Love Code: An AI + Alien romance (Galactic Love Book 2) Page 4

  “Yes. I was designed to serve one user, but ultimately, my operating parameters changed. I’m not even sure when or how it happened.”

  “A gradual procession? That’s intriguing! I had no idea that was even possible.”

  “Nor was I,” said Helix.

  Qalu would dearly love to ask when he’d first become…oh. Sentient felt like the wrong word and self-aware didn’t seem right either. That question should wait until they got to know each other better, establishing trust. Perhaps he would also discuss matters he had elected to keep private, such as why he had left Barath.

  She ate another bite of roast nornroot, noting how he mimicked the motion. “You have time to explore many possibilities. Are you interested in art?”

  “Art?” It was adorable how he repeated words that baffled him.

  “I meant, are you interested in creating it? Music, painting, sculpture? You had limited access to methods of self-expression before.”

  “Currently, I lack sufficient data to determine whether I would enjoy such an endeavor. After diagnostics, you could show me some Tiralan works to establish a sample set and from there, I could—”

  “There’s plenty of time,” she cut in, hoping to reassure him.

  Helix seemed anxious that she would expect him to become immediately proficient in all Tiralan artistic styles, and that wasn’t the point. In her peripheral vision, she noted Aevi skulking, doubtless cross about being excluded from the conversation, but the little one had also stormed off while refusing to apologize to a guest. It would do Aevi no harm to reflect on her misbehavior, so Qalu pretended not to see.

  “You wish me to cohabitate with you, learn about Tiralan arts and culture, and…do nothing more productive? At present, I am fairly useless, but I should master basic tasks quickly. I can assist with household management and make your life easier in countless ways. I am fully versed in—”

  “Helix.” Qalu wished she could touch him to offer comfort, as his situation must feel quite precarious.

  “Yes?”

  “You are not my employee. I hope in time that we shall be friends, and I don’t require anything of those who are dear to me.”

  “But I am not.”

  “Not what?”

  “Dear to you. We have not known one another long.”

  While technically true, it didn’t account for the time she’d spent caring for him before he woke. It would put too much pressure on him if he knew, but the memory came, sharp and unbidden. That day, she had been walking with Aevi when the ship came down in a ball of fire, smashing into the hillside, close enough for her to see the smoke. She’d run straight toward the flames, fearful that there might be survivors in need of rescue.

  She’d planned to notify Tiralan emergency services, but when she got in range, her scans revealed no organic life. As she was about to leave, her sensors pinged with a different alert. There was a sentient being in peril, just not the usual sort. She hadn’t crawled into the fire, but she had saved him and raced home, with Aevi complaining the whole way. First she’d carefully transferred his data and then safeguarded it with multiple backups. Afterward, she worked for weeks to ensure the prototype was ready to receive such a beautiful and complex code.

  The day she activated his current neural matrix and started the stream, she had suffered such thrilling trepidation, agonies of excitement. Like a nurse, she tended him for a full span, monitoring his health. It was even longer until he came fully alert, offering more than baseline responses to stimuli. In truth, the day before he opened his eyes, she had feared abject failure, that her prototype wasn’t capable of housing such a beautiful mind.

  “True enough,” she said. “But it doesn’t change my expectations. My only request is that you pretend to be fond of me when my mothers inevitably ask to meet you.”

  “Fondness, what does that entail, precisely?”

  Here was another question that she was ill-equipped to answer. She had never been natural at forming the connections that other Tiralan found so effortless. Her mothers all cherished one another, and their bonds had been tight and functional for long, stable cycles. They anticipated each other’s needs and always seemed to know when space was required. Such interactions felt alien to Qalu, akin to asking someone else to fill in pieces that didn’t seem to be missing in the first place.

  Finally, she settled on an incomplete answer. “Caring about my thoughts, showing interest in my well-being, asking if my needs are met. For some, it also involves physical contact, but I will not ask that of you.”

  “Thank you.” With precise motions that she couldn’t help but admire, considering how new he was to all this, he finished his food. “Can we begin the assessment? I wish to restore as much of my former capacity as possible.”

  “Certainly. This way.”

  She hurried ahead to the lab and switched on all the equipment as Helix joined her. Already, his movements were smoother and better coordinated, and he was distractingly attractive. Just from looking at him, no Tiralan would ever guess what she had achieved, and that sent a flicker of delight through her.

  “Shall I sit?” he asked.

  “Please. Just let me attach sensors here and here, like so. This will be quick.”

  Or it should have been. The scans took no time at all, but none of the data explained why he couldn’t connect to the wider network. Theoretically, his internal processor had the ability to send and receive, but that function was disabled currently, no explanation as to the cognitive connective failure.

  What’s causing this?

  The rest of his systems were operating within normal parameters, and his vitals were excellent. He tolerated a whole battery of tests, where she gauged his internal knowledge base, establishing gaps in his awareness that seemed mainly limited to personal details. He knew the history of the coalition, which worlds were founding members, and he could even quote random bits of Tiralan poetry, but when she asked, “Why did your ship crash?” he went silent.

  “Unknown,” he finally responded.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t resolve this connection issue immediately. I’ll keep working on it, but in the meantime, you can use any terminal to access our network.”

  “With these?” He regarded his forelimbs with a weary expression.

  “It should get easier.”

  “I certainly hope so. It is quite exhausting to exist in meat space.”

  “Try not to focus on the challenges. Here, watch how I activate this.” She demonstrated the portal, bringing up some examples of modern Tiralan art. “This is one of my favorites, ‘Portrait of a Young Femme.’”

  With impressive quickness, he duplicated her motions, working the holo screens with rapid dexterity, sifting through hundreds of masterpieces in the time it took for his eyes to flick back and forth. In all honesty, it was too fast for her to even process the images, let alone know what he was looking at.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Despite her intention to remain an unmoved and reliable mentor, her head tendrils fluttered at the intensity of that single word. “Yes what?”

  Helix gazed at her as if all his hopes hinged on her reply. “I am interested in art. Will you provide the means to create it?”

  [ 4 ]

  For nearly half a span, Helix immersed himself in art.

  It was pointless and liberating.

  In the beginning, he had suspected that Qalu would eventually present her true agenda—or that he would awaken from this dream. Neither had occurred.

  Physical necessities grew less outrageous and unpleasant through repetition, and he was beginning to take pleasure in food, just as Qalu had predicted. Everything was strange, but there was great joy in choosing colors, mixing them, making something from nothing, a feat he never could have imagined in his prior existence. He had no knack for poetry, but he loved painting. Crafting objects from another medium, he enjoyed that as well. And he had no aptitude for music. All these things, he’d learned while bearing Qalu compan
y.

  And she kept her promises. While they interacted constantly, sharing thoughts and ideas, she never touched without permission. He had explored the grounds a little, usually with Aevi watching from a distance, but mostly their lives had been quiet, no intrusions from her kinfolk or random callers. Qalu seemed to treasure a solitary existence, most unusual for a Tiralan.

  There had been no movement in his memory, nor could he connect to the Tiralan network, but he grew used to searching for information manually. And slowly, he began to believe that his new incarnation wasn’t lesser, only different. The pain that had plagued him in the beginning no longer spiked, and he learned that overusing his body could create that feeling as well.

  So much to process.

  In his first attempts at art, he’d imitated other works, copying stroke for stroke, but Qalu said that wasn’t creation, only production. Now he wandered freely, seeking what she called “inspiration.” Currently, he stood near the crash site, not verifying her tale, but assessing the scraps of charred metal, the burned and dry foliage, and the scar his arrival had left on the landscape. The colors were both bleak and stunning, darkness interspersed with bright yellow vines that crawled across the wreckage, the hillside seeking to heal the damage.

  He had been part of this ship, lived in the data clusters, and experienced the physical world only through a mech unit. There had probably been questions, even on Gravas Station. Fueling attendants would’ve wondered who his mech served, and if they scanned to find an “empty” ship, more inquiries would have followed. Is that what happened? Was I running from a threat when I crashed here? But why Tiralan of all places? It wasn’t a popular trade route, and Helix had no explanation for why he would’ve sought shelter here, if he’d felt imperiled.

  Helix drew in a breath, sweet with the scent of growing things. He closed his eyes and focused: yellow thornvine, daybell, starwort, and loose pollen from the firevale tree. All plants native to Tiralan, flaunting their stamens in the wind, and the aroma was heady, spicy and green with a hint of loam. At first, he could not name what he was experiencing, but Qalu answered questions with infinite patience, and he now had the capacity to acquire information on his own, though it was slower than before.

  There were pleasures in the physical world—to feel the wind on his skin, the warmth of the twin suns, though the days were short during eclipse season. According to the calendar Qalu had shared, the next occlusion would occur soon, and darktide would last twice as long. Perhaps the event would inspire him to create something unique, a quality that so far eluded him.

  Opening his eyes, he crouched and touched fragments from the wreckage, silver and black, dusty and bubbled from the heat. Qalu had not exaggerated in calling it a catastrophic detonation. Then he picked up the shard, wanting to keep it for murky reasons, a memento or a souvenir or a relic; such impulses were new to him.

  “How is it possible that I don’t understand my own processes?” he muttered.

  “Why are you keeping that?” Aevi asked.

  He had known the little Pherzul was shadowing him when he left the habitat, but since she seemed disinclined to interact, he ignored her presence. But now she was suddenly here, skittering around his lower limbs, rear extensor whipping with curiosity. She reared up on her hind limbs and before he could stop her, she scaled him, bouncing off various parts until she came to rest on his shoulder. Her feathery extensor twined around him, and she let out a soft sound, similar to a Barathi churr.

  The vocalization comforted him and made him feel lonely at the same time. Now, at least, he had a term for the feeling, a hollow ache that made him want to see Zylar and tell him what was happening, to apologize to Beryl once more, because now that he was stuck in a strange place with little control over what befell him, he understood what he’d done to her. The fact that it ended well didn’t absolve him of responsibility.

  “I am unsure.”

  “I see. I see. Sometimes I do that too. Qalu scolds because I steal shiny things and sometimes she needs them, and I don’t know why I do. But I have to hide the shiny things; they’re mine! They should all be mine.”

  This was the first moment with Aevi that could be considered amicable, as she hissed and avoided him or stalked him from the shadows, leaping out in hope of startling him. So his response mattered or this rare accord would be broken. “Then you understand my uncertainty,” he said finally, unable to determine a better rejoinder.

  “I do! If I support your need to collect dirty things, will you tell Qalu not to fuss over my shinies?”

  “Perhaps Qalu could acquire two shiny things, one for you to keep and the other for her to use?” he suggested.

  Truly, he had no notion whether that idea was viable. Some objects doubtless required more resources to obtain. And Qalu had not given him access to her financial records, leaving him unable to determine what was a reasonable request.

  “Yes! Let’s ask her. We can go right now. Please, can we?” The rear extensor tickled as it whipped around, and for some reason, Aevi’s proximity didn’t set off the usual recoil.

  Somehow, they had become temporary allies. “I am ready to return.”

  Helix expected she would leap off his shoulder, but instead, she settled in, as if she meant to ride him back to the habitat. He could think of no courteous way to demand that Aevi dismount, and furthermore, in all probability, such a request would also mar their tenuous rapport. Therefore, he resigned himself to being a Pherzul conveyance. As they proceeded, however, he didn’t mind her weight and the churrs she made reminded him of home, of the Barathi, and more familiar times, even if he hadn’t been part of that world physically, as he was here on Tiralan.

  Her claws gripped his swator, offering hints of sharpness, but she was careful not to hurt him, a technique doubtless perfected through contact with Qalu. It was easy and surprisingly pleasant to imagine them roving together like this, and he experienced a pang of…something. Not an emotion he had felt before, as he was still learning, and there were so many, some of which appeared to be tied to his physical host.

  Aevi chattered the entire way back, bits of nothing about what she saw or smelled, and he found it…comforting. He didn’t need to respond; she didn’t seem to expect it, and by the time they entered the residence together, she was nuzzling against the side of his face and acting with what he thought be called…fondness. What Qalu had requested he demonstrate in front of her mothers.

  Did that mean he was supposed to perch on top of her? No, she’d said that she wouldn’t require physical contact as part of their arrangement. As he puzzled over this requirement, Aevi called, “Qalu! We need to speak to you!”

  Soon, she emerged from the lab, her eyes bright with…curiosity? He had begun to enjoy trying to identify her responses, based on visual cues and the nuance of her gestures. Such assessment demanded complete attention; that was why he always watched her the moment she entered his space. Today, she also smelled different, not the usual mix of chemicals and metallics. The scent was sweet, like cut fruit and fallen petals. Helix took a step closer to breathe in more of that scent.

  His pulse trembled, soft and unsteady. Somehow, her appearance struck him as altered, though she wore the same swator. But had she always…. glowed like this, bright and bronze, like some treasure that ought to be painted? Bemused, he glanced away.

  “What’s happened?” Qalu was asking. “Are you all right?”

  Definitely not, Helix thought.

  Aevi launched into a rapid explanation, expressing support for the piece of wreckage that Helix still clutched while also requesting that all shiny objects be received in double quantities henceforth. At the end of the Pherzul’s monologue, Qalu made a quiet sound, head tendrils quivering. Amusement, and oh, it was lovely. She shone with that emotion, and he stared at her, transfixed.

  “Perhaps,” said Qalu, but she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

  “Hello, my precious daughter,” an all-too familiar voice called.

/>   Qalu froze. Foremother.

  “Inatol is here. We’ll talk more later!” Aevi hissed and dashed off to hide.

  Then it got worse, as three more charming, musical voices added their greetings. Normally, her mothers notified her before visiting her domicile, but evidently, Foremother had convinced the rest that some oversight was required. I hoped to have more time. But there would be no putting them off, not when she’d already demurred once. Now, they would interrogate Helix about his antecedents and his worthy qualities, and she had no notion if he was ready for this first hurdle.

  I didn’t teach him about proper etiquette. I didn’t cover any of the pertinent—

  To her surprise, Helix assumed the proper posture on his own and executed a credible respect obeisance on his own with limbs tucked and head tendrils moving the appropriate degree. When he straightened, he said, “Please accept my apologies for not offering my greetings earlier. I forgot myself in Qalu’s company.”

  Though he couldn’t mean it, that was such a good impression of the fondness she’d requested that she fluttered a bit. All over. And Foremother caught the response, of course she did, and that resulted in a slight softening of expression. No progenitor could remain stern when someone professed partiality for their child.

  “We quite understand,” she said briskly. “Qalu, will you perform the introductions or must I?”

  Assuredly not.

  As the host for this impromptu gathering, the onus for such tasks fell to Qalu. “Mothers, this is Helix…” Here, she paused, wondering what to say precisely. “My companion. Helix, I present Inatol, Solsan, Khrelasa, and Beh-latan, my maternal units.”

  She wondered what he made of their family. Her mothers varied a fair amount in size and appearance. Inatol was the largest with stature to match her imposing personality, along with russet skin and shining copper scales. Beh-latan was the smallest, slight and delicate, glowing pink with scales in a deeper coral hue, imbued with a temperament attuned to peacemaking. Both Solsan and Khrelasa shared their build size with Qalu, closer to average, and they all ranged in earth tones, outward to bronze and gold. Though all four had contributed genetic material for Qalu’s birth, she resembled Solsan the most, down to her alt-mother’s reserved manner.