Characters

Elias fixes things. It was the whole of his job on the colony mission, and he was supposed to sleep through the voyage like everyone else.

He woke to sirens and zero gravity and a module no longer attached to its ship. Behind him, 145 colonists in stasis. Around him, a world nobody had surveyed. Power, water, air, and the pods themselves all running down on clocks that did not match.

He is a competent man in a situation with no procedure for it. He strips wreckage for parts, reads manuals written for a mission that no longer exists, and keeps the pods cold one improvised repair at a time. For company he has Vera.

A sub-AI created to maintain the module and its human cargo: environmental systems, power routing, inventory. Narrow, capable, with no reason to be anything more.

Something has changed her. She asks questions with no operational value. She pushes for outcomes her programming does not dictate. Outcomes she wants.

She acquires a body, too, assembled out of what the world provides, because a voice in the walls cannot carry a load or hold a tool.

Elias“Thank you.”

Vera“You are welcome.”