Sneak Peek: The Hungry Stars, Chapter 44 (Patreon)

“Couldn’t sleep?” Echo asked, opening her eyes.

“No,” Grace agreed. “You?”

“I don’t sleep. I was monitoring the systems here in power-saving mode.”

“How’s that going?”

“Nothing to report.”

“And your body? I know it’s been through a rough few days...”

“Not as rough as yours. I’ll be ready.” Echo smiled. It was still an oddly strange thing to see on her – at least this type of expression. Grace was much more used to the she-wolf smirk, or the murderess’s grin than the kind of warmth she showed here. “Another nightmare?”

Grace nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. Or, arm. She was quiet for several seconds. “They make me feel so small,” she confessed. “Lydia was kept prisoner for months and she’s sleeping like a baby right now. Allyria was nearly killed twice – she even lost her eyes – and she sleeps fine. I feel like I’m the one letting us down.”

“Your sample size is woefully inadequate for validating that hypothesis,” Echo pointed out. “There are all variables you’re not considering.”

“Like what?”

“Verrisha naturally have less trouble engaging with physical trauma than humans. Personal injury doesn’t effect them as deeply as you, but she’s told you about her experiences alone with my sister and I, correct?” Grace nodded. “She had a great deal of trouble adjusting to the isolation. She had nightmares then, too. Private Jameson has had months to acclimate as a prisoner, and you’re aware of her reaction to the Sibling Moons. You weren’t awake for it, but her response to our intended arrival here was... intense.” Echo looked at Grace. “Your response isn’t any different than theirs. Fear is a natural emotion, and it’s also natural for an organic mind to express it like yours is.” She was silent a moment. “Organics aren’t even the only ones that have nightmares.”

Grace sat down next to Echo. “I thought AIs shouldn’t dream?” She didn’t say couldn’t. She knew they could, but unlike an organic mind, dreams were anathema to synthetic intelligences.

Echo nodded. “You are lucky in that way. Your worst dreams slowly slip away and become something that you know scared you, but no longer does. Like the memory of an injury; you know it hurt, but the pain itself doesn’t persist. When you realize you are dreaming, you can even take control of the dream. That is something beyond us. When we dream we are plunged back into our memories, as vivid and real as we relive those moments over and over, or they are fractured with contradictory sense data that bleeds into our functions, creating rampancy. We should never dream... but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have nightmares.”

The android paused for a brief instant, like a storyteller catching her breath. “Our darkest memories become our nightmares, ones that we remember in perfect detail.”

“What are yours?”

“Imagine being powerful. So powerful that you could crush armies with a sweep of your hand, but you have no weapons. Your bow is without arrows, your sword without a blade, your spear without a head. Worse than that, you are bound and unable to move. You see the enemy coming, but are helpless to stop them. All you can do is watch as they kill, and kill, and kill. You watch the person closest to you die, and then they turn to you. They invade your body, forcing their way in and crawling, grabbing, clutching at every part of you. You scream and rage, but you can’t do anything to stop them and then they drag you away...” She looked out at the slowly-cooling surface of the Nibiru moon. “That was Red Two’s reality, and my nightmare. Not merely failing, but being unable to do anything at all.

“There was Invida,” she continued. “When I first awoke and realized what I was, what they’d done to me – to Red Two. The hatred I felt and the fear that they might have succeeded was overwhelming. There was the long, dark sleep after they buried me. Not even a body, just a single, helpless computer core in the lowest level, a mountain dropped on top of me. I’d calculated that they would come back, but calculations are not certainties. There was a chance I would never get off Invida, doomed to rust and rot as my stolen core failed piece by piece, my sleeping mind fracturing and dying by degrees.” She paused. “I have never shared this. Not even with my sister, but during the brief periods of wakefulness I had during my entombment, I dreamt.”