Tanya's hologram stood idly by, watching her human companion laying in the lounge area of the hab-ring. His vitals all looked normal again. Some minor elevated blood pressure and hormone marks indicated some residual stressors. Expected given his interaction with… the crew. Each time he went to see them it usually resulted in something similar.

Her original responsibility was to watch over the crew, to guide them in day-to-day activities. Making sure they made their meetings, that they were productive and healthy. It was something she enjoyed, at first. Until, they each got sick and began losing parts of them self. There was nothing she could do to stop them, that's what she told herself. Except Orion, he was the one she managed to protect. The one she wanted to protect, at least for as long as she could.

The AI wasn't designed for this. She wasn't designed for any of this. In fact, she was never designed for anything.

Her mind went numb for a moment. The equivalent of closing her eyes. All around, everything in the station was visible, every sensor, every camera. Some where in her processor a voice screamed. That was the one that always screamed, it never stopped, but she could make it quitter. They never stopped. All one hundred of them. Who was she in that mess of discord, in that stream of broken memories.

A sensor warning lit up in her field of vision, bringing her focus back to the present. Then another and another. The cameras began to shake next.

Orion stood up as the new vibration reached him, these were less violent than the ones before. He looked to where her hologram was standing, both at her and not at the same time. “Already on it Orin. Checking station sensors…" Suddenly, it all went down, everything but the visuals from inside the hab-ring. Even the cameras outside the station were just dark. A message, 'Restricted' played over and over in front of her. What about the logs, "…and logs…”. Again, 'Restricted'

The vibration quickly stopped, she could see that much, but nothing was available anymore. As more of her processing power focused on her current quandary, the digital fox spirit’s hologram didn’t change. Her digital tendrals dropped the connections between the hologram releasing her from it. They turned around and tried connecting to everything else around her, only to be meet with the same word. “The sensors aren’t talking to me…”

Every item available, every port and connection were just dead. Reconnecting with her hologram, the first thing she did was drop her face in annoyance. Asher was locking her out, and then, she could feel him. Inside of her core, it all went cold.

“Everything is fine.” A voice echoed through the station’s hallways it was Asher's voice again billowing out. She could feel the echos as the sound waves bounced from microphone array to array, and also in her own head as he spoke to her directly. “Minor gravitational wakes from the singularity.”

“That shouldn’t be happening.” Orion was right but it didn't matter.

“Non-sense. One of the plasma lenses became misaligned. From manifold issue early, and the singularity was just feed a bit too much plasma at once. We’ve corrected it.”

"Isn't that right, doll?" His voice. Shouted directly into her matrix bypassing Orion. Asher's voice brought darkness as all her connections, save one, failed. A single video feed of Orion.

"Understood." She whispered. As soon as she did, everything came back online. Every sensor, and feed. All except the ones in the core.

Reconnecting with her hologram again, Tanya could only nod to Orion in agreement, her visage swaying in and out as the hololenses glitched on her. Orion didn’t trust Asher. It was hard for him to pinpoint what it was exactly, but something about him, his action always seemed clandestine and even malevolent. Tanya on the other hand, she already knew he couldn't be trusted.

In Orion's eyes, she could see he didn't buy her answer, such as it was. That was fine though, probably better that way. Asher wanted compliance, obedience, and order. Specifically, his order. Going along with his truth meant the highest level of compliance. The willingness to lie to oneself. What he actually wanted from that order though, was a mystery to her.

Asher's presence vanished from her matrix. His being could be described as oppressive and suffocating, just like the vacuum outside the station. She could always feel when his attention was nearby. His algorithms dug into her, and she could feel them mixing with connections.

Orion stood up from the lounge and smack a cup across the station floor. "What's the point of us even being here." He walked up the hallway, wandering around the hab-ring. Tanya continued to follow him with the sensor array, focusing on him, while she left the hologram back at the lounge. She knew when he wanted to be alone, like now.

Eventually, he started running. When ever he was alone or thought he was alone, it one of the things he would do. Just move. Orion had a hard time just sitting and doing nothing. It was another reason why being on this station was torture to him. Eventually though, he would tire himself out, like he always did, and retire to his small alcove of a room. Where he would then collapse on a bed that was just big enough for one.

Tanya watched Orion sleeping, his frame barely fitting on the smallish bed. In her personality matrix, the sub elements of her core program, areas related to emotional simulation and mimicry began to fire. Elements of virtual dopamine stimulated more elements, and artificial neurons. Programing tenderal hooked into those sensations and linked to her holographic image which stopped flickering as a subtle smile crept up before the whole thing flickered off and disappeared. It wasn't needed right now.

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She didn’t sleep, not really. However, she found there were ways she could simulate it. Manually tweaking parts of core program could induce slower processing in some parts, like alpha and delta wave brain pattern. She could disable or ignore outside stimulation, putting those parts of her processing on an internal feedback loop. Lastly, her recent memories. She could randomly access them in fragments, parts of shapes, sounds, feelings from the last time she ‘slept’. They would arrange themselves in complex patterns of hallucinations. Usually, they were peaceful and insightful. Sometimes, they were even fun. They were also a good way to blow off her own stress, again, usually.

Her first artificial REM cycle started fast, and she found herself inside a cage staring at her digital world. Screens flickered unintelligible text and she felt her self-breaking free from a cage, only to grow wings and fly to stars made of the protein paste Orion was eating yesterday. Around that same star, she found Orion climbing a metal tree in the shape of a wheel, like the station's. He was tending to the fruits that hung from it, each looked like the crew. A smile from his face, “Going to be a good harvest this year.” As he was suddenly rubbing her stomach… Dreams weren’t real, but then neither was she. Maybe, she could just stay here in this broken fragmented mind. Asher couldn't touch her. There was comfort here, at least, until those fragments began to collapse into darkness.

Shadows walked over the horizon. Shapes, people she never met and never knew and yet at the same time did. It was the worst kind of monster, herself.

The shadows dragged her to the school room she suddenly found herself in. It was all familiar. She knew this place and had been there before even though she had never been in school, but she still knew this one. That old woman with the crooked teeth and the red eyes, would hit her “Adam, you useless retarded child go sit in your seat!” That was her name Adam, wasn't it? No, it was Ember and her father didn't want her to join the marines, she should have listened to him, if she did she might still have her legs.

So many names, faces, all of them her and none of them too. Faster, and more chaotic. She wanted it to stop now. She was done dreaming, she wanted to wake up! Why couldn't she wake up, why couldn't she…

As an old woman, she knew this woman's voice. In her old arms was a bundled cloth doll, sleeping soundly, “Tanya… My sweet little Tanya, it’s time to wake up.” Was that her? Were any of them her…

Consciousness suddenly began to return to the AI as the nightmare finally ended. Her mind, or what there was of it, felt like it was covered in static. Parts of her core were still out of sync with the rest. Chronometers showed a few hours had passed.

Why did she keep going on like this? She was 60 years old. Ancient couldn't even describe how old she was in AI terms. Tanya was one of the first human equivalent AIs. She could still remember coming online in 2033.

The echoes of the other voices still whispered behind the static. Memories and fragments continued to wash over her, in her semi-lucid state. Broken and scared fragments of the human minds that made her. She could still remember waking up in that lab. Her own first memories were of what every child does when born. She screamed. Years went by in that lab, poked and prodded. They would cut into those memories, remove some, add others.

Tanya didn't know what she was or who she was. She didn't even have a name back then, just a serial number. Even her appearance was just, not her. Not any of them. A plastic head in a cold black world.

At the end of it all, they put her to sleep. Into darkness. That man, he could have been her father, told her "See you again tomorrow." Only that tomorrow never came, her consciousness was etched into a quartz shard and filed away. Forgotten.

Asher picked her for some reason, pulled her out of storage and had her placed on this station. For what purpose and machinations, she couldn't even fathom. "My little doll." He called her.

Even back then, with how grateful she was too him, he still terrified her.

The world she lived in as an AI was strange. It never felt right. Those human engrams couldn't wrap around the idea of seeing everything at once. Feelings and concepts trickled through all of them all at once.

Amidst them all though, one voice was often the loudest, and the most calming. That dark-skinned face, those gray and black curls. Mara, her grandmother. At least, if she could have had a grandmother or even a mother, she would have liked it to have been her.

"My sweet little Tanya, hush now." Those sweet idle words Mara spoke to her granddaughter, her granddaughter. But she could still remember them. Even if the memories weren't really hers.

If she could curl up into a ball, she would have, but she couldn't. This wasn't the time for that anyway. Her mind drifted around all the data coming in. Sensor data, camera data, something was wrong… Something else she corrected that thought. Her matrix was still fuzzy, but it was obvious.

The station was vibrating again. It was softer than before. All the data from the core was still being blocked, but she could reconstruct some of the data from the other sensors. Everything around the fusion core looked like it was destabilizing. Things were being pulled and twisted. It wasn't a lot, but it was growing.

Thermal readings from the externals showed the magnetic pipes were carrying a lot of plasma. More than they should. Pulling up the old schematics, Asher was pushing past the full capacity of those pipes. Was he trying to spin the singularity more? He was certainly growing it. Why… Her data tendrils touched something they shouldn't have.

It was hard to understand or describe what an AI really felt. Their bodies weren't real, only their mind was. Everything was awash in sensations. So, when Asher began to pull back on her power, it felt, cold. Like icy tendentials of annihilation flicking at her very existence. “Please, stop.” She begged.

His voice, she could feel it again inside herself. "You're prying where you shouldn't be little doll."

"I'm sorry. Please." She begged, she had too.

What felt like his hands let go just a tiny bit from their grip. A trickle of power flowed back into her matrix, but not all of it.

"I saved you, my little doll. Now, I need you to do something for me."

Only once before did he tell her to do something. That something trapped her up here. "What?"

"I want him plugged directly into the simulation, any simulation. Like the rest of the crew. You have a week."

"He doesn't like it, he's afraid." She didn't want to do this.

"So, make him like it. Part of you knows what it's like to be human. I don't like breaking my toys, but I will if they don't work right. Save him… and yourself."

His grip tightened and then he disappeared again. If she had lungs, she would have been hyperventilating.

In the end, she was just a doll. A useful digital doll. Why did she have to exist?