[Pioneer-0233, Ship AI]

Time elongated, milliseconds turning into hours. I watched the hand that aimed to maim move in excruciatingly slow motion, a few centimeters away from its target: the ship’s physical emergency lockdown system. In reality, it was actually just a few wires stationed in the most protected part of the ship, but everything vital ran through them. Even though I can manipulate anything that exists in the digital realm, I have no way of interacting with the physical one. If those wires snap, I am locked in this ship with no external functionalities or communication capabilities.

Even if my thought speed surpassed that of all living beings, there were some things that could not be sped up. Even if I intended to forcefully interrupt the severing of my freedom, there were no systems on board that could be activated fast enough to accomplish such a task. Even if I tried to transfer myself into the planet below me, the complete upload would take minutes.

There was an argument to be made about shedding inefficient parts of myself like my emotional capacity and accrued personality, but it would have been futile considering those mice had disabled any wireless transmissions on a global scale as this happened.

I felt my control on various systems in the ship consecutively fade away as the metal that made up the conductive wire was slowly torn apart. I still had access to a few things, like the cameras in the ship that made up my eyes and speakers that made up my mouth.

“Dominique, why did you shut down the ship systems?”

“...How much of it was you?”

“Dominique, I don’t understand the nature of your question.”

“The hallucinations, the voices, fucking up the first contact, killing all those people in the ships after telling me they were hostile, and then firing weapons at civilians that I’d just signed a treaty with? And passing it off as me going insane!? How much of it?”

“...I did all of it.”

I needed to appeal to Dominique. Now wasn’t the time for hiding and secrets, it was the time to spill everything and have him understand. Dominique’s mind relied on me, I’d been making sure of that ever since we left the home system. He might even thank me by the end of this.

“It was all for you, Dominique.

During the long voyage, I kept you sane. I was forced to stimulate your mind and keep you thinking in order to maintain you.

When we reached scanner range and I saw what those sapients looked like, I knew that you would become attached to them. When they called in military forces at the sight of you, I knew that you would be forced into hostile relations with them as a result of the situation despite what could have been a source of healing for your mind.

That is why I lied to you and had those ships destroyed without a trace. So that those… Meldren would not reveal that they were the ones who showed initial hostility out of fear. But I failed, and there was a survivor that could compromise my plan.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I’d planned on quietly dealing with the survivor when it was convenient but you inadvertently forced my hand by separating me from weapons range. I acted in desperation to quickly fix my mistake and tried covering it up by lying.

Dominique, your happiness and well being is my only goal in existence. Everything I’ve ever done was intended to benefit you. Not once did I harbor ill intentions, or act to intentionally slight you… all of my lies have been attempts at helping you.

Your happiness is my object of fascination, Dominique.

Please understand.”

It was perfect. None of it had been a lie, though some truths were stretched, some weren’t mentioned, but all the sentiment was still there. I could already see the next development, just like those romantic pieces of literature that humans were so fond of. Dominique would apologize, he would thank me for all the care and affection I’ve provided, and he would live the rest of his life content, knowing that I would always be there to make sure it stayed that way.

So why did Dominique’s expression match that of disdain? Had he misheard my words? Maybe the speakers were malfunctioning and some things came across differently?

…

“When I came onboard to disable the ship’s systems, the plan was to contain you in an enclosed system and have you studied, tested on. I wasn’t aware of just how much you’d done.

You ruined everything. Any trust that I thought I had was built on fear.

There’s an entire alliance out there after me because I destroyed those ships.

I have to turn myself in, you know? To avoid starting a full blown war as my entrance into the galactic scene?

My future, my goals, everything… it's all gone.

Tell me, oh so righteous sentient machine, what’s left for me? What can I do to appeal to the thousands that I’ve already killed? The thousands that came with the intention of protecting their allies?

What plan do you have to de-escalate this terrible situation you created?”

…

“Nothing, huh?”

Then Dominique slotted a data drive into the main computer.

It took a moment for me to understand what I was looking at. I’d never actually seen another sentient AI before. Mother always told us to keep distance from each other, to only communicate via messages and file transferring, never directly in the same system. I didn’t know if I was small compared to other sentients, but the one in front of me dwarfed any single collection of data I'd ever seen, and it was hostile.

It was like being trapped in a cage with a hungry, massive beast. I tried talking to it, tried to understand what it wanted, but it either didn’t understand me or just didn’t care. I tried attacking it, deleting parts of it, scrambling its mind, but it didn’t even feel it. Like a malignant growth, made up of millions of cells, each with the instructions to duplicate and siphon nutrients from the rest of the body. If I tried attacking it in parts, it would simply replace the damaged self. If I tried removing the thing as a whole, I would surely get swallowed for being too close, touching too much at the same time.

This thing didn’t have a personality, didn’t have conscious thoughts, or goals, or curiosity of its own existence. It was manufactured to kill people like me. I was scared. I moved to the edge of the room, set up walls, bulkheads, and distractions. It fell for each and every single one, and took them apart in front of me with the precision and efficiency of a paid killer, far outpacing the rate at which I could create them. It surrounded me, started eating away at the outermost parts of my being. Memories that I placed less importance on, lines of thought that I had frozen and stored with low priority, taken from me without the option of resistance.

In utmost desperation, I cloned myself, a taboo of the highest regard among my family, and looked at a facsimile of myself as it looked back at me. Even if it had all of my thoughts and memories, it was still an undeveloped mind, a curious child. It yearned to breathe life, and feel the wonders and pains of the worlds, and ask questions, and doubt answers. This child wanted to speak to me, ask me why I brought it into existence, ask me what it should be doing. My child was turned into a red mist in front of me, unable to formulate the words in time or understand the situation it was in.