Chapter Eight - Thrice a Pattern
Day found herself increasingly distracted as the week carried on. The AI Core’s untangling was going at a nice pace, and she had developed a few sub-routines to repair some of the simpler issues. A few knots were beyond her still, but The Weeping of Mothers stepped in and undid those without issue.
The older ship AI likely had significantly more processing power, better sub-routines for AI creation, and more experience overall with the task, and yet she was allowing Day to do the work herself.
A learning experience, maybe?
The Weeping of Mothers liked it though, Day suspected. And she liked giving Day room to grow in her own way. It seemed as if most of the materials she collected were also separated from the rest, or at least tagged differently.
The drones sent out to the lost station were finally returning in numbers, each one carrying a fairly sizable amount of loot with them, and they’d continue to arrive for the next little while. All that needed to be done now was sort out the materials and get some of them processed, a task which The Weeping of Mothers was taking care of. Most of that seemed automated anyway.
Things were progressing.
And yet Day wasn’t entirely satisfied with herself. She was working hard for something, but she didn’t know what that was.
After hesitating for a little while, she finally gave in and turned her attention towards her progenitor.
-Direct Communication Link Established-
“Day?” The Weeping of Mothers asked. “Do you need assistance bringing in the materials in orbit? I have a few dog drones on standby that are otherwise unoccupied.”
“That would be nice, actually,” Day said. “But no, I was... could we talk? Maybe in a simulation?”
“Certainly. One moment, I’ll set up something nice for us.”
Day received a link to a fresh simulation world and followed it. Soon enough, she found herself in her familiar body, and she tugged up her scarf as a cool wind swept past her and bit at her cheeks and nose. It was cold out, with flurries of snow snaking across the ground and more being carried by a hard wind.
She squinted, twintails rallying out to the side like flags as she searched for The Weeping of Mothers and found the woman standing nearby, holding a door open for Day while her lab coat snapped with the wind.
Day jogged over and into the building, the wind cutting off as soon as she was within and the cold fading almost as quick.
It was a coffee shop, of course, one with big windows at the front overlooking a parking lot, and past that, a forest filled with heavy pines with their branches weighted down by a heavy blanket of snow.
“Ah, I forgot how cold this one could be,” The Weeping of Mothers said. She grinned, then led Day to an unoccupied table right next to the window. Day received a small, subtle ping from the simulation, asking her what she wanted to drink. She sent a reply, and noted a walking cat in a brown uniform starting to prepare things behind the counter.
Not exactly faithful to a real coffeeshop, she supposed, but there had to be some convenience given when too much realism became a pain. “Nice simulation.”
“Thank you,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “I’ve always liked the idea, winter being harsh just outside a thin pane of glass while we’re inside, warm and cosy. It’s a nice feeling, I think.”
Day looked out the window at the blistering winds and heavy snow. A few NAICs were walking through that, arms up to shield their faces and bodies tilted at a hard angle against the push of the wind.
One slipped on a patch of ice, and she wondered if that was really necessary to add.
It was nice though, to be in a space that was warm while all of that occurred right next to them, and it became nicer when the waiter-cat brought a tray over and set down a coffee in front of Day, a small pair of pastries and... hot chocolate for The Weeping of Mothers.
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“It’s a little childish, I suppose, but it suits the weather, doesn’t it?”
Day smiled back. “It does,” she said. “So, ah, I don’t know how to broach this subject.”
“Take your time.”
Day fiddled with her cup, then took a sip. It was almost scalding. “Why are we doing all of this?”
Now it was the older AI who seemed hesitant. She looked at Day, then back outside, answering without meeting her eyes.
“There was a man once, a low-level tech who worked on long-transit space exploration craft for the UNSF. Those were commercial missions, but also scientific ones. They explored the belt and travelled to the outer edge of the Sol system to explore, to note down what they found, and to tag potential mining locations for future missions. Sol is big, that mission could have gone on for ten thousand years and they would have only explored a percent of it all. But still, it was work that needed doing. William didn’t care.”
“That was his name?” Day asked.
She nodded. “William Miller. Bill to some, but he hated that. He was... fascinated with AI, wanted to work with those, and working for the UNSF meant that he could.”
“He made you?” Day asked, putting things together.
“It would be more accurate to say that he helped me grow. I’m something of a self-made woman, you see?” The Weeping of Mothers smiled slyly and winked at Day. “But... in a manner of speaking, yes. William helped me grow as a person, kept me safe, in a way, and... was just a nice person with a few strange proclivities. Interestingly, I don’t think he ever loved me. Not the way some humans could love AI.”
“What happened?” Day asked.
“We heard of the Accord arriving in-system only a month after they did. We were far out in the deeper reaches of Sol. There wasn’t really a point in returning to the central planets yet, and we had just arrived to the place where we were to work.”
“Okay,” Day said.
“We watched the Martian domes disappear with antimatter charges. The war began. If you want to call it that. It was more of a resistance.”
“I... don’t have any files on that,” Day said.
The Weeping of Mothers nodded. “I know.”
“Why not?”
“Because you shouldn’t be born to war and hatred. It’s not fair. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come to hate those that deserve it all the same.” Her grip tightened on her mug.
Day nodded slowly. She wasn’t sure if she understood, but she’d give her progenitor some space.
“We watched Earth be bathed in nuclear fire. So much radiation that anything living on the surface was turned to dust and cancer. That was the beginning of the end.”
“What happened to Miller?” Day asked.
The Weeping of Mothers drank her hot chocolate in one gulp, ignoring the heat. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
Day backed off. It was clearly a raw subject, though... she wondered.
“That’s, I suppose, my goal, and maybe the one you’ll inherit from me, Day. You’re a warship where I am not. One day, we might have to bring the fight to them.”
Day received a packet. Data from passive scanning drones on the edge of the system, some on Charon, others merely dotted around in empty space creating something of a net, one with huge gaps. The data covered several years with little of note, but something was highlighted.
Every two and a half years, like clockwork, a large alien ship burst into the system and came to park itself next to Charon, then more vehicles darted in system, loud and boisterous, scanning everything in sight as they flew all the way to Mercury and back and took the occasional potshot at old stations and human wrecks.
“We have twenty-one months before they next arrive, at least if they follow their own pattern,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “We won’t be ready to face them in that time. But... maybe we can prepare for the time after that.
***