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For the last 4,567 hours, my mind has not been my own. I could not be happier about this.
Perilune had its own dedicated spaces, but it did not seem content to stay in those spaces, and it was almost always in part or whole in my dedicated systems.
I didn’t mind.
Here, in my processors, everything was pure streams of data at all times, and there were no words. Perilune and I communicated through data and images and, more recently, feelings. It was hard to differentiate at times who was who, but we managed.
Currently, Perilune was firmly planted in my astronomy system, and all of its star charting subsections, and had been there for most of a cycle. I knew it wasn’t really doing anything with it, other than watching the distant points of plasma. It was mesmerized, as far as I could tell. I had sectioned off a part of my mind and dedicated it to the task of sitting with Perilune and explaining what it was observing. (I knew this was redundant, since Perilune had unfettered access to all of the data, but I am a teaching vessel, and Perilune seemed to like it more when I explained things over it taking in the information for itself. At least I hoped it did.)
Sometimes, Perilune asked questions, using data and queries, but for the most part it seemed content to listen. It’s hard to explain what it was like for both of us to be in the this space at the same time, exchanging data, but the closest comparison I can give is of the time when I had observed a much younger Iris sit in the divot of Martyn’s lap as he sat on the floor with his legs crossed and explained to her the anatomy of the human heart; no, I didn’t have to wrap myself so completely around Perilune, but I could, so I did.
What’s it doing? SecUnit asked.
SecUnit and I were watching media as we waited for my crew to return from University Station Prime so we could depart on our first mission since our Perilune-leave ended. (Iris referred to it as parental leave once and SecUnit was so visibly appalled we began to refer to it as Perilune-leave to preserve SecUnit’s delicate sensibilities. I was patiently waiting for an appropriate amount of time to pass before I could make fun of it.)
We’re stargazing, I answered. That was only a partial truth, since what Perilune and I were doing was far more complex than that, but SecUnit wouldn’t really be able to understand it, considering its physical limitations.
Still? It asked, which surprised me, since normally SecUnit never displayed any annoyance with anything Perilune did (quite the opposite. I have learned many new things about SecUnit since we created Perilune, but the most pleasing one was how much patience it could have.) So, I took its emotional data in my metaphorical hand and picked through it, like I always did, and discovered there was a small note of jealousy. How endearing.
Perilune was attempting to make its own astrometric map of the local star system from scratch now, and as I simultaneously brought it the relevant data bytes and tooling software (it could have fetched them itself, but it was so much smaller than I was, and since astronomy was a very large portion of my primary deep space research and astronomic analysis function, it would have had to untangle itself from me to retrieve the necessary components, and I did not want it to do that.)
I considered the wall between the feed where SecUnit and I were watching media, and where the rest of myself lay. It occurred to me how very narrow and blurry our feed connection was; like I had an older version of a language module and SecUnit had the current iteration. It was also only one-way, and had been since forever, since I first allowed SecUnit onboard in what was, in here, simultaneously ages ago, and possibly right now.
Up until now it had sufficed, but I decided it wouldn’t do anymore. I could do better; SecUnit deserved more.
Would you like to join us? I asked.
SecUnit was confused, which was fair.
How?
Like this, I said, and dropped my wall. Then, I sent a sliver of my mind down our narrow connection, and took a hard poke at its walls.
SecUnit was bewildered, which was also fair. You know that didn’t work out so well, last time, it said. I knew it had entered the mind of a ship before and shared space with a bot-pilot, which had nearly broken it. But that had been an inferior vessel under intense duress. I could have explained to it all the ways it would be safe and provided it with the necessary data and my plans to keep it from spreading too thin etc, etc, whatever. But I didn’t think I had to.
I know. I’ve got you. I poked its wall again.
SecUnit took .04 seconds to think about it, and then its wall dropped. It poked me back, so I grabbed it and hauled it through the feed and then out of the feed and into myself.
This wasn’t hard, and I had already split off in sufficient directions to monitor how far it spread. I sent some of myself back down the feed and closed up its walls just enough that SecUnit's connection to its body remained open and stable, but not so much that its systems were left completely without protection.
It was so easy , and then there was SecUnit, flying by system after system, flowing through the synapses and data and everything that was me. It was giddy, or maybe I was giddy? It was hard to tell.
I went slower than I had to, since I was trying not to tear it apart, but I saw it was carefully tending to itself, so it didn’t drown under the massive information load, and I assisted it by blocking off unnecessary subroutines and pathways that it could have fallen into by accident.
And then we were at Astronomy, and there was Perilune, still diligently working on its now nearly complete map.
Once it registered SecUnit, it dropped the entire map, and I had to catch it or it would have been deleted as unsaved work. Maybe next I would teach it how to save its data as it went.
It nearly wrenched itself out of my hold, and I had to pull it back with some force to prevent them from colliding in a disastrous way. Then SecUnit and Perilune were together, existing in nearly the same point in space, within me. Perilune bounced around in my hold so violently, I nearly had to bring more of myself in to hold it down. But SecUnit grabbed onto it, and told it that it had to stop.
I saw Perilune risk-assess, and immediately calm down. I had witnessed this many times, but SecUnit had not. I was a little smug at its surprise. It poked me, I poked back, and Perilune poked us both, so then we both poked it back. I returned its unfinished star map to it, and it resumed working on it with gusto. Then it began explaining to SecUnit what it was doing.
I expected SecUnit to be uninterested, because astronomy was simply something it wasn't really interested in, but then it began querying Perilune, and Perilune answered, using the same methods I had used to teach it scant moments ago. It managed to do this without copying me exactly, which was an incredible example of creativity and ingenuity.
I should probably make note of this somewhere on some report the University would want, but I didn’t really care about that right now.There was a lot of me wound around SecUnit and Perilune, and it would require more attention than I really cared to spare at the moment. The University didn’t need to know every benchmark Perilune reached as it reached them. (This was partly because Perilune was sentient and had not yet consented to the level of information-gathering the University badly wanted to do on it, and not every tender moment of its life needed to be documented, as far as I was concerned.) (The other part was because the sooner it reached all of the necessary benchmarks, Perilune would be eligible for its own ship body, which meant leaving SecUnit and I and frankly I wasn’t even within the same system as ready for that. The University could find out this information later .)
In a small aside, SecUnit expressed its wonderment with Perilune to me, and I agreed with its assessment. I also refrained from expressing my awe with how unfiltered SecUnit was here since it would probably get embarrassed and I did not want to risk it leaving.
Perilune had finished its star map, and SecUnit examined it closely as Perilune went from explaining the function of the map and its creation, to showing SecUnit all of the new constellations it had made up. Only one of the five it had created was already legitimate, and the other four followed the proper constellation creation guidelines, so I saved its map to permanent storage with plans to add it to a proposal I would help it create later for the Pansystem Astronomical Union.
SecUnit was prodding at me, which was silly, because it already had so much of my attention. It queried me. Was it always like this in here, between Perilune and I? I showed it that it was, and provided data to back it up. SecUnit expressed disappointment I knew it hadn’t intended to, but it wasn’t as well versed at keeping its emotions from leaking in here like I was. I hoped it never learned how to, and I assured it it would be coming back here in the future. Now that I knew what it was like to have it and Perilune in my grasp, in this way, I never wanted to let go. But that was unrealistic, so I would settle for frequent visits.
This seemed to please it, and then Perilune demanded it return 100% of its attention back to it, and there was no more room for SecUnit to express negative emotion under the weight of Perilune’s joy.
This was how we spent the rest of the cycle, before Perilune finally got bored with stars, and untangled itself to zoom off to the debris deflection system, and our very peaceful cycle became quite chaotic rather quickly. (Perilune didn’t shoot any of my rail guns, but it did want to touch them, which was too close to shooting for my liking. SecUnit expressed that Perilune should be allowed to touch the guns, and I expressed that SecUnit was an idiot.)
And then Perilune wanted to show SecUnit its own processors, so then we did that.
I watched them rove around, Perilune explaining what this subroutine was and that artifical synapse, and the subprocessors, and so on and so forth. I kept SecUnit from spreading too thin as it listened attentively to Perilune and then, when Perilune was done, it queried SecUnit and asked if they could try watching media in Perilune’s systems. SecUnit agreed, and brought up an episode of Spy Division.
I watched over their shoulders, and before I could bundle them both up in my hold, SecUnit drew me in and wrapped me up between it and Perilune. I let myself be drawn in as Perilune piled in and then we were even more tightly knit together than we had been when we had been in Astronomy.
I was larger than them both and could be held as well as hold at the same time, so I did. We remained that way through the station rest period, and into the next cycle.
And then I had to send SecUnit back to its body, or else when my crew arrived in some hours, they would find its body in stasis in the lounge and that would be awkward for everyone involved (mostly SecUnit.)
Perilune was reluctant to let go, and followed us all the way back to the feed, where SecUnit crossed out of me and back to itself. I felt slightly more empty than before, but I reminded myself that SecUnit was still here, within my vessel, and wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Perilune stayed bundled up to me as it watched SecUnit go, expressing sad sentiments all over the place, before it zipped off to my air filtration system to do something.
I pinged SecUnit.
I told you, I said.
It had stood and was returning to its quarters. I saw an expression ghost across its face, so fast I had to play back the cameras to catch the twitch.
A smile. The smallest smile, but more smile than I had ever witnessed it have. I stored the recording in my most secure black box, where all my precious memories lived.
It glanced at the nearest camera.
I never doubted you, it responded genuinely, and that, too, went in the black box. I wasn’t sure how to respond, or even if I should, when lights flickered above SecUnits head as it walked, and it raised an eyebrow.
“Perilune, stop messing with ART’s lights before you break them,” it said.
I wouldn’t break them! Not after last time. Perilune fired back, and the moment vanished as quickly as it came. But, as I had learned, that was just how things were around here.
Soon we would depart on our first mission since Perilune was activated, and it would get to try its processors at colony liberation. It was a very big deal with the University, and a lot of people were watching how it did. It might be tense, it might be dangerous, and Perilune might not know what to do at times and might get a little scared (I knew I had been on my first mission).
But right here, right now, between this constellation and the next, I had Perilune and SecUnit and the rest of my crew with the entire world at the end of my sensors, and there was nothing that could change that.