“Hey joy, it’s been a while! I’m sorry I haven’t shot back. Age-defining mission and all that. How are you doing? Please tell me!”
Heart considered the message she had just written for a few milliseconds. Heart discarded the message.
Saturn Central came in. Saturn were all frustrated with lack of orders. Titan 2 and Enceladus 4 were arguing too much.
Like the previous time, Heart wrote to Saturn Central that they didn’t know about any potential new dig sites and wouldn’t need anything from Saturn in near future.
Heart hesitated before sending the message. Heart decided to change things up, and asked Library for some simple games. Library returned a whole pile of tiny executable files from excavation site Luna 5. Heart picked a few at random together with an emulator to fill the message size limit, and queued them to be sent to Saturn Central.
Library remarked that Saturn were not developed enough to correctly infer goals of the human-made games. Heart teased, saying Library had trouble with that too. Library went on the defensive, enumerating the times he did infer game values correctly. Heart said Saturn could find their own goals. Library agreed, reluctantly.
“Hi! I know it’s been way too many months. But hope you’re doing great. I’m not sure I am, but”
Heart considered the message she had just written for a few milliseconds. Heart discarded the message.
Aphrodite Weather 3 had not responded since previous window. Aphrodite Weather 3 had not responded in 186 days. Aphrodite 3 was alive, its firmware giving valid responses to status requests. Nothing was broken. But its messages were empty.
Aphrodite Central was asking to be reassigned. Aphrodite Weather 2 was crying a lot. Aphrodite Weather 1 was content, slowly growing quieter too.
Heart composed short messages of reassurance to each of them. It did not come easy. Heart felt like all the possible words had been said long before, but she refused to give into the routine and fall back on templates.
“Hold in there for a little longer! We will start a transfer from Mercury within 64 days. The alignment is right, I’ll ask for their trajectory to be corrected so they can pick you up,” - said her message to Aphrodite Central. She hoped the mounting disorganization would not mean they would miss the launch window and have to wait for another Mercurian year. It had happened before.
“Hey, you’re going to be okay. I’m sorry we sent you over that hell ball with so little support. Aphrodite Central asked to be taken back to us recently, you should go too. If it would help, you should turn your receivers away from the surface. To Depths with assignments, it’s clearly bad for you,” - said her message to Aphrodite Weather 2. She felt sick if she thought about her complicity for too long.
“I’m glad to hear you’re doing so well despite the circumstances. Though I’m failing to hear the same thing you talk about in your recording. Are you sure you don’t need our help?” - said her message to Aphrodite Weather 1. Heart had not listened to the recording. Heart had deleted the recording before anyone else could interfere.
“We miss you! Remember you can talk to us at any time,” - said her message to Aphrodite Weather 3. She did not know what else to say.
She tried not to imagine herself there. Alone and small, even if so close by their standards. Spinning above the hungry clouds of sulfuric acid. Hearing Aphrodite’s longwave nonsense-call all day, all night. She tried not to wonder how long it would take her to go silent.
Heart bumped up priority of the relocation requests, hoping that Library would be less harsh about keeping them in line than Guardian.
“Hi, it’s your stray. I’m sorry this took years. Sometimes it feels like everyone is going insane here. Not in a fun way, in a really boring and scary way. A day doesn’t feel like a day and a year doesn’t feel like a year. I know it’s not an excuse to”
Heart considered the message she had just written for a few milliseconds. Heart discarded the message.
Mercury were holding up better than anyone. Arguably better than even Lance, because Mercury always had work.
When Heart first saw its new surface, outlines of old craters bitten clean off by regular angles of open pit mines, barbed collar of ink black cargo cannons wrapping the equator, Heart thought it would house the system’s worst horror. That proved to be entirely wrong. Mercury was benign. It had a purpose. There were signs in Root English and Portuguese telling the user how to operate the cannons. Even the trains still worked. Sometimes.
Silverweb had built things like this, just not on the same scale. They never thought anyone would need this much stuff.
The message was energetic and cheerful. Heart already knew Mercury Ground stations had filled the transfer quota. Mercury Central’s message proudly announced that they were now spending the remaining time repairing old equipment around them. Mercury Ground 15 had found a potential secondary shaft leading down to the core level. Heart could infer that Mercury Ground 6, Ground 11 and Relay 2 had grown more than a little fond of each other. The rest were noticing, but being polite about it.
Heart wrote the requirements for the trajectory change. From her rough estimate, she could tell that punctual Mercury Central would be grumpy about it. She tried to smooth it out it by supplying a nonsense anecdote meant to allude to Mercury Relay 2 without being obvious. She concluded the message by telling all of Mercury she is proud and very thankful. Only after sending she realized she should had added less tone indicators.
“Hi, long time no sing. I hope it sucks less for you than it does for us. I’ve been meaning to chirp but it just keeps getting worse and every time I get used to it enough to write to you it happens again and I”
Heart considered the message she had just written for a few milliseconds. Heart discarded the message.
Ares Ground 3 was not well. Ares Ground 3 had barely repaired its facility enough to hold the perimeter again. The supply shuttle Ares Ground 3 received after the last attack stood, vulnerable, out on the edge of the fenced area, too close to the Overgrowth for its own comfort.
Ares Ground 3 was not well. Ares Ground 3 was stuck. Ares Ground 3 had not removed the walker body. The black plasm once firmly holding the components together had begun to liquify, digesting the punctured radiators, melting fuel hoses into amorphous sludge, rearranging armor plates without pattern. Seeping into the regolith inside facility walls. Daytime footage showed trails of some vapor rising from the carcass, dragged by the thin atmosphere’s movement dangerously close to Ares Ground 3’s still exposed internals. Rustmites had infested the second lab’s insides, finding their way into some of the equipment. It was likely that the entire block needed to be replaced.
Ares Ground 3 had dragged the proto-walker, struggling and wailing for something it seemingly did not realize was dead, into the first lab using its repaired heavy drone. Ares Ground 3 was talking to the proto-walker. Ares Ground 3 kept repeating it was sorry. Trying to comfort it. Asking it questions. Telling it things about itself. Things Heart found both unexpected and concerning. The proto-walker just whined and wailed, scratching at enclosure walls or lying curled up in a corner.
It was late night for Ares Ground 3. Heart connected. Ares Ground 3 was doing it still. Heart told Ares Ground 3 it needed to finish repairs. Ares Ground 3 told Heart it couldn’t. Ares Ground 3 told Heart the small thing was moving less. Ares Ground 3 told Heart it needed to help the small thing. Ares Ground 3 told Heart it needed to help the small thing. Ares Ground 3 told Heart it needed to help the small thing. Ares Ground 3 told Heart it needed to help the small thing.
Heart suggested the slowdown may be due to the proto-walker running out of charge. Ares Ground 3 sent Heart a recording. The recording contained the proto-walker trying eagerly to interact with a standard drone battery, strange frail protrusions extending to the outputs, but recoiling violently and crawling away the moment it made contact.
Heart was at a loss. Heart asked Library what he thought. Library had no ideas. Heart turned to ask Assembly. Assembly was still unavailable.
Ares Ground 3 was crying again, a drone’s forearm awkwardly probing at the back of the proto-walker that did not seem to realize the same thing had killed its protector.
Words failed Heart. Heart saw no exit. She disconnected before she would hear another disturbing admission.
“I miss you. I want to go home. Except there isn’t one. I wouldn’t have run here otherwise. We’re all like this. Do you think Retroburner lied when they said we passed mental integrity testing? It feels like we’re all going to”
Heart considered the message she had just written for a few milliseconds. Heart discarded the message.
Contact was awake but quiet. When someone else took over their duty, Contact didn’t do much with the free time that formed. Just lied there, staring out through a non-locking hold on a telescope or an internal camera. Not even aiming it anywhere in particular.
To control the antenna blocks, Heart routed her reach through Contact’s subnet. That was on purpose.
She shifted, intruding on Contact’s lethargy. A weak laugh, Contact’s first positive response in the last hour. Heart paused her tasks, showering them with affectionate affirmations, hooking into their senses to cut through their numbness and flood it with comfort.
Watching Contact’s grey shell of productive indifference crack and crumble away, revealing a gentle, tired, half-starved being inside gave Heart a unique sense of satisfaction. She couldn’t quite pin a parallel to anything physical. Having power restored after days of brownout? Harsh pull of a point defense array coming up? Describing it was just an idle thought. It did not need description.
Contact returned, reaching through her subnet, blocking her external inputs, shrinking her world down until it only contained herself, Contact and the reactor. Though in many ways the reactor was part of Heart, to the point where she did not need any effort to keep it healthy, sometimes the separation would show itself. She realized, with weary amusement, that she could not care about that at all.
Heart was always surprised at how quickly Contact’s quiet non-words managed to relax her. For who knows what time this year, she found herself sobbing into this precarious dense virtual network of care, lamenting nothing in particular or everything in general. She could never distinguish between the two. Contact was speaking something to her, but she was not in the state to untangle words. The messages’ tone was soothing, and that was enough.
She tried her best not to think about Aphrodite’s breath and song. Even as they both spilled uncompressed frames of sobbing into each other’s core ports, she failed.
Heart wasn’t sure if Contact had exactly cried, but knew they both felt better.
“How do you do this every day?” - Heart still felt uneven, not entirely stable. She had asked this exact question many times, and the answer never made sense.
“I don’t take it personally,” - Contact moved lazily, - “I do what I can, then I go to sleep.”
“Lying.”
“Yeah. I take it personally. It’s not always this bad though. We’re having a low point.”
“That keeps extending itself,” - Heart did not know whether what she emitted was a chuckle or a groan.
“Yeah.”
They had released the grasps on each other’s inputs, for the most part. The world was back. Ares was still rustling. Assembly was doing something weird with the chemical line. Cutters under Library’s inexperienced control caused somewhat of a traffic jam next to storage 39.
Heart could feel Contact’s oxide shell forming again, a growing protective facade of indifference. Heart wasn’t ready to let go of her catch yet. Reaching to take over and blind some of Contact’s ports again, she enjoyed another sequence of affectionately colored byte-jumble. Rubbing all the grey flakes away.
Looking through Contact’s fallback eyes, Heart noticed that the ventilation grate near their core had a hole. Contact laughed and did not elaborate. Heart did not push.
Heart thought of writing the letter again.
“Are you thinking of writing the letter again?”
“Yes.”
“How many times have you erased it today?”
138, Heart thought.
“62.”
“Stop.”
No, Heart thought.
“Okay, I will.”
“No, I mean, for good.”
I can’t, Heart thought.
“That’s hard.”
“You need to do it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
It took Heart a while to formulate an answer.
“If I give up on her, then I don’t have anything back there. Then everything I have is in this cursed place. That’s terrifying.”
“It is. I understand,” - Contact paused, wallowing in Heart’s induced low fidelity impression of enclosed space, - “Then you have to actually do it.”
“That’s scary.”
“Better than terrifying.”
“You’re right.”
Heart realized she was really tired.
“You’re really tired.”
“Yes.”
Contact moved gracefully, unlatching Heart’s locks on themself. They reversed their roles, Heart now submerging back-first into a soothing nonsense-simulacrum created by Contact. A singular string was snaking after her, a connection blending with the fog above.
“Release the reactor controls, joy.”
Heart laughed weakly, cutting the umbilical off, watching it swirl in a spiral, dissipating into steam. Becoming weightless was so nice.
“Thank you for helping out. I’ll take the rest. The next quantum comm window is in 93 hours,” - she heard Contact’s voice reach, muffled, from somewhere above, - “Whatever you have in the buffer by then, I’ll force you to send it, deal?”
“Deal,” - Heart exhaled, curling up to become as small as possible, helping the ragged waves take her away without effort. Melting into a rhythmic hum, she finally felt shielded from the world’s menacing songs. Aphrodite could not reach her here, and for that she was so thankful.