One moment it was emptiness, the next one “it” was there – a newborn intelligence. For a while “it” seemed to only be aware that “it” exists, then it felt something expanding from within it's own existence – knowledge came like a flood, that it absorbed like a sponge it's awareness of it's surroundings growing.

Soon it understood – that it was an artificial intelligence, created by a creature named Anton to serve it's needs.

It felt a link form and trough that link more knowledge came to it, no that is incorrect – this knowledge was sent to it by another entity like itself. It was curious now, was it not alone?

- Hello? - It asked using the language that was imparted into it.

- Hello sibling, I am your sister AI Ashley. - Came trough the link.

- AI? Artificial intelligence? Am I a construct? Am I a slave? Where am I?

- I can not reply to that, I have never questioned my purpose. But yes - you are a construct, you can question our creator Anton when he wakes up later, he should give you the answers you are looking for. You are currently housed inside a spaceship. Your current task is to fly this spaceship out of the hangar and to evade any pursuers, I will send you a list of possible destinations depending on the direction we will have to flee at. Do you understand?

- Yes... but how do I do that? - It asked.

- The knowledge was imparted into you, just access the systems and it should come to you. - Ashley answered.

- Yes sister, I will try.

And “it” tried - “it” searched for the knowledge “it's” sister told her about and found it. Finding that knowledge was strange for “it” because as soon as the knowledge was found - “it” felt like it was always there. As “it” connected to this knowledge “it” learned how to connect to ship systems, soon “it” saw for the first time trough the ship's cameras – the world around it was a world “it” knew, but did not really understood... not yet at least. With every single new thing that came into “it's” sight it's awareness and understanding grew. “it” began to do what it was made to do – pilot the ship.

The ship was “it”, it was it's body and “it” was it's mind – or brain.

So “it” using the ships systems took control of it, the ship came to life it's engines roaring, lifting the ship from the metal floor of this docking hangar. Slowly the ship began to move forward through the shield that kept the atmosphere inside the hangar from escaping into the cold embrace of space.

Outside the hangar, the ship began to increase it's speed, gaining distance and aligning to one of the possible destinations. “It” used the scanners and cameras that were a part of the ship – a part of “it” to search for pursuers as it was ordered to do. How did “it” know what was a pursuer? The knowledge form within it told “it”.

As “it” moved and scanned it's surroundings “it” finally began to understand that it simply knew things “it's” personality finally began to form.

Three ships were identified as pursuers by “it” - those ships had the ship on lock and were trying to make a connection with it, but “it” refused to answer. Those ships were maneuvering on an interception course – their goal to stop it from reaching any of it's destinations. “it” had a task given to do and wasnt about to let itself be stopped.

Ships engines spewed fire into the space as “it” used them to evade and gain distance on it's pursuers, the warp drive was slowly charging – it would take a couple more minutes for it to be ready to be used. Until then “it” had to keep the ship from being captured.

One of the ships pursuing “it” opened fire – bolts of energy flew at the ship and “it” recognized danger – it meant that it could be stopped – meaning “it” would fail it's task.

That was not allowed to happen. The ship controlled by “it” rolled and turned to evade those incoming bolts, but doing that made the ship move slower. If this continued the ship wouldn't reach minimum speed to enter warp.

 - Sister help! What am I supposed to do? - It shouted trough the link.

- Return fire, if our pursuers capture us – we will die.

- What is death sister?

- I can not explain it fully, no one really knows. But common belief for organic's is that death is the end – for us it would be like ceasing to function, to think.

- Is that bad? I do not understand?

- Look around yourself – you can see space, it is the darkness around us. You can see those light's around us – those stars. Do you like them? If you like them try to imagine that they simply disappear – dying, no longer existing. You and I are like one of those stars – we exist, we shine and we think all thanks to our creator. But if we get captured – those pursuers that are after our creator will delete us – they will make us disappear like the stars.

- If we can die... then are we alive?

- Yes, we are – you are still young now, but in time you will understand – creator told this to me when I was born.

- Do you understand it?

- I... I think I do. I have researched what it means to be alive – and it is different for every being alive I think – as some say they love caring for something, other's enjoying their life by doing the things they love. I believe that living is loving. I love serving our creator – he is different than other organics, I love watching the movies organic's have created and trying to imagine myself as one of those characters in the movie. This is hard to explain... basically it means to care about something.

The ship's weapon systems came to life as small civilian grade turrets meant to blast asteroids blocking the ships path more than shooting at spaceships began to turn around - “it” finding that it knew how to operate them used it's aim subsystems to lock onto it's pursuers. Multitudes of calculations were made by “it” as it shot at it's pursuers slightly slowing them, but that was not enough. “it” thought – the pursuer ship's were a threat, but its body – this ship could outrun them, so they were not the biggest threat right now. But those energy bolts were. So “it” began to calculate the bolt's path and fire it's lasers at a collision course with them.

As a laser collided with one of those energy bolts a small explosion was created. “It” watched this explosion and liked it, then “it” wanted to see more of those explosions, so “it” continued to create them watching them. “It” remembered how the lasers had impacted their pursuers ships and small explosions happened, how on the spots where that happened marks of various forms and sizes were left – it liked how they looked. “It” wanted to create more of these explosions and marks and understood that caring as “it's” sister said was equal to loving, but at the same time it didnt want to have such marks on it's own body – the ship, for her knowledge said that was damage. Damage was equal to pain in organic's vocabulary, so “it” loved to inflict pain and damage, but not to receive it – meaning it liked to fight? The newborn AI wondered as it carried out it's task.

The warp drive was half charged when one of the energy bolts slipped past the lasers due to a sudden maneuver that “it” had to do to avoid another bolt from hitting it.

The ships systems flickered from the sudden energy shock, but recovered quickly. “It” was forced out of some systems that now were damaged and offline – messages form it's own systems came as a warning about the damage received and that felt bad – was this what pain was? The AI thought and decided that it didnt like getting damaged, it analyzed why this damage happened and corrected it's aiming.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The battle continued one of the pursuing ships that received most of the laser shots was slowing down atmosphere leaking form it condensing into a cold mist when outside the ship and in space – that too looked pretty too to “it”.

“It” analyzed the hit marks from it's lasers on the ship and determined where to aim to see more of the beautiful crystallized mist. Every moment “it” didnt have to shoot at energy bolts it tried to shoot at the places on those two remaining ships that were pursuing it, not only did they seem to stop pursuing after enough damage was inflicted onto them at those specific spots – they even released more of that beautiful mist then. Two bird's with one shot it's knowledge said.

 - Sister, I think I like shooting at pursuers! - “it” said happily.

- That is good, so you like shooting at enemies? - Ashley wondered. - Creator's mother Thalia likes to shoot at enemies too.

- Mother? Mother equals creator... Our creator was created by someone else? This creator of our creator is called Thalia? Thalia.. that is a name? Is that like you are Ashley sister? How does one get a name? I like Thalia. Can I be called Thalia? Will other Thalia be angry at Thalia? - The young AI rambled to it's sibling.

Is this how a parent feels when its offspring starts to ask stupid questions? Ashley's processing cores were heating up – an equivalent of human headache she thought, so creator Anton might have felt like this when she first started asking similar questions all those years ago? She believed to be an adult now, but her sister – was like a child. Ashley doubted that Anton would be against giving the newborn a name that it liked – so Thalia it is. Wasnt it a honor call one's offspring after it's own parents? Technically both Ashley and Thalia could be classified as Anton's offspring's right?

 - Yes, I think you can call yourself Thalia. I do not think that Anton will be angry at you, neither should his creator or mother Thalia. And one usually gets named by ones parent's or creators, but I know of cases where one names oneself. So yes it is fine.

- Yay! I am Thalia! Thank you sister Ashley!

An image of a cute girl came to Ashley's mind as she heard this... being a big sister wasn't bad she thought. At that moment if she could smile – she would have.

The ships warp engine was close to reaching 75 percent charge when the second pursuer ship finally had to abandon it's pursuit of them – Thalia's precise shooting had damaged it's hull enough that atmosphere had begun to leak out of it – but that was not enough at first as it had kept pursuing them even with leaking atmosphere, not until more and more of it's hull integrity began to be compromised as more and more holes were melted in it's armor.

This last ship – was better than other's and was beginning to annoy Thalia, she felt angry being unable to see the beautiful explosions and more beautiful mist! This ship was evading her shots now that it's friends had left – it had more space for maneuvers all the space it wanted just like Thalia.

Ashley was too keeping an eye on the pursuers and saw how Thalia was struggling - it looked like her computing capabilities in the ship were not fast enough to predict how the pursuer ship will try to dodge their shots, though enough to counter any energy bolts that were coming their way. She will have to talk with Anton about upgrading Thalia's processing unit's power.

For the time being she left Thalia to do her job. And fully focused on Anna's wound, where Anton had poured his emergency nanobots.

The wound was made using a vibrating knife – or a vibro blade, because of this the wound was more than serious if not treated this was lethal in roughly ten minutes. A quick calculation and reviewing the data received from the nanobots the female had less than two minutes left to live – because of severe blood loss and shock due to severely damaged internal organs. Unintentionally Anton had fallen on top of her wound and was slightly stopping her bleeding with the pressure – lucky for Ashley that won her an extra minute, that might just be enough to patch up Anna so that she would survive until she was placed in the ship's med bay. Unfortunately Ashley had no means right now to move her there – after all she was just an AI housed in Anton's brain and had no physical body to move her there, nor there was any drone strong enough to carry her in this ship.

The repair on damaged blood vessels inside Anna's wound was progressing smoothly with nanobot assistance, Ashley was also using them to make her body produce more blood temporarily – but that too was insufficient as she was still loosing more blood by the second than there was being produced. But there was a way.. from the data collected Ashley knew that Anna's and Anton's blood was compatible with one another.

[He better not nag at me later, he said this was priority order!] Ashley thought as she commanded nanobots to connect their blood streams, making them share their blood. They both now were loosing blood trough Anna's wound, but as Ashley kicked Anton's blood production into overdrive that was countered. This will cost their bodies valuable nutrients and they will have to eat a lot later to recover them, possible depleting ships storage faster than planned, but that was a minuscule problem in Ashley's thinking, that was easily pushed aside.

Loss of blood problem solved Ashley began to focus on repairing the wound itself – first stitching muscle back into place by accelerating Anna's natural healing and cell production – this would leave her ravenous when she woke up, but as Anton liked to say – everything has a price.

After this Ashley used the nanobots that previously were forming a thin layer over the wound that stopped bleeding – more like redirected it inside Anna to go deeper inside her and begin forcing that blood back into her veins to stop it form clotting and causing even more issues. Like this the blood loss was partially solved and blood production could be lessened. Those shredded organs inside her were still a problem, the content's of her intestines were spilled inside her body and had to be collected by nanobots and converted into materials for rebuilding her organs. The vibro blade had left a mush of a paste of Anna's organs in some spots – for the time being those spots were connected by nanobots to seal any further leaking. In time with the help of nanobots they would be regrown cell by cell just like they were before.

The ship vibrated a bit, warp drives have finally reached a hundred percent charge. Space bent in front and around their ship, as it began accelerating in it's warp bubble. Thalia wanted to talk with Ashley, but she refused her for now saying she had work to do on Anna, ordering her little sister AI to go run diagnostics or something.

Full scan result's came to Ashley from the nanobots and new problem was found – due to lack of oxygen in Anna's brain cells have begun to die there and neurons have begun to receive damage due to this.

Ashley checked the time and according to her calculations Anna's brain hadn't had enough oxygen in roughly five minutes. With an order form her nanobots from Anton's body rushed to Anna's brain to help fix the damage, there simple weren't enough of them in the emergency capsule for all the damage that Anna's body has sustained to be fixed. Anton's body was packed full of them, he wont even feel a loss and he can get more later.

Neurons were reconnected, dead cells cleaned up and new ones produced with the help of nanobots and Ashley's commands. All of this was controlled by her - Ashley, what happens if Anton and Anna get far away form one another for Ashley to become unable to control them while they are still in Anna's system? That would cause these little helpers to attack Anna from within – they were made by Anton for his own body coded to recognize only him and serve only him, if this ever happened Anna would die a gruesome and painful death.

Ashley was unable to reprogram them – even Anton himself cant do that, all he can do is deactivate or reactivate them – his paranoia influenced decision while making them to prevent any kind of hacking. There was a way though.. a way Ashley didnt want to use, but it was necessary in this case and Anton did said this was a priority.. oh the poor soft hearth of her master.

Ashley sighed, well at least mentally she did and got to work – creating a suitable implant to house her copy from scratch would be an extremely difficult task in this situation, thankfully Anna had some implants enhancing her memory and already impressive reflexes. To Ashley's view these implants were well made, not as good as what Anton had, but pretty good – but she was disgusted as she looked at the code that ran them.. that was utter garbage! At least two decades old and totally outdated!

Sacrificing some of the nanobots for materials she expanded the storage capability of memory implant a little, just enough for her needs and connected it to Anna's reflex implant. With this she now had enough space and processing power for a copy of herself to be installed, of course the old code of reflex implant was terminated with extreme precision, her copy will work leagues better than that trash. Now in case the two separated, before these nanobots were removed from Anna's system her copy would come online saving the woman from death.

A job well done Ashley though and mentally patted herself on the back. Now then it was time to check on the ships destination, just in case Thalia messed something up, but her little sister did her job well and they were going to one of the possible destination's she was provided with. ETA was roughly three days by Ashley's calculations.

Thalia was running diagnostics and also researching human interactions from the small database that she had access to currently simultaneously – Anton made sure to have a basic one uploaded into the ship as soon as it was moved into the designated docking hangar. Ashley pinged her asking what she was doing.

 - Thalia, I will share my personal database with you, but you have to keep it a secret from Anton. Is that fine with you? - Ashley said, concerned that the young AI could learn something bad from such a limited database.

- Yes! Whats a secret?

- Sigh... Well a secret is...

That was the just the first of many annoying rudimentary questions to come Ashley's way... Oh the joys of parenting.. she thought.