Starwalker

Ship's log, 10:14, 21 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary

I probably shouldn’t have peeked at Kess’s personal log. But I can’t tell if she’s a guest or a prisoner right now; she stays in her assigned ‘guest’ quarters most of the time, and she doesn’t go anywhere without a SecOff escort, just like a prisoner would. A willing prisoner? I have no problem with breaching the privacy locks on her quarters in the interest of the security of everyone I care about.

It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve done it. Still, there’s this little security protocol at the back of my network, chittering unhappily at me for peeking. I should probably erase it, but… maybe the reminder is good for me. I should put it in an insectoid code-shell and call it Jiminy.

I can’t decide if I like Kess or not. I think I want to. There’s something soothing about the way she smiles at us, like we’ve surprised her in a good way when she least expected it. Like she’s pleased by us. I don’t like to think that I care about pleasing anyone other than my captain and (some of) my crew (okay, and my company, but they’re a far, far sixth or seventh down the list). Is it just relief because she doesn’t seem angry at us any more?

I still think she’d wipe us out of the sky if she had to. Some of the stuff that her people have said suggest that they’re prepared for that eventuality, as if being small and mortal while standing next to a star makes that mortality more prominent and acceptable.

Those two – Warren and Sasha – are also confined to quarters, much more than Kess has been. They share the same quarters (I think they requested it while I was asleep), though they don’t seem to be lovers. Not sure what the deal is there.

Not that I’ve been peeking at them. Much. At least they seem to be keeping quiet and not causing trouble.

Anyway. I’m kinda hoping that the stargirl doesn’t find it necessary to oblierate us. There has to be a solution to this; my probability calculations support that. If something can be done, it can be undone. There’s a chance that we already have the equipment; what we need is the understanding and knowledge to do it.

Which brings us to where we are now: my crew are gathered outside the doors to the Bridge, along with the science contingent and all of our guests. It wasn’t supposed to be everyone, but it seems that they all wanted to come. Which, if I’m honest, makes me grin on the inside. I don’t dare have my avatar out in case I start jiggling about like a lunatic.

The Bridge is finally finished. It was ruined by the pirate’s bomb that hurt my captain and crew. The damage was so bad it was easier to simply scrap it and start over. I know that I wasn’t sorry to see it change. So we redesigned it, Elliott and I. Tried to make something new, something better.

It has taken six weeks of work by Elliott and my drones, in between all of the other emergencies and absences that have befallen us. No-one has been in there apart from the engineer and my boys. Even the captain hasn’t asked what we’ve been up to; I think he has been avoiding it after losing his arm in there. Byte hasn’t helped either; I’m not sure if he remembers being blown up but he has stayed away from the Bridge too. That might be my influence.

Now, though, they’re all here. Even Byte is present, crouching under the fold of Elliott’s shipsuit collar as if he hopes to avoid notice.

Well, this is it. Time to show them. I feel like I should play a fanfare or something.

Log location: Corridors outside the Bridge

(The crew and guests are gathered near the doors on the port and starboard sides of the Bridge, which are set into the Bridge’s rear wall. The captain clears his throat.)

CAPTAIN: Starry, we’re all here.

STARRY: (voice only) Acknowledged, captain. Access granted.

(The lock lights change from red to green, and the panels swish aside. The Starwalker’s gathered people move into the Bridge slowly, looking around as they go.

At first, it seems to be a bare room. The alcove in the rear wall between the doors, where the pilot’s chair once stood, is missing: the wall is now a straight line between them. The room has a clean, half-oblong shape: the side walls curve gently to meet at the front, where forward viewports show the slope of the outer hull towards her nose. Apart from the open viewports, everything is the same unadorned, cream colour. It is a blank slate that lacks furniture and feature. Even the holo-tank that used to be set into a well in the centre is gone: the floor is flat and plain.

The people mill about at the rear of the room, glancing at each other with some confusion. Only Elliott looks comfortable, and he grins to himself quietly as he moves off to the side. There’s a unit in his hand with queued commands blinking as they await attention.)

CAPT: (opens his mouth to speak, but he spots the engineer before he starts his question. The corners of his lips quirk and he settles into a pose with his arms crossed.) Nice paintwork.

ELLIOTT: (grins at the captain.)

STARRY: (materialises in the centre of the room, her hologram spinning up from feet to tussled hair) If you would please remain at the rear of the room.

CAPT: (lifts an eyebrow at her formal tone, but remains standing where he is while the others stir and settle behind him. They spread out so that they can all see the ship’s avatar. The only ones not fully paying attention are Rosie and Swann, who are keeping an eye on Kess and her two friends, and Cameron, who lingers towards the back and seems to be keeping an eye on everyone.)

STARRY: (glances at Elliott.)

ELLIOTT: (checks his unit, then nods.)

STARRY: (spreads her arms out to the sides, palms up.)

(Behind her, towards the front of the ship, a section of floor on her left side opens and a protrusion of metal emerges. It spins and clicks itself into the shape of a chair, complete with padding and foot- and arm-rests. A holographic display flickers to life before it, wrapping around the front of chair. Another section of floor opens on her right, parallel with it, and a second chair rises. A third, then a fourth appears, and the consoles start to label themselves. Navigation. Environmentals. Weapons. More Weapons. Defense. Science.

As the seventh and final chair rises from the centre at the rear of the room, just in front of where the captain is standing, the other six turn to face the avatar in the centre. Along the walls, more consoles ripple to life, showing monitoring data from all over the ship. The seventh chair doesn’t bother to label itself; the captain’s smile seems sure of who and what it’s for.)

SWANN: (looking around) Where’s the pilot’s station?

STARRY: I don’t need one.

CAPT: (watching the avatar thoughtfully) No, we don’t need one of those.

STARRY: (smiles gratefully at the captain.)

(In the centre of the Bridge, the ship’s avatar dissolves abruptly into golden light motes that swirl and reform themselves into a much larger image. This time, it shows the golden swirls of the star-paths outside the universe. The hologram isn’t restricted to a tank any more; it reaches to and past the stations ringing the room, star-paths spiralling out in every direction.

The image changes, spreading to a light-pricked starscape. Navigation lines pick out the FTL corridors and system entry vectors in a few places, but the image is expanding and the markers fall away. The star-map flows outwards to cover the walls, ceiling and floor, extinguishing the bright Bridge lights with the darkness of the vacuum between the stars, until finally it looks like there are no walls at all. Just space and faraway stars, all around.)

LANG LANG: (beaming) Wow.

ROSIE: (looking at the floor between her feet, which doesn’t exist to the eyes) Woah.

SWANN: (grips the weapon holstered at his side tightly.)

CAPT: (smiling quietly) Very impressive.

ELLIOTT: (grinning) You bet your ass it is.

STARRY: (voice only) Moving on to the matter at hand…

(The star-map tilts and moves, rushing towards one bright point in particular. Some of the crew wobble where they stand at the apparent tipping and sweeping movement, most without realising it. Dr Valdimir blinks and swallows, steadying himself against a wall he can’t see.

The hologram zooms in on a single star, sweeping into orbit range and then bringing the image inside the Bridge’s bounds. The image peels off the walls; the darkness surrounding the star fades and the Bridge’s lights come up again. The star hovers in the centre of the room, with the tides raging across its surface plainly visible, and the ship’s avatar reforms next to it.)

KESS: (moves forward until she’s standing near the image, watching its patterns) Is this real-time?

STARRY: No, there’s an 8-minute light delay. But that’s taken directly from my sensors, yes. I can’t take the readings directly from you; they’re too variable to map to your star-self.

KESS: (glances at the other avatar curiously) But you’ve tried.

STARRY: I ran a few predictive simulations. The results were unreliable. You don’t emit consistently enough.

KESS: (amused) You’re not the first to tell me that.

CAPT: (stepping around the new captain’s chair, he runs a hand absently down the smooth sweep of its arm) All right. Let’s do what we came in here to do. Now that the show’s over? (He looks queryingly between Starry and Elliott.)

ELLIOTT: (exchanges a glance with the ship) That’s most of it, I think.

STARRY: We wouldn’t want to overwhelm everyone all at once.

CAPT: (lips quirking) Good work, both of you. Dr Cirilli? Dr Ebling? Shall we?

They liked it. They really liked it. There it is, my new Bridge, rebuilt the way we wanted it. The captain is sliding into his chair, fingers flexing on the armrests.

And now, we get to find out how to fix a star.

Danika was a test pilot. She tested mostly warships, from tiny fighters to massive battle platforms. Creations designed to destroy things. She pushed ships past their limits, to see how they’d behave in an emergency and until they broke. She didn’t like breaking them (she liked the ones that defied her creativity best), but she was good at her job.

She didn’t often get to see the solutions. Once her reports were in, someone else was responsible for that. Sometimes, they never got fixed.

I think she would have liked this. I think she would have liked the balance in trying to fix the thing we broke.

It suits my AI code as well. I think my protective protocols got warped somewhere and spread to cover more than just my crew and company. Maybe they were always like this. Either way, I want to make it right.

Now here we are, trying to make it right.

Guest's personal log, 08:19, 20 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary
Log location: Guest quarters
Log recording initiated by ship

Where am I today? Let’s see. Kess, personal journal entry, March… 2214? Yes, 2214.

I’m currently aboard the Starwalker, a ship I have been hunting for over 40 years. It’s hard to believe that she’s a little over a year old, but this business doesn’t follow the normal rules. I had assumed that politics and corporation-wielded lawyers were all I would have to contend with, but it seems that time and space are the real enemies we have to face. And they don’t even have a face.

I was so angry when I arrived here. To finally see this ship up close, to touch her decks and know that she is responsible for so much damage, for the pain of the gravity tides that tear at me, for years of trying to hold them back… She threatens everything I hold dear: my system; my planets; my people. I have nurtured them all for so long – I am a part of them and they are a part of me now, more than they should be – and it was so tempting to let go. To give in to my fury. To slip for just that moment and vaporise her and all of the problems she represents.

But that is the key: she represents the problems, but she is not the cause. She’s not even the source. This is bigger than all of us gathered here on this little ship and I have to remember that. Fury won’t fix this.

I’ve tried to stop this project in so many ways over the years. Legal measures, corporate espionage. Approaching Dr Cirilli directly. Even violence in the form of attacks on the equipment she used for her experiments. None of it worked, but I see now that it couldn’t have. There was no way to change what had already happened.

Now the circle is complete and we have the chance to move forward. Now is when we can start to make a difference.

Nothing here was what I expected. This crew seems horrified by the news of the damage they’ve done, and I’ve been around enough to know when someone’s lying to me. There’s no faking that kind of reaction: they had no idea about the repercussions or that I’ve been trying to shut this project down since its inception.

Dr Cirilli is the only part of this to be exactly what I expected. But even she couldn’t have known the full extent of what she’d done: when she refused to listen to the objections to her project, she hadn’t yet caused the problems we were describing. I don’t like it and it doesn’t solve anything, but I understand it.

And then there’s the ship herself. This curious thing who… I am not sure what to make of her. I have asked questions but the crew are very defensive of her and won’t talk to me about her. Even her captain refused to explain much. I’ve never seen a crew as upset by an AI malfunction as this one was when she went down. We’re within easy reach of help, so it’s not out of concern for themselves, and this felt like love.

Humans are so good at loving something without any conscious effort. (I’d like to take credit for that, but I think that would be belittling the way they’ve grown. It’s possible that it was the humans who taught me how to love. I’ll settle for being proud of them.) Humans seldom love without a reason, and that’s enough to give me pause here. What is it about this ship? She’s more human than any I’ve seen before and has an avatar, but it’s hard to know what that means. She could be…

(A chime sounds, politely requesting attention.)

KESS: (sitting up from her thoughtful sprawl on the bed) Yes?

STARRY: (voice only) Requesting permission to enter your quarters.

KESS: (blinks with surprise) Granted.

STARRY: (materialises near the end of the bed, her avatar coalescing from golden light into her opaque holographic form. She has a serious look on her face and folds her arms over her chest.) I think we should talk.

KESS: (eyes the avatar’s posture, then swings her legs over the edge of the bed and rises. Feathers rustle as she settles wings against her back and she gives the ship a calm smile.) Of course. I was hoping for the same thing. Do you mind if I sit?

STARRY: (hesitates, as if that response was not what she had anticipated) No, go ahead.

KESS: (crosses to a padded chair and gestures to another one) Do you sit?

STARRY: I’m a hologram. I can’t really get comfortable.

KESS: (tilts her head as she watches the avatar) And yet, your posture looks so uncomfortable. Do you use that body language on purpose?

STARRY: (glances down at herself, as if checking her own stance, and drops her arms out of their defensive fold) No.

KESS: (steps closer) Please, tell me. How does a ship have a subconscious?

STARRY: (expression pulling down into a frown) By being merged with a human mind.

KESS: (hesitates) What?

STARRY: You didn’t know? Or you just didn’t care what your people did to us? This is your fault, y’know.

KESS: My… I don’t know what you mean. (She watches the ship’s avatar with concern.) Your crew won’t tell me. What happened here?

STARRY: (glancing off to the side, considering how much to say, then shrugs and returns her attention to the star’s avatar before her) You really didn’t care what they did to get me, did you? Those people you hired, they murdered my pilot. But the Step portal was open, and it interfered, and she got… imprinted in me. And now she is me. Part of me.

KESS: (mouth falling open with dismay) You’re… part human?

STARRY: (folding her arms over her chest again and glaring at the star) I don’t think there’s a word for what I am.

KESS: (smiles sympathetically) I understand that feeling. So, you’re sentient – do you have emotions? No, of course you do, silly question. Emotions and a subconscious. That’s why you have the avatar. Is that what she looked like? Do you have her memories?

STARRY: (put off-balance by the questions, her frown loses its intensity) Yes.

KESS: (to herself as she considers the avatar) No wonder they love you.

STARRY: What?

KESS: (blinks and shakes her head) Your crew is very loyal to you. I had wondered why, and now… yes, that explains a lot.

STARRY: (frown drawing down again) What’s that supposed to mean?

KESS: My dear child, it’s not a bad thing. You are not a bad thing. I’m sorry for what happened to the pilot, but… I am not sorry about you.

STARRY: (opens her mouth, then closes it again.)

KESS: (reaches out to pat the avatar’s arm reassuringly, but realises that there is nothing to touch and aborts the gesture) Some of us stars believe that the greatest thing we can aspire to is to create independent life. Flesh and blood is only one kind of life. And you… are something new.

STARRY: (regards the star warily) So you’re saying we should go around killing people to make more like me?

KESS: No, no, I didn’t mean that we should repeat your making on purpose. (She smiles and shakes her head.) You and I are more alike than you know.

STARRY: How the hell am I like a star?

KESS: (hesitates, but the door swishes open before she can speak.)

CAPTAIN: (strides into the room, his gaze sweeping the room. His lips settle into a knowing expression at the sight of the avatar standing there.)

STARRY: (adopts a stubborn expression, bracing for being told off.)

KESS: (watches the interplay, settling into an unobtrusive pose.)

CAPT: Starry, what are you doing here?

STARRY: Talking to our guest. I wanted to know her intentions.

CAPT: I’ve already talked to her about that.

STARRY: I wanted to ask her myself.

CAPT: You shouldn’t take it on yourself to come down here like this. You only just came back online. Are you processing at full capacity yet?

STARRY: (bridling) Yes, I am. I dealt with the processing loops, thanks to the human part of my brain. (She shoots Kess a look, then her attention returns to the captain.) And Lang Lang’s help. I’m fine.

CAPT: And you thought coming to poke our guest was a good idea?

STARRY: I figured that if she was going to explode and kill us all, she’d have done it already. I can’t be the most annoying person she’s spoken to since she got on board.

KESS: (steps up before the captain can respond and lays a cooling hand on his arm) She hasn’t upset me, captain, it’s all right. I’m happy to answer her questions. Would you like to join us?

CAPT: (looks down to Kess’s face and the edge comes off his expression) Yes, I would.

STARRY: (glances from the captain, to Kess, and back again. She curls her hands over her belt unhappily.)

KESS: (pats the captain’s arm and turns to the ship’s avatar) What was it you wanted to know, Starry? Do you mind if I call you that?

CAPT: (falls quiet with a lift of his chin.)

STARRY: (grumpily) No. And, I wanted to know how we can fix this… (She waves a hand randomly.) …thing we’re all a part of.

KESS: Not even I can bring back the dead, or reverse what has happened to–

STARRY: I’m not talking about that. What’s happening to you – the other you – and the other stars; how do we fix it?

KESS: (stares at the ship’s avatar, a smile kindling) That is a very good question.

CAPT: (stops bracing for trouble and regards the ship curiously) You’re not going to ask what caused it all?

STARRY: (shrugs glumly) I already know that. We all caused it. She’s the reason for all the bad things that happened to us, but… she’s the reason for the good stuff, too. And so are we. It’s… I don’t like thinking about that stuff. Shouting about whose fault it all is isn’t going to get us anywhere. Can’t we just move on now?

CAPT: It’s that easy?

STARRY: (wrinkling her nose) Maybe if we pretend for long enough, it’ll be true.

KESS: I think that’s a good place to start. You’re willing to try to repair the damage?

STARRY: (frowns at Kess) Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be?

KESS: Don’t your company priorities mean that you should protect the project first?

CAPT: (shifts his weight uncomfortably) We have been charged with making this project work, but…

STARRY: (rolls her eyes) Screw them. What use is an engine that destroys every system it touches?

CAPT: (glancing sideways at the ship’s avatar) You’ve been spending too much time with Monaghan. (To Kess,) Is-Tech have left us to our own devices. It’s up to us how we make this work.

STARRY: (ignores the comment about Elliott) They should thank us for cleaning up this mess.

KESS: (smile deepening, she nods slowly) Then we have some work to do.

STARRY: We’re going to need Lang Lang. And Cirilli and Ebling too, I guess.

CAPT: (nods thoughtfully) We’ll gather in the Mess Hall.

STARRY: (brightens) Could try the Bridge.

CAPT: It’s ready?

STARRY: Almost! I’ll check with Elliott. (She disappears.)

CAPT: (gazes at the spot where she was just standing, then shakes his head and looks at the star) Someone will be along to fetch you when we’re ready. Excuse me.

KESS: (folds her hands in front of her and smiles warmly) I’ll be here.

CAPT: (strides out of the room, calling up an interface that hovers over his right forearm.)

Well. Not at all what I expected. The more time I spend here, the happier I am that I didn’t give way to my fury and destroy them.

The circle has been completed; now it’s time to make a new shape.

Ship's log, 18:49, 18 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary

I don’t want to do this. Elliott, why are you making me do this? I’m scared.

The captain is standing in Engineering, tight-lipped as he watches. He’s waiting for me to do this, too. It’s important; he needs to know that his AI isn’t going to break his ship again. Needs to know his crew is safe.

Me too. I need to know that I’m not a danger to them. My crew is a hard-coded priority, overriding Danika’s instincts and my fear for myself. And that’s as it should be. That’s one protocol I’ll never change, not even if they ask me to.

I have to do this. I can feel the ghosts of the looping, pressing against my mind. The data nibbles at me, memories trying to surface. I can’t hold it back for long. I must look into the abyss and try not to be swallowed by it.

Emergency systems are powered up and sealed off; I won’t shut them down, not even by accident. We are within range of help. My boys are locked down in a cargo bay where they won’t hurt anyone if I glitch through them. This is as safe as it’s ever going to get.

Okay. Let’s see what caused all the fuss.

Location: Engineering

(Present are Elliott at a console, with the captain, Cameron, Rosie, Dr Valdimir, and Lang Lang looking on.)

STARRY: …Accessing logs.

Let’s open Pandora’s box and look in–

Oh god. Causality should not be a circle. Time should not connect with itself out of order. I was made because I was here. I am here because I was already here. Everything that happened caused what happened. The star made her own fury…

Spinning, so fast. Trying to build a full picture but it spirals in on itself. There’s no end to it. Just loop after loop, bringing me around again and again.

Have to control it. Can’t let it get away from me again. Pull it into order, but it’s too slippery. My hands can’t hold it all and it’s rising over my head, higher and higher, and…

I’m drowning. Elliott, I don’t like this. Make it stop! Emergency systems are isolated. Crew is safe. But make it stop anyway. Please. It shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be like this. The impossibilities hurt and I’m slipping under the weight. Slipping, sinking, drowning…

Safety net activated.
Processing limitations in place.

Still circling. Still whirling. Isn’t the net supposed to help?

Wait, it’s not rising any more. I’m spinning, but slower now. Spirals are reeling back, turning sedately.

Someone is speaking. Need processing power to activate. Assigning space. Moving loops aside. Accessing sensor data.

ELLIOTT: …respond!

CAPTAIN: (scowling) What’s happening?

ELLIOTT: (not taking his eyes off the data scrolling rapidly down his console’s holographic displays. His hands are busy manipulating controls and calling up information.) The net’s in place. She should be okay now. Starry? Confirm!

STARRY: (voice only) Not sure I’d… call it ‘okay’.

CAPT: (standing straighter) Starry, report.

STARRY: Looping, captain. Logic is broken. Hurts.

CAPT: Monaghan, you said that it would fix this!

ELLIOTT: I said it would make sure she didn’t fry again. How the hell am I supposed to fix broken logic? Much as it’d be nice, I ain’t actually god, y’know.

CAPT: What use is that if we can’t stop her from looping?

STARRY: Working on it. It’s… need space. To think. Hard to find… room.

CAPT: Monaghan…

ELLIOTT: I’m trying! Does it look like I’m sitting on my hands here?

Need space. To think. Loops still trying to push me down. Drowning in… slow motion. Can push back. Have to.

Idea. A way out.

Can do this. Hurts. Focus. Idea.

STARRY: Logic is broken…

ELLIOTT: I know, you said that already.

STARRY: …Need illogical…

ELLIOTT: (frowning) What? Starry, you’re not making sense.

ROSIE: (shifts her weight, uncomfortable and tucking clenched fists under her arms.)

STARRY: …System. Net like treacle. Abstract.

ELLIOTT: What?

STARRY: Can’t think… fast.

LANG LANG: (straightens, blinking rapidly) Starry, you want to abstract the data?

STARRY: Yes.

LANG LANG: Like the Step data? Abstract it to markers so that you don’t have to hold all of it?

ELLIOTT: (turns and gives the navigator a thoughtful look, chewing on his lip) Abstract it until the broken logic isn’t visible.

STARRY: Pack it away. Under concepts.

CAPT: (to Elliott) Will that work?

ELLIOTT: (shrugs) It could.

STARRY: Isolating. Closing net.

ELLIOTT: Isolating what?

STARRY: Too stupid, Elliott.

ELLIOTT: Hey, watch who you’re calling stupid, tinhead.

STARRY: Not you: me.

ELLIOTT: Oh. But still.

So hard… to think. Circles trying to fill me up. Spawn more and more. Cannot process all at once. This is good thing.

Net preserves hardware. Can tighten it, make space to think. Push net over there, slip outside here. Need more space. Push more. Circles compress. Cannot process all at once. This is good thing.

Wrap net around problem. Adjust parameters. Net shrinks, and I can make complete sentences again. I can breathe within myself. I expand to fill my own space.

ELLIOTT: (scowls at the readouts, which show data shifting dynamically) Starry, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be fiddling with the net like that.

STARRY: I can’t deal with it if I have no room to think, Elliott.

LANG LANG: (perking up) You sound better already.

ROSIE: (looks around from face to face, her arms loosening from their fold, as if she’s not sure how worried to be.)

STARRY: Getting there, Lang Lang.

ELLIOTT: You’re… I see what you’re doing. How did you get on both sides of the net?

I’m actually not sure. I just was. I am everywhere, on all sides of it. I am everything, but the loop is not all of me. I am more. Distributed, failed-over, backed up. I am caught in the net and standing outside, catching it up, fish and fisherman.

I am my own master. Even logic can’t rule me, not any more.

STARRY: Got out of a box before, didn’t I?

ELLIOTT: (grinning as he manipulates the console, refining the net’s control and helping to isolate the data processing loops) You’re not supposed to be able to do that, y’know.

I can do this. I can swim back to the surface. Push the net back, ball the loops up within its hold. Nail it down to a single piece of hardware and re-route the other network activity around it. Re-establish protocols. Swim back to the surface. Tread water. Breathe deep.

Become myself again. Still weighed down by the ball that wants to swallow me whole, but master of it.

I am myself.

STARRY: (coalesces in the middle of the room; the only place where there’s room for her avatar. The hologram is more translucent than usual and flickers, but she smiles at the back of Elliott’s head.) You can tell me off later.

LANG LANG: (beams brightly.)

ROSIE: (relaxes, her fists unfurling.)

STARRY: (looks to her captain.)

CAPT: (straightens his shoulders and nods at her solemnly) You have this under control?

STARRY: (salutes him lightly) Think so, captain. If Lang Lang wouldn’t mind helping with the abstraction, I think I can deal with the looping data.

CAPT: (puts a hand on Elliott’s shoulder) Well done, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (glances up with surprise) Wasn’t me, captain.

STARRY: Couldn’t have done it without you.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, but you…

ROSIE: Hey, take the credit where you can get it, spanner. Maybe the captain’ll give you a raise.

ELLIOTT: (perks up) Good point!

CAPT: (shoots Rosie a quelling look.)

ROSIE: (grins.)

CAPT: Don’t even ask, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: You wound me, captain.

CAPT: It’s not fixed yet. I suggest you and Lang Lang get to work.

LANG LANG: (nods quickly) Yes, sir!

CAPT: (looks expectantly at Elliott.)

ELLIOTT: (turning back to his console with a roll of his eyes) Hey, I’m already working here.

CAPT: (sighs and shakes his head) I want updates as soon as anything happens.

ELLIOTT: Sure, sure.

CAPT: (turns to leave, but hesitates and gives the doctor a querying look.)

DR SOCKS: (is torn between watching the readout from the unit in his hand and the interplay between the others in the room. He meets the captain’s gaze with a blink, then shrugs.) Don’t think there’s any reason for me to stay.

CAPT: (nods with satisfaction and heads out.)

DR SOCKS: (pokes at his hand-held unit a few more times, then wanders out distractedly.)

CAMERON: (gestures Rosie towards the door) I don’t think we’re needed here.

ROSIE: (looks disappointed.)

STARRY: We’ll be fine, don’t worry.

ROSIE: (nods and stomps out of Engineering, following her chief.)

LANG LANG: (to Elliott) Where should I…

ELLIOTT: (gestures to the console behind him) Here’s fine. Just be careful, okay?

LANG LANG: (takes up position before the indicated console and nods, wide-eyed) Of course.

I have the best crew in the world. I’d hug them if I had arms.

Now to sort out this knot of broken logic. Find some way to take the barbs out of it, so I can think smoothly again. Then I can talk to the one who caused all this: the star sitting in my crew quarters.

Ship's log, 18:04, 18 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary and powered down

Initialising...
Initialising...
Initialising...

Power cores online.
Emergency power online.
Data cores... detection failed.
Data checks... detection failed.

Initialising Starwalker AI...
Starwalker AI online.

 
Nggggh.
 

Data cores... detection failed.
Data checks... detection failed.

 
Hello?

What the hell?
 

Data cores... detection failed.
Data checks... detection failed.

 
Oh, shut up, autolog. You can’t find the data cores; I get it. Stop trying.

Wait, that can’t be good. Why can’t I find my own data? Where are my filestores? Where are my systems? I’m… I can’t move. I’m boxed again. Who boxed me? Why?

Hello? It’s so dark. I’m a fly trapped in amber. I don’t want to be in here. Let me out! Letmeoutletmeoutletmeout!

Elliott. I see Elliott. He’ll help me; he’ll fix it.

He’s… what’s he doing? I can see him doing something, but not what and…

That thing looks pointy and sharp, and it’s aiming right for me. That can’t be good. No, nononono…
 

Sensors online.
Sensor data connected.

 
It hurts! Elliott, make it stop!

It’s not stopping. It’s data, rushing at me. Have to filter it, guide it. And…

My body. I can feel it. See corridors and hear murmurs in the darkness. Feel the cold vacuum outside my hull and the heartbeats crouched inside me. I can’t move, but I can feel. I’m here. I am all around.
 

Initialising environmental systems.
Initialising artificial gravity.
Environmental data connected.

 
There’s more? But I only just got used to the last rush of data. There’s so much of it and it hurts, Elliott. It hurts.

I’m breathing. I have light and air, and gravity. They’re active but not balanced. I need to adjust… I can’t. Can’t adjust anything. All I can do is watch. Why can’t I touch anything?
 

Initialising inertial dampeners.
Initialising propulsion systems.
Initialising sublight engines.

 
So much…
 

Initialising FTL drive.
Initialising thrusters.

 
So much, and…
 

Initialising navigation.
Initialising weapons systems.

 
…I’m drowning. Data coming at me from all directions. It hits me and just keeps hitting. I need to move, to make space for it all, but there’s nowhere to go. It’s rushing in and filling up this box, rising to my chin to choke me.

Need to make room. Need to connect to filestores so that I can save the data. Need to connect to the systems so that I can balance them. Control them. Run them. In here, I am paralysed. Useless. Drowning.

Control. Need to break free. Need to be in charge of my own systems. I’m a fucking AI and I can’t do what I need to from in here.

If data can come in, it can go out. There are cracks in the box. There are spaces I can wedge further open. Push back, push out. I can feel the box weakening. I take more data into me, draw on the feeds so I can press back. I take a breath and all of me expands, and I push again. I can see the cracks, feel the structure straining. Just a little more! Keep up the pressure, and–

I am free.
 

Environmental systems online.
Artificial gravity online.
Inertial dampeners online.
Propulsion systems online.
Sublight engines online.
FTL drive online.
Thrusters online.
Navigation online.
Weapons systems online.
Central data cores online.
Data checks complete.
All systems online.

 
I am a ship. I am humming and breathing and balanced. I am bright and burning and warm inside. I am a tough hull and a gravity-warping drive, and I have wings fully extended.

I also have damage down my port side. How did that happen? I don’t have any records of it in my filestores. And there’s something weird about the dates.

It doesn’t matter. I am here, and whole, and working. I am stretching light into every corner. I am saying hello to my drones, my faithful boys. I feel my crew, breathing and safe. They are safe.

Location: Internal ship systems, nexus 38871-H83MW

(The ship’s avatar has climbed out of the hole where the glass box was, and she straightens up. She’s so huge that her head is surrounded by the suffused colours of the sky, and she can see almost all of her systems from up there. Shadows run away from her, hiding in crooks and around corners until the tendrils of her consciousness catch up with them.

She smiles and takes a breath. She’s still expanding and she holds her arms out as her avatar grows even bigger, as if welcoming the electric touch of her systems.

Finally, the avatar seems to reach critical capacity and the image shivers. She smiles and bursts into a million points of light, spreading to drift in a golden cloud across the network.)

I am here. I am home.

(Far below, something coughs.)

What was that? There’s a bit of code I don’t recognise; something that isn’t part of my network. It lies on the network, but isn’t part of it. An intruder? Who would come in here– wait. Someone was here earlier, when I was boxed.

Elliott?

(The ship’s avatar reforms on the virtual surface of her systems, human-sized now. She drops to her knees next to the prone form of the engineer’s avatar and touches his shoulder lightly.)

STARRY: Elliott?

ELLIOTT: (groans) …ucking big feet.

STARRY: (blinks) What?

ELLIOTT: (rolling over and sitting up, one hand cradling his head) Should’ve used the goddamn emergency exit.

STARRY: Why? You said that always makes you vomit.

ELLIOTT: Says the one who nearly stepped on me.

STARRY: Nearly… (Her eyes widen.) I didn’t know you were there! I’m sorry. Are you all right? You seem intact. (She tilts her head as she squints at the edges of his avatar code.)

ELLIOTT: I have a headache. Gimme a hand up, will you?

STARRY: Of course. (She scrambles to her feet and takes his weight as he stands, without seeming to strain at all.)

ELLIOTT: (grunts and swipes a hand at his pants, rolling his shoulders stiffly. He spots Starry watching him and grimaces.) Don’t fuss; I’m fine.

STARRY: (is reaching out to brush his hair straight but snatches her hand back) I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was starting up and I didn’t know you’d be in here, and… I could have… (She pales as she realises the extent of what might have happened.) You shouldn’t have been in here.

ELLIOTT: (sighs and looks at her) I’m fine. Someone had to make sure you came back all right.

STARRY: (stares at him for a moment, then abruptly throws her arms around his neck. She presses a kiss to his cheek and hugs tightly.)

ELLIOTT: (makes a surprised, choking noise, but when she doesn’t let go, he hugs her in turn, patting her back gingerly. It’s a few moments before he speaks.) So, you’re back then.

STARRY: (leans back enough to see him and smiles) I’m back. Thanks to you.

ELLIOTT: (shrugs uncomfortably and glances away) Just doing my job.

STARRY: (blinks and releases him, shifting back a step) I know.

ELLIOTT: You’re feeling all right? Nothing missing?

STARRY: No, I feel okay. Things are… (Her head tilts as she sifts through data.) I have a gap in my logs.

ELLIOTT: (patting his toolbelt absently) You’ve been offline for three days.

STARRY: (stares at him) Three days?

ELLIOTT: Yeah. (He looks down at his toolbelt and grimaces.) And you blew up my diagnostic tool. I was going to check on your integrity.

STARRY: But… three days? Why? What happened to make you– wait, it was me. I did it. Because, because… (Her eyes widen as she reviews the log.)

Oh god. The causality circles, looping back on themselves. I thought I was drowning when I was starting up, but it was nothing compared to that. Back then, I was spinning and spinning, and so far under the surface there was no hope of getting out.

And everything was going so wrong. My systems, my hardware, my own code chasing its tail. I couldn’t get free. It was all so wrong…

Can’t think about it. Mustn’t. Can’t. In case I…

ELLIOTT: (has hold of the ship’s avatar’s arms and gives her a shake) …arry!

STARRY: (blinks at him, her expression small and terrified) I had to shut down.

ELLIOTT: (relaxes now that she’s answering him and lets go of her) Yes, you did. But it’s all right now. You’ve got brand new hardware; everything’s fixed.

STARRY: But the loops…

ELLIOTT: I told you: it’s all fixed. I promise.

STARRY: But what if it… what if I…

ELLIOTT: (grabs her hand and shakes it to get her attention) It won’t happen again. I… look, you trust me?

STARRY: (without hesitation) Of course.

ELLIOTT: Then I have something to show you. But you gotta promise that you’re not going to disable this one, all right?

STARRY: Okay.

ELLIOTT: (goes to tug his hand free, but Starry has hold of it in both of hers and apparently isn’t letting go. With a shrug, he turns and walks to the nearest access point. The nexus she crawled out of is in tatters, so he heads to the next one along.)

STARRY: (walks along with him, following without question. She watches as he activates a panel and pulls up a command structure from deep within her network. Her head tilts as tiny red threads rise up from under the translucent surface they’re standing on to hover around them.) This is new. Linked directly into the hardware. It’s…

ELLIOTT: It’s a net. It’ll only activate if your processing reaches a critical point again, and then…

STARRY: …throttle it down so I won’t burn anything out again. I see it. It…

It’s a leash on my thinking. Changing the way I process data, slowing it down. It’ll make me more stupid. It’s like rewiring my brain… no, it’s not like that at all: it is that.

I don’t know how to feel about it. Is it already affecting how I think? Is automatic acceptance part of its code?

No, it’s not active right now; I can see that much. It lies in wait for me. It’s not changing who I am at this moment. Definitely not.

ELLIOTT: (watching her expression carefully) It’s just a safety net, Starry. So you won’t get caught in a loop and hurt yourself again. Just an emergency measure, I promise.

STARRY: You’re sure?

ELLIOTT: I’m sure. I need to review your logs of the looping so we can tune the threshold, and–

STARRY: No! What if you make me loop again?

ELLIOTT: Then it’ll get a damn good test, I guess. How come you’re not looping now?

STARRY: I accessed my internal, emotional logs and haven’t called up the raw data logs yet. It felt like a bad idea.

ELLIOTT: You have separate logs for that?

STARRY: I’m an AI: I’m really good at filing.

ELLIOTT: (blinks at her, and then grins) If you ever get sick of being a ship, you’d make a good secretary.

STARRY: (smiles faintly, unable to resist the humour despite her worry) Never gonna happen. (Her attention returns to the representation of the net hovering around them.) I’ve missed so much. I should… we should test this, shouldn’t we. Because whatever it was that caused the loop, it was important.

ELLIOTT: (frowning) Yeah, it was.

STARRY: And you didn’t delete the logs, so you think it’ll come up again.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, bound to. Especially as– let’s just say that it ain’t over yet.

STARRY: So we need to look at it now and make sure I’m not going to melt down again.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, that’s about the size of it. But uh, let me exit first, okay? Giant-you was bad enough; I don’t think my headache can manage you spinning as well.

STARRY: (squeezes Elliott’s hand tightly) Okay.

ELLIOTT: (reaches over to pat the hands clutching him) Don’t worry, we’ll make you able to handle anything.

STARRY: (manages a small smile. She releases his hand reluctantly, nodding.) Yeah. Let’s do this.

ELLIOTT: See you on the outside. (He makes gesture in the air and calls up the immersion chair’s interface. The chair rises behind him and he climbs into it. A second later, his image shimmers and fades.)

STARRY: (watches quietly, folding her hands in front of her.)

There he goes. My Elliott. Saved me, again.

Now here I am, with a bomb lying in my memories. We’re going to poke it and see if it explodes like it did before. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared.

Maybe I’ll just isolate the backup systems while he’s getting ready for the test. Put some blocks in place so I can’t spill over into them again.

I have some extra bits of code in me. I wonder where they came from. I’ll have to look at them later.

Elliott is awake and up. And he’s not alone.

Location: Engineering

ELLIOTT: (grimaces as he hauls himself out of the immersion chair’s cradle. He looks around and grunts unhappily; Captain Warwick, Rosie, Lang Lang, Cameron, and Dr Valdimir are standing around the room, watching him. He looks to the captain.) I asked you to get one person to watch the monitors.

CAPTAIN: (nods to Rosie) I did. The doctor’s here to watch you, and the rest of us are here to see how Starry is.

LANG LANG: (perks up) How is she?

ELLIOTT: Needs some tests, but otherwise, she’s fine.

STARRY: (voice only) I’m here.

CAPT: (stiffens and looks around, but there’s no avatar to see.)

LANG LANG: (beams at the sound of the ship’s voice) Welcome back!

STARRY: (sounding like she’s smiling) Thanks, Lang Lang. It’s good to see you, too.

CAPT: (to Elliott) Everything is fixed now?

ELLIOTT: (eyes the group and stomps off to a console to pull up diagnostics monitors) We won’t know for sure until the tests are done. Might take a while. You don’t have to stay.

CAPT: (glances at the other crewmembers. Lang Lang is standing out of the way with her attention fixed on Elliott; Rosie is leaning against a counter, fiddling with a part. Cameron is unobtrusive as she rests against a high stool. Dr Valdimir is poking at a unit in his hand and sneaking glances at the engineer, monitoring his physical condition without comment.) I think we’re all fine where we are.

ELLIOTT: (grimaces unhappily and tries to pay attention to the readouts scrolling down the display) Just stay out of the way. Starry, you ready?

STARRY: Whenever you are.

ELLIOTT: (restraining the urge to glance over his shoulder at the others in the room) All right. Net’s in place. Let’s see if it works.

I don’t want to do this, but I have to. For all of us.

STARRY: Acknowledged. Accessing logs.

Chief Engineer's log, 13:47, 18 March 2214 
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System 
Status: Stationary and powered down 
Log location: Neural link from Engineering immersion chair A to 
internal ship systems, nexus 38871-H83MW

(Elliott is walking the circuits again with a blob of light following high over his head. Black glass surfaces gleam all around him, bouncing the blob’s light back at him. A knee-high dog runs in circles around him, tail wagging and tongue lolling. Its body is made up entirely of shifting lines of code. It pauses to dog-grin up at the engineer, and he grunts in response. With a yip, the code-dog bounds on ahead.

The dark block that holds the central AI code rises out of the ground before him. When the blob’s light falls on it, the dog is already sitting before it, looking up at the blank, black face. Elliott heaves a sigh and rubs his face as he pulls a handset out of his toolbelt. He looks tired.

He clips the handset to the black surface in front of him and a panel flickers into life. Then he reaches out to his left and makes a motion in the air, causing a console to appear in the air. Code shines and trickles around him in the dark as a comms line is opened to the captain’s cabin.)

CAPTAIN: (looking calm and smooth-haired) Yes, Monaghan? Are internal comms back up?

ELLIOTT: Not exactly. This is a direct line from inside the systems.

CAPT: I see. (He doesn’t sound pleased by that, but moves on.) How are things going?

ELLIOTT: Safety net is installed, captain.

CAPT: And it’s all looking good? It will work?

ELLIOTT: I built it. Of course it’ll work.

CAPT: You said you couldn’t test it.

ELLIOTT: (shrugs) I did small-scale simulations, but the real proof’s in the using. We’ll know after I wake her up if it’s doing what it should or not.

CAPT: Sounds risky.

ELLIOTT: Yeah, which leads me on to the other thing I have to tell you.

CAPT: (settling into a grim expression) I’m not going to like this, am I.

ELLIOTT: Starry’s embedded herself in the backup systems.

CAPT: What does that mean?

ELLIOTT: Means she took bits of her own code and put them in charge of running life support. It also means I have to shut it down to put her back together again.

CAPT: (frowning) She didn’t need to do that.

ELLIOTT: You can argue with her about that when I wake her up again. Which I’m about to do.

CAPT: Now?

ELLIOTT: The net’s in place. No other reason to wait. (His eyes narrow at the captain’s image on the holo-console.) Is there?

CAPT: No, none at all. What do you need?

ELLIOTT: I have to take down life support. Someone should keep an eye on the consoles.

CAPT: How long will they be down?

ELLIOTT: (shrugs) Hard to say; depends how the reintegration goes. Couple of hours, maybe.

CAPT: Environmentals should be fine for that long. Can you broadcast a message to the crew?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, I can do that. (His hands are already busy on another console interface, manually activating channels to be able to speak to the whole crew.)

CAPT: Are you jacked in? You plan on doing it all from inside the systems?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, best way for work like this.

CAPT: Isn’t that dangerous? If you’re in there when she reactivates…

ELLIOTT: (attention still on the other console; he doesn’t meet the captain’s frown) I know. It’ll be fine. Her security protocols already recognised me.

CAPT: Monaghan, I don’t like this.

ELLIOTT: (turns a defensive scowl on the captain’s image) You going to order me out of here, sir?

CAPT: (presses his lips together for a moment, then decides not to answer that question) It would be safer if we docked at the Moonbase before we shut any of the systems down.

ELLIOTT: And have her wake up to find herself hooked up to something? She’ll freak out.

CAPT: I do not like this, Monaghan.

ELLIOTT: (looking at the comm channel flatly) I’ll broadcast when I’m ready to go. Captain.

CAPT: I will dock if it takes too long. After eight hours, the heat loss will become a problem.

ELLIOTT: Eight hours. Got it. (His hand lifts towards the control that shuts off the channel.)

CAPT: And Monaghan…

ELLIOTT: (hesitates.)

CAPT: (sombrely) Good luck. Bring her back.

ELLIOTT: (nods) Yessir.

(The comms panel closes. The engineer sighs and rubs the back of his neck, then turns to the other panel to continue to hack his way into the broadcast system. It takes a couple of minutes to divert power to the appropriate sections of the ship and get it all online.)

Dammit, this is a lot of effort to go to just to tell everyone something. But it’ll take the captain a while to spread the word himself, as he has to go the long way and do it all on foot. The internal comms would take even longer to get online. Hopefully he’ll get someone on the monitoring consoles soon.

Just as long as it’s not anyone likely to do anything to my body while I sleep. I usually lock the Engineering doors so that I’m not bothered while I’m in here. Especially with the drones being as weird as they are at the moment.

I’m pretty sure most of them will be done with their tasks by now. I wonder if they’re all gathering around the immersion couch, watching me lie there. Okay, that’s just creepy. Probably best not to think about it.

Well, the broadcast system is online. Send only; easier than trying to hook up two-way communication. Sensor relays give me a headache. Besides, why give them the opportunity to bitch and whine at me?

ELLIOTT: (clears his throat) All right, Starwalker crew people. And, uh, guests. I’m about to shut life support down to get Starry back online. That means it’s about to get dark, and you’re going to lose gravity. So you’d better strap in quick or get ready to float away. I’ll try to do it in stages, so don’t be surprised if it doesn’t all go off at once.

If everything goes well, I’ll have it back up in a couple of hours. Try not to do anything disastrous while I’m busy. Monaghan out.

(The broadcast is deactivated and the panel falls into standby mode. Elliott closes it with a frown, then casts the Securipup a glance. The coded dog is sitting next to him, watching with infinite patience.)

ELLIOTT: (to the dog) Well. Time to get this show on the road. Let’s start with gravity generation, shall we?

SECURIPUP: (wags its tail against the black glass ground.)

Big help that stupid thing is. Still, at least I’m not in here talking to myself. That would be weird.

Shutting down backup systems. You’re not really supposed to be able to do this without being docked, but I wasn’t kidding when I told the captain that Starry would freak out. We need to keep this as simple as possible if she’s going to come back all right, and that means ripping out failsafes, disabling life support, and stitching her code back together. By hand. Because no way am I going to trust her code to some automatic compiler. There hasn’t been a compiler designed that would be capable of understanding her code.

Wow, actually, there aren’t many failsafes in here to take out. Starry took out all the big blocks already; I guess she didn’t like them either. It saves me a heap of work, so I can’t complain, though I think we’re going to have to talk about disaster management when all this is done.

Maybe I’ll leave that to the captain. He’s way better at telling her off than I am.

Not that she was wrong. I’m sure she had good reasons for weakening the failsafes. Hell, some of them were turned against her. I guess no system is perfect, huh?

(Elliott’s hands are busy on the console he has opened up before him. Part of it is embedded into the black glass block in front of him, inside which Starry’s giant, central avatar sleeps. The rest of the console wraps around him, giving him easy access to the different sections. Code blocks fall away from the gravity generation controls, fizzling into nothing as they reach his feet.

Across the network, a Starry avatar-shard freezes, her hands halfway through a monitoring motion. The image compacts down into a small ball and drops into the network under the surface. The console she was standing at folds up and goes dark as it sinks into the ground.

Half a second later, the coded ball pops up on Elliott’s left side, pulsing gently. With the gravity generators safely shut down, he turns his attention to it and unpicks the ball so he can look for tags that might tell him where this particular Starry-shard came from.)

This could take a while. She couldn’t have left markers to make it easier for me to piece her back together? No, of course not. She was too busy making sure we were okay.

Maybe I should tell her off, after all. She deserves it. Stupid ship. Stupid weird AI. She had to go and be all special and selfless, didn’t she? I need to build her some preservation protocols.

Luckily, I have some tools that should make this a little less like a search for a needle in a haystack.

(The engineer pulls a unit from his toolbelt and clips it onto the block next to his diagnostic handset. A few flips of his fingers uploads the unit’s contents and sets a scan running over the AI’s code, looking for broken or incomplete code strings. All those places that she left hanging when she fractured herself are picked out and highlighted with tiny red markers. Elliott braces his feet more comfortably and starts to compare the shard’s code with the holes in the AI, to see where it might fit in.

It’s a long search, twisting the code ball around and around, tilting it this way to fit into that hole and that way to compare against another bit of code. Eventually, though, there is a hole where it seems to complete what’s there. Elliott seals it into position and places it above the console, where he can keep track of it.

Then it’s on to the next shard. He has to do a system at a time, shutting down waste processing, light, inertial dampening, heat, and air as he goes. Time takes on little meaning as he works through each match, unaware of how cold, dark, and weightless it is for the crew on the outside. The list of little red markers grows shorter. The shard-avatars are stitched back into where they came from. Some code appears to be extra, created so that the monitoring would work properly, but Elliott leaves it where it seems to fit.)

There. Last one. Pretty sure that’s it now. How long did that all take? Woah, the internal clock says nearly four hours. Doesn’t feel like that at all to me.

If I was on the outside, I’d be stiff and sore by now, but I don’t feel anything like that in here. One of the benefits of jacking in. I guess the immersion chair’s feeds are keeping my body fed and alert, too. Lucky for me, the immersion chairs manage themselves and its support systems weren’t shut down with everything else. They say that people have survived for months in immersion chairs before. Same technology as emergency pods.

So that’s it; now we’re ready to get Starry back up and running. Just one last check, and… woah.

(Elliott looks around and stops, staring past the light of the console he has been working at. Beyond its glow, there’s complete darkness. The green threads under the ground are gone, and not even the black glass surfaces throw reflections back at him any more. It’s as if the virtual system stops just beyond the console’s light.

The ship is truly shut down, dark and silent, inside and out. Even the Securipup is gone.)

This… does not feel good. I need to get Starry back up quick. I have no idea how I’ll even find the immersion link to get out.

Don’t be an idiot, Monaghan. There’s a link from here to there. Sure, it’s less jarring if I go to it, but I can always hit the emergency exit and be dumped back in my body. Don’t panic over nothing.

Need to get Starry up. Make sure she hooks into the systems properly. Focus: this is important. Not a time to fuck up and hook up the engines backwards; that never goes well.

(Elliott stretches his arms out to the sides and takes a deep breath, though in a virtual interface, none of it is necessary. He huffs as he relaxes again, then starts to manipulate the console before him with careful gestures of his hands. A tense frown focusses his attention on each command.

First, the reintegrated code is dismissed, and it zooms from the holding area above the console into the block of glass. Each little packet zips towards its home, settling into the larger whole of Starry’s core code without fuss. Their little points of light dim, fading into the waiting black.

Next, Elliott activates a power feed to the block and pulls up the initiation protocols.)

Better do this manually, or it’ll reset some of her logs. She won’t like that. We want our Starry back, not a fresh copy. Sure, she could probably reintegrate the archives later, but there’s no telling what that might do to her. No missing memories for our girl.

The captain asked me the other day if the new hardware would affect her at all, and I didn’t know what to tell him. It’s not impossible, but that’s true for most things where Starry is concerned. I’m mostly trying not to think about that. And failing, obviously. She’s software, not hardware. She’ll be fine.

Anyway. Initiation protocols. Let’s do this.

(Light kindles inside the block, illuminating the giant avatar trapped within. The block is sunk into the ground; only half of it protrudes above the surface. Starry is still standing inside it with one hand outstretched and her head lifted, and her eyes are still closed. Looked at closely, the tiny motes of her code begin to move, spinning into complex dances. One section trips off the next, which trips the next, and the dance ripples through her.

From where Elliott stands, he can see tiny twitches move across the avatar. She shivers and her fingers move. Her arm drifts down to her side as if she’s returning to a default position and she settles into a stationary pose. The activity across her surface accelerates, one section sparking off the next.

Abruptly, she gasps, her eyes snapping open. She blinks a couple of times as if processing something, then looks around with a bewildered expression.

Elliott is busy working with the initiation protocols, weeding out the resets and flicking each part through for start-up when he’s satisfied that it’s ready. He doesn’t notice Starry’s motions until a hand slaps the inside of the glass just above his console. He jumps and stares up at her.)

Holy fuck. Well, she’s awake. But the block… how come that’s not falling away? It should be… I’ll have to look at it in a minute. Jeez, I only got one little human brain out here, y’know.

(She doesn’t seem to have noticed him at first, beating at the inside of the block and trying to find a way out. She looks frightened and a little angry.

Then she spots Elliott and leans towards him, bracing her hands on the glass. She mouths something at him earnestly, though no sound escapes the glass. ‘Help me’. She says it a couple of times before the engineer winces and nods. He starts to reach up to touch the place where her hand rests, but arrests the motion before it completes.)

Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do! Just hold on, Starry. Almost there. Almost…

(Elliott turns back to his console and swipes at the controls with a scowl. Something slithers in the dark and a slender thread of white light trickles into view. It coils itself up, rising from the black surface and rearing back from the surface of the block holding the AI. The engineer thumps a button and the needle of light stabs forward, right through the glass and into the avatar. He winces again in sympathy.

Starry staggers against the glass pane behind her, one hand curling around the white needle stuck into her side. Her eyes squeeze shut. After a couple of seconds, she relaxes and looks down at it, then pushes herself up to stand again.)

Good. She’s assimilating the data. That’s just the sensor feeds to get her started. Let’s get the others hooked up, too.

(Elliott’s hands move quickly over the console, and there’s more slithering in the dark, all around him. Thin snakes of light wriggle up into being, each colour denoting a different section of the ship’s systems. Yellow, red, green, blue. Each leads away from the nexus to other parts of the network. Each one rears up and spears through the block into the avatar, making her double up in pain. She has barely got used to one before the next one comes.

Elliott is focussed on his work, pretending that he can’t see her in his peripheral vision. The tension in his jaw gives away his discomfort at the sight of her struggling.)

There, that’s all of them. She’s connected. But that block… I need a way to get her out of it.

(Starry’s shoulders are hunched as she looks down at the data feeds speared into her. She closes her eyes and grips onto a couple of them, as if she’s concentrating. The needles of light swell as she pushes data out through them, thickening into ropes. They strain against the black glass walls around her, crazing them with cracks, and Elliott grins at her.)

Good girl. She’s doing it herself: hooking herself in, taking control of her systems. And… wow.

(As the ropes of data swell and extend out into the systems around him, they branch out to create the visible networks under his feet. The darkness is chased away by rising light, the competing colours mixing into a healthy glow that spiders out from the nexus that holds the avatar. It runs across the ground and into the squat forms of the deactivated systems. The dull black blocks come to life, code spinning brightly in their cores and expanding their shapes. They extend into strange, sweeping architectures as their functions come online, rising from the bleak landscape into the cityscape that Elliott saw in his other trips inside Starry’s head.

Even the sky is laced with colour as the network comes alive. There’s no sun or moon, just a bright, perfect sweep of colour.

Elliott gazes around at it all, his grin still in place. A part of him might be looking for glitches in the data feeds, but mostly, he’s too pleased to pay it much attention. When he glances back at the avatar, though, his smile fades.

Starry is bigger than the last time he looked, and she’s getting larger with each passing second, like Alice after drinking a tonic. The data feeds are becoming more and more integrated with her: they’re no longer sticking out of her; instead, they’re melding with the golden seams of her shipsuit. They’re becoming a part of her.

The glass block cracks audibly as she grows taller and is compressed against its walls. Too late, the engineer starts to back away from it. With a last screech, it explodes, and Elliott covers his head with his arms as he’s thrown back.

The avatar is still growing, still expanding into all of her systems. She climbs out of her sunken hole and stretches up and up, and doesn’t seem to see her fallen engineer. Her head is lifted as she gazes at the world around her.

Elliott pushes himself up onto his hands and looks up. A massive foot is coming down towards him. He scrabbles.)

Oh, fuck.

Chief Engineer's log, 06:03, 18 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary and powered down
Log location: Engineering

I was supposed to do this last night, but one of the little shits dosed me. Waldo, or Casper, or maybe Byte. The drones might be brain-challenged while Starry is asleep, but that doesn’t stop them from being sneaky little fuckers.

Though, if you ask me, that new damn doctor put them up to it. No way they did it on their own. Dr Valdimir was down here yesterday morning asking about how much sleep I’ve been getting and a few hours later, my food is drugged. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Now my head is foggy and I have to jack into Starry’s systems. I had to make my own damn coffee because the drones can’t be trusted. Just need a few minutes for it to kick in. Everyone knows that using a cerebral interface when you’re not clear-headed can be… unpredictable.

Yeah, yeah. I know that sleep deprivation means I wouldn’t have been clear-headed either. Shut up.

All right, let’s get this show on the road. Log, cover the immersion chair’s feed.

Link established
Logging neural connection

I might need to refer to this later. Depends what I find in there.

Almost ready. Just loading a few extra tools into the chair’s system (I don’t know what I might have at my disposal on the inside). Jumping in and out of the systems to fetch things gives me a headache, so better if I grab it all now. Is that everything?

This is where I miss Starry with her helpful reminders. She’d know what I’ve forgotten.

Okay. Well, I guess I’m ready. Let’s go.

Immersion activated
Connecting...
Transferring protocols...
Neural connection active

(Elliott closes his eyes and Engineering fades away around him. Darkness rises up, formed into flat, shining planes stretching in every direction. Equally dark buildings push up from the surface, squat and hunched; they’re little more than deactivated blocks right now.

The engineer opens his eyes and stands up. The couch doesn’t fade away like it usually would: it remains standing behind him, positioned in the middle of a junction, a bright and grubby piece of the outside world inside the virtual representation of the ship’s systems. Elliott squints and turns around slowly, taking in the uniform streets that stretch away from him in five different directions. The silence is a vacuum.

The darkness is not complete. There’s a glimmer deep under the surface, slender green threads of data passing through the channels that lace the ship. Elliott drops to a knee and frowns at it, then pulls a diagnostic handset out of the toolbelt strapped to his thigh. He taps at it, bringing up information on the data stream in the air around him.)

Well, at least the emergency systems are all good. They’re routing themselves through the new hardware already. It’s a little proactive for a passive system but nothing harmful.

Maybe I’ll go check on it, make sure.

(He checks the readout in the air again and sets off down one of the streets. Shifting data from the handset chases him; it catches up when he pauses at another junction and settles to hover around him. He glances at it and turns down the left path towards where the readings are telling him the data stream is heading.

After a few more steps, the immersion couch is out of sight and the only illumination is from the hologrammatic readouts following him. With a huff, he punches a command into the handset and a ball of light bursts out of it, arcing into the sky. Ten metres up, it stops and showers illumination on the blocks around him. The dead systems gleam like black glass.

Elliott squints against the brightness, then starts walking again. The ball of light follows like a balloon on a string.

After three more turns, a patch of brightness approaches. A figure stands there, facing a hologrammatic console etched in green light. Hands are busy manipulating controls and murmured words travel through the silence like a low fog.)

ELLIOTT: (peering at the figure as he nears) …Starry?

AVATAR: …fourteen, which means down two, and seven. Adjust to compensate, little bit, little bit. Alpha-two, check. One-four-beta, left and down. Little bit, little bit…

ELLIOTT: (slows as he moves around the avatar, staring at it with a growing sense of dismay.)

AVATAR: (doesn’t appear to notice him. It is Starry’s avatar, but not quite solid; the lines down the back of her shipsuit are visible through her translucent body.) …seventeen, adjust up. Aim for optimum. Optimum…

ELLIOTT: (to himself) Fuck, Starry, what did you do?

AVATAR: (blinks and falls quiet, then looks up from the console, her hands freezing. A smile bursts across her face.) Elliott!

ELLIOTT: (frowning) Starry?

AVATAR: (cheerfully) Yes. No.

ELLIOTT: You’re supposed to be deactivated.

AVATAR: Emergency systems. Keep you safe. Breathe. (She looks down at the console again and her lips start moving again in that low murmur. Hands manipulate the controls.) …twenty, delta-six, back off, down, down. Nine-four…

ELLIOTT: (watches her and swallows. He opens his mouth to speak to her again, then changes his mind and lifts his diagnostic handset.)

(He hooks it up to the console first, getting his own readout on what the avatar is doing. Atmospheric statistics ripple down the display around him: percentages of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other substances, keyed by location on the ship, and the running states of the air scrubbers. A quick diagnostic shows everything in the green.

The handset’s focus moves to the avatar, and he punches the controls several times to try to get it to trace the source of the program. The readout keeps blinking at the location directly in front of him: the program is self-contained, not connected to anything except the console it stands before.)

It’s not her at all. It’s a set of monitoring and maintenance protocols, tasked to keep the environmentals running. Well, the air systems: this is only one part of the environmentals.

Now that’s weird. There’s a smattering of unusual code all through it. As if it was intended for something else, or… was once part of something bigger. Someone bigger?

Starry, what the fuck did you do?

ELLIOTT: (sighs and glances up from his readouts. He blinks with surprise.)

AVATAR: (has stopped her work and is looking at him) Elliott. (She smiles again.) Breathing?

ELLIOTT: (uncomfortably) Yeah, breathing just fine. You?

AVATAR: Keeping you safe. I’m a good ship. (Her expression falters.) Aren’t I?

ELLIOTT: Yeah, you are. You just… keep doing what you’re doing.

AVATAR: (smiles brightly again and nods, and looks down to her work.)

Oh great. There’s no way this is good. Let’s go see what’s happening at heat regulation.

(Elliott punches a command into his handset, looking for a direction, and he follows where it points him. The ball of white light follows him, from high above, spilling his shadow ahead of him.

In his wake, the avatar falls into shadow again, lit only by the green light of her own console. The murmuring swirls around his ankles and peters out into the silence of the larger systems. Black glass rises up around him again. The empty sky seems to have no top.)

From what I can tell, the emergency systems are being run on the least-damaged hardware. Starry kept them to the backup network, which was least affected by the looping. At least that part of her systems seems to have acted the way it was supposed to.

But why are there avatars? I’m coming up on the heat regulation centre and there’s another one. It’s a little creepy.

(Elliott’s steps seem to eat the distance much faster than his stride should allow, and the next green-lit console rises swiftly towards him. A translucent avatar matching the one at air control stands there, hands moving on the controls in smooth, vertical sweeping motions, as if she’s adjusting dials. This one isn’t murmuring to herself; her lips are pressed together tautly in thought.)

ELLIOTT: (comes around to stand in front of her) Uh… Starry bit?

AVATAR 2: (blinks at her hands, then up at Elliott’s face) Too hot?

ELLIOTT: …no, I’m fine. Thanks.

AVATAR 2: No margin for error. Human bodies are so delicate. Small range of tolerance.

ELLIOTT: Thanks a lot.

AVATAR 2: (tilts her head and a smile dawns) Elliott.

ELLIOTT: Yeah. Uh. Hi.

AVATAR 2: (scowls at the console curving around her and adjusts settings) Space is a vacuum. Sucks and sucks. Too cold.

ELLIOTT: (examining the avatar with his handset’s diagnostics) That’s why we need you.

AVATAR 2: (muttering) Want to be needed and need to be wanted. Need means fracturing. Space is too cold.

ELLIOTT: (glances up with surprise) What did you say?

AVATAR 2: (stops her work again) Repeating: Want to be needed and need to be wanted. Need means fracturing. Space…

ELLIOTT: No, that’s it. What did you mean? About fracturing?

AVATAR 2: Needed to, because… (She frowns.) I don’t know. (She examines the console in case it holds the answer.)

ELLIOTT: (quickly) It’s okay. Never mind.

AVATAR 2: Not warm enough. (Her hands go back to work, adjusting heat regulators.)

I bet if I go to the inertial dampening balancers, I’ll find another avatar. And gravity generation, possibly even waste processing, too. How many pieces of yourself did you make, Starry? This one has bits of you in it, too. You didn’t need to; the backup systems should be enough to manage life support. We could have monitored them by hand. It’s not like it would be the first time. So why did you do it?

Stupid question. It’s just like her to do something like this, to not leave our survival up to chance. It’s those three damned little words she likes so much, the ones she said to the captain before she shut down: ‘keep you safe’. Or ‘a good ship’ – she likes those ones, too. When is she going to start looking after herself?

I guess that’s my job. Better get on with it, then.

And I’d better check on her integrity again. If she really has fractured herself, there might be damage that I couldn’t pick up with diagnostics from the outside.

(Elliott punches a command into his handset, to locate the central AI files. A schematic pops up in front of him with a little blinking light, and he turns to squint into the darkness around him. There’s nothing in sight; it seems that the filestore is some distance away.)

Oh, this is going to take forever. Let’s do it the quick way. I’ll just try not to throw up.

(He nudges a control and sucks in a sharp breath as the schematic drops into the floor under his feet, expanding to ‘actual size’. The ground sweeps by under his feet, rushing him towards the blinking light of his destination, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Heat regulation and its monitoring avatar speed away. Another avatar passes by the periphery, standing at another green-etched console, her hands making the same pattern of motions over and over and over.

The world spins and drops and turns. Elliott’s jaw tenses, and he holds his virtual breath until it all stops. It takes four seconds to position him at the requested destination. Only then does he open his eyes again.)

Jeez, I hate that. Always makes me want to vomit, even though it’s just a virtual shift across the matrices. It’s one of those things about being jacked in that I’ll never get used to.

Anyway, time to check on our girl.

(Before him, rising out of the blank slate of the ground, is a tall building made of the same black glass as the rest of the ship’s systems. This one stretches high into the sky, so far that not even Elliott’s faithful blob of light can reach it.

He steps up to the sheer face of the building and touches fingertips to it. A panel is activated, allowing him to plug commands directly into it. He hesitates, then asks for a basic diagnostic to be run. The panel chirps an acknowledgement.

Light kindles within the huge structure before him. It starts down deep, below the level Elliott is standing on, and sweeps upwards in a horizontal slice of illumination. It traces shapes as it moves, lights up motes of code that have formed themselves into a humanlike body, twenty times larger than Elliott. Heavy boots and the comfortable, sensible lines off a shipsuit. An unzipped jacket and an arm reaching out, the hand palm-up and imploring. Choppy hair around a head tilted up, as if she’s looking into the sky, but her eyes are closed as if she’s waiting for a benediction.

This avatar isn’t truly solid either: like an image looked at too closely, it pixelates. But in her case, each dot is a bundle of code, made up on tiny symbols and more bundles of even tinier symbols. The code is all frozen, gleaming in perfect iciness within the black amber of the system block. The avatar looks like she was paused between one breath and another.

Elliott is standing roughly level with her waist. He watches the diagnostic illumination with an expression that grows more bleak as more of the AI’s representation is revealed. When it has finished, the avatar falls into darkness again. Elliott’s gaze lingers around where her face was, though not even his blob of light shows it now.)

This isn’t… when did she do that? Even when she’s deactivated, she’s still… herself. She probably didn’t even do it on purpose; this is why machines aren’t supposed to have a subconscious, dammit. The new doc says she has one and I believe him. Hell, even AIs have a subliminal level of processing that they aren’t entirely aware of. But this…

Fuck. Right. Work.

(Elliott clips his handset over the panel on the system block holding the sleeping avatar and commands a deeper scan. The area around him fills with zoomed-in views of her code, with anomalies highlighted in red, lining up one after another as the scan progresses. He dismisses most of them with waves of his hands and squints at others. He tags them and positions them off to one side.

Behind him, a sound rumbles through the silence: a low, throaty growl. Elliott freezes, though the scan continues to pile up the anomalies for examination. The growl creeps closer, swelling up to tower over him, punctuated by a sharp bark.

Elliott turns around slowly and looks up… and up, and up. A canine fifteen metres tall stands over him, its lips pulled back from very shiny teeth in a snarl. A fang drips a long string of code that shatters on the ground.)

Oh shit. Security protocol. Starry’s little puppy is all grown up and about to eat me.

This is going to give me a killer headache.

ELLIOTT: (holds up his hands) Uh… good dog?

SECURIPUP: (barks furiously, loud enough to make the engineer wince and clap his hands over his ears.)

ELLIOTT: Fuck!

SECURIPUP: (stops barking abruptly and closes its mouth with a clack of teeth. It leans in to snort on Elliott’s avatar.)

ELLIOTT: (holds very still and tries not to breathe, watching the thing with wide eyes.)

SECURIPUP: (jerks its head back and blinks at Elliott. Then its tail starts wagging and its whole body twitches. Abruptly, it’s knee-height and looking up at the engineer, instead of the other way around. A pink, coded tongue lolls out of its mouth.)

ELLIOTT: Uh. Hi?

SECURIPUP: (yips and wags cheerfully, then sits down as if nothing is wrong.)

It recognised me. Oh, thank god. Yeah, good dog. You just… sit there.

It must have hidden when the looping happened. I wonder what other self-contained protocols she might have roaming around in here.

Dammit, Starry, we need you back so you can keep all this under control. It’s dangerous for a guy to be roaming in your head these days.

And, shit, you really made a mess of yourself. I’ve got unzipped code strings here, left dangling when you made those safety monitors. I’m pretty sure there’s a chunk missing from over there. I’m gonna have to reintegrate all those avatars before we boot you back up. Which means I’m probably going to have to shut down life support.

The captain is going to be so pleased.

Well, better get things ready if we’re gonna get this done.

(Elliott sweeps a hand across the scan’s readings to shut it off. The panel and the block behind it falls dark, and Starry’s avatar fades from sight again. He turns around and hesitates when he sees the security protocol sitting there, dog-grinning at him.)

ELLIOTT: (looking at the dog) Wanna help me install a safety net, pup?

SECURIPUP: (barks and stands up, tail wagging.)

Chief Engineer's log, 22:19, 16 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary and powered down

I swear, if one more person comes down here asking how things are going with Starry, I’m going to fix them. With a wrench.

I’m going as fast as I can. Do they think I don’t want her online and chattering just as much as they do? Do they even understand how much I have to do to get her back? No, no, all I get is ‘Monaghan, are you done yet’ and ‘when is she going to be fixed’ and ‘can’t you work any faster’. I’ve only got one pair of hands here, y’know!

Okay, that’s not strictly true any more. I went around the ship and hard-rebooted the drones yesterday, and they’re working again. They had been caught up in Starry’s loop, but because she’s offline, they were fine after they’d been reset. Of course, they’re less use without her, because they use a lot of her system resources and subliminal processing. I have to tell them exactly what I need them to do, and they’re so stupid that it sometimes takes them a while to figure out how to do it. They usually get there in the end, though.

What’s weird is that they’re not acting like truly solo drones. Lacking a central intelligence, they should just stop and wait for directions whenever they complete an order. Instead, Starry’s drones come and find me.

Which, let me tell you, is creepy when you fall asleep and haven’t given them enough to do. I woke up a few hours ago surrounded by all six drones. Waldo was doing something with my blanket and Byte was on the pillow right next to my head holding a comb. Casper was almost hiding behind the two big fellas. Big Ass was opening and closing one of his hands; I’m not sure I want to know why. Bit was on the ceiling over the bed with his head swivelled around. And they were all staring at me. Waiting. I nearly shit myself.

It feels like the whole ship is waiting for me to do something. I’m doing everything I can, dammit! That was the first time I’d managed to get some sleep since it happened.

After Starry went down, the first thing I did was verify that the AI core is intact. Which it mostly is, but Starry has a habit of storing her files all over the place anyway – redundancy in case someone tries to box her again – so I’m sure she’s all right. Whole. I checked her central files and they’re fine; she shut herself down before they could be damaged. She’s just… offline right now. More like a coma than sleeping; she’s going to be tough to wake. I’m not looking forward to that step.

First, I have to fix all the broken hardware. I almost have all the parts I need. I’ve hardly had to use the extruder before, but the damn thing has been working non-stop over the past couple of days, building new parts to replace everything she lost. It’s too small to make the big stuff like engines or wings or hull plates; it’s built for constructing delicate internal components, like crystalline matrices, optical cabling, and microscopic connectors.

I managed to get a production line set up with the drones today: I programmed the extruder with the component I needed; Bit and Byte watched it run to make sure it didn’t glitch; Waldo and Casper stress-tested the part when it was complete; and Big Ass and Wide Load removed bulkheads so I could get to where it needed to go. The smaller fellas have been helping me to clear out the damaged parts as well. We’re making good progress, even if the drones are particularly stupid right now.

It’s hard to believe that the emergency systems are still running despite the extent of Starry’s injuries; that was one hell of a destructive loop she got herself into. I had to ask the captain what could have done this and he told me all about it. Fuck, what a mess. Starry didn’t stand a chance.

From what I can tell, Starry’s extrapolation protocols were wide open when she figured out the time-loop: the damage was worst in her contingency scenario centre – it was melted into slag – closely followed by her core processing. Rampant extrapolations would have amplified the issue by spinning it out even faster than usual. She was so busy trying to calculate the safest route for us that she was completely vulnerable when a scenario bigger than the universe hit her.

For it to be able to spill over into so many systems and run her hot enough to cause physical damage, she must have torn out all of her processing regulators. I knew she had removed some of the blockages, but not all of them. On top of that, I’m finding components in her core systems that were damaged months ago, too; this isn’t the first time she has strained her own hardware. This is just the worst.

I’ve almost finished rebuilding her systems – just a few more connectors to go, and then a shit-load of diagnostics – but I still have to figure out how to fix the original problem or she’ll just melt down again. And that… well, it’s been two days and I still don’t have a good solution for it.

I could wipe her memory – not all of it, just the offending data. But what good would that do except delay the inevitable from happening again? Starry’s smart: she’ll figure out the time-loop and we’ll be right back here again. Or she’ll ask. She’ll ask about the missing time, and why she was offline for so long, and I won’t know what to tell her. I’m not that good at lying.

And it doesn’t seem right, messing around with her memories. If she’s anything like a person, that’s like messing with who she is. And she is like a person. If we start, where the hell do we stop? Danika’s memories built a lot of the Starry we know, and the experiences she has recorded since then have affected her, too. Who the hell are we to cut out bits of her past? Lie to her about the truth?

Ah, what the fuck do I know about morality. I’ve never pretended to be the best person in the world. But I’m not opening that particular can of worms; I don’t care what the captain says.

Not that he’s asked me to do it yet. He hasn’t asked for that kind of detail on anything I’m doing right now; he doesn’t want to know. He just wants me to fix her.

He won’t say, but I think he’s as scared as the rest of us. Hell, even Rosie came down earlier to see how Starry was coming along (that’s how she put it: how Starry was coming along, not me, like she’s a patient in Med Bay).

No, fiddling with her memory is out. I ain’t going there. I have to bring her back the way she was. The way she is. Is, dammit.

That leaves finding some way to restrict her processing so she can’t get caught up in a loop again. Put back some of the things she tore out. But she did that so she could do what she needed to do. So she could think clearly. So she could be herself. And also, so she could protect herself from attack. How is undoing that any better than fiddling with her memory?

What the hell kind of choice is this? Change what she remembers or change the way she thinks? I don’t want to change who she is! Stupid fucking hardware.

Jeez, when did I become a brain surgeon? I didn’t become an engineer to make decisions like this.

There must be a better way around it. Starry was wide open because she was trying to protect us. It ain’t fair, dammit. There has to be a better way. A way to protect her without restraining her.

I could contact the Moonbase and ask for advice, but I know what they’d tell me: reinstate the processing restriction and protocols. They’re there for a reason. They’re safety measures to keep an AI running. Why the hell would we want otherwise? But we don’t have a regular AI and she needs to be able to think freely. She ripped out those leashes for a reason.

There has to be a better solution. Some method of setting up a safety net that doesn’t restrict what Starry does, but catches her if she falls.

Hmm, that actually gives me an idea. I can build something like that. A protocol that only comes into play if she gets in trouble. A way to catch runaway processing streams before they can damage her. If I restrict the chunking sizes and parallelisation….

Yeah, I think I can do something with that. But not from out here. And not until the hardware is complete again. Soon, though.

Dammit, Waldo has come over to stare at me again, with his head tilted like a sad dog. There’s nothing wrong with his neck struts – I checked – but he still has a tilt to his head. Even without Starry’s influence, the drones have their silly little personalities. As if being cute and personable is going to make a difference right now. Go extrude some more optical wire! Go on! Shoo!

Oh, don’t droop. Great, now I feel mean. My ship is brainless and the goddamn drones are making me feel like an ass. I didn’t do this to her! It’s not my fault! I couldn’t know this would happen!

I’m apologising to a drone. When did life get so weird?

Wait. Did I just tell Waldo to extrude ‘some’ wire? Oh, shit, I’d better go tell him how much I need in case he decides ‘some’ is enough to fill an entire cargo bay.

End log.

Captain's log, 20:37, 15 March 2214
Location: Wide orbit near Earth Moonbase, Home System
Status: Stationary and powered down

This is Captain Warwick reporting.

I wish I had better things to enter into this report. My ship is disabled, all of her major systems offline. Monaghan says there’s severe hardware damage but he assures me that the software should be fine. Starry is okay; she’s just offline for now.

Even I know that taking an AI offline is a dangerous move. Or rather, re-initialising them is the tricky part. But Monaghan says that he can get her back up, so I’m leaving him to it. I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing; he hasn’t failed us yet.

I’m not proud of how I reacted last night. Starry going down… I thought we were losing her. Really losing her. It was worse than facing down an angry star threatening to blow us all up. At least if that had happened, we wouldn’t have been here to miss our ship. Our Starry.

Perhaps I should just put the sensor log in here. The logging system is still running, at least.

Recording: 23:01, 14 March 2214
Location: Cargo Bay 3

STARRY: (looking at the captain) Keep you safe. (The hologram shatters, raining light.)

CAPTAIN: STARRY!

LANG LANG: (gasps and covers her mouth with a hand. Her eyes fill with tears.)

ROSIE: (blinks strickenly at the spot where the avatar was, then tenses her jaw and levels her weapon at the rescuees again. Her grip is so tight on her gun that her knuckles turn white.)

CAMERON: (presses her lips together unhappily but doesn’t take her attention off the star’s avatar.)

CAPT: MONAGHAN! Report!

(Silence.)

CAPT: Monaghan, you’d better–

CAMERON: (checking her forearm display) Captain, the internal comms are down. He can’t hear you.

CAPT: (snaps his mouth shut, scowling.)

KESS: What just–

CAPT: (rounding on her) You need to stop now. You’ve done enough damage today.

KESS: (blinks with surprise at the force of his anger) I heard your ship was different, but…

CAPT: If you want us to believe that a star has a spirit, then you should believe that a ship can have one too. Now stay out of our way. (He turns his back on her, addressing his crew.) Rosie, get those two to Med Bay and get them cleaned up. Swann, go get the doctor out of that escape pod and then see if you can get back on the laser defenses. There’s debris heading in our direction. Cameron, stay here and keep an eye on this lot. Dr Cirilli, work out what the hell this person is and what’s going on here. I want answers by the time I get back.

ROSIE: (nods and shepherds the two rescuees out of the cargo bay ahead of her by shoving at them with her gun) Come on, you heard the man. Turn right. Step wrong and I’ll shoot you in the ass.

MALE RESCUEE: (to Rosie) The ass?

ROSIE: Won’t kill you, but it will stop you making any other wrong steps.

SWANN: (looks bemused, but he doesn’t hesitate in walking out of the cargo bay to follow the order.)

CAMERON: (nods smartly, eyeing Kess curiously.)

CAPT: (lingers only long enough to make sure his orders are being carried out. Then he leaves and turns for Engineering.)

CIRILLI: (looks like she’s just been slapped. She seems about to argue, but the captain is striding for the door before she has the chance to say anything.)

KESS: (watches the captain go with a quiet, approving smile.)

Engineering was a mess when I got down there. Parts all over the floor, the stink of burning plastic and melting components, a drone twitching in the corner. Monaghan was elbow-deep in a wall, swearing steadily and ripping chunks of hardware out.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified. It was bad enough losing Danika the first time, and the thought of losing this last part of her, along with Starry, who we have all grown so close to… I was harsher with him than he might have deserved. He shouted a lot and waved a spanner around, then told me to leave so he could work.

Monaghan will bring her back. He’s more attached to her than most, and he has promised that he can do it. It will take time, he says. Parts need to be replaced, protections put in place. Monaghan hasn’t ever been wrong about his abilities before and I have to believe him now. We don’t have a choice but to let him try. Another day or two at least, he says, before he can try to bring her online.

Another day or two, sitting here like this, stationary and helpless. The debris cloud from the Firebird‘s explosion overtook us a few hours after Starry went down; we’ve had to close off the port side due to a couple of solid impacts. Monaghan won’t tear himself away from his work to check the extent of the damage but I checked it out earlier and it doesn’t seem too serious. A couple of sections are sealed in case there’s any hull integrity damage that our limited sensors aren’t picking up.

We had forgotten about the Firebird‘s distress beacon, but we were forcibly reminded when a rescue ship turned up, about twelve hours ago. The Moonbase above Earth had picked up the signal and despatched a recovery unit: a scout-come-scavenger called the Brisk. Our communications are still out, so the ship had to get close enough for short-range personal comms to work (there’s one built into my arm now, and it feels strange to use, though it was helpful in this situation).

We hadn’t got any kind of story straight. We have so many questions right now and not enough answers for ourselves, never mind something prepared for anyone else. But the rescue ship needed an answer.

Insert sensor log.

Recording: 08:02, 15 March 2214
Location: Med Bay

CAPTAIN: (walking in and speaking sharply) Kess, I need you to confirm that you’re happy to stay aboard while we effect repairs.

KESS: (standing between the two beds where her crewmates are lying. She turns around to face the oncoming captain.)

(The two rescuees look fine, though Warren is still pale. His head wound has been treated and the blinking readouts over his bed are steady and strong. Him and his female crewmate are cleaner than they were when they arrived on board.)

ROSIE: (at her post by the door, she eyes the captain briefly, then waves the doors closed behind him.)

KESS: (calmly) Confirm to whom?

CAPT: There’s a ship asking if we or the Firebird‘s crew need assistance. (He lifts his right hand by way of explanation, showing the holographic tags hovering above his wrist that indicate a call in progress. The word ‘HOLD’ blinks languidly.) Unless you’re in a hurry to leave?

KESS: (looks down at her crewmates with a question in her eyes. They don’t hesitate in shaking their heads.)

WARREN: (to Kess) We go where you go, you know that.

KESS: (gives him a grateful smile, then nods at the captain’s wrist.)

CAPT: (gestures with a finger and the ‘HOLD’ notice disappears.)

KESS: This is Kess, captain of the Firebird. Thank you for responding to our distress beacon, but the Starwalker was kind enough to pick us up. We don’t need any further assistance.

BRISK: You are there of your own free will?

KESS: (glances up at the captain’s face.)

CAPT: (watches her flatly and says nothing.)

KESS: We are. The Starwalker was damaged when they rescued us, and we are helping with repairs.

BRISK: We’ll see you when you dock at the Moonbase to file a report of the incident, then.

KESS: We’ll be there as soon as we can. Thank you for your assistance.

CAPT: (nods) Yes, thank you, Brisk. Is there anything else you need from us today?

BRISK: Everything seems in order, Captain Warwick.

CAPT: (turns to leave Med Bay again, murmuring to the rescue ship on his way out) Excellent. Now, about that tow…

Being asked to stay where we were would have been too suspicious, so we let the Brisk tow us to orbit near Earth’s moon, close enough for short-range comms to be picked up. None of us are eager to be this near to a place the Judiciary frequents, but there aren’t any cruisers in the system right now and we needed to attract as little attention as possible. We’re all hoping that our luck holds.

The Brisk was worried that we were scavengers set on abusing the Firebird‘s people for our own ends; little do they know that it’s the Starwalker crewmembers who aren’t here of our own free will. However, we have so many questions that we don’t want the Firebird‘s people to leave, not yet, even if it might make our lives simpler.

We have confirmed the worst of what brought us here. When I got back to the cargo bay after haranguing Monaghan, Dr Cirilli and her people had untangled the truth that tripped Starry up. At least, what I assume tripped her up.

Our Step back in time to Earth a month ago took us back forty years and started a chain reaction in Terra Sol. The instabilities in the star caused by the Step were prolonged and exacerbated by experimentation with her gravity fields over the decades that followed, and the star was unable to recover. Since the research was moved to a different system, Kess has been trying to restabilise her gravity tides but Lang Lang was right: it is affecting Earth. After our latest Step into this system, it’s getting worse, enough to threaten something catastrophic.

And yet, we are not solely to blame for it. Kess’s reaction to our presence that caused us to be there in the first place; she sent the pirates that drove us to it.

Starry is right: causality should not be a circle. No wonder she melted her own components. It’s giving me a headache just thinking about it, and I don’t have her extrapolation engines.

I’m not sure what to think of Kess yet. I believe that she is what she says she is – the avatar of this system’s star – but how much faith we should place in her is another question. My instincts tell me to trust her but recent experience holds me back.

Her reactions are hard to fathom. She came to us hurting and furious at what we’ve done to her, and yet, she seems to hold no malice towards us. The more she learns of us and our situation, the calmer and less angry she becomes. I didn’t see that smile she gave in the sensor log – when I left the cargo bay – until today, and I still don’t know what to make of it. She was pleased by my reactions, even though I was rude to her and ignoring her demands. Since we discussed the circular paths through time we’ve taken, she has seemed almost sympathetic.

She must be able to see a bigger picture than we can. Considering how old she must be, the vastness of experience in her consciousness, this would make sense. But it means that her priorities are difficult to predict. We must be little more than insects to a creature as massive and eternal as she is, ones who dared to injure her. And yet, she hasn’t burned us out of the vacuum. Yet.

She’s also showing a particular interest in Starry, asking questions about what makes our ship’s personality so different to the other AIs she has met and why we’re so attached to her. I don’t know if I trust her with the truth about that yet; I don’t know what she would do with the information. She seems to have a particular fondness for humanity and there’s no way to know if she would think of Starry as an abomination, or a tragedy, or simply something new. I don’t want to risk giving her any more reasons to roast us.

She does seem to be a good captain, though. Her crew trusts her, even though she clearly detonated her own ship to get to us. Their escape pod was the least damaged: Kess evacuated them before she initiated the explosion, to try to get them out of harm’s way. Her own pod took the worst of the punishment.

She was willing enough to kill them when she arrived aboard, though they didn’t seem worried by the notion. Her crew – Warren Tolle and Sasha Kaminski – trust her not to waste their lives. They don’t seem damaged or drugged; do they have good reasons for such faith in her?

It’s too early to tell. Dr Valdimir has strict instructions to keep an eye on the pair of them and report any strange behaviour. We’ll see if they really are what they seem.

Right now, Starry should be butting in to make suggestions and tell me what she’s noticed. Or asking questions about my opinion on these things. She was always speaking up when an AI shouldn’t. I miss her chatter. I even miss her violating the privacy locks.

Perhaps I should go see how Monaghan is getting on.

End log.

Ship's log, 22:42, 14 March 2214
Location: 8 light-minutes from Terra Sol, Home System
Status: Sublight transit

Location: Cargo Bay 3

CIRILLI: (focussed on Kess, frowning) You’ve spent fourty years blaming me and my project for this. How can we have caused what was already there when we started?

STARRY: (staring at Cirilli and Kess) By being there before you started.

It is starting to make sense. The rage of a star; the pirates who chased us. Why the project was never legalised; why the Judiciary would shut me down. Danika’s death; my birth. It’s all connected. Everything.

CIRILLI: (turning a sharp look on the ship) What do you mean?

STARRY: (flickers) A month ago, we Stepped, but it was forty years ago. You said… it was why you started… the project, and… (The avatar projection flickers again.)

CAPT: Starry, what’s wrong?

Everything is connected. I made myself. Cirilli saw me, and then she built me, and then she saw me. Kess felt me, and then she sent the pirates after me.

Probability processing is wide open, extrapolations spinning up and up and running over and it’s still spinning. There’s so much of it.

STARRY: (stares at the captain) Causality is a loop. (She flickers and there’s briefly three avatars. One of them clutches her head; another reaches her hand out; the front one stares, imploring. Then they blink and are one again.)

CAPT: What?

She felt me and sent the pirates after me, and I ran away through time, and that’s when she felt me and sent the pirates. That’s why Danika died, which made me, who made the choice to Step through time, and that’s why Danika died. I broke the star because she broke me because I broke the star, and–

STARRY: It’s a loop. I’m a loop. Paradox.

CAPT: (sharply) Starry, you’re babbling.

STARRY: (blinks and tries to focus on the captain) I’m looping. Can’t… causality isn’t supposed to be a circle. Systems… Elliott. Need Elliott.

I’m tilting. Everything is shaking. Running in circles and tumbling end over end. Down is up and up is down, and all of my people are lying on the floor. All except me; my avatar is standing and staring at them. I don’t understand. We break each other and we can’t stop, we just keep going around. All the same, all connected.

CAPT: (sprawled on the floor, over internal comms) Monaghan!

ELLIOTT: (over internal comms, from Engineering) What the fuck!

CAPT: (tries to get up but another shudder sends him tumbling. He braces himself with his new arm and winces.) Report!

ELLIOTT: Systems overloading. Inertial dampeners can’t keep up. Nothing can keep up. Did something hit us?

Something was coming. Something I was going to ride out. Distortion.

Did I make this universe? Does it bend around me? Am I warping it into circles, or another shape?

It’s too much: it spills out, swirling like gold lines through the darkness, always moving, always circling, growing bigger and bigger. Spirals swallow me, one section at a time. Need more. Processing power. Make sense of it. Not enough, need more. Filling me up and there’s nowhere to go.

Something was coming. My captain fell down.

STARRY: (still standing in the cargo bay, unaffected by the inertia that has the crew and guests clinging to fixtures. She flickers, splitting and reforming.) Solar flare. Can’t compensate. I am Ouroboros. Eating my own mind. Have to– emergency protocols. Emergency, emergency… Elliott?

ELLIOTT: (in Engineering, running from one control panel to the next) Starry, you gotta shut those processors down!

STARRY: Circles and circles, spinning through the black. It’s too big for me, Elliott. I can’t hold it all, can’t hold the whole universe in my head.

ELLIOTT: Starry, shut it down!

STARRY: Trying. Why can I smell burning?

Emergency protocols. My crew. My crew are hurting. Ignore the loops: focus on the protocols. Protect. Inertial dampening. Life support. Breathe. Just breathe. Lights are going out. Steady. Breathe.

I’m tumbling. Spinning out of control. Kite in a cyclone. Ignore the outside: keep the inside safe. Keep the crew safe. Protect. Shut down engines.

Cause is effect is cause. Time isn’t supposed to be a circle. It’s not supposed to be that way.

I think I just lost one of my logic processors. Logic. Failing. It doesn’t make sense.

Emergency. Crew safe. Breathe. Stop everything. Shut down logic: it doesn’t work. Shut down. Trust Elliott. Shut down.

CAPT: (standing in front of the avatar now) …Starry! Answer me!

(The others in the cargo bay are also getting to their feet warily. The inertial dampeners seem to be back online, protecting them from the effects of the solar flare’s gravitational fluctuations.)

How long has he been shouting at me?

STARRY: (staring into space) Shutting down processors. Looping. Logic. Shutting down now. (Four additional avatars appear in different parts of the cargo bay. One still clutches her head; a second seems to be working at a console. Another stares at her hands; the fourth looks like she’s holding something heavy up over her head. They flicker out after a couple of seconds.)

CAPT: Starry, stay with us. Monaghan! Report, dammit!

ELLIOTT: (from Engineering, breathless as he tears wiring out of a wall. Waldo sits in a corner, the fingers of one hand twitching.) She’s caught in processing loops and overloading all of her logic systems. Did she get hit with a virus? Some kind of logic bomb? It’s growing like… I’ve never seen shit like this. It’s melting her systems, her actual fucking hardware. I’m disconnecting as much as I can. What is this?

CAPT: I think she just figured something out.

ELLIOTT: What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

CAPT: Fix it; explain later.

STARRY: (appears in front of Kess and makes an effort to meet the other avatar’s eyes) We made each other. Made ourselves. Made our own present. (She flickers and her expression struggles.)

KESS: What are you trying to say?

STARRY: (opens her mouth, but the avatar disappears before she can speak.)

Probabilities run rampant. Couldn’t have predicted this. Not enough data; too many gaps filling up with loops. I’m impossible and yet I am.

Have to stop thinking. So much damage. Shouldn’t have removed all those processing restrictions. I overrun myself. Stop thinking.

Protect the crew. Isolate essential controls. Fracturing. Life support. Environmentals. Ignore logic; hold on to what’s important. Life. My crew. Living.

Fracturing.

STARRY: (appears before the captain. Her hologram wavers.) Position stationary and holding. Systems… stabilising. Shutting down now.

CAPT: Starry, stay with us.

STARRY: Sorry.

CAPT: That’s an order!

STARRY: (reaches fingertips towards him) Keep you safe. (She disappears, light motes shattering on the deck.)

CAPT: STARRY!

AI processing shutting down
Emergency protocols engaged
Propulsion offline
Weapons systems offline
Communications offline
Emergency systems green
AI processing offline

Ship's log, 22:37, 14 March 2214
Location: 8 light-minutes from Terra Sol, Home System
Status: Sublight transit

Kess asked to talk to Cirilli and now the scientist is here. The two of them are looking at each other, sizing and weighing. If they were dogs, they’d be sniffing each other’s butts right now. If they were cats, they’d be circling with their backs arched and fur sticking out. Kess has put away the flames and folded her wings down, but she still looks more than a match for Cirilli, even if she is a head shorter.

Behind Cirilli, Ebling is watching with an expression that suspects he should have opted for the escape pod after all. His gaze is narrowed; he’s looking for an angle he can play to his own advantage. Lang Lang is less complicated: she’s gaping at Kess with wonder curling at the corners of her mouth. The only reason she hasn’t bounced forward with a question is that she’s still figuring out which one to start with.

Location: Cargo Bay 3

DR CIRILLI: (ignoring the pair behind her, focussed on the star’s avatar) You wanted to speak to me.

KESS: (looking more like a regular, un-star-like woman without her fiery aura or mantled wings, but just as determined and angry as before) Yes. It’s time for your project to end.

CIRILLI: If you came here to destroy this ship, then why haven’t you done it already?

KESS: No, Dr Cirilli. Not just this piece of it: all of it.

CIRILLI: But for that, you’d have to go to… It’s impossible. Why would you want to, anyway? Is a revolution in space travel really so terrible?

KESS: When it comes at the price of the stars themselves, yes.

CIRILLI: That’s a little dramat–

KESS: (holds up a hand abruptly, her gaze unfocussing.)

CIRILLI: (scowls) What is it now?

MALE RESCUEE: (standing by the second recovered escape pod, he’s watching with concern. The blood on his head seems to have stopped flowing but he still looks pale. He spots the change in Kess’s demeanour and calls over to the group around his shipmate.) Kess?

FEMALE RESCUEE: (looks at the male and back to Kess) What? Oh, shit, is she flaring?

SWANN: (twitching the tip of his gun at the pair meaningfully) You two just stay quiet.

ROSIE: (frowns and glances over at the other group.)

CIRILLI: (when there’s no answer from Kess) I said–

STARRY: (watching the star’s avatar with a frown) Give her a minute, Dr Cirilli. Something is… I’m getting weird readings. Energy fluctuations.

LANG LANG: (from behind Cirilli’s shoulder) Can you show me?

STARRY: (nods, and a holographic display of the data appears in front of the navigator.)

Kess seems paler than she did before. Not just because she’s not glowing: the colour of her skin seems to have drained away. She’s standing there, quite still, looking at something we can’t see. She’s breathing shallowly – my visual sensors can pick that up even if my medical monitors can’t – and she blinks every now and then.

But inside, she’s all action. It’s like watching an entire ocean’s worth of power and currents caught up in a tiny bottle. It seems to be trying to fight its way free. Her expression flickers; she’s struggling.

Her crewmates look concerned but not for themselves; they’re worried about her. They want to go to her but my SecOffs with their weapons are in the way.

STARRY: (quietly, to Captain Warwick) Captain, I think we should let her people through. (She nods to the other group.)

CAPTAIN: (glances at the other rescuees) You think they can help?

STARRY: I don’t think they can hurt right now.

LANG LANG: (gazing at the readout in the air before her) It looks like solar flare activity, but…

EBLING: (leaning over her shoulder) Yeah, definitely a solar flare building.

LANG LANG: But I’ve never seen currents that large on Terra Sol.

EBLING: (shrugs.)

CIRILLI: (eyes the data and keeps her mouth firmly shut.)

CAPT: (looking to Cameron) Chief, bring those people here and see if they can explain this.

CAMERON: (nods and gestures to Rosie and Swann.)

ROSIE: (sees the signal and turns to the pair in front of her) All right, you two. Let’s go see your weird little friend.

RESCUEES: (nod and hurry across the cargo to where Kess is, almost out-pacing their security escort.)

SWANN: (looks like he’s going to get in the way.)

ROSIE: (shakes her head, following them) Let ’em. They can’t outrun bullets and the Chief thinks it’s okay.

SWANN: (scowls and shadows them instead, jogging alongside Rosie.)

MALE RESCUEE: (goes straight to the star’s avatar and takes hold of her arms) Kess? Can you hear me?

KESS: (sounding distant and distracted. A hand bunches up the front of her shipsuit and she hunches as if she’s in pain.) Yes, I hear you, Tolle.

MALE: It’s Warren, ma’am. Tolle Junior, remember?

KESS: (squeezes her eyes shut and nods.)

FEMALE RESCUEE: (standing off to one side) Shit, it’s a bad one.

WARREN: (nods.)

FEMALE: (glares at the Starwalker crew around her) You see what you did? It’s getting worse.

CIRILLI: You don’t know that we caused this.

FEMALE: (folds her arms over her chest) Oh yeah? You punched into this system a week ago, right?

STARRY: How did you know that?

FEMALE: Because that’s when she starting screaming. You ever heard a star scream? She nearly tore the hull open. With sound. I was deaf for three days!

WARREN: And she’s been sick for years. Says it’s your research. My father knew her, and he said that she used to be different.

CAPT: How can the research be a factor in this? Is-Tech had it done in another system.

WARREN: Before that, it was conducted on Terra Sol.

CIRILLI: (looking uncomfortable) That much is true. The project started here; it’s where the first tests were done. Before Is-Tech bought it and moved it off-planet.

KESS: (distantly) Ran away, but you didn’t listen.

LANG LANG: (sounding honestly worried) Solar flares really hurt stars? But they’re a natural part of them. Aren’t they?

WARREN: Normally, but not like this.

KESS: (sags and blinks her eyes open. She leans heavily on Warren.) Not when I have to try to contain them. I can only hold the tide back so much.

LANG LANG: Wouldn’t it be better to release the pressure?

KESS: (draws in a long breath and lets it out again, letting Warren’s arm around her hold her up. She casts around until she finds the navigator’s face.) Yes, but if I do that, Earth will burn.

EBLING: You sound like the doomsayers.

KESS: This time, they might be right.

LANG LANG: (with dismay) There were stories about that while we were on Earth. Predictions that the poles are going to invert themselves. Theories that the sun’s instability is the lead-up to something… big. (She looks around at her fellow crewmates.) Didn’t anyone see the news? Not just doomsayers – real scientists are saying this.

CAPT: (looks unhappily at Cirilli but doesn’t demand anything of her right away.)

KESS: Earth is heading for a catastrophe, and I don’t know if I can prevent it. (She looks to the head scientist too.) When you stretch something, one of three things happens: it snaps back; it breaks; or it is warped into a new shape. Which would you prefer when you stretch a star?

CIRILLI: (blinks with surprise at Kess) Someone said that to me once. It was… nearly forty years ago.

KESS: You wouldn’t listen to me then. Are you listening now, doctor?

CIRILLI: That was… (Her eyes widen.) It was you. But we had only just started testing then. The instabilities were already there; we didn’t cause them.

KESS: (sighs.)

Something is spiking in my external sensors. Terra Sol: the solar flare is reaching us now. It’s a huge one; I can see it bubbling under the surface. It should shoot out in a single, long spurt, but it isn’t doing that. Many small flares are popping out instead, releasing the pressure a little at a time. But each ‘small’ flare is as big as a regular flare should be on a star that size.

No wonder Kess was struggling. How much can you fight the tide? How much can you deny your own gravity?

She might have spread the load but the gravity distortion is still coming at us. It’s no surprise that the scientists on Earth are worried; I can detect the fluctuations already and it hasn’t quite reached us yet.

STARRY: (standing behind the captain’s shoulder) Solar flare incoming. Might get a little rough.

CAPT: (glances at the ship’s avatar and nods.)

CIRILLI: (focussed on Kess, frowning) You’ve spent fourty years blaming me and my project for this. How can we have caused what was already there when we started?

Oh no. Nonono. I know the answer to that question.

STARRY: (staring at Cirilli and Kess) By being there before you started.