Chapter 32

Chapter 32

You might think that after sharing something I felt was a deeply personal secret, my AI friends would have some kind of followup questions. Perhaps something about the nature of the station, or the unsettling alien machine at its heart, or maybe even just if I was doing okay.

They didnt.

It wasnt personal. Machine intellects, I think Ive mentioned before, can have a hard time being temporally bound to conversations the same way someone with an easily fallible meat brain would be. Im sort of required to hold focus on something, because once I forget, that line of inquiry is just *gone* out of my head, and who even knows how long until I remember it again?

Ennos though? Ennos can wait as long as I need, and postpone that curiosity until such time. Infinite patience. Also I think theyre plotting orbital trajectories for a handful of comet chunks that might hit us, because no matter how indestructible the station feels sometimes, Ennos is constantly afraid of things hitting us. The lovable coward.

Glitter just doesnt ask because I think Glitter thinks I outrank her.

I dont bother to correct that. I dont really want to talk.

I have chores to do. And without thumbs, those chores take just enough focus and are just barely important enough that I can forget anything I might be feeling while I do them.

Chores are great.

The material bunkers are low on a few things, so I get on the mag grapples and start snagging jagged chunks of metal out of space. Theres an endless supply of them, and it requires enough focus between making the control yoke bend to my will using *paws*, and then running through AR menus to feed the different pieces of things to different parts of the stations automated production lines, that I dont have time to think about anything else. Except being mildly frustrated.

Im mostly restocking ammo. Theres a lot of ammo to restock; Ive used up most of the point defense rounds. I task about a third of the low-grade metals to be used for flak shells, to restock the Kessler Syndrome Im working so hard to deplete.

Sometimes I feel like I havent adequately described the scale of the mess that is Earth orbit. There arent just a few thousand old satellites and broken ships up here. There arent even millions. There are *billions* of pieces of old infrastructure, from single-person skiffs to unmanned comm buoys, to whole stations that might still have active populations.

Im not running out of materials anytime soon.

I am halfway through trying to figure out what containment array to send a lump of some weird purpleish paramaterial to when my brain starts to betray me.

This no longer feels pressing, no longer feels like its easy enough to zone out on but important enough to eat up focus.

I can feel the gray creeping in.

Magnetic collection of space junk is over. It is time for beans.

Well, not time to eat beans. Even if they were ready, I dont think now would be a good time to actually enjoy the experience.

Beans - and I have a few varieties - are coming along nicely. My heavily networked dirt is doing an excellent job of providing perfect nutrients, and feeding replicated hydrocarbons into the mix has kept it lively and my produce growing.

I still havent bothered to check if my species can eat a number of those things. But my garden now has a deep, vibrant smell to it, and green is becoming a more dominant color against the dark gray hull plating.

My decades of studying farming, gardening, and even cooking - yes, studying. Certainly not obsessing over - comes into focus, as I check soil saturation and growth patterns, and make some minor adjustments to irrigation and temperature controls.

This requires me to actually think, *and* its paired with the promise of being able to eat a tomato within the next month. This is a good distraction.

And then its over, and I find myself eating lunch in the galley next door, trying to keep my treacherous mind focused on crop cycles, only barely paying attention to the fact that my ration is a series of stacked cubes that dont appear to be connected to each other in a bizarre culinary optical illusion.

I cannot keep my focus going. I feel the gray start to creep in again. A ravenous mental static that shreds away at my constructed self. Makes me doubt who I am, or what I want. Turns every choice I have to make into a screaming vortex of self-loathing, that eventually ends with me doing nothing but sleeping and maybe eating for a month, until something changes in my skull and I start to put myself back together.

Id prefer to avoid falling into that, this time, I guess. Its exhausting and inconvenient, and I have things I need to do. I dont have time to fall apart right now.

So I go down into an engineering and upkeep deck, letting one of the stations internal funiculars carry me the half kilometer of vertical distance to where I need to go. My legs are working, but moving feels like Im puppeting my body, instead of inhabiting it, so I opt out of ricocheting through access shafts this time.

Theres one thing that I can always count on to feel important, and thats breathing. Okay, maybe not always. But usually. Sometimes. More often than not, I want to be breathing, lets go with that. Also, it helps motivate me that theres now organic life beyond me on the station. All of my plants actually do need a working atmosphere in order to - the dog! Right! The dog is also on the station! And of equal importance to the plants, I promise - in order to grow to my satisfaction.

I put a scrambler round into the side of a mountain near their location. Shouldnt hurt anyone, but itll shut them up for a while, and should make my displeasure clear.

Battle damage repairs continue, though now I find myself working on a fast attack craft parked in one of my bays. The onboard AI doesnt know what to do with itself, and doesnt know much about communication skills either. We have a clipped conversation as I - armored in my engineering suit - do an emergency flush and overhaul of the neutron reactor at the core of the craft. Its learning fast. Might even pick a name. We talk about what it means to have an objective, and how maybe its not as important as we think.

The fighter craft gets me, I think.

Also working on it while Im trying to fight through this mental fog is probably useful, because I find myself less worried about if it might decide to fire its weapons while parked in here.

So thats nice.

Local energy discharge logs get checked over. Glitters been keeping up on keeping the Haze moving, every time were overhead. Thats good. Theres also signs that a nearby chunk of the dead moon thats just coming through a close part of an elliptical orbit has internal heat, and possibly power flow. *That* I should check out. I make a note. I could go there now; Ive got drones and armor and even a ship I could ask for help. But Ill wait until its closer.

I dont want to get too far from home.

The station is still home. No matter how I feel, its still my home.

Time for more work. This time, with a little more energy than before.

I take some time to cut power to the Real American barracks, and methodically cannibalize every combat drone in there for fluid circuitry. And also for revenge.

I do some reading on logistics and sociology. I think Im getting closer to actually understanding how I might be able to help a surface society that I have limited opportunities to interact with.

I run manual visual targeting as our orbit takes us closer to the lower ring of debris and wreckage around the planet, picking out what appear to be still-operational weapons platforms. Its dangerous to show any sign of activity down here, but whenever Im required to be in this area anyway, it doesnt hurt to add to my list of things to shoot when Im higher up the gravity well.

I have lunch. Its ration. Shaped like a ration bar. I think the galley is sulking.

I apologize for not appreciating whatever it made last time. I dont actually remember what it was. I dont know if it can even hear me.

I check on the vivification pod that the rescued dog is in. Almost ready to go. Only a day or two left. Hes looking properly healed, which makes me feel something. Good? Good.

I launch a cloudburst round into a part of the world thats experiencing a drought. While Im in my weapons cradle, I also trace a line with a void ray to draw a boundary for a flesh lattice thats growing a little too close to a spider settlement. Thats a problem that wont go away, but at least this way itll be stalled for a decade or so. Thats an issue for Future Lily. Future Lily is gonna be annoyed, but thats not my problem.

I really should talk to Ennos. Havent seen any of their drones around for a while. But I still cant get started with the words.

Not really an excuse though.

Hey. I meow, the first non-command Ive spoken in in a while.

Hello. Ennos replies instantly, voice sounding from the station around me. Weve been worried about you. Are you feeling better? Their voice is warm and comforting. Concerned, but not pitying.

I check. For the first time in a while, just letting myself think about how Im doing, and what Im feeling. Im exhausted, terrified, drained, and uncertain. I dont remember the last time I slept, Ive eaten only sporadically that I can remember, and I have this uncertain feeling that Ive forgotten something critical.

Theres some static. It never really goes away. But its not washing everything away.

Im better. I say, tail flicking behind me. I saw you were working on something.

Oh! My friend picks up the conversation like nothing ever interrupted it, a camera drone bobbing down the hallway and into view. Follow me! Let me show you what Ive found

I give a slow blink that threatens to turn into its own little nap. Then, with a growing ember in my spirit, I follow with steady padding steps.

Always more to do.