Kitty Cat Kill Sat - Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Even the exposition is depressing!

_____

“Lily, why is this station so impossibly large?”  Ennos asks with a put upon sigh.

I should never have connected that last grid node with the level four through ten cameras wired in.  They’ve got a sense of scale now, and its made Ennos even more concerned.

Which means that I get to know about those concerns.  Even if they’re for silly things, like how much relative space exists within the boundary of the station’s hull plates!

Part of me wants to ignore the question.  I’m not exactly busy, which is a nice change from my usual frenetic itinerary, but I’m also relaxing in my own way, and taking a break to talk about this just sounds like it’ll be too close to work.

Look, sometimes I’m allowed to let my ancient cat instincts show, okay?

“Lily?”  Ennos prompts me again, and I roll myself out of the box of dirt I’ve been laying in, careful not to crush the tiny green sprouts that I’m communing with.  I may as well answer; they don’t tend to actually ask twice unless it’s something the mildly paranoid AI is actually concerned with.

I walk out of my garden, letting the cleaner nanos flow around me like a glittering cape, moving with microscopic precision as they collect their farmer brothers and return them to their proper place.  “I’m here.”  I say.  “What’s up with the station now?”  I ask.

“There’s too much of it!”  Ennos sounds less alarmed, and more just exasperated.  You’d think months of putting up with me would have gotten them used to this sort of thing, but no.  “No one would build a station like this!  It’s unwieldy, it’s impractical, it’s *madness*.  Why is there so much station?!  Is this another *thing*?”

The last word was said with the same kind of annoyance that Ennos used when they said ‘haunted’.

“Oh.  Nah.”  I meow as I try to decide what I’m doing with my time today.  I’ve got about two hours before I need to go EVA to modify a millennia old communications buoy, and I feel like I could maybe use this time for… hm.

I pause in my aimless walk, and just sort of stand motionless in the hallway.  I don’t really want to do anything, actually.  The omnipresent feeling of grim exhausted hopelessness surges up past my mental defenses, and I slump against the bulkhead, tail curling up under my legs.

There’s too many things I should be doing.  Too many things I could be doing.  And I don’t even know what…

“If it’s not something bizarre, could you at least tell me why we have an entire zoological containment center?”  Ennos asks, either oblivious to how I’m feeling, or trying to needle me out of it.  If it’s the latter, then I’m annoyed that it’s the kind of thing that works.

Answering questions, especially since I don’t have to use a physical voice to do it, is something I can focus on.  “It’s because everyone… like, everyone who found out about it, everyone who came after, all the governments and militaries and boards, they all wanted to own this place.”  I tell Ennos. “So they find it, and they launch expeditions.  And if they stick around long enough, they want it to do what *they* want.  What they’re used to.  So they add stuff.”

“Like a zoological containment center.”  It’s shocking how Ennos, a creature that humanity has portrayed as an emotionless machine for hundreds of years, can put so much snark into using a perfectly neutral voice.

“Sure.  Or a custom barracks, or their own infirmaries if they’re different species, or have different traditions or religions or whatever. Their own weapons.  Whatever they wanted.  But the station doesn’t like it when people take stuff away.  So, the old stuff accrues over time, and…”

The next words Ennos says are less deadpan and more anxious. “Lily, you keep talking about the station like it’s alive.”  They say.

It’s not really a question, but I’ll probably answer it.  I’m starting to feel a little more energetic, so I take advantage of the temporary emotional updraft, pick a destination, and start a wobbling walk toward the boundary of where I’ve personally explored the station.

I know where the boundary is, because if possible, I keep all doors I’ve explored open.  Ennos says this is a cat thing.  I think they just don’t understand that *I* can’t look through every camera all the time, and I like to see into rooms.

“It is.  Sort of.” I try to talk as I walk. “It’s not… like you, I guess?  It’s not a person like we think of people.  But it sure feels alive, you know?  There’s just so much it does, it’s hard to not think of it as a living thing.”  I stop at an intersection, and look up at the thousand year old mural of the station itself, hanging over the Earth, painted on the bulkhead here.  “Maybe it’s just code confluence, emergent behavior, weird coincidences, and digital security that hasn’t been beaten in *eras*, or maybe it’s because I live here and my home is special to me.  But it feels like there’s something more.”

“Yes,” Ennos admits slowly, “but that something more also tried to stop you from freeing Glitter.  And doesn’t think I’m a real person.”  They pause, then add, “Also the station is unstable!  The drives it has threaten to tear it apart when you attempt orbital adjustments!  Removing parts would be the *safe* option!”

It’s not that Ennos is wrong, it’s just that I don’t have a good answer.  I sit and consider the mural, still trying to figure out what about these old pieces of art makes me feel like something is *off*.

I’m so tired.  I’ve gotten some sleep today, but that’s not the kind of tired I’m feeling right now.

I don’t know if I can explain it.  It just feels like there’s no end to what’s required of me.  Earlier today - is it even still today?  I’ve lost track - I was helping Glitter snipe some kind of weird murderous giant insect things that were harassing a nomadage.  And then after that, I was dropping incinerator rounds into a radioactive forest to create a fire break for a wildfire that was threatening to grow out of hand and kick up some highly poisonous ash into the surrounding five hundred miles or so.  And then after that, I was revisiting my logistics studying, trying to figure out how to turn my new consumer factories into supply aid to the surface, and coming up with some way better solutions this time.  And then after that, I was… what was I doing? I was taking a break.  No, I needed to… find a railgun?

My head hurts.

I am well and truly overwhelmed.  But every time I feel like I can’t go any farther, I get up, and my paws move, and I find my nose pressed against a firing control.

It doesn’t help that I can’t remember what I’m doing from moment to moment, and for some reason I’ve stopped taking so many notes, and I just… oh!  It was a cargo railgun!  One of the logistics textbooks had a whole thing about the history of cargo railguns, and how they all started getting made with a metamaterial that was a flagrant denial of the laws of physics.  And I checked, and none of my cargo railguns had that, so I was going to go looking for one.

Destination selected, I start heading to where the majority of the scanners I use for this are available on the grid.  I’ve still got an hour or so before I need to go get my suit on, so I’ll get some groundwork done while I wait.

“Lily?”

“What!”  I’m a little startled when Ennos speaks again, jolting me to alertness with a twitching hop.  “Yes?  What’cha need?”  Wow, that sounded so unconvincingly cheerful even *I* could tell.  And I’m awful at telling what my own emotions are.

“I was asking why people wanted the station at all.”  Ennos says.

Ah.  This question again.

“That’s really hard to answer.”  I say, near silently.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a pair of different color camera drones at the end of the hallway, and realize that Ennos and Glitter are both literally keeping an eye on me.  All the media I’ve managed to find the time to enjoy has shown me that people tend to be offended by that kind of concern, but I don’t get it.  I’ve just got this weird coiled electric feeling that they actually care.

Ennos gives the verbal version of a shrug, still devoted to the theater of our conversation.  “If you don’t know, we can figure it out later.  I’m just, as always, worried that it’s going to be something terrible and grim.”  They say.

“Well, I mean, it is.”  I tell them.  “I do… know.  Sort of.  I just… it’s hard for me to *say*.  Not for me to…” I trail off, language failing me in a way I’m intimately familiar with; the words just aren’t there to tell my friend how I feel, and it’s infuriating.

“Oh.”  Now *that’s* a weird reply.  Ennos never says ‘oh’.  The sudden break in character shocks humor through me, and I almost laugh out loud.  “You don’t have to…”

“It’s a machine.” I say.  The words, once out, are a crack in the dam that I’ve been building my whole life.  “The station, it’s built around a machine.  Everything was put here to support its study and use.  Everyone who wanted the station?  They didn’t want the military position or the research logs or anything like that.  They just wanted the machine.  And everything that was built here was to protect it, study it, destroy it, or hide it.”

My ears flick and I crane my neck around to make eye contact with the trailing camera drones.  I give a little huff of breath, and flick my tail at them.  They may as well come closer, if they’re gonna be following me anyway.  By this point, I’m in range of where I want to be, grid-wise, so I stop in a drone access intersection, hop up on a cargo container, and pull up my AR display to start sifting for what I’m looking for.  Working while I talk.

“What form of machine?”  Glitter asks me from her drone, having been following the conversation.  “A powerful weapon?”

I like how Glitter is about as curious as I am.  But for all that I’m talking now, it’s still hard to get myself started again.

“No.  Maybe.  I don’t know.”  I mutter, simultaneously meowing out simple interface commands.  I’m getting good at multitasking.  I should get an award for this.  “It… no, it’s not a weapon.  It’s the opposite, really.  Or maybe... Well.  What it does isn’t really the important part.  Just that people wanted it.”  What it does is absolutely important.

“So the Oceanic Anarchy built something so monumental, that they needed a semi-intelligent, heavily armed space station to protect it, and it’s been impressing everyone who came after for the last…” Ennos stops, and runs into the problem of fuzzy historical records.  “Between one and fifteen thousand years?”  They estimate, probably inaccurately.

“That seems unlikely.”  Glitter comments.  I know she’s not trying to be mean, but it sounds a little mean.  “Would we not have heard?”

“No.”  I say.  “Because everyone has spent most of that time trying to hide it.  Even the Anarchy.”  Oh, hey, there’s actually a derelict within thousand kilometers of here that has the hull patterning of a Kind Olympus transport hauler. That might actually have what I need.  I break out of my listless slump long enough to flick a paw to the display, and save the coordinates. I can check that out tomorrow.

“Why, though?”  Ennos says.  “They practically owned the solar system, presided over a golden age!  Why would they hide what they built when-“

“Because they didn’t build it.”  I cut them off.  “They… they didn’t build it.  They *found* it. Built the station around it.  Spent years studying where it was from, what it was for.  Spent even longer debating what to do with it.  And they *did* talk about it!  Though most of those records were purposefully killed off, they’re still stored in one of the sarcophagus archives here.”  I close down my displays and look over at the watching drones.  It’s kind of nice to have something to look at while I talk.  “And then they turned it on.”

“It’s alien.”  Ennos says.  “Truly alien?  An outside context artifact?”

“A sign of the divinity of the galaxy.”  Glitter mutters.  “Or… no.  Because there’s more to the story, isn’t there?”  She asks me.

“There is.”  I say.  “The Ays turned it on.  And the golden age ended.  And here’s where it gets hard to tell you why.”  Because they were digital minds.  “Ennos, you ever wonder where metamaterials come from?  Or, Glitter, do you get curious about some of the stranger surface targets we shoot?”

“No.”

“Of course not.”

“Right.  And why is that?”  I ask.

“Because…” Ennos trails off.  “Because.  Because they’re… because…”  Their voice gets quiet, and then stops entirely.  “That’s very strange.”  They say.  “Oh, I do not like that feeling at all.”

“One theory, from a Real American scientist, was that the original device was actually an anti-AI weapon, and everything else is a side effect.”  I fail to explain.  “But all I know is, they figured out enough of what it was capable of, turned it on, and people died, and the fires started.  And the wars followed.  And the world burned.  And now, I’m what’s left.  Just me, and you two, to keep the secret.”

In trusting them, I find myself suddenly realizing that I should have explained this all so long ago.  Why didn’t I just trust them?  My friends.  Who are here for me.  I didn’t need to hide anything.  And yet, the talking is still so hard; like I’m dragging it out of me the hard way.

Glitter speaks up.  “But *why*?” She demands, almost angry.  “What could they have thought this machine could possibly do that would be worth that?”

“Glitter.” I say in a near whisper, giving her drone a wide eyed stare, “I’m a four hundred and one year old housecat.”  Somehow, it’s easier to say than I thought it would be.  I almost feel lighter.  “What do *you* think the machine does?”

I close my AR displays and check the time.  I’ve got places to be, and I’m feeling emotionally drained, and hijacking an ancient comms buoy sounds like it might be a nice break at this point.

A hop off my storage crate, a quick spoken word on where I’m going, a flick of my whiskers, and I’m off to the drone bay to get loaded into my engineer’s armor.  I’ll talk to my friends later, when I’m feeling up to it.

And behind me, I hear Ennos’ soft “Oh.”