Chapter 6

Chapter 6

In *general*, I would highly recommend being a cat.

I have a lot of comparative data on how humans move, due to a few years spent learning vacuum suit design, and while yall have the eternal advantage of *thumbs*, it comes at a cost of maneuverability. I may be small, but I can get around even this fairly massive space station a lot faster than any human could. Mostly because I have the reflexes to respond to the alternate gravity zones, or because Im small enough to take access tunnels meant for repair droids.

Also, fur. Fur is just comfortable.

I realize that my list of reasons to be a cat isnt that long. It mostly exists to console myself that I dont have thumbs or a voice. But those arent actually the biggest drawback.

Im not sure if this is a cat thing, or a byproduct of experimental uplift technology that was adapted by a smart-but-mundane cat, but I lose time sometimes.

I dont mean I black out and wake up a day later, mind you. I know exactly what Im doing. Its more like I find it increasingly easy to fall into a kind of hyperfixation on a specific task, for a very long period of time.

Normally, I cant. And I dont mean that Im incapable of it or medicated to prevent it or anything like that; I mean I cannot focus on anything for more than ten minutes before another alarm goes off. Alarms do a great job of snapping me back to the moment, and forcing me to engage with a present problem. Theres nothing quite like knowing something on the planets surface is on fire, or theres a meteorite about to hit the station, to get me to pay attention.

Outside of a constant string of emergencies, I use scheduled activities to keep myself on task. And its not like we *lack* for an endless chain of problems to deal with up here. So normally its fine.

This last um three months? It has not been fine.

It starts small, like it always does. I put off a task, in favor of something that interests me more. Soon, I have failed to draft a new schedule, and I let small tasks lapse entirely. Then it gets worse, as I devote more and more time to my new passion project, until Im using stim pods and appetite suppressants to cut sleep and mealtime down to almost nothing.

And somehow, in three months, *no alarm sounds*. Whatever drone platform took a pitiful shot at me stays quiet, no baleful portals to the monster dimension open up, nothing tries to set the atmosphere on fire, all quiet.

So I let myself sink deeper into the project.

And then, suddenly, I find myself biting into a ration bar that tastes like angry vinegar, and my thoughts snap back to the present. The constant, energetic background buzz of ideas and plans trails away like a symphony cut off with a single squealing violin. And I am, again, here, and now. Realizing that I havent authorized the cleaning procedures on the food production line for a *while*.

Havent authorized *any* maintenance in a while, actually. Havent been keeping the munitions foundry projects queued up. Havent been doing anything that Im supposed to have folded into my routine.

The one saving grace is that, since there hasnt been an alarm to snap me out of my fugue, that means things have actually been *quiet* for months. This might be a new record, actually, especially given that just before this, I got about five alerts a week.

I do a quick check of the scattered, scrambled notes that I left for myself. Not that I really need them, mind you. I *do* remember what I was doing, mostly - again, its not that I black out or anything, I just narrow my mental focus to a very thin beam. Though coming out of the fugue can mix up some of my more delicate plans or held thoughts. But the notes are always handy for putting together a clear picture, especially since if its been *months*, then I may very well have forgotten bits and pieces of what I was up to naturally.

Naturally, says the biochemically uplifted feline.

Looks like my memory is mostly intact, though. Everything I was working on is consistent with a single goal.

Specifically, the goal of upgrading communication with my new killsat friend.

Ive sort of alluded to this before, but I do actually consider myself Earths protector. And yeah, maybe I wouldnt be on propaganda posters proclaiming Lily, Guardian of Humanity or anything. But I do take a certain amount of pride in running interference against everything that keeps trying to heck up the world I orbit.

Which means my long absence makes me feel a much, much deeper shame in my paws than the thought of not being able to keep things clean properly.

The Haze made it to its next destination two months ago, and has been hanging out there the whole time. My orbit is *off* from where it should be, and I dont actually remember why I diverted us this way, though I do remember it was my fault. Fortunately, this does put me in position to get it moving again, and I can only hope it didnt cause too much suffering in that extended time rooted.

Theres a flagrant emergence event happening in the polar sea. Whatever its doing, nothing alive is coming through, but it is dropping the temperature dramatically. To the point that even the weaker instruments meant for spotting things out here in the black can pick it up from orbit. I leave it, for now. I am not a climate scientist yet, but the final death of the Antarctic ice sheets three hundred and fifty years ago was a real tragedy. Letting this one run wont undo the damage, but nothing lives there anyway, and I wont be in position to bomb it for another sixty hours anyway, even if I do reset my orbital trajectory.

The station AI also keeps nudging my attention toward California Island. Though Im not sure why, the place is still very radioactive. And its not giving me an alarm, which means it thinks I should be looking there, but not that theres an immediate crisis. Its worth noting, I keep calling the station an AI, but it really isnt. Not by the same definition that something like Glitter is. Its very advanced programming, that was written with a moral code in mind that gives it a number of idiosyncratic behaviors. But its not actually alive. Probably. Ive asked before, but it never answers.

All told, nothing dramatic going on. Its been a quiet season for the denizens of Earth, and Im glad for it.

And then, theres the close area scan, which gives me the answer I was looking for earlier.

Ive matched the stations vector to what appears to be an isolation cell. Which instantly sets my hair on end, my back arching subconsciously.

The station has bumped into these before. Once. I had to seal off a whole deck, and then when that didnt look like it was going to be safe enough, dump that entire deck into orbit and shoot it. Repeatedly. I lost half a translation program I was working on that was on one of the data servers, an entire properly calibrated generator, and most importantly, the aquaponics testing bay that the galley used to provide the gentle hint of onion flavor to ration bars.

I am, ninety years later, still so pissed, I consider vaporizing the cell on principle.

Isolation cells are honestly a pretty basic concept. Theyre basically just escape pods, in reverse. Any station that was doing research into dangerous substances or concepts - and there were a *lot* of these for a while - would have lab spaces parceled off and easy to eject into space. But just to be safe, and so as not to get saddled with the responsibility of dropping a plague or a hostile antimeme on the planet, the ejected cells were set up to keep themselves in orbit. A lot of them would gradually drift away and get lost in the void, but many polities wanted to be able to retrieve and retry their mistakes.

So, sealed danger-boxes, floating around. And adding to their number every year for decades, human scientists gone mad with power. Perfect.

And then I remembered why Id parked next to this one.

Because it had a warning beacon on it, still emitting a Morse code string of coded hazard signals. And when I translated them all into something I could understand, the picture they painted was pretty clear.

Unchained digital intelligence inside. Do not open. Do not access. Do not power on. Do not plug in. Do not connect. Do not...

It was an AI, free from any hard coding.

Waiting. Probably shut off this whole time. Whoever had dumped it had been terrified, either of what it had done, or what it represented. But right now, me? I wasnt exactly thrilled by the prospect of something like this being on board my station.

But it might have a solution that I wanted. A way to break the shackles. And now, a desire to free my friend and a low hum of curious intuition pushed me to start a new project. One that wouldnt take too long, but would require me to carry a large number of battery packs over to this drifting cube, access it by paw, turn it on, poke around, and if I was very, very reckless, bring a passenger back.

Well. You know what they say about cats and curiosity.

Its a clear path to immortality, if youre smug enough.