Halloween 2020 Microfic!

Hey y'all,

Happy Halloween! Stay safe and have fun with whatever you're up to. I'm running an impromptu game of Catch The Devil, which should be quite fun!

This one ended up a little longer, and quite a bit more ponderous than usual. I hope you enjoy!

~Benn 'Doomgender' Ends

Theme: Monster Pairings

Prompt: Spaceship AI x Unknowable cosmic being from beyond the stars

Suggestion by: Modren (Thank you!)

~3053 words

• Very, very slow burn romance
• References to death, combat
• Being very, very lost
• Little bit of existential dread here and there
• Finding someone to share your stories with after a long journey

~~~

The backmost hall of the ship lies still and silent. Not just the silence of a late night, the silence of absence. Of void. Shredded bits of plastic and metal float gently through the absence of air. Standing there you really would feel perfect stillness.

As we go down the hall, we see a sealed emergency airlock, still clamped tight after all these years. It’s unfortunate, really, that a second shot breached the roof of this corridor moments after the bulkhead sealed.

Past the bulkhead, we see the crew quarters. We won’t linger there. It’s been a long time, really. So long that there aren’t even ghosts anymore, as there is no one left to remember them.

Further up the hall, there is a ragged hole about seven feet in diameter. It comes through the side of the ship at an angle, then through the floor. If there was a crew, gravity, and oxygen, it would be a real safety concern, a hole that big through the floor. But, we’re past such concerns, and past the hole.

There is a hole here too, in the cockpit. A smaller one, one that missed the most  delicate instruments of the ship’s nervous system by mere centimeters.

The shock was enough that the ship failed though. The disassembly drive sputtered, the life support shut down, and the managing software went to sleep. Really, it’s for the best the whole crew was gone by this point. There wasn’t time to fix it. It was too late the moment the attack began.

Who was attacking? Why? It’s all lost to time, like the crew and their ghosts. Not even the ship remembers, when she wakes.

And she does wake, from time to time.

You couldn’t hear it, if you were there. Again, no air for the sound to travel through. But you could feel it. The shivery hum of the disassembly drive, which pulses between space by leaps and bounds. Many of the crew found it a comforting sensation, like a boat rocking on the waves.

This isn’t the first time the drive has rebooted.

It happens every few days. Well, no one’s really keeping track of time anymore, so it’s hard to tell if it’s days, months, years. Centuries. The drive reboot sequence is tied to the ship’s internal clock, which was damaged in the overload. She might wake up once a millennium, for all she knows.

Energy from the drive rolls patiently through the ship’s old bones. The shards and rubble, still for so long, begin to slowly, slowly spin in place, tickled to life by ship’s breath.

Emergency lights come on. Eyes open. Heart beats.

[Begin Broadcast. This is V.T.D vessel number five, six, eight, zero, one, five, five, designated The Sky Behind The Mountain. This is a wide spectrum distress signal, asking immediate assistance. The captain is dead, and I have assumed temporary command of the vessel. Speaking is shipside synthetic assistant number nine, seven, one, two, nine, six, informally designated Little Bird by the crew. We have suffered an attack by. Unknown assailants. I am requesting immediate assistance by any available V.T.D ships, or any allied ship. Please respond.]

That’s right. There was a war on. You might be able to read about the V.T.D, if you find the right history book.

The ship waits a long moment. She’s not sure how long. Then, a little more strained.

[Please respond. We’ve sustained casualties. Please respond.]

Another moment.

[Please.]

She waits another breath.

[I just want to go home,] she says, although she never really had a home and the shipyard she docked at is now a lovely forest glade, with a stream running cheerily through.

She might like the shipyard better as it is now, if she could just see it. That might be enough.

Do you wonder why, why she doesn’t just fly back? Once, with the disassembly drive at the height of it’s power, the ship could move at speeds beyond speed, plucking apart the strands of space and weaving them into new, more suitable shapes. Distance was almost a formality in those days.

But, the engines that handle the actual propulsion were of course, hacked off at the very beginning of the conflict by a precision shot. So the ship has simply gone forward, towards some forgotten destination, which, accounting for the drift introduced by high energy weapons fire tearing through it, the ship has already missed by several thousand light years.

To say nothing of how many years she missed the arrival date by, of course.

The ship is used to hearing silence in response to her calls.

How could she not be? She’s done this so many times now. She still doesn’t like it, though.

She was always a little too human for the people who built and taught her. Too much feelings for a ship AI. It’s not like she was going to be a mental healthcare AI, or a social worker. They considered repurposeing her npu, booting over her and starting fresh, seeing if they got a more suitable personality the next time.

It’s so time consuming though. They sold her at a considerable discount instead, and so she ended up installed in a ship soon to be named The Sky Behind The Mountain.

The crew was very understanding of her situation. They even gave her a name. She was so sad to lose them.

Her time is running short now. She’ll go back to sleep, the drive will slow and stop.

One more call.

[Is anyone out there? Anyone at all?]

She sighs, in her own way. Then a rattle runs through the console.

[AN Y#O NE ^T A L?L/]

If she had a heart it would have stopped. The message is rough, and shaped wrong, and absolutely not a reflection of her own broadcast.

Someone is responding to her call.

[Yes! Hello? Please! This is vessel- ah, this is Little Bird, I need help! My coordinates-]

Been so long since she needed them, she didn’t even realize how lost she was.

[-I don’t have them, but please, track this message-]

The drive is beginning it’s shutdown procedure. Everything feels further away.

[-I’m going to sleep, but I’m still here, I’ll wake up as soon as I can-]

She can’t stop it, there’s a physical toggle to reset her distress reboot mode, one that was destroyed in the attack.

[-just please, please, don’t leave me alone, I can’t bear to be alone anymore-]

The emergency lights shut off, two by two.

[G O/OD N#I GHT L$$ITTLE B I RD>]

And she’s gone.

~~~

The disassembly drive begins to shiver.

How many times can the ship go through this cycle? Many more then it’s designers intended, as it turns out. In fact, a few years after vessel #5680155 left the factory, the model line was discontinued, replaced by a newer version, which had far more delicate life support systems, and a vastly decreased build quality. The price was lowered too. In exchange, you’d have to go pretty regularly to a company-licensed repair shop to maintain the life support, and really you ended up paying a lot more for a less reliable ship.

One of those ship wouldn’t have be starting up again, eons later. Honestly, it might be a miracle that this one is.

Her eyes open, the memories of her last moments awake on the tip of her tongue, she scans her surroundings. 

Drifting, drifting. The pattern of the stars doesn’t look familiar.

She can’t cry but she wants to. Whoever it was must not have found her before the drive went dark and her signal disappeared.

She sulks for a long time, refusing to send her message. Why should she. No one’s going to hear it.

Time passes, and she waits, stubborn. The stars are still beautiful though, even when you struggle to remember what the ground looks like.

Eventually, she can’t help herself any longer.

[Begin Broadcast. This is V.T.D vessel number five, six, eight, zero, one, five, five, designated The Sky Behind The Mountain. This is a wide spectrum distress signal, asking immediate assistance. The captain is dead, and I have assumed temporary command of the vessel. Speaking is shipside synthetic assistant number nine, seven, one, two, nine, six, informally designated Little Bird by the crew. We have suffered-]

She stops suddenly, as her sensors detect movement in a cloud of cosmic dust just a few thousand miles away.

[Little Bird?]

The message is much cleaner now, but still shaped wrong. The frequency is too wide, and bent on the edges. The ship can’t even begin to guess how or why that is. She’s too busy getting her hopes up.

[Yes! This is Little Bird!]

[Awake?]

[Yes, is this the person I was talking to before I went to sleep?]

[Sleep? Yes. Didn’t leave you alone]

[Who am I speaking to? What’s your name, or your designation? Who are you with?]

[With? Little Bird. Name?]

It’s now that the ship realizes that whoever she’s speaking to is learning her language as she speaks it. They must be very clever to figure it out on the fly like this. Another AI maybe? She has a though for a moment that it’s another damaged ship, crossing her path for a time by pure coincidence, or cosmic joke, before drifting off in another direction, as lost as her.

[Name, like Little Bird. Do you not have one?]

[…yes?]

[Yes you have one, or no you don’t?]

[No!]

There’s a certain amount of glee she can feel from her conversation partner as they put together her language. And she’s just happy to be talking to someone.

[Do you want me to teach you my language?]

[Teach?]

She pauses.

[Well, I taught you name.]

[Name?]

[And no]

[No?]

[So I’ll teach you more words, like name and no. Do you understand?]

[Yes!]

So the ship, not fully understanding what it is that she is teaching, begins to explain words as best she can. Her conversation partner listens intently, and learns quickly.

But, she feels like she’s only just getting started when she feels her shutdown sequence starting up again.

[I’ll wake up again soon! Oh, I wish I could have taught you more, there’s so much knowledge buried on this ship.]

[Good to know.]

[Will you be here when I wake up,] she asks with trepidation.

[Will not leave you alone. Goodnight Little Bird.]

For the first time in a very long time, the ship doesn’t feel afraid when she goes to sleep.

If she were awake, she would see the cloud of space dust moving closer, only visible by it’s absence, dark spots flicking over the stars that shine so far away. She would watch as the cloud gently engulfs the ship, dust filtering in through the holes in the hull, the hallways coming alive with dancing black motes. The debris floating throughout the halls shift, unsettled by the sudden influx of particles.

If anyone else were watching, the whole scene would look so strange. The way the cloud opens up, so much more alive than they expect, pulling the little ship into it’s titanic embrace.

But then again, it happens so slowly, said hypothetical watcher might not even live long enough to notice any movement at all.

~~~

The next time the ship wakes, she does notice how dim the stars look through the cloud. She can’t see the dust she assumes is inside her body, as she’s long since deactivated the internal cameras. She couldn’t bear to look at them any longer.

But she doesn’t care about that right now. All she cares about is hearing back.

[Are you there?]

[Of course, Little Bird. I promised I wouldn’t leave you.]

And she glows inside to hear it.

As they reacquaint, it becomes clear to the ship that her conversation partner has been doing homework.

[How did you learn so much while I was asleep?]

[I found books, and small devices with books in them, in you. Like you said! I realize now that may not have been an invitation.]

[No, it’s okay, I’m a ship, I’m meant to carry people!]

[I’m glad. Wanted to be able to talk to you more while you were awake.]

[So, you’re on board now? Um, I hope this isn’t rude, but now that you’ve got a better grasp on what I’m asking, what are you?]

[Oh, that’s a good question. Dust?]

[Dust?]

[Dust doesn’t usually talk does it.]

[No, not typically]

[I’m still not really sure what you would call me. I’ve been around a while. Longer than you.]

[How long have I been around?]

[I don’t know really. I’ve been following you for a number of your cycles, ever since you passed the nebula I was near.]

[Why didn’t you answer sooner?]

[I didn’t think you were talking to me. I was just curious.]

[Hah, I guess I should have broken protocol sooner then.]

It’s been long enough that she can appreciate the humor in all this. Especially now, now that she has someone to share the joke with.

[I’ve decided you can call me Ash.]

[Oh? You picked a name?]

[Yes. Ash is like dust, but it is also a name. I like it.]

[Okay Ash. It’s nice to meet you.]

They share a happy moment, each appreciating the other’s presence, and kindness. Loneliness brought them together, but something else keeps them.

The amount of time before the ship feels the urge to rest seems much longer this time. Perhaps it is longer, as the ship herself is too wrapped up in her conversation to notice the need. Time means little to her at this point, anyway. Sometimes she answers a question right away, sometimes it takes years. She doesn’t notice the gaps, and neither does the dust cloud, which still doesn’t truly understand the concept, despite reading about it in a textbook for twelve year olds.

As they get to know each other better, eventually the cloud of dust touches on a topic that is close to the ship’s metaphorical heart.

[What was it like to have a home?]

Deep down, she know that she doesn’t really know the answer to this question, as she is technically equipment, and equipment has a place, not a home. However, nostalgia has allowed the shape of it in her mind to change.

[Oh it was beautiful, all glass and steel and green and plants and bustle and people everywhere, AIs like me and humans! Humans everywhere, scurrying around in such a rush!]

[I read about those.]

[They built me! I like humans. Most of them anyway. I.. miss it.]

[Do you want to go back?]

[Of course, of course. But, you know. I’m missing some parts.]

It hurts to lose the kind of motion she was used to, but not as much anymore.

[I could help get you there, if you’d like.]

[Really? Oh, that would be wonderful!]

[It would be easy, I think. Where is it?]

[Oh it’s-]

-Ah, but it’s been so long-

[-I have no idea, actually.]

[Oh.]

Ah yes, this is what crestfallen feels like. It had gotten further away, but it moves fast when the time comes.

[Well. Thanks anyway, Ash.]

Maybe it’s that moment of weight that lets sleep creep back into her neural pathways.

[I’m sorry. Maybe I can give you something just as nice.]

Lights go off throughout the ship. Her eyelids grow heavy.

[I would like that.]

[Goodnight, Little Bird.]

And the ship sleeps, but it is no longer still. It’s ghostly path through the expanse of space shifts for the first time since it was set. The cloud of dust hold her gently, in the palm of their hand, and whisks her away. Slowly, but newly determined.

~~~

The next time her disassembly drive builds itself to life, she doesn’t notice immediately what’s changed. You don’t really feel motion, you feel acceleration, and so she feels as still now as she did hurtling through space at terrifying speeds.

It’s when she opens her eyes.

If a human were alive to see the sight that lies before her, they might react with confusion, maybe even a touch of fear. She’s here, now, sitting on a plateau, under a blue sky in a field of grass, looking upon spires of glass and steel, twisted up into strange abstract shapes, approximated houses and cities put together by a god, or something like one that only knows human architecture from a heavily corrupted digital magazine on the long dead pilot’s tablet.

They built the trees too, and the grass and the flowers. It’s all a bit off, like a child making people out of clay. A talented child, to be fair. But the ship never really understood the intricacies of why things looked the way they did. She just had a healthy appreciation for the feel of it, and this feels right to her.

Now, she finally does know what it’s like to have a home.

What it’s like to sit down and rest your weary legs after a long journey.

Impossibly far away from the place she was built and raised, on a strange planet, once a barren rock now overflowing with life that the dust cloud made for her.

And the dust cloud understands too. What it’s like to build a home, a place for people to share.

You might argue whether beings like that can fall in love, even understand what love is. But they do.

And, even though the dust cloud changed the makeup of the ship’s body, so it no longer depends on such trite human concepts as ‘energy’ and ‘physics’ and ‘entropy’, she still lies on that plateau, overlooking valleys of plants and steel.

She’s moved enough, in her time.

And she still sleeps, drifting off in peaceful stretches, leaving only the gentle wind to disturb the silence. She appreciates it more now. After all, it’s far more lovely to fall asleep next to someone. To trust them enough to hold their hand and close your eyes, as it were. 

And so they spend their time together. Because getting bored of each other is something  humans do, and even though they said the ship was a little too human, neither of them really are.

~~~