A mess of wires descended from the workbench to the floor, weaving under a thick layer of green tape, snaking towards an adjacent room. Someone was in there, though Devon wanted to be the first to arrive at the lab. The display on his workstation begged for his attention, but he turned away.

The walls were the color of storm clouds, interlocking panels filled with luminescent goop. The wall between the main lab and the other room was unshielded and somewhat transparent. Devon stared and made out the technician's outline. The young man filled a large syringe from a small packet, and then emptied the contents into something near his waist. The laboratory was silent except for Eric's footsteps as he return and tossed the packet into a wastebin. Eric raised his hand in a polite wave.

Doctor Devon Sanders stretched. He had rushed over to the lab too soon after waking, and his breakfast wasn't settling. He glanced at Eric for a moment and scratched the fuzz on his chin.

"What were you doing back there? Everything ready?" Devon asked.

"Hardware's hooked up and running bootstrap right now. Marshall will be pissed, but I'm trying out my new power source. If you see any glitches, it's still cabled up to hard power, it'll fail over automatically, but the diagnostics are all good."

Devon rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes. The young man was ambitious and intelligent, and though they were still ahead of schedule, too many failures marred the project's recent history. The stand-alone power source was risky and unnecessary. Failure held no particular consequence beyond personal disappointment, and so Devon did not push the issue. Instead, he used a small screwdriver to flick a bit of dust from the antique mechanical keyboard in front of him.

The computer chirped. Devon nodded. "Ok. Uploading the archive..."

The display scrolled through a stream of numbers as different parts of the system code were uploaded to the prototype. The primary system transfer completed in two seconds, while the system dictionary and metadata were a thousand times longer and took as much time. They made small talk about the latest inter-sectional collide matches while they waited. Devon was fond of the sport, a team-based martial competition adapted for the constraints of space-faring life.

The process finished, and the computer displayed a grid of red indicators. A small command prompt flashed, eager for new input.

"And bringing up the interface interpreters. Vision... audio... kinematics... good. Core is at eight percent. The automated diagnostics are running. Could you go run the manual procedures?"

Eric felt his head swim, full of excitement, and watched the array of indicators on the screen turn green. He returned to the mechanical room. Two kiloseconds, half an hour, passed while he gestured, juggled objects, and uttered nonsensical phrases. The automatic diagnostics would test the core, but the researchers wanted to make sure the whole system was performing as it should. And it would give him something to do. The exercise came to an end, and Eric was satisfied. Devon shouted something, and Eric dragged his feet as he returned.

"Huh? You know I can't hear you from the other room," Eric said.

Devon chuckled. "I said, good work. We're stuck until Marshall arrives. Let's clean up for a bit. This place is turning into a mess."

Eric nodded, and returned to the rearward chamber. Devon followed him, and the two made an effort to organize the equipment laying on the massive workbench in the back. The task was made tedious by dozens of cables, unintentionally tangled by several cycles of wiring and re-wiring. The diagnostic equipment had been delivered equipped with debugging modules that could transmit data through air or space, but security restrictions in place dictated that those components were replaced with hard lines. Chores complete, Devon returned to his chair, and set the diagnostics program to loop.

Eric spent his time perusing a technical book on a second computer terminal located in the room. That terminal, unlike the one Devon was using, contained a network link and connected to the station and could be used to download data from the network.

Long kiloseconds passed until a clunk reverberated through the room as a door-slab swung open from a hollow in the wall. A thin, bald, and pale-skinned man in a sleeveless shirt walked through the door with hunched shoulders and a casual gait. The brighter lighting from the hallway outside created a silhouette of his form in Devon's vision, and drew attention to curling gray hairs extending from sagging skin on Marshall's bare shoulders. Marshall looked around the lab, thumbing the communicator at his side. He raised two fingers to his forehead in a sloppy salute, and spoke in a high-pitched voice that Eric found irritating.

"Hey kids. What's up?"

Devon turned in his chair. "Marshall, the system's up. We're ready to go."

Marshall shrugged and turned to face Eric. "Well?"

Eric said, "It's got the latest symbol set. Made it through diagnostics, so the new equipment seems to work."

Marshall relaxed and picked at a bit of skin on his arm. He peeled the dead, dry speck off, and flicked it to the floor. Eric wrinkled his nose as his eyes traced the path of the fragment of skin towards the floor. "And... ah, your new toy?"

Eric crossed his arms under his sternum. He knew Sanders and Marshall were in charge and more experienced, that he was just an intern. But the experimental power system was his way of contributing to the project, and he needed to see the effort through. The design was borrowed and well-tested in large scale installations, giving him no reason to think it would be inadequate. Eric would be returning to his university soon, and had the confidence to make mistakes for the possibility of a bit of success and glory. "Yeah... it's stable."

"Ok. And you've got output monitoring up? Recording everything on the primary endpoint?"

Devon stood and turned towards Marshall. "He's good. It's cleaner than station power. Fully fueled."

"Right... So we're ready to load the symbolic interpreter?"

Eric's grin widened. "Absolutely. We'll have to load it over the network. I... uh, Doctor Sanders had me close her neck up."

Marshall found his place in an empty chair next to Devon. "Ok, my turn, then."

Devon scooted aside. Marshall took control of the workstation, authenticated, and flicked his hands in a choreographed pattern across the keyboard. The process was tedious, and made slower as Marshall decided he would run his own diagnostics. Thumps came from the next room. Sanders was surprised by the sound. The first step in testing new high-level programming had always been initialization in a simulator, without real hardware enabled. Marshall's sloppiness was unprofessional.

"Eh, what are you doing? Motion? We should complete the simulation checkout first."

Marshall looked to his side and laughed at Sanders. "Yep. Robots do that. Just initializing the controls, uh, she's in the restraints, right? I should have checked, but I'm excited, and we haven't got the cycles to waste on shit. The pressure's on, so I hope you haven't screwed anything up."

Devon and Eric looked at each other. "We took it out of the shipping container," Eric stumbled, "We strapped it to the bench with elastic. Everything should be secure."

Eric looked at Devon, shrugged, and sat down. He had proven himself; the power system remained stable and unflinching.

The test was an advanced diagnostic procedure; symbolic commands like 'move left arm four centimeters up' were sent and the diagnostic computers monitored for an appropriate response from the hardware.

"Good. She's pulling the aux wetware across," Marshall finished.

Sanders shook his head and wondered whether Eric had learned his recklessness from Marshall. This success became the first time the hardware had completed a full diagnostic without failures, and a misstep could destroy irreplaceable electronics. Well, not irreplaceable, but Sanders suspected they couldn't get parts in time to meet schedule.

The three moved into the mechanical room and examined the equipment laying on the padded bench. The prone form could have been a young woman asleep, buried under plastic sheeting, cables and clamps, resting on her chest. The body was still, without the rise and fall of breath, lacking the subtle tremor of a heartbeat. Layers of protective laminated metal were held to the body by a solution that served as both an adhesive and a nutrient for synthetic skin. A flap of tissue had been cut from the between the body's shoulders and was wet with a thick pink fluid that oozed from the edges. The skin was alive, in the most basic sense, composed of a membrane that could sense, heal, and die. The underside of the skin was bonded to an intricate mesh of titanium-ceramic fiber reinforcing material. Diagnostic cables plugged into sockets hidden underneath the exposed mechanical spine.

Sanders looked way from the profile of the face. The shape was familiar and he wondered who had made the decision. The face had surprised him when he helped unpack the prosthetic body for the first time. The resemblance to Elizabeth was inconsistent, structural at best. The skin tone and age were both wrong. He kept the reason for his surprise from the others - neither of his colleagues knew about his ex-wife and their ugly divorce - though they had sensed his initial discomfort. Devon ran his hand through the coiled gray ringlets hanging from his head to his shoulder, and grinned.

Eric placed his hands in his pockets and searched out Devon and Marshall. "What now?"

Devon cleared his throat. "It's going to take a while for the image to stabilize. The last core took, what, a whole megasecond?"

Marshall agreed. "Eric, keep your eyes on the power source. We'll run diagnostics every few dozen kiloseconds. Uh, twice a shift. I'm rather pleased that your system is working. It means we can move the prototype without shutting the system down. That's been a problem since Devon ruined the original power source with his crappy software. If your system doesn't work, we've got a conventional one on order. The computer core's got a backup power cell, but that provide enough power until the image is fully integrated. Notify me immediately if you have any problems. Other than that, Sanders, send me an update on the integration progress at the end of each shift. And clean up these cables."

"Ok. That's fine," Eric replied.

Devon agreed and watched as Marshall left. "When are you going to be leaving us?"

"I guess I go home in four megaseconds. You think we'll actually get her running before I leave?"

"If we can manage to avoid any critical mistakes, yes. The core is powered up and active. Even with all the data and memories she's got, the mind is an embryo still learning how to wake up."

"It's good that my bit is working. I'll have a good story when I get home, at least, what little I'll actually be able to talk about. Who gets to hold a reactor in their hands? I've filed for rights. If this enters production, it'll be a windfall."

"Good luck with that," Devon said with a grin. "If we don't have any problems, we may need to find you something else to work on. I don't expect Marshall to pitch in on these diagnostic shifts, and I've got other work. For the moment, monitoring is all up to you. Long, boring shifts in this lab. Let me know if you need anything."

"Sure. This is kind of creepy, but I do want to see it through. And, you know, I don't mind some boredom. I've got classes to prepare for next semester."

Devon chortled. "I know how you feel."

***

Her container leaned against the wall, with a caricature of the contents embossed into the dark green cover. The box could have been a coffin; after all, nothing living had ever been put inside. Eric ran his fingers across the letters in the name. "Carolina?"

"Have a crush? Isn't there a girl waiting for you back home?" Marshall asked.

Eric ignored the taunt. "What's with the name?"

"Oh... that? It's actually her name. The manufacturers have a few base models that get you your gender, height, build. The rest gets customized. Get a Yendross catalog from the net and you'll have something to remember her by."

Eric turned and glanced at the body on the table. "Does... did the body actually belong to someone before?"

Marshall found the question amusing. "Strange question. I doubt that. It's probably a boutique configuration. I don't know, if this belonged to someone before, I guess they're dead now. You know what this thing cost? Want to guess?"

"Hmm. Well, I don't know. A hundred thousand? Am I close?"

"No fucking idea. We got this built up to fit our special bits. My black box and your little generator. Maybe half a million all said? Petty cash compared to what this station and you and Devon and I cost."

"Maybe we should sell it and retire."

Marshall shook his head. "There's a reason this work is being done in secret, Eric. This sort of thing makes weak people very uncomfortable."

"Kidding," Eric said, annoyed and red-faced.

Sanders plodded in to the mechanical room, wiping his face clean with a damp cloth. "The station's new commander is a weak person? Hum. I suspect she isn't supportive of our work. I saw her group in the hall outside, and she'll arrive in a moment."

Eric beamed. "I'd like to meet the commander. I mean, I did when I came aboard."

Marshall shook his head and walked towards the front of the area. "Eric, if Devon is right, you don't want her remembering you. Stay out of the way."

Tribune Rashid entered the lab, followed by her administrative attache. Two stars adorned each of her shoulders. Her crisp uniform was made of padded black fabric with a tailored fit and heavy tactical boots. The two men who followed her wore slim beige suits with silver ties. The men could have been brothers, with matching short-cropped hair, square faces, and similar heights, both two centimeters taller than Rashid.

She peered around the lab before introducing herself to the group. The researchers knew her, were aware of her authority and station, but interaction with military leadership on a regular basis was rare. Both of her aides scribbled, taking notes on the lab and preparing for conversation. Rashid wondered whether such a small space could be used for substantial work - the team's budget seemed outsized for this little lab. A few computers littered the tables, though there was none of the usual overflow of clutter in the other labs. She thought that the type of engineer who had time to organize excessively also had time to perform more work, and she was used to the larger teams on other projects.

"Tribune, I don't think we had a chance to review this project after you took command."

"I'm sorry for that. I trust that my engineers can look after themselves. I'd like for you to bring me up to speed, and we can discuss the project and your needs. I've read the station dossier."

Marshall forced a smile. "Yes. Certainly. We're a cog in the machine. It's complex what we do, and in civilized space, a gray legal area. We're a Regulation Sixteen project, so I'm afraid the dossier is largely inaccurate. The short version is that we're scaling down a ship-based artificial consciousness to run on a small-scale hardware prototype. A pros-"

"As in the Science class vessels? What's the intent? Help me understand the point of all this."

"We're not given guidance on that. But we're not making a generation ship control core. We're scaling a specific retired core. I'll show you some of the hardware. That'll help you understand."

The Tribune nodded and followed Marshall into the mechanical room. The area was as clean as the lobby. She walked around the bench, and pulled at one of the straps, testing the strength of the harness. Her eyes traced the outline of a humanoid body by the shadow beneath the thin plastic sheets, with a small patch of dry skin exposed, folded over and laying on one piece of the sheet. A single wire protruded from the spine, the width of an eyelash.

"Ah. I see. This is a continuation of the Trojan projects?"

Marshall made a mental note. "Well, I can't say. We've worked with other prototype hardware, which we delivered when we got the core more or less working. Those systems had two primary processors. Drone frames carrying an emulated pseudo-core. But that core had limited command capacity over the body. We never got interaction working. This new system is built around a prosthetic body. Full up. If you got hurt and your brain survived, you'd end up in a shell like this one."

"I see. This one is in control of the prosthetic body?"

"No, but it could be, and that's the intent. The basic architecture is scaled down from generation ship tech. Normal ship cores have a lot of sensor computers. They map all the data to the limited number of inputs-"

"I get it."

"But a human... a prosthetic body has lower bandwidth requirements. So the goal is to input directly to the core. Because that's developmental, we use custom processors that reduce the data and provide specific inputs. But the signals are all wired up. We call it a hybrid design."

"Where do the cores come from? Do we manufacture that here?"

"No, We don't know, actually. We've only received a few, and they come via manned courier. Of course, only one facility manufactures that sort of equipment, the Staatschild. But the origination is intentionally opaque. Not that it would be illegal of course, since the bare core is just a box full of inorganic goo."

"Is the core in the body?"

Marshall tapped his forehead. "Yep. The body has a convenient space the right size up here."

"How far along are you? Is it powered? Online?"

"Yes, it's powered, but no need to worry. Tribune, everything is safe for now. It's still integrating," he continued, pointing to the small wire, "and we have an interlock, so it can't move the body without my permission."

"Integrating?"

"Let me explain what that means. There are two ways of constructing a core-"

"I don't need a science lesson-"

Marshall took a deep breath and began to speak quite fast. "The first is to map out a generation ship core. It's a destructive process. You freeze the core in liquid hydrogen and slice it into thin layers, and you duplicate the layers with a lithographic process. With, uh, lasers. That's how they did it in the old time, before the sentience laws. That process is illegal now, and the old master cores are based on obsolete technology. But that doesn't matter much because generation ship cores can duplicate themselves, and our effort has been to scale that process down to something that can fit in this room. Actually, it's an adapter that fits in your hand. It's a slow technique, where essentially one core talks to another blank core through an attometric interface, and run through simulations until the blank core figures out how to think. It's a great deal more complicated than that, so we call it integrating. The new core isn't an exact copy of the parent, but it shares basic traits, like, you know, uh, personality and gross memories. It's a more biological sort of process than lithography."

"You've got another core that you're using to program this. I didn't know that. How many cores do you have?"

"Cores? Just the retired core, and barely at that. But our process isn't core-to-core. We tried that, and it worked for the other prototypes, but we what we got out of the process... you wouldn't consider... that is, it was never something that could become... useful. They were active, and could map sensor inputs to reactive outputs, but your communicator could do a better job passing itself off as intelligent. Not really failures, since they met the objectives we had set, but not what we want in the end. So, we've spent most of our time constructing a set of parallel simulations. That's the magic of the adaptive layer. It pretends to be a generation ship core that's substantially less defective than the one we have. We've gotten better at it. We run the simulations on our real ship core, so we're legal from the perspective that one core is cloning itself. The additional indirection through the computers separates our process from the usual method. We might be able to do all this in the hub without violating any laws, but it's not a good risk when we can move out to free space."

Rashid winced. She knew she wasn't getting out of this conversation without more lectures. That seems to have been this whole detail: lots of geeky researchers making themselves feel important by telling her things she didn't need to know. She'd mostly already come to her conclusions, but wanted to ensure she didn't make too many mistakes.

"What happens when you're done? Where does this go? Tell me you know that at least?"

"We've shipped two functional prototypes out. I use the term functional loosely, of course. Couriers off to whoever knows where. This one's a bit different, though. With those other prototypes, we were in control of the drone scale. With this one, we won't be. And once we're done, we can't just turn it off, that would destroy the core. I wouldn't be surprised if this thing walks off the station with an armed guard, instead of going in the shipping crate." Marshall pointed a thumb at the shipping crate in the corner. The destination label lacked the typical five-line address, and stated "FPO KUROSAWA" in oversize letters.

"I see. That's why you've got it strapped to this table. Is... it... dangerous? Could it be?"

"We had requisitioned a barricade cell for this area, but it hasn't gone through. The prosthetic body is all standard stuff. None of those high-powered actuators the military types like. You're former operations, right? I'm sure you could take her in a fist fight, and she has very limited protection against firearms. But the important thing is not going there, with the right primary measures."

"Do you have plans that require you to move this out of the room?"

"You mean walk around the station? That's not really the intent-"

"No-"

"Once she maps out, finishes integrating, we're going to attach her to a high-fidelity sim and see what happens. Talk to her. Make sure she takes orders from the military, those important things... She won't be moving, and we don't want her remembering anyone after she leaves. That's for whoever gets her next."

Rashid pondered for a moment. "And no one knows what's going to happen to this when this portion of the task is complete? No one on this station?"

"Well, yeah. We'll ship her off to some other facility that will perform a destructive analysis so they can make more. We could be asked to redesign this one so she could clone herself."

"It's a drone, right? This thing will remain a chunk of metal and plastic while under my command. No... moving around without my direct supervision. I know what the word 'sentient' means, so tread carefully."

Marshall blinked. He understood Rashid; the sentience laws did grant personal rights to artificial consciousnesses. She stared at him for a long second before continuing.

"Does it have a name?"

Marshall took a step back. "No. Well, the station's. Project 171e2a-Kurosawa. She's a drone. Even once the core is integrated, we're still treating her as a drone. Make no mistake, this has a tiny fraction of the capacity of... even the old Mark II gear."

Rashid released her frustration with a sigh. "This makes me uncomfortable. I don't want it getting out that we're doing this work. This is a lot less lethal than the other projects on my station, but it's more unusual. I'll get you that ballistic cage. And we'll have some armed guards to support you. I should have been briefed earlier. No offense meant, but I thought this was some pointless science experiment. And I hope it is."

Marshall raised his eyebrows in concern. Her lack of support concerned him. He had checked her personnel record, and she rose into command through a covert activities group. She should have been more comfortable with dirty hands, he thought. "Is this a problem?"

"No, Doctor. Can you explain your timeline?"

"Ah. We're funded for another thirty megaseconds. Beyond that, I can't say much. With a little luck, we'll be wrapping up with this prototype much sooner than that."

"Thanks for your time, Doctor. I'd like to see any reports before they go off-station. I don't want this thing out of this room, and I don't want this discussed outside of this area, either. Not to other station personnel. Not to anyone."

"Absolutely. That's all standard procedure. What else can I help you with?"

"Nothing, Doctor. The Quorum appreciates the work you're doing."

Marshall shook her hand and watched her leave, followed by her escorts. Marshall cringed, realizing that they had inspected the area while the pair were locked in conversation. He wondered what interesting things they documented in the paper notebooks. He peered at his older colleague through narrow eyes, and sighed at the scowl waiting for him.

"That was slimy," Devon said.

Marshall forced his face back into a smile. "You were right. The Tribune doesn't like what we're doing. Why one would take a post on a black research station and expect to stay squeaky clean, I don't know."

"I wasn't talking about her, Marshall. We're very near to having to call that pile of parts is a legal person. Right now. It's one thing to face that and the tough calls we've been making as we follow through with this sort of work, but it's another to lie," Devon said.

Marshall shook his head, the blood rushing to his face. "Do not say that. You're wrong. I don't want to hear it. We'll turn it over to some other command, just move on."

"Whatever."

Marshall left.

Devon looked over at Eric. "What did you think of Marshall's choice of words?"

"Uh... I thought... shit. The Tribune would be upset," Eric whispered.

"Do you have a pet fish? You don't give them names. You've got to distance yourself, you know, to make the right decisions. I've been doing this my whole career. That might be what you'll end up doing, if you found this work interesting. The work can feel like making a child. An infant isn't the product of its mother, but the baby doesn't make itself either. Something happens and emerges. The process is prone to failure with human infants or generation ship cores. And this is harder than either. In the long run, we're better off being honest about what we're doing."