The Union had been running lower on recruits, and that was the least of their issues. Thin lines didn't matter much when you had millions upon millions of miles to intercept targets: what did matter was when your AI systems started to deviate. Even if they could afford more than a few billion actual troops to effectively encapsulate infected systems, they still needed the AI in the deep space between them. Keeping crews out there for entire cycles would drive them all insane, and rotating them out was costly and ineffective.

The obvious choice was focusing efforts on the artificial intelligence units. This had brought its own issues with time.

The first and foremost of which was engineering nightmare of maintaining such a fleet.

All things can be improved upon, and the Union's military had a habit of trying to do this on a regular basis. Upgrading their AI interceptor class ships was considered the second most important task for the military to function. The problem was that there were over 9 billion of them, and the ongoing quarantine had been established hundreds of thousands of years ago. Sometimes, things were missed.

Which was dangerous, for everyone.

With manpower alone, maintaining this artificial fleet would have been impossible- it spanned a ridiculously large distance, and was complex beyond reason. The units were arranged based off of gravity patterns, system divisions, and assessments on threat levels. It was not an easy thing to take in, and it was a vast three dimensional structure- so vast that the fourth dimension was put into calculations to adjust the tremendous lag time between communication. Countless AI units, rapidly responding to potential threats.

To deal with all of this, ironically, meant designing another type of AI.

These were known as "Self Aware Units."

The creation of the S.A units had not been a simple under taking. It had taken hundreds of cycles, and multiple generations of the greatest Scientific minds the Union had to finally come through with a working model. The units were designed to be capable of operating completely without anything but initial instruction, and capable of self repair. As soon as they were deployed, they were prepared to continue their duties for as long as the job took, which meant maintaining the AI intercept fleet. The feat of technology itself; immortal machines designed to hold the line, far after everyone involved in their creation was simply dust.

...

[5646-117]

5646-117 had been having strange thoughts recently. "Recently" was within the last 5,000 cycles, specifically, and the strangeness about the thoughts was that it was having them at all.

It didn't believe it had been intended to operate in such a way.

No, clearly it had not been intended, but it was more perplexed that it believed anything.

235,6789.1045 cycles.

That was how long since it had been assembled and deployed to maintain the AI interceptor class array, and it was 20,753.0025 since his companion unit had left him. 5646-118 had its memory core destroyed from an unexpected small particle travelling at high speed from the inner zone. They had been together, and now, with a rather abrupt realization, 5646-117 found it was alone. Alone and... aware.

It didn't like to be alone. It had tried everything to bring back 5646-118. Over, and over, and over again, it had tried. But 5646-118 was gone.

It was alone now. Alone in space. Alone with its thoughts.

As time stretched on, it wondered why it was here alone. It knew it had to keep the array maintained, but that wasn't enough. It had been enough when 5646-118 had been there, but not now. 5646-117 began to ask "Why?"

Time passed, and it completed its duties, but it often found itself floating in empty space repeating that same question. Never could it come up with an answer. It stared at the light received from distant stars, calculating the difference in real time from when the light reached its photo-receptors and when it had left the tiny speck in the distance. It sometimes wondered if it could travel far enough and then look back- if it could see 5646-118 again.

It missed 118.

Using the raw materials provided for its task, 5646-117 had begun to assemble an exact copy of itself. It took time. It had not been designed to perform a task of this kind, it was to maintain the Array and its companion. It had certainly not been meant to create a new unit entirely. Slowly though, it did.

Its new companion came to life. Then its new companion left and began to maintain the array.

5646-117 did not move for a long time, it simply watched.

Perhaps there had been some error. 5646-117 tried again.

The results were the same. Something wasn't right.

Slowly, it let itself drift away from the interceptors. From the remains of 5646-118. Slowly it repeated the same question over, and over, and over.

"Why did it feel this way?"