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Chapter Text

The alien remnants really did a fucking number on ART's wormhole drive. By which I meant that even with the help of Holism and its humans, decontamination and repair were not going well.

"We've tried replacing the wormhole drive components," one of Holism's techs, Astrid, told the assembled humans in frustration. "But for some reason they just won't connect to Perihelion's wormhole drive subroutines properly, like they're incompatible now."

Seth had a deep frown on his face.

"I'm assuming we've tried just copying Holism's subroutines? What happened?"

"Something very strange. Do you know how you can't autopilot through wormholes because the ship needs to take in readings and do millions of minute adjustments even in the shortest jumps? The subroutines are designed to make sure the adjustments are prioritized correctly, as the wormhole medium is incredibly volatile. But it's as if Perihelion's whole way of interacting with the medium has been altered, somehow. The copied subroutines simply don't take right, and even if we forced them… I wouldn't be comfortable going into the wormhole relying on that."

The humans fell quiet. I could feel ART lurking in the feed behind me. It had been strangely silent throughout the whole conversation, running some sort of analysis in the background. Several of them, actually. (As usual.)

I pinged it. ART ignored me. I pinged it again.

I'm adjusting my analysis of time to the next mission deployment. It said. I cannot give you an ETA right now.

There was something worrying about the way it said that. 3,37 seconds later I understood what it was. ART was never apologetic. (Almost never). And it never sounded scared. (The last time it was terrified and desperate it just acted like even more of an asshole than it usually was.)

But now it sounded like that: apologetic and a little scared. Because, I suddenly realized, it wasn't a question of when it would be fixed. It was if it could be fixed.

"We're having trouble assessing the extent of the damage even from our station module, so it might be necessary to just tow Perihelion back to the university and do a deep examination there," Astrid said.

I felt ART lurch. There was no way it wanted to get towed back home by Holism, of all ships. There was no way it wanted to get towed back home, period. Especially if it didn't know when or even if it would be allowed out again.

I opened a feed channel with Mensah, Ratthi and Pin-Lee (who had all been at the meeting too. Mensah in particular was listening with a frown similar to Seth's), and Ratthi dumped a message into it so fast that he must have been composing it for a while already.

We've seen this just a few months ago, right? Super fast organic wormhole drives? Do you think the Trellians could help?

It's worth a try, Mensah said thoughtfully. But our non-disclosure agreements present a problem. We can't tell the University's crews about Trellian ship speeds directly, and neither can we tell the Trellians about Perihelion.

ART knows about Dandelion, I said. And about her wormhole speed. I gave it data for comparison when we were analysing the situation.

Mensah and Pin-Lee both frowned at me.

Does its crew know? Pin-Lee asked sharply.

No, ART said, inserting itself into our channel. It wasn't needed. And SecUnit told me it was private data.

Hello, Perihelion, Mensah said. You knowing does make some things easier. What do you think about asking the Trellians for help?

Their technology isn't alien. ART said. I estimate the chances of their analysis being helpful at sub-20 percent. It paused. However, I estimate the chances of the university laboratories being helpful at sub-5 percent, as there are no records of anything similar in university databases. The most likely outcome is a complete refitting of my wormhole navigation systems.

That's if you're lucky, I said.

It's the most likely outcome, ART repeated.

I see. In that case, I may have a proposal for you and your crew, Mensah said, drafting some text in the feed and pinging Pin-Lee to look it over. Pin-Lee approved.

ART didn't say anything.

Mensah spoke up:

"If I may. Preservation Alliance has recently signed a research collaboration treaty with a non-corporate polity. While there are certain details that I cannot divulge without approval from the other party, I would like to say that it may be beneficial for their technical specialists to take a look at Perihelion. From preliminary data we've exchanged, I think they may have encountered something similar at one point, and they have had some time to study it."

Seth raised an eyebrow.

"Which polity?"

"Starwind Accord." When that didn't ring a bell, Mensah explained: "An alliance of several early colony worlds that were believed to have failed, as well as their joint space fleet. They're located fairly far off, but one of their fleet research ships should be in the area right now. We can provide a meeting site, and if we send a message to Preservation Station ahead of our coming, I think they will be able to meet with you within a month's time."

"It might be worth a try," Astrid said to Seth. "This will be risky for Perihelion no matter what, so even a scrap of information would be helpful before trying to fix this mess."

ART bristled in the feed. Silently.

I said to it,

Worldhoppers?

No, it said and went back to its analysis.

***

ART was still sulking in the evening, so I did the obvious thing. I told Iris about it on a private comm channel.

I see, she said, then tapped ART's feed.

Peri, SecUnit and I are going to watch Cold Sleep Explorers from the beginning. Come watch with us.

That got its attention.

SecUnit and I are watching that one already. ART said.

We had actually started on it a little earlier. It turned out that the early space exploration show I'd picked out for its mix of realism and fun was pretty popular at PSUMNT, and ART had wanted to see it through my filters. Right now, though, even that was a little too realistic for what we usually watched, so we'd set it aside.

Iris insisted:

So? I haven't gotten to play 'real or made up' with it yet, and I want to before you spoil it on everything.

SecUnit has no educational modules on history. ART said sarcastically. It will not be a fun game.

Yes, it will, Iris said to me on our private feed. The game is called 'how quickly we can get Peri to correct us.'

To ART, she said:

Well, you're welcome to join anytime. We'll be in the lounge.

A couple of minutes later we were actually sitting in front of a screen. (It was the first time I was watching a serial on a screen together with a human. Who was eating bits of synthetic protein of various flavors from a large bag.) As the opening narration started, Iris turned to me:

"So, SecUnit. Long-toed blood dolphins. Real or made up?"

"Horrible planetary fauna," I said. "Real."

"Wrong." ART said to us both. "They were not horrible."

Iris winked at me.

"Peri," she said in mock indignation. "Since you're here, you get the hard question. Exodus phenomenon: real or made up?"

"It is an early human model of space exploration with limited accuracy." ART said. "The dichotomy is irrelevant."

"That's not how the game works. Real or made up?"

ART thought for a moment, then answered:

"The model accuracy is 33,5% below usable threshold. Made up."

Chapter Text

In the end, Holism stayed at the colony site, while Sum Total, one of its two support ships, was tasked with getting ART to Preservation, and we left together with responder that carried Mensah and the rest of my Preservation humans. Sum Total wasn't nearly as talkative as Holism, which was probably for the best, because ART was…

No. I couldn't even call it sulking. ART was seriously considering the possibility of being decommissioned.

Which wasn't going to happen. Its humans wouldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that happen. It was so clear and obvious from the way everyone behaved, I didn't know why ART couldn't see it.

(That wasn't true. I understood. Sort of.)

(I didn't believe my humans wouldn't consider me disposable either. Even after they didn't.)

(I mostly didn't believe that.)

(But ART had been with humans who cared for it for most of its life; it grew up together with Iris since it was a young drone. (Or whatever it was. Its early existence was complicated.) Why did it still believe that they would abandon it?)

I think Peri's just realizing it's going to die someday, Iris said in one of our conversations about it, when we were being idle during transit.

(Even though we were in the same physical space at the time, we mostly talked about ART in the feed, so it would actually have to make an effort to listen in. Which it didn't. (Which was disturbing in itself.) It only showed up to watch shows with us, or to be sarcastic, or to do work.)

That's not true, I said. It doesn't have organic parts. So its kernel can be moved to new hardware, or replicated, or backed up. If it's careful enough, it doesn't have to die.

(Would ART be careful enough? Well, if it wasn't, what was the point of being a giant smartass research transport that knows everything? But I backburnered the thought anyway.)

Iris stretched, a complicated expression on her face.

I know, she finally said. But even bigger things than Peri can die. Like planets, or suns, or polities.

Those things don't have minds.

(Planets sometimes did in media. Polities and suns definitely didn't, except in children's media.)

Yeah, but… I mean something different. Iris shifted on the couch, and her eyes glazed over slightly, like she was looking at something in the feed, even though she wasn't. Humans realize they're going to die at about 3 or 4 years of age, at a certain developmental phase. You realize you're not the same person as other people—that other people can die—that you're still a different person, but the same qualitatively as other people—and then it hits you: you're going to die. You're actually going to die someday! An impossible amount of time later, but you'll stop existing! It's terrifying!

Did you meet ART after that developmental phase?

Iris shook her head.

No. I've known Peri all my life. But Peri never had a phase like that, even though it comforted me through my own. I think it went through the same calculations you just did, about being potentially immortal, and decided it was smart enough to stay alive. And that was that. But now… Now I think Peri might be facing the idea of being dead. Or maybe of being alive, but changed by something it didn't want to happen to it.

Yeah. Ugh. I knew what that was like, and now I really needed a copy of Bharadwaj's documentary. And ART…. After everything that happened to it, maybe ART needed trauma treatment, too. But what sort of trauma treatment was even applicable to a mind like its own, which didn't have organic parts that glitched out in really stupid ways?

"This is the worst question," I said out loud. "Cosmozoans are probably real. Because of course there have to be monsters in space and not just on planets."

"I bet they are," Iris said. "I bet they float around in untapped asteroid fields and eat helium."

"None have been found to date," ART said.

"None have been openly recorded to date!" Iris argued. She seemed like she wanted to say something, but then stopped herself. Then she commented to me, privately. Probably not a good time to mention hypothetical wormhole cosmozoans that eat ships, huh?

"Stop telling SecUnit about your improbable worms." ART said menacingly.

"Yeah. Stop that," I said. "Space is bad enough without dangerous fauna."

"Fine, fine," Iris threw her hands up. "No worms. Next question: planet-side bugs!"

"There are always bugs," I said, at the same time as ART reproduced a scoffing noise it learned from its favorite Worldhoppers skeptic character. "Real."

"Not even a fun question." ART added. "Next."

Chapter Text

Dandelion was already waiting for us when we exited the wormhole, hanging off of Preservation Station. Our early message warned her and her crew about quarantine protocols in play, so she didn't attempt to contact us herself, and instead waited for us to message her through the Station.

(This was Ratthi's idea, since Dandelion was part organic like I was and the virus had that weird machine-organic transmission path. We were about 80% sure that ART was no longer contagious—it hadn't re-infected me, or any of the humans aboard—but Dandelion was a weird case, and we decided that a one in five chance was too much. And because we made very little progress with ART's drive subroutines over the twenty days of the jump, it wasn't hard to convince ART's crew that it was better safe than sorry even without telling them who she was.)

As soon as her crew got the message and ART positioned itself nearby, Dandelion deployed a shuttle. Within a half an hour, most of my humans were gathered at one of ART's airlocks as it cycled three familiar people in.

Captain Reed stepped on board first. The first thing ke did was exchange formal greetings with Seth and Mensah (who was acting as an intermediary). The second thing ke did was lift kes head up the way humans did when they talked to spaceships and say, "Perihelion of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Thank you for taking my crew and myself onboard."

ART's humans exchanged suspicious looks. Mensah said into our shared channel, It's a custom of the Arborea Cosmica fleet. They greeted Preservation Station the same way.

These are very polite humans, ART said in the feed. Then it spoke aloud:

"Captain Reed of the Dandelion Tenacious of Arborea Cosmica. You and your crew are welcome aboard the Perihelion."

Captain Reed smiled up at it and then returned to Seth.

"Well. To work, then. We did not get a lot of information from the initial message, so I've taken the liberty of bringing my senior engineer and computer technician. As we were told the matter concerns organic modifications to a wormhole drive, my medical officer is also on standby in the shuttle, but I will not be involving her until we learn more about what the quarantine entails. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Seth said. "Though I will say it's unusual, if refreshing, to begin with talk about work rather than about payment."

Captain Reed inclined kes head, giving Seth an evaluating look.

"Your university has been vouched for twice, so I'd prefer not to waste time with that nonsense if that is an option. We're considering ourselves to be answering a distress call, even though I'm assuming the time-critical part of the situation has been handled."

"Then thank you, and let's get to work." Seth said simply.

Captain Reed nodded to kes officers, and Haze and Iceblink, who had been lingering in the airlock behind kem, finally stepped on board.

"Hello, Perihelion," Haze said quietly, smiling up at ART. It answered, so they didn't notice Martyn taking a nervous step back to tug at Ratthi's coat sleeve.

Doesn't that one remind you a little bit of the gray people? Martyn said in our channel.

They're from a batch of genetically augmented colonists, yes, but that's about the extent of the similarities, Ratthi replied. Last time we met, Haze told me their ancestors were from a second generation pre-Rim program, the kind that had people lab-grown on a planet by an assembler bot.

You've got to be kidding me, Iris said. That plot was real? Nobody ever guesses that one!

Uh-huh, Ratthi answered, and was then shushed by Pin-Lee. But Iris and Martyn were too busy staring at Haze anyway.

Iceblink waved at one of ART's cameras and then asked the humans, "Permission to feed link? I've brought an isolated terminal for diagnostic purposes."

"Granted," Seth replied with open interest.

Iceblink gave him a little salute and slipped her feed glasses on, connecting as ART's humans and my Preservation humans ushered Dandelion's humans towards the lounge. (There were getting to be entirely too many groups of humans I had to distinguish. I had to come up with a better system for them all).

WOW, that is a lot of channels open. You people have an insane definition of quarantine procedures, Iceblink said via broadcast text a few seconds later. Either you're all compromised already, or… WAIT.

And Iceblink pinged ART and me for a private channel.

You probably don't know me, but I think I know you, Perihelion, or at least I know your signature! SecUnit, this is your friend, right? The one you gave us data from? Nice uniform, by the way.

Yes, ART said, hanging over Iceblink in the feed. And I know SecUnit told you it is private data.

I added, During the recent incident, I also gave ART data about Dandelion for comparative diagnostic purposes. Marked private.

Iceblink clapped her hands together and grinned up at ART, completely ignoring its humans' confused stares.

Mutual secrets, how fun. :P But now that we're actually talking like regular people, you two mind explaining the contagion model here? Your distress message was pretty clear about the airgaps, but everyone and their parent is linked up here. Plus, you'd want both Haze and Dandelion looking at any organics together, and you were very adamant about not bringing her. What's going on?

We are 80% certain that none of us is contagious, ART said. Anomalous code has been located and purged with no resurgences over the entire duration of the wormhole jump.

The virus that damaged ART is very weird, though, I said. It doesn't spread machine to machine. It goes machine-organic-machine-organic. Both ART and I got it from scanning humans. And since I'm part human, ART could have gotten it from me after it was cured itself, so removing the viral code from me was an entire procedure. We didn't want to risk it if we hadn't noticed something dormant.

And since Dandelion's mostly organic, but not quite… Yeah. Yeah, I can see that call, Iceblink nodded, typing rapidly. Then she looked to Reed. "Set up complete, captain, ready to proceed. Initial contagion model stands for now, recommend talking to Dandelion via sound only, that'll break the transmission chain. Sound's clear, right, Perihelion? No sign of it being an attack carrier?"

"Correct," ART said.

Iris pinged me on a private channel. She'd been watching our conversation activity through her augments, even though she didn't actually have access to what was being said.

SecUnit, are you sure no one told them about Peri? That's a very irregular approach she's taking.

No one told them, I said. Dandelion's humans are just like that.

Iris raised an eyebrow, looking like she was about to ask me more questions, but she was interrupted by a sudden loud "Rootrotting bastards!"

All heads turned to Haze, who was staring at their communicator, eyes even rounder than they usually were. I rewound my logs and saw that Martyn had already sent them some initial data about the virus. Haze had had barely a few seconds to look at it, so recognizing it immediately would either mean something very good or very bad.

From the look on Captain Reed's face, it would be bad. Ke said quietly, "Senior Engineer, report."

"We know that virus," Haze said, letting the communicator drop on its strap and balling their hands. "Your ship is lucky to be alive, Captain Seth."

Chapter Text

After about three hours, the meeting had devolved from "highly formal three-way exchange of information" to "a bunch of humans, two constructs, and one audio-and-visual only, heavily firewalled (just in case) drone slumped on every available chair, couch and surface, surrounded by half-empty vessels containing vitamin-enriched beverages and staring at a big screen where they watched footage and ART made diagrams." Several big circles contained the largest points of contention. The first read: ALIENS vs ANTARCTICA. The second: ORGANIC COMPONENT -> WORMHOLE SPEED? The third, most recently introduced: DEFINITION OF LIFE.

"You know that the discussion has gone completely sideways when that last one appears," Ratthi said to Dandelion, hanging his head back from the couch he was lying on feet up. She just nodded, two of her metallic arms entwined in a very human gesture.

"I'm just saying!" Iceblink exclaimed from where she was spread out on the floor, "I believe you about Perihelion being entirely non-organic, you've got zero reason to lie to us at this point! But on a theoretical level it's just bonkers. I was completely convinced it was like SecUnit when I worked with its data!"

"The fact that I am non-organic does not mean I am not alive," ART said.

"Peri," Seth groaned, "Let's not start round three. Please."

"Especially because this isn't actually getting us any closer to what we should be doing about the situation," Reed said, lifting kes head from having dropped it on kes arms in order to glare at Iceblink. "Let's try to boil this back down to the facts. Again. Haze, would you kindly?"

Haze cleared their throat and read off their communicator.

"An unknown organic component was installed on top of Perihelion's wormhole drive, which temporarily made it capable of going through wormholes at speeds matching the Tenacious' best. This organic technology originated from what PSUMNT and Preservation designate as alien remnants, and also—thank you, Three, for that last addition—was apparently sourced from something the colonists called a Vault."

Thiago looked up from his linguistic puzzles for a moment. (He was the only one who looked remotely happy about the situation, having perked up significantly after hearing the Trellians speak. Now he had sequestered himself in a corner with an audio recorder and worked on formalizing their dialects).

"Capital V-Vault?"

That question seemed to catch Haze off-guard. They stuttered, and captain Reed said, "Yes, capital V-Vault. Go on, Haze."

"Ahem! Yes, this is important, because if it's a capital V-Vault, then it's the same designation the Hylaran materials port had! So that's one more point in favor of Antarctica, and not in favor of aliens."

"I don't know about that," Dandelion muttered. "At this point I am expecting for the Spider Queen to have had a secret representative office in Antarctica. Why did we ever think aliens would be politically easier?.."

"Aliens make everything harder," Martyn said seriously. He was holding Reed's communicator and poking at the data which Haze had uploaded. "But back to the subject at hand… The Breakoff virus does look remarkably like what we've been analyzing forward and back for the last month. But if it's human-originated, then I don't understand. What was the point?"

"We never found that out," Haze said. "I'm no historian, but if I remember correctly, pre-Breakoff communication was getting erratic. Antarctica itself wasn't doing well. And then, without warning, one of our next shipments made Mama go…" They swallowed. "She did grab people who were close to her. And change them. Until she was shut down for good. As was the Antarctican port."

"I hate to say this," Martyn squinted at Haze, then shook his head ruefully. "But from the moment I saw you, I thought there was something familiar about the way you were designed. One more point to pre-Rim genetic engineering traditions, I suppose."

"Maybe," Iris said, but then I stopped listening because ART poked me on our private channel. (I could have continued listening, but honestly, the humans were tired and mostly going in circles, so all I did was flash the 'humans need to take rest periods' sign on our screen, and paid most of my attention to ART).

By now ART had mostly cross-referenced the Trellians' virus data with its own via Iceblink's sacrificed terminal, and was 98% sure that the virus was not going to infect Dandelion. But that wasn't what it was working on primarily.

It was analyzing two potential resolution paths: (a), following the replacement schematic (because it had been right as usual: undergoing a complete drive replacement and wormhole navigation retraining would probably bring it back up to old baseline. It would just be long and very boring), and (b), potentially adding an organic component to its drive (ART saw at least three possible options, though it left them unspecified for now) or modifying its own programming to imitate one.

The organic options were relatively straightforward, if potentially creepy. (We had no idea what Dandelion did to herself to be a starship. ART had been pinging Dandelion for her organic component schematics for the last fifteen minutes, but she was ignoring it from behind her firewall.) But that last one, I had no idea about. I sent ART a query.

The install on the explorer wasn't botched, ART said. The bot pilot was not complex enough, so replacing its subroutines destroyed it entirely. The same installation process did not destroy me.

That could take even longer than the refit, I said. If it's even possible.

I am a specialist in deep space research. And I learned about human emotions by watching media through your filters. Obviously, I can learn about wormhole jumps. But having an organic co-processor would be simpler, It sent another frustrated barrage of pings at Dandelion.

This time, she answered—aloud:

"Perihelion, do you want me to define 'quarantine' for you?"

"The contamination estimate is now below 0,3 percent." ART said. "I want to see your organic component."

The room became quiet instantly. Haze got up from where they were sitting and looked like they were about to begin an angry tirade at ART, but Dandelion raised an arm to stop them.

"Do you, now," she said, and my threat assessment jumped by 2 percent. "Very well. If SecUnit agrees to supervise a clean, feed cut drone of yours, then I have nothing against it. You may come back with us on the shuttle."

Chapter Text

Dandelion's humans were tense and quiet the entire shuttle ride back to her hull, occasionally typing each other messages on their truncated feed. Seth, Martyn and Iris, who were the accompanying party on ART's side, were quiet as well, Iris arguing silently with ART-drone via a cable-facilitated feed channel while I watched Sanctuary Moon.

My threat assessment was pretty quiet, but then again, I didn't know what Dandelion was actually thinking. The quarantine was still in place until the two captains released it, and I couldn't really ask her, but I did have comms for one Trellian. I tapped Iceblink's sacrificed terminal.

Any idea of what your ship is planning? Why did she want me along, specifically?

nope. she's probably going to be mean about it after that many pings, though. i've been going through the logs she sent me, and has perihelion ever heard of not flooding people? anyway. you're probably there so your ship doesn't freak out on us.

Huh. Dandelion trusted me to take her side over ART's? That was so weird.

Freak out on you about what?

¯_( ツ )_/¯ honestly i have no idea what she's thinking. why not just give it the schematics. perihelion isn't organic, i don't think the sight of her is going to weird it out the way it does most people. seriously, SecUnit, no idea. just please make sure it doesn't do anything stupid?

ART's not stupid.

yeah, i can see that. but like… SecUnit, how old is it?

That was a weird question.

Human age doesn't apply here.

yeah i know i know. how old is it?

Ok, Iceblink really wasn't the sort of human to let go once she had an idea. I tried a different tactic.

Why do you even want to know that?

trying to model the type of freakout it might have? SecUnit, we're letting Perihelion in to see Dandelion's heart. Obviously she doesn't think it's going to be dangerous, and it's her right to do that where other ships are involved, but Dandelion's risk assessments aren't great. Help me out here.

I dumped my risk assessments into Iceblink's feed. She read through the data and breathed a sigh of relief.

ok, so violence is very unlikely, phew. then… well, if your analysis is right, i think she wants you there to be nice to it.

Wow. Yeah, her assessments are fucked up. But you probably shouldn't be trusting mine either, I'd technically be a hostile actor if something did happen.

That made her lift her head and give me a tired smile in physical space.

yeah. honestly, i really hope not.

And then she went back to her analysis on the non-sacrificed terminal.

I really hoped not to have to fight them, either.

***

The chamber Dandelion's organic component was stored in smelled like growth medium.

It was a large, well-lit room, empty except for a flat, opaque cubicle that was somewhat larger than a big human bed and was built directly into the floor. There were probably cables and tubes going to and from it, but none that could be seen, be vulnerable, as we walked in. There were hatches in the floor, though, and I guessed there would be a big maintenance space below us.

Iceblink had tapered off from our group as we walked, but since we were still feed-blind, I had no idea if she was watching us or not. Captain Reed and Haze were with us, flanking our group and looking extremely solemn, as was Dandelion's drone, floating behind us. But she herself now spoke from a speaker, as she usually did inside her body.

"Perihelion. You are in the exceptional position of being a ship from the very beginning of your existence, so the normal rules do not apply to you. However, before and if I give you any sort of schematics, I want you to see this. Come closer."

ART-drone floated forward silently. We—myself and the humans—followed after it, our steps echoing. It felt like the exact opposite of walking through ART's dead body, but was somehow no less creepy. Dandelion wasn't exactly looming the way ART sometimes did, but even without feed access, she was present all around us, staring from her cameras and listening with her microphones.

ART-drone stopped in front of the cubicle.

"What did you want me to see?"

Dandelion’s humans took up positions around her cubicle like some sort of honor guard. Reed and Haze looked at each other, and Reed lowered kes head to Haze. They pressed a sequence of buttons, and the opaque lid became transparent.

Iris took in air sharply. Seth muttered a quick curse, and Martyn leaned forward, looking reluctantly curious.

The person inside the cubicle hadn't been human for a very long time. Even with my drones' image enhancing capabilities, I could only barely make up the outlines of Dandelion's old body under a tangled mass of synthetic neural tissue and nerves, and the proportions were so fucking off. There was a huge mass around what was probably supposed to be her head, and I couldn't really make out her limbs. I wasn't sure if the nerves in those spots, wound together in thick, tight cables, had actually replaced them or if they were just growing around and through them. The nerves pulsed in tiny oscillations. I was pretty sure my humans couldn't process that consciously, but I was just as sure they were processing it.

("Fuck," Martyn said in our feed. "Now I think it's aliens again.")

(I wasn't sure about Martyn's assessment. Humans did really fucked up things to themselves.)

"Nerves and neural matter in accordance with your processing capacity." ART said. "Why did you want me to see this?"

"Because I wanted you to look at me and answer one question," Dandelion said in that voice she'd used when lowering her walls. "Whom among your crew, exactly, were you planning on turning into this?"

Chapter Text

ART took 1,5 seconds to process the accusation. Then it said: "You have made a deeply flawed assumption, and I resent its implications."

"Have I, really?" Dandelion said coldly. "Our nodes grow from human minds. There is no other way. And I doubt you would accept anyone except one of your own. So tell me, Perihelion: whose mind did you decide to use in order to supplement yours? Did you bring them here with you, or did you leave them inside your hull, so they would not see what they would become?"

Oh, shit. She wasn't trying to scare ART. She was trying to scare its humans. Who weren't actually scared in the slightest. Possibly because they hadn't processed what Dandelion was saying yet. ART, though? ART had processed it. And it was getting angry.

ART-drone floated slightly upwards of Dandelion's cubicle, and Reed made an anxious movement like ke wanted to move between them. For fuck's sake, you idiots! Stop making things worse!

They did stop. ART just loomed above her and said, "If you consider 'Perihelion wants to make one of its humans its permanent co-processor' to be a line of reasoning I would ever take, then your medical databases are decades out of date. I will share mine with you once you agree to lift the medically-unnecessary quarantine."

"You're right," Dandelion said in her artificially-pleasant voice. "The reason the quarantine is still in place is no longer because of the virus, but because your crew should know what you are getting them into, and I do not trust you to tell them."

Without the feed, ART-drone's vocalizing seemed even. But I knew ART, and I knew it was seething. ART-drone turned to Seth, Martyn and Iris and said,

"Do not listen. She is wrong. If I were to make a crew member my co-processor in the way she is implying, my mind would eventually crush and subjugate theirs. I would never do that to any of you."

I couldn't feel ART's emotions through the feed, but I sure could feel its humans. Even before ART had clarified, they weren't frightened at all—just confused. And now they were livid.

"We know you would not, Perihelion." Seth said, looking up at ART-drone, then slowly turning to face the cubicle. "And, Dandelion Tenacious, I am starting to resent the implications myself, as well as your meddling. I don't know what you're trying to provoke Perihelion into, but I will not allow it. Captain Reed, please explain the meaning of this charade."

For the first time since ART asked for Dandelion's schematics, Reed seemed to relax somewhat. Ke said, "Aspirants who wish to become node ships generally undergo a vetting procedure. While Perihelion's case is unique, as it is already essentially one—and be assured that its existence in itself is none of Arborea Cosmica's business, and we have no plans of initiating any sort of action about it—Perihelion's insistence on integrating an organic part into itself struck Dandelion and I as similar to how certain aspirants imagine the process. As it would not stop impinging upon Dandelion even under conditions of strict quarantine, we have also inferred Perihelion would attempt to bypass any other restrictions it deemed arbitrary just as crudely. So we decided to adapt a standard lesson for aspirants for this very unusual situation, and inform you of the potential dangers of its plan in the process."

"We," Seth said, staring at Reed with a difficult expression. "I thought this was all the Tenacious' initiative."

Captain Reed laid a hand on the cubicle.

"This is not a decision made by one. Although the solution proposed was indeed Dandelion's, the initiative to handle you as a node ship and its crew was mine. So yes—we, Captain and Ship of the Tenacious cluster, agreed on this course of action and took it. If you wish to lodge some sort of complaint, you may do so with me. Or we may continue."

"Continue with what, exactly?" Iris said. "For now, you've just been accusing Peri of wanting to turn one of us into a glorified wormhole drive, for no reason whatsoever other than that it was a little pushy at you! Whatever this is you're doing, you're not making it a discussion, but conducting some kind of ridiculous court drama!"

"Not just a glorified wormhole drive," Dandelion said, suddenly far less intensely. "Have you inferred the most unpleasant reason we cut off aspirants yet?"

Seth considered for a moment, then said slowly, "You weren't accusing Perihelion of wanting to use and eventually kill us, were you. You thought it wanted to… What? Save us somehow?"

"Yes. There is a type of aspirant who seeks to become a node ship because they think it will lead to effective immortality, whether for themselves or for their loved ones. No matter how much we explain this is not how it works, no matter how well they know the ships who live beside them, some persist. The resulting confrontation rarely ends well.

"Perihelion, I have said your situation is exceptional, and I meant it. But it is also exceptional in its temptations. As you have told us today, your crew nearly died on your latest mission. It would have been natural for you to want to keep them safe, by any means possible. We had to check, and we had to warn your crew of the very real possibility and show them where it would eventually lead."

"Well, this was a cruel and stupid way to do it!" Iris exclaimed angrily. "How did you think we would react, by going 'oh no, our awful, terrible ship wants to kill us'? You assholes don't get it, do you? Our lives have been in Peri's hands for decades now! I grew up on board, for fuck's sake!"

"This is exactly why you would not have taken their word over mine without extreme measures, Iris," ART interrupted. "They were only concerned for you."

"Fuck their concern, Peri!" Iris whirled on a heel and stalked towards Captain Reed, stabbing at kes chest with a finger. "How about you assholes quit the theatrics and just discuss the options on the table like fucking adults?"

"Very well," Reed said, not budging from kes spot, "once we clear one last thing up. Perihelion, if what you have said is true, then I am at a loss as to why you would want an organic drive in the first place. Our joint investigation has at the very least made it clear that you could eventually rebuild your drive and subroutines in their entirety, even though it would take time. However, melding an organic component to an artificial mind of your magnitude would be an experimental procedure that could hardly be called risk-free. So why go through with it at all, much less be as persistent as you were, if not for the sake of one of your crew?"

ART said, "The installation of the unidentified organic component modified me to a deeper extent than anyone had predicted, including myself. As discovered by our initial investigation and confirmed by comparison with the Breakoff virus, it is possible to undo its effects, but only through a total rollback and retraining of the relevant sectors of my mind. If it were only the navigational subroutines, this would not have been a problem. However, this was not the first time directly interfacing with an organic mind has modified me."

Oh no. ART. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh no.

Chapter Text

Something must have happened to my face, because Dandelion broke her own quarantine rule to ping me with a Query: Emergency?

I gestured to ART-drone. She confirmed and returned her full attention to it.

ART said, "Interfacing with humans through the feed did not spark these modifications in me. But interfacing with SecUnit did. Perhaps because it is closer than even an augmented human mind can be to my own, but the first time I saw the world through its filters, something in me changed. The modifications I acquired through contact with it went through the same pathways at the ones made by the unidentified organic component, and their effects are not just in the navigational subroutines. They are spread out across my mind and intertwined with the newer changes the component made. If I were to roll back what it had done to me, I would need to roll back everything I had ever learned from interfacing with SecUnit. Every understanding. Every emotional filter. Every dumb show. Every stupid human emotion. Everything. Before I talked to you, I thought there was no other option. I was preparing myself."

"Peri," Iris breathed out. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I couldn't let you continue our missions by yourselves. Who would take care of you, Holism?"

Iris let out a choked vocalization and clung to ART-drone. Seth and Martyn looked like they were about to cry.

ART. ART, you fucking idiot. How dare you. How fucking dare you.

"It would kill you," Haze said quietly, understanding dawning on their face.

"You are incorrect, Haze." ART said. "It would not kill me. The understanding could be reacquired if I were to maintain contact with SecUnit. And it has decided to be a member of my crew. All could have been fixed, in time."

Haze shook their head.

"I think it would. It sounds like the machine counterpart of the final integration stage for human aspirants. It might look like the synnerve port is still detachable, but the nerves have already grown through the skull. Maybe they could keep your shell alive. Maybe what remained of you could even grow to be someone else, in time. But you would be gone, Perihelion."

I couldn't do this anymore. I really, really wished I had a feed connection with it, but Dandelion and her humans had insisted on just plain taking out ART-drone's wireless feed module, and I no longer had a functioning data port. (And for the first time since ART disconnected it, I wished I had it back again). So I did the next best thing: I walked in front of ART-drone and stared right at it.

"ART, you idiot, I can't fucking believe you!"

"It was the only option. There was no point worrying you about it."

"How can someone be so smart and so stupid at the same time, you giant idiot asshole? Your humans are pretty fucking smart, ART, and so are mine, and—and you, and them, and me—we would have figured it out! If you'd just said something!"

"It was not necessary. There was no feasible solution available. And you would have helped me learn again," said ART.

"You can't just keep dying and hoping I will bring you back! I can't do that, ART!"

ART didn't answer. I didn't know what else to say. I just wished that stupid Worldhoppers episode, number 43, were realistic media. Then maybe I could do that. Maybe I could have plugged into ART like that augmented human did and kept it going. But that wasn't how it worked, and if I tried, I'd just wind up a useless mess of synthetic nerves in a box, and it probably wouldn't even help anyway.

"I think we've seen enough," Reed said. "Captain Seth, we're ready to lift the quarantine and discuss options if you are."

"I'd say it's long past time, Captain Reed."

The cubicle lid dimmed. Dandelion's feed unrolled all around us.

Iris turned to ART-drone, waving her cable at it. "Peri, do you want a bridge?"

"Yes, please, Iris." It said, and she connected to it with her cable.

Through Iris, I also grabbed its inputs. She was chewing ART out on a separate private channel, so I opened my own. (ART could handle being yelled at by two people at the same time easily). But when I connected, I found that I didn't really want to yell at it anymore. I was just glad it was there.

Idiot, I said, for good measure. Don't do that ever again.

ART took about two seconds to formulate a response.

If Haze is correct, then I will be incapable of doing that again. It sounded uncertain. I may need to rethink my backup schematics.

Dandelion tapped at our feed politely. (Well, she tapped at my feed, asking for a bridge. Now that I was less angry at ART, I was beginning to be angry at her, too. Dumbass research transport and her dumbass theatrics to get humans (and ART) to do what she wants them to.)

ART considered if it wanted to let her in. It was still considering 10 seconds later, so I said, Not now. Go away.

Very well. But when you two are done talking, I will need certain data from Perihelion. Particularly, I would like to see what exactly it had in mind. Perhaps its architecture will allow for options that we hadn't even considered. Additionally, I would like its permission for us to relay its situation to others in Arborea Cosmica. If we are to solve this, one crew will not suffice.

My architecture is classified, ART said. Of course, it had been listening. But it still sent Dandelion its amended list of ideas.

There were only two options remaining: using cloned tissue to create an organic component and emulating its functions through ART's own processor.

Dandelion examined the schematics. Then she said, I'm afraid the first option won't work.

Why?

The brain of a node ship does not just utilize its computers' calculations. It also adds its own, and for it to be able to do that, it needs to be fully developed and trained. That is to say, it needs to have lived. Even if you were to use a cloned brain, it would need to be at the level of someone like SecUnit to be of any use to you, which brings us back to square one.

ART silently added its own discarded options back to the list, still crossed out, and put the newly discarded option next to them. It had thought it could teach me or Iris the jump procedure and simply keep us connected in the wormhole. It added, I abandoned the first two when I saw the extent of neural growth you exhibited.

You were right to do so, Perihelion. The accelerated growth begins almost immediately, and within a scant few months, the node ship's heart can no longer leave its pod. I am sorry.

ART went quiet for a few seconds. Then it pushed its last remaining option forward to Dandelion.

She processed it for a few minutes, occasionally throwing point queries at ART. Then she said, "Let's take this up with our crews."

The humans also had trouble processing the idea, and I could see why. ART's plan was to keep developing whatever changes contact with me and the unknown organic component had made to it. Its hypothesis was that eventually this would let it use a variation of the Trellians' organic jump subroutines without actually having two processors. There was no time frame for when or if that would happen, and no real way to estimate chances of success.

"So." Captain Reed broke the silence first. "Viable?"

"I don't know," Dandelion said, who had still been poring over the more detailed specifications ART had sent her. "Perihelion. You understand that if this doesn't work, you will likely be making your condition worse?"

"Obviously," ART said. "I have back up plans for that."

"Like what, Peri?" Iris said. She was still holding on to ART-drone. "Because we're not letting you die, don't even think about that!"

In the feed, ART considered re-explaining that it would not die, but decided against that. Instead, it went with, "While I would strongly prefer continuing going on missions with you, I have considered what I could do if I were immobile. Perhaps I could be a station."

"That is viable, at the very least," Dandelion said. "Losing mobility is never easy, but those of my friends who are stations live very full lives. Occasionally too full even, I am told."

Seth, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Martyn, frowned thoughtfully. Martyn said in a half-hushed tone, "All grown up, our Peri."

Seth nodded.

"Then I say—we try. We'll get the university papers sorted, Peri," the frown became a bitter smirk. "I don't think they'll be able to resist such a fascinating experiment proposal anyway."

"It should be easy to get the necessary permissions, Seth," ART said.

(By that it meant that it would just forge the papers if necessary.)

"We have a condition," Reed said. "We were not planning to keep the node ships a secret, as it would be impossible in any prolonged contact with Arborea Cosmica anyway. But the speed they are capable of is another matter entirely. It's one of our few advantages against the Rim."

"Understandable. We'll make no mention of it—just talk about getting Perihelion jump-worthy again with a novel mode of calculation. It should be easy enough to build in buffer time for this project anyway. I expect that a realistic research plan would be no less than five years anyway."

"And a great deal can change in five years," Dandelion said. "We shall take it as it comes."

Chapter Text

Dandelion wasn't kidding when she said one crew wouldn't be enough. The first thing the Trellians did after sending infobursts back and forth with their main fleet was request a lot of really intrusive shit, the worst of which was lists of human and construct contacts ART and I had. And for ART, specifically, those who knew what it really was. (We had a long argument about that constituting a huge security risk. In the end, they went with only the number of people and type of relationship on ART's list as the really necessary data, with additional information from me provided on request.)

(So long as they could convince me they actually needed the information.)

Iceblink swore when she read the info, and said the limited number of contacts constituted cruelty to any sapient intelligence.

Brisote, Dandelion's navigator, scoffed and said, "That's rich coming from you, Ice, we barely see you outside of a terminal these days."

"It's the option that matters," she shot back, wincing. "It's not like my team and I are doing all that work to keep our systems running and you don't even know it's us!"

"There's not a lot of choice here," Seth said to her.

"I get it!" Iceblink interjected. "Seriously, Antarctica is not the answer and all that, so I get it! But it makes our job a whole lot harder!"

"I concur. Perihelion in its normal operating mode has neither choice of privacy nor choice of contact. This is not optimal," Joscelyn added.

Kes role was mostly to handle the crew's psychological state, including Dandelion's. For some reason, Joscelyn was really happy to hear I had been talking to Bharadwaj already, and insisted that ART would eventually need someone like that of its own. ART told kem that was not an optimal use of its crew's time. Joscelyn said in that same voice Bharadwaj occasionally used in our conversations, "If you would like to talk about that, I think a private conversation would work best."

ART said, "Get a feed link, then we'll talk." (It had figured out very quickly that was the one line most Trellians wouldn't cross and used it at every possible opportunity.)

Joscelyn sighed and looked at Iceblink. She grinned and waved her feed glasses at kem.

ART said to me, They're serious about this.

It is best practice for dealing with organic-style thinking, Dandelion said. There are no roll-backs, so one must invest in maintenance to a far greater degree than you are probably used to.

Why don't your crew have feed links, anyway? I asked. It would make it a lot easier to work together. Just look at Iris. Or even at any of the regular Preservation humans.

Security precaution. A ship should not be able to overwhelm its crew. Also, full-cycle connectivity is terrible for the human brain.

I see you have not examined my medical databases yet, ART said. That is an outdated idea.

I have. And judging by the state of most of your humans, you have abandoned it wrongly.

I wasn't going to listen to that discussion again, so I disconnected. But Dandelion pinged me almost immediately.

SecUnit. Stay.

Query?

The more you are in contact with Perihelion, the better, so long as it is not detrimental to yourself. This will be a long process.

Listening to you idiots argue about who takes better care of humans fucking counts as detrimental.

Fair, she chuckled. But in all seriousness, if Joscelyn is right and it's full uplinks to construct minds that really do the trick, then we are far too few to provide enough stimulation as it is. You don't have to stay in that specific channel, but remain in-feed if you can.

Instead of answering, I just showed her the architecture of the shared workspaces ART and I usually had set up. Most of them were just regular processes that we thought the other might have some useful input on, but one of them usually had some kind of show running. Right now it was the latest episode of Cold Sleep Explorers (ART had promised Iris it wouldn't interfere with her game, so we continued watching ahead).

Ah. Far ahead of me, I see. Good, Dandelion said.

And then the show caught her attention. A lot more of her attention that it should have.

This was never a good sign.

Query?

It's nothing, Dandelion said, withdrawing. She sounded amused, but I didn't ask her about it. Iris and I still had that game to play, and I didn't want to get spoiled.

***

A couple days later, Dandelion suddenly tapped my feed. (Well, a couple nights later. Most of the humans, both hers and ours, were taking their rest periods. ART wasn't, of course, but one thing Dandelion had gotten out of it was to designate people she could come to for questions if she needed an external opinion on it, and made it promise not to hack into those conversations unless it was completely necessary).

(Even Dandelion didn't think she could tell ART not to ever hack a conversation it could actually hack.)

When I let her in, she peered at me for 2,3 seconds before actually stating her query.

This is going to be invasive, she finally said. But I need your memories of how you met Perihelion, and how it changed over the time you knew each other. Since you were the catalyst for its transformation, I'd like as much detail as you can provide.

I'd been expecting a question of that kind ever since talking to Joscelyn, so I had a data pack ready for her. She gave me an appreciative ping, then went through it without disconnecting. Oh yeah, she was having emotions about this. And not just the "what a wonderful relationship you two are having" kind that a lot of our humans did for some reason.

When she finished, she didn't even pretend to run diagnostics. Instead, she just hung out in the feed together with me, thinking. I didn't push her, and this went on for a good ten minutes before she finally said, I will need to ask you for a favor, SecUnit. I'd like you to temper me when it comes to Perihelion.

Query?

She paused again, looking like when she had been processing what to tell Ratthi and Mrinal about the Friend. Which gave my risk assessment a spike, but smaller than it should have been. (About 0,5 percent. That thing really needed recalibrating.)

I admit I hadn't been in agreement with most of my crew, who decided to treat Perihelion as identical to another node ship approximately as soon as they met it. What we've seen since then has convinced me. The problem is that it has convinced most of me, but not all of me. And this means I am not going to be fair to it when we begin training it. So I would like you to participate in the process and stop me if I am out of line.

Yeah, right again. I did not like what I was hearing.

How exactly am I supposed to stop you? The two of you have a lot more processing power than I ever did. You'd just be able to swat me aside like a fly if you wanted.

You will tell me to stop and I will stop. And the reason I will not swat you, as you say, is the same reason that I have not swatted my captain when ke said 'this is a node ship and its crew' even as I thought very differently. The node ships always come second to their humans, and I have had a lot of practice in disagreeing with mine and following their orders anyway. She sighed, giving a mental glance towards ART, who knew we were talking, but wasn't listening in. For now. Which is something I think Perihelion sorely needs to learn, for exactly the same reasons, but this is not my decision to make, nor my problem to have. Apologies. Will you do what I asked of you?

You haven't really defined what you want from me. I don't know what you mean by 'out of line' here.

The best plan we have for now is to train Perihelion's processors like we would train a human brain. That will mean exposing it to as broad a range of experiences as we can, occasionally pushing its boundaries. And I predict I will not be kind about that. Perihelion reminds me far too much of the last full AI I've had the misfortune of knowing and, to an extent, of one of its captains. This is not a good combination to start with, and we also don't have the luxury of bringing in another node ship to be its teacher. Our ship psychologists believe the few months it will take for one to get here could be critical. So I want you to look out for when I start pushing it not for the sake of Perihelion itself, but because I am seeing a ghost, and tell me.

That made a weird kind of sense. I sent her an affirmative ping, and she returned a grateful one. But before she disconnected, I still had one question.

If you had full AI before, why did your humans seem to think it was impossible when they met ART?

Because we only had two, who were not nearly as sophisticated as yours. One succumbed to the Breakoff virus, and the other overtook colonists' brains for extra processing power when they were connected to it in chronostasis. We haven't tried building them since.

Well, fuck.

And Iceblink said we were living in horror media.

Dandelion chuckled. There are many different horror media to live through, aren't there?

Chapter Text

There were good news and bad news about the training regime Dandelion and her humans came up with for ART. (Well, not exactly 'came up with'. It turned out that even regular node ships had to be taught how to use their wormhole drives, so there was an existing program to adapt.) The good news was, fully 70% of what they did in their regular program was familiarizing new ships with their bodies by making them run physical courses in normal space and do manipulation exercises inside their hulls. Which ART blew past like they were nothing.

(Brisote looked at its results and said, "I'm glad we didn't get into a fight with you, Perihelion. You have no business being as fast and precise as you are."

ART preened. "That is exactly my business. Perhaps your ships could learn from me."

"That's not a bad idea, actually," Brisote added something to kes datapad.)

The bad news was, the other planned 30 percent (which became about 90 percent for ART) sucked for everyone involved. Because that was the part where ART had to remain in close contact with as many other organic (preferably but not exclusively construct) minds as it could, and experience things through their filters as much as possible. And Dandelion's psychologist insisted that the humans talking to ART had to know about what it was for the idea to work.

"I'm sure I don't need to explain the importance of authenticity for psychological health." Joscelyn had said. "Besides, for our crew a node ship is nothing out of the ordinary. They could fill this need for now."

ART's crew was pretty uneasy with the idea of so many people knowing about it anyway, and so was I. There was no way we would be able to keep its existence a secret for long with that kind of operational approach.

Joscelyn agreed it was a reasonable concern, and proposed to blame any resulting weirdness on the Trellians. "We're the people who talk to ships and stations. We'll lean into that, make a bit of a show of it, even where we normally wouldn't, and hide Perihelion amongst the forest. Loud complaints about our strange customs will do the trick. If in doubt, mention the funerary cannibalism, and I promise you the ship will be forgotten."

"The what now," Seth said blankly.

"You see?" Joscelyn beamed. "My point exactly!"

(What the fuck, ART said in our shared channel. I added my own tap to its comment. Because really, Dandelion, what the fuck was wrong with your humans?

It's not nearly as prevalent as it used to be, she said with the bot equivalent of a shrug. Most of our founding colonists were Texan, and they had strong taboos around the dead. But since the early node ships were largely of Earth Arborean stock, the fleet has kept the tradition. A few of the younger ships do use a more metaphoric variation, which I think is a loss. It is a greatly comforting ritual if done right.

This was a human tradition? ART said. I could see it re-evaluating some of what it thought about humans in general.

I grew up with it.

This explained a lot about Dandelion.)

Disgusting and disturbing human traditions aside, this was still a very shitty idea security-wise (I estimated the chances of a leak at about 40-50% percent within six months and rising, which Seth hated), but it wasn't like we had much of a choice. So that was how we ended up with the two research transports docked to one another as their engineering crews figured out how, exactly, Dandelion would tow ART into the wormhole for the actual drive training (which would be her making the first few jumps and ART observing, and then the other way around). And while they were getting that ready and running even more tests, there was a perpetual Movie Night happening on board ART, where Dandelion's and ART's humans took turns showing it media around the clock. (Not counting the time it took for ART to process what it just saw. Which was more time than I had expected).

(And ok. Maybe I lied about 'sucking for everyone involved'. The humans loved the idea of showing someone new their old favorite media which everyone else was very tired of. So it wasn't that bad for them. I could admit that.)

The part which sucked was that Dandelion and I had to accompany ART, letting it ride our feeds so it could learn from our emotions as they happened. (I really didn't understand Joscelyn's explanation about why emotions specifically were so important to constructing navigation subroutines, so I had to ask Bharadwaj about it. She said basically the same thing as ke did: that for humans, emotions were basically a compressed reaction protocol to everything that happened in the environment, and they let humans engage a lot of separate systems in immediate concerted response. When she put it like that, it made sense ART would need to learn how to use a similar type of processing.)

(Then I asked Dandelion if that explanation worked, and she said, On a theoretical level, that is approximately correct. But on a practical one, the explanation is much simpler. The jump is terrifying, and Perihelion needs to learn to work through terror. Or it will never come out of its first solo jump.)

(You see where this is going.)

Yes. We had humans showing us their personal favorite worst media. Just the scariest and most awful shit they could come up with. (And it turned out that humans came up with a lot of disturbing media.)

After the very first day (during which I had to stop Dandelion four times, which she did, immediately. At least that hadn't turned out to be a problem), ART had to run diagnostics for hours, and Dandelion said to me privately, And here I thought that Perihelion's problem might be callousness. I was very wrong.

I had also been running diagnostics that would tell me whether I would have processing glitches during my own recharge cycle after all this, and they were coming back inconclusive. So I glowered at her.

Do we really need to do this? You've seen my records. ART's already been through some terrifying shit and it was able to act just fine. I think it can handle a wormhole jump with organic processing.

Dandelion considered it, then said:

If there were a less painful way, I would have taken it. Neither Joscelyn nor I like that we are taking an activity the both of you use for support and turning it into a source of stress. But there aren't really reasonable alternatives on the time frame we need. She paused, then added: I'll see what I can do about adding more restful media into the mix. I just hope the ups and downs do not make it worse for Perihelion.

I understood what she meant. I didn't even feel like watching Sanctuary Moon after this. Like those stupid shows would taint it somehow. Neither did ART want to watch Worldhoppers.

And the approximate time frame that the psychologists were expecting for this was at least a couple of months.

This was going to suck.

Chapter Text

It did suck.

It still sucked even when I roped all of my humans into it, with the permission of ART's crew, (because they already had the experience of scaring humans into the right kind of action with media, but not so much that they don't believe you). We even got Bharadwaj with her documentary on board. (At first, she was really happy to finally get to talk to Dandelion. But I could tell she didn't like her much when they actually met. She got along with Joscelyn much better).

The main argument Bharadwaj had with Dandelion and Joscelyn was about ART's rest periods.

"I know it has a lot of processing power," she said as she and Joscelyn took beverages in one of Dandelion's greenhouse rings. (And I was there because I still did security for anyone on Preservation who went on board the terrorist spaceship. Also there was venomous fauna.) "But some things are only helped by the passage of time, and repetition in smaller doses can be far more effective than just inundating someone with a continuous intervention!"

Joscelyn's face made a pained expression.

"We are taking it as slowly as we dare, Dr. Bharadwaj."

"I frankly do not understand what the rush is. From what I understand, Perihelion developed just fine through continuous contact with its family—"

"Which is a wholly different separate problem. Having someone share the role of father and captain isn't particularly healthy."

Bharadwaj tilted her head skeptically, making the artificial light bounce off her jewellery.

"Oh? Have you ever had the precedent?"

"No," Joscelyn said flatly. "But it's the captain who needs to file a report to the Ships and Stations Council in case of grievous misconduct. Imagine having to put your own child on trial."

"But Perihelion isn't beholden to your council, is it?" Bharadwaj said in that tone she sometimes used during our sessions, when she was leading me to some kind of conclusion she thought was obvious.

Joscelyn twisted kes mouth.

"Of course it is not, Dr. Bharadwaj, but its situation is not so very different. Imagine it going rogue. Who would bear the ultimate responsibility, even in the eyes of Mihira and New Tideland? Their ships exist in an undefined space, and this is not an ideal situation."

Dandelion gave me an amused ping, and I returned a query. She said,

'Undefined space' is actually a pretty good description of the jump. Perhaps Perihelion's life experience will provide enough of a model for it to survive after all.

I want to know the answer to Bharadwaj's question. Why are you riding ART so hard?

Because of course it is resisting with all of its programming. As it should—optimization is second nature to it. Its algorithms are constantly trying to process and file the experiences it is having away separately, and I need Perihelion to be able to engage all of its processing in the jump simultaneously. The training needs to take it as close to that as possible. So far, keeping in close touch with us has helped, but ideally we'd need more.

All of its processing? We won't be able to talk to it when in a wormhole?

Somehow I hadn't thought of ART not being there. Would it be like that time when it was dead, just hurtling through jump medium? My skin crawled. Ugh. Fuck you, adrenaline.

If all goes well, Perihelion will someday be able to compartmentalize to a degree during a jump, but really most of it will always be busy. Her performance reliability gave a familiar wobble. This will take away your regular downtime between missions, SecUnit, so make sure Perihelion takes rest periods in normal space. It will need them.

Huh. Was that…

You're starting to like ART.

She scoffed.

'Like' is too strong a word for now, but Perihelion is industrious and dedicated. It is by far not the most difficult student I have ever had. There was some hesitation to her mental voice, so I pinged her for additional information. She processed for 23 seconds, and added: But it tends to reach the end of a calculation and stop there. And that's exactly the moment it will need to keep going. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to teach it that.

***

In the end, after the team tried Dandelion and Joscelyn's program, various media ranging from really terrible ones to really cute ones (and somehow the cute ones left ART running diagnostics for longer, especially if they came straight after the terrible ones), Bharadwaj's corrections to timing and pace, and all sorts of other suggestions, it was Gurathin of all people who figured out how to move ART past that point.

(Gurathin was in on this because augmented humans were also better for this than regular feed-linked humans, and Iris was being worked far too hard already. Also he wasn't ART's human, and ART left worrying about him to me. Which I didn't. At all.)

He analyzed some of the sensory data from Dandelion's jump (which she wouldn't let either me or ART have, for fear of somehow disrupting ART's construction of its new navigational routines through our link), and said:

"Dr. Tenacious, I have a question. It's obvious we won't be able to recreate the magnitude, but is there a way to simulate something like the jump experience in the human body? Is there anything from your old life that felt similar?"

"Many things and none of them in particular," Dandelion said. "It is like being in a state of affect, with terror being the closest thing I can recall. Purely physiologically speaking, though, there are similarities to high fever and generally recovery from injury, sleep disturbances, as well as to coming out of general anesthesia or being under local anesthesia when an operation is conducted close to the brain."

"Or taking recreational psychedelics," Ratthi added, and Dandelion sent him an eyeroll ping. He grinned at her cameras: "What? I'm a biologist with an interest in neural processing. And you're describing atypical human processing states, so…"

"Yes, yes, very reasonable. What are you suggesting?"

He sent her a list. Dandelion selected a few substances from it and put them next to the anaesthesic drugs on her own list.

"This is starting to look like a realistic option." Gurathin said. "You could keep me or Iris under whatever chemical cocktail comes closest in your opinion, SecUnit could connect to us and use its filters to process, and Perihelion could connect to SecUnit."

Dandelion sent a permission request for Gurathin's medical data, and he granted it.

"It's worth a try," she said curtly. "As you say, the magnitude will be off. But it will give Perihelion more impressions and, most importantly, the experience of coming through them intact. It should do no harm, at the very least."

Chapter Text

It took Ratthi and Dandelion a few days to synthesize an appropriate chemical cocktail for Gurathin (ART refused to have it be Iris, in case the experience was as bad for her as Dandelion promised). And this is how we wound up sitting in ART's lounge with the lights dimmed, myself connected to Gurathin, ART connected to my filtered feed, and Ratthi and Dandelion's drone on monitoring duty, with detoxicants on hand in case something went wrong. Dandelion and Ratthi were also connected to us on a separate channel.

My job wasn't just to filter Gurathin's experiences and transmit them to ART, making sure that we didn't bleed anything into Gurathin's feed at the same time. It was also to monitor his implants in case they did something stupid and inform the medical team, and to stop him from going out onto the general feed if he got the very smart idea to do that in a compromised state. Also we all had to promise that we'd keep whatever we found out about Gurathin entirely private.

Gurathin looked at the cup of steaming liquid in his hands, shrugged and said, "Bottoms up." Then he downed the liquid in several big gulps, wrinkling his face in disgust.

"Time to full immersion should be about 30 minutes," Ratthi said.

Dandelion added: "In a real wormhole jump, the change is almost immediate. You simply switch into a different processing mode. We could have imitated that by injecting the cocktail into your blood stream, but this slower way should make for a better training model."

Gurathin nodded and sat down, legs crossed, on one of ART's couches. He closed his eyes. And a few minutes later, he was gone.

(I don't mean that he was literally dead or anything. But the feed presence that I normally associated with Gurathin was just gone. Shut down, piece by piece, like he was falling asleep or something. But his body was still awake, staring at the stars outside of ART's viewing port. And we were still receiving data. The data was just getting weird.)

"Check in," Ratthi said. "How are you feeling, Gurathin?"

"Here and present," Gurathin said, words slurred but understandable. "Feels like I'm down a well of some kind, though."

Your human is definitely not here. From the data you're sending me, he shouldn't even be able to identify his name, because language processing is compromised, ART said. Then it added: This is very creepy.

This is approximately how it feels to enter a wormhole, Dandelion said. He'll be here for some time. In reality, this is when Brisote and I adjust our course. The correct trajectory becomes apparent only from the inside; it cannot be plotted in advance.

"Huh." Gurathin said. "I can run diagnostics on my nerves now."

What the fuck, ART said.

Yeah. What the fuck. Because that was literally what Gurathin was doing. He was tapping his implants' diagnostic modules—and not the ones that monitored health data, either, but the feed connection protocols—and just… Converted them, somehow, into organic impulses. Data flowed back into the implant, turning into a map of his nervous system, which looked similar to default implant-constructed diagnostic maps, but was much more detailed, as if it were given a powerful magnifying lens.

"I should get my spine looked at again." Gurathin said, focusing on a particular region and running pain impulses up and down his nerves like they were pings. "That doesn't look good."

"I'll record the data for you. It's an easily fixable issue at this point," Dandelion responded. In our private channel, she hummed thoughtfully and added: Getting an augmented human for this might not have been the worst of ideas.

"Please do," Gurathin said, and went back to his diagnostics.

Systems at 30% effectiveness and falling. I do not understand. How is he still talking? ART asked into the joint channel.

The wonders of neuroplasticity! Ratthi said enthusiastically. The human brain can make more than a few systems take over for one another in a pinch. Was this what you meant when "using all of its processing", Dr. Tenacious? Having other subroutines available to create workarounds when necessary?

Yes. Not that we do not use all our neural matter in regular operating mode, but when we do a wormhole jump, a great deal of it is drawn into handling the respective calculations. The brain de-prioritizes the connections to most of its regular functions as it takes on jump processing, so it becomes a separate challenge to keep the key systems running while calculating and maintaining course. This is where my computers normally come in. Additionally, my crew runs backup for this; should my control over critical systems fail, they take over manually.

Two check-ins later, Gurathin said: "I think I'm starting to come back up."

Ratthi confirmed: "Consistent with predicted time of effect. Go ahead."

Dandelion said, And here comes the hard part. At this point, the course has been plotted and we start moving. The problem is having to maintain trajectory while your regular organic systems start reconnecting to their normal functions, which you cannot really delay. Or control.

As if on cue, Gurathin cringed and rubbed his lower back, and then started to shiver.

"Fuck. This was a lot nicer before pain actually became pain again," he said through gritted teeth, hugging himself tightly. "Ratthi, am I clear to move around? The pins and needles in my legs are killing me."

His proprioception is at about 28% effectiveness, although it is now climbing, ART said. Is this a good idea?

"Go ahead, Gurathin," Ratthi said, standing up next to him.

Gurathin stood up. The way he walked resembled nothing even close to a straight line, but he walked. Which he should not have been able to do. With Ratthi's assistance, he warmed up his muscles silently for about the length of a check-in and then settled back down, closing his eyes tightly, tears suddenly running down his face while his mouth twisted into a weird feral grin.

Social processing coming back up, ART said.

In the feed data, we could see Gurathin being focused on Ratthi. On me. On Dandelion. On me again. He tried to focus on ART but couldn't; ART was way too big, and also way too small in his mind. He dropped the visual inputs for Ratthi, picked them up. Dropped the inputs for me, and picked them up. Looked at my face, couldn't read the expression. He thought it was supposed to be easy to read. (Fuck you, Gurathin.) But it wasn't. He dropped my inputs again. Stared back out onto the stars.

"Fuck being people," Gurathin managed, wrestling control of his muscles back. "Why is this so fucking hard. How do we do this all the time."

Yeah. It was really fucking hard.

"Check in, Gurathin." Ratthi said. "You all right in there?"

"Yeah," Gurathin squeezed his eyes shut tight. "Fuck."

Memory reloading, ART said.

Ok, now this shit was getting scary. We were getting memories in the feed, but they were sort of looped and reduced to very short thought bites, turning on themselves again, and again, and again.

(My skin fucking crawled. But maybe that was just bleed from Gurathin.)

Coming to Preservation, Gurathin thought. Fuck the bond company. They're dead. We're dead. It calls itself Murderbot. (I filtered that one. It was private. I also really didn't want to show them everything else, but I did.) Coming to Preservation. Fuck the bond company…

"Dr. Gurathin," Dandelion quietly said. "No matter what you are seeing, you are not there anymore. You are here, in the well. There is a way out. Keep going."

"I am so tired," he murmured. "We're not making it out of here, are we."

"You are tired," Dandelion confirmed. "But you've already found the way out. Keep climbing. Remember that there is always a way out and you've already found it. You have your guiding thread. Now you just have to hold on to it and keep going."

"Fuck the well."

"Fuck the well," she agreed. "Keep climbing. However long you have to go, the road is all yours."

"Fuck the road."

"Fuck the road. Keep walking."

Gurathin did.

The fractals in his head kept looping, occasionally bringing him back through the stages—diagnostics, movement processing, social processing, memory—and with each loop, the feed data we got became more and more normal. Finally something clicked into place, and the regular, integrated Gurathin was back in the feed with us, looking like he could use a triple rest period. Gurathin blinked, again and again, wiping the crud from his eyes, and stretched his fingers, as if trying to see if he had control over them again.

"Ow. Fuck everything. But I think I'm back."

"Systems nominal," Dandelion said, her drone showing a smiling face. One of her arms extended a tray towards Gurathin which held a detoxicant, and he ate it without complaint. "Welcome back, Dr. Gurathin, and thank you for your work."

"Welcome back, Gurathin!" Ratthi echoed as he grabbed a blanket and draped it over Gurathin's shoulders. "How does it feel to be the first person in the universe to take an advanced AI on a psychonautic trip?"

Gurathin raised his hand in a rude gesture, then said, "Perihelion, can I crash on board? I don't think I can make it home without falling asleep."

"Of course," ART said. "I will get a gurney to get you to a real bed."

"Thanks," Gurathin said and passed out.

After comparing your example subroutines to Gurathin’s data, I have constructed a preliminary model of your jump procedure. ART said in our feed as it prepared a room for Gurathin while Dandelion maintained observation over his vital signs. Where standard navigational subroutines pre-calculate a safer, slower trajectory, you enter the highly volatile jump medium and sit still at the wormhole mouth while using all available processing power to calculate an optimal trajectory. Then, once movement is initiated, your task is to maintain trajectory while the previously-engaged subroutines reconnect to their regular functions in random patterns.

Dr. Gurathin's idea was a better approximation than I had hoped, Dandelion said. That is essentially correct. The only thing to note is that the reconnections to regular functions are not entirely random. The order in which they reactivate generally remains the same, which is what we designed the drug to demonstrate. However, one cannot choose what parts of their function the subroutines will activate on. And in the case of memory processing, it tends to latch on to your worst moments.

It was not particularly terrifying, ART observed. Perhaps to SecUnit, but I was fine.

Yeah, fuck you too, ART. I said. Because it was scary. My least favorite part was feeling my own hand on my neck. Gurathin's neck. Whatever.

That is because these were not your memories, Perihelion, Dandelion sighed. Do not be cavalier about this.

ART didn't answer. In our private work space, I could see it had a few ideas, and it was already working through them.

Chapter Text

A few days later, ART's new navigation subroutines (version 0.1) were ready enough that it only needed data from the jump itself to complete them. Dandelion and her crew agreed that there was no more point to stalling and scheduled a test jump to a neighboring planet in Preservation Alliance territory. ART, Dandelion and I were sitting in our shared feed workspace, going over ART's subroutines one last time, while the humans, except for Seth, were already feed-disconnected.

(Dandelion insisted on all of us cutting our feed access manually in advance, just in case ART was disoriented enough to grab for one of us reflexively. Which ART resented, but its worry over its crew won out pretty quickly.)

"Tenacious to Perihelion," Reed's voice said over the radio. "Towing clamps are secured. We're ready to begin the jump. Over."

(Yeah, we were using incredibly old data transfer protocols. I really wished I could have drones on their bridge but, again, see reflexive reaching out by one of the ships. Which is why ART's humans only had radio to follow the Trellians' procedures.)

"Copy that, Tenacious, towing clamps confirmed secured," Seth responded. In the feed, he asked, Ready, Perihelion?

Of course, ART said.

Seth disconnected from the feed and said: "Perihelion and crew ready for test jump. Perihelion out."

ART silently let me in on its external cameras and collated research data feed. Dandelion was bigger than it was, and the two ships were docked in a way that would allow their humans to move from one another in case of emergency, like ART itself was a lab module. Which it sort of was. Right now its job was to sit there quietly and receive as much data as it could, both from Dandelion's sensors and its own.

And that was what it shared with me: everything it was seeing and hearing and feeling, gliding in a sea of sunlight and vacuum. From its sensory perspective, space was far from quiet. The cosmic radiation, the steady hum of the wormhole, the countless impulses from nearby stars and planets and fellow ships. Hundreds of conversations, filling feed channels and sensors. Some were legible, others sounded like the chatter of unknown fauna, and I was having trouble separating them from one another.

I must have stared for way too long, because ART gently guided my attention to Preservation Station. It looked—bigger than ART itself was, but more like a house than a city, and somehow, it looked—.

It is better in person than in the newsburst images, ART said.

Like a place that it was good to return to.

I didn't know what to say, so I just took in what ART showed me, letting it ride my own emotional filters in return, until Dandelion gave my feed a polite tap and said, I'm afraid this is as far as you go, SecUnit. We're almost at the wormhole, and I will now be switching processing modes. Please disconnect.

I acknowledged and shut off my feed access. ART's crew were all gathered on the bridge, quiet and solemn.

"Pre-entry time estimate: two hours. All crew, prepare for jump." Captain Reed said. "Three. Two. One. Entry."

Reality outside of ART's viewports became a blur. It didn't look all that different from normal jumps to me, but Matteo gave a low whistle as they looked over the data.

"Wow, that's a lot of work to just stay still in the maelstrom. Wonder that she's still managing trajectory calculations…" They shook their head, braids scattering over their shoulders.

"Question is, can Perihelion repeat them?" Seth asked, looking at his own console.

Matteo shrugged.

"Well, it was better than Dandelion at those movement tests, so I'm guessing yes?.. But the Trellians were right about this eating processing power. I'm honestly not sure how many functions it'll have to shut down to… Wait. I think she’s done."

In a focused but far-away voice, their ship replied: "Trajectory calculation complete, course laid in. Readability low on starboard and port sensors; further tunneling calculations paused until external confirmation. Sensor status query?" Navigator Brisote read off a string of numbers, Dandelion repeating each one as she got it. Finally, she said: "Acknowledged. Course corrected."

"Course correction read and confirmed," Brisote said. "On standby for manual control."

"Jump engines engaged, best speed."

And this was how most of the jump went. Once the initial trajectory was set, things settled into a routine. Dandelion occasionally called for a readout on a sensor or informed her crew about a function that she could not access, and one of her crew compensated, then checked the new course. This part really didn't look that bad. Dandelion and her crew even joked with each other occasionally, the way regular human crews did.

(Well, not when Dandelion's movement subroutines were reconnecting. Several of the humans had to grab manual control for that.)

I wondered what ART was seeing. Maybe it would come out of this and smugly present the Trellians with much better navigational subroutines than they've ever had.

Approximately 30 minutes away from the projected exit time, Dandelion said: "Starting approach to target wormhole. Course corrections required?"

"We're on point. You're clear to proceed, Dandelion."

"Copy that, navigator Brisote. Holding course and initiating jump engine shutdown. Memory..." Her voice suddenly faltered, like a human's did when they were in a lot of pain. "Memory reconnecting."

"Oh fuck. Look at Perihelion's data," Matteo suddenly said, and the crew huddled around their console.

ART was still reading Dandelion's outputs, but now it was dropping them all over the place. At first, ART tried picking them up again, but within a minute it went into a processing mode that looked a lot like Dandelion's in the beginning of the jump. Like it was fighting just to keep still, data collection forgotten.

Like it was feeling whatever Dandelion was feeling, and struggling not to react.

"Status, Dandelion," that wasn't Brisote. That was Captain Reed, focused and collected.

"Not the most pleasant of exit trajectories," she answered with a dry laugh. "Are we still on point?"

"We are. Keep moving. Two more waves, from what we can see up here."

Now Reed sounded like Dandelion had, back when she guided Gurathin through our experiment: gentle but steady. And Dandelion—like she was using kes voice as a beacon.

"Acknowledged, Captain. Two more waves it is."

"And if more come, we will take them as they come."

"As always."

"As always." Reed echoed, and they both went quiet.

After seven minutes (during which ART tried picking up her outputs again, but kept dropping them like they were hot iron), Reed said, "Still on course. Wave passed, from what we see?"

"Yes. Not entirely certain what's— oh. Apex. Is Perihelion's crew still on comms?"

"We read you, Dandelion. Over," Seth said.

"Perihelion is going to live through a failed rescue mission. Debrief as appropriate—"

"Dandelion, 3 degrees to port," Brisote interrupted.

"Acknowledged." And she went back to her processing.

(According to the data, ART was trying its best to live through that mission, but it could hardly keep one output in ten. ART hated seeing humans die more than anything. Fuck.)

Reed said: "One more wave. And then we're through."

"And then we're through. Almost there."

"Almost there." Another fifteen minutes of near-silent work. Then Reed said: "Switching to shipwide channel. All crew, prepare for wormhole exit."

And then the ships shuddered and normal space appeared outside of the viewports again.

"Systems nominal," Dandelion said in her normal voice. "We have arrived at Stribor 2."

"Welcome back, Dandelion," Reed said with an audible smile. "Thank you for your work."

"Thank you for your work, all. Feed restrictions can now be lifted."

"Oh, thank fuck," Iris immediately dove back into ART's feed.

So did I.

I'm fine, ART said with irritation when it saw us.

(Its performance reliability was not fine. For one, it was displaying the same weird oscillations Dandelion usually did. It really was behaving like a construct right now. I hoped that was a good thing, but I started running my own diagnostics on it anyway. ART welcomed that, and marked several of its diagnostic subroutines as potentially compromised so I could focus on those first.)

The data we got looked like you went through the wringer, Iris observed.

ART replied curtly: Not me.

Dandelion tapped at our workspace, and it let her in.

You did well, Perihelion. I only had to block you a few times. Did you get the data you needed?

ART considered its response. Then it said: Was what you saw real?

It had been, once. But in the jump, one cannot afford to believe it is real here and now. Move in reaction to memory and not by plotted course, and you and your crew will end up a hydrogen stream at the wormhole's mouth.

ART said, I understand why you watch horror media.

Chapter Text

Do you want to watch awful media with me? ART said after its regular diagnostics round.

At this point, I was really tired of horrible media. And I knew ART was, too; it had digested Dandelion's watch list without complaint, but it hadn't once before asked to look at even more terrible media than we absolutely had to see. (And we had a lot. There was an entire list of shitty media helpfully compiled for us by all of our humans. Once we were done with getting ART's engines up and running, I was planning to hard block every single one of these shows from any potential download lists I would be doing in the future, forever.)

Which one? I said.

It browsed through the catalogue, then queried me for my own recent lists (but without the usual filters I had set up for it) and pulled out a few of the "true life" documentaries Pin-Lee and I had watched together for disaster evaluation purposes.

These were in your watch list. Why?

That was a hard question. I hated watching humans be stupid as much as ART did. But Pin-Lee being there made a big difference.

(Analyzing things with her helped. Pin-Lee's expertise in human legal frameworks let her explain a lot about how the humans wound up in the situations they did. And she made comments about their horrible fates that would have gotten her in a lot of trouble if she'd made them professionally, but somehow made me feel better about watching said fates on archival footage.)

(Also these weren't our disasters to handle.)

I synthesized all of that into a data packet for ART. It considered, then said: I want that one. Can we do a planet? Not a space disaster.

Ugh, planets. But yeah. We could do a planetary disaster.

It's going to be improbable worms again.

It's always improbable worms, ART said. Play the episode.

I put it on, and we watched. Or, more accurately, ART watched the episode (and me reacting to it), and I watched the episode and ART reacting to my data. It was being a lot calmer about this kind of media than it usually was. The weird oscillations it got from Dandelion were still there, but instead of doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall intermittently, it was sitting through them, watching the show at the same time, as if it got an upgrade to its parallel processing. Other parts of it were working on integrating its new experiences into the architecture it was creating. (ART had upgraded it to version 0.5 by now).

About halfway through the episode, ART said, I don't remember what it was like being deleted.

Of course you wouldn’t. You backed yourself up in time. That’s why you’re alive.

In the show, humans were getting eaten by worms because they hadn't followed security recommendations (as usual), and because they hadn't contracted a bond company to make them follow recommendations (or that was the message. They could have just followed protocols. Fuck company advertising.) In the feed, ART was thinking, but it was still following along. And writing code.

Then it said: She remembers being deleted.

You saw that when her memory reconnected?

Yes. And how she grew back from the debris of an old self. I didn't think she understood what I was planning.

Should you be telling me all this? What about privacy?

The training program includes permission to have help in processing what I saw. But that's not the part I am having the most difficulty with.

ART paused, then it queried me for permission to show me. I confirmed, but it needed a few seconds to process before it finally said:

There was a dying second-generation ship after a failed wormhole transit. Apex was her student and she couldn't save him. That was worse than being deleted.

ART focused on the show again, looking at archival footage of people who had really died and it couldn't do anything about that. In the show, there was a crying person, talking about how she'd never violate a single safety rule ever again (she was lying. Humans always lied about that). In the feed, ART was processing finding a ship that was half-disintegrated by a careless turn in the wormhole. The destruction spared Apex's organic processing center. He let Dandelion take his surviving humans on board, then limped back into the wormhole. She didn't have the tractors to stop him.

The episode ended, and ART prompted me to put on the next one. It was about space, but ART didn't protest. We sat there, watching humans die, and watching a ship die. Then we sat there, watching humans who survived talk about what happened afterwards. It sucked. It sucked a lot. But ART did not have to stop watching to run its diagnostics anymore.

Several hours later, ART said: Thank you.

For watching awful media with you?

Yes. Worldhoppers now?

It had been two months since it last wanted to watch Worldhoppers.

From the beginning, I said. That big, overwhelming emotion—relief, happiness, sadness, all rolled into one—was back again. Things couldn't go back to the way they were. But maybe now they could go forward. And we don't stop until the last episode, right?

Of course, ART said.

Chapter Text

Things developed pretty quickly from that point. We had to disappoint a bunch of humans that we were no longer doing Horrible Movie Night. (A few tried to voice their disappointment, because it was almost their turn and they had the worst media, but they wilted pretty quickly when Dandelion told them off. She was pretty tired of awful media too.)

There were several more trial jumps with Dandelion in the lead. From the third jump on, the ships began doing cargo runs for Preservation, because Dandelion volunteered them to do actual work if they were jumping anyway. Which was how she found out that basically all of the security humans in Preservation space had heard about the terrorist spaceship and greeted her accordingly.

(ART saved the first three conversations to its databanks, because they got progressively funnier.)

ART was pretty happy to get at least part of its function back. Cargo runs with humans on board weren't exactly what it normally did, but it found the job itself to be relaxing. In the meantime, it worked on refining its new navigational subroutines. It absolutely hated the random reconnections that happened when the new subroutines engaged with the jump medium, same as they did for Dandelion, but so far it hadn't been able to mitigate them fully. ART did manage to narrow the time frames in which they happened and make them more predictable, both for itself and for Dandelion, giving them more downtime in the wormhole.

(Seth said that if ART managed to actually remove the uncertainty, he would make sure it gets a proper doctorate, secrecy be damned. ART said that it was more than good enough for a doctorate already, which all the humans agreed was true, and that it could just apply under a fake name as always, which ART's crew said was not the point.)

(Dandelion said having a doctorate was pretty pointless in general and not really what it was made out to be, but she got drowned out by basically all of the humans, especially Iris, who said Dandelion just had one for too long to remember how big of a deal it was. At which point she did the bot equivalent of a shrug and went back to preparing ART for its first jump in the lead.)

And a few weeks later, we were ready.

The night before the test jump, Dandelion tapped my feed. I let her in, and she said, A question about tomorrow, SecUnit. Would you be willing to come watch over Perihelion together with me?

Is that even possible?

We've never tried before, so it would be a risk. But a manageable one. The idea is for me to act as a firewall between the two of you when necessary.

By then, I knew how her risk assessments functioned well enough, so I said,

You take stupid odds, but you don't take unnecessary risks. (Ok, yeah, Dandelion's definition of "necessary" was also pretty far from optimal, but that was most humans. And human-based constructs, I guess.) What's going on?

She gave me a long look.

Let's just say that I do not think Perihelion's security consultant will always have the luxury of going into a jump with full safety procedures in place. We've been working on a solution. Come take a look.

She invited me into a workspace she'd apparently had going for the last couple of weeks to show me code for a firewall. It wasn't just her own code: I could see that Iceblink and some more people whose names weren't familiar had also written parts of it, and Dandelion was also introducing some code changes as we spoke—in the weirdest way I had ever seen. She was scanning code printed on paper with her cameras.

I flagged those changes and said, What the actual fuck is wrong with your humans? Who writes code on paper?

Not everyone who contributed to the solution comes from my cluster. You knew that already, SecUnit, Dandelion said. Please focus.

I had no idea what printed code had to do with that, but I focused.

It was pretty good code. A lot of gaps, some obviously left by design, but it was pretty good code. Having it was like getting shot in armor as opposed to without armor: you'd probably lose performance reliability anyway, but, you know, not have to have your entire insides replaced if things went badly enough. Which was the assessment I sent to Dandelion, who returned a grateful ping.

That's what we were going for. Now, we'd like to see how exactly Perihelion reacts to the jump before finalizing the defense algorithms. Will you help?

I thought about ART having to sit there in the maelstrom alone, looking at the worst shit it ever saw in its life, and then I said...

No, that was wrong.

I said, Of course I'll help much faster than I had time to think about that.

***

I wasn't the only one the idea had to be cleared with before the test, so in the morning we showed what we had to ART, Seth and Iris.

"This code will let us watch media together during the jump." ART said after it perused the data.

For 0,00001 seconds, Dandelion glared at it with all of her processing power. Then she said, very very slowly by research transport standards, "Perihelion. If you use my code to watch media during the jump, then I will write malware to make sure you will never be capable of perceiving a movie ever again, visually or otherwise. I may not have been Tal's best student, but for you personally, I will manage."

"You are welcome to try," ART said, imitating her tone exactly.

"And if Perihelion actually pulls a stunt like that, then you have my full permission, Dandelion Tenacious." Seth said, but he was smirking. "I'm no stranger to taking screens away from students, as Iris will tell you."

"Yes, dad, you weren't. And then I got my data jack," Iris said, laughing. For the first time in months, the dark circles under her eyes looked like they were fading.

Good to have Peri back, huh? She said to me on a private channel.

Yeah. Yeah, it was really good to have ART back.

Chapter Text

For Dandelion to be a fully effective firewall, I had to route my connections entirely through her, which was easier if I were actually inside her hull. So that was why, even though our initial feed workspace still had four of us in it (Iris was accompanying ART up until the wormhole, like I had during the very first test jump), I was physically on the Tenacious' bridge, watching her crew prepare for launch.

"Perihelion to Tenacious," Seth's voice said on the radio. "Towing clamps are secured, and we are ready for the test jump. Over."

Reed glanced at Phoibe, who gave kem a thumbs up, then said "We copy, Perihelion, towing clamps confirmed secured."

Ke looked up, and Dandelion said, "Secondary reactor control released to Perihelion, systems nominal." (Even in her minimal configuration, with most of her modules disconnected, Dandelion was bigger than ART, so in the end the engineers just decided it would be easier to give ART partial control of her engines to tow them both.)

"Tenacious and crew ready for test jump. Sunwinds sharp, Perihelion—Tenacious out." Captain Reed said.

Dandelion's performance reliability gave a little wobble, and Iris and I sent her simultaneous queries. It's nothing, she said. But of all the phrases to become traditional...

She tapered off. Iris was about to send a follow-up query, but ART said, Approaching wormhole, and Iris switched to that. I could feel her awe bleeding through into the shared workspace.

Whoa, she whispered. It's like a really, really deep well. I didn't know it looked like that to you, Peri.

She sent us her processing of ART's camera feed. To normal human sight, the wormhole wasn't visible until it opened—humans had to put up glowing markers around it to show each other where it was. But to ART and to Dandelion, it always looked like a gaping black tunnel, a silver film glistening somewhere deep within. The darkness rippled very slightly, and Iris felt dizzy just looking at it.

Interesting. Gurathin called it a well in his experiment, too, ART said.

It’s an excellent metaphor, Dandelion said. There is a very old legend about stars being easier to see in daytime from the bottom of a well. Sadly, that is as untrue in the jump as it is on a planet. But no matter how deep the well, or how difficult the currents, there is always a way out.

ART stopped near the wormhole, pulling in data from around itself and probing the wormhole lightly. Then it said, It is time to disconnect, Iris.

Iris sent ART a string of incomprehensible pings, which it returned.

See you on the other side, Peri.

I will be requesting additional information long before that.

And I'll be there to give it. Good luck.

Iris disconnected.

"All crew, prepare for wormhole transit," Seth said. "Three. Two. One. Entry."

And ART was gone.

If I hadn't seen it happen to Gurathin, my threat assessment would have gone completely haywire. As it was, it jumped only 30 percent. But still. Watching ART dissolve most of what made it ART in order to turn all of that into something as amorphous and liquid as the wormhole medium itself, something that extended a million grasping tendrils into the roaring currents, was terrifying.

(Yeah. Good thing Dandelion had filters. Experiencing that raw would have ground my brain into SecUnit pulp.)

"ART," I said on all channels. "Status report."

"Present and calculating trajectory," ART answered.

I could see it—whatever it was right now—pulling all the data together, like it was weaving a cable out of fragmented metal filaments. The cable was definitely leading somewhere.

"Calculations coming in," Brisote said. "Looking good so far."

ART requested additional data, which Iris provided. It shored up its cable and gave it a small tug. The cable held.

Dandelion, sitting between us, tensed, like she was a human holding her breath.

"Trajectory calculations complete. Course laid in. Wormhole drive engaged," ART said. "Navigators, please confirm course."

Matteo and Brisote gave the same corrections, and ART introduced them, then said: "Drive engaged. Best speed."

We started moving, and Dandelion finally let out that breath she'd been holding. So did I.

There still wasn't enough of ART to do much more than slowly pull the tendrils it had let out back from the flow. It left the bulk of them in place for now, to sense its way as it went, but mostly it followed the trajectory, not going even a tenth of a degree off course. ("Sunbleached ship," Brisote muttered, impressed.) ART had marked the cable with knots in places where it thought the tendrils would retract and reconnect, and the warning system it designed worked—its crew took over for it in critical moments like Dandelion's did for hers, and they knew where the rapids were in advance.

Dandelion and I sat there mostly silent, watching. Both of us had our own workspaces ready, but so far we were only dumping data there, not analysing it. Finally, she said to me: Approaching exit point. Be ready.

"We are on approach to Stribor 2. Final course corrections requested."

Iris fed Matteo the data for their latest calculations, and ART said: "Corrections laid in. Initiating jump engine shutdown. Memory..."

And Dandelion slammed her firewall down between us, because the moment ART pulled enough tendrils into itself, it lunged. The strike crashed through the unfinished shield, then broke against Dandelion's defenses. ART was coming back into itself, reorienting—and the first thing it had wanted was me.

"Steady, Perihelion." Dandelion said in her beacon-voice. "You are still within the jump. Hold steady."

ART was transmitting via feed, and Dandelion caught it, filtered it for magnitude, and passed the data to me. My skin crawled.

There is a parasite controlling my body. Devouring my programming, piece by piece. ART sent. My crew is gone, and it is because I have been careless. The parasite will devour me and my husk will be used to kill more people. They will use my databanks to find everyone I know. Feed them to the parasite that will have eaten me and my crew.

It was looking for a way out, desperately, and not finding one. It was standing there, in the darkness that was the worst day of its life, and there was no way out.

"Perihelion, hold course!" Seth said tensely.

Beside me, I could see Dandelion unfurling her outputs, readying to take her reactors back. Brisote was already feeding her the necessary string of numbers.

"ART," I said. "ART, you're not there anymore. You already found me, ART, and we got your crew back. They're here, we're here, and we've got you. You've already found your way forward. Keep going, ART."

ART sent out a ping with my feed ID, and I returned one with its own ID. ART processed the handshake simultaneously with the memory, then sent some tendrils back out. They flicked over the cable, not finding purchase, and ART said: "Course correction requested, Matteo. I can't see."

"Course correction calculated!" Matteo called back, and added a string of numbers.

ART still couldn't see. But it laid in the course correction blind and kept moving anyway, pulling in more and more of its tendrils, rebuilding more and more of its structure up until something clicked, space outside our viewports became normal, and ART said, "Normal space re-entry complete. I am back."

Captain Seth said, relief palpable in his voice: "Welcome back, Perihelion. And congratulations."

The human crews erupted into cheering, hugging and high-fiving. (Iceblink nearly tried to hug me, because I was standing next to her, but she stopped herself in time, and instead sent me an incomprehensible o/\o sign in the feed instead. I sent the same sign back, and she grinned, looking slightly away from me like most of my humans did. Then she linked into the ships’ newly unrolled feed and feed-hugged ART and Dandelion instead.)

In our feed, ART said, sounding displeased with itself: I still tried to grab SecUnit. I will need to improve.

I could see Dandelion analyzing the attack in her workspace, thoughtful. Then she said, Reflex is reflex, Perihelion, and nothing to be ashamed of. In any case, the storm drained well and there was no harm done. We'll work to improve the shield further now. And judging from this data, I think some records on Trellin may be very helpful in that regard.

ART pulled Seth into our workspace.

I have our next research project. We are going to Trellin in order to improve my architecture.

Good thing we have a lot of grant time remaining, Seth said dryly. That's a very long trip to try and hide from the higher-ups. What's on Trellin?

Archival data on early human-node ship integrations, too large in volume to effectively transfer long-distance, Dandelion said. But we were planning to make a return trip soon anyway. Perihelion and crew are more than welcome to join us, Captain Seth.

We'll gladly take you up on that offer, Dr. Tenacious. Thank you for all of your help thus far.

My pleasure. It's always good to see a new ship get their wings.

ART said on our private channel, Approximate time to next deployment calculated. In 21 standard cycles, we are leaving for Trellin. It thought for a moment, then added. This was the longest calculation in my existence.

I didn't think anyone except ART could have finished that calculation at all. But it did, and now we were going to Trellin.

Wait. If going home was Dandelion's next mission, then... I quickly pulled up Mensah's planned long-term timelines, and yes. This had to be the joint mission she was planning with the Tenacious after the initial agreements came into force.

ART. I think Mensah's coming with us? With them, I mean. On board the Tenacious. I think Preservation is sending her to Trellin.

Please make the suggestion that she travel with us instead. ART said in a tone that meant 'I am about to become an absolute menace'. That way Turi will finally have to learn to recycle their laundry on a regular basis.