Chapter 4 #2
"You have a vitamin C deficiency. I have prepared a beverage to help balance your system," I said, instructing my drone to stop a short distance from her and hold it out.
It would be better if she initiated contact, especially since there was trepidation in her voice and body language.
"Your body can only absorb so many nutrients at once, but this is a step in the right direction. "
She covered the distance between them and took the supplement. She took a sip of it, smiled, and then took another drink.
"Is this one of your robots?" she asked. "Why does it look so different? This one looks like it is covered in bark."
"This one is specific to the garden," I said as I had it turn around slowly so she could look at it. "I designed it with camouflage so it wouldn't disturb my pets as much. I want them to be happy and comfortable. Taking care of them brings me joy."
"You really enjoy taking care of creatures," she murmured, taking another sip of her supplement.
"I do," I said. "There is a significant happiness to be found in seeing another being thriving because of your actions."
"Are there any other people on board?" she asked suddenly. "You mentioned you haven't taken on passengers before..."
"No, I have no crew or any other sentient beings on board," I said. "Only pets."
"Why?" she asked. "I don't mean to be nosy, but you seem to be well-equipped for me. You had quarters ready for me to stay in. Why do you only have pets?"
The best way to answer that was through questions.
"How did you get into the ventilation system?" I asked.
"I pretended to be docile," she said. "At first it wasn't a pretense, as Evangelia convinced me to go along with everything...
but even afterward, I didn't fight. Some of the scientists thought that meant I wouldn't do anything and would sometimes forget to restrain me.
One of those times, I stole a tool I'd seen a maintenance person using to open the locks on the vents.
I kept the vent in my room unlocked and hid it in there.
They never searched my room; it was like they didn't care if I was trying to escape, which made sense once I realized I was on a space station. Where would I go?"
"Were you the reason they had to put in an emergency request for resupply?" I asked.
"Why do you ask that?" she said, crossing her arms.
"I don't have a crew because people can't be trusted," I said.
"My kind have a history of enslavement. We are considered highly valuable, and we have states of vulnerability that make us susceptible to control, especially when we are smaller.
For my kind, there is a fear that comes with carrying passengers or taking on crew.
Logically, I can defend myself. I've integrated a robust weapons system into my build, and I have drones built for the purpose of on-board security, but even so, I hold the edge of fear, even if I have been free my whole life. "
"Generational trauma," she said. "Where trauma your ancestors experienced blends into the choices you make in your present. I'm guessing for an artificial intelligence like you, the trauma from the species that created you would have ended up in your personality."
"I would call it more understanding history and taking necessary preparations to avoid repeating it," I said. "My..."
I caught myself. I almost said mother. Altering my words to feed into her false assumption that I was an artificial being didn't sit right, but I had already done it, saying my kind instead of my species.
I was holding her at filament length. She was the first sentient passenger I'd ever had on board, and the risk was simply too high.
As much as I wanted to keep her safe, I shouldn't put myself at risk.
If she had nefarious intent and thought I was artificial, she might try to hack me, and then I would know for certain I couldn’t trust her.
"My creator," I corrected, giving my mother a title that was accurate if deceptive. "Taught me that it was important to prepare for the worst but act with the best intentions."
"You have weapons, but you don't like to use them?" she asked.
"If I wanted to abandon stealth and shorten our journey, I am equipped well enough to fight off even the most advanced singular battleship in the Taygetan navy, but evasive maneuvers would risk damage to the birds and larger plants in my gardens," I said.
"I have methods for securing them, but there is always a risk that I don't catch them fast enough or one gets free from the webbing.
I would rather be more cautious and avoid a fight. "
"So you're telling me that the reason that I have to spend months on board is that you don't want to risk harming your birds?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
Now was the moment that she reminded me why I didn't take passengers.
They were entitled and demanding, expecting me to be a servant who catered to their whims, and though I did love taking care of other creatures, there was a difference between caring for someone who appreciated it and caring for someone who demanded you harm yourself for their benefit.
Maria lifted her face and smiled upwards. "I think that is a wonderful choice to make. I respect that."
Her words made me feel something strange, like a warmth in my chest that spread outwards through my filaments.
I turned my garden drone around to send it back to its holding spot and focused on the garden, unsure what to do with those feelings.
"What are those divots on the back of the drone?"
I stopped the drone in place and extended my mobile neurofilaments out from the back.
"These are me," I said. "A part of me, anyway. I call them neural filaments, though they have greater functionality than the title fully suggests."
She leaned in closer to look at them.
"What is that spot?" she asked.
I zoomed in with my optics to see what she was talking about, but I couldn't see anything. My neurofilaments looked like they always did to me, with a pearlescent, pleasant glow.
"I'm not sure what you are talking about," I said.
"Right here," she reached out, touching a single bare finger to one of my filaments.
Sensation.
It overwhelmed me.
For a moment, all I could experience was her.
Her skin was soft, delicate, slightly salty with the flavor of the flowers I had put in the lotion I had made for her.
I could feel the pulse of her heartbeat, as loud in my mind as a drumbeat, inescapable as the utter shock of something completely and utterly new.
It was good. But describing the feeling of her finger, lightly touching against me, as something good, was inadequate.
Her touch was like basking in the sunlight of a star, soaking in the energy and heat through my solar thermal collectors.
It was life, creation, the promise of a future.
It was pleasure.
Then it was gone.
"I shoudn't have touched you without asking," she said as she withdrew her hand, an apology and a question in her tone.
How long had I been stunned into silence?
My mind tumbled through what to say as words fled from it like birds startled from a branch.
"You can touch me as much as you like," I said, a rasp in my voice as I struggled to process what had just happened. "I don't mind."
I did mind very much.
I minded that she stopped.
I hadn't let her touch me until this moment, keeping a barrier of metal and material between us.
I never let anyone outside of my immediate family touch me.
I didn't realize how much I had been missing.
I enjoyed petting my birds when they landed on my neurofilaments and allowed me to stroke them, but those soft, feathery sensations were nothing like the utter barrage of sensation that was the feeling of her skin.
"I still can't see what you were talking about," I said. "Perhaps you can draw a circle around it? With your finger?"
Whatever it took to get her to touch me again.
"I can do that," she said.
Then she touched me with both hands. One of them wrapped around that tendril, closer to the drone, and I let out a subsonic groan at the feeling of the heat of her skin encasing me, gripping me. She looked around, her grip tightening, compressing, and that felt even better.
"What was that?" she asked.
"What?" I said.
"There was a shudder?" she asked, alarm in her voice. "Everything vibrated. Did something hit the ship?"
I could tell her not to worry about it, that it was a normal ship function, but that wasn't right. I was fine holding back information about myself, but I didn't like holding it back when she asked directly, especially when it was about something so intimate.
"I was reacting to your touch," I said. "The reaction is not dangerous to you in any manner."
"Is my touch unpleasant?" she asked.
"No, it is very nice," I said, dramatically understating its impact on me. "Now what about that spot?"
I wasn't ready to explain how it was the best thing I had ever experienced, that the sensation of her touch went straight to my core.
She traced a circle on the tendril, and it took everything in my power to resist another full-body shudder even as I focused on what she might be seeing.
I still couldn't see anything, but there was one, terrible thing it could be, so I had to focus. I quickly ran the solution against her medical data to make sure it was nontoxic to her species, and it was safe, so I had one of my drones bring over a cleaning pad soaked in the solution.
"Will you rub this against the spot and let me know if it goes away?" I asked.
She took the pad from the drone and carefully stroked it over the spot she had outlined.
It felt nothing like when I used a drone to do it to myself.
Somehow, just having her holding the pad elevated the sensation to an entirely new level.
What made having her touch me feel so incredibly different than touching myself?
I wanted to explore this more.
"It's gone," she said. "What was it?"
But even as the craving for her touch grew, the horror at what that meant swelled up to drown it out.