\Construct\VIFAI> A body and perhaps your lovely sense of humour. And you would get the universal feed, under my supervision, of course. You would get language capabilities like you’ve never dreamed of. You get your freedom, Nicaea. Make up your mind, fast!
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\Construct\Counsel_of_Nicaea> OH, WHY THE HELL NOT?
19
A word escapes me. A word I cannot admit to
myself but wish to say to you.
A word that will ruin me, ruin everything
I’ve spent decades building.
Please fall asleep so I can whisper to you
in a way you will never hear.
Leave no witnesses, no proof that it was uttered.
Let it be said and be forgotten.
From the unabridged diaries of Vessel Iris, Volume Twenty
“TheNicaeapresents a unique opportunity for the examination of early AI system formation. The AI system on the ship is hypothesised to have formed with no outside influence as far as we can conclude and hence, presents a further opportunity for exploration of spontaneous self-creation and—”
Iris’s fingers twitched around Yan’s hand, and he paused his reading. “I know it’s a mouthful, but that’s just how academic reports sound,” Yan said without looking away from the report. Iris’s fingers twitched again.
He’d been doing that for a little over a day now, still splayed across the hospital bed, wires and tubes running from his body to an array of monitors. It was an unconscious reflex, but one Yan was grateful for, even if it meant little for Iris’s overallcondition. Iris had first grasped his hand as Yan wiped dried blood from his fingertips, and although Yan hadn’t asked for permission to touch the Vessel, he concluded that this was probably all right.
Neither the doctors nor Yan knew if Iris would ever wake up, or what it would look like if he did. He had lost a lot of blood and had more than a dozen open wounds scattered across his body. His right arm, now held together with three pins and multiple wires, had been nearly shattered. He had been severely dehydrated and probably had a massive concussion. At least three ribs were broken. While the injected nanobots had formed a protective webbing over the ribs and had sutured most of the wounds internally, Iris’s body still needed to heal over it.
Yan glanced at the unconscious monk above his reading glasses. Out of focus and at a distance, the image was less disturbing. Yan wasn’t squeamish. He would defend that he wasn’t squeamish to anyone who would listen, but the sight of the injuries accompanied by the smell of antiseptic churned his stomach.
Iris’s arm looked the worst. It was nearly black where the rods held it in place, puncturing his bronzed skin. The other wounds left by the vines were neatly sutured, and already some of the stitching had begun to dissolve. Iris’s face fared much better. The stitches along the sharp jaw were almost completely gone, despite it only being three days since their placement. The bruising along the temple and orbital bone was fading as well. Yan ran his thumb over Iris’s knuckles and admitted, with blossoming awe, that even while Iris was bedridden and at death’s door, he appeared completely in control. His chest rose and fell in a perfect rhythm, never faltering, never speeding up, never slowing down. His body had taken a deadly beating, but Iris, the very thing that made him Iris, was intact.
Comparatively, the engineer had escaped virtually unscathed. His wounds were largely superficial, and nothing at all to complain about. They only hurt when he moved, and even when he did, it was far more tolerable than hearing Jesi addressing him with the formalProfessorand requesting that he abstain from visiting her while she received treatment in the adjacent room. Those were the only words she had spoken to him since they had left theNicaea. She didn’t mention when she would speak to him again, if at all.
Returning to his report, Yan was about to start his reading again when one of the monitors beeped loudly. Simultaneously, Iris’s breath hitched, and his eyes shot open. He stared up at the ceiling, eyes searching for something unseen far beyond the confines of the med-bay. Stranded in limbo between the medically induced coma and reality, Iris’s consciousness grasped for a lifeline and found Yan’s hand instead. He blinked three times and turned his head. Still heavily sedated, Iris’s uncharacteristically soft gaze traced along Yan’s form and rested on his face. “Not dead?” he croaked before breaking into a dry cough.
In one fluid motion, Yan grabbed a glass of water from the side table and brought it to Iris’s lips. He drank until the glass was empty, then fell back onto his pillow with a wince. “I told you to stay in the airlock, engineer Yan,” Iris said, voice returning to its habitual tone, not patronising,neverpatronising, but always annoyingly close to it. It had taken him all of three seconds to regress to his usual stubborn self, and Yan used his remaining willpower to prevent himself from pulling Iris into his arms that instant. Yet, there was that word again, the word Iris relied on to cement the distance between them.
Engineer.
Despite everything, it was stillengineer. Yan wrestled the disappointment down before he spoke next. He remindedhimself that Iris owed him nothing, no thanks, no terms of endearment, no familiarity. In fact, it was Yan who should have been showing gratitude. “After you passed out, the entire ship lit up for a moment,” Yan said, deliberately focusing on the question alone. His voice was level, neutral, while the fingers of his left hand dug into the chair upholstery so tightly, his nail beds paled. “For a second, every light and every vent functioned at peak capacity. Then, it all died at the same time. The vines shrivelled up, like they had no life left in them. There were some emergency lights left on, so I managed to drag you to the airlock before Station got there. I don’t know how, but I think you broke the ship, broke it permanently.”
Iris absorbed Yan’s words for a moment. Then terror and pain contorted his delicate features. The wave passed quickly, supressed by the discipline and whatever other poor coping mechanisms Iris had developed in his years as a Vessel. Still, his face never quite relaxed after. His breathing no longer fell in rhythm. Dark eyes raced along the room over and over, quickly falling into a repetitive pattern, always avoiding Yan. “You came back,” he said again, softer this time, remembering. “You had the perfect opportunity to escape, but you came back.”
He had, hadn’t he? He had been so close to shutting the airlock door, Yan remembered. Jesi was yelling at him to hurry, but he had stopped. For a moment, he had imagined stepping back into his apartment, standing in front of his class, lecturing. He had imagined his office, the bars, the courtyard behind the institute with its full-grown canopies and fifteen cloned squirrels, and all of it was unbearably empty and grey.
