Chapter Five - Return Trip
Taking the station apart wasn’t an easy feat. The station was clearly designed to be set up relatively easily, but it wasn’t built to be dismantled with the same ease. Day’s first day of work mostly involved using the drones she had to move anything loose into one of the station’s holds and into some of the tunnels in the asteroid below.
She lost a drone near the end of the day when a pipe burst and snapped out, striking a drone in the side and sending it crashing into a wall.
Still, it wasn’t that big a deal. There were hundreds more on Ceres, and a number of them were on their way to the station already.
There was nothing for it. Day sent The Weeping of Mothers back her copy, now with a lot more information, and got to work. Shipgirl AIs didn’t need sleep, nor were there days or nights in space, despite what her name might lead to believe, so she worked around the clock.
It took thirty days for the first of the drones to reach her. They weren’t able to accelerate nearly as quickly as she could. It would take a lot longer for them to return to Ceres, especially if they did so while loaded down.
She didn’t complain. The added drones came in handy.
One of them was labelled The Hearse, and it carried a large pod with dozens of empty stainless steel containers. She had her drones carefully, respectfully, move the bodies she discovered into the pod. Amber was the last to be sealed away. She felt that that was right, somehow.
The Hearse left with the first wave of materials sent back to Ceres.
It was plain and rather simple work, satisfying, even. As more drones arrived and left, Day continued to break the station apart into large batches of raw materials. Some things she couldn’t do much with, but she figured The Weeping of Mothers might have some use for them. Everything went.
This much pre-processed material was worth a lot more time than what she was losing taking it apart.
Then, after a second month of surveying and working on new, more efficient scavenging sub-routines for her drones, Day finished. The station was no more. All that remained of it were rows of raw ressources tied together in near bundles covered in nets ready to be shipped out.
She started to dig into the asteroid then. The rock itself didn’t have much of interest, no precious metals, no interesting kinds of stone or raw resources worth digging for, but there were plenty of caches and tunnels.
Mostly, what she found was fuel. Precious, beautiful fuel, lingering in large plastic tanks, sealed against the vacuum and likely just as potent as the day it was processed.
That was a great find all on its own.
Day dug out the tanks and placed them on the asteroid with a few lingering drones to keep watch over them, and then, with a final scan behind her, she took off towards Ceres.
She was carrying one final piece of cargo, as well as some dozen bundles behind her on her now-retrofitted drone-carrying rack. That most important piece was the station’s AI core.
It was entirely intact. A civilian model, and one that had been outdated even before the Accord appeared, but still, it was worth as much to Day as the entire rest of the station combined.
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This core, once modified, improved, and patched up, would one day soon house her sister. The entire trip, she poked and prodded at it, bursting the boils of rampancy growing across its surface.
It would take an AI far stronger than Day to really repair this one core, to break the rampancy, and to truly both fix it, and turn it into more of a person than just a mere station AI, but she still thought it was possible, and worth the investment.
Or maybe The Weeping of Mothers would just wipe the core clean and start over from scratch. It would take a little longer, but it wouldn’t be too hard to do.
The trip back was almost entirely uneventful, until The Weeping of Mothers and Ceres became close enough that near-real-time communication became possible.
-Direct Communication Link Established-
“Hello, Day,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m alright,” Day said. The truth was she was starting to feel a little... she wasn’t sure. Heavy? Maybe it was a psychosomatic syndrome of having the drone rack and several tonnes of materials strapped to her hull?
The link broadened, and Day found herself invited into a simulation. She accepted, and soon was in her near-blank body, sitting in a cafe. American, this time, late 70s, with Elvis on the radio and a walking cat in a pink waitress dress behind the counter.
“It’s not very healthy, but I like the taste,” The Weeping of Mothers said as she took a sip from a large glass cup. It was filled with some sort of pinkish milkshake.
“Uh, okay,” Day said. The cat waitress passed by and set a similar milkshake in front of Day. Curious, she turned the straw around and took a sip. She was hit by a too-sweet taste that made her spine shiver. It was... interesting. She both felt it, and could dissect the code that had made her feel that way.
It left her feeling a little vulnerable, actually, but not in an unpleasant way.
She filed that away for later.
“You haven’t changed your appearance yet,” the older Ai said.
Day shook her head. “I haven’t. I was busy. Should I make it a priority?”
“Only if you want to,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “My... progenitor thought that it was important, that the self should reflect the self, even if it was merely virtual. We are us, we are who we choose to be, in a way that most will never have the opportunity to experience. And I chose to be this.” She gestured to herself, her human avatar.
Day stared for a moment. The Weeping of Mothers’ avatar was a woman in her early adulthood, with long brown hair, orange-brown eyes, a sharp chin, and breasts which Day suspected were only possible thanks to her digital existence. Day... didn’t know what that was supposed to tell her.
The older avatar wore business casual, though today that was just a clean shirt under her habitual lab coat.
Day wasn’t sure what to make of it. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I’m almost at Ceres.”
“I saw. Thank you. Your discovery, these materials. They’ll help a lot.” The Weeping of Mothers took a long draw from her milkshake, then let out a contented sigh. “I finally feel like things are looking up.”
***