Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Okay! Three, two, one!

I drop my forepaws onto a switch plate, engaging the magnetic couplers behind the hull plates of the stations walls. Its taken a lot of time - and a creative and possibly illegal use of a cleaner bot - to get the things into position without disassembling large chunks of the hallway.

Which I really didnt want to do. Like, more than I really didnt want to arrange a series of couplers without being able to see them properly.

Would it surprise you? Learning that the connectors and bolts and other contact points that keep the plates secure are perhaps *not placed with me in mind*?

Theres a lot of oh, this was made for humans going on around here. It comes up pretty much every time I have to void beam the surface; Im not really the set target for the target setter. But theres just some ways where its way, way worse. Like, I can at least plant my hind legs on a chair and prop myself up on a desk to see a screen or a holo-interface. What I cant do without some really unsafe uses of station drones and creative applications of damage is get a wall panel down.

I need to remind you all that Im something like a foot and a half tall. The station is built for creatures several times that, and with hands. The hands thing is a sticking point for me.

Anyway, Im using magnetic couplers and the same principles that railguns use to drag a grid cable through the walls without having to perform excavation. Thats where I was going with this. I think. I kind of lost track, and I was supposed to be listening for anything rattling in case one of the couplers was misaligned.

Connection recognized. Ennos voice says. No drivers, though. Ill need to fabricate compatible ones, which should take some time. They pause for exactly two seconds. Okay. Done. Ennos *says* they arent a smug AI, but I know when theyre being smug. I can feel it. Link established. Encryption overridden. Yup. Thats it, weve got proper access now.

Ennos keeps saying we, but I had access to begin with. This is about building something else. Something they can use, with full permissions.

And as of now, Ennos has a hard line from the processor hardware that the dominant part of their persona runs on, straight to one of the two consumer factories that weve unearthed and brought online in the stations depths.

This would be the part in a bad spark opera where the AI, finally having convinced its organic handlers to give it access to something, would begin to show signs of nefarious behavior. In five or six episodes, it would be revealed that they had secretly been building a drone army, and now were going to try their digital hand at genocide or something. Then, the inevitable slow drag of the apology arc where the characters who had supported AI rights were rightly chastised for almost unleashing a robot apocalypse.

Hey Ennos. I meow innocently. Whatcha gonna build first?

Robot army. The AI replies, deadpan.

I *knew it*. This is why we get along so well. Ennos actually has been watching the same archived shows I have.

Seriously, though. I know that history is a different land, and Ive read a *ton* of essays and texts that define people as just behaving as a product of their time, but its still creepy to me how obvious even some of my favorite pieces of fiction are overtly anti-AI propaganda. It seems like a lot of Earths literary critics are falling over themselves to excuse the blatant racism as the creators just being immersed in a horrible culture, or not having had the time to grow up and mature properly. But that seems weird to me.

I, for example, am four hundred years old, and I dont think I was every hatefully anti-synthetic at any point in my life. Maybe I just got lucky though.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

I leave Ennos to acquaint themself with their new host of assembler arms, and get to doing some chores.

Four hundred years old and I still have to do chores. Youd think that by now, Id live in the future, and not have to work this hard, but oh well.

First up, checking on the dog. He is, and I cannot stress this enough, a very good boy. He is also taking up one of the vivification pods in the medical wing; turns out, you just cant get through having an orbital craft shot out from under you without a few radiation burns and shrapnel hits. So, once the stasis unit had cycled, Id let the pained and stumbling dog by the tentacle over a few steps to another pod, and helped him into it.

Helped is another one of those words thats doing a lot of work. I was a stepping stone, of minimal aid. Im just lucky my new guest was smart enough to go where I pushed; I dont exactly have dog snacks to lure him anywhere.

Hes repairing now. Flesh being regrown and revitalized. Hell feel good as new once hes up, but itll take longer than I knew I was prepared to wait.

I am, strangely, excited. Ive never shared my space with a living creature before. Ennos and Glitter are wonderful friends, but neither of them are really big in the giving pets department.

I miss pets. I miss a lot of things.

Of course, now I have to wait for who knows how long to meet the doggo. But itll be fine; the vivification pods work. Void knows Ive used them enough myself, for a variety of reasons. Most of them reasonable.

I leave the medical wing - Theres a medical wing; I dont know if Ive mentioned this? It was behind a sealed bulkhead, and had to be decontaminated. Used as some kind of plague quarantine. Didnt work. The cleaner nanos have already disposed of the skeletons by the time I got there. The point is, and I promise there is a point, that the two different high tech medical research labs placed on different sides of the same deck was actually for a reason, and the reason is theres about six hundred well appointed hospital beds between them. - and head toward the next chore I have to get done.

Have to. Heh.

The garden is thriving. Vines that will soon carry peas and beans and tomatoes wind up around metal lattices made from dismantled common room chairs. The thin sprouts of greenery from morruts, carrots, and ananas cut up out of the deeper boxes of technoenhanced dirt. Stalks of rice and rods of sugarcane are both starting to come along in my makeshift aquaponics setup. Theres one onion growing. Just to see. Just to know if it will kill me, like it would a normal cat.

Its a chaotic mess. Differing temperatures dot the room as the climate control system wars with itself to keep things steady to my satisfaction. The concept of crop rotation, which I actually *do* have a strong grasp on, is alien here. The dirt is networked, and a thin trickle of a power supply keeps it working to maintain perfect environments for the plants in it.

In theory, I dont even have to check on my garden.

Ennos, doing their AI thing, picks up the conversation like it never stopped. Thank you, I appreciate it Lily. I also appreciate you dismantling something people wont use, instead of continuing to cannibalize all the stations chairs.

I glance over at the cargo segment Im mostly done cutting up. Its not really any kind of segment anymore, just metal wreckage in need of a new purpose.

Yeah, its nothing. Ive gotta do something to keep busy, you know? I pause. Also the chairs are fine. Sometimes I just need hollow metal rods in exactly that size, and the fabricator has trouble with them. Its fine. Ive been using chairs for things for about fifty years, and I still havent run out.

Ennos makes an awkward humming noise. An endless supply of chairs? They ask.

Its a big station! A lot of chairs! I yowl defensively. Its not like anyones using them.

Yes yes, Im not defending the chairs. Ennos says. Its just odd that youve never run out. There is a long pause. Long enough that I assume Ennos has gotten sidetracked, like people do, and that the conversation is over. But just before I start the laser again to finish my work, they speak up. Also it explains why this factory has a standing queue of chairs for delivery.

For a mortal creature, the sudden knowledge that youve just spent the last several decades doing something pointless would be *crippling*. I imagine theres a level of soul crushing despair that would render someone for whom that represented a larger percentage of their life into a crying heap.

Fortunately, I am not mortal. So I can bear this minor folly with dignity.

Calmly, I disable the industrial cutting laser, stand up, and leave the bay. Disabling my AR windows one at a time, I make my way to the refurbished exolab I use for situations that require a truly impressive nap.

I lay down on the cushions. They are plush and comfortable against my mostly entirely regrown fur. The sun is in a good spot today, solar radiation warming me to a perfect temperature.

Wiggling side to side, I bury my head under a stray pillow, and, in a calm and dignified way, give my best feline impression of a drawn out scream.

I stay here, hidden from the endlessly frustrating and politeness elements of my daily life, until I doze off.

As I fall asleep, my ears pick up the distant sound of a womans laughter, clear and happy...

...I bolt upright, trying to hold onto the sensation of that moment between sleep and wakefulness.

The laughter stops. But not because I stop hearing it. I can still hear. Something else, in the background. An appraising little hm, a noise from nowhere, to nowhere, and yet in my ears regardless.

I feel a presence near me, and I stay shock still. Its not like the invading specters; theres no physical sign of anything changing or coming for me, just a feeling. A sensation, in my *soul*, if thats even a thing cats have.

A hand touches my head. I am torn between the desire to lean into it, or flinch away. I do neither; waiting, and observing. Probably because I am actually terrified. My heart hammers in my chest so hard Im worried it will break.

A noise halfway between a sigh and sob drifts on the empty wind, and I feel long, *human* arms encircle me. A hug, the likes of which I havent felt in a very, very long time.

Something whispers Youre doing great! You have friends! Thats so... into my ear. A voice I havent heard in lifetimes. Maybe I still havent. I

The connection *shatters*. The ghost is gone. I bolt upright, waking into pandemonium. Ennos is yelling something at me from a trio of camera drones that have creatively wedged the lab door open, the lights flicker back to life with an electric crackle that should not be there, and not one but *two* different - both highly annoying - alarms are blaring.

A dream.

Possibly.

But maybe not.

I sit quietly on my couch, tuning out the world around me. With a soft motion, I rub the back of my paw over one of my eyes, trying to clear the sleep away, trying to determine if I am going mad, or if someone really is out there.

It is a personal, solemn moment. The kind that I dont get very often around here, because usually-

Sorry, Ennos is yelling at me.

Oh, right. The alarms. There is an emergency.

I arch my back in a stretch, and with a flicker of motion, bolt into action. Solve the new crisis first. Solemn moment later.

Just as its always been.