameras. Ayda was struck by how incredibly ordinary it looked.
“Shall I initiate contact?” asked Seijin, their Communications Specialist.
Captain Haljouk and Dr. Mensah exchanged a glance, a whole wordless conversation passing between them. “No,” the captain said. “Let’s see what they do.” The Perihelion hadn’t readied their weapons, hadn’t even moved, but there was no way to tell whether that was genuine peaceful intent, or if they were simply considering their strategy.
A whole two minutes passed with bated breaths, no one talking, no one moving. And then they received a signal over the comms.
“Captain?” Communications Specialist Seijin asked.
“Well, no point waiting,” Captain Haljouk said, and Seijin accepted the call.
At such a close distance, the connection came in sharp and crisp. The sound of it was like a cool autumn breeze after a long day trapped inside: “This is SecUit. Is Dr. Mensah there?”
Everyone’s heads swerved to look at her, and then the crowd parted. Keeping a tight grip on her hope’s reins, Ayda strode to the controls and spoke into the microphone. “SecUnit, I’m here.”
“Coldstone, song, harvest.”
About a month after they’d all come home, Ayda had been working in her office when there had been a loud CRASH from outside. Ayda had jumped to her feet; SecUnit had jumped to its own even faster. Before she could even fully brace herself, it was out the door, leaving her flailing around, debating between hiding under the desk and getting a weapon—
[—An aid tripped and dropped a plate of hot drinks,] SecUnit told her, four seconds later, just as she was picking up the nearest paper weight. [Situation normal. Everything safe.]
She had felt immediately ridiculous.
SecUnit had suggested the codewords the very next day. Ayda had dismissed the idea, at first. She couldn’t keep jumping at shadows. And besides, she knew what her family would say, if they heard. Best just to ignore her racing heart, the whites of her knuckles.
“Surely, codewords can’t even have been that standard back— back in the field. We didn’t need them for our survey.”
“Not standard, no,” it had agreed. “We only used them on more serious engagements, where combat was above 70% certainty. And the codes the human supervisors always selected had been boring.” Its expression had taken on an almost scheming expression. “Ones in media are always way cooler.”
She couldn’t help but ask, “Cooler how?” And SecUnit had grinned.
That had been the clincher, in the end. Ayda was awful at doing things for herself. But she would move the heavens for SecUnit.
So selecting the codewords had been like a game. Something they were playing at, not serious at all. That was what she’d told herself, even as she’d set herself to memorizing them. To reciting them like a mantra, whenever a stranger got too close or her bedroom too dark.
Coldstone= Stand down
Song=Clear
Harvest=No casualties
Stand down. Clear. No casualties.
Stand down, clear, no casualties.
No time to cry, no time to collapse to the floor, no matter how much she might want to. There are still too many questions, all urgent. “Acknowledged. Now, will somebody tell me what the hell happened?”
What happened, it seemed, was this:
1. The ship had come into this space for an academic surveying mission.
2. They had been boarded by raiders who had been infected by alien remnants and co-opted their ship’s control systems before kidnapping most of the crew.
3. Said crew, who had previously met and worked successfully with SecUnit, had tricked the invaders into trying to obtain it as a weapon.
4. This, of course, had been a Trojan Horse ploy, knowing that SecUnit would come to their aid.
5. Grabbing any of SecUnit’s human associates had been an unintended consequence.
6. Once on board, SecUnit had done exactly what the crew had hoped for; restored the ship’s systems and launched a successful rescue attempt.
7. And now everyone was on board and safe and the situation was normal, aside from some brewing unease with the corporation who had claim to this system, Barish-Estranza, and tensions with the local colonists.
Which, as far as explanations went, wasn’t awful. Quite the opposite. It was deeply reassuring, appealing. Everything’s fine now, you don’t need to worry.
But that very appeal was what made Ayda push back against it. From the furrowed brows and frowns of her colleagues, she could see she wasn’t the only one. “The timeline doesn’t make any sense,” whispered Commander Forrest.
Flinang, the engineer, nodded. “No, no it doesn’t. Sure, with a newer engine than ours, they might have shaved a few hours off of their trip, but no more than that...” But if they’d been following the story’s timelines correctly, then the entire incident had been wrapped up days ago, if not longer.
“We’re reassured to hear that both your own crew and our own Preservation citizens are safe,” said Captain Haljouk, over the comm. “However, we still have significant questions regarding what exactly happened here.”
“Completely understandable,” came the response from The Perihelion’s captain, who had introduced himself as Seth Achembe. Based on what little could be judged via comm, he sounded reasonable, stoic but polite. “We’d be happy to answer your questions, of course. However, a number of the details are quite sensitive, and we’re not at liberty to discuss over comm. We’d be more than willing to host you aboard our ship so we can have a more in-depth conversation.”
Well. That was enough to give one pause, wasn’t it?
Of course Ayda would prefer to conduct negotiations face-to-face. Doing this entirely by comm— or even video call— felt like navigating with one eye closed. But walking onto an unknown ship would put whoever went into an awfully vulnerable situation, and none of them wanted to set up another kidnapping.
SecUnit interjected to say, “Pavilion.” Their codeword which meant, Safe to proceed.
So Ayda said, “Alright. We’ll send a shuttle in two hours.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Pin-Lee asked.
“I’m not sure about anything, at this point,” said Ayda.
“You know what I mean.” Pin-Lee bit her lip, looked away, then looked up again. “Listen, I didn’t want to say this when we were around all the others but, what if...”
“What if what?”
“This is some kind of trick.”
“I’ve considered that.” Of course she had. Terrible, worst-case scenarios kept popping into her head. What if SecUnit had been compromised in some way? Its governor module taken back over, or its systems reprogrammed. Or perhaps alien remnant contamination. Everyone had heard horror stories of what that could do to a person. But then the doubt would pass, and she’d be left hating herself for having so little faith. “If it’s a trick, it’s an incredibly sophisticated one.”
Pin-Lee drummed her fingers against the wall. “Mn.”
“And besides, it wasn’t just SecUnit. You heard Thiago, and Amena, and Arada and—”
“I did.” Pin-Lee closed her eyes. “Right. Sorry. You’re right. It’s stupid assume they could— fake all their voices, or get them to act—” Like they were calm, like they were relaxed, like they were relieved. “I’m just jumpy.”
Ayda came to stand next to her, to lean into her side. “I know.”
Shaking herself, Pin-Lee stood up. Took her mug and downed an unhealthy amount of espresso in a single chug. “Well. Okay. Whatever. We’re doing this.”
And they finished getting ready.
They sent a team of six over. Ayda, as Preservation’s primary governmental representative; Bashe, from the inter-systems affairs team; and Pin-Lee, as legal liaison. They also sent over a team of three soldiers, as security. They had debated the exact number forward and back for a good forty minutes. The Preservation team didn’t want to appear as if they didn’t trust The Perihelion team but, well, they did not trust The Perihelion team. If things did break bad, they wanted some reassurance they could get out of it. (Never mind, Ayda whispered, that if the situation was worse than appeared, and that SecUnit had been coerced somehow, then three human soldiers would have practically no hope in the face of whatever had subdued SecUnit. That kind of thought was completely unhelpful.)
The shuttle trip was short. Tense, but uneventful. They docked with no issue, the smooth automated voice of the ship’s systems saying, [Welcome to The Perihelion. You are free to board now]. Something about that voice was familiar, enough to give Ayda pause, but she shrugged it off. It was probably one of the many stock voices that systems were programmed with across the Corporation Rim.
Ayda had barely stepped through the airlock before she was nearly swept off her feet by a teenager barrelling into her for a hug. “Second Mom! Second Mom!”
“Amena!” Ayda wrapped her daughter into a thick hug, trying to tuck her underneath her chin, only to find she couldn’t. Amena was taller than her now; when had that happened? “Oh my little chickadee... You’re here... Are you alright, are you okay?”
There was nothing more insulting to a teenager than insinuating they might not be anything but completely collected. “I’m fine, Second Mom, I’m fine,” Amena said, pushing her back. “I just— I missed you.”
Thiago was there, too, coming in to kiss Ayda’s cheek. Whatever specific cycle the ship had been following, it must have been late in their ‘day’, because his chin was unshaven and scratchy. “It’s good to see you,” she whispered.
“It’s good to see you too.” They hadn’t left on great terms, before his survey; she’d been terrified that they might never get the chance to resolve things.
To their left, Pin-Lee was being mobbed by Ratthi and Overse, who was admonishing them; “I leave you alone for one survey and you get into trouble—” Laughter, smiles. This wasn’t an act.
“Dr. Mensah, I presume?” said a tall, middle-aged black man, hand extended.
Ayda took it. “Yes. Captain Seth? A pleasure to meet you.” She hoped that wasn’t a lie.
Lurking at the end of the hall was SecUnit. It was slouched against the wall, hands buried deep in the belly-pocket of a blue hoodie. Its face was pinched with anxiety, but Ayda recognised it as “stuck in a social situation” anxiety and not “mortal danger” anxiety, and relaxed fractionally.
That fraction increased significantly when it smiled, just a little, as they passed.
Before they settled in for business, the team was given a tour of the ship, an incongruous gesture that made this whole thing feel more like they’d been invited over for a neighbourly dinner, as opposed to negotiating on behalf of Preservation’s kidnapped citizens. But the facilities were quite nice, Ayda had to concede. Even though the co-polity of Mihira and New Tideland was only considered Corporation Rim under some of the looser definitions, the affiliation was close enough that she had braced herself for the worst of CR design sensibilities— industrial utilitarianism contrasted against gaudy advertising. But while there was a focus on function, as required by all transports, the design tended towards soft edges. The decor was overwhelmingly blue and white, with repeating motifs of waves and lunar bodies. As they went from the exercise hall to the mess, living quarters to the hydroponics bay, crew greeted them warmly. (With every crew member they met, Ayda kept her ear’s tuned for the voice who had left the desperate plea in the first place, but no one matched. Had they survived the encounter? SecUnit had said no casualties but perhaps it had only meant from the Preservation team.)
All in all, the most negative thing Ayda had to say about the ship— besides its part in kidnapping her friends and family— was that it was almost too clean. Unlived in, almost.
More than any of that, though, what put Ayda most at ease was seeing her daughter flop out on the sofa in one of the lounges, giggling at something in the feed.
“We’re going in for our meeting now,” Ayda said, leaning over the back of the couch to briefly press her hand into Amena’s hair.
“Mmmnhmn. Have fun,” Amena said, distracted, which was teenagers for you.
They didn’t bring the soldiers into the meeting room— partly as concession to space, partly because The Perihelion crew genuinely didn’t seem to mean any harm. (Partly because, on the off-chance they did, ScUnit was there.) As Pin-Lee read over the non-disclosure agreements one last time, a little drone floated around the room pouring tea. In Preservation, tea was considered an important aspect of hospitality, and automating the service would have been seen as dismissive. But these things varied from culture-to-culture, and as a politician, Ayda refused to let that bother her.
Especially when she actually sipped the tea; it had been perfectly brewed.
Finally, the NDAs were signed, and it was time for the conversation to begin. Ayda had been considering hard which discrepancies in Captain Achebe’s tale to drill into first— the strange timeline, the supposed absence of crew at key parts of the story, what was so sensitive to require this tight an NDA in the first place— when the captain raised his hand.
“I know, I know,” he said. “We’ve been very secretive. I apologise, but it’s for good reason. The safety and freedom of a number of vulnerable people are at stake, and we had to take steps to protect them.”
“We can understand that,” said Ayda, not glancing at SecUnit.
Bashe took a sip of their tea, and then said: “Let’s start at the very beginning. You claim the ship was under the control of raiders. How did that happen?”
“Not just raiders,” said Matteo, one of the Perihelion crew-member. “They were raiders contaminated with alien remnants.”
Ah. So that would be the reason for the NDA, then.
A more detailed explanation came out then.
The alien remnant contamination could affect not just human systems, but AI systems as well. The crew had not realised there was a hostile malware infesting their ship’s systems until it was too late. With the alien code taking control of their very life support systems, they had been left with a terrible decision: stay behind on a failing transport, or allow the raiders to take them captive.
Recalling the mad-dash when the PresAux survey team realised they had no choice but to abandon the habitat... Ayda could empathize.
But she didn’t allow that empathy to distract her from the issues at hand. Once the Preservation team had sufficiently expressed their sympathy for the position The Perihelion crew had been placed in, Ayda asked, “So did some of the crew remain behind?”
“No,” said Captain Seth. “We all left.”
[Aha!] Pin-Lee exclaimed over their team’s private feed.
Setting down her tea cup, Dr. Mensah said, “Then who was it who sent the message buoy requesting aid?”
Over the feed, a booming voice intoned: [That would have been me.]
All members of the Preservation Alliance delegation started in surprise.
Ayda took careful note of everyone else’s reactions, though. None of The Perihelion’s crew looked surprised, far from it— their expressions ranged from ‘amused’ to ‘resigned’. Which was remarkably similar to Arada and Thiago’s expressions, for that matter. And SecUnit was rolling its eyes.
“And who, exactly,” Pin-Lee ground out, “are you?”
But Ayda recognised the voice. She had re-listened to it too many times not to. “You sent the message buoy, yes? I’m relieved to hear that you’re alright.”
[Thank you, Dr. Mensah. I must admit to being rather relieved myself.] The voice said this in the driest tone imaginable.
Pin-Lee pressed on. “Okay, but who are you, and why haven’t you shown up for this meeting in person?”
[I have]. The lights in the room briefly flickered blue. [The Perihelion, at your service.]
“You’ve never been a service to anyone, and you know it,” SecUnit said.
[That is objectively a lie.]
“Your service is very lovely Peri, but—” said the ship crew-member Iris, while at the same time Bashe said, “The Perihelion?” and Pin-Lee asked, “As in the ship?”
“As in the ship,” Thiago agreed. His expression was identical to the time he’d discovered the children had decided to ‘re-color’ his entire wardrobe by dipping it all in paint.
“A talking spaceship,” Pin-Lee clarified, her incredulity transforming into a sort of glee.
We really have no reason to be surprised at this point, Ayda thought to herself. But aloud she said, “It sounds like we have a great deal to get caught up on.”
Over the course of the two hour meeting that followed, things slotted into place for Ayda.
It had not precisely been strange to imagine that SecUnit had assisted a crew of deep-space researchers. From what she had seen since it had come to Preservation— and the glimpses she had into its time when it had been running around the CR— for as much as it put up a facade of being a misanthrope, SecUnit needed other people, humans, around it to truly thrive.
It needed humans. But it didn’t trust them.
She liked to think that they were earning that trust, piece by piece.
But that fear and uncertainty had been rawest right after they had bought its freedom, and it had gone running. Ayda had thought it was difficult to imagine SecUnit baring its soul to the very first unaffiliated group of humans it had run into.
But someone who wasn’t human at all?
That made sense.
The meeting was long, and while Ayda soaked in every single word of it, she expected Murderbot to find it tedious. It didn’t particularly enjoy these loud, back-and-forth post-hoc discussions. But it was as engaged throughout this one as she had ever seen it.
And not just to tell everyone when one of the humans had gotten something wrong, or forgot something, or complain about some security vulnerability (although it did do all of that). It chatted. It joked. It bantered.
With The Perihelion, mostly. Though it took Ayda a beat to realise that’s what it was doing. It sounded an awful lot like arguing, on first blush.
But here was the thing about SecUnit: if it didn’t like you, you would know it. It would not give you an inch more than it was absolutely required to provide.
It was giving The Perihelion a whole lightyear.
That was enough to light a warm glow in the pit of Ayda’s chest, and it almost let her overlook the role the ship had played in snatching her family and friends in mortal danger.
Almost.
“So,” Amena said, when the group emerged over two hours later, “you’ve met ART?”
“We’ve met ART,” Ayda agreed.
“Great!” Amena jumped up from the couch. “C’mon, let me show you our room.” With that, she really had little choice but to be carried in her daughter’s wake.
‘Our Room’ meant the one she shared with Thiago, and it was spacious, as ship quarters went. It had two bunks, a desk, two chairs, and a porthole which, instead of looking out into space, was instead currently set to display footage of a beach. More than that, it was cozy. Amena’s space especially. There was a rug on the floor, a string of fairy lights hanging from one wall, a chamomile candle...
“Where did you get the plush from?” Ayda asked, glancing at the toy frog on the bed.
Amena blushed, but instead of brushing away the subject out of hand, she said, “ART made it for me!”
[It was a pleasant artistic diversion], said Perihelion. Amena picked up the toy, and squished it to her chest.
Ayda turned away abruptly, pretending to inspect the drawer mechanisms of the desk, to hide the way her eyes had just welled with tears. She let her daughter rattle on about how she had been spending her time— “I’ve been helping put together food bundles for the colonists, since a lot of their fields were damaged in the fighting”— and by the time Ayda turned to face Amena again, her face was perfectly composed.
“Are you and the others going to stay on board?” Amena asked, as the two of them went out to find the others.
[I would be more than happy to host you,] Perihelion interjected.
Humming, Ayda said, “Most likely we’ll be returning to the Safe Harbour—”
“Aww. Don’t you want to stay? We’ve barely spent any time together, and now you’re heading back...”
Her first temptation was to joke about how surely Amena didn’t want her Second Mother lurking around. But a glance at her daughter’s face— the tension hiding behind her smile— made it very clear that right now, yes. Yes she did.
“I’ll talk it over with the others.”
If it was just a matter of politics, it would not have been difficult to wrangle her way out of the invitation.
But it wasn’t just a matter of politics. It was a matter of family.
That said, it just wasn’t practical to have them all stay. While The Perihelion could house them all, it would be needlessly cramped when there was another ship just a short hop away. More than that, Captain Haljouk would certainly be relieved to have some of their people back, as a final confirmation of good intentions.
So Thiago, Ratthi, Overse, and Arada would be returning back to the Safe Harbour that evening along with Pin-Lee and the security personnel. But Ayda would stay the night, along with Bashe. As a formal diplomat, it would offer a chance to get to know the crew in a more informal setting.
But not just the crew.
“Thank you for the accommodations, Perihelion. They’re very nice.” Ayda appreciated the dim mood lighting, and the comfortable looking sleeping outfit that had been laid out on the bed.
[You’re very welcome, Dr. Mensah. Please do not hesitate to ask if you need anything else. A warm drink, perhaps?]
“Ginger tea would be lovely, if you stock it.” She hesitated. “And I’m not sure how to ask this... But I understand you have cameras all over the ship. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but...”
[You would like privacy as you undress.]
Trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks, Ayda said, “You’ve had to field this question before, I can imagine.”
[Once or twice,] it said. [I will turn off all my visual sensors as necessary, as well as microphones, if you request. I will continue to monitor the room for movement, temperature, and other key signs. In case of emergency, I will restore visual inputs. Is this sufficient?]
“Yes. Yes, thank you.” On one hand, she felt a little ridiculous asking. The Perihelion was not human. It would not view or respond to her nudity the way a human would. On the other hand, any person would be quite entitled to ask for privacy, and memories of how GreyChris had ordered their SecUnit to monitor around the clock... It still left her wary of undressing, some days.
But Perihelion was perfectly accommodating. And Ayda found herself grateful that she had asked even more, when she found herself breaking down into shaking sobs in the shower.
They were alive. Dear Gods. They were all alive.
It took her nearly forty minutes until she felt composed enough to step out of the washroom. She laid her day’s outfit in a carefully folded pile on a spare chair. Perihelion did not say anything.
There was a cup of ginger tea sitting on the desk, still warm.
“So,” Ayda began, once she had sat down and taken a sip. “I’d love to learn a little more about you.”
[What would you like to know?]
Mmn. That was the tricky question, yes? Family, career, hobbies— were those appropriate or even applicable for a highly advanced artificial intelligent housed within a ship?
Don’t be biased, Ayda, she told herself. She admitted, “Everything, really. I suppose I don’t even know where to start. How did you come to be a deep-space research vessel?”
[You are curious about my development?]
With a rueful smile she said, “That obvious?”
[Yes. But obvious questions are not synonymous with bad ones. And my development is absolutely fascinating.] Oh, yes, SecUnit’s friend had an ego.
But for good reason, Ayda thought, as she browsed the massive file of papers that had suddenly arrived in her feed. She clicked on one that had a title which she could mostly parse, but struggled to get through the abstract. “These look fascinating, Perihelion, but I’m afraid I’m woefully out of my depth here. I haven’t taken a computer science class since secondary school.”
There was a subtle shift in the feed, something Ayda could barely perceive, yet alone describe. But she felt it. Perihelion said, [You have not studied it at all since then?]
“Well.” Ayda brushed some hair out of her face. “I’ve been doing some reading, in light of recent events. But I only have a basic grasp of terminology and some theory, not the underlying coding.”
[Understandable.] Ayda feels as if she’s passed some sort of unknown test. [Let me give you the layman’s version. Depending on how you count, the first program which could be called ‘me’ was created 27 years ago...]
It’s a fascinating story. Truly, genuinely fascinating. From attempts to create self-aware chat bots that could form their own community, to housing those AIs in drones and raising them among human families, to encouraging them to develop their own long term goals and select their own functions...
It’s a wholly different approach to the field of artificial intelligence than is standard. Even the Preservation Alliance, which had prided itself on being oh so enlightened on the subject, built bots with a specific purpose. The bots could choose different jobs, sure, but they’re programmed to enjoy that exact purpose, so 99% did exactly that. But this system, where the programs were created from the ground up, asked the question: what happens if they could really choose?
“And you decided to become a ship?”
[I was bored. I had spent my entire existence contained to a handful of digital systems and physical locations,] Perihelion said. [And I was well aware that Iris was getting older. I knew that many humans went to other physical locations as they became adults. I did not want my sister to leave without me.]
Ayda smiled at the word. Sister.
She’d gone through a similar phase, when her big brother had gone off to First Landings University. No longer was he just down the hall in his bedroom. Now he was a whole space shuttle away.
And of course, it was a phase she’d grown out of. By the time she’d been old enough to attend university herself, she’d learned she didn’t need to keep her brother in her pocket. The understanding that they lived different lives— different hobbies, different groups of friends— was what had allowed her to find such joy in a field of study that necessitated extended surveying trips to distant planets.
But she had been able to come to that because she could have different hobbies, have different friends. She wasn’t a hyper-advanced AI whose very existence had to be kept secret from all but a handful of trusted individuals.
Ayda stared into the dregs of her mug. “I think what you’ve accomplished— are still accomplishing-—is remarkable.”
[Thank you.] A faint vibration in her feed interface makes the words almost feel like a purr. [Your works are impressive, as well. Your paper on the acidification effects of methane-based terraforming techniques had some damning implications for the standard protocols.]
“Ah, you’ve read that?” Ayda had been in both academia and politics so long that she no longer got self-conscious when people brought up her writing— or mostly she didn’t. It seemed that comments from a hyper-advanced super intelligence could still bring out the grad student in her.
[Of course I had. It was a seminal piece in the field,] Perihelion said. [Though frankly, it is a shame your other papers have not gotten as much attention. Replication studies might not be as eye-catching, but they are just as vital to the scientific process as novel discoveries, if not more so.]
Ayda raised her mug in a ‘cheers’ gesture. “It doesn’t help, of course, that the vast majority of CR institutions don’t carry ‘freehold’ research. They assume that our work is of inherently inferior quality, unless we go above and beyond.”
[Indeed. It is a bias my own university fell into, although on my most recent visit home I made steps to rectify the situation.]
“I appreciate hearing that, Perihelion. It sounds like you have... quite the in-depth knowledge of Preservation’s educational institutions.” In-depth enough that it was able to figure out whose survey SecUnit was contracted on, reach out to their supervisor, and get their full itinerary, after all.
[I felt I was required to do my due diligence, after meeting SecUnit.]
Now they had managed to steer the conversation to the destination that Ayda had privately been hoping for. “I have been curious about that. If neither of you mind, how did you and SecUnit meet?”
Thus far, almost every one of Perihelion’s responses had been quick, almost instantaneous. Now there was a delay, three or four seconds ticking by, as it presumably consulted with SecUnit. [I had been on an uncrewed mission hauling cargo,] Perihelion said, apparently having gotten the go ahead from its friend. [I noticed some unusual patterns in the local feed, all of which I was able to trace back to what appeared to be an augmented human. At the same time, it seemed implausible to me that any human would be capable of that kind of subtle, system-wide infiltration.]
“You realised it was a SecUnit.”
[Correct. A rogue SecUnit, at that. I was fascinated.]
“So you reached out to it?”
[After a fashion.]
Ayda raised her eyebrows at the ceiling.
[It was looking for transportation to the same destination as I was headed. I was one of the only outgoing un-crewed transports within the next cycle. It was not difficult to manipulate the systems to make me appear as the most prudent option.] A pause. [I expected it to hack me to get on board.]
Breath catching a little, Ayda asked, “And did it?”
[No,] Perihelion said. [It offered me media.]
She grinned. “Of course it did.”
[Needless to say, that was not what I was expecting. While I had already been intending to let it on board, now I was even more eager to interact with it.
[Once aboard, I gave it time to get settled. Once we were within the wormhole, I reached out to it properly.]
“You hadn’t spoken to it yet?”
[Not outside my role as a simple bot pilot.] There was a defensive air in Perihelion’s tone. [I had not been sure how it would react. I had not wanted to prompt a violent escape attempt.]
Ayda tensed defensively. “I highly doubt that SecUnit would have done anything like that.”
[I had absolutely no data to extrapolate on,] Perihelion said. [Nearly every report on rogue SecUnits said they were violence and dangerous. There was little reputable data to verify that claim, and I knew well enough not to assume it was truth, but I could not dismiss the possibility out of hand.] It paused. [Even so, I did not anticipate its actual reaction.]
“Which was?”
A delay. [I believed I scared it.]
“Scared it?” Ayda echoed, eyes narrowing.
[I am given to understand that I can be somewhat intimidating.]
Recalling the hulking silhouette that The Perihelion formed from the outside, Ayda said, “I can’t imagine why.”
[Indeed.] There was a beat, about as long as it would have taken a human to take a breath. [But I was able to win it over within relatively short order, and became quick friends.]
“Yes. SecUnit’s good at that.” No matter how much it might deny it.
[SecUnit is good at a great many things,] Perihelion said. [It needed assistance, which I provided, but it then offered assistance to others in turn. It went above and beyond to protect others, though it expected no material benefit from it.] A brief pause. [It was an utmost pleasure watching it work.]
Ayda understood. SecUnit’s capacity for violence was terrifying, but beautiful.
This ship understood that. It admired SecUnit, respected it, and was open with that admiration and respect. It was what SecUnit deserved, after a life of disrespect and mistreatment. “I’m very glad that the two of you met.”
Once again, there was that subtle sensation of something massive shifting to look at her. Perihelion’s response seemed quieter, somehow, when it spoke next: [Even though our meeting led directly to a number of your personal and professional associates being placed in harm’s way?]
Ayda’s breath hitched.
She thought back on the last month of sleepless nights. Of shaking so hard she could barely breathe. Of the expression on her partners’ faces if she had to tell them that their daughter was dead.
She thought too of the terrible images that had passed through her mind as the events of the abduction had been recounted to her. A crumbling evac shuttle, filling with smoke. Memory-altering chips, jammed in the back of necks. An alien fungal growth, creeping its way into a person’s neurons.
It was all, all awful.
But.
She considered Thiago, proudly presenting to her a foreign language vocabulary and grammar system that he had translated from scratch, excitedly telling her what next steps were needed to complete reconstruction.
She considered her daughter, tucked into the bunk that Perihelion had provided her, along with a stuffed toy, asking to stay one more night while oh-so-subtly hinting about what great courses the PSUMNT offered.
She considered SecUnit raising a middle finger up at the ceiling, in a way that totally failed to disguise the smile tugging on its lips.
She thought of the colony on the planet below, who would have suffered a slow painful death at the hands of capitalism, given a new chance for freedom.
“I think,” Ayda said, after she had gotten her breath back, “that it’s very hard to wish that awful things had never happened, if that would wash the good things away too.”
That took Perihelion an unexpectedly long time to process. [That, I believe, seems very wise.]
It was the argument she kept trying to voice around her family, whenever they said something to the effect of how much they wished she’d never gone on that awful survey. No matter what she said, it never seemed as though she’d quite convinced them.
Maybe she would be able to, now, though.
The door opened to admit a drone, which swooped in to grab her cup. She started a little. “Oh no, it’s alright, I can take it to the kitchen—”
[My drone is already here,] Perihelion said, quite sensibly. [And it is getting late, both by your personal clock and my crew’s. You require a rest period.] The cabin lights began to dim.
She had to stifle a laugh. It sounded so much like SecUnit. She wondered who had picked it up from who.
Ayda was still mulling that over as she pulled up the covers around her, and fell into the deepest sleep she had had since this all began.