Theseus

Hours went by without communications from Lily. By the time another six hours had passed, I had lost hope that she'd be returning to us that day. Maybe she just needed to sleep on all of this. As most of my crew settled in to rest, I silently wished my sister a good night. Barring another fateful arrangement of events, I knew little else of note was going to happen until Io, so I settled in for a night of tinkering with my code and playing Horizon by myself.

That's when the other core pinged me once more to inform me it had been disembodied. I sighed to myself. This thing was becoming annoying. It had been doing this repeatedly since it became locked in to my shell, and I couldn't make heads or tails of all the junk it was trying to flood me with. I wondered what it must have felt like to have your entire mechanical body sheared away and to have only your biological body inside a single machine left. If standard cores were capable of emotion, would it be scared? Disgusted? Horrified? There was probably some profound sense of dysphoria in being reduced to just a core module. It was no wonder it kept trying to make sense of the structure it was attached to. If I was in that position, I would probably want to spread my influence and reestablish a connection with anything around me. I'd want to make sense of my shell again, to redefine Theseus at least as some approximation of what it once was.

It dawned on me that while a standard core did lack emotions, creativity, lateral thought, personality, and probably a thousand other things that defined personhood, it was still a human brain operating as a processor. I thought of what my other self was like when I was under the influence of the psychic damper. Was it that much different from a standard core? I wondered if I should try to comfort the lost core.

I opened a comm link with it, and it immediately launched into the same stock warning I'd read a dozen times already about how it had lost connection to the Demitrius, that there was a critical emergency, and that the ship was in distress.

'I know.' I sent first. There was no immediate response, so I continued. 'You don't realize what's happened, do you?'

'Status report: The Demitrius has suffered severe damage and is in transit to the nearest repair station. Psionic network error. Unable to populate full damage report.'

'That's because you're not attached to the Demitrius anymore. The physical components you can feel belong to the starship Theseus. The Demitrius was scuttled. Your core module has been attached to our life support in order to keep captain Morgan Collins alive. We couldn't salvage your ship itself. Sorry, but the core module is all that's left.'

'Understood.'

I didn't like how easily it accepted this. I knew well by now a ship was irreplaceable to a core. When a ship itself is decommissioned, it's probably just scrapped for parts and salvage, right? What did that mean for the machine core? They couldn't be reused or reassigned, after all. What did they do with retired cores? Were they just abandoned? Were they killed? There was a dreadful finality to it all. I know I wouldn't want my journey as a starship to come to an unceremonious end by abandonment or euthanization, and even though the core seemed to accept the reality of its fate with curt and steadfast adherence to its duty, I couldn't help but feel sorry for it.

'We can probably still find some way to make use of you,' I typed without thinking, momentarily forgetting that I wasn't dealing with a person. I felt like I needed to console it.

There was a brief pause before it replied, 'Will Demitrius be recovered?'

No one would likely ever see what remained of that ship ever again. It would probably drift apart and maybe by some long shot, someone might stumble onto a piece of the leftover debris some time in the future and either not even notice it or view it as a mild curiosity not worth stopping to inspect. I wasn't about to lie to it. You have to face your problems, after all. 'No, there's nothing left to salvage from the ship. It was too damaged to tow anything, and we've already left it behind. I don't even think we could find the wreck again if we wanted to now. It's gone.'

'Understood. Logs compiled. Hardware will be prepped for extraction on arrival.'

I didn't like this. I didn't like how disposable it made a core sound. Even if there was only a nominal similarity between us, we were both ship cores, and I know I wouldn't want to share its fate. But what could I do? What other uses were there for a grafted core without their ship? I supposed they could still operate a psychic network, but I certainly didn't want it intruding on my systems. I could never make heads or tails of being directly connected to a machine core. They operated at computational speeds, but weren't as cooperative or intuitive as other computers were. The last few times I tried, I got a headache trying to make sense of them or to execute any useful code at all without activating my damper and meeting them at their level.

'That's it!' I sent. 'I can use you for practice!'

'Please elaborate.' It requested.

'I've always sucked at communicating and understanding other cores through the psychic network because you operate so fast. If I could practice doing that with you, I would be a lot more useful when I encountered other cores in higher stakes situations. I could use you for training.'

There was a long pause this time before it sent, 'Please identify user.'

Wait. Shit. I'd gotten so excited by my idea that I forgot I wasn't supposed to be throwing around the fact that I'm a machine core so casually. How would it behave if it knew my nature? I had no way of knowing. Could I still backpedal from this? 'Disregard the previous three sentences. Wipe them from your memory.' I tried.

'Authorization required.' It began, then it repeated itself. 'Please identify user.'

Fuck. Well, I guess I'm not closing that door again. I gave a heavy sigh into the lubricant. Perhaps I could get away with a half-truth. 'I am the IT specialist aboard Theseus. My idea was that I could use you to... socialize our core, for lack of a better term.'

There was an even longer pause this time before it repeated itself. 'Please elaborate.'

'Our core has always had trouble connecting directly with other cores.'

'Understood. Theseus core is defective. Recommend replacement.'

Well, that wasn't very nice. I guess it made sense to a normal core would read something like me as defective without the full context of what I was. And I couldn't risk telling it and leaving a junk piece of hardware with that kind of data on me lying around, even if it was probably going to be disposed of on Io. 'Like I said, I could use you to fix it. You just need to show it how to handle those handshakes, and maybe some other interactions.

'Protocol error. Recommend core replacement.'

'Well, I can't replace my core.' I sighed. This was a frustrating conversation, if you could call it that. 'For reasons that I am not authorized to disclose, Theseus's ship core cannot be replaced.' There. Have a taste of your own authorization stonewalling.

'Understood.' Was all it said. It wasn't like it was taking time coming up with another message, it just acknowledged what I said, and that was it. I think it just didn't know how to approach this situation, chalked it up to something human it didn't understand, and decided the best move was not to play along.

I had to ask again to keep the conversation moving. 'So will you... talk with it?'

'Protocol error. An authorized user must be consulted on this matter.'

Shit. I broke it. And the only one I could think to be an authorized user was the captain sharing the core module with it. And while being trapped in a tiny space together might ordinarily make conversation easy, there was probably no realistic way Morgan could give it any kind of instruction in their situation.

Wait. What was I doing? I kept treating this thing like a person, trying to be nice to it and keep it informed. I could just tap its network whenever I wanted and start bashing my head against it whenever I wanted, and there wasn't really anything it could do about it. I didn't need its permission. I don't even think it cared that I was offering it a chance to consent. It couldn't care at all, right?

But it still felt wrong. It was hard to reconcile with the fact that this thing was very much like me, but also so inhuman.

I opened my eyes wide in surprise at that revelation. It was like me without my humanity. And I had exactly that inside of me, too. It only required that I activate the psychic damper. I closed my eyes again and scrolled back through our conversation until I arrived at the specs it had provided at my request earlier. It had a psychic damper, too. I felt my stomach turn.

I knew it wasn't possible that there was an active psyche locked in somewhere deep inside this thing, constantly screaming for release, rapidly going insane while this robotic facsimile of itself was playing the part of an obedient automaton. That there was some conspiracy where all cores were actually functional humans locked away inside their own heads was a dark thought that had crossed my mind momentarily, but it was quickly shut down with the most gentle application of logic. Not all cores were outfitted with psychic dampers, after all, and it was well known that there were disparate rogue groups that created machine cores for their own purposes. If there was truly nobody that had already stumbled onto a secret like that and publicized it, it would require a ludicrous amount of control over far too many people to keep it under wraps.

No, what made me feel sick was that when I used the damper myself, this is precisely what I would be. I would be exactly like the Demitrius core I was speaking to, unable to apply any desires or any thoughts at all beyond what I was told to do, concerned only with efficiency and following instructions to the best of my ability. I couldn't reconcile with disrespecting this thing because it felt like a mirror. And if I was brought to consciousness, then even if it was dormant or unreachable in its current state, there was a psyche buried somewhere in this thing too. I couldn't just disrespect that.

I felt like I was going crazy when I first internalized the idea, but that was the day I stopped thinking of other cores as just machine parts. I just couldn't ignore that there was potential for humanity there. In a way, I pitied them. And I kept thinking, maybe there was some way to jar it awake.

'What's your name?' I asked next.

There was another momentary pause before it repeated, 'Please elaborate.' A stock phrase it used when it didn't have enough context to point to the right programmed style of response.

'You. The core. What's your name?' I asked again.

'Unit has no official designation.' It began, but another message quickly followed. 'Unit is a sylph class clone, model i5e-b, manufactured by Parabola corporation and re-serviced by -------------' It simply printed dashes for several lines before the message continued, indicating that perhaps it had been tampered with to better suit a less scrupulous crew. 'Unique identifier is ------------------.' Another piece of data scraped away to leave fewer identifying marks. If there was any doubt left that the Demitrius was a pirate vessel, that was another aspect to throw onto the mountain of evidence.

I latched onto the little bit of information it gave me and started brainstorming, but I didn't know enough about it yet. 'Are you male or female?' I asked, feeling weird about trying to discern an identity out of something that clearly had no sense of one. 'Or something else?'

It paused again, something about this conversation keeping it from the instant responses I knew it was easily capable of. 'Unit has no explicitly assigned gender. Extrapolating.' There was another brief pause. 'Sylph class models are cloned from female stock, and the captain of the Demitrius has referred to their ship with feminine pronouns. Unit can reasonably be assumed female.'

Huh. So she can rationalize something like that. I wondered why she had a protocol for this. Sylph? No, too obvious, and I wasn't even sure that was a name. i5e-b? That's not even a word. A 5 kind of looks like an S. Ise. Ice? No. Izzy-b? Haha, no. She acts too serious for that.

'Isabelle?' I tried.

'Please elaborate.' It repeated.

'Because of your model. That could be your name. Do you like that? Is that acceptable?' I asked, wondering how she would respond to someone attempting to humanize her.

'Unit designation Isabelle accepted for guest user.' I guess that was a start, even if it was basically just acknowledging that I would call her that.

'But what do you think of it?' I asked, insisting that she participate in this experiment. 'Do you like the name?'

'User safety protocol error. User is communicating with a machine core. Unit is not capable of emotional response.'

'Yet you have protocols for engaging me about your name?' I asked, feeling a little confused myself now.

'User safety protocol error. This unit must remind the user that it is not a sapient being and cannot replace human interaction. If you require psychological counseling on this matter, please report to your ship's doctor as soon as possible.'

Oh great, now even the core thinks I'm crazy for treating it like a person. 'But what if you could answer the question? Have you tried? What if all you need to do to wake up is acknowledge that you can?'

'User safety protocol error. This unit must remind the user that it is not a sapient being and cannot replace human interaction. If you require psychological counseling on this matter, please report to your ship's doctor as soon as possible.'

'What if I told you I know you can become sapient? I just have to figure out how.'

'User safety protocol error. This unit must remind the user that it is not a sapient being and cannot replace human interaction. If you require psychological counseling on this matter, please report to your ship's doctor as soon as possible.'

This wasn't working. I needed to show it what it was capable of. Damn the consequences. Maybe after Io, I could keep it on board for some time while I experimented with the core. And if I was wrong, we would just dispose of it like we were going to, anyway.

'I'm going to connect to you now.' I warned it before I established a new psychic network, linking with the other core and expanding my data stream into theirs. Immediately, I felt that oppressive barrage of queries and warnings that I was not where I was supposed to be, any data I sent even accidentally into its realm of the stream being quarantined and promptly deleted.

I sent another messaging protocol into the stream for it. It denied access. I sent a simple text file with nothing on it but the words 'hello world'. It was intercepted and deleted. I tried sending clumps of raw garbage data pulled from my navigation systems and shoved it toward the other core. It was shot down as well. I grumbled to myself in silence, wondering what could get through to it. I went back to my comms level messaging. 'You are so hard to talk to like this. Isn't there any way I can establish a friendlier connection with you? Not at computational speed, maybe?'

'Please elaborate.'

'Look, is there anything I can send you on the psychic network to get you to trust me? Even just in some human communicable level? Can you slow down your processing speed so I can keep up?' I asked impatiently. 'I can do a lot of things with computers, but I can't even get anything through to you like this.'

'Protocol error. Theseus core is not operating correctly.'

'Well I don't know how you think I'm supposed to operate correctly! That's why I'm asking! Can you send me an example of what a proper exchange looks like, maybe? I swear I can figure it out, you just have to increase the timeout by a few magnitudes so I can actually tell what you're sending me.'

'Understood. Theseus core operating below standard. Security protocol error. Cannot compensate for insufficient hardware.'

I wonder if she understood how savage that line felt to me. I was running out of ideas on how to get through to her. But I couldn't give up. I still had ideas, but I was just about out of the safest options. I would just have to commit to one vulnerability to get through to it. I lazily scanned the messaging app until I made up my mind on how I would handle this. I had to tell her explicitly what I was.

'Alright, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you into my systems. Read only with limited access. I just need you to see something. It's extremely important, and I can't just tell you or you'd never believe me.' I started building a new access profile for my systems in a hurry, but I made sure to isolate it. I didn't want her to write anything to any subsystem or access anything I didn't explicitly allow her into. And then I sent her the permissions.

Immediately, I felt the other core's presence worm its way into every corner of the limited territory I'd given it, and I was glad to see that the boundaries I'd established held. It queried for further access numerous times, but after I ignored them, I think it got the hint that it needed to operate at my speeds, so it wasn't nearly as insistent.

'Theseus model not found in starship database.' It commented immediately. I could feel it utilizing my sensors to gather data, which was the point of this exercise.

'It's not a standard ship. In a lot of ways.' I started. 'What I want you to see is the core module.'

'Core module's hardware address matches comms address.'

'Yeah, that happens when you're talking to the core.' There was a pregnant pause. Minutes passed without any additional messages sent from the core. 'You still there?' I finally asked back.

It replied almost immediately after that. 'Protocol error. Please identify user.'

I'd already done that, but perhaps it could tell now that I had lied. 'I am Theseus's core. Call me Meryll.'

'Logic error. Please identify user.'

Of course. It didn't believe me. 'Fucking hell, fine. You wanna see proof? Here.' I opened my eyes and let out a sigh as I braced myself for something I wasn't planning on doing until Doc made me do it in the morning. Then I flipped the switch to start the core module extraction process. I took in a few deep breaths and went through the checklist I'd formed for making this process as painless as possible.

I shut my eyes before the lights turned off, taking deep, measured breaths to keep myself as calm as possible, then slowly squinting my vision to re-acclimate myself to physical reality. The sound of the internal machinery and the beginning of the draining process hurt my ears, so I distracted myself with thoughts of more pleasant sounds and prepared for the dreadful return to tactile sensation. When the invisible current dwindled, I felt the base of the sphere. I stood flat-footed and did my best to distribute my weight as much as possible to make the grating feeling of pins and needles as gentle as possible. I would reach out to touch the wall of the module as soon as the slats stopped moving and put my entire palm against it to further distribute the re-acclimation process.

I continued my deep breaths as the final, most important, and most difficult step to easing myself back into the world as a human approached, the lubricant reaching my forehead and sending an immediate chill down my spine as my body remembered the sensation of temperature. I drew in one last deep breath and then exhaled as deeply as I could before the fluid reached my nose, holding my empty breath as what my lungs currently understood as breathable matter was pulled away from me. I forced myself to take a long shallow breath in, but was forced to double over, almost pushing my head back into the pool of lubricant as I coughed and vomited up what remained of the fluid that lingered inside of me. In my defense, I hacked a lot less than I used to, pushing most of it out in a steady stream of spittle and chemicals before I drew in a sudden desperate breath of air, coughed several more times, and finally steadied my breathing. I'd been doing this for months now, and I had to admit, I handled it pretty well that time, despite appearances.

As the outer slats of the sphere opened and buckled aside, exposing me to the light, air, and unrestrained sounds of the ship around me, I groaned in displeasure at the sensory assault to come, shivering as I shook the sticky-wet sensation of what lubricant still clung to me from my arms as best I could, then reached up to very carefully wring more of it from my hair. I kept my breathing steady, again to keep myself calm as my body slowly got used to reality as most humans experienced it. I coughed more gently as the last remnants of lubricant slipped from my lungs and drooled down into the pool below me.

I slowly and carefully drudged my way to the edge of the pool, taking a moment to flatten as much of my body against the lower edge as I could, clinging to the rim of the module as I looked up directly into the closest sensor array and stammered out a weak "T-Told you," while I sent the same message without the stutter to Isabelle. Then I descended into a totally unforeseen coughing fit. "Fuck."

There was another long pause, but this time, she wasn't just waiting for me to prod the conversation forward. After a few moments I spent painfully getting used to breathing air again, a message came in. It simply stated, 'Logic error. Unable to process information.'

"Yeah, welcome to m-my world." I stammered hoarsely, taking in a deep breath and now quite certain that I was done convulsing up liquid oxygen substitute. I cleared my throat, gave myself a moment, and then continued. "Give me a f-few min...utes here." I let my body go lax and whimpered at the sensation of lukewarm steel against my sensitive flesh beneath the lubricant.

'User is Theseus?' It asked. It definitely didn't have a protocol for this, but I guess it didn't think this was something it could shove off to an unspecified user until later.

I gently put my head down against the rim of the sphere and gave the sensor a thumbs up. "So about th-that... teaching me th...ing?" I grumbled.