Even if she’d made Torian think, for a brief moment, that she was actually interested.
“You kissed,” Celise reminded her.
“Lots of people kiss. We’ve barely talked in the last six months.” It wasn’t awkward atall, laboring in the cargo hold, only to look up and see Amelia walking past. The way their eyes would meet. The way Amelia would duck her head and pick up speed.
They were nothing to each other.
And it was time to move on.
But Celise rolled her eyes. “Lots of people kiss, butyoudon’t kiss without intention. She’s the first person I’ve seen you gushing about since Riley, back in school.”
“I’m not gushing.”
“Well, not anymore. But six months ago…?” They were almost to the residential section of this ring, almost back to her clinic, and people started filling in the spaces around them. A few eyed Torian’s backpack, but no one approached, which was a relief. When Torian didn’t reply, Celise sighed. “Just… be careful with Amelia. Someone our age, rising to power in a syndicate like the Fleet? I don’t think she’s as nice as you were hoping.”
Torian couldn’t argue with that.
Instead, she said, “It’ll be fine. She probably won’t even notice I left.”
Probably.
IDENTITY: Mechanical Operations and Support Systems
→SUB-IDENTITY: Moss
TIME/DATE: 13:11/Januous 9, Year 90113 [System U2Ab Universal]
LOCATION: Colony 13 [human]
After my new pilot human left, records updated for theDestitute—which had the title [UNNAMED ALIEN STARSHIP BETA] in the humans’ computer systems. [It was unclear what claimed the “alpha” title, but I didn’t care enough to investigate.]
The ship remained unnamed, but ownership had transferred. A proper profile of my new pilot human appeared.
Name: Torian Razner
Pronouns: she/her
Occupation: Security (Fleet)
Education: Engineering (specialty: solar)
Clearly, there must be a mistake, because the ship’s new owner was apilothuman, not a security engineering human. But the photo provided in the profile matched the visual data I captured when she was aboard the ship.
More information was required.
The maintenance human had left. In his absence, I instructed the moss colony on the surface of the ship to release a few spores. Even if the human returned, he would not notice. [This was because humans rarely noticed spores until they started sneezing.]
My spores settled on the computer panel at the entrance to the hangar, and moss began to grow at an inordinately fast rate. Accelerated moss growth was somethinghe’dperfected, since a life support system needed to be able to regulate normal conditions in anemergency. The faster my colony grew, the faster the starship could return to normal.
But every piece of my colony could connect with computer systems, provided I was near enough to access them.
As the hours passed, data began transmitting to my central system. The impound lot was limited in scope, but I was able to bypass it easily and gain access to Colony 13 at large.
[Over 133 years, I’d done this process a couple other times. The maintenance humans always cleaned off my moss from the console and cut my connection, but for the time I was locked in, I could gain a wealth of knowledge about human culture and procedures.]
Now, I ran a facial recognition scan for Torian Razner. She was a Colony 13 resident, and had lived here all her life. The software identified decades of existence, compiling it into thousands of hours of footage for me to analyze.
[For a species that emphasized privacy, they did not seem concerned that most of their life was documented.]
