Diane had heard of ‘nice guys’ and “Nice Guys,” but this was the first time she’d met a guy who was so nice he seemed too good for this world.

  “Oh…my…gosh! You’re a Morvuck!”

  Diane had to struggle to keep from ughing at the enthusiasm, “…I am…”

  “I heard the dinosaurs never died out on your world, is that true?” the man’s question might have been somewhat insulting if he weren’t so clearly earnest about asking it.

  “Well, they aren’t ‘dinosaurs,’ strictly speaking. They’re dinosaur-like megafauna. Distant cousins to my species, from what I understand,” she took a sip of her Jyantin Tonic…or what the station could synthesize of the stuff, which based on her trial run during the character creation process wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing. It was good enough, though, that she kept drinking even after the slight disappointment. “The megafauna that exist are more like...alligators, I guess. Fully reptilian, no bird or mammalian features whatsoever, though there’s obviously some features in common between them, us humanoids, and the avians. Morvuck birds developed a lot like they did on Earth, megafauna developing feathers and then evolving smaller and smaller until they’re…well, I guess on Mortan they’re a lot bigger than on Earth, probably feed a whole football stadium on one thanksgiving bird.” She smirked as his eyes lit with childlike wonder.

  “Do you think,” groused Norma with fond exasperation, “That we could eat at this, our lunch?”

  “Oh, right!” Russe snatched up his fork and speared it into the spaghetti on his pte. Like everything else made by the station’s synthesizers, it was good but not great. Diane was dutifully eating all of hers if for no other reason that her body needed the calories and proteins. The day before yesterday she’d nearly colpsed and, upon dragging herself to the med bay in the lower levels of the Ops building, it was determined that she hadn’t been consuming nearly enough calories.

  Katrina had read her the riot act, informing her soundly that even if she’d been raised on Earth that didn’t excuse her from taking care of herself. Reading between the lines of the tirade, Diane had figured out that the average Morvuck needed approximately three times the caloric load as the average human and twice the protein. She’d been wondering why she was so hungry when she’d been eating as much as she normally did, but then different bodies (even if virtual) meant different needs.

  Katrina then asked when the st time she’d seen a gynecologist was, and when Diane had truthfully answered, “Never,” the digital assistant railed against the state of modern medicine and idiot bureaucrats who didn’t know how to properly care for orphan girls and proceeded to have the medical drones give Diane a full workup for her female anatomy.

  Diane had, honestly, felt…odd about it. While some of her discomfiture was due to the act of clinical probing that the med bot had done, the majority of it came from the humiliation she felt, not at being a man and having a woman’s procedure done, but from feeling good about a procedure only being done with actual women being done to her, it being for good reason (her virtual body did have all the proper parts and this world was designed to mimic real-world conditions, including the possibility of certain afflictions that women, specifically, had to worry about), and that someone, even if they were just a training hologram inside a VR game, was taking her feminine appearance at face value enough to treat her like any other woman.

  Barely making it back to her quarters in time, she’d had another breakdown like she’d experienced in the character creation process. Just as confused as ever, she found herself questioning everything about herself, her life, and how she got into this position. Had she not committed to herself no fewer than three times now that no matter what she was going to complete the mission she’d been given, she’d have hit the emergency log-out option in that moment.

  How are other pyers not experiencing this?! The thought rang through her repeatedly as she bawled into her pillow, once again having so many positive emotions that she had no way of processing them until they came out in ways that she’d normally have associated with severe distress.

  She considered looking it up online. The time compression may have been a factor as it would appear almost static to her, but the Internet was still avaible. She would, in fact, have even greater access to the Internet than inside the wall (even though she was, technically, still inside it herself) since nothing like the American Firewall was between her and accessing all that data. She could even, she had realized, utilize the FTLN, the part of the Internet that existed due to the specialized nodes that were installed in the hardware that was developed in the non-American world.

  But what, exactly, would she look up? “I’m feeling so good about being in an alien body that I’m barely able to keep the emotions contained and it’s terrifying me”? She was, unfortunately, at a loss and completely alone. That would then spiral her into an existential depression. She knew those symptoms; she’d had them enough after the death of her mother that she’d needed to see a shrink for it. He’d given her the tools necessary to manage the depression, which was what she was doing now.

  One of those tools was to find people, preferably friends, to remind herself that there are others in the world who have interest in her.

  While the in-game A.I. weren’t able to be actual friends, any more than an overeager puppy, they would certainly do.

  And speaking of overeager puppies, Russe bolted the st bites of his spaghetti and choked it down with a gss of water. Having completed his lunch, however hastily, he took a deep breath, “So is it true that there are dinosaurs in enclosures and you can actually pet them on Mortan?”

  “No idea,” she said with a grin, “Never been.” Norma apparently picked up on what Diane was up to because the woman snorted in ughter around a bite of pasta, grabbing her own water to wash the bite down before she choked on it.

  “You’ve never been to one of the enclosures?” Russe’s voice almost squeaked in incredulity at the notion of someone having access to ‘dinosaurs’ but not take advantage of it.

  She delivered her highest quality smirk across the table, “No, I’ve never been to Mortan. I was raised on Earth.”

  Russe’s face turned simultaneously crimson and stricken, and Norma burst out ughing, throwing her head back and clutching her arms around her belly, “Oh, my gosh! Your face! This is why I wanted you to have lunch with us today, I had to see how you’d react to the commander!”

  Norma’s appearance had improved quite a bit over the st week. Access (proper access) to the fabrication facility meant she could get clothes that fit properly, including a nice blouse made of a shimmery fabric that shifted colors in a rainbow of pastels and a utilitarian pair of cargo pants. It seemed she couldn’t let go of the habit of wearing something heavy and capable of delivering a kick, as she’d opted for a pair of steel-toed boots. The only part of her old outfit that she’d kept was her old flight suit jacket, and even that had been undered and mended by the station’s robotic facilities.

  Russe’s appearance prior to Diane’s arrival to the station and subsequent unlocking of the facilities for the tenants was something she didn’t know, but he’d shown up to lunch wearing a very casual t-shirt and jeans combo, a clothing style that hadn’t ever really fallen out of everyday fashion since first being introduced to the world by mid-20th century America. Given that this gentleman was a hacker that Norma had initially hired to try and break into Katrina’s systems and hadn’t left even when it was obvious that it would be an impossible task and no payment would be forthcoming told Diane one thing; he was smitten with Norma.

  There were other signs, of course. Norma was constantly talking about how Russe would do random tasks around the station for her, bring her items he thought she might want for some project or another she’d mentioned working on, and often standing by her as she worked with the tenants to address the problems of the day.

  It was the tiny smile on Norma’s lips while she recited Russe’s antics with exasperated fondness that told Diane that the feelings went both ways.

  They were presently in the mess hall, which had been built almost as soon as the station had the capacity to do so. There were simply too many people for the food synthesizers to keep up with now that they were off emergency status. Besides, they had to be ready for the station to have a popution of thousands, and the crew and support staff, which a good chunk of the tenants had chosen to become, were going to need their own pce to get their grub that wasn’t going to be (hopefully) chock-a-block with visitors to the station.

  Diane nguidly twirled a forkful of spaghetti, “It’s not my fault you didn’t ask where I came from.”

  Russe smiled bashfully and nodded, “Yeah, that’s fair. Sorry ‘bout that.”

  Diane was just about to reply when a page came over the P.A. system, “Ops to Commander Somni’els, please report to Ops for an incoming transmission.”

  The mentioned commander sighed, “Duty calls,” she said as she shoved an oversized forkful of pasta into her mouth and grabbed her pte and water as she stood.

  To her surprise, her table-mates stood with her, Norma grabbing up the remaining dishes as they headed to the exit. At Diane’s inquisitive look, Norma replied, “If it’s a call for you it’s something that affects the whole station. That means the governor you appointed should be there to learn whatever it is sooner rather than ter.”

  And, of course, Diane knew Russe would be right behind wherever Norma went. She slugged back some water to wash down the food in her mouth and handed the cup to Russe, “Hold that,” she breathed, then as she scooped another forkful of pasta she said to Norma, “Solid thinking, that’ll certainly prevent the old ‘telephone game’ from happening.”

  The two station dwellers shared a confused look, “The what game?” blurted Russe.

  Diane rolled her eyes, “I’ll expin ter,” she said just before filling her mouth again.

  Having finished her pte of calories by the time they made it to Ops, she wiped her mouth with the napkin Norma provided (really, the woman was almost disgustingly competent and helpful) and entered the main Ops deck with a commanding stride, “Commander reporting, is the transmission still holding?”

  “Yes ma’am,” replied a teenager who’d proven just gifted enough with the comms system that the duty was falling to her until they could sort out actual duty rosters. “Should I put them on the main screen?” The girl, Sandy? No, Cynthy! Cynthy Rodre, nodded in the direction of the rge floor to ceiling panel that Diane had mistaken for a window when she’d first toured the pce.

  “No, thank you Miss Rodre, not sure what the sensitivity of this is or anything, I’ll take it in my office.” She turned and handed her pte to Russe and took what was left of her water from him, “Can we get someone to run that back down to the mess hall? I don’t want to leave it somewhere and forget about it and develop a new life form on our very rge space station.”

  Russe gave a cocky salute, “On it, boss dy!” He then took off back to the lifts as Diane entered her office, smiling wryly.

  “You know, you should probably make it official between the two of you, he’s not a bad catch and I’m sure someone would like to pin him down in a retionship,” mused Diane as she sat at her desk and brought up her holographic dispy.

  “What?!” blurted Norma with a blush, “But…we’re not…that’s not…!”

  Diane just snickered as she flicked the ‘incoming transmission’ notification to one of the wall dispys and turned to face it, “This is Commander Diane Somni’els,” realizing she hadn’t yet named her station, she left the introduction hanging.

  The slight awkwardness didn’t seem to perturb the man calling in. He was, from appearances, in his early thirties if she were to take a guess. He had short cropped bck hair that had just a tinge of dark red flecking his sideburns. He was otherwise clean shaven and this aided to show off his beaming, eager smile. “Ah, commander!” he said in a distinctly accented voice. Irish? Scottish? Not familiar enough with the accents…maybe Welsh, made that mistake once too often, “Good t’see you again! Not that you’d likely remember, I was on the review board for your candidacy to take ownership of one of the seed stations.”

  Grateful that the game had given her an ‘out’ on recognizing this gentleman, she nodded with a vague smile, “You’d be right, I’m afraid I don’t remember you.”

  “That’s alright, ss! Y’were busy that day and you’ve had yer hands full since unless I miss my guess. M’name’s Daffyd, though a lot of people off-world find it easier to say ‘Dave.’ And who’s this?” the man’s eyes went to Norma.

  “Thank you, Daffyd, my own st name can be quite a handful, so I’ll do you the courtesy of at least making the attempt at a correct pronunciation. This would be Governor Norma Grice. She’s been gracious enough to take on the day -to-day tasks of handling the non-crew, non-administrative tasks required for dealing with a popution of people on a station this rge. Or, at least, hopefully we’ll have that rge a popution. It’s still early days, after all.” She replied with a wan smile.

  He nodded at Norma and turned back to Diane, “Already delegating; already off to a good start, commander!” he stepped back from the camera a bit and they could see the room he was in. It appeared to be a sort of boratory/engineering space. Mostly dark but with bright lighting on stands and mounted to the wall to shine on a specific project or task. He stepped aside slightly to show what looked to Diane’s eye to be a stack of ft crystals, each about the size of an index card and about as thick as a smartphone, strapped together with what looked a little like American 3D wafer storage circuitry…if you squinted and tilted your head. Honestly she couldn’t tell what it was and her mind seemed to be trying to make connections to concepts she knew about, “Speaking of starting, you happen to be the newest station owner with a freshly activated Ops of all the currently active seed stations, which is what we need right now. In fact, do you have your digital assistant handy? According to the old colonial computers the logs show her coming online st week.”

  Katrina rezzed into being in the office, “I’m here, Mister Daffyd.”

  “Please, m’dear, just Daffyd. No need for ‘mister’ with me, but if it’s a st name y’need, Winchester will do.”

  Diane’s eyebrows went up, “‘Winchester,’ as in the gun family?”

  Daffyd chuckled, “At least yer not askin’ about werewolves and where I keep my salt. But back t’business! This here,” he indicated the crystal matrix, “Is a little solution we’ve come up with on Earth for a problem our seed stations have been having for some time, specifically with the digital assistants.”

  Katrina actually seemed to be a little worried at the idea that there may be a problem with her, specifically, “What problem is that?”

  “Oh, ss, don’t you be worrying yourself. You’re too recently activated for the problems to show up with you. It starts happening after activation. See, the early programmers of the assistants back in the day didn’t really have as good a grasp as we do today on how digital beings learn and adapt to their environment. As long as you have the station all to yourself and the only job you have is building it and getting it ready for habitation, you’re fine. But when your programming acknowledges a station owner, it starts to, well…logjam, for ck of a better term.”

  Diane’s head tilted, “‘Logjam’? You’re going to have to expin that.”

  “Aye, basically she’ll get conflicting directives built up in her buffers. That’s, of course, horribly oversimplifying things, but the end result is she’ll simply…stop learning. Basically, she’ll enter a locked memory state where she can’a even notice the passage of time because that’s require she remember that time has passed. She’ll do alright in managing the basic operation of the automated systems of the station, but beyond that? If a new commander comes in? Or new systems are installed that weren’t part of the pns the original Colony Corp. installed in software? She simply won’t be able to learn it.”

  He patted the crystal ttice, “That’s what this beauty is meant to address. We’ve been just installing new systems to take over where the old girls hit their limits, but there’s always challenges because the stations are too tightly integrated with their digital assistant software. We can’t simply remove the old software and repce it with a new assistant because the old hardware doesn’t recognize it. Even trying to upgrade the hardware alone doesn’t really fix the problem. So, we’re combining different ideas, and we need to get this installed as soon as possible. It only just became ready a little bit after you left Earth to take command of your station, so I’ve basically been chasing you for a couple of weeks now.” He said this st part with a chuckle.

  “…chasing me, so you’re…?”

  “On my way now, actually. I should be there in a few hours.”

  Daffyd’s ship turned out to be a science excursionary vessel that he almost lived on. When it docked with her station it required the rger cargo airlock on the top of the ‘wheel’ of the dock, all the other airlocks were too small for it.

  “Good heavens!” he excimed as he stepped out of the airlock and into the cargo access shaft, “This station practically still has that new station smell!”

  Diane was finding it hard not to smile in his presence, “Well, mostly new, we hung the ‘new station’ air fresheners at the ventition ports.”

  The joke nded, Daffyd practically whooping with ughter as Norma, Katrina, and Russe looked on in confusion.

  “Daffyd, this is Russe, we don’t have an official position for him yet but he’s a solid hacker and probably the best person for you to work with directly on this.”

  Russe shook the other man’s hand, “I think I do alright. I have been spending some time in the st couple of months getting pretty familiar with the hardware and security protocols of the station’s systems.”

  “Whether you were authorized or not…” muttered Katrina. Diane shifted her arm to elbow the hologram only for her arm to pass through the apparently empty space. Right, thought Diane, Hologram…

  Not too much ter, the four people and one hologram were making their way through the sub-floors below the construction deck that rarely saw actual people. Katrina had pressurized and provided an atmosphere for this deck when Daffyd had expined what needed to be done on his earlier call, so the air held a slightly metallic scent that seemed to hang on after a total space vacuum. Or, at least, that’s what Katrina had told her after Diane had compined about the smell that, apparently, only she could detect. Morvuck noses were much more sensitive than human noses, it turned out.

  “I don’t think it’s just vacuum, Katrina, I’m pretty sure I smell…” she sniffed again, “Yeah, that’s ozone. I think we’ve got a fried circuit.”

  Katrina scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous! I would know if one of my systems were faulty! It’s in my code!”

  Daffyd held up his hands pcatingly as they walked through the maze of conduits, raceways, and computer racks, “Not necessarily, love. Your processors are pretty complex. I’ve been called in to troubleshoot your sisters' hardware on occasion and the old developers who built your systems over-engineered in some pces and under-built in others. I think it’s wise to follow Diane’s nose to the source to be sure.”

  Grumbling, Katrina allowed Diane to take point as they made their way through the surprisingly complex jungle of computer hardware. “Katrina…you built all this?” marveled Diane.

  “Not all,” admitted the hologram, “About two percent of the station’s current computing power is provided by the original core at the heart of this level. The rest was built over time by robotic drones and the pre-loaded pns for the station’s eventual computing needs.”

  “Aye, and they built these things to make do,” interjected Daffyd, “They aren’t quantum computers, the tech for that wasn’t quite developed and reliable enough by the time they started unching these things, but I’ve seen a Katrina array calcute the trajectory of a ship through a time-space anomaly. I ran the incident through a quantum datastream array back on Earth after the fact; the newer, supposedly more capable computer was only able to get more accurate telemetry from the same data to an additional four decimal pces. It’s no wonder even modern hackers can’t get into the things to take ‘em over, those old engineers and coders built these babies right in so many ways…”

  “So what’s the reason for this new piece of hardware about, then?” asked Russe as Diane stopped in a crossway to try and track down the ozone smell. “I mean, if they can do so much, why are the other digital assistants breaking down?”

  Diane paid half-attention as she led them down a side branch that was fairly close to the heart of the digital ir as Daffyd expined, “It’s because they’re not quantum computers. Basically, the system’s trying to extrapote future events to anticipate requests far in advance based on all avaible data. Because the software only has a limited stack of hardware and no real way of parsing possible future states, it can’t figure out what possible projections are legitimate, and which are just bad data. This doohicky is designed to be a quantum co-processor. We’re basically going to jack it in so that the projection models can take little peaks into the quantum foam and use the data that it gets as a metric for which possible future outcomes are actually likely.”

  Diane paused, turning to look over her shoulder at the scientist, “…you’re describing feedforward.” She kept her more urgent emotional reaction in check, forcing herself to remain calm and not simply smash the crystal ttice before they could get it any nearer to the core.

  Daffyd waved his hand dismissively, “Nothing like that, dearie. That requires…well, something a lot more sophisticated than this,” he casually waved the component about. “Feedforward is what produces a sentient, conscious intelligence. It’s the ability to see what you want in the future and then shape the world around you to get to that point, even if you have no data about that future or how to get there. All this does,” he waved the component again, “Is parse the projections. Basically, it’s filtering the feedback.”

  “Can we not swing the piece of tech that’s going to keep me from breaking down at a ter date like it’s a child’s toy?” snapped Katrina.

  Norma gently plucked the crystal ttice from Daffyd’s hand with an apologetic smile, “She’s not wrong.”

  The scientist blushed, “Ah, right.”

  Diane subtly took a deep breath and tried to breath her spike of anxiety out through her nose. Last thing I need is for the station itself to ascending to actual human-level sentience and going rogue with a single installed piece of hardware. Virtual reality or not, the thing would probably find all sorts of creative ways to cause pain before I managed to log out, non-sentient rogue A.I. are already an existential threat to humanity. As unlikely as it seemed that a simuted computer could attain sentience, she’d seen enough Star Trek to at least consider the possibility. And if she’d accidentally given the rogues the key to human-level sentience because she didn’t do her due diligence in a game? She was not going to be part of the robot apocalypse if she could avoid it. She started forward again and sniffed, adjusting their course.

  Daffyd hurried to catch up to her, “I’d hardly have expected someone like yerself to know about advanced sentience theory,” he said conversationally.

  “I…had reason to look it up for a project a few years ago,” she dodged, “And how do you mean, ‘someone like me’?”

  “I’ve seen your file for the seed station assignments, love,” he grinned in a somewhat fatherly way, “You’re good, no denying that, but EarthGov doesn’t let someone who’s demonstrated the skills and intelligence to work on advanced theories stay in the system too long. You’re a lifer, so…well, it’d have been outside your wheelhouse.”

  Who is compiling this background for my character? She thought, That’s more than I’ve come up with…on the other hand, maybe this is the algorithm’s way of letting me know it was building it on the fly and keeping me in the loop. She stopped as she realized the scent was diminishing, meaning she’d passed the source, “Well, like I said, a project needed a little knowledge of how sentience worked in the brain, so I dug a bit on the ‘net, read a high-level paper or two,” she turned and backtracked a bit before stopping in front of a panel, “And got what I needed out of it. I didn’t really look much further into it than that.”

  Only because I haven’t had the time to do so since the agency started watching the agents like a hawk, too much time in research would have let slip I had the weapon in my…heh…back pocket, she thought as she thumbed the release catch on the access panel.

  The smell of ozone practically hit her in the face as the panel swung open. The wrinkled noses of Daffyd, Norma, and Russe told her they were finally smelling it, too. A stack of computer equipment, modules, and components rested in the rack now exposed to them, and about two-thirds of the way up was a shelf full of vertically inserted processing cards in a bus drawer, and what looked like the fourth card from the right side was partially bckened from a short or fused circuit.

  Daffyd stepped in and pulled the drawer out, “Ah, that’d do it. Katrina, cut power to…” he read the asset bel off the drawer’s leading edge, “AUX-Juliette-Gamma-twelve. We’ll pull the board and do a diagnostic on the rest.”

  The blinkenlights on the shelf abruptly cut off, “Done, and thank you Daffyd. I’m gd you were on-hand to provide your expertise.”

  Diane snorted and smugly said, “I’m just here, being chopped liver.”

  Katrina simply rolled her eyes.

  As Daffyd set about pulling the card and testing the others, Diane asked, “She’s been behaving more…well, human as time goes on. Is that a result of the learning you said she does?”

  The scientist id the spent component on the back of the drawer as he double-checked the seating of the remaining cards, “Aye, that’d be it. She’s built so she adapts to best fit the needs and personality of the station owner, which would be you. If you need someone to behave more human,” he said as he lifted the spent card and shoved the drawer back into the rack, “Then she behaves pretty near human.” He turned to the hologram, “Okay, power that drawer back up and run level 4 diags on the whole thing. Might want to do the same for the entire rack.”

  Katrina nodded and the drawer lit up again. Daffyd closed the access panel and handed Diane the singed component. “Y’lucked out, ss. That there is an auxiliary controller. It’s a primary auxiliary, which means you’ll need to repce it, the backups can’t do the job like it can.”

  Diane nodded, “Katrina, do we have any of these aboard?”

  The hologram shook her head, “Negative, the expected lifespan of that component was for another 50 or so years. The fabs aren’t scheduled to build another for twenty more years.”

  “How long would it take to build one now if we adjusted the schedule?”

  Both Daffyd and Katrina seemed to flinch. “That unit requires components that would, themselves, need fabrication. The problem is multiple yers of prerequisites. The adjusted schedule would have the repcement unit in six Earth months.”

  Diane frowned, but Daffyd interjected, “Actually, since I’m part of a pretty small community of techs and engineers and scientists who still work on the old seed stations, I know where you can get one built in about 24 hours. The catch is actually getting it after it’s built.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Russe.

  “The company that can handle a request like this…actually, they’re based on Mortan, come to think,” he nodded at Diane, “In any case, that’s also the downside. The trade routes maintained by the merchant corporations don’t run directly from there to here. The request could go out today and the component built tomorrow, but the actual shipment would take a few months. Not as long as the station building one itself, but still quite a lot of time.”

  Diane frowned, “…but…I’m pretty sure a direct trip wouldn’t take nearly that long.”

  Katrina nodded, “Even with the slowest FTL avaible on the Ad Astra, it would only be a nine day trip each way.”

  Diane smiled conspiratorially at the hologram, “Are you trying to get me off the station already?”

  Katrina smiled back, “Not at all, but you did seem awfully eager to get a ship built.”

  Diane winked at Katrina and turned to Norma, “What do you think, want to get off the station? The ship is built for three people…” She looked significantly in Russe’s direction as she said this, Norma smirking at Diane’s obviously telegraphed pn.

  “Oooh, ooh!” Russe gasped, “Can I come?! Pleeease?!”

  Diane chuckled, “I dunno, seems like a pretty big deal, taking you along. Are you sure you want to come?”

  Norma punched Diane in the shoulder, “You’re both dorks! Yes, I’ll come, if for no other reason to be a voice of sanity to keep you two from nerding out.”

  “And if you should find a convenient port to drop them off and leave them there on your way back…” offered Katrina.

  “Hey!” Norma snapped back.

  PrincessColumbia