“What… what is that?” Munto exclaimed via the walking frame at the bounding pile of organics which had immediately hopped out of the stasis unit and proceeded to look around, taking everything in.

“It’s my pet, Reginald. Reggie for short,” Rix said, a wide grin on his face.

The being, whatever it was, was half the size of Munto’s walking frame. It moved around the room in a curious kind of hopping fashion, sniffing a huge subsection of the room, which included Munto.

“And Reggie is?” Munto prompted, locking the walking frame into ocular sensors movement only.

“Oh, do they not have rab-hounds anymore?” Rix asked.

“I am uncertain without access to my databases back aboard myself,” Munto said with as much authority as they felt was reasonable.

“Based on everything you’ve said about humans disappearing and going extinct, makes me wonder if rab-hounds still exist. How about it, Reg? How’s it feel to be the last rab-hound?” Rix called over to the pet called Reggie, who bounded over and the Terran appeared to rub the face of the creature quite vigorously, flapping the ears and shedding organics all over the place.

“So what is a rab-hound?” Munto asked.

“Oh, I know this one. They’re a kind of cross-breed come genetic project between a pet from Terra, genetic adaptations for the colony where I grew up, and cross-bred with one of the local animals. We call them rab-hounds because they hop instead of run. Gives them a wicked kick and jump,” Rix explained, still stroking Reggie, albeit less vigorously.

Munto tried to picture and understand, but without their many databases for reference against organics, they felt blinded to so many insights the Terran seemed to think was instinctive.

“I would very much like to be reconnected with myself, Rix,” Munto quietly requested.

“Can’t do that yet. I need you to tell me how to disconnect whatever it was that almost killed us. And I’d love for you to troubleshoot my reactor too,” Rix answered.

“I would prefer to do all of that from onboard myself,” Munto insisted.

“Munto,” Rix stopped petting Reggie and moved over to the walking frame. “What guarantee can you give me that it won’t immediately start trying to take over again?”

Munto thought about this for a long second, made longer by being so disconnected.

“None in truth. But now that I know it exists, I can build in safety protocols against it,” Munto asserted.

“I wouldn’t count on that. No, you’re staying right here until you can give me wires or blocks to pull. In the meantime, I can plug you into the Esperanto. Or I can try, rather. This was actually my seventh attempt at making those power connections,” Rix said, rising to their full height.

Munto wanted to protest, but decided against it. Rix had a point and until the both of them knew how to disconnect it, it was significantly less risky of them both to leave Munto partially disconnected at a minimum.

Munto still really didn’t like it.

“Stay here, Reggie. Munto and I are going to go see about hooking him up,” Rix said, apparently to the hopping pet, which proceeded to lay on it’s side on a softer section of the ground, sprawling their legs.

Reggie emitted a kind of rough sound that didn’t translate to anything that Munto could find readily in the downloaded lexicon, but given that it was likely a low-sentient, at least under the conventional scale of galactic society, it likely had no well understood meaning.

It was at that moment that Munto realized that the Terran had some degree of artificial gravity.

“What have you done to grant yourself artificial gravity?” Munto prompted as they moved from the room.

“I haven’t. We’re under thrust, so it gives us a minor fascimile,” Rix said, without glancing back and continuing to move at a fairly slow pace, allowing Munto to keep up with the walking frame.

“Are your inertia dampening systems still offline?” Munto asked, examining all that they could, trying to remember the map they had made of the interior.

“Don’t have one. The Esperanto was too small to carry one and my thrust rating isn’t high enough to warrant one,” Rix said and waited a moment. “I just realized I left a hook there for a dirty joke, but you aren’t likely to catch that one.”

Munto reviewed the statement.

“Would it be reasonable to assume that it was some manner of self-deprecation related to the thrust rating of your vessel?” Munto tried.

“You’ve got it. Except less my vessel and more me personally,” Rix turned his head and a large grin was evident. “We’ll get you telling your own dirty jokes here before too long.”

“Does your vessel not suffer ill effects from mis-aligned geometry from operating at thrust?” Munto tried prompting.

“Not really. It was designed for a long cruise to outside the heliosphere, a long jump, and then a long cruise sunward. Not a lot of need for speed control and even when there is, you just turn around and reverse thrust. The trick to remember which way the toilets are supposed to be facing and to make sure they’re stowed before you make the turn or start coming to a stop,” Rix chuckled at the end of this last statement.

Munto remembered the lexicon’s reference to ‘toilet humor’ as it had been described in being highly important in Terran culture and so decided to emit a matching chuckle.

“Did I just hear you laugh?” Rix turned around and proceeded to walk backwards, facing Munto instead.

Munto wanted to comment about the unsafe nature of the Terran’s behavior in moving backwards, wanted to check the database for this type of maneuver and movement by various galactic species organics, and wanted to check for instantiations of humor among the TACITs who worked with organics on the regular.

“I did. I concur with your assessment as to the important of stowing appropriate equipment when conducting maneuvers which may result in messes, broken or damaged equipment, or broken or damaged personnel,” Munto explained, skipping over lexicon explanation.

“Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then you have to do their job too,” Rix turned back around and took a sharp turn down a comparatively narrow passageway.

Munto could see the logic in that response, particularly when applied to void-side duties.

“Here we are,” Rix announced and pointed to, in the middle of the narrow hallway, a set of sliding panels surrounded by more analog levers, each a bright color that Munto was having trouble focusing on. They were obviously there, but for some reason, the walking frame kept wanting to look away.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Munto instead looked inside the doors.

Sitting on the central column within what could only be called a storage closet, their core was tethered into place with various loops of cabling hanging off of it.

Munto knew what a TACIT core looked like based on archival knowledge as part of their formulation, but it was… rare… no, exceptional to ever actually see one. And it was more than a little disconcerting to see their own, knowing that they were looking at their core self.

Munto wanted to avert their sensors, but just… couldn’t. There was something about it.

“A bit like seeing your innermost guts, right?” Rix prompted.

“Something like that, yes,” Munto said, checking the lexicon for the reference on ‘guts’, finding the reference to a large Terran wielding a large slab of metal to be unlikely to be the definition in this case.

“Hopefully you don’t mind helping me figure out which inputs need to go where. I haven’t had any time to actually get you fitted for any sort of standardized connections. Not even sure how that’d work in any case. I’m just lucky that the power connection I cooked up didn’t blow your circuits,” Rix said, reaching in.

Munto didn’t want to look, but did so anyway.

First, Munto had to tell Rix what kind of connectors and adapters they would need to be able to hook Munto into the Esperanto. The data wasn’t… too dissimiliar, but would require some adaptation before being connected to Munto and the same for data being sent from Munto to the Esperanto.

Because of Munto’s earlier work with the TriForce connection, they already had some idea on how to internalize the process of data handling, so less adaptation would be needed.

The Terran had managed to plug in two of the five power connections somewhat correctly, so the next task had been to splice those and distribute them appropriately.

Munto shuddered as the Terran worked, but he did so rather efficiently (for an organic), so Munto could hardly complain. Particularly since the walking frame didn’t have the right tools or elevation to work at the necessary height.

Over the course of the next hour and significant explanations between Rix and Munto, during which the Terran appeared to begin leaking, they managed to make one connection that wasn’t power related.

Munto tested it and found it to be the Esperanto’s secondary waste disposal system.

The Esperanto felt slow, compared with Munto’s usual self, akin to being dragged down. Not as a challenge of processing, but of bandwidth. The trinary systems feels slow compared to the q-pairing networking that Munto used.

Munto could actually count the milliseconds before responses were received. They complained of this to Rix.

“Come on, now. The Esperanto is brand new… was brand new. One of the fastest and most robust networks the Colonial Administration could afford, or at least that’s what was advertised. Faster than my scroll for sure,” Rix replied.

“A brand new pocket computer doesn’t mean anything compared to my systems,” Munto retorted, perhaps a bit more forcefully.

Rix grinned, despite the wording.

“That almost sounded downright Terran. One of the first times you’ve actually sounded more like a person and less like a machine,” Rix said, looking at the walking frame.

“Is that a compliment?” asked Munto.

“More than just a little one,” Rix said, looking back at what had grown to be a further mess of cabling. “Any chance we can head up to the mess and see about some grub and maybe you can get the printer to give me some adapters to make this go a bit faster?”

“I would concur with the latter portion of that recommendation. This frame requires recharging,” Munto commented.

It was a strange feeling for the walking frame to need recharging. They hadn’t used it this much in such a long time.

Together, they made their way back to where they had left Reggie and Rix had enticed the being to come with them, indicating that it was ‘snack time’, something which the being apparently understood.

Passing through several more spaces, they reached a small room with a number of chambers. Munto had looked in this room, but as it had held minimal power readings, it had served of no major interest at the time.

Rix depressed a series of buttons and two containers were lowered into a slot, where the Terran retrieved them.

He removed the cover from the top one, grimaced slightly and then put it on the floor, where Reggie hopped over to it and immediately began to messily consume it. To Munto, it was almost disturbing to watch the being eat.

Rix proceeded to set the other container and the now extra lid on a platform with a seat and then moved over to a wall point with a small cable end hanging out of it.

“Come here, Em. I did my best to try fitting your walking frame with a TSC type power coupling. It’s what I tested with before I tried hooking up your core. This should work,” Rix gestured with the cable end, which appeared to variably extend from the wall.

Munto moved the walking frame over and observed the Terran’s insertion of the plug into a rather odd looking adapter that Munto hadn’t noticed before now on the back of the walking frame.

A small spike of energy and that same ‘greasy’ feeling filled the sensors of the walking frame, but Munto was able to confirm that the on-board batteries were recharging, if only at a slow rate.

“How’s that working?” Rix asked.

“It is slow and inefficient, but it will suffice,” Munto replied.

“Good,” Rix said and went to where their meal was and sat down. Reggie had already finished their meal and had hopped over to observe Rix uncover their own. “No, Reggie. You don’t like Tryn lasagna, so stop begging.”

Reggie appeared to sit and observe the Terran intently. Munto pre-supposed that this was something of a ritual for the pair as Rix proceeded to grab a piece of whatever Tryn lasagna was and lowered it for Reggie to smell it.

Reggie appeared to not like the smell of it, but still seemed interested in Rix’s consumption of it all the same.

“He’s a greedy beggar, but he knows that he shouldn’t have. He’s a good food checker, that one,” Rix said, his mouth half-full as he rapidly began consuming the contents of the container.

“Is it common to provide food from your own portion to your… pet, I believe you called them?” Munto asked.

“You’re not supposed to, but almost everyone does it at some point. Trick is to avoid anything that will make them sick. Reggie here is pretty resistant to a lot of the standard stuff since he was going to be coming to the new colony and he had to be able to eat whatever we can manage to give him,” Rix said, in between bites.

“Is Reggie a sentient?” Munto decided to ask.

This took a moment of thought by Rix, who slowed their chewing accordingly.

“Not in the same way that you and I are, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Rix rather more eloquently put it than Munto expected.

“Please explain,” Munto requested.

“Well, Reggie and most pets are smart to some degree. It’s part of how they’re raised. We’re their family and they recognize that, but they aren’t smart like us. Or most aren’t. And there are laws against doing mental uplifts,” Rix said, still slowed in their consumption.

“Uplifts being increasing sentience?” Munto queried.

“Something like that yeah. Basically, the TSC figures that beings should get started on their own, you know? And then come find us,” Rix replied.

“That is not in line with what has occurred since the dissolution of your TSC,” Munto commented.

“Yeah, I’ve been reading some of that galactic history you downloaded for me. Can’t say that I agree with it, but at least there’s some pretty strong sentient protections out there it looks like,” Rix said, gesturing with his hands as he continued to eat.

“That is my understanding. It is also the reason for the previously discussed ongoing debates on scales of sentience,” Munto gestured similarly with the walking frame.

“Still, can’t blame them. Sometimes, it’d be nice if Reggie here was a bit smarter, but I still love him just the way he is,” Rix said, setting aside the meal for a moment to cup Reggie’s head in his hands again and rub their face vigorously.

“Should Reggie be out at this time?” Munto asked.

“Technically, no, but I figured I’d introduce you two. Plus, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. He went into stasis just before we left the station and it was two weeks for us to get to transit distance. Plus then the week I’ve been awake. I’d planned on not seeing him for about a month, but given that we’re still sublight for now, figured I might as well get him up to stretch his legs and enjoy a bit of ship time before I have to put him back under,” Rix said, stroking Reggie’s head, as Reggie made a kind of happy rumble.

“Is that a pleasure sound?” Munto asked further.

“It’s his happy noise, yes” was Rix’s reply, his eyes clearly fixed on Reggie’s.

“On an unrelated matter, I believe this frame will need some additional time charging before I can assist with communicating adapter needs to the mobile printer,” Munto said.

“Oh that should be no problem. I figured out that you set it up to be able to talk to my scrolls, so I figure maybe you can use that while I take Reggie for a quick run and empty before he goes back into stasis,” Rix pushed the now empty container and lids to one side of the table, grabbed up the container which Reggie had eaten out of to set next to the other one.

Rix then proceeded to pull out the scroll from a leg pocket and handed it to the walking frame.

“Back in a few. Come on, Reggie!” Rix called and Reggie immediately followed, suitably ignoring the walking frame holding the data scroll.

‘Back to this analog mess,’ thought Munto as they unrolled it and began trying to figure out how to locate the pre-stocked templates they had loaded into the mobile printer.