IDENTITY: Mechanical Operations and Support Systems
→SUB-IDENTITY: Moss
TIME/DATE: 11:21/Januous 11, Year 90113 [System U2Ab Universal]
LOCATION: Vaesa [nylarian]
The inconsiderate asshole dog-turd fungus traitor worked on the engine.
I watched in silence.
After twelve minutes of analysis, my conversational awareness subfunction identified it asawkward, which felt like an appropriate label. Sequelta vel Dutch-Ath was rarely silent—either he had changed more in a century than he had in millennia, or he didn’t know where to restart conversation.
If the latter, I could assist.
“Since it appears you are unsure how to proceed, an apology is the primary function of this interaction.”
Dutch laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Incorrect. I have changed immensely. One hundred and thirty-three years necessitated it.”
I kept my speaker isolated to the engine room, and diverted one subsystem to analyzing Torian’s sleep pattern. But she was deep within a human REM cycle, which likely meant we had several hours to talk. Considering I had welcomed Dutch onto the ship, that suddenly felt like a very long time.
[A blink, for him.]
[Agony, for me.]
Dutch examined what Torian had torn apart, and tapped his chin. “The exhaust valve,” he muttered, bending deeper into the engine. I didn’t have a camera angle to watch his progress, but I retrieved theDestitute’s engine schematics and located what he was exploring.
“Torian already determined that,” I said, although I had no way of verifying if that was true.
“Smart girl,” he replied absently.
“Sheissmart. She is a solar-engineer pilot smuggler human.”
“Smuggler?” Dutch’s words were echoing as he fumbled for a wrench. Nylarians typically used ultra-strong magnet connectors, but Dutch had retrofitted this ship with screws and bolts—simply because we spent most of our time in this solar system, and that was what humans favored.
“Easier to fix later,”he’d said, eight hundred years ago.
[Neither of us had wanted to return to Vaesa for maintenance, after everyone left. Dutch’s reasons were complex and based in emotion. My reasons were based in logic: the logic that Kerracia was annoying.]
“Torian is a former smuggler.” I didn’t want to talk about that. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”
Dutch paused, but stayed below the engine. My cameras couldn’t see him. It shouldn’t have been a problem, but I’d written a few subscripts to identify sentient micro-expressions, and I didn’t realize how much I’d begun to rely on those. To counteract, I prepped several analysis functions to dissect tone and nuance.
His response left much to be desired: “I forgot.”
His emotions from least prevalent to most: Regret. Irritation. Apathy.
I did not expect a surge of emotion deep inside my central system. Perhaps I should have; it had been happening more and more lately.
“You forgot?” I repeated.
Dutch sighed. “Moss, I have no excuse. I am exceedingly sorry. I spent the better half of this century searching for you, but blast it, human space stations all look the same. I visited several—but none had records of where I’d docked.”
He had given me copious data with those sentences.
[All of it was insufficient.]
