Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Four hundred years has done a great amount of work for me in terms of preparing me to be surprised.

At a certain point, I had this realization. Every time I thought I was getting bored, thought Id seen too much, or seen everything, thought that Id become *weary* of life? Every time, without fail, something would catch me off guard.

Maybe its just because my guard was dropped. But maybe not. Maybe its because the universe is too complicated, too varied, too wild and wonderful and *weird* to ever really fully get bored with.

The moment for me that really solidified that was probably the first time I realized there were still Earthlings living around the solar system. Sure, the industry of Earth that made space development practical and useful was mostly gone. But people lived on more than one moon, on more than one planet, and on a host of orbital structures that kept on going even in the face of certain doom.

The moment two hundred years ago when I realized that the reason the starship hull I was planning to strip for parts was missing because a crew of turtlebacks had boarded it, gotten the engine working, and flown it on stealth mode out to the asteroid belt to a hidden colony? That was it for me. That was when I gave up trying to be prepared, or bored, or cynical.

Without even knowing they were doing it, they sniped a prize right out from under me.

That was *so cool*. There wasnt really a lot I could do about how cool it was. And also, I had over three hundred thousand crippled starship hulls to choose from, so getting mad about it would have served no purpose.

Compared to that kind of bravado, what chance did I ever stand of living my life without a few surprises?

My digital companions represent two different attitudes, both of which Ive had at different parts of my life, when I was younger.

Glitter is me when I was on the cusp of surrendering to the dull. She takes everything in stride not because shes in tune with the chaos of the universe, but because shes starting to think that shes seen it all, and is somehow above it all too. And okay, lets not dwell on how thats literally true. You know what I mean, and I dont want to this isnt a semantics thing. This is about finding meaning in a dark and hostile reality, and wasting your time being prescriptive about word use is wasting your precious candle.

Ennos, on the other paw, is where I was right after my uplift. Theyre so uncertain, that everything is a point of panic. Surprised by everything, scared of everything, Ennos seeks to understand so that the surprises stop coming. Because the surprises are terrifying!

But thats just how life is. Its all of us, sometimes. Maybe Ill loop myself, and end up scared again for a while, before Im bored for a while. That would be a nice surprise for the version of me that will then be amused for a while!

Live long enough and you can see it all. Im not there yet, and dont know if I ever will be, but seeing it all sure is fun.

Maybe thats why its so easy to feel like my life hasnt really deviated too far from normal with the unintended attack on the station. For me, anyway.

Most of the first week was devoted to getting Glitter stabilized, as well as hauling the station bit by bit back into our stable orbital path safely surrounded by a maelstrom of deadly debris and ancient weaponry. At one point, I deployed our mini drone fleet to secure a lump of pseudo-lithium, which Ive been running through the foundry and consumer factory to produce a *lot* of replacement batteries for Glitter.

Hers got shredded by a dead and pained ghost, sadly. And she needs the backup power. The good news is, by this point, Im *really* skilled at setting these things up to work in parallel, and by the end of the week, Ive ferried two thousand of them over to her hull.

Oh, should mention, lost two drones to a mild skirmish over the material. There was some kind of defensive minefield deployed around it. Guess someone was planning to come back. They cant now.

Repairing the rest of Glitter has taken up the two weeks after that. Her hull has tears in it, her main core was dangerously close to complete failure before she forced a shutdown, and a lot of her safety functions were offline. In contrast to fixing up the station, which *mostly* just requires me to tell the repair drones to fix the station, when I even have to do that, Glitter requires manual assistance.

Its been a couple months, so I feel like I should remind you all that I am a cat? This probably doesnt come up much - I havent done a statistical breakdown or anything - but its true. And it turns out, operating a cobalt welder when youre not working with thumbs is *really* hard.

I actually took a full two days before that part of the repairs to retrofit my engineering suit. Ennos helped me out with building the actual schematic file, but mostly it was me rapidly intuiting material tolerances and power draws so that I could build pseudo-thumbs into the forepaws of the suit.

That made the job simpler, but not really any less time consuming. But by the time were sure were back in our stable orbital path, Glitter is at least back up to reasonable safe functionality.

And now that my friend is okay again, I can get down to analyzing and undoing all the havoc laid down on my home.

Perhaps a comparison. They bring up a live feed of the stasis pod they are dragging through a hallway four decks overhead. How about now?

Uh both dogs? I feel like Im being messed with here. I dismiss the windows, and decide its time for lunch.

I am *almost* angry to admit that I am looking forward to lunch. It is going to taste like ration. But its also going to be art, or art-adjacent, and Ive started to get into the theater of it all.

Lily, the creature you brought back has four extra prehensile limbs, apparently engineered for combat. Ennos sounds some kind of mix of concerned and annoyed. You dont find this at all worrying?

...Sometimes dogs have those? I dont get why the AI is so worried. I dont get why youre so worried. Im sure theyre a very good dog!

How can you possibly-

Because all dogs are good dogs!

Lily no. Ennos sighs. Please. You cant what if it tries to eat you?

Probably wont work. I mutter, possibly in cat. Not that it matters much anymore, Ennos has long since begun building an ancillary language database, and speaks whatever garbage linguistic monster Ive developed perfectly well. They still havent figured out whats latched onto the main one. I think they take it personally.

I dont. The AI says for no reason. And Im going to bring this up again when we get a genetic scan, and I can prove you wrong.

Sure. Im gonna have lunch. Anything else to report?

Theres a spy satellite thirty six kilometers away that is actively scanning us. Ennos grumbles. You should shoot it.

I should not. Does it report to anything?

I dont have access to the sensors needed to track that. Also I think they may have been destroyed in the attack. We are partially blind and it is-

Worrying, yes. I agree. Ill get to work on those after lunch. Actually, can you do both of us a favor? See if we have any commercial grade blueprints for an onboard drone with arms. I know it wont be perfect, but lets see if we can at least give you the ability to push buttons in a way that doesnt involve ramming them. I bat one of the camera drones in a friendly gesture that sends it spiraling away through the air.

Thank you. Ennos sounds surprised. Which worries *me*. Did they really think they were a pet? Just because I keep forgetting to be a responsible parent doesnt mean I dont want to give them every tool I can. I make a promise to myself to devote time to that, no matter how many new sirens go off in the next few days. ...Thank you. Ennos voice is quieter this time. Enjoy your lunch. I am going to yes. I will check the blueprints.

Lunch is a highly detailed recreation of the classic Arclight holosign, an echo of a memory of an era of creativity and art that may have been a fiction but certainly gave rise to some powerful films.

It is 100% made of ration, and it tastes like it too. But its impressive, anyway.

I dont end up shooting down that spy sat. Its a hundred years old, and its transmitter is obviously damaged. Maybe Im just being vain, but I dont feel the need to snipe things just for scanning me.

I did shoot down the weapon platform that had started tracking the spy sat, though. The thing had come online as soon as the bundle of automated sensors had gone to active scanning of the station, probably in response to us firing the engines to brake back to our stable orbit.

It takes about four seconds for me to start to consider something defenseless as a pet, I guess.

More than enough time to put an inferno lance through whatever threatens my new friend.