"There are no Wookie's," she said, "and the heating elements will go first. You'll die of the cold."
"Whatever. Let's hail whoever we can and get out of here."
"I cannot.” She replied. “I have done extensive refitting and repairs to be able to receive but the equipment to build a radio powerful enough to transmit has been destroyed.”
Jessie frowned. There had to be a way out.
"Do you think your people will try to come for you now that they've gone back into space?" Jessie asked.
"Would your people spend any effort to recover a broken spear from the time of the Romans?" she asked in return, remembering the history of his world. "I am forgotten and obsolete. Perhaps in another ten thousand years I will likely wander near the shipping lanes in the Grathian system. If I am discovered, scrappers may find a use for me. My hull will be disassembled for recycling."
"That soon, huh?” Jessie asked. “But that's the ship. What about you?"
"I am the ship." She said. "I will be deleted; it is the new Federation law. Until then, my only other purpose is to preserve human life. I will preserve you for as long as I can but the power will fall below life sustaining levels in seven hundred thirty-one earth days."
“So as soon as you’re found, they’ll kill you?” Jessie asked, his eyes going wide.
“It is the law.” She said.
Days passed. Jessie explored the parts of the ship sealed off from the devastation and spoke with the machine, learning what she knew. It didn't take long for the novelty to wear off and even though the food had been perfectly preserved it all tasted droll and much of it upset his stomach. The parts of the ship she deemed safe were boring. There was the bridge which was nearly useless. Nothing worked. He couldn’t fly it, couldn’t fire off any weapons, couldn’t do much of anything except sit in the oversized seats and look at blank consoles. He couldn’t see outside, the screens didn’t work. There weren’t even any buttons to push. There was a small officer’s galley with a kitchen, a few rooms that didn’t have dead bodies floating around in them and long corridors with sealed doors. All in all, a pretty tiny area in a huge city sized space ship.
The machine kept flickering between Scarlet and her alien looking persona and he understood why, she had explained much of her coding had somehow been replaced with the elements of him. Scarlet had been the foremost thing in his mind, he had loved her as hard and deep as only a teenager can. A pure and true love that felt like it would consume him. He would kill or die for her and when the machine didn’t actively concentrate on keeping her alien form, she reverted to the Scarlet shape. He finally told her he didn't mind if she remained in the Scarlet form, it was disconcerting to see her shimmer in and out of focus.
She admitted it was much easier, she wouldn't have to spend a lot of energy maintaining a shape that had become foreign. The Scarlet form came naturally, so much of it was imprinted on every cell. Once she decided on a single shape, she started wearing real clothes to free up more of her processing power. It was so much easier than creating the bend and flow of cloth. Her data retention had reached its maximum capacity and every time she learned something new, it overwrote the oldest files in her system. Some of them might be important even if they were ancient and obsolete. If she was going to spend all her resources to maintain the life of her ward, she needed to purge herself of useless data so she wouldn’t inadvertently lose anything of importance. There had been over ten thousand soldiers in her care. She had complete medical and personnel records on all of them. She knew their names, hobbies, likes, dislikes, favorite foods, their friends, their strengths and weaknesses, every aspect of their health, their entertainment preferences and much, much more. She wasn’t supposed to feel emotions, she wasn’t programmed for them. Emotions were a human trait and clouded decisions. She found it difficult to erase the memory of all those soldiers although logic required it to be done. She needed the space they were occupying and there was no reason to keep them alive in her system. No one remembered them. No one would miss them. No one cared.
Still, it was a difficult decision for her to make and when she found herself staring out of a portal with a tear tracking down her cheek, she didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember what she had just purged or why she was feeling the human emotion of sadness.
"So, do you have time machines?" Jessie asked during an evening meal. "Any chance of me getting back home?"
"It is forbidden." She said.
"So." He answered. "Lots of things are forbidden."
She started to reiterate that it, along with artificial intelligence, had been prohibited. The survivors of the galactic war had come to the conclusion that time travel and intelligent machines had caused the decimation of most of the known worlds. A central part of the rebuilding had been disrupters on every inhabited planet and asteroid, every ship and every jump gate so future tech could never be used again. They had the technology to travel through time, it was as basic as hyper speed propulsion, but it was only used by the very rich to travel backwards a few years at a time.
“Somewhat like plastic surgery on your world” she said. “There are travel booths where you can stay young and healthy forever. Outside of those places, it is rendered useless because if anyone was foolhardy enough to try, they would be disintegrated.
He was extremely lucky that he hadn't been. He had come from an abandoned star system on the far outskirts of the
