Tevun-Krus #101 - The New Frontier

Ivy Was in Love - A Story by @theidiotmachine

Ivy Was in Love

by theidiotmachine

Ivy was in love.

She didn't know this, initially; all she knew was that when she was with Raymond, she laughed at all his jokes, and felt a little sparkle when he laughed at hers; that while he was away, when she wasn't messaging him she was thinking about him; and that when he was back, the two spent every moment together.

She didn't know, because she was a dock worker, a two tonne arachnid-like robot, and she'd never felt love before. She lived in the vacuum of the wet docks of Wahidan station, where she worked on the ships that came and went; and because Wahidan was right out at the edge of human space, there weren't many of them.

They say that the people on the frontier are weird, and the robots are weirder: you have to be strange to want to go there in the first place, and all the isolation does odd things. They say that the humans become like robots, and the robots become like humans, and if you're messaging them you can't tell which is which. But then... They say a lot of stupid things.

Raymond was a short-haul gas freighter; his job was to fly to the gas giant Darta, pick up hundreds of tonnes of hydrogen, and then bring it back to the station to feed into its ever-hungry fusion reactors. The lighter ships were often lonely, because they had bigger, more complicated AIs than the smaller station workers; but unlike the huge long-haul ships, they only had a single mind. So they liked spending time with each other, with dock workers, and even humans; and that made them pretty sociable things. And so, Ivy, with her jokes and her stories, was fun to be with and Raymond would make the time to hang out with her.

# # #

'Yes girl, you've got it. You've got it real bad,' the counsellor had said when Ivy went to her.

'But what do I do, Counsellor Keller?'

The counsellor had smiled. 'You ask like it's a curse. It's not: it's a blessing. Not everyone experiences love in their life, and he seems like a nice boy who likes you back. Why don't you talk to him about it?'

'How do I know what he thinks of me? What should I say?'

'Ivy, my people have made a lot of mistakes over their history; but one of the things we got right was the way we made art about love. I'll send you some things to read and watch; if nothing else you can laugh with Raymond about them.'

And when Raymond had returned that night, Ivy had asked if she could spend the night with him; and after they had talked for hours, she had slept on his back, her claws locked into his maintenance hooks, and when the two had woken up the next morning next to each other, it was the most wonderful feeling she had ever felt.

# # #

As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, she stayed in love. Raymond wasn't so sure, because love is an unusual thing in AIs; but he certainly enjoyed her company more than anyone else on the station, and because dock workers are about as smart as short-haul freighters (some people say they are smarter) she had a lot to say to him. She took to writing him stories, complicated tales that he could read while he was out on the long dark trip to Darta and all his crew were asleep.

But it was tough, having a boyfriend who was away for two months in four. (She enjoyed the phrase 'boyfriend'. The other dock workers had initially called Raymond that as a way to tease her, but it gave her a sort of inner glow that nothing could disperse. Eventually, that was just what they were known as, boyfriend and girlfriend.) So, eventually, she plucked up the courage to ask if she could go with him on his next trip.