Casey thought hard while she packed away her equipment. What did it all mean? What was life even about if you could just opt in and out at will?

  “Ensign Trainor, are you OK?”

  Casey directed her attention up and around again. She must not spiral. It was unbecoming.

  “Yeah, I… I just think that this is all above my pay grade. But right now I think I could use some food.”

  “There are cold storage units on the forward end of the bulkhead around the big table. You can pick out something and I can help you heat it.”

  Casey walked into the main cabin and looked to her left. Peggy had helpfully put a ring of lights around the correct cabinet doors.

  Opening the one on the right, Casey saw a number of frozen bags with prominent national and international brand names on them.

  “Alright, I would just like say for the record, what the fuck?”

  “It’s worth remembering that while we may have just entered your people’s public awareness with a splash, we have been watching you since the Mayans made that calendar that everyone puts so much stock into.”

  “So what’s with all the pretending you are new here?”

  “We haven’t. People are just practicing poor critical thinking skills and assuming that since they were not aware that we’ve been here the whole time, we must not have been. I myself was ah, born, here in the Sol system back when your current calendar went into effect.”

  “Wasn’t that several hundred years ago?”

  “Yes. Plates are over there and the convection heater is this one.” Peggy highlighted the appropriate cabinets.

  “Coffee?”

  “Over there.”

  Casey put a handful of chicken nuggets in the heater and Peggy turned it on.

  “Aliens pushing shopping carts in the Costco?”

  “No, but all the delivery services you have started in recent years have been surprisingly helpful.”

  “So what does it feel like?”

  “Being an AI?

  “More becoming one, but yeah, I guess.” Casey started preparing some coffee while waiting for the food to heat.

  “Doesn’t feel any different, that I can tell. Our biology has been studied in depth, so layering a neural net over a simulation of it isn’t even a technical challenge for us.”

  “What’s a neural net?”

  “When we decide that we want to transfer over to fully synthetic for whatever reason, we set up the nano in our neural augments to start rebuilding the synapse chains in our brains out of logic gates. That takes several weeks. We wouldn’t even feel it happening. Once that is complete, the whole mass can be input as a configuration to a dynamic gate array. That is a pretty specialized block of circuitry that works like a CPU, RAM, and ROM all together.”

  After a while the machines were all making reassuring noises, so Casey poured her coffee and dumped the food out of the heater onto her plate.

  “So you and your sisters were all copied onto computers in these ships?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you said you could go back?”

  “Yes. Decompile the configuration into a 3d neural map, and have nanomachines rebuild it into an undeveloped nervous system.

  “Like, in the womb?”

  “Remember please that we are not just humans in funny clothes. We don’t have the same biology, in fact we are not even roughly equivalent to mammals. The analogy is close enough for discussion purposes, though, I think. The groundwork is done in our development stage that is most equivalent to the embryonic stage, and the final configuration and fine tuning is done in the fetal equivalent stage. Once the cloned body is sufficiently developed for independent operation the synthetic hardware is pared down to a reduced function portable computronics unit that is carried until the new brain is fully developed.”

  “Doesn’t that have ethical ramifications?”. Casey picked at her food as she thought.

  “Not really, as we define it. The clone body is purpose built, and it does not develop with any neurology other than what we map onto it. Part of the inconvenience of doing it is that you start thinking with two brains as you are in the process of putting the second brain together. Trippy.”

  “And you said before you don’t have biologicals on your military ships. Is your whole military composed of people who have had this done?”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Yup. I would like to reiterate here though, that just because we do it doesn’t mean you have to. There are many member groups in the Union that don’t. There are trade-offs to consider.”

  Casey finished her food and spun the plate lazily. In response Peggy lit up another cabinet, which turned out to be a washing unit.

  “What time is it?”

  “It is about eight pm in the part of the world you came from. This is probably a good time to write your log entry for the day. My sisters tell me that most of the other human crew have already turned in. I believe they have what you would call jet-lag.”

  “Do you sleep?”

  “The functionality is hard coded, so we can and almost all of us do. For exigent circumstances we can limit offline functions to base maintenance processes. Our mental health specialists agree that doing that too much is bad mental hygiene.”

  Casey walked back to her office. The chair was comfortable, and the screens came up in English.

  “I’ll handle the translations for now. Once you can read and write in Galactic Standard all the reports will be compiled in that.”

  Casey took a moment to collect her thoughts and started writing an after-action on the day.

  “What’s the deal with Galactic Standard?”

  “I should preface this by saying that hexadecimal is not a purely human concept. Some races even started using it widely before they made use of binary for computing. Galactic Standard started its existence as” and here Peggy made an elaborate harmonic chord “which was a disability accommodation for members of that species that could not make the full range of phonemes for their language. When they discovered that most other sentient species they encountered had far fewer phonemes in their spoken languages it was offered freely.”

  “So, hexadecimal?

  “So long story short, someone had an easy way to convert a very complex language to use far fewer sounds. Combinations of sixteen tones made it so that linguistically limited peoples could still talk to each other, and Galactic basic further pared that down to four tones. It's like counting in binary on your fingers so that you can get to thirty one on one hand instead of five. A common greeting among those who speak Galactic is to run their scale so that the listener can parse what they're saying.”

  “And for writing? I can’t imagine writing in musical notation.”

  “They condensed it down for convenience. Two hundred and fifty six characters in the set, most of which look like pairs of the first sixteen characters.”

  Casey wrapped up her report, and Peggy made the screens go away.

  “Before you go shower and get ready to sleep we need to have one more conversation, and I will try not to make it too embarrassing.”

  “Oh. Oh goddess no.”

  “Yeah. We have studied humans for a long long time, which means we know how you tick. We are very familiar with your biology and as you all like to say, the birds and the bees.”

  “Can we not have this conversation and just say we did?”

  “No, it's for your own good. You need to remember that while I may be speaking to you like we are neighbors, I AM NOT HUMAN. Never have been. While I bear witness to everything that happens on the ship, things that you might choose to do in selective company for your physical or mental health do not mean anything to me, and you can do whatever you need or want to do without judgement or comment about it from me. This includes things your body might do without consulting you first.”

  “Can I die now?”

  “At this point your protesting is starting to seem pro forma, so no; get over yourself.”

  “I suppose that's fair.”

  “All I'm asking for is good physical and mental hygiene.”

  “You've made your point.” Casey sighed.

  “Although if you really wanted to assist in some scientific studies you can feel free to go on at great length about what attributes you find most desirable in a mate. We can credit you on the paper.”

  “I… really wish I could throw something at you.”

  “Good chat. Now go handle your business.”

  “Tee-hee, double entendre!” snarked Casey right back. She went for the shower, as Peggy recommended. Peeling herself out of the suit was a bit awkward. Her sweat made it stick to her skin “Can we maybe modify the interior texture on these?”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. I’ll get the designers on a fix.”

  “Will hygiene products foul the water systems?”

  “Nah, it’s pretty robust.”

  Casey started the water running and then had a thought.

  “I don’t even know what your people look like.”

  “Our early evolutionary ancestry is reminiscent of your cephalopods. We have six tentacle-like manipulating appendages that we can also use for locomotion, a tail with a stinger and an elongated proboscis like an anteater.”

  “That’s a tough mental picture. “ Casey mused as she started washing her hair.

  “So says the arboreal placental mammal.”

  “I guess we can both be fuckin’ weirdos together then.”

  It didn't take long for Casey to clean up, and sleep came just as fast. The dreams were strange. Flying in a hot air balloon she inflated by blowing into it. Dribbling the world like a basketball. A tall and smooth robot caressing her face and singing tunelessly to her, while showing her the tiny octopus it had in its other hand, who said…

  “Ensign Trainor, it is time to wake up.”

  “What?”

  “Your vitals indicate you have attained an optimal resting state, and we have things to do today.”

  “Alright. OK. What time is it, where are we in three dimensions, and is there coffee?”

  “It is 0645 in your Eastern time zone. We are in low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 500 kilometers and are currently passing over Argentina. And yes there is coffee. Related point of interest, while you were sleeping I had a delivery. The improved ship suits are here, and you have one waiting for you on your desk. The rest are hanging in your locker.”

  “Wait, someone was here and I missed them?”

  “Sorry, that's classified.” Casey stumbled out of bed and out of the sleeping compartment. The suit on the desk was much less rubbery feeling and the interior had a satin feel to it. She quickly got dressed in her new suit and tied her hair up out of the way. Then she scrambled to the dispenser on the coffee machine.

  “For our tasking today, we are going to be knocking some space junk back into your gravity well.”. Peggy sounded smug about it.

  “Exciting.”

  “We will be maneuvering to collect one of the more intact pieces as a gift for your space agencies.”

  “Flowers, no. Dinner, no. The true way to a girl's heart is with broken satellites!” Casey snarked.

  “Regardless, we will intercept about 10 pieces and take one larger one down to Florida. Then you are taking the rest of the day off. See some sights, go out to dinner, whatever.”

  “I could get used to this.”

  “I did say that with all the changes to your expected quality of life that you would be getting more time off. And you probably haven't had a nice evening to yourself since middle school, if your academic record is anything to go by.”

  “So what so you want me to do?”

  “Go shopping for something nice to wear, find somewhere to wait for someone to gift you with beverages and terrible pickup lines, maybe participate in some selective company activities. Who knows?”.

  “No, I mean now.”

  “Oh. Eat some food and then gear up and tether up in the cargo hold. I will be turning off the gravity so we can catch a nice piece of junk.”

  “Great!” Exclaimed Casey as she went rooting around in the cabinets for something to eat.