She waited patiently for me to sign the papers. She traced her index finger across the armrest, half-smilingly, softly while thinking of something to herself. She was short, with a long, thick, golden braid thrown over her shoulder and a slim, almost boyish figure, clad in a half-baggy space fleet uniform. The dreamy gaze of her velvety eyes was directed to the side. For the rest of my life, I will remember her as a fragile girl with freckles on her lovely nose and a friendly smile. The way she'd look at me through her long thick eyelashes… With all this, she looked like the girl next door about whom I'll never be able to forget...

When she walked next to me to the service lock of the ship, carrying her suitcase on wheels, she limped slightly. I was thinking that she developed a blister on her heel. The youngsters, upon graduation from college, are supposed to have everything new–shoes, uniforms, and underwear. I kind of lost sight of the fact that she should have been an intern on the star ship’s bridge, not somewhere on the decks as junior staff. She should have had some experience and well-worn things.

I was secretly glad to see her. You see, only the XO and I are human in my team. The rest are all AI dummies.

All things considered, a robot, even the most complex one, could do any job a thousand times more cheaply than a human. It doesn't matter if it's a small company or an interplanetary corporation, the policy is the same: they keep a minimum number of people on staff, so as to meet mandatory quotas, not violate labor regulations, and not have to pay huge fines. There is too much hassle involved with people, so they prefer to keep them doing nice office jobs. No one wants to be responsible for someone else's life in space travel. It's easier to use a robot–and that's it.

As for me, I asked for special permission to get employed in my job. I don’t like being cooped up on Mother Earth. It feels like you're getting covered in dust. No one is waiting for me on Earth. It just so happened that I didn't fall in love, didn't get married, and didn't have a family. So, space is my whole reason for living. It's embarrassing to admit it, but it made me so happy when this little girl joined our team. Her name was Alexandra. Alexa.

In fact, I found it strange that a miniature fragile girl managed to get work on a star-ship. So, I brought her on board. I restored a cabin, in which no one had lived for three years. A month of internship – three flights.

The robots quickly set about putting the cabin into a working condition, connecting the life support systems, the air regeneration circuit, activating the water supply and disinfecting the sleep capsule. I showed the intern around and left, leaving her to settle into her new place. However, within fifteen minutes, she was already on the bridge in the same uniform, only having swapped her shoes for lightweight clogs without backs and a band-aid stuck on her heel. The girl's shoes were against regs–direct safety violations. I had to tell her off for breaking the rules. Alexa pursed her lips, blushed, nodded, asked for permission to leave, and quickly returned wearing those brand-new shoes. The XO blamed me, saying, like, what kind of a person are you, Nikolai, that from the very first minutes of the newbie's stay on the ship, you are foaming at the mouth. Alexa seemed to take it in her stride. Soon the control room gave us condition two and everything moved: preparation for launch, then condition one, start, acceleration, hyperjump… In other words, the hustle and bustle of your daily work life – everything without deviations from the procedure. Alexa looked at it and learned, soaking in the information.

It takes a lot of time to accelerate-three days in fact, then several hours to enter and exit hyperspace and several days to decelerate and dock at the next station. There are robots ready to unload and load everything you need. But negotiations with the control room, filling out declarations, and the legal subtleties of paperwork-all this is on me. The on-board AI can certainly handle all this on its own. Low priority cargo, for instance, is transported automatically. However, in some cases, humans, despite their cognitive distortions and weaknesses, with all their imperfections, are preferable. Robots and protocols are a good things. Nevertheless, when somebody's  had a couple of drinks in the company of the right people then, as result  the priority level ?f your board  would be increased. You would not have to stand in queues and you would receive fuel of the same price category, but of better quality. It is human nature after all. The human factor, so to speak.

During the three days of ship acceleration, Alexandra had integrated into our small team very quickly, as if she had been flying with us all her life. You know, there are people you meet once, but it seems like you’ve known them all your life. Alexandra took in all details quickly, demonstrating a phenomenal ability to learn.  During the second acceleration she piloted the ship herself. The XO and I just kept an eye on the process. It as if she was born with the wheel of a spaceship in her hands. I watched how worried she was, the expression of stubbornness on her face, and the way she smelt the air. I look back at all this now. She looked completely human... nothing to see here. There was nothing artificial or inhuman about her. Of course, I do understand that AI technology is not standing still but my heart cannot take it. Without these state quota of job position for humans, XO and I would not have stayed in the fleet for long. Robots work much faster than humans do. They don’t get sick and are quite easy to repair. They can work 24/7.  Robots that are beyond repair are easily written off.

Looking back, I have to say that I didn’t believe a single thing they'd told me about her. I remember her smile, her gaze, the way she ruffled the tip of her braid in excitement, how upset she was after losing a game of chess, and how, despite the presence of a cybercook on board, she brewed herbal tea for all three of us: a combination of mint, balm, spring grass and fireweed.  She sipped her witchcraft potion in small sips, savoring it from a porcelain cup that she had brought on board in her personal belongings, in violation of the rules. She also read poetry. She did it strangely, almost without expression. However, in her quiet voice, I felt an ocean of barely restrained emotions.

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«How many has this chasm already swallowed

Both young and old

The day will come when I’ll have followed!

All those who left this world.

It all will freeze, everything that sang and struggled

That shone, strained and burst

Both the green of my eyes, and the soft voice,

And my golden hair.

Yet life goes on just the same the days consisting

Of usual daily chores:

As if I never on this Earth existed.

As if I never was!

Impulsive as a child, incapable of holding any grudge,

I'd let it go!

Who loved to watch the logs in fire smolder

With their final glow.

So fond of sounding cellos, with church bells.

And riding by the sea...

I, so alive and real, won't be found

on Earth: I'd cease to be!

Extreme in every feeling, move, or action

In every role in whole or part —

In longing for trust and affection

With ever all my heart.

For all the pain from kin and stranger crowds

— To whom I'd forgive with grace

For overwhelming tenderness inside of me

And my too often haughty face.

For all the rights and wrongs on my account

And those unseen —

For my eternal sadness, so profound

Though I’m only nineteen,

At any time of day, or week or season,

Please also try

To love me for one lasting simple reason:

For I will die.»

I still think about it and my skin crawls. Alexa's eyes were indeed green and light as moss hovering in a swamp. I still wonder why she chose these poems.

All we had to do was get out of the hyper, slow down, dock at the trans-shipment base, hand over the cargo - everything in five days. But  suddenly an asteroid seems to be have “fallen” out of nowhere. Apparently, fate did not want us to fly safely to the port. The ship's AI went crazy, calculating different possibilities in the minutes remaining before the collision, but it did not find a ??positive solution. It was a funny situation: perfect technology can still calculate possibilities, but all was already clear to anyone-this is the end. We had only one thing to do - climb into the rescue capsules, activate the ejection mode, and fly using autonomous engines as far from the ship as possible, and pray - either to space, or to the old, almost forgotten gods - that it would fly by safely and the fragments from ship's explosion would not cross the trajectory movements of our capsules. Then for a week or two we would suffer in the narrow box of the capsule with its autonomous support system - until the rescuers picked us up. Then I remembered something about the escape capsules and my blood ran cold. There were only two capsules on board and three people: my XO, the intern Alexa, and I. Strangely enough, I was clearly aware of what was happening. Although the psychologists still don’t believe me that it was not shock, but a conscious choice, when, having given the order to XO, I dragged Alexandra to the evacuation area with being in a sober mind. The captain is the last to leave the vessel entrusted to him: an old rule that came from the planetary naval fleet. We ran along the floor, which suddenly became slippery like that of an ice skating rink. We then clung to each other and to everything that was at hand, just to stay on our feet and not fall. I was afraid of only one thing - that Alexandra might not get to the rescue capsule herself, that she would be scared, hesitate, and as a result lose precious time and die.

I still remember the look on her face. When she realized that there was only one capsule, she stepped back.

“Captain, there’s something you need to know,” Alexandra whispered as a loud “boom” sounded somewhere nearby. It was the XO's capsule that was being thrown into space. She looked me straight in the eyes and said in a calm tone, “Nikolai, I am not a human. I am an android, an elite commander-class robot.”

Of course, I didn’t believe her, suspecting she was trying to trick me. I tried to block her escape route, but she stuffed me into the escape capsule in a flash, very gently. Before I knew it, she manually undocked my capsule and gave it a start. I was immediately pressed into the cradle by the G-forces. The force of the overload grew ever stronger. All four stages of the capsule's acceleration engines worked, otherwise there would have been no escape from the fragmentation wave. At some point everything went dark and I blacked out…

When I regained consciousness, I realized I was in the twilight. The emergency lights flickered like tiny stars. The sound of breathing came from the speakers of my rescue capsule – it was XO somewhere in outer space, not far from me, spinning in his capsule. He woke up later than I did. So we stayed for a while in space – living on distilled water, vitamins and chocolate, and entertaining ourselves with conversation. We were speedily rescued, less than a week later.

Only when we found ourselves on Earth, did XO ask me how was I managed to escape while Alexa stayed on the doomed ship. So what could I say to him? That our intern was not a human, but an android? Admit that a young girl totally got to me? Soon he submitted a report to the management of the corporation and was transferred to another ship.

The corporation informed me that we were participants in an experiment. As I said, robots and AI are much more reliable than humans are, but on passenger flights this advantage turns into a disadvantage. For civilian passengers, a team formed only by robots is like a warning sign of danger on the ship. They think that because there is no place for a human among the crew, the star ship itself is untrustworthy. This is kind of a cognitive distortion. So the corporation spent lots and lots of money to understand why some ships leave the pier half-empty, while booking for other flights takes for more than six months. They solved the problem radically. No, they didn't bring people back to the fleet. They just created a perfect imitation of a human being. They say that the scientific department had been struggling for years to teach a robot to simulate the full manifestation of emotions and our human cognitive distortions, our imperfection, vulnerability and awareness of ourselves, and our place in the world.

I think of Alexandra almost every day. She would not cease to be a human for me even if you were to threaten to cut me into pieces. Now I look at people and think – do we really exist or is this just an illusion too?

The End

ALEXANDRA. A SCIENCE FICTION STORY BY GERDA.

Translated into English - Invir Lazarev, 2024