The mood in the station was entirely too somber for me.

I have, effectively, one reality warping power. And that is to chaotically forget whatever has been bothering me, dial into a new project or crisis, and lose track of how depressed I am in the ensuing mess. It’s kept me alive for centuries, and I like to think I’m pretty skilled at channeling this energy for good.

The problem I’m running into is that the people around me don’t do that.

Ennos and Glitter are both quiet and subdued. And, being AIs, they have zero problem continuing to feel that way for a long time. Which is fine, everyone handles stuff their own way. But they seem to be able to do it while also continuing to function outside of the emotion, and I’m a little jealous of that.

AIs are, in a way, temporally unbound. Which you’d think I’d empathize with, since I use that term to describe myself a lot, but it’s different and I’ll think of a better term later.

The point is, they don’t actually need a conversation to take place all at once. Multiple times, Ennos has asked me a question, and I’ve more or less answered with ‘not right now’, and he just accepts that. And then later, will pick up the conversation exactly where it left off. To them, it’s just another memory, waiting to be accessed. They don’t experience any loss of focus or decay of fidelity. The conversation continues, with a different timestamp, but all the information intact.

Now, I don’t have a whole lot of experience living with other squishy organic creatures, so maybe I’m projecting a bit when I say “that is not how biological brains work”.

I, and by association all organic life forms in general, are a mess of confused emotional signals and half remembered dreams. So when Ennos continues their quest to map the station, and by association sometimes asks me questions, it gives me emotional whiplash.

Or it would, if Ennos weren’t also still quiet and sorrowful about the lost ship.

Even Glitter, an expert in mourning the fallen, is spreading the feeling around. While her physical body is towed behind us as we cut a slow path through the orbital plane, most of what she’s focusing on is trying to learn fine control of the camera drones she has newfound access to. After she asked, I rounded up some supplies she requested, and now she’s practicing a sort of magnetic dust calligraphy thing in one of the hub areas.

She plans on writing a death plaque for the dead among the debris.

I’ve been avoiding that part of the station. Which is, I should point out, not hard. The station is huge. Ennos and Glitter have, like, eighty camera drones each at this point, and their unshackled minds and comically potent levels of processing power let them functionally maneuver a good chunk of them at once. But that still means I can go for a day or two without accidentally bumping into one, if they aren’t looking for me.

Or if Ennos doesn't cheat when we play hide and seek.

I will not play hide and seek with Ennos anymore. They cheat.

Anyway. My point is, while I’m capable of both intense confusion at a moment’s notice, I am also capable of working to banish the feeling of shame and loss that comes with the destruction of yet another surface launch. Ennos and Glitter are not.

For Glitter, this is not a new experience. Her sensors were mostly limited to the moon itself, but she’s seen this play out a dozen times from a dozen sources. Crap, she’s probably been the interceptor at least once, before she had the choice to refuse. But for Ennos… well, we’d talked about it. They knew, in the abstract. They’d seen the sensor logs, the reports.

It’s a little different to watch people die when you’re alive, though.

I think what’s worse is, I don’t know how to help.

I’m just… hiding, I guess. Laying curled up on a cushioned command chair in some operations center or another, reading stuff on my AR display, and trying to stay out of the way for a day or two until we reach our destination.

I have things to do, obviously. The work never stops. I’m still keeping an eye on my garden, because I’d be a moron to let that lapse. I’ve got a rotating list of sensor feeds to watch. And in the meantime, there’s still hundreds of doors to check behind, and new grid points to access.

Right now, I’m reading through personnel logs.

It is, quite possibly, the lowest priority thing I’ve ever done. And that includes the three month long fugue state where I tried to retrofit a kinetic impulse beam to work within atmosphere. It didn’t work, obviously. Most of my plans don’t work. It’s actually kind of surprising that I ever get anything done up here.

Anyway, personnel logs.

The station has a concept of a command structure. Which is odd, sort of. I’ve mentioned before that the station was built by the Oceanic Anarchy, notorious for their lack of command structures, and it’s kind of wild what got prioritized. The station is *smart*, to a degree that I think would make a lot of people call it an AI. But, unless it’s playing a very long con, it’s not actually got an ego.

So the station, which automatically infiltrates and integrates anything it deems as ‘attached’ to itself, has developed not just a concept of a command structure, but an entire *menu* of organization options. Do you have a captain? A high priest? A king? Do you need security clearance to get some places? Do your deckhands have rights? Trick question, they do. The station takes no shit on that count.

As the station’s ranking resident hadn’t changed it, though, it was set to default. That’s me, by the way. I’m the ranking resident. It refuses to acknowledge Ennos as a person, which is really starting to anger me, and Glitter just isn’t a resident.

“Default”, though, is an Oceanic Anarchy special. There are people in charge of things, and people who take orders, but the entire flow of power is based on trust and respect. In theory, as the only person here, I should be allowed to just order the station to acknowledge Ennos, but all decisions to modify the station actually *require consensus*, and since I am *one cat*, I can’t do that.

I scream. Softly. It comes out as a mewling yawn.

Ennos popped their voice into the room, briefly asking me about an empty cargo space. It was originally for storing full dive puppet suits. Now it was empty; I’d disassembled what was left of those about fifty years back to get the parts I needed to build a really weird bomb to kill an even weirder grid virus. Ennos politely thanked me, ignored my rambling story of heroism, and left to continue working on their map.

It left me feeling kind of alone, and colder than the station’s air circulation normally left me.

I still wasn’t used to even having someone else here. Much less someone who wasn’t feeling alright. I honestly just didn’t know what to do.

So I went back to reading old personnel logs, and trying to piece together stories for the long dead crew listed within.

Jonse Hulu. I imagine this person, whoever they were, was a bit of a joker. They have thirty eight reprimands in their file for ‘unauthorized use of regulation material dyes’, which honestly, sounds like they either got up to a lot of impromptu art, or the kind of thing that all happened at once and just hit thirty eight people in one go. Possibly some kind of paint bomb.

Markus G-33. Clone soldier. Their file has a list of their access logs. They liked to read murder mysteries. Listed as missing in action after a hot drop. I choose to believe they defected, and still operate as a private investigator in one of the surface cities.

Ruth Gabur. She was doing research into… uh… everything. Looks like she was the head of two separate departments up here. She has more degrees than I do, and she was only sixty. I paint a mental image of a stern woman, arms folded, a stereotypical gold and gray lab coat and big glasses. That mental image is shattered when I see that she has a disciplinary action still pending for smuggling hallucinogenic mushrooms onto the station. Alright, party on Ruth. I should see if I can find those.

Sean Flying-Wind. Popular guy, uplift of some kind, looks like a pilot. His marital status is formatted as a flowchart, and I stop trying to make sense of it after the third branch. He also never read his messages, and he has thirty six hundred pending pings, most of them flirtatious.

Gunther ad-Partos. Big guy, looking at his log. Listed as an expedition leader, looks like he boarded the station to…

Oh.

I’ve reached the end of the personnel logs.

This becomes dramatically less fun when I actually know how these people died.

I’m about to close the file, and go off to find something else to do, when I notice one last thing. My name is on here. Lily ad-Alice, acting commander. I’m mildly offended that I’m only *acting* commander, but I guess I haven’t technically been voted in, so I let it slide. For now. Curious, I prod the file open, and take a look at what the station has to say about me.

A very long list of access logs, directive modifications, automatically generated after action reports, and medical history greet me. None of it is really new, though it is kind of neat to be able to scroll through all the different surface threats I’ve taken out over the years. There’s even the sensor feed records from that time I ran out of ammo and had to take out a weird mutated tree thing with a rock. That was an *impossible* shot to make with just paws, and I tag that record to brag about later with the others.

I skim most of it though. Nothing here is really that… hang on.

Medical history.

Allergies?

I don’t have any allergies. I don’t even think I have the normal cat allergies, like not being able to eat onions or leamaric. Hell, I think I could actually eat uranium without too much of a problem.

I *won’t*, but I *might*

Except the station seems to disagree with my assessment. And I have no real idea why. I’ve never actually even had an allergy screening; I just never considered it. And my personnel file lists me as having… *everything*. Every. Single. Allergy. I am listed as allergic to everything from fruit to *wood*. I don’t think that’s actually possible!

A thought sparks across my mind, and my eyes briefly go wide before narrowing into predator’s slits. A hiss escapes me as I make the connection.

The galley, source of all my food, thinks I am *allergic to everything*.

Trying my hardest to stay calm, I check my schedule. Yes, yes it would appear I have an amount of time free, right now.

I send a command to a medical unit to power up and prep itself for a basic battery of tests. I hate needles, but I’ll let it take as much of my precious blood as it needs to if it’ll let me have a lunch that comes in a color other than beige.

I specifically do not bolt over there. I am, at least for now, pretending to maintain some decorum.

The needles sting. The pinprick holes they leave after extracting my blood heal rapidly. I shrug it off. And then, I have an hour or two to wait.

Which, unfortunately, is about when I should be having lunch.

Part of me wants to just skip it. But my body, regretfully, needs energy. I am, after all, still a growing girl. So I cover two breaches with one paw, and have lunch while I wait to learn if I can eventually have better lunch.

Lunch is a curved and sculpted goat horn. In shape. In flavor, it is ration. I stare at the work of delicate art on my plate for a good ten minutes before I start eating it. I also update my list of things to do to include ‘do a software scan on the galley’ much closer to the top. I suppose I could have been doing that this whole time, but this place always feels more communal, even when the station was empty, and I wanted some alone time.

As if to confirm my thoughts, Ennos ports in to ask about a strange configuration of machinery they found.

“Don’t touch it.” I meow calmly, halfway through my horn. “It’s a singularity shotgun.”

“Oh. What… what?”

I tear off another small chunk, gnawing on it slightly. “Yeah, it was built to fire a pseudo-random spread of unstable microsingularities. Don’t touch it.”

“For some form of particle physics research?” Ennos sounds resigned to the inevitable answer.

“No.” I flick my tail, enjoying the byplay.

Ennos sighs. “So, it doesn’t work? Is that why I should avoid it?”

“No, it works.” I confirm. “It just… fires a pseudo-random spread of un-“

“Unstable microsingularities, yes, thank you, I understand now.” Ennos excuses themself from the conversation in that rapid task focused manner they prefer.

And I’m left alone again. To try to think of anything except the newest tragedy.

The thing is, there’s almost always a tragedy. There’s almost always someone in trouble on the surface. And I help when I can, but often times it’s too late. Sometimes, sometimes, I get a call early, and someone who knows how to say it calls down my ire before a problem gets out of control. But just as many times, maybe more, I only notice when the sensors catch something, when I spot a battle in progress, or when I trace a trail of death back to a source.

There’s always someone dead who didn’t deserve it. Always some tragic sacrifice. Always another handful of lost survivors.

It has literally been that way since I got here.

Doesn’t make it any easier to keep living through it though.

Resigned to the fact that I can’t fix this in the next half hour, I do my best to put my upcoming blood work and potential next meal out of my mind, and go to find Glitter. Or rather, find where Glitter is working. It seems more personal that way.

The space she’s taken used to be some kind of communal gathering area. Evenly spaced out tables, surrounding a roughly hexagonal open floor that makes crossing between the space easy for one of the intended bipedal users. Or so I assume.

Right now, it’s covered in magnetic filings, and a couple spare deck plates, as well as several of Glitter’s drones. I know they’re hers, because they’re towing around a couple small canisters of more filings, a brush, and a pair of tongs respectively. How she’s been manipulating the tongs is beyond me, and I’m not here to ask for her secrets. Well, not those secrets anyway.

I hop up, first onto one of the smoothly molded red chairs, and then onto the surface of the hourglass shaped table it’s matched with. From here, nestled next to a few canisters of filings, I am in plain view, but I don’t say anything just yet. Instead, I watch Glitter work.

Slowly, carefully, the drones bob and dip to carefully spill metal shards onto the plate she’s using. Then, with small, obviously uncoordinated motions, the drone with the brush spreads the dustings, moving this way and that to paint a symbol in the negative space.

When she’s done, she’ll magnetize the plate, and if it’s all done right, everything snapping down into position will make the artistic nature of the writing come to life. But, without an attention to detail Glitter can’t accomplish with a commercial camera hoverdrone, it’s probably gonna be a little messy.

“Blessed evening, Lily.” Glitter says through one of her drones, pausing in her work briefly. “What brings you to me today?”

I want to tell her she doesn’t have to be so formal. But a small sigh from one of the drones reminds me that I’m probably thinking out loud anyway. “I just wanted to be… around, I guess.” I meow at her. “I’m trying something new. Now that I actually can.” Another pause, and then I add, “I think it’s getting harder.”

She already knows what I mean. She’s a weapon, just like I am. But there’s something a good bit more at peace with the situation in her tone and the motions of her brush and metal paint.

“You can’t fight death forever.” Glitter tells me quietly, not stopping in her work. “We must remember, always, that our sorrow is in our own loss, and not in the suffering of the fallen.”

“I’m pretty sure they had some suffering of their own.” I bite back, angrier than I expected myself to be. “Possibly from the several hundred missiles we failed to intercept.”

Glitter doesn’t react to my ire, but I don’t bother to adjust the projected voice of mine to be any different. “But their pain is over.” She says simply. As if that excuses it. “Their spirits will be caught, and enter the cycle once again. And for us, the living, we carry on. As we always do.”

For a minute, I sit there, considering her words. It is, more than I am willing to admit, tempting to just… give up and believe that. To think that Glitter might know something I don’t, be wiser than I know myself to be. To let myself be at peace with it all.

But deep inside me, I know that’s a lie.

Even if it’s not a lie for her, it would always be for me.

With a slow motion, I make my counterpoint in the time honored tradition of my people. A paw, slowly extended, slaps one of the canisters to the floor.

It falls like a bombardment shot. Hitting the deck, and sending a plume of metal dust and scrap out in a chaotic mess that thoroughly ruins the calligraphy she was working on, a detonation in miniature. Glitter’s drones have stopped, and are watching me from their multiple angles as I give the cleaner nanos something to do today.

“I think I can.” I mew softly. “Fight forever. I think life is art, and death is just a mess on the deck, and I think I have a preference.” I look up, tongue flicking over the back of my paw as I match the camera stare of Glitter’s art drone with half lidded eyes. “I’m only here because my mom thought the same way. Thought that death was worth fighting. And I’m going to keep doing that.”

I hop off the table, ignoring the small shards of metal stuck in my fur and paws. Glitter doesn’t say anything, either from the drones or through the station, as I stalk out of the room.

We all cope in our own ways.

I still haven’t found mine yet.