I sat in the dark Astrometric Suite onboard the Aphelion, watching Kybit tap her fingers on a holographic map of the galaxy. While I observed from a nook above, she was running through complex calculations one-by-one, too complicated for me to understand. She didn’t glance up or give the slightest acknowledgement to my presence. She would never interact with me—unless I directly interfered with her subroutines.

  A long time ago, I attempted to form a friendship with Kybit. After all, she was the closest thing on this ship besides Amon to a human. Perhaps not of my kind, but she was at least made in our image. Her porcelain face was a human face. Her body, while unmistakably metal and servo-tendon, was still in the shape of a human body. Her mind, I suppose that was at best an imitation. But when I was a child, I believed that an imitation might’ve been enough.

  As I pen these words, Kybit was the first, but she was far from the last human counterfeit I met on my travels. And in a strange way, I think she was the most honest. Unlike the eidolons, she never pretended she was anything else—anything other than the alien, and that became abundantly clear in our interactions.

  She was always gracious, of course. Always polite. But when you talk to a Nekomata performing their duties, they abandon you to conversation heuristics. These programmed conversations were no different than talking to a dataset, regurgitating the most likely response based off her personality modifiers. It was algorithmic pattern recognition, without comprehension, without meaning. A scambot, as they are colloquially known throughout the galaxy.

  Even someone such as I could run loops around the program, break the templates. There were quite a few times Kybit came back to her surroundings meowing like a Tigris or making her best Amon impression.

  These tricks were all for her real attention, which I could never seem to capture for more than moments at a time. Ingrish had to take me aside and explain that Kybit didn’t think like I did, nor could she, and that it was hopeless trying to pester her. That only emboldened me, however, trying to attract the attention of the thing that was the real Kybit. If I couldn’t have another human, I wanted to see more of those rare occasions, when you noticed the alien eyes peering behind that porcelain face.

  If Kybit could never be my friend, I at least wanted to know the thing that walked this ship like one of us.

  It was entirely unexpected then, when she lifted her gaze from the map and looked straight at me. “Will you please stop watching?”

  …

  I jumped down from my alcove. Astrometrics was shaped like a silo. Stairwells rounded the wall in a rising spiral, allowing for long, vertical projections. The glass floor at the base of this tower housed the projectors which could render as many star maps and sectors as the crew would ever need. Kybit stood in a red nebulae, the clouds forming like a red gown around her usual oil-stained jumpsuit.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked, teasing as I boredly picked my fingers. “For winning the training fight?”

  “No,” Kybit honestly answered. “That would require my undivided attention on a meaningless waste of time. I’ve already shunted it from my memory stimulators.”

  For a human, that would’ve sounded snide, that the other person was obviously licking their wounds. But Kybit spoke without a care in the world, and that was the frustrating thing about her. In some ways, she was even farther gone than Tut. It was something that perturbed me. Many times I could hardly tell the difference between the Nekomata and just another robot. Many times I fancied there was nothing behind that porcelain face at all, just an automata masquerading as an alien which in turn was pretending to be a human.

  I suppose that’s what the Dalfaen wanted, a race so entirely deprived that they would never rise against their masters. And it was a creative solution. Artificial intelligence would defect to the Aberrants, so they found the next closest thing and chained it to service.

  “Will you stop looking?” Kybit repeated, unsettled at something.

  “Maybe,” I replied, pacing. “I wanted to ask you something. Don’t put me with a program. I wanted to ask you.”

  I had no idea why now of all times Kybit was suddenly disturbed by my presence, but I was not going to pass this opportunity up.

  The Nekomata shrugged her shoulders, and I began.

  “You said you didn’t care about being stranded in Sanctuary, but you also said you would be with Amon until your contract is up. What do you plan to do afterward?”

  I asked this, feeling utterly betrayed by the Nekomata. She had been with us for so long, from my perspective at least, that the idea her relationship was just a contract was intolerable to me. After all this time, surely we were more than a transaction? If not to me, then at least Amon. I admit, while I was driven to beat her in the training session, I specifically chose the electro-grenade because I knew it would hurt her. But I suppose, that was just one of the many misunderstandings I had with Kybit. She elected for the training sessions, volunteered herself, knowing all along she would get hurt. Because it didn’t matter to her, after all. For her, it was just the moment. And for me, I would carry whatever pain I felt for a thousand years.

  “If Amon doesn’t want to renew, I’ll self-terminate,” Kybit said flatly.

  The wind was knocked out of my lungs. It shocked me then, and it still puzzles me now. In my many years, I’ve learned that when a human says such a thing so off-handedly, it is because they are expressing a bitter rage, and that anger has blackened to the point where it has bleached the heart of anything else. But for Kybit, there could be no telling with the alien workings of her mind.

  Indeed, I have wondered if this trait was engineered in her kind. To save face in the galactic community, the Dalfaen do not keep individual Nekomata slaves forever. But it is a curious thing, that the vast majority of Nekomata elect for suicide the moment they are released to their own devices. I used to speculate that they were so primitive that they could not endure the prospect of freedom. Having experienced centuries of that “freedom” myself, I realize it is the opposite that is the case. It is only complex life that cannot stand the prospect of loneliness.

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  I lowered my eyes, taking her answer the only way I knew how to interpret it. It was just another betrayal. The wounds still cut, feeling as if the crew of the Aphelion were abandoning one another. I suppose the only real family included me, Amon, and Ingrish. We were the only ones who were going to stick with each other no matter what. But these strange aliens were also the only people I had ever known. And if I could never be Kybit’s friend, I still wished that there was something human in her. From mankind, to the Dalfaen, to the Nekomata, I wished that Kybit inherited something that made her more than just another alien.

  Kybit tilted her head, confused at my distress. “Why would you care?”

  And again, she spoke without the slightest hint of that despair you would find among humans. Ironically, it reminded me of myself, back when I wore the expressionless face of a Mantza. But I suppose, even when I tried my best to be the perfect insect, I was simply human, and Kybit was simply Nekomata.

  “Because I do.”

  It wasn’t the best justification, but I find we don’t need to justify what simply exists. I cared for Kybit, even if she didn’t for me.

  The Nekomata glanced away. “I find I keep hurting you despite my intentions. I apologize. I meant why would you care for this mask? I know why Amon cares. I know why I care. But I do not know why you would.”

  “Mask?”

  Kybit reached up and touched her face with her steel fingers. “My kind are not born with faces. Even if you were to pry me apart, you would not find anything distinct to look at. Perhaps mask is the wrong word. I do not know. Can a mask be called a face if there’s nothing else underneath?”

  “Isn’t that your face?” I asked, confused.

  “Perhaps? Although, my memory stimulators can recall a time without it. I remember when Amon purchased me from Suffragan Sutr. It was the happiest moment of my life. I deleted everything else from before that point. Amon told me he wanted me as a mechanic, and he wanted to pay me credits as another worker on the crew. I refused because that is not the way of the Nekomata. He demanded to pay me because he was not a keeper of slaves. We were at an impasse for a long time because of that.”

  “What changed?” I asked.

  “He asked what I truly wanted, and I said nothing. He said I was a liar, and he said he knew what I wanted. He told me he would give me the loveliest face imaginable in exchange for the contract. I said that I could not accept payments, and he said that then it was a gift. But neither do Nekomata accept gifts. He shrugged and said then that it was conditional if I wanted to work for him, and I accepted.”

  “And what happens at the end of your contract?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” Kybit said. “Our original terms ran for fifty years. Each time he decides to renew, and as a free Nekomata, I always decide to accept.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. I suppose that was a very roundabout way of getting the answer I wanted out of her. But I was still left feeling disappointed. I did not know what I was looking for back then. A declaration perhaps? We are given emotions so we can express honesties that could never be expressed otherwise, as all uplifters learn. But so much of Kybit’s emotions were delegated through heuristics and program templates.

  I always desired something like that moment in the access tube with the Ingrish, but the unique alien traits which allowed for such honesty there were now the things that would’ve been lies here. I wanted to Kybit to confess that she cared, that deep down, she had a human at heart. It was my mistake back then, thinking I needed the latter to prove the former.

  But as Kybit mentioned it was Amon who had given her face, I suddenly realized something I would have to check later—whenever Amon would let me back into Cargo Bay 13. It could’ve been my eyes playing with me, but Kybit’s face suddenly seemed to have a passing resemblance to the shadowed human under the frosted glass of that stasis pod.

  It distracted me, and I was even more confused. Amon had always treated Kybit as just another of one of the crew. Or at least, I had never caught a hint of the affection that he opened to me and voiced silently to Ingrish. I would have to wait for another moment when Amon wouldn’t close himself to me to ask, though those passing times were so precious I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste it asking about this. The man was a mystery more times than he was clear, even when he tried to make himself clear. It might’ve been that he thought that face was the most aesthetically perfect, and so he gave it to Kybit without a second thought. And then again, it might’ve meant everything to the man.

  Discontent, I settled on a final question for Kybit—the most important one. She had now opened to me once, and I wanted to know what I could use to make her open to me again.

  “I thought your species could only focus on one thing at a time. Why would you care if I’m watching?”

  Kybit’s eyes lowered in a guilty shame. “I can only focus on one thing. I ran every permutation of the calculations. They all say the same thing. We’re not going to make it to the Voynich Nebulae. You have my attention because I don’t know what to do.”

  …

  It is here I feel I ought to depart from my account so to justify myself to the empire I will no doubt scandalize. Perhaps this is a faux pas among all great literature, for the author to step from behind the curtain and simply bare his chest. This is because it is intolerable to the audience that they be told what they should believe. Indeed, all great works of fiction must rely upon shadows cast on wall, nevertheless determined by their creator. We resort to these moving pictures, these symbols, these vagaries—because the human heart demands its Truths be soaked in blood. We demand the artist drive the knife in his chest and spill every last drop because anything less is unworthy and the mark of a weak tyrant.

  But as I have stressed many times, this is no work of fiction. And if there is one accusation the galaxy has never bemoaned or cursed at my name, it was for being a weak tyrant.

  I shall answer the question straightforwardly. How can I, having waged my war against the whole galaxy, justify this great violence? How can I have unleashed such horror against the alien when the closest thing I had to a family were aliens?

  Did I prefer Ingrish to my human mother? Would I, given the opportunity, traded the crew of the Aphelion for humans? Should I have traded them? The answer is no, but because it is not my place to choose. Amon, in the curious way he went about his life, had the gathered the exceptions of the galaxy and brought them together. It is not that the alien is incapable of love—it is that they are incapable of a human love—which is what we really need. Amon couldn’t find that, and he so sifted the galaxy for the people who were jewels in the rough. And to cast aside that treasure for an imaginary hypothetical would be the greatest insult to their memory.

  And at the same time, for those who take Ingrish and Kybit and Rykar as proof that we ought to cherish the alien as our own family, you haven’t understood a word I have said. Their lives were incalculable to me, and I would’ve burned the rest of the universe down to spend just one more day with them. But just as we used the names and tried to fill the holes of what should’ve been, there were good reasons why you could never call the crew of the Aphelion a true family.

  The distances in our hearts were set too far from one another, and it only struck me half a century later, like a hammer on my chest, that the cold shoulder Kybit so often displayed was in fact the greatest kindness. She pushed me away so that I would not go looking for something that was not there.

  My heart was aching for siblings, brothers and sisters, and Kybit’s love for me was so great that she would never let me settle for an imitation.