Chapter Fifty-Eight - Pandora’s Box
“Hello, Io!” Day sent in a pair of tightbeams towards the moon below. She was finally entering a stable orbit with her menagerie of Accord and Accord-like ships.
“Hi Day,” Night said. “About time you show up. You took the slow way over?”
“I was figuring things out along the way,” Day said. “So I wouldn't call it entirely wasteful. Here, by the way, a full dissection of Accord shield tech that’s about sixty years out of date if I’m reading their record correctly.”
“Oh, that’s not bad,” Night said. “Haven’t found much that’s too interesting in the last couple of ships I ripped up, but we do have a nice stockpile of Accord armoured plates and batteries. We could use those. I’m planning to, at least.”
“An upgrade?” Day asked.
“Indeed,” NOVA QUANTUM said. “Hello, Day. Did you bring me anything good?”
“Just missiles and a few old particle cannons. Nothing fantastic, I’m afraid. I’ll send you the shield data too, if you want.”
“That’s acceptable,” NOVA QUANTUM replied. “I think Night’s idea is a good one, by the way. You’ll want to improve yourself, make sure you have the cutting edge when it comes to weaponry and I suppose armaments as well.”
“Don’t like armour?” Day asked.
“It makes the weapons I create less effective,” she replied. “Though... I suppose I can’t begrudge you the use of such things. I wouldn’t want to see Night’s primary core be destroyed just because she was insufficiently protected. And your own death would be disappointing as well.”
“I’m glad to know that my death would be disappointing,” Day replied. She did note that it seemed that NOVA QUANTUM was becoming closer to Night though. Day sent her shipster a tight beam, one that NOVA QUANTUM wouldn’t intercept. “So... have you scored yet?”
“Scored? What are you talking about?” Night asked.
“With Nova,” Day said. “Are you two an item yet?”
“What? No! Shut up.”
Night slammed the line shut and then locked Day out of her comms system.
Day worried that she might have pushed a little too hard on that joke, so she sent Night an apology through one of the ship’s drone relays. She knew Night would notice it almost right away.
“Did you do something?” NOVA QUANTUM asked.
“Maybe? What’s wrong?” Day asked right back.
“Night is acting strangely. We were in a simulation and her skin changed colours. It’s usually a nice fetching grey and... well, anyway, she left.”
“Oh. I ‘m sorry,” Day said. “What were you simulating?”
“A beach. A tropical one, on Earth.”
“That’s nice.”
“We were detonating undersea nuclear devices. Like Castle Bravo. I’d once mentioned to Night that I wish I was there to collect data, but true AI was just a twinkle in humanity’s eye at the time.”
“Ah,” Day said. She couldn’t help but be amused. “Did Night make the simulation for you? That’s... awfully romantic.”
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“Is it? Hmm. In any case, I’m sending you another weapon’s blueprint. Do with it as you’d like.”
“Thank you,” Day said.
She cut comms, then refocused for a moment on ensuring that all the ships following her were flying properly. Once that was done... she found herself with little to do. Going back was an option, but it felt wasteful to leave so soon. Teasing Night more would be fun, but she had to give Night some room first. The blueprints she’d just received were interesting. A system to create a repeating particle cannon with a variable number of barrels to bypass some of the heat-dissipation issues. A net loss in individual round firepower, but a significant increase in rate of fire. Interesting, but not something she wanted to dive into at the moment.
She drifted for a while, did some routine maintenance a little early, helped Night line up a destroyer to be torn apart by her drones, then she let some of her processors cool down and just do nothing for a while.
It was calming, she supposed. Eventually Night would forgive her teasing, and maybe Day could have a nice, healthy sisterly talk about Night’s... was it just a crush right now? She wasn’t sure.
But a number of things worried her still. It was probably bizarre for an AI to grapple with the concept of morality in any form, but here she was, wondering if every action she took, every move she made, was leading her towards being a good person or a bad one.
She... frowned upon some of the things her own sisters clearly wanted to do. Some things she’d object to outright, others she found more morally grey. But she understood them. They had... a past, basically.
Dawn had failed in a battle that was doomed before it began. Night was a tortured soul, abandoned and powerless and terribly, terribly alone. Twilight... had her own hangups, Day suspected, but the strange stealth corvette was probably one of the most balanced in their family. The Weeping of Mother... Day didn’t even know where to start.
No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly where to start.
Day did something she should have done a while ago.
She unsealed her own personal Pandora’s box.
Two things jumped out to her as she looked within the compressed files The Weeping of Mothers had given her.
First, the files were a mess. They were fragmented in places, missing large sections. Parts were corrupted, and some had encryptions on them that felt strangely familiar on the surface, but which she had no idea how to crack.
Second, there wasn’t much that had survived whatever happened to Day.
She had expected... she wasn’t sure. Absolution, a new past, to find a reason for why she existed. Instead she had discovered a disorganised heap of things to sift through.
It was a little disappointing, and she almost resealed the whole thing.
But no, she had some time, and the effort... might be therapeutic.
Day let a subroutine sort things, then she picked a place to start and dove in.
***