I Fell From The Dark

16

She hurtled through space.

It was nice, somehow, just to be a thing. Just to be a hunk of machinery, alone, millions of miles away from anything else. There was no physical pain, and the quiet and calm meant that her soul hurt less.

Being alone in the darkness, a tiny mote of nothing, gave her a serenity which she hadn't felt since waking up in the ship. Maybe ever, she thought. My life before seemed to be composed of crises and stress. That's assuming that those dreams were really from another life before this.

What am I?

At that thought, the probe ran a self-diagnostic scan. It noted that it – she – had two non-standard additions: a dozen torpedoes and a little white box with wires trailing from it, running into the probe. The box housed a computer of staggering power. It was about the size of...

A human head.

There you are, she thought. That's me. There's no way that there's a biological brain in that box; there's no air, or water, or food. I'm a machine.

What was all that about me being wired to a sleeping body on the ship?

Am I a simulation of myself? A copy of some previous biological Mia? Or was that always me? Did Pilgrim just take me apart, rip my mind out, and wire me up into this thing? I must be here, physically here in the probe: a delay of an hour and a half would mean I couldn't possibly operate it remotely.

You lying piece of crap AI. Why did you spin me all that bullshit?

She didn't even feel angry. I guess it's because there's no glands in me, she thought. No hormones pumping through me. I'm just pure intellect.

She closed her eyes, and let the calm return. The darkness was her friend, not her enemy; she was invisible and untroubled by anything.

OK, she thought. I need to kill this thing, and somehow live to tell the tale. What did Pilgrim mean by 'making it so I survive this'?

She checked her schematics. Ah yes: explosive bolts attaching my brain-box to the main probe. I could throw this switch, and blast it off. So Pilgrim did care, after all. Or maybe this is just another one of her stupid games. But, I'll take it.

Why the heck do I have torpedoes? As she said, the momentum of this probe would be enough to wreck anything it hits. Also, why does a colony ship have weapons?

Oh, hang on. Ah yes. The torpedoes are preprogrammed. I don't actually have any control over them. They'll launch just before I get to the point where the previous two probes were fried. The torpedoes use compressed gas to manoeuvrer. No heat, nothing to make them visible. They're pure insurance, more options if I don't get the job done.

Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence, Pilgrim.

But I have other things to worry about now. So where's our new mutual friend?

She soaked data into a vision algorithm. Ah yes, there it was: the unknown ship, visible as a dirty smudge in front of the accretion disk. Not particularly large, maybe the size of a car.

She was heading straight at it. It was unmoving, although gently glowing with emitted heat. Whatever powered it was running hot.

Come on then, she thought. I'm not going to die for nothing.

Something clicked in her mind. It was the strangest thing that she'd ever experienced: her perception slowed down, so that seconds stretched out like minutes. Whatever her mind was, it was capable of overclocking itself.

She manoeuvred, releasing compressed gas to nudge her course. The ship was screaming closer and closer towards her, kilometres being eaten at a terrifying speed.

Her missiles launched simultaneously, pushed away from her by more puffs of gas. They drifted out, black cylinders almost invisible in the dark, accelerating gently, spreading out to make sure she hit something.

Then something pinged, a laser range finder hitting her. She remembered the last probes, how this was their end; this gentle tap would soon be followed by a massive burst of heat. She closed her eyes and blew the bolts, to throw what she hoped was her mind into space.

Everything went black, an abrupt shutting down of all her feeds. This wasn't the gently sparkling darkness of space: this was the hard void of total sensory deprivation. No sight, no sound, no other sensation at all.

No, there was still some data. Her remaining battery power flashed, a simple countdown to a permanent death.

So that's it, she thought. I can sit here in the darkness, watching a number tick down and I'll just run out of energy and die. But I think that if I do this... I can go into a sleep mode. I'll use almost no power, and whatever battery is in me will be able to keep me going for some time. Looks like decades.

Well, here goes nothing. I hope someone picks me up.

She was about to set herself into sleep mode, but then paused.

Do I want to be picked up? I'm honestly not sure I do, actually.

She sat in the darkness, alone, and uncertain. But then she remembered the calm of being a hunk of metal hurtling alone under unknown stars, of how serene she had felt.

Maybe it is worth living for. Ah well. Goodnight, strange universe.

And she slept.