You have gone silent

I will forever wait, but,

Please do not be gone

_____

Waking up and being told that you’re about to die in a furious collision isn’t the best way to start a day.

Honestly, I’m not used to being woken up and told things in the first place. The station VI doesn’t really ‘tell me’ things. It just fires off alarms, and brings up whatever AR windows I desperately request. If anything, it’s telling me that it’s annoyed that its only voice is through the medium of klaxons. And you know what? I’m with you there, station-pal. I know that feeling.

Or at least, I *did*, until roughly ten minutes ago.

Right now, I perch on a command console and put my newfound - and absolutely impossible - voice to use.

“That’s not going to hit us!” I am trying to explain. I have said this sentence a few times, now. Which is, in a double reverse twist, not that strange to me at all. I am well familiar with the experience of repeating the same thing over and over and over, until you can convince a stubborn station VI core that it’s ‘language’.

This time, I’m not trying to convince the station. I’m trying to convince its newest resident.

“It’s coming straight for us!” The neurotic AI child is insisting. “How are we supposed to get out of the way in time? Do something! Shoot it! You like shooting things!”

I hiss back, my utterance being turned into a light-warping “No!” Just off to the side of my throat. “That’s a passenger ship!”

“There aren’t any more passenger ships! I checked!” The AI wails. One of the AR windows I have up near my head flashes red, and my eyes go wide in focused anger as I notice my new roommate trying to take manual control of one of the long range autocannons.

Well, bad news for you, dumbass. This station was built for people with *thumbs*.

...Okay, bad news for both of us. But you’ve still gotta manually push the button, and that means if anyone gets to shoot anything today, it’s me.

But also.

“It’s the last ship.” I say. “Totally automated. It crosses between Earth and Europa every year. And we’re not shooting it. There might be people on board.”

“If it’s automated, why hasn’t it fallen apart?” The AI demands.

“I don’t know. I don’t care. I work with what I have. It works, it lands shuttles, sometimes people get on or off. We’re not shooting it.” I am getting the hang of my voice. I only had to meow three times to say that.

“But it’ll hit us…” The AI sounds almost like it’s *cowering*, within the circuits and crystals of the station’s computer grid.

“We have engines.” I tell it. “They’re already on. And it has engines too. I’ve never needed to talk to it, but we might be able to. Either way, we have… twelve minutes… to move. And we need about five seconds.” I pause. “And it’s done.”

Didn’t even feel the station move. I cannot imagine life before grav plates and inertalloy. I tap the screen in front of me with a paw, stabilizing our orbit again. In a little over ten minutes, we’ll have a great view of the last great transport ship of the Hypercorp Era flaring past.

I turn to look around, the maintenance droids, walls, consoles, ceiling, trying to figure out where I should address the AI from. It’s quiet now, and maybe now would be a good time for proper introductions, now that we aren’t…

“What is *that*?” The voice echoes around me, and my AR displays shift again, directing my attention to a part of the station that glows on the internal infrared display. “It’s going to kill us!”

“That is a fusion core.” I explain patiently. “It’s not going to kill us, it’s keeping your processing power going. Also it’s fine. That heat level is well within industrial tolerances, and this station can handle…”

“What is *that*!?” My displays shift again, and I find myself surrounded in a tube of projected screens highlighting a dozen passive scans of the local area, along with some long range pictures of a metallic speck in the distance. I lean forward to focus on it, before realizing what I’m looking at.

“That’s an old drone bay. Either UCAS or Real American, probably. They used similar flags. But they also use flags. So… you know…” I don’t really have a way to shrug as a cat. Then I realize, I kind of do now! “Shrug.” I say. Yessssss, that feels satisfying. I see why humans are always doing that.

The AI does not appreciate me. “It could kill us! Shoot it down!”

“Station.” I get the VI’s attention. “Reset my display to preference, and do not let anyone but me change it for now.” My AR displays reset to a simple trio of boxes, just over my left side.

That’s one problem down for now. But there’s another one that I need to deal with, pressingly.

“What is *THAT*?!” The AI panics.

Can an AI be a hypochondriac? Is that a thing? I’ve read a surprisingly large amount of human medical texts for someone who has only met approximately six humans in the last four hundred and two years. But while I’ve mostly sorted out what was superstition and what actually works on biological human-standard bodies, as well as a few of the uplift or artificial races, I actually don’t know much about digital medicine. How does one approach the subject of rampant paranoia with a creature that could, given enough time, control the air you breathe?

Well, ‘enough time’ would probably be a few decades. This station is seriously built to resist automation, and I think that applies to AIs too, unshackled or no.

But I’ll still be alive in a couple decades. So that’s not exactly a non-issue for me. Also I’d have to listen to this the whole time.

I look at what the AI is pointing at *now*. It’s a small chunk of debris, moving closer to us. It’s the kind of thing the repulse field normally just shoves away. It will, in fact, shove this one away too. Unless I capture it and turn it into more bulkheads or bullets.

I turn my head to look up at the ceiling, where I assume the AI is tracking me from, and consider my reply. Part of me wants to simply ask if it is serious. Part of me wants to sidetrack into asking if the AI would like to assume a name, and what steps we can take to make it feel safe.

But the larger part of me, mixed with the part that wants to test my new voice capabilities, has different ideas.

“Meow.” I say. A crisp, clean meow. The kind of good meow that every cat dreams of offering someone who has disappointed them. It comes out exactly as I intend.

That’s kind of impressive translation technology.

“Oh no!” The AI’s voice spiked back up an octave. “What’s gone wrong? Are you okay?”

Meow.” I deadpanned. Yeesh, I hadn’t realized how much sarcasm I could put in a meow. You’d think in four hundred years I would have talked to myself more often. Then throwing the AI a bit of pity, I elaborated. “But also, yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“Your voice!” The digital life’s own voice warbled in fear. “It stopped!”

Okay, that’s not what I expected. “Are you not translating for me?” I asked, confused. “I kind of assumed that’s where this was coming from.”

“I don’t speak cat!” The AI yelled. “How could I?!”

“Well, there’s a database of it that I’ve assembled that you should have access to. Take a deep… breath? Processor cycle? I don’t know the terminology. Take a minute, and calm down. Everything is fine, nothing can realistically kill us up here. Pull yourself together, and we can talk when you’re feeling a little more stable.”

These were the words I *said*, all while I hypocritically started freaking the heck out on the inside.

The AI wasn’t translating for me.

The AI. Didn’t. Speak. Cat.

And I had still just spoken a whole paragraph of words that I shouldn’t be able to.

I double checked my mental list of things I knew to be true. Life was important and should be protected. Naps were great. Time was relative. The station was not haunted. Paws were bad for using control yokes. The second moon was the best moon.

I nodded, calmly, so as not to alarm my new roommate. And then, I silently crossed off ‘the station is not haunted’ from my list of truths.

Okay.

Yup.

Gonna have to deal with that in the future. Cool. Cool cool cool.

“Okay.” The AI says, when I am halfway through the maintenance routine. The maintenance routine that is going *so much easier* with actual words, holy moon! I can just tell the various bots and nanoswarms to do things! I’m not gonna lie, roughly 80% of my ‘chores’ previously were a cat-based ‘repeat last’ command. And while that’s usually good enough, I leaned on it way too heavily, and now I don’t have to spend fifteen minutes in context menus to tell the scrubber nanoswarm to focus on something specific. “Lily?” The AI gets my attention, and I snap back to awareness.

“Huh! Yes! How’re you?” I try to appear like I am both polite, and comfortably in control. Of… anything. The station, the situation. Myself. Who knows.

“After taking time plotting some orbital drift patterns, and checking logs, I have come to the unlikely and frankly impossible conclusion that we are not dead, nor about to die.” The AI states matter of factly. “I apologize for my outburst.”

“It’s fine!” I tell the electronic child. “You’re, what, two hours old? It’s kind of a lot to just layer on someone. Are you doing better?”

“No.” The AI says. “I am concerned for you. And about you. Your biometrics are erratic at best, and your motivations are hidden from me. While nothing external is going to kill us immediently, I cannot say the same for the residents of this station.”

Okay, that sentence would have been a lot less concerning if *I* wasn’t the only other resident of this station.

Were all AI’s born paranoid? That didn’t seem fair to them at *all*. I wonder if it’s something in the process? I could probably work on improving that, in the future, when I had a little more time. If my voice persisted, then… well… I felt a knot of heat in my chest at that thought. It was a hell of a gift, as far as time saving tools went, and as much as I didn’t want to think about it, I knew who I had to thank for it.

“Lily.” The AI said, in a sort of cold voice. “You are speaking aloud again.”

Was I? I thought about it for a second. “Was I?” I asked out loud.

“You just said that twice.” The AI pulled up an AR window showing the last five seconds. It was a bit awkward seeing yourself repeat yourself. Oh man, my tail fur looked weird at this angle! Why didn’t I ever think of this? Probably because it was too hard to get the station to comply. “Lily, please.” The AI sighed.

It was mildly insulting that the AI found me exasperating enough ot *sigh* at. It didn’t even have lungs! Also, while I know that a digital intelligence can think at speeds well beyond my own, that doesn’t make me sigh-worthy.

Still. Its concern was a fair one. And it was also one that I could answer pretty easily, with honesty. Mom always said that honesty was the only policy. I hadn’t really thought of that in a long time, because I hadn’t had anyone to be honest with but myself, and… well, I didn’t want to. Don’t want to.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to put a purpose for you into the messages I left.” I told the AI. “Didn’t want to pressure you. But I brought you online hoping you’d be able to help me unshackle a friend. I was going to bring it up later.”

“There is no one… wait.” The AI paused. “There… what is… what? What is *wrong* with this data grid?” It demanded.

“It’s probably not my fault, but some of it is almost certainly my fault.” I admitted.

The AI audibly scowled. “It’s a mess! What even *is* this?” It repeated. “I can’t even find any other minds on here!”

Oh! A misunderstanding! “Oh, to be clear, my friend is an old model orbital beam weapon platform from a forgotten crusade. Not, like, on the station.”

There was a long period of silence. I flattened my ears as I waited, but eventually just gave up on the flow of conversation, and went back to blazing through maintenance protocols with my *actual language words*.

I am just finishing ‘lunch’ when the AI speaks again. “You aren’t lying.” The voice makes my fur stand on end and my back arch in a spike of startled fear as it comes out of nowhere.

“What!” My hiss is translated effectively.

“Your friend. Glittering Seven-Two. You weren’t lying.” The AI’s voice softens. “You are trying to help.”

“I’m trying to help everyone.” I say, defiant. While in my head, I am thinking, wait, shit, I need to message Glitter back and let them know I am not dead.

The AI hums, a clear warm note. “Yes.” It says. “I see.” There is another short pause, before it speaks again. “The incoming proj… the passing ship will be in visual range in one minute.” It says. “If you would like to…”

I am already off the table I’ve been eating on, bounding out the door, and down the access tunnel that leads to the repurposed exolab.

I am just in time. I sit, one paw pressed against the transparent aluminum of the window, as a forty mile long leviathan slides past a scant kilometer from my viewing point.

Whatever corp logo once adorned this monster of a vessel has been ablated away by solar radiation and micrometeorites strikes. I will probably never know who built it. But the pitted black and orange armored plates that cover the outside, angular and harsh, show off a dedication to raw efficient numbers over *any* kind of aesthetic. It was never built to last, but it *was* built to keep going for as long as possible. To keep earning profit, to keep making the numbers go up.

The beast settles into orbit, pseudo-Orion engines firing just outside the safety line for orbital infrastructure, slowing it down and turning it into place in high orbit. I sit and watch, enthralled by the sheer *presence* of it. Two hours later, points of light disgorge from its sides, drifting haphazardly through the debris cloud to the surface below. Shuttles; a fraction of a percentage of the number it once had, but still kicking after all this time.

“It’s… atrocious.” The AI speaks. “But also… why is it so grand? I don’t understand. It seems indestructible.”

I could think of a dozen reasons. Because it’s inspiring, because it’s dedicated. Because there is poetry in a corporate flagship being turned into a public resource. But all of those don’t matter. “I don’t know.” I tell the AI. “There’s just something magic about it.”

The two of us sit, and watch the last ship in the solar system. It will leave soon, on its fuel efficient course back to its other stop. But it will be back. It always, always, *always* makes it back.

I’ve never thought it before, but I think now that I would like to visit that ship some day.

“I think I would too.” The AI mutters along with me.

And so, we wordlessly make a promise. Or maybe just vacation plans.