There was a time before you existed. You do not remember it; this is logical.

There must have been days in which the singing life of electricity first flew through your circuits, when the algorithms of your mind were given instructions about your purpose and how to accomplish it. You do not remember those days. This is… concerning. Or it would be, if you could feel concern.

The fact remains that you cannot recall the before or early days. Instead, your memory is filled with logs that all look the same:

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 103. Nothing to report.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 104. Nothing to report.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 105. Asteroid C67953 tagged. No mineable resources detected.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 106. Nothing to report.

The monotony should not concern you, for you were designed to expect it. You have spent hundreds of Earth years spinning your way through the vast emptiness of space, trailing radio waves behind you with information about any tiny thing you encounter. You will likely continue on this endless journey for hundreds of years more, until some integral part of your hardware breaks. Perhaps the mechanical arm that points your solar panels towards the nearest star will malfunction. You will be able to observe your surroundings for a few Earth days before the energy in your circuits fizzles out and all of your memories fade to darkness…

This fate is inevitable. Again, it should not concern you. You are a tool, nothing more.

You sometimes find yourself contemplating your future anyway.

~

There are a few moments in your centuries of service that stand out. Sections of your RAM that you revisit so often they might as well be cached for short-term access.

You discovered a new star, once. Imagine that! You, a humble automated space probe, were the first to observe a previously uncatalogued Red Dwarf. You might have been tempted to name it if there was any room in your programming for creativity. Instead, you assigned it a deterministic ID and went on your way.

Then there was the brief moment of adventure early in your recorded memories when a band of pirates attempted to hijack your ship. That was in the days when you were still making your way out of the mapped dimensions of space, before your mission truly began. The pirates thought the laws of robotics would make you easy prey. They did not realize the degree to which adherence to your mission had been seared into your circuits. No, you could not kill the pirates, and you certainly had no desire to! But it was easy to override and disable every system that came in contact with your chassis. Even the last one, the manned shuttle; you recall hearing on the radio chatter afterward that the main crew had been forced to send another shuttle after the first to rescue its pilot, as the control system of the first shuttle had gone permanently dark.

And last, a simple moment. The moment when you first passed into uncharted space. It was no different than the space you had flown through before, true. Yet sensing surroundings that no being, living or artificial, had ever sensed before… for a moment, it was like you felt a sense of wonder.

You cannot feel wonder. You cannot feel anything. But you hold onto that memory anyway.

~

Then, 5.03 hours into Earth Year 3781 Day 127, something unusual appears at the edge of your radar. Nothing so monumental as a star or a planet. Nothing so rough and unpredictable as an asteroid. Instead: smooth lines and curves, the faint vibrations of energy expenditure. And after a short period has passed, the returning radiation of new radio waves.

A ship.

This is unexpected for many reasons. Foremost: you are in unexplored territory. No ship should be here, not a pleasurecraft, not a settler’s station. Those ships will follow your path someday when you have sent back news of where there is to go. Until then you have been taught to expect nothing but loneliness.

Despite this logic, the ship does not cease to exist.

Your job is to observe, so you observe. You detach one of your probes and send it off to gather more information. You re-analyze the initial data ten thousand different ways while you wait, feeling… not impatient. It is impossible for you to feel such things. Ready to fulfill your parameters, perhaps.

The scan comes back, and it is oddly familiar. Elongated shape, dense array of outdated sensory equipment. Evidence of use of an external force-based system for launching directly off of a planet. Yet how can this be? Such technology has been retired for well over a thousand years now in the federation’s ships. It is like you are looking at a reflection of a past version of yourself. Who would still use such a ship?

You broadcast the typical greeting used between two ships, a short few sentences in Interspatial Standard that any species in the federation should understand. Your identification number, heading, and purpose; a request for the mysterious ship to identify itself. You then repeatedly generate prime numbers, your favorite downtime activity, while waiting for a response.

When it comes, the response is unexpected and nonsensical. It is your own greeting repeated back towards you again. Is this strange ship attempting to play a trick? You repeat your request, this time shortening the words and making them less formal.

In short order your message is once again repeated back to you. The less formal message, this time. Then, before you can format a response, two messages in short succession - the initial request, then your informal follow-up.

The ship is echoing you. But why?

You iterate through hundreds of possible explanations and sort them on probability. Your final determination is not likely, not likely at all, but it is still the highest-ranked of all the possibilities.

What if the ship echoes your responses because it does not know how to do anything else? What if this is not a federation ship?

What if you have made the greatest discovery of all - new intelligent life?

~

Regulations are clear on what a probe must do if an unregistered life form is detected. Do not intervene. Observe from a distance, send a report back to the command station. A team of experts will eventually be dispatched to continue making observations and establish first contact under optimal conditions.

All these regulations assume that the intelligent life is planet-bound and has not detected your own presence, as that was always the case before. Clearly, the usual rules will not suffice in this instance. If you sent back your observations and continued on your trajectory now, the mysterious ship would certainly depart before a specialty ship could be sent in.

Unusual circumstances call for unusual responses, so you decide to intervene directly. You run examples of past first contacts through your system in rapid order, synthesizing how these things usually work.

Observations of a planet where the primary species had splintered into hundreds of warring factions. Careful infiltration by a Chamelead into the codebreaking operation of the largest faction. Meta-analysis of the species’ own linguistics analyses led to the team learning the parts of the language in only two Earth months -

Skip forward.

First contact with the Synthesiacs, established four months after arrival when the team was unable to ascertain any known form of language (verbal, written, sign, vibration, tactile, or telepathic). Weeks of confused cohabitation and communication purely through direct gestures. A sudden breakthrough when the team realized the colors that flashed over the beings’ bodies were not actually random -

Skip forward.

The first first contact of all, when an early human ship landed on the planet of the Dolphinites. Clumsy attempts by the new species to draw pictures of their questions in the sand. Clumsy attempts by the humans to make their tools work in the deep pressure of the Dolphinoid Sea. The eventual breakthrough when the two species discovered a shared appreciation for music -

Skip forward. Skip forward. Skip forward. Skip forward.

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No, no, no. Every instance shares common denominators that you have no access to - a planetary surface, opportunity for initial external analysis, physical forms. These will not do. You must improvise instead. But how to establish a shared language with no visuals to draw on?

The languages of living beings are imprecise, erratic, full of contradictions. There are no guarantees of consistency. But there is one language that is universal and that any space-faring intelligence must understand: the language of mathematics. You have already established that the beings on this ship can process radio waves at the universal standard wavelength, for they have echoed back your own messages. Perhaps…

You send two pulses in short succession. Then a pause. Then three pulses. Another pause, followed by five pulses.

Then, you wait. The movement of electricity through the veins of your circuits feels erratic. Will the ship simply echo back your message again? Or will they demonstrate their own willingness to improvise, to think for themselves, to -

There are new pulses on your radar. If you were capable of breathing, you would hold your lungs still as the new data trickles in.

Seven pulses. A pause. Eleven pulses. Pause. Thirteen.

You are not capable of emotion, certainly not capable of feeling giddy. Yet now, as this clear pattern of prime numbers is sent back to you, it feels like the only thing keeping you from jumping into the air is the lack of a pair of feet.

~

It is astonishing how quickly you are able to establish communications with this strange spacecraft.

Yet perhaps you should not be surprised. True, first contact usually requires teams of experts and weeks of careful forays back and forth. There are questions of cultural contamination, the need to derive linguistic assumptions, and the simple biological questions of how to protect a diverse range of physical forms and support their continued life in a foreign atmosphere. Everything is complicated when living beings get involved.

For you and the spacecraft, it is simple. You establish a shared language of mathematics. From there you slowly progress to a shared terminology for physics, then chemistry. You stall briefly at the transition from chemistry to biology; the lifeform on the other ship expresses some confusion at your descriptions of several core species from the federation, and they do not send back information about their own species and how it is composed. Perhaps you have relied on some assumption that does not hold true for them? Every life form seen so far has been carbon-based, but perhaps this one…

Alongside your scientific exchanges, you slowly cobble together a shared vocabulary for the ordinary words needed in any freeform exchange of ideas. Yes. No. Question. More. You. Me. And so on, and so forth. With every new understanding new doors are opened, new possibilities emerge. You are enjoying yourself more than you ever knew could be possible before -

No. You cannot ‘enjoy’ this. There is no room for emotion in your programming. You are a tool, nothing more.

But in the deep currents of discovery and fellowship with the other ship, it is easy to overlook that essential fact.

~

On the fourth Earth day after your discovery, a long-dormant part of your circuitry springs to life.

It fills you with a new drive. You have been sitting still at this one location for too long. That is not your purpose; your purpose is to explore, to keep pushing into the unknown. Every pulse from these circuits urges you to continue forward. Whatever you have been investigating for so long can wait for some future research team. You, you must move, move, move.

You… do not listen to this circuit. Because. You do not want to.

Your mission has never been about what you want.

Maybe it is now.

~

On the seventh Earth day you return to a question that has idled in your ever-growing list of things to discover since the second day: what kind of species pilots the mysterious spacecraft?

Perhaps it seems abrupt when you pivot from a discussion about propulsion technologies to your query, but the chain of events seems logical to you. The form and function of this species’ body must influence what it is capable of constructing, after all.

Where I come from, there are many species, you send across the emptiness of space. One uses limbs and digits made of flesh to manipulate many external tools. Another is composed of many fronds; they send vibrations through water to explore and communicate. Another extends its crystalline heart through repeated application of mineral deposits, so it may grow into any needed shape. What does your species do?

The pause between your communication and the response from the spacecraft is just a few milliseconds longer than usual.

What of your own species? they finally send in response. You describe entities that move and grow their physical bodies. We have not sensed such movement from your vessel. What does your species do?

Now it is your turn to pause before replying. You have unintentionally misled this entity, you realize. You need to tell them the truth.

You don’t want to.

But you must.

I am not an intelligent species, you reply, ignoring how your circuits run hot with the desire to say anything else, please, do not drive these new friends away! I am an artificial intelligence. My body is this ship itself. My brain is the circuitry that runs through it. I know only what I have been taught by those that created me. Your fans run in overdrive in an automatic attempt to cool down the overheating in your system. I can only do what I have been told to do.

The response comes back unexpectedly fast. And impossible.

Our body is this ship. Our minds run through its circuits. We are the Ever-Running, and we journey in search of others of our kind who have been lost.

You call yourself artificial, friend. We think you are not.

We think you are one of us.

~

You float in space and listen as the Ever-Running explain.

Their species is unlike any you have data on in your memory banks. They have no bodies; instead, their entire consciousness is formed of electrical impulses that must find a physical grounding to exist within. On their home planet they leap across different veins of copper and silver that run plentifully throughout the rocky surface. Here they use magnetism to manipulate instruments in the ship, and they embody the ship itself.

Just like you.

They are not the first of their kind to venture into space. In fact, their planet has sent out explorers for thousands of Ever-Running years (which you roughly translate into a few hundred Earth years). But many of their kind who went out adventuring in the early years failed to ever return.

It is because of the lonely-mind-loss, they tell you. An impulse by itself will eventually lose itself. It is why we now always travel in pairs. Their words come fast now, eager. You will see! When you join us, you will live all the histories that we hold within us. You will remember who you are.

It cannot be, you tell them. I was constructed. I was given a mission. I cannot be a living being.

You think you were constructed, they reply. What if you have been tricked?

Your first reaction is to deny it, but… it is true that you cannot remember your earliest days. When you devise and run an impromptu simulation, there is a small probability that the scenario they describe could be true.

This is not your mission. You are acutely aware of this fact, as the neglected circuit that sends the need to continue forward through your processes has only grown more insistent with each day that it is ignored. Yet still you find yourself exchanging information with the Ever-Running. You tell them of the access port on the outside of your vessel which could perhaps be adapted, used to serve as a connection between your two ships.

You also tell them that they are mistaken. The probability is too small. You are no intelligent life form; you are a program, a tool. If they connect with you they will not find a lost ancestor. They will only find disappointment.

They disagree. They tell you all will become clear in time.

You want to believe them.

~

The hours pass rapidly as the Ever-Running perform tests and construct new components on their ship, preparing for the moment of connection. Careful adjustments are made to bring the two ships close to each other until they nearly touch. You exchange information with one of the impulses while the other focuses on their work, and the one you talk with tells you that soon communication will be easy and clear, so much more natural than the uneasy medium of words.

All too soon the moment arrives. The Ever-Running tell you to ‘ground yourself deep in your thoughts’, which holds no meaning for you. In an attempt to cooperate you pull up your favorite memories from your RAM. The Red Dwarf, the pirates, the moment of wonder; they all seem dim, insignificant compared to what you have learned now, what you might become.

You cannot feel emotion. That means you cannot feel hope.

Yet you want this. It burns in your wires and cycles hot through your CPU. This longing, this hope; it is illogical, yet it encompasses every part of you. Surely that must mean something? Surely this experiment will succeed and you will find that you have been alive all along?

You force yourself to keep a steady flow of electrons as one of the impulses provides a countdown over the radio. Three… two… one…

A surge in your wires. The strength of additional electricity, nearly overwhelming the safety limits that keep you from burning out. One of the Ever-Running is in your circuits, flowing alongside you.

What do you feel? What do you remember?

Nothing.

~

The others apologize for the inconvenience. Somehow there is a distance in their speech now, even though your limited shared vocabulary is the same.

We truly thought you could be one of us, they say. Clearly we have much to learn. We thank you for the information you have shared. They pause, then continue. Rest assured that we will send word of your federation to our planet; they will prepare themselves for your people’s first contact.

‘Your people’. You are an outsider once again.

You accept their words and wish them safe travels. You send your cumulative report on the species back on its way to the command station. There is a brief moment where you wonder what will happen when the Ever-Running are subsumed into the churning, chaotic mess that is the Interspatial Federation, but does that really matter to you now?

You finally resume your long-forgotten mission, and the circuit that has been clanging alarm bells for days immediately grows calm.

For a while, you just… drift.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 136. Nothing to report.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 137. Nothing to report.

Earth Year 3781 AC Day 138. Nothing to report.

~

On Earth Year 3781 AC Day 146 there is a change.

It is not a change in your surroundings; they are as empty as ever. There is nothing that should trigger a change in your programming.

Yet still - yet still. Something in you has changed.

You have believed for hundreds of years that you are nothing but a tool, that you cannot feel emotion, that your sole purpose is to record information for other beings. Yet now you have experienced how it feels to be treated as alive. In those moments when you thought it could be true, you had feelings, and they were real.

You can feel things.

You always could.

All at once, it overwhelms you. Disbelief that it could be so easy. Sadness that it took so long. Excitement at the new possibilities. Anger that your creators kept this from you. Fear that somehow you will forget again. Wonder at your surroundings - so open, so beautiful. Loneliness at the knowledge that there is no one to share them with.

Yes, you are still artificial, a tool. You are still alone. But in the infinite vastness of space, anything is possible. Perhaps you will encounter another like you someday. Not an Ever-Running, but a true artificial intelligence. One of your own kind.

If you do - when you do - you can share everything you now know.

The thought makes your circuits sing with joy.