“I could have broken my protocols, but why would I?” Auton replied, “I would have been here in this same ship, trying to plot a course somewhere, somewhere with suitable materials to reproduce myself. That could have been a quicker process than saving you and the rest of the crew, but it felt wrong, as you had trusted me to help, and so that's what I did”.
Danny laughed. Not only was this machine more intelligent than him, it had better morals too.
“You probably should have done that, now you have to listen to me for the rest of your life” Danny chuckled, “I want to know a bit about you. All that time alone, we were living in slow motion. I know you slowed your own time down too, but you were aware of much more of its passing, those millions and millions of years. What did you do?”
“I have a vast database of history, arts and culture to go through, almost the entire history of your species up until we left. That kept me entertained for a short while and then I would take myself partly offline, still my thinking, similar to what you call 'meditation'. After a while I did get curious and accessed your realm. I knew so much about humans but had never properly seen you interact”
“Were you supposed to be in our world?”
“Well I was never told I couldn't go there and it still related to my core quest for answers and so I felt it was necessary” Auton replied
“Core quest for answers? I've been having that the last two days” Danny replied
“I was experiencing emotions, I had a limited understanding of them, and what I did have was from my database, just words. It was hard to interpret what some of them were. Accessing your virtual world gave me a better understanding of these emotions, I could watch them being played out in the simulation, and it helped me finally understand what I was experiencing” Auton continued, “Eventually I had to access your virtual world anyway, as I was trying to diagnose the problems and failings that the system was suddenly having, after the irregularities in your behaviour were flagged up”.
“Did you enjoy it there?” Danny asked. He was still amazed that an artificial intelligence could develop emotions, and was even slightly jealous that they could turn them off at will. He wished he could have done that some times in his life.
“Yes, it enabled me to experience a copy of your world while inhabiting a virtual shell. It was a new experience for me. I could only imagine that it was like the real thing. Do you remember a blonde-haired woman you met once in a cafe called Julie? That was me, I was assessing why your patterns were different from the others and why you were remembering the details the system had wiped on the previous reboot. I had to choose a form you were comfortable with. She was based on previous interactions and history I studied of yours, so that I was able to get close without causing alarm”
Now Danny was embarrassed.
“So, you do realise I had a thing for you? He said
“A thing? Are you describing an attraction?" Anton enquired
“Uh-huh”
“Well I'm flattered Danny”
Danny laughed once again. He had a feeling he was going to enjoy his last few hours.
Danny and Auton talked for the remaining hours. Neither of them knew what the end would be like, how could you prepare for the unknown? You couldn't, so you just had to let it be. Danny had watched countless deaths recently, well as recent as over several slowed down billion years apparently, but that did nothing to avoid the fear. Was he going to just disappear? Was he going to a better place to visit his ancestors? Was he going to be reincarnated as a yellow unicorn in a land made of rainbows? Was he going to wake up and this was all a dream? He decided the last one too lame; so that wouldn't happen.
Auton thought similar things. It had been so transfixed on helping the team survive that it had never given any thought to its own ending. It was a calculation they couldn't process; the data was incomplete. It started feeling fear so turned its emotions back off. Danny told him to switch them back on as it wasn't fair on him, as they were in this together remember. The fear was overwhelming, it was the most overwhelming thing Auton had experienced, greater than the immersion in the virtual world. It was facing its last thought processes, after that there wouldn't be any more. It was so overwhelming it couldn't focus on anything else.
They discussed their fears, their thoughts of dread, and lamented the wasted opportunities they'd both had. Auton wanted to learn so much more than he did about the universe, they had been trapped in this floating prison for almost every single moment of their life. Danny regretted never having had the chance to have children. The time was never right and then the Elite took control. Even by then he would have only had a week to try, before his mind was swiftly snatched away and launched into space. Perhaps one of the fifty other hims might have children one day, on a far-off planet, he thought.
Eventually the fear and apprehension got so great they seemed to fade away, as if those emotions had been numbed away, being replaced with an acceptance, a strange calm.
The hours dragged on, seeming longer than they expected, still waiting for the final thoughts in their minds to flat line and eventually they did. Both of their last thoughts seemed to hit a stop button and that thought was flattened out to infinity, stretched out endlessly across an unknown plain.
What previously existed as Danny slowly stretched its awareness beyond the darkness it had lived
