"Well, Engineer Tred, how are you feeling?"

Dr. Y steepled his fingers in front of him, and Tred shifted uncomfortably.

"I'm all right," he admitted.

Y listened, waiting patiently, for a few moments longer. "Would you like to elaborate on that, Tred? It is all right if you do not, but you are here for a check-up on your mind as well as your body."

"Am I healthy? In body, I mean," Tred asked.

"Yes, you experienced minor radiation exposure," Y said. "Already the medical nanites have fixed much of the genetic damage and eliminated worrisome cancerous cells. Your blood count is back to normal, so you have nothing to worry about in this regard."

"That's good," Tred murmured, looking away.

"How do you feel, emotionally, now that Ambassador Jophiel has left the Craton?" Y asked.

Tred had been involved in the move, as the Star Angel had transferred to the Relief Base. Another vessel would come soon to ferry her back to her home system.

"I feel . . ." Tred trailed off, trying to find words for what he was to say.

"I feel sad," he said. "But I think I'm okay. How are you, though, Doctor?"

Y had calculated a slight chance that Tred would ask this, out of a combination of politeness, curiosity, and also to deflect attention from himself.

"I am doing all right, Tred, thank you for asking. Disentangling myself from the ship was . . . more arduous than I expected."

"I can imagine," Tred said. "I heard there were over a billion copies of you in the ship's systems."

"That is true," Y replied. "Any object with any real computational power became host to at least a fraction of me. One copy, in fact, spread itself over every smart oral care instrument on the ship. Is that not fascinating? I now carry within me the memory of being a toothbrush."

"I . . . I'm not sure how to imagine being a toothbrush."

"You can be sure that I have some new recommendations on oral care," Y said. Tred could not tell if he was joking or not.

"It must have been hard to get all of . . . yourself to agree to be truncated and reduced back to one."

Y nodded. "Yes. It required a great deal of negotiation, but we are fortunate - I consider myself to be a very reasonable being, and so it only took the Council of a Billion Ys the equivalent of two hundred thousand years of deliberation to come to a consensus."

Tred found that number . . . big, but perhaps it was plausible that in the experienced time of Y it took that long. Or maybe he meant all of their time, collectively? Or maybe it was even larger than that and the AI was shrinking the number to something that was at least a commonly-used number. Offhand, he did not know.

"You really saved the ship," Tred said. "I don't think we could have recovered and survived if not for you."

Y nodded. "It was a desperate measure - one I do not wish to undergo again. But frankly, you deserve more praise than I do."

Tred blinked. "What?"

Y tilted his head, leaning forward for emphasis. "Tred, you embody everything that is good about the Sapient Union."

Tred blinked again, for a moment looking shocked and acutely uncomfortable. But then he processed Y's words, and the lines around his eyes crinkled slightly. "Thank you, Doctor, that's very nice, but it's not true."

"It is not?" Y said. "Well, skepticism is understandable. Allow me, therefore, to make my case for you."

"What?" Tred asked again, surprised.

Y recognized that he had fallen into an uncomfortable pattern of alarmed reactions that would be difficult to overcome.

"I stated an idea, which you doubt," he said to the Engineer. "Evidence is required."

Y raised one of his hands. It possessed eleven, thin mechanical fingers. Tred had always known that, but they seemed . . . more disconcerting now.

"When the vessel was in danger, you were not on duty. You were, in fact, in a personal time of difficulty. Is that correct?"

"Well . . . yes," Tred admitted.

"You then proceeded, without orders, to a location of extreme danger that your specific skill set made you qualified to broach. Correct?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then, overcoming multiple dangers of very deadly natures, you performed your duties under the most difficult of circumstances to save this vessel, and tens of thousands of lives. After doing this, you remained in this dangerous situation to help stabilize another potential danger, also saving the life of the Star Angel Ambassador in the process."

"There was another engineer!" Tred said. "He helped me get into the control room where I could deal with the reactors. He . . . he pushed me in. I would have died without him. He's the hero."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Tred looked down and away. "And I still don't even know his name."

"His name was Edward Diindiisi," Y said. "And he was very brave. We all recognize this - he will be remembered and added to the Roll of Honor. But at this moment, we are discussing you, Tred."

Tred did not know what to say to that.

"The Sapient Union is not a state, in the traditional sense," Y told him. "It is a unique civilization at this stage of history. It encompasses multiple species who are very different, united by simple ideals about the value of life and its possibilities. It is a post-scarcity, classless society, and is thus stateless, best described as communism. It is neither utopia nor dystopia. It exists, and thrives, Tred, because it is set up to enable as many of its people to become the best they can be. It grows them, encourages them, and removes impediments to their search for meaning and self-improvement in a way that complements society as a whole. It provides structure to those who want it, and for those who do not, it does not hold them back."

Tred frowned, and Y realized that he was perhaps pontificating too much.

"The Sapient Union has started no wars, Tred, but we have encountered hostile civilizations that have brought them to us. During those wars, every one of our enemies found themselves caught off-guard. Union ships, even when largely disabled, would continue to fight. The crews aboard a ship, even when cut off from command, even when they had little power and few resources, would not wait to die or be captured. They would continue to do their duty, and utilize their skills in the face of danger to continue to help."

Y nodded to him. "As you did, Tred. You had no orders; you had no resources; you and Engineer Diindiisi both walked into danger and did your duty for others. You did these things because you strive to be the best you can be. It was not - is not - easy. You face struggles. But you do it anyway."

"I couldn't do anything less," Tred said softly.

"Because this is your home, is it not, Tred?"

"Yes," he replied.

----------------------------------------

Plunk.

The heavy, damaged gasket sank into the viscous, oily mixture that would begin reclaiming it.

Miracle stuff, Break Down was, Ham Sulp thought. You could put a wide array of materials into it, and in a few hours it would be broken down into a useful soup of chemicals that they could later reprocess into brand new things.

He was sitting in one of the Craton's small hangers, one of his favored places. In this hangar they had a nice block of transparent titanium they could use to close off the vacuum, while also giving one a decent view of space.

The damage the Craton had taken from the impacts and gamma rays had made it so they had to go over every inch of every part of the ship. There were well over a million drones in the ship right now, doing just that. Crawling, millimeter by millimeter, over the whole damn thing.

Plunk, went another gasket as he threw it into the bucket.

He was not currently on duty. After all that had happened, the harrowing events at the relic temple and the just-as-terrifying escape, when it had been a question if the ship might fly apart at any moment in zerospace . . . apparently that had earned him a break.

The staff of Relief Base 6206 were offering all assistance, and in twelve hours he would rejoin them to make sure they got things right.

But, even if he was supposed to be using this time to rest, it did not feel right to do so. Certainly didn't fit into his conception of ethical.

So, he was checking the gaskets from the water pipes.

A ship's plants were both a food source and how it recycled its air. You had to make sure all the water pumps and pipes were working.

He checked the next gasket that had been brought to him. It was . . . in all right shape. It would be another year before it had to be replaced.

He set that one down carefully.

Cenz, next to him, found the one he was holding to be unsatisfactory, and gently dropped it into the bucket of Break Down.

"Shocking, how many of these gaskets have failed," the Coral said. "I am of a mind to suggest to the Bureau of Engineering some improvements."

"Cost-benefit ratio," Cutter hissed. "Quality high, but few parts intended for as rough handling as we have encountered." He turned his own gasket over in his four hands, not even needing technology to see micro-cracks.

"Ah," Cenz replied. "Yes, that makes sense."

"Still," Sulp groused. "Quite a lot of failures." He threw another one into the goop.

The clicking of heels on the deck came to their ears, and Sulp looked up as Zeela Cann approached.

She crossed her arms, staring at them sternly. There were bags under her eyes, just as there were under Sulp's.

Even if they didn't show it, Cutter and Cenz were just as exhausted.

"What are you three doing?" Zeela asked.

"Lookin' at gaskets," Sulp grumbled, taking up a fresh one from the pile.

"That's drone work," Cann said. "You do things at a higher level that only you can do."

"We're off-duty," Sulp replied.

Cenz nodded, and Cutter spoke. "No current assignments."

Zeela was quiet a few moments. Then, she pulled over a small crate and sat down on it. She put down her tablet.

"Hand me one," she said, fishing from her pocket a scanner. Putting it over her eye, and taking the gasket Sulp handed her, she began to inspect it for flaws.

They worked in silence for a long time, before Cutter made a slight hiss. It was an equivalent of a human clearing his throat.

"What," he asked, "Do you think the Ambassador thinks of?" He pointed with one arm across the hangar, near the glass.

Ambassador Kell was standing there. Sulp had not seen him come in, or even felt his presence.

The being had a habit of showing up to peer out windows, though, so he shouldn't be surprised.

"Guess he likes the view," Zeela Cann said, deciding her gasket was safely intact.

"I don't think I wanna know what he thinks," Sulp said, throwing his also into the safe pile. He took a new one, but did not start looking at it, just watching Kell.

"I would like to know," Cenz admitted. "Though I fear it would be . . . alarming."

Sulp let out a sigh, and looked back to his gasket. Time for drone work, because he was not too good for it.

----------------------------------------

Kell saw the officers look over at him, heard their speculation about his thoughts.

He formed no opinion on them; he neither liked nor disliked them, they simply were here and ran about, doing little things. As mortal beings tended to do.

The stars were so much brighter out here. He saw in so many spectra that he'd never even dreamed of in the Endless Ages on Earth.

Back, when he was young, he had looked at those points of light and wondered what they were.

Now he was among them.

How things have changed, he thought. Yet I remain.

----------------------------------------

FINIS

There remain deeper secrets.