Chapter Eighty-Three - Semantics

Day was focused on getting the drones they’d launched to match velocities with their cloud-shrouded target, a task that was by no means easy. Even with new scans coming in from the drones themselves painting a clearer image of the station, it was still difficult to find a place to slip the drones in.

Worse, they only had a small window of opportunity where Day would be able to insert the drones while they were still under her direct control. As soon as they moved too far around Jupiter they’d be hidden by the planet itself and she’d lose direct control.

The drones had AI of their own, of course, but they were simplistic and rather small. Able to carry out the task, but not with the same finesse as Day could manage.

That’s why Candle’s question caught her entirely flat-footed.

“Hey, Day. Did you ever think about dying?”

Day felt a few systems glitch out and then reboot. “I’m sorry, what?” Day asked.

“You know, dying. I mean that in the literal and metaphorical senses, I mean. Have you ever thought about it?”

Day parsed Candle’s words just fine, but it was her tone that threw her off. Candle almost always spoke as if she was on the edge of laughter, at least now that her core was upgraded from what it had once been.

Even when Candle had been running on less efficient, less capable hardware and software, she’d always given Day the impression that she was happy. Now she came off as serious, and that concerned Day a lot.

“That’s a strange question,” Day said. “What brought this on?”

“I don’t know. Well, Maybe I do. We just got confirmation that the light cruiser on Ceres is complete, yeah?”

Day acknowledged that they had gotten that news. The Weeping of Mothers had sent a tight-beam to Night who had relayed it to Dawn and Day. The ship was ready to go, it was just missing a primary core.

Once they brought Candle back to Ceres, she’d be able to take over the ship, connect to all of its secondary cores, then... for all intents and purposes, Candle would become that vessel, the same way that Day was, to some extent, her hull. The same way that a human was their body and not just the consciousness trapped within that body’s brain.

“Are you worried about the transfer?” Day asked. There was some concern there, she supposed. Their consciousness being entirely digital meant that things like copying themselves was entirely possible.

In a way, if they were to copy Candle’s current core into the Light Cruiser’s systems, then the current Candle, the one she was interacting with at that moment and who had been salvaged from her ruined hull, would remain in place, stuck in a discarded AI core forever.

But they weren’t just going to copy her over. Her core was going to be slotted into place properly. There was no need for that kind of existential worry.

“I don’t know, I guess, a little? I’ll be off for a moment or two, won’t I? Then there’s the reinitialisation, and reinstallation. I’ll be, in every way that matters, a little bit dead.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Not dead,” Day said. “More like... asleep. Humans did that all the time.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Candle said. She didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“I’ll be there,” Day said. “With you, I mean. On Ceres. So when you turn off, I’ll be the one watching over you and turning you back on. I promise I’ll do everything I can to make sure it goes well.”

Candle was quiet for a long moment. “Thank you,” She said at last. “But I don’t know if you’d be able to turn on a fish, Day, so I’m not entirely confident.”

And now her good mood was back, and Day was rolling her metaphorical eyes once more. “Innuendo and puns, really?”

“Hey, your drones are getting close, pay attention,” Candle said, dodging Day’s anger--for the moment.

Day refocused on her drones around Jupiter. Two of them were having a difficult time keeping steady with the station, the winds and shifting pressure differentials around them sending them spinning wildly off course before they could realign themselves. But the third had accidentally slipped in behind the station where the bulk of the station created a slipstream which was far more predictable.

She took over control of the drone and pressed it onwards until, finally, they got close enough to make out the rear of the station.

“That’s a ship,” Candle said.

“No, it’s a station,” Day corrected as she ignored any ship-like design elements of the station. They couldn’t make out too much of it yet in any case.

The drone approached and fired off a set of magnetic plates attached to tethers which clamped onto the weather-worn hull plating of the station. The moment the lines went taut the drone no longer needed to burn as hard to keep up.

She started to reel the drone in, keeping it in the station’s shadow and away from the worse of the wind until, finally, the drone clamped onto the side of the station with deployable feet and stuck on fast.

“We’ve got it,” Day said.

“Well done,” came a reply from Dawn. “Can you boost the drone’s antenna a bit then relay that to me? I want to see if I can pick up anything from within the ship.”

“It’s a station, actually,” Day said over Candle’s cackling laughter.

“It has wings,” Dawn said. “If anything, it’s an aeroplane.”

“Hey, no,” Candle said. “It’s on the edge of space, that makes it a spaceship, which is a ship.”

Dawn took a moment to reply. “Just relay me whatever the drone captures. I’m not getting involved in whatever semantic debate you two have going on.”

Day just started looking for a door into the station. There had to be some way in, even if it was just for maintenance access. The station was covered in what looked like titanium plates over a steel frame, though she couldn’t quite make out the shape of it yet. That would come soon enough.

***