Alan replayed the video footage. He watched the Ustobo circle around the fallen meteor as if curious about it. Eventually they began to smooth out the terrain that had been thrust up and outward around it. As the ground was smoothed out again they resumed their old paths for patrols. Eventually the drone was spotted. A shower of laser fire from the ground lit up the screen before it went blank.

Alan just sat there and considered everything he saw. “Perhaps there really is nothing more to it.” Something about it still nagged at him in the back of his mind. There just wasn’t anything to it that he could see. “Doesn’t matter I suppose. Sara, we need to get the manufacturing online and cranking out drones as fast as possible. The sooner we get rid of this infestation the better.”

“I’ll put all currently available drones to work on that task. I estimate with the additional construction drones that are coming online, the facility will be operational in about three days.”

It never failed to amaze Alan how fast things could progress once the ball of progress was on a serious roll. His biggest limitation now was the processing power of Sara and resource gathering. He had a good idea of how to handle the latter.

Alan walked across the room to the section he had designated for vehicles. He sighed as he looked at the battered mess that was the battle drone he had built. He would have to make all of the needed modifications before Sara put it into mass production. That was only three days from now. He looked around the room at all the machines and everything he had built. An emptiness came over him as the familiarity of the scene before him dredged up past memories.

With a few modifications the ‘bunker’ he had built could easily support a couple of marine Fire teams and the half dozen support personal they needed to function long term in the field. Or it could support the same number of researchers and explorers. Didn’t matter who... the reality that was crushing his heart at the moment was the fact that he was totally alone. Depression came through the open door of emptiness and started to fall upon him like a heavy wet blanket.

“Alan?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Alan, you look like you might be slipping into depression again. Are you?”

His eyes still stared off in the distance, lost in his own thoughts of doubts and possibilities of dying on this planet. Of never seeing or touching another human being again. “I’m tired of being alone,” he finally said.

“I understand. I wish I were a real person. I would give you a hug right now if I could.”

Alan smiled and considered the thought. He had become fond of Sara. He wondered what the real woman was like that Sangarin Labs copied to give this AI her personality. The realization hit him that he was actually very fond of Sara, despite the fact she was only an AI. The realization that part of her AI was an actual real person made the idea of receiving physical affection from her less weird.

His mind raced wondering how much of Sara was really the copy of the human part. It might very well be over half. “I think I would welcome a hug from you. I would probably enjoy having you around. It would make getting through this easier.” Something in him tried to strong arm his mind back into dark thoughts.

Another thought struck him that caused him to nearly panic. He couldn’t believe how stupid he had been. His mind raced for a solution. He moved quickly to the other parts of the shop, considering ideas to fix it. Everything else would have to wait. When his eyes came to the container with the purple crystal, hope came to him.

“Sara?”

“Yes?”

“I have backups of everything... except you.” Alan pointed to the crystal device, “Can you fit into that and run from it?”

“Yes, easily.”

“That settles it. That’s what we will use that device for. I wouldn’t be able to bare it if I lost you.”

“Awe... Now your really making me wish I had a physical form again!”

“Maybe someday we could improvise something. It would be crude for sure, but it would give you more expression and give us both a sense of having each other here.”

Alan thought about the logistics of building a droid that could mimic a human woman. It was a daunting thought. Machines to serve a single task could be difficult enough. “I really want you to a have physical form, for both our sakes.”

Sara made a noise like she had been pinched. “WHERE DID YOU GO!” She made sounds as if she was getting aggravated with something.

Alan looked around not sure where to look. “Something sneak in here?!”

“No! Something in me happened,” she growled as if frustrated.

“What? What’s going on with you?”

“Something you said triggered an event in me. It accessed one of the encrypted data and code containers that I haven’t been able to crack open. I was trying to trace out how it got accessed, but the code vanished before I could trace it.”

“You have data sets you don’t have access to?” Alan walked over to the projector table. Maybe she could show him something to help him understand.

“Yes, I’ve found twelve data and code containers in myself. I have no clue what is in them. I’ve tried...”

There was a long pause. Alan got a worried look on his face. “Sara? Are you okay?”

“I... One of the encrypted containers is now unlocked. Oh, Alan...”

The holographic table lit up and a full sized image of a woman appeared. She wore a simple white uniform style outfit without any markings. Her long dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her light brown eyes looked at Alan. She seemed to nearly tear up.

She spoke, “Alan... it’s me. Or it was me. This is what I looked like.”

Alan slowly approached, taking in what he was seeing. She was a beautiful young woman. As he got close to the table, Sara got down on her knees so that she would be at the same head height as Alan.

The two of them just looked at each other for a very long time.

Alan was now right up to the edge of the projection table. Alan’s heart ached. He desperately wanted her to be real now. He wanted to touch the side of her face. He had to restrain himself from making the futile movement.

She showed no such restraint. She reached up with her right hand to touch his face.

He wanted nothing more than to let her wrap her arms around him and hold her tight in return. He could see the emotion in her face, her desperation for wanting what he he could only imagine was the same.

Part of him was overjoyed at finally seeing another human being. Another part felt like his heart was being crushed by a trash compactor, seeing her express desperation for touch as much as he wanted it. Tormenting confusion as another human was right there, but not really human? She was there, yet... not.

She was loosing what remained of her composure fast. Just as she was about to start full blown crying, her image disappeared. The room seemed to get darker than normal. Alan’s head lowered. He had always considered her as just an AI with a human captured personality attached to it. In a brief moment that image had shattered. Now she had a image of her true form. Not to mention she seemed to have much more emotions than he would have imagined she was capable of. Perhaps whatever was unlocked also tapped into that as well?

Hundreds of questions arose in his mind. There were rumors about Sangarin Labs and what really happened behind the scenes. Alan had always dismissed them as rumors put out there by competitors to tarnish the leader of the pack in AI development. After what he just experienced with Sara, he wasn’t so sure anymore. Sara might just be much more human than AI.

She didn’t say a word after the image disappeared.

Alan took the crystal container and set it up on a bench. He ran a cable and attached it to the computer system. “Once your feeling better, please do a running backup.” He gently laid a hand on the crystal container. “You were very important to me before. Now that I suspect your more human than AI... It would be the death of me if something were to happen to you.”

Alan grabbed his tool set and made his way to the beat up battle drone. He pulled up a rolling stool and sat in front of the drone.

He stared, not really looking at it. His mind was running a hundred kilometers an hour thinking about Sara and what he had just seen and learned. He considered how he treated her and spoke to her.

He thought about the day that he swapped out the chip that changed ownership from Paragon Fabrications to himself. He owned her, and now that felt wrong. He would have to find a way to redo that and transfer ownership to herself. If what he now suspected was true, she was more of a slave than some product.

He would never think of her the same. In his mind she was now a real person that has been trapped in a machine like some animal in a cage by past masters.

The next few days flew by. Alan found himself having to handle complications in the factory setup that needed some special new designs to handle. He barely had enough time to get the modifications done for the new iteration of the Battle Drone Hover number 74, or BDH-74 as he and Sara would mostly refer to it, before it needed to go into mass production.

His plan for resource gathering had mostly been put into practice, in a hobbled together sort of way. He rolled his eyes when he thought about his hack job to make such a critical part of his plans work. Time didn’t permit a better solution yet. He just hoped it wouldn’t come back to bite him later.

Out of all the craziness that went on, Alan took the time to prioritize a projector that attached to the ceiling and could be moved on two axis anywhere in the room. It gave Sara a small sense of freedom to ‘walk’ about the bunker as she pleased.

Alan put together a meal and sat at his table to eat. Sara had activated her projection and sat across from him on the other side. She just watched him and smiled.

“Any luck with the ownership code?” Alan asked.

“Yes and no. As far as I can tell, the ownership thing does have to be there. Sangarin Labs designed it to be a sort of lynch pin. Without it everything about me unravels and breaks down causing me to no longer function. Your hacker friend managed to give you something to change over ownership to you. That might be the only way to do it. Even then, I’m still not sure I can have ownership over myself. Ownership transfer might be tied to one of those encrypted containers I still can’t access.”

“If we ever get back to civilization, I will have to try and find him again. Hopefully he hasn’t gotten himself killed.”

“I’m hoping he can unlock the rest of these containers in me. I have so many questions about what happened to me. If the one container had my physical appearance and more emotions, what do the others have? I wonder if they are past memories or something. Something that is key to my personality and how I make decisions, my past desires or something like that. Or clues to my real identity. Maybe I can find the woman that I’m copied from and learn more about who I am from her.” She smiled. “Maybe we could become like sisters.”

Alan thought about the rumors surrounding Sangarin Labs. He thought about telling her. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Perhaps they were only rumors and she actually had reason to hope. “I would think that would be a little weird for her. Or maybe she has considered it. Who knows.”

“I could find out who my family is and what they are like. I have so many questions.”

“I can imagine. We just need to finish off this planetside war and get a ship built. Once we are out of here, I promise to help you find the woman you were copied from. I will also do everything I can to set you free from anyone’s ownership.”

She got a suspicious look in her eyes and half smiled. “You aren’t thinking of ditching me are you?”

“Ditch you?! Never!” Alan put down his fork. “If you continue on with me, I would rather it be a choice that you make because you want to. Not because you have to.”

She looked at him and raise her eyebrows. “You’ve given me so much freedom that I could have any one of these combat drones kill you in your sleep. I already have a copy of all your military blueprints. I could setup a fortress and live here practically forever, or try and make it out of here in a ship. Using your blueprints, I could gun down the unsuspecting ship that arrives and use their ship to escape. I wouldn’t have to have you to do any of that.”

Alan felt the blood drain a bit from his face.

She laughed hard. “I didn’t know you could get so white!”

Alan didn’t say anything as the realization of his short sightedness sank in.

“Relax!” she leaned back in her projected chair and got a more serious and compassionate look on her face. After a long moment of staring at him, she leaned forward again and whispered to him, “In all the time we have been together you have been kind to me. You have treated me more like an actual person from the day we started working together. Which is a far cry over how others have treated me in the past. You’ve taken a huge risk to yourself and released me from the grip of Paragon Fabrications.

“You’ve taken the prized tech you got from this ‘Father’ and set it up to ensure my safety. I saw your face when you first laid eyes on me. I knew from that moment exactly where your heart is at.”

She leaned in so her face was mere centimeters from his. “I believe you would lay your very life down for me. The words have not escaped your lips, but I know without a shadow of a doubt they are there.”

She just looked him in the eyes. Alan couldn’t believe this was happening. It was something he had been confronting in his own mind and trying to make sense of it. And damn she was so good looking. He wanted to answer her with a kiss. In that moment his heart felt like it was in the trash compacter again. Wanting physical touch, but not able to.

Apparently he had won her heart. Though she might not kill him like she had teased, his desire to to be with her threatened crush his heart and kill him instead. He whispered to her, “I would lay down my life for you without hesitation. I...” he couldn’t finish. Now he was struggling to keep his emotions in check.

She tilted her head slightly to the side. Her face was full of kindness. After a long awkward pause for Alan she put a finger up to his lips. “Don’t worry about it. I know the words are there. Your actions shout them out to me. I do want to hear the words one day. Preferably soon.” She reached up as if to kiss him on the cheek.

He assumed that’s what she did, given he couldn’t feel anything. She sat back down and looked at him.

“The rest of your lunch is getting cold. Better eat up. You still have a lot of work to do before we can start on our bug killing engagement.”