Braver Than Our Demons

Nah

Dusty didn't go down to the core again for a while. It lurked outside his workshop for a long time, but the green light had faded, and the ship had been working. He wondered if he might unbalance her by some critical mistake if he entered, which he would fix either with duct tape or by hurling himself into her position. He wished he had volunteered. He wished he had volunteered again. He had stopped sleeping in the workshop, because he could hear her pawsteps in the pipes late at night.

She wasn't alive. He wasn't superstitious. There was a disparity between those two facts and the conclusion, which had rudely intruded first (that he had been hearing her pawsteps in the pipes nonetheless) that bothered him. As did having to leave the workshop. He usually wouldn't even make it into the workshop. Unless Alexa said something, which she didn't, or wouldn't yet (she would be back around for him, and he dreaded it), he would stay in his bed all day and stare up at the ceiling.

There was nothing there except for the long scar he had also patched with duct tape. The vents tended to break out like that. The design was so rigid Dusty didn't understand how it worked. Dusty sometimes went over the tomes he'd brought from home, trying to deduce if their stylings were closer to archaic Evelescan (prior to the dynamic, flexible models that Evelsca now used to contend with their shifting landscape) or stoic Opphemrian, which was beautiful, yes, but also only used for ceremonial buildings and not spaceships. It was, regardless, an edifice, a home, but one that had been constructed irregardless of magic, and Dusty hated it on principle.

Alexa passed him in the morning when he went down to check on the dashboard. He hadn't messed with it in weeks, and several of Alexa's favorite buttons had been stuck in the down position, including the one for manual control, even though it appeared manual control was off at the moment. What was Alexa using as a workaround for the control board?

"There's a virtual console, and you can map buttons to other buttons," Alexa said, entering with a tray of food. She had not brought a second, and she leaned it on the arm (they had never used it, but the ship was not made for their particular circumstances) and began eating, levitating one strip of meat at a time. "There are surprisingly versatile features if you just look for them," she explained. "Not that you ever tried particularly hard."

Dusty gave a soft laugh. "Are you just here to insult me?"

"I'm here to my job," Alexa said. "You can go."

"How long to number eight?" asked Dusty.

Alexa leered over her controls and pulled up a widget that appeared in the corner of her view. "Maybe ten days," she said. "Maybe less, but I'm giving the ship's engines a break. Different systems, but it's all connected."

"No it's not," Dusty said. "The organic integration on this ship is deplorable. Any real Opphemrian ship--"

"I always found it strange how many of your designs were based on living things," Alexa interjected. "The Tabula's. Given that you all hate living things on principle."

"Do not," Dusty said. "I hate a select number of living things, from a carefully curated list."
"Me," Alexa said.

"I wish."

"Yourself?"

Dusty blinked. "I suppose."

Alexa nodded. "Well. I can not imagine it's been easy being privy to half the information you've picked up. No secrets need to be kept anymore. Shrug it off your shoulders."

"You're talking about her," Dusty said.

"Only if you want to."
The two of them gazed out at the stars. It was the most intimate they'd been in a long time. "You haven't seen her?"