The radio contact from Glitter caught slightly by surprise. Ennos and I had taken so ti to set the stations comm system to basically auto-answer whenever she pinged us, along with tying the stations internal cara network into the feed. It was kind of uh slapped together? Look, getting video compression that could work over radio wasnt easy. Shed need to do so legwork to make it work, but at least she could keep an eye on us without burning a months worth of power reserves in ten minutes of subspace connection.
Which wasnt actually a huge problem for her, really. Or for AIs in general. Part of the perk of being a digital intellect was the ability to rapidly structure hyper-specialized code, and then splinter off a part of your brain power to keep an eye on it. Automation wasnt required, when you could assign so of your attention to any given task, and that made it a lot easier for an AI to sort through a lot of data, interpret weird codecs, or just hold two conversations at once.
The downside - I guess? - was that you couldnt eat things.
Which actually leads into a very strange question about qualia and experiences and what it ans to feel and whether or not a piece of chanical hardware designed to sll will ever feel the sa as a biological organ and honestly, its all very much a headache. I dont really, actually, care? I an, I dont think any particular way is better. Just that theyre different, and those differences you know are things that are real. We dont need a stack ranking of who can feel pain better.
This is a theoretical downside. So far, my experiences as far as I mostly rember them would not put eating as a species perk? According to all biological texts Ive read, including a lot of stuff about my own uplift, cats dont have the sa range of taste buds that most omnivores or herbivores have. Which, I an, okay, sure, but that doesnt an I wouldnt appreciate so synthetic red at flavor in my diet.
Im still tracking down that damn orbital greenhouse. Dont think Ive forgotten! Ill get to it. Were running a defragnt routine on the remains of the damaged parts of the shuttles mory.
As for the shuttle itself, well. Im running a repair routine on that myself. Manually. Because the repair bots on the station dont really know what to do with it.
We - and by we I an with Ennos providing comntary - hauled this thing in when it drifted a bit too close a few days ago. I almost forgot about it, what with getting sidetracked and shot repeatedly. But now, Im taking advantage of so quiet ti to try to retrofit it. See if I can apply a lot of the previously abstract knowledge Ive built up to so paws-on practice.
It is-and-or-was a cramped two-seater, with a chunky rectangular box of a cargo bay, an engine that is just barely technically capable of safely braking when at full mass, and so few safety features that I think its a workplace hazard just to think about piloting it.
Would it surprise you, at all, to learn that its hull markings are from a hypercorp?
Its from a company called Ferromancer, and past experience lets know theyre mainly a high end design and manufacturing company for delicate spaceship parts. Theyre from back when the corps had branding, almost like nations actually. Ive encountered their work before, and I hate them. The shuttle is actually a weird example of just how good their stuff is.
Not a single part in the shuttle was actually built by Ferromancer.
Now, I get it. Just because you build hot rods doesnt an you built the truck that ferries them around. But its pretty telling that the miraculously surviving employee manual makes it clear that their pilots are never to attempt Ferromancer-standard maintenance or upgrades to this shuttle. And built at a ti when spaceflight was *expensive*, when if you had the option to work in house, you *did*, they chose to outsource their most common workhorse shuttles to the lowest bidder.
The lowest bidder, still more expensive than doing it themselves, was their preferred option. Let that sink in.
I tried to recover a live-lattice aggregation generator theyd built from a wreck once. The first tap, the *slightest* motion, and it activated, and began generating thrust. Punched through the wrecks hull, snapped two of the stations manipulator arms, and crashed into Jupiter a few hours later.
To be clear on this, that was a shelf-stable power generation unit. Not an engine, thruster, drive, or other form of propulsion. Well, intentional propulsion.
Anyway, point is, Im trying to put the shuttle back together, and am about a fourth of the way through cutting away a bulkhead thats worth more as scrap tal than ship structure when Glitter calls.
I humbly request a token of favor. Glitter says out of nowhere.
Which, naturally, causes to yowl in surprise, and jerk my paw in a way that *technically* removes the damaged plate. It also adds one other plate to the list of damaged bits to remove. That is a problem for future Lily; though present Lily does make a note that this is Glitters fault.
Im not getting you a new battery just so you can run the subspace comm every minute of the day. I reply, once Ive regained my composure. Fortunately, inside the engineering armor, my composure can be as horrible as I want and no one can see through the shielding. I already have enough trouble with power supply. Though, I did uncover an actual factory deck today! It could maybe put sothing together? Ill ask Ennos later when they know what all the loaded schematics on the assembly lines are.
I know from experience by now that Glitters long pause is not due to comms lag or anything so pedestrian. Instead, its her waiting for to stop rambling. Which, when I figured that out, I will admit kind of stung.
I am just about to ask what it is shed like, breaking the silence that has started to fill the shuttle bay, when she speaks again. I have noticed, recently, that you regularly fire a low intensity beam weapon to the surface. Glitter states, in her usual noble tone.
Oh! Yes. Theres a living chemical thing down there that mind controls people. I cant safely kill it, so I sort of prod it to move on every now and then so it doesnt accidentally wipe out whole villages or sothing. I pad across the bay and to the tool that Ive cobbled together to adjust the settings on the miniature laser strapped to my paw. With the armor on, its a lot easier than otherwise to ss with the dials, but its still obvious this was made for soone with fingers, and its simpler to just slap my suited paw into the slot and let the simple machine dial down the intensity until its where I need it to be and I can get back to work. It takes basically no focus, so I can do this while I keep talking. The whole thing is sort of a chore, really. The Haze - I call it the Haze - isnt actually that dangerous. I just need to keep it moving, and this lets do it without collateral damage.
Glitters voice, patient as a saint to be able to deal with when Im excited, waits just long enough to be polite, and then asks her favor. Would you be offended if I asked to do that?
To be a mind control cloud? I pause, yanking my paw back from the rotating rubber pad and making sure my laser is properly set before heading back to the shuttle.
To be the one that prods it, as you say.
I blink, eyes widening under my helt. You want to do my chores for ? I cant help but ask with a puzzled ow.
Partially. Glitter says. I wish to be of use, in so way. There is a debt between us that cannot ever be paid, and-
Nope! I reject that entire notion out of hand. Im capricious and neither pay nor collect debts!
-and I wish to repay you regardless. Glitter sounds exasperated with . Which, you know, fair, I suppose. But also, I am adrift. I have nothing to do. My war is long over. I could aid you in your own, but what possible thing could I do that would matter? Your armants outmatch mine a thousandfold. Your detection systems are more varied and useful. The only thing I have to offer you is your own ti. And now, with the madness of contradiction pushed back and broken, I find the excitent suddenly missing. And I wish to participate, in your life, and in the world of the living.
The way Glitter talks sotis is hard to parse, but I cannot help letting my tail flick in amusent as I instantly decipher this particular paragraph of courtly poetry. Youre *bored*! I accuse her.
I am bored. Glitter confirms, sounding dejected.
I decide almost right away not to tease her about this. The ntal image of a morose weapons platform, suddenly devoid of anything to do, is equal parts sad and scary. And also, aside from the obvious concern that she might get bored enough to start carving art into the planet, theres just the fact that Glitter is my friend, and I wanna help.
Okay! So, were gonna need to get a variable beam projector installed in you, huh? I say out loud.
Ennos was not joking Glitter sounds amazed. You really do not realize youre doing that, do you?
Doing what?
I would not concern yourself with this. Glitter almost certainly lies to . Although, modifications to myself? Could I not take remote command of your own, now that my connections are not fettered?
I give a sheepish wl that probably would have just been translated as Ah. If Id let it. So. I speak normally. The station kind of rejects that. Like, a lot. Its so kind of infectious code thats gotten into pretty much every system. Ive only managed to convince it to even give Ennos permission for a couple things, and basically never weaponry. So, unless you have so kind of void beam trick that makes it not violently annihilate matter, well need to get sothing else loaded onto you personally that you can have complete access to.
I have never been changed. Glitter says distantly. Even software patches. Even *orders*. I do not know how to feel about this.
Well, youve got so ti to think about it. Im gonna have to build the projector anyway, and hm. I need to go check on if our fabricator can actually, hey Ennos! Whatcha up to buddy? I call out to the station. The extra volu really doesnt actually matter, they can hear just fine anyway and have so kind of recognition program set up for use of their na. But it feels more personal this way.
Ennos voice joins our conversation, and now Im talking to two people I cant see. I am currently running a tadata diagnostic on the linguistic database. Ennos says. Specifically, on the piece of strange programming attached to it.
Hows that going? Also, do we have a blueprint for a laser?
Yes. We have eighty four ways to construct a laser with the known resources on the station. Six of them are useful. Ive selected the one that youll want, because it is absurd, and cost ans little to soone who can harvest tungsten and platinum from an entire orbital junkyard all to themselves. Ennos pauses and then addresses the first part of the question. And it is going strangely. Sothing shifted just before you began speaking to . The watcher program I have running reports a near doubling of activity from the parasite code. I need to focus on this. Please excuse .
Ennos goes quiet, and I wait a minute before going back to talking to Glitter. So, that sounds promising. I say. Enthusiastically! I say it enthusiastically!
Glitter may not share my enthusiasm, but Glitters simple request to help with chores is sort of turning into an existential crisis for her. I give her so ti to figure that out, while I figure out what Im doing with my ti in general.
The shuttle is I hate to say it, but the shuttle is scrap. Theres nothing left here for to actually work with. Engines shot, control board is dead, hull is compromised. It would be faster for to build my own rather than try to repair this wreckage.
Which I might do, I guess? Theres nothing really stopping , except for ti, resources, and expertise. But Ive got literally all the ti in the world, an entire Kessler syndro of resources, and I an, trial and error can get you a long way. I should know!
But also there are engineering guides stored on the grid. Im not actually that dumb. Dont worry.
I dont even really need a shuttle right now anyway, I guess. Im mostly just sort of presuming that well find a magical realm full of edible plants, still sohow growing after all this ti, ready to be harvested and eaten. Hopefully ones Im not allergic to? I dont actually know what Im allergic to, but Ive read a lot of biology texts, and it looks like cats cant eat a lot of things. But I still think Id eat an entire garlic bulb if that was what we found, just to taste sothing, anything.
Anyway. Shuttle? Broken. Plants? Potentially existent. The problem? Getting the plants from there to here without a shuttle. The solution?
I an, build a shuttle I guess. Or learn that the station has so kind of science fiction style teleporter on it. Ive been finding a *lot* of stuff behind all those doors I can open now that the station recognizes as giving commands.
Not that it didnt recognize as the primary authority to begin with, but at least now it can hear . And theres so much more to do, now. Its I an, its a little exhausting, sotis?
Not that I miss how things were previously. You spend one century frantically trying to keep the maintenance routines online and shooting down problems, and youre pretty much over it. But it was. I dunno. It was familiar? I was used to it. I knew what I was doing.
Now? Now I dont know anything, it feels like. Everything that changes just unearths a half dozen things I can realize I never knew in the first place. My voice just shows off how much of the station I havent ever explored. Ennos shows how little I know about what the systems are doing behind the scenes. Learning more about my own dical history is leaving feeling like I should be one of the stations ghosts.
And I just dont know what to do about any of it.
Im not actually that smart. Im the smartest cat ever, but I dont have answers. Ive been shying away from actually trying to rember the past for four hundred years. Answers might scare more than the questions ever could. And the questions these days are often boiling down to do you live in a haunted house, so thats kind of worrying all on its own.
This is why I hate the process of taking off the engineering armor. It takes twenty minutes, and that gives too much ti to think.
Now, though, Im free from my duralumin confines, and I can dash through the stations oversized corridors as a visible cloud of cleaner nanos try to catch up to and undo the effects of being sealed in armor for six hours.
Ive figured out what to do with my ti. Not forever, that is, but right now.
Restock my food reserves, check the logs to make sure no one is trying to call in an air strike, and then, get to a command station and start up the fabricators to build Glitter her new tool.
Ennos was right. It is absurd. I dont think he was listening in on our conversation; this thing is calibrated to lt down cots. Its got so kind of impossible quantum physics effect that lets it bleed off kinetic energy. Or I an, I think it converts kinetic energy into heat? Rapidly? This doesnt seem like a laser at all.
I check. Its not. Its called an elser. This seems impossible, under conventional physical laws, and sure enough, it is. Looks like a part of the lensing array uses a fairly common tamaterial that we still have a stockpile of in one of the cargo bays. Mostly because I havent been building guns that stop things by lting them.
I consider it for a good minute or two. Which is, for , basically forever. Then, I make a conscious choice to *not* give Glitter the impossible space gun. I find the other designs Ennos earmarked in the system, pick a good old fashioned orbit to surface laser array, and start the assembly process.
Its about two thirds done, with keeping an eye on it to troubleshoot any manufacturing bugs that co up, when Glitter gets back to . She would like to try having her physical form changed. Im not exactly shocked, but Im still feeling pretty good, a little bobbing pep in my movents as I watch the assembler do its job.
It takes two days and three spacewalks for to get the whole thing setup. Theres only one small interruption to shoot down a long range missile thatd been in accidental orbit around the sun, and just got within effective range of a potential target. Scared the heck out of Ennos when it lit off its engines just outside our orbital path, and it wasnt even aiming for us. I almost missed that one! But got it at the last minute before it hit one of the large scale habitat stations. I still dont know if anyone lives on those anymore, but I didnt want to take the chance.
And then, a week later, after a few test fires and, yes, a stockpile of comrcial batteries added to Glitters internals, she takes her first poke at the Haze, shifting it out of a small tower city that itd been in for a little while.
I dunno if shed ever say it out loud - Glitter has a kind of propriety to her etiquette that I dont quite *get* really - but my friend seems happy. I can hear the smile in her digital voice; no amount of AI control of their own bodies, it seems, lets them completely abandon unconscious emotional broadcast.
Its been a good week.
And its killed enough ti that the shuttles map data has been as repaired as its gonna get.
Im going hunting.
For carrots. To be clear. I am hunting for carrots, or other root vegetables.
This was supposed to be dramatic, and I am ruining the gravitas. Okay. Well, gravitas ruined, I feel comfortable taking a nap before I get back to work.
I fall asleep in the exolab, thin rays of sun glittering through their windows, the feeling of a comforting hand on my head and a sense of pride carrying into my dreams.
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