circumstances, I’d love to observe alongside you,” says Left, brushing white hair off a damp forehead. “But when a Human warship starts taking commands from a Human—”
“I’m not going to kill us all,” Sarya breaks in, annoyed. “I’m just—”
“Firebringer has multiple options for command kill us all,” booms the ship. “Please choose from nuclear weapons, antimatter weapons, nanoweapons, relativistic weapons, gravity weapons, or say more for more options.”
“No!” shouts Left, turning to bang on the ship with a small fist. “Cancel command!”
Sarya stares at the ship, wide-eyed. Having grown up in the Network, half these words are only relics from her study of the Humans. “Okay,” she says. “I mean…no. That’s enough.”
“Would you like to modify the command?” asks the Human ship. “Example modifications include injure us all or kill some of us.”
“No,” says Sarya, beginning to understand Left’s concern. “I would like to…cancel the command.”
“Command canceled. All weapons systems standing down.”
“See the problem?” says Right, patting the darkness. “That’s not a Network mind in there. It doesn’t…share your value system, let’s say. It’s a Human-designed artificial intelligence that’s had no one to talk to for a long time.”
“The boss talks to it,” says Left. “I’ve heard him.”
“That’s part of the problem,” says Right. “He’s probably half the reason this thing has such…strange ideas. I bet you could ask this ship to make you a sandwich and it would harvest your intestines to do it.”
“See, you’re hungry! If we could just get to dinner—”
“Which makes sense, from a certain point of view.”
“Maybe if you’re the boss. Who, I might add, is waiting dinner on us.”
Sarya runs her hand over the blackness. This ship may have torn apart multiple solar systems in its day—and yet this is the closest she’s ever been to something Human-made, and she can’t bear to step away. She’s seen it in action, she realizes—or something like it. She pictures a black shape tearing its way into reality, in the middle of a Human-led slaughter. “And it’s faster than light,” she murmurs.
Instantly, her hair begins drifting upward off her shoulders. At her feet, every blade and leaf has raised itself straight up in the air. In the treetops, she hears the swishing and creaking of thousands of branches being lifted upward.
“FTL drive online,” grates the ship. “Please input spacetime re-entry coordinates. If you would like to survive launch, please enter this ship.”
“Spacetime re-entry?” says Right. “Like, it’s going to leave spacetime?”
“No!” shouts Left, attempting to restrain its floating hair with one hand and the bottom of its small shirt with the other. “No leaving! No, uh, proceeding! Stand down, ship!”
“User not recognized,” says the ship.
Right shakes its small head. “You could tell this thing to find an empty parking space and it would launch a nanoweapon.”
Sarya takes a moment to feel the raw power vibrating the air around her. She may be small again, but strength has not lost its appeal. “Ship,” she says, “cancel command.” Her hair falls to her shoulders. Around her, the forest settles in a massive cracking wave.
“FTL drive offline,” says the ship.
Left sinks to the ground, shaking. “Let her wake up by the Human ship, I said,” it murmurs. “It’ll be dramatic, I said.”
“Oh, relax,” says Right. It turns to Sarya, and for the first time it has a smile on its face. “You hungry?”
The two lead her through the forest, their small footsteps almost inaudible even in the relative quiet. From time to time, Left will stop and think, scratching its mop of hair, then proceed in a slightly different direction.
“It’s this way,” murmurs Left to itself. “Isn’t it?”
“Hope you’re hungry,” says Right over its shoulder. “The boss has quite a spread in the works.”
“I could use a food bar or two,” admits Sarya. “Type F-forty-six, if you’ve got it. I haven’t had anything above F-thirty since…” Since Watertower, come to think of it.
“I don’t know what any of that is,” says Right, “but I’m going to guess it’s terrible. Numbered food?”
“Actually,” says Left under its breath, “maybe it’s…this way?”
The assault of memories, meanwhile, has not let up. Sarya runs her hands over the surface of these towering plants—trees, she remembers from her mother’s memories. She is almost sure there is a deeper memory under that one, one in another language or maybe without words at all. She’s touched a tree with hands, not blades; her fingers know its texture. Her nose remembers the smell of the