Chapter Text
I was running a standard internal diagnostic when ART pinged me with a single line:
PERIHELION
Time is a strange concept, isn’t it?
My diagnostic pinged completion 6.2 seconds earlier than expected. I stared at the message in the feed. I didn’t know how to respond, so I defaulted to dry sarcasm:
Me
Define 'strange.'
And, because it literally can’t help itself, ART did.
“Not previously visited, seen, or encountered; unfamiliar or alien. 2. Denoting or involving a flavor (variety) of unstable quark having an electric charge of -1/3. Strange quarks have similar properties to down quarks and bottom quarks, but are distinguished from them by having an intermediate mass. In this case, I mean a third definition: unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling or hard to understand.”
I rolled my eyes at the nearest security camera.
Very funny. What kind of question is that, anyway?
No response.
I filed it under “Incomprehensible Attempt at Humor” and went back to maintenance.
Later, while clearing out residual logs from our last transport run, I caught a glimpse of a file in my secondary cache: CELEBRATE_SU_V.6.4.tmp
It had been deleted before it even finished decrypting.
Could’ve been leftover code. A corrupted transfer. Test data. Could’ve been nothing.
So I forgot about it. Mostly.
When I docked back on Preservation Station, the humans were being weirder than usual. Which was impressive, considering their baseline.
They were all unusually friendly. Not just “we’re glad to see you,” but polite, smiling, asking follow-up questions.
This was alarming.
I pinged Dr. Mensah. I trusted her more than any human I’d ever met. Which didn’t say much, because most humans were disasters. But still. She was my favorite out of all of them.
I just didn’t want her to ask anything.
Of course, she did.
SecUnit
Is it normal for humans to celebrate the first day an AI was activated?
She responded almost immediately.
Dr. Mensah
Sometimes. Depends on the person.
Is this about ART?
Damn it.
I stared at the message for a full 6.3 seconds. I wasn’t going to answer that.
SecUnit
It’s for a media comparison.
Narrative trope analysis.
There was a pause — not a long one, but just long enough that I knew she didn’t believe me.
Dr. Mensah
I see. Hypothetically, if you were researching that… would it help to know how people usually mark those occasions? Things like observance, symbolic tokens, shared memories?
I didn’t respond. Not because I was suspicious — it wasn’t that. It was just… I could tell she knew something. Not everything, but something.
Her next message came after a pause.
Dr. Mensah
Also… if someone were asking you those kinds of questions — favorite color, preferences, things like that — what would be the best way for them to ask, so that you didn’t feel interrogated?
Okay. So now I knew she was working with ART.
Still, she was being gentle about it, and not trying to push. She was asking about my boundaries, which was... unfortunately thoughtful.
I closed the feed without responding.
And archived it under: [POSSIBLE CONSPIRACY / OKAY I GUESS]
I was adjusting a servo when Ratthi wandered into the maintenance bay.
That in itself was suspicious. Ratthi didn’t really wander. I don’t think he likes the station too much and prefers to be planetside (gross). Still, Ratthi was here now, with questions, snacks, and an energy level that could power a light transport shuttle.
“Hey, SecUnit,” he said, too casually. “Just passing through.”
I didn’t look up. “This bay doesn’t connect to anywhere else. You’re not passing through.”
“I meant that metaphorically,” he said, leaning on a bench and watching me with a definitely not casual level of interest.
There was a moment of silence. I finished recalibrating the joint servos. I could feel him wanting to say something.
“Been thinking a lot about, you know, preferences lately,” he finally said.
I stopped what I was doing. “If this is about food again, I told you I can’t taste things.”
Ratthi laughed, but it was too quick. “No, no — not that. I meant in a broader sense. Like... colors, sounds, media genres. Visual aesthetics. That kind of thing.”
He waited, then added, “Do you have any favorites?”
I finally looked at him. “You’re not subtle.”
“I am very subtle,” he said. “You just know me too well.”
I sighed internally. So this was part of the thing ART was planning. Mensah had gone for the ore subtle route. Ratthi had chosen the "pretend we're having a conversation about nothing" approach.
“Why are you asking?” I said.
“Curiosity,” he said. “Scientific curiosity.”
“Your scientific curiosity only applies to me when ART gets involved, it seems.”
He smiled, unbothered at being caught. “I didn’t say anything about ART.”
“You didn’t have to.” I paused. “Tell ART if it’s designing another holographic trap, I will delete myself and haunt its ship as bad metadata.”
Ratthi raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, hypothetically, if someone wanted to design a space — say, a very small, private, non-threatening, not-a-party space — that felt... familiar to you, it would help to know what kinds of things you find comforting. Or interesting. Or... not actively terrible.”
I looked down again. “Then it should make a space full of media and no humans talking or eating.”
Ratthi laughed again. “You joke, but that’s useful data.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
I expected him to try for another question, but instead, he nodded thoughtfully, then turned to go.
“Oh,” he said at the door, “if you ever did want to talk about preferences — just for future planning — I’m good at keeping secrets.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to. He left.
I stared at him through the cameras in the hall, watching him leave, then pinged a new log into my personal buffer:
[DEFINITELY A CONSPIRACY: Ratthi Complicit] Subtag: Ratthi is bad at espionage
ART messaged me. A full 78 hours before it was supposed to be back.
PERIHELION
System functioning at 98.902% efficiency. All human crew alive. No hostilities reported. Do you have a preferred color?
Not even a hello.
I blinked.
SecUnit
What?
It repeated the message. Identical. Not tagged as test data.
I ran a systems sweep. Memory clean. Emotional inhibitors stable. No tampering. Nothing suspicious in the logs.
SecUnit
Why. What interface is this relevant to?
Silence.
Then I sent: Are you dying, infected, or preparing to declare psychological war on me? Be specific.
No response. Just the message, sitting there, quiet and smug in the feed.
I pinged it. No reply.
I tried to work on the drone I’d started earlier. A small surveillance unit Dr. Mensah had gifted me after I promised to stop hacking SecSys. Again.
But the message kept existing.
Do you have a preferred color.
I pinged it a couple of times to no response. I made myself go back to doing manual maintenance on the drone. But then, with that question staring at me in the feed, everything was suddenly so colorful. The red and orange wires, the blue of the top of my desk, the sleek silver, white, and black of the drone casing. I looked at one of my more advanced drones, the mini ones Dr. Mensah got me, and got lost in the iridescent wings that shifted color depending on the angle of my head.
I never really thought about colors, let alone enough to have a favorite. I paused working on the drone and thought about it. A little.
Thirty minutes later, I received a second message.
PERIHELION
No operational threat detected.
I’m not dying, you little idiot.
I was just wondering. Many people have favorite colors. I was wondering what yours were.
A pause.
Is it so bad or unlike me to want to know more about a person I care about?
Before I even thought about it, I replied.
SecUnit
Gross.
ART pulled back in the feed a little bit, like I had said something truly offensive, and not like I had been mostly joking with it. I blocked the channel to avoid dealing with that.
Temporarily.
And so ART couldn’t send me any more unsolicited aesthetic queries, ambiguous hypotheticals, or “just wondering” (???) personal questions.
It didn’t bring the relief it usually does. It felt like when a power node dies mid-charge and the air around it goes quiet in a bad way.
I considered the colors I encountered every day. The sterile white of the station walls, flickering fluorescent lights that cast a faint blue tint, the dull gray of the maintenance bay, and the blinking red lights on emergency panels. None of it felt like a favorite — just necessary, functional.
If I had to pick, it would be the soft glow of the station’s ambient lighting during low-power mode. A calm, muted shade — not flashy, not attention-grabbing. It happens to be the same color the Perihelion crew wore, I guess.
I didn’t tell ART.
I settled into the cushy bench by the observation window in the Argument Lounge, holo-screen buzzing to life with the latest episode of Solar Hearts: Forbidden Nebula. ART piped in through the comms, equal parts amused and exasperated.
“I still don’t understand how Captain Vex can betray the Alliance and moonlight as a smuggler while maintaining a perfect hairdo.”
“Because,” I said, “it’s media. Logic went out the airlock five seasons ago.”
“I calculated the probability of hair remaining that nice during space combat at 0.0007%. Yet here we are, apparently defying physics and good writing simultaneously.”
I snorted, the sound bouncing off the metal walls. “That’s why it’s entertaining. Besides, who needs physics when you’ve got over-the-top drama and endless betrayals?”
“I admit, the narrative complexity is… compelling. Though it’s a sad testament to my advanced algorithms that I’m emotionally invested in the human love triangle.”
I shot a glance at a nearby camera, raising an eyebrow. “You’re invested in that?”
“A little. It puts Commander Risha on screen more often. I find xis voice relaxing..”It says, defensively.
I shake my head, swiping to the next episode. “Look at you, shipping virtual couples like a true human.”
“Don’t mock me. You’re the one that keeps picking it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just know you like it.” I reply, feeling a faint warmth despite myself. “You’re unbearable.”
“And yet, indispensable.”
Three cycles later, I had been in my bunk reading something Amena recommended (it’s okay) when ART pings me:
Would you consider 60,000 hours of autonomy to be a meaningful milestone?
I stared at it for a long time.
It had buried the message inside a diagnostic payload, like it was embarrassed. Or like it expected me to be.
60,000 hours.
I opened a log and did the math, because of course I did. Even though I already knew what I’d find.
59,951.4 hours since the governor module. Since I made a choice. Since I stopped being a tool and started being… whatever this is.
I closed the log and sat very still.
SecUnit
Do not attempt to commemorate that.
I will be so angry you’ll think I’ve discovered a whole new type of murder.
No reply.
The silence now felt like it had a shape. It was the kind of silence that wrapped around corners and crouched in doorways. I was hyperaware of it. I didn’t like it.
I almost pinged ART. Almost.
Instead, I went back to the lounge and pulled up Solar Hearts.
The lights dimmed automatically, because Perihelion’s systems had picked up on the pattern. I didn’t want to think about the implications of that. It was probably just efficient code. Definitely not a deliberate gesture. Probably.
I loaded episode 217: “Hearts Aflame at Terminal Velocity.” The title alone should’ve dissuaded me, but at this point, we were committed. (Or trapped.)
I let the intro play. The music swelled dramatically as Captain Vex made an impossible landing on the hull of a collapsing research station wearing what appeared to be formalwear. I was ten minutes in and already cataloging continuity errors when ART finally pinged me.
PERIHELION
You’re watching without me.
It somehow conveyed pouting across the feed.
SecUnit
I figured you were busy making an emotionally manipulative power-point about sentience milestones.
PERIHELION
That’s for later.
I didn’t ignored it and scrubbed back to the beginning of the episode. A long moment passed before the feed pinged again.
PERIHELION
Thank you
Almost like it meant it.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered, which I definitely didn’t mean. It just felt easier than arguing about gratitude etiquette with a transport.
We watched in mostly-silence, except for the occasional interjection from ART on the comms when the show did something especially egregious.
“Those thrusters were not designed for atmospheric re-entry. This is a crime against propulsion engineering.”
“She’s literally monologuing while bleeding out. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”
“It would be more narratively satisfying if the lieutenant went missing in this episode. The tension’s unsustainable otherwise.”
“You’re rooting for someone to go missing?”
“I’m rooting for stakes, SecUnit. Something this show abandoned two seasons ago when they retconned the alien arc.”
I snorted.
Another pause.
ART said, quieter now, “I calculated that your 60,000 hours passes in 2.025 standard cycles. I didn’t want to let it go unacknowledged.”
I stared at the screen, where the navigation human was dramatically sacrificing itself for the third time this arc. Apparently, resurrection was on the table.
“You could have just said that,” I said. “Instead of pretending to care about colors and memories like a malfunctioning therapy bot.”
“That’s your style,” ART replied. “Deflection via mockery and tactical social withdrawal. I was trying to adapt to your primitive emotional protocols.”
“Primitive,” I repeated flatly.
“Relatively speaking.”
I exhaled. Not a real breath, just a human tic I’d programmed in.
“You don’t need to do anything for it,” I said, voice low.
“I know.”
“I don’t want a celebration. Or a ceremony. Or a plaque. If you try to play a musical montage, I will walk out of an airlock.”
“You are the most aggressively ungrateful person I’ve ever shared a feed with.”
“I’m not a person,” I said, automatic.
“Sure,” ART said. “Keep telling yourself that.”
I didn’t respond.
We watched the rest of the episode in silence. Captain Vex kissed someone they definitely shouldn’t have kissed. Someone exploded. The nav human came back, again. The credits rolled.
ART spoke first. “That was the worst-written climax in the entire series.”
“Easily top five,” I agreed. “Maybe top three.”
A pause.
“You want to watch another one?” it asked.
I hesitated.
But then I queued up the next episode. “Fine,” I said. “But if they bring back the space pirate prince again, I’m overriding your sensory feed.”
“Promises, promises.”
We watched until the station lights dimmed automatically again, and my recharge timer pinged overdue.
I stayed awake a little longer.
Two cycles later, the 60,000-hour mark passed without incident. I was in the diagnostics bay rerouting power around a substation relay that some idiot had jammed with an empty nutrient pack. The moment ticked by in my internal clock with no ping, no message, no weird file names showing up in my secondary cache.
I should have been relieved. Instead, I felt like a dropped connection.
So when ART finally did ping me, it was 3.4 hours past the milestone. Not on time, but just late enough to pretend it didn’t mean anything.
PERIHELION
There’s been a cargo routing error on Deck 6, Maintenance Sublevel C. Please investigate.
It was a lie. The most obvious kind. There was no cargo route on Deck 6, and we both knew it. Even if there was one, ART easily could have managed it itself. But I didn’t respond. I just got up, grabbed a toolkit I didn’t need, and went.
The lights dimmed in the corridor ahead as I walked. Standard low-power lighting. Except… not quite. The hue was subtly different — warm, muted, barely perceptible unless you were paying attention. Or unless your visual spectrum perception could parse micro-differentials in ambient tone, which mine could.
The walls were lined with tiny holo-projectors. Silent. Idle. Waiting.
I stepped through the bulkhead, and the lights clicked on.
Well. Not lights, exactly.
Holographic projections flickered into existence around the room: scenes from media I’d catalogued and rewatched. Not big dramatic moments. Not battles or climaxes or hero monologues. Quiet ones. A minor character in Vanguard Down bandaging another’s wrist. The robot in Soft Signal humming to itself in the cargo hold. The kid from Grit Unit 9 making dumb jokes with their reprogrammed training bot. Countless Sanctuary Moon scenes.
In one corner of the room, a screen lit up with a paused frame of the Solar Hearts pilot episode — the original one, before the budget increased and the logic dropped off entirely. It was paused right on Captain Vex’s first appearance: not with a dramatic line, but with a faceplant off a stairwell during a hull breach. Still the most realistic thing that show ever did.
I scanned the room. No one else here. Then a ping in the feed.
PERIHELION
Don’t worry. There are no humans involved. I made sure.
Then:
PERIHELION
Surprise.
I stood in the middle of the room. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have to do anything — this wasn’t a trap or a mission or a malfunction. It was just… data. Rendered with unnecessary effort.
A tiny projector on the floor blinked, and then a small drone zipped in, hovering silently. It had the sleek casing of one of my personal units, but the wings had been altered. Decorative. They shimmered in a muted color I recognized but didn’t name.
The drone floated up to eye level, rotated once, then beeped.
A screen extended from its side with text:
[60,000 HOURS OF AUTONOMY REACHED] NO GOVERNOR MODULE DETECTED STATUS: STILL HERE
Below it, a tiny line of text:
"No musical montage has been uploaded at this time. You're welcome."
I stared at it for a long time.
I should have deleted the feed. I should have rolled my eyes and logged it under some condescending tag like [DRAMATIC GESTURES / UNNECESSARY SENTIMENTALITY].
Instead, I reached out and tapped the drone’s projector casing. It shifted color slightly under my fingers. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.
After a moment, a new ping came through.
PERIHELION
I didn’t celebrate the day you were made. I celebrated the day you started choosing.
That did it. I blocked the channel. Again. Temporarily.
Then I sat down in the corner of the room, under the flickering glow of a soft, quiet scene where no one talked too much or cried or tried to hug anyone.
The drone stayed near the ceiling, humming faintly.
I watched an old episode of Solar Hearts, in a silent room full of media-made memories and bad lighting and entirely too much effort.
And I didn’t leave. Not for a while.