Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Theres an alarm going off again.

I am aware of the alarm going off, because for safety reasons, I am not allowed to disable alarms. If youre thinking something along the lines of But you shouldnt disable alarms? That seems unsafe. Then youre correct. But Im over four hundred years old, and you dont really make it that far without building up at least a few reckless habits. And a hatred of alarms.

See, its entirely possible that I *could* turn off the alarms? Like Ive said, there isnt actually documentation for a lot of the operations of this station. Its quite likely that half the alarms spit out by maintenance issues are things that should never be coming up, because Im missing maintenance check-ins that I just dont know exist.

Now, you might be thinking something else at this point. Something about how four hundred years is kind of a long time, and maybe I should know more about the station I live on. And Im not gonna lie, youre probably right. Though to be fair, I did spend something like... what, seventy years?... as a perfectly ordinary immortal housecat with an unreasonably good memory. Ive also spent a combined total of maybe a decade or two in vivification pods, for reasons I do *not* care to explain, thank you!

And yeah, that leaves kind of a long time. I get that. Ive got *priorities* though! And I mean, seriously, priorities beyond just napping. Although I actually do need to sleep. Im immortal, not invincible, or immune to biological requirements. Just because telomere decay cant touch me doesnt mean that Im wasting time when I kick back on my favorite nap couch and catch a few hours of rest.

Most of my priorities have been learning various things, and teaching the station to understand me. Learning was a massive hurdle to cross, though again, even before my uplift I was still able to learn. You know how a cat can figure out how to open a door in a month or so if properly taught? Yeah, given a few decades all alone, its possible for a totally normal cat to learn how to open an AR window. How to access some basic controls. How to read. That kind of thing.

Okay, I said that, and then instantly realized just how much that makes it sound like Im lying about the perfectly normal thing. Well come back to that later, when I have more emotional processing power.

The biggest problem really was the amount of time it took to create a translation database from Meow to English. I can actually read several languages at this point, but the station cant exactly understand me without some really, *really* confusing software doing work that doesnt always actually translate things properly into what I want. Ive got a lot of basic stuff, like yes and no, down pretty well. But theres a lot of times, especially any time I tell you that Ive made an information request from one of the AR windows, where what Im really doing is screaming something that approximates a number code, that just hits a specific virtual button, which I took a long time to set up previously.

Imagine having to operate a computer without a mouse. Do you need to click on something? You can kind of do that. The screen is split into sectors; you can pick one, then it divides that section, and you pick one of those new sectors. And so on, until youve narrowed it down enough, that a click can happen. Its *that*, but I have to do it by meowing. Clearly enough for the audio nanos, too. Which, for all that they are basically magic, is still a *lot* cleaner than I had gotten used to speaking over the course of my life.The source of this content nov(el)bi((n))

I guess what Im saying is, theres a reason that long stretches of my daily hours are devoted to writing new code. It can be tedious. But at least it motivates me to do it right the first time.

And also its a convenient excuse for why I havent explored more of the station.

There are a lot of doors that require specific commands to access. Commands I technically have the authority to give, but lack the documentation to know. And the station doesnt care that Im allowed, only if I know the passcode, which makes me feel a little like a wizard sometimes. Casting a hundred spells of repair or unlock a day.

I mentioned an alarm. That was a thing that was happening. In the intervening time that it has taken me to complain about being unable to directly interface my brain with a compiler, and also complain about how the alarms have no off switch, I have switched off the alarm.

Well, okay, I acknowledged it, and removed the reason for the alarm. It was a low-risk emergence event happening just over the surface of what used to be the Pacific Ocean. I took care of what came out of it with void beam fire, and then basically just held down the button on the ion array until the hole in reality went away. Not my favorite way to handle these things, but you cant exactly make a hot enough crater to kill an emergence when youre firing orbital weaponry into the water. It doesnt have enough initial energy discharge.

If I made the experience of cleaning up extradimensional monsters sound like a chore, or like it was easy, then that is correct. Good job.

The thing is, access to weapons designed to kill armies, biomechs, cities, and spaceships is *kind of* an unfair advantage against creatures that fundamentally lack the ability to shoot back. I am *in orbit*. I say that a lot, but I dont think a lot of minds inherently comprehend just how far away orbit is from where *they* are.

Update part three. I have been lying to you. I do not keep captains logs.

I close the command window, and check what needs doing next. Nothing serious, just a review of the local scanner data. Maybe, if Im lucky, a rogue spacebound garden will have wandered within grabbing range, and I can fuse it to my home. For professional use.

Regardless, this can be done while laying down comfortably anywhere. So I leave the comms station, and head for my nap zone.

Ive been working in a secondary comms station, so I take a weird circuitous route back to where I want to be. The AR projects a map for me, but it keeps saying to go through a door that literally does not exist.

This happens sometimes. I swear the station isnt haunted. It just thinks there should be a room or hallway that never got built, and is still on the schematics. Its not either me, or the station AI, being in alarmingly specific denial about anything.

As I move, slightly slower than normal as I go through hallways I dont normally use, I notice something.

There *is* a door here. Not the one that isnt real, just a door that I havent ever been through.

Its not like Ive never seen this door before. Ive been here for a long time, Ive been down all these halls and tunnels. Mostly. Maybe not all the maintenance shafts. But I havent been through every door, and it always frustrates me when theres a part of what I think of as my territory locked off from me.

The thing that stands out here is that theres an AR projection on it. A pictographic glyph that Ive seen before, in the long ago archives of my memory, back when I was a normal pet. It was the symbol that was projected on my moms door, whenever she had company over, and kicked me out.

Room in use, my brain fills in the information. Come back later.

My body ripples as my muscles tense up involuntarily. I find my back arching as I hiss at the door on reflex, the ancient reminder of what Ive lost glowing red and blue over the bulkhead.

And then, the AR flickers out. Like it was never there. Just a normal locked door to a crew cabin that I dont know the right command to open.

I orient myself, and run the rest of the way to my nap zone. To sit in the sunlight, where the ghosts cant get me. Not, I remind myself, and everyone else, that the station is haunted.

Its just a hiccup in an overly complex system, manifesting in an unexpected way. The place is centuries old. Its earned a few quirks. I just wish they werent ones that startle me like that.

I fall asleep reviewing scanner data, and tagging dead satellites for recovery and conversion into material stockpiles later. The sun is warm, the couch is soft, and my heart has long since calmed down from my scare earlier. Now that I might be able to talk to the weapons platform, I need a new project, so before dozing off, I allocate some of my time tomorrow to digging through the station code again, looking for the unlock commands. Just for my own amusement, obviously.

I roll my belly into the sun, and must be dreaming, as I feel the sensation of fingers in my fur.