Chapter 51

Chapter 51

My sister has been down here for a very long time.

No matter what shes done, the station has always had some form of security or containment measure to keep her from leaving the reactor deck, and a few subsystems around it. But even within that confined zone, theres been a lot for her to do.

The reactors, the beating hearts of the station that were here long before I arrived and in theory will still be here in a thousand years, are her food supply. Without them, she goes dormant. And thats happened a couple times, I know, because Ive had to come down and fix the place.

Something else keeps her dormant too, when Im down here enacting repairs. She doesnt know what, and neither do I; in her voltaic voice she describes it like an outside pressure that comes and goes and keeps her from noticing things.

It doesnt always line up to my trips down to perform maintenance. And, also, its not happening *now*, for whatever reason. It didnt start happening again when we walked back into monitoring range either.

Regardless, she hates the feeling. And so, even without being aware of me personally, shes been keeping the reactors as functional as possible so that the blackouts dont come.

Id always wondered where the station had picked up a being made of energy that regulated power flows. Now I guess I know. The same place it picked up me. Somehow.

The how is what eludes us. We know who we are. Theres no crisis of identity to be had here; why would there be? Im Lily. Shes Lily. Theres at least one more Lily. We can share; its not like one of us is more real than the others. But where did we *come from*? Thats a lot harder to answer than what do we do now.

We have the same memories. The same fuzzy impressions of being a kitten, of warm concrete and red string, of living under a real sky. We have the same moment etched into our minds of the launch from the surface, of disembarking onto this space station. Of the various researchers and crew giving us pets or treats. Of mom.

Of an abrupt end.

But then, things get hard to follow. Timelines are hard to construct off of memory alone, especially with a station thats actively fighting your attempts to understand your history.

One of us woke up first, but we cant really tell which one. Weve learned different things, seen different parts of the station. Led different lives.

And yet not quite. We both developed the same language, for our limited interfaces. Despite being classified as synthetic life, this Lily still has limited access to station systems, just like I do. Did.

We both like naps. We even enjoy them in the same way; savoring the feeling of foreign radiation on our bodies as we allow ourselves to not be responsible for anything for a while. We both think the other is warm, in some way. We both dream of our mom.

We both like food. Theres some kind of weird thing going on where she can spetromaticaly analyze organic matter as her body breaks it down, but she tells me thats just a dumb way to say she can taste things. And just like me, shes been living on the bare minimum for survival for a long, long time.

She cries when we eat stir fry.

We both care about the world below us, and the people around us. We are children of Sol, as our mom raised us.

Neither of us like trying to make things work with paws. She doesnt know *why* she has paws, why shes still shaped like a cat. Shes tried to be something else a hundred times. I can empathize. I have too. But we are what we are.

Right now, we are both exasperated, because Dyn has walked into the galley for her share of stir fry, and is screaming.Read latest chapters at novelhall.com Only

Okay, thats not fair. Dyn isnt exactly screaming. Shes more just Dyn stop that where do you keep getting those waving a gun around, yelling about how shes supposed to be told about things like this, yelling about monsters or something.

Is she always like this? Lily asks me with a charged meow.

More or less. I say. Well, actually, less. This is the most shes said in a month. I look away from Dyn to lean down to my bowl and bite into a slice of zucchini. Its kind of awful. I dont think I like zucchini at all. Its the best thing Ive ever tasted. Ennos, can you calm her down? I ask.

Lily Ennos voice has gotten a *lot* more detailed since theyve been able to expand safely into more and more digital space. Before, theyd done a lot with what they had, but *now*, its like a perfect replication of an organic human who really, *really* wants to sigh deeply and rub their forehead, but has their hands full. Im very impressed! Yes, thank you. Ennos says for some reason. Its what my social prediction models said would be most likely. For some reason. And no, I cannot calm her down. I can hardly calm myself down. Theres someone who has been living on the station this whole time that we didnt even know about. Thats *worrying*.

Im right here, you know. Lily says in her somewhat accented cat. Do they know I can hear them? She asks me.

Subspace gets around a lot of this. Subspace comms are power-thirsty, subject to fluctuations in the underrealm, and are technically less faster than light than an ansible unit. But most of those are gone, and Ive got an excitable industrial repeater building me batteries for my personal communications buoy network, so mlem.

The problem Glitter and Ennos have is that the station keeps editing their memories when they get close to certain things.

The solution - were off the tangent, mostly, by the way - is *not* to kick them off the station, as I had first thought. Instead, it is to put their memories into a storage and update loop.

The instant a discovery is made, it is broadcast out to join the server on the corp vessel Dyn and I set up. Filtered of any influence from the stations core. From there, it is bounced from buoy to buoy, across the station in a known subspace band, until either of them want to pull the information out and use it.

Its not a perfect system. But we have essentially reinvented cloud storage without meaning to. And the golden age ability to form celestially tethered incorporeal balls of pure information was kind of a big deal.

Though modern - modern, hah; modernity is a lost idea - subspace uses paramaterials, which is cheating. I just cant tell my friends that.

What did you find? I ask Glitter, a mind encased in a weapons platform for a body, bouncing her thoughts through another mind and a hundred voices, pulling knowledge out of the echo. Its a lot of work just to look at a scanner image.

Her peaceful, musical laugh comes back through her trio of drones. Slightly different from each, and I realize she probably uses clusters just so she can get her voice the way she wants it. Ive found you. She says.

Dyn sighs, and cracks open her mechanical hand, fidgeting with the insides under the guise of cleaning it as part of a nervous tic.

Glitter, I love you, but youre going to have to be more specific right now. I tell her.

Lily, you are currently on the exterior hull of the station. Armor segment UX-Infraction-441. I am, in a way I am unfamiliar with, aware that this is not you, as I am speaking to you in the galley right now. However I also know that it *is* you. You are enacting repairs from a microdebris strike. You are not wearing a suit. I need to stop discussing this now, as the constant power drain of pulling deleted memories from subspace is mounting higher. Glitter cuts off.

Theres a moment of quiet, punctuated by Dyn snapping her hand back together. Alright. The old woman says in a resigned voice. You wanna go get her, or should I?

An alarm sounds. One of my surface watchers chiming in. Then another alarm, this one of a tone I dont recognize, and my sister bolts to her feet in a crackle of heat and light. In unison, we have opened AR displays, though mine has a few more layers of complexity these days.

Distress call from a librarian tribe. I say, eying the red blips of infovores closing in on the ground based mobile store of Earth knowledge through a stolen spy satallite. I have to I have to move. I look toward the door, then back to my sister in a snap of motion.

She looks at me through her own display. Tracking code predicts an incoming high power drain that I need to stabilize. She says.

We make the connection at the same time. Share a feral grin with each other.

Ill get your sister. Dyn says, walking between us and out the door, pulling the arm of her vac suit up over her shoulder and cracking her neck.

My sister and I turn to follow, but then, I pull up short as I say, Wait a second! Stopping her as she prepares to bound down the corridor on electric limbs.

Except I didnt say that. I didnt say anything. But my voice did.

She turns. Meows a question at me, tail straight up as she prepares to *move* in the way that only a lifetime of knowing exactly how many gravity anomalies you can run through without dying can cause.

I dont know what my voice wants, but I stop fighting it. Its never been wrong before. Its still *me*. I loosen my mental grip on my own throat, and let myself speak.

Take this. I say. I dont know whats expected of me, but I offer a paw anyway.

My sister hesitates, then reaches out, slowly. Our paws make contact. A spark of electrical charge and biological impulse cross between us. And something else moves across the connection. And thats it. My voice is returned to me, as Im used to.

Good luck! I say, the two of us turning to sprint in our respective directions. Her to her reactor, me to my gun.

You too! She yells back in my own voice as we split away.