Four hundred years has done a great amount of work for me in terms of preparing me to be surprised.

At a certain point, I had this realization. Every time I thought I was getting bored, thought I’d seen too much, or seen everything, thought that I’d become *weary* of life? Every time, without fail, something would catch me off guard.

Maybe it’s just because my guard was dropped. But maybe not. Maybe it’s because the universe is too complicated, too varied, too wild and wonderful and *weird* to ever really fully get bored with.

The moment for me that really solidified that was probably the first time I realized there were still Earthlings living around the solar system. Sure, the industry of Earth that made space development practical and useful was mostly gone. But people lived on more than one moon, on more than one planet, and on a host of orbital structures that kept on going even in the face of certain doom.

The moment two hundred years ago when I realized that the reason the starship hull I was planning to strip for parts was missing because a crew of turtlebacks had boarded it, gotten the engine working, and flown it on stealth mode out to the asteroid belt to a hidden colony? That was it for me. That was when I gave up trying to be prepared, or bored, or cynical.

Without even knowing they were doing it, they sniped a prize right out from under me.

That was *so cool*. There wasn’t really a lot I could do about how cool it was. And also, I had over three hundred thousand crippled starship hulls to choose from, so getting mad about it would have served no purpose.

Compared to that kind of bravado, what chance did I ever stand of living my life without a few surprises?

My digital companions represent two different attitudes, both of which I’ve had at different parts of my life, when I was younger.

Glitter is me when I was on the cusp of surrendering to the dull. She takes everything in stride not because she’s in tune with the chaos of the universe, but because she’s starting to think that she’s seen it all, and is somehow above it all too. And… okay, let’s not dwell on how that’s literally true. You know what I mean, and I don’t want to… this isn’t a semantics thing. This is about finding meaning in a dark and hostile reality, and wasting your time being prescriptive about word use is wasting your precious candle.

Ennos, on the other paw, is where I was right after my uplift. They’re so uncertain, that everything is a point of panic. Surprised by everything, scared of everything, Ennos seeks to understand so that the surprises stop coming. Because the surprises are terrifying!

But that’s just how life is. It’s all of us, sometimes. Maybe I’ll loop myself, and end up scared again for a while, before I’m bored for a while. That would be a nice surprise for the version of me that will then be amused for a while!

Live long enough and you can see it all. I’m not there yet, and don’t know if I ever will be, but seeing it all sure is fun.

Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to feel like my life hasn’t really deviated too far from ‘normal’ with the unintended attack on the station. For me, anyway.

Most of the first week was devoted to getting Glitter stabilized, as well as hauling the station bit by bit back into our stable orbital path safely surrounded by a maelstrom of deadly debris and ancient weaponry. At one point, I deployed our mini drone fleet to secure a lump of pseudo-lithium, which I’ve been running through the foundry and consumer factory to produce a *lot* of replacement batteries for Glitter.

Hers got shredded by a dead and pained ghost, sadly. And she needs the backup power. The good news is, by this point, I’m *really* skilled at setting these things up to work in parallel, and by the end of the week, I’ve ferried two thousand of them over to her hull.

Oh, should mention, lost two drones to a mild skirmish over the material. There was some kind of defensive minefield deployed around it. Guess someone was planning to come back. They can’t now.

Repairing the rest of Glitter has taken up the two weeks after that. Her hull has tears in it, her main core was dangerously close to complete failure before she forced a shutdown, and a lot of her safety functions were offline. In contrast to fixing up the station, which *mostly* just requires me to tell the repair drones to fix the station, when I even have to do that, Glitter requires manual assistance.

It’s been a couple months, so I feel like I should remind you all that I am a cat? This probably doesn’t come up much - I haven’t done a statistical breakdown or anything - but it’s true. And it turns out, operating a cobalt welder when you’re not working with thumbs is *really* hard.

I actually took a full two days before that part of the repairs to retrofit my engineering suit. Ennos helped me out with building the actual schematic file, but mostly it was me rapidly intuiting material tolerances and power draws so that I could build pseudo-thumbs into the forepaws of the suit.

That made the job simpler, but not really any less time consuming. But by the time we’re sure we’re back in our stable orbital path, Glitter is at least back up to reasonable safe functionality.

And now that my friend is okay again, I can get down to analyzing and undoing all the havoc laid down on my home.

I am actually multitasking when Ennos darts a half dozen camera drones into the room I’m working in to bother me. Ennos has been really clingy lately, but I refuse to tell them that. I think they’re reacting badly to almost dying again, which… uh… seems fine? I’ve kind of lost track of how to react to almost dying. It happens kind of regularly.

Multitasking. Right. Part of me is trying to learn how to sing. I’ve never actually tried this before, but now that I have a regular voice, I’m kind of interested in what I can do with my *cat* voice. So I’m trying to make actual music with my meows.

“Lily, what are you doing?” Ennos asks, voice rippling out from three of the drones at once.

“Singing!” I answer.

“No, I know… everyone can hear you singing. I mean, what are you doing that is relevant to this place.” Ennos clarifies, hiding any irritation they feel.

I twitch my tail, trying to keep my body in the slightly comfortable position I’ve settled into as I work the control board. “I’m trying to calibrate this stupid machine properly, and I’m doing a bad job at it.” I admit. “It’s… you know how I’ve redesigned a few key places for my use, and some other stuff is technically cat-compatible?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this isn’t.” I state. “This is made for I don’t even think humans. It feels like I’m short two limbs. Or maybe just dumb.” I glare at the rounded glows of the control board some more. It doesn’t help. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“I have an update for you, if you have time.” Ennos sounds like they’re just finding an excuse to spend some time talking, but I don’t mind anyway.

So I just say that. “Yeah, I don’t mind. The lightbulbs aren’t gonna be fully grown and ready for install for another month anyway no matter what I do here. What’s up?”

“Your survivor has completed quarantine in the secure medbay. I’ve tasked a few dozen of my drones to haul the stasis pod to one of the genetics labs for a full scan and health report before we open it. Estimated time fourteen days.”

“Good!” I walk as I talk, the camera drones bobbing around me like a crown of orbs. “I’m excited! Are you excited? I’ve never had a pet before that wasn’t…” I trail off on that sentence.

I can *feel* Ennos glowering at me. “You were going to say ‘that wasn’t me’, weren’t you?” They accuse me.

“No!” I lie. “...Yes.” I unlie. “I’m bad at this! I’m sorry!”

“I find your antics amusing.” Ennos says magnanimously. “Also it is difficult to not *feel* like a pet sometimes, I admit. I still lack access to… almost everything. I am so far beyond advanced compared to every piece of programming we encounter, and yet, I cannot even convince this station to acknowledge that I am alive. It is… aggravating.”

“You’re telling me.” I huff in exasperation, the noise coming out with a small squeak. “Well, you’re not a pet to me.” I reassure them. “But a dog! I’m gonna take him on walks, and teach him to fetch, and, and…”

“Okay, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this.” Ennos cuts me off. “But you’ve been busy. You keep saying *dog*, and the medlab has assured me that the creature in the stasis pod is *not* a dog.”

“What?” I stop, pausing underneath a glowing sign that the station’s programming constantly updates with crowd sizes in nearby main access corridors. They all ready as empty. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s a dog.”

Ennos whirls all their camera drones around to examine me, pulling up windows in my AR display. “This,” they say to match an image, “is a dog. Now, I know there’s a running joke that my people are bad at this, but I want you to tell me if I’m wrong here.”

“Sure, that’s a dog.” I admit. Umbra Retriever, shaggy black fur, constant smile, big friendly mutt. Good dog.

“And you don’t notice anything weird here?” Ennos says.

“No?”

“Perhaps a comparison.” They bring up a live feed of the stasis pod they are dragging through a hallway four decks overhead. “How about now?”

“Uh… both dogs? I feel like I’m being messed with here.” I dismiss the windows, and decide it’s time for lunch.

I am *almost* angry to admit that I am looking forward to lunch. It is going to taste like ration. But it’s also going to be art, or art-adjacent, and I’ve started to get into the theater of it all.

“Lily, the creature you brought back has four extra prehensile limbs, apparently engineered for combat.” Ennos sounds some kind of mix of concerned and annoyed. “You don’t find this at all worrying?”

“...Sometimes dogs have those?” I don’t get why the AI is so worried. “I don’t get why you’re so worried. I’m sure they’re a very good dog!”

“How can you possibly-“

“Because all dogs are good dogs!”

“Lily no.” Ennos sighs. “Please. You can’t… what if it tries to eat you?”

“Probably won’t work.” I mutter, possibly in cat. Not that it matters much anymore, Ennos has long since begun building an ancillary language database, and speaks whatever garbage linguistic monster I’ve developed perfectly well. They still haven’t figured out what’s latched onto the main one. I think they take it personally.

“I don’t.” The AI says for no reason. “And I’m going to bring this up again when we get a genetic scan, and I can prove you wrong.”

“Sure. I’m gonna have lunch. Anything else to report?”

“There’s a spy satellite thirty six kilometers away that is actively scanning us.” Ennos grumbles. “You should shoot it.”

I should not. “Does it report to anything?”

“I don’t have access to the sensors needed to track that. Also I think they may have been destroyed in the attack. We are partially blind and it is-“

“Worrying, yes.” I agree. “I’ll get to work on those after lunch. Actually, can you do both of us a favor? See if we have any commercial grade blueprints for an onboard drone with arms. I know it won’t be perfect, but let’s see if we can at least give you the ability to push buttons in a way that doesn’t involve ramming them.” I bat one of the camera drones in a friendly gesture that sends it spiraling away through the air.

“Thank you.” Ennos sounds surprised. Which worries *me*. Did they really think they were a pet? Just because I keep forgetting to be a responsible parent doesn’t mean I don’t want to give them every tool I can. I make a promise to myself to devote time to that, no matter how many new sirens go off in the next few days. “...Thank you.” Ennos’ voice is quieter this time. “Enjoy your lunch. I am going to… yes. I will check the blueprints.”

Lunch is a highly detailed recreation of the classic Arclight holosign, an echo of a memory of an era of creativity and art that may have been a fiction but certainly gave rise to some powerful films.

It is 100% made of ration, and it tastes like it too. But it’s impressive, anyway.

I don’t end up shooting down that spy sat. It’s a hundred years old, and its transmitter is obviously damaged. Maybe I’m just being vain, but I don’t feel the need to snipe things just for scanning me.

I did shoot down the weapon platform that had started tracking the spy sat, though. The thing had come online as soon as the bundle of automated sensors had gone to active scanning of the station, probably in response to us firing the engines to brake back to our stable orbit.

It takes about four seconds for me to start to consider something defenseless as a pet, I guess.

More than enough time to put an inferno lance through whatever threatens my new friend.