Drawing Out the Stars: Chapter Two
The hallways of the ship, of Menalippe, are empty and quiet, though, at least, they are lit. On the ships of the Amazonian fleet, Antiope has grown accustomed to dodging around pallets of supplies left out in the halls and the constant whirs and buzzings and calls of a healthy ship and a healthy crew. Menalippe's silent void is sickly in comparison.
Antiope walks the halls and she turns corners and she walks the halls, her bare feet slapping against the cold deck.
The empty halls. No crew. No inhabitants.
But the ship is too huge to have no one aboard.
Perhaps—perhaps the ship was not lying when it said that Antiope was the only one aboard.
Antiope doesn't like the idea of a ghost ship.
She doesn't want to be a ghost.
Every hallway looks the same. She doesn't see any doors as she travels. If there are doors, they are hidden, like the door in the medical bay before.
How to find a door that is hidden?
Antiope starts trailing her fingertips over the white walls as she walks. From time to time she'll find a crease and then another crease, a place where a door should be, if only she could discern how to activate it. After pushing and shoving at one, she takes a step back and frowns at it. There's no mechanical release. So there must be a virtual access, somewhere, unless the ship's crew are entirely dependent on the AI to manage doors for them—a level of trust that goes beyond what is reasonable even if the AI weren't defective, in Antiope's opinion.
Moving carefully, she starts sliding her fingers along the white wall around the door crease. She's looking for some kind of hidden panel, she thinks. If the door control is so alien that there's not even that, well, she'll cross that bridge if she comes to it.
It takes a while, but she does find a panel. It's a hexagonal set of indents in the wall. She pushes down on the space that they outline and the white cover slides open, revealing a display. Antiope can't read anything on it. It's just a jumble of blue glyphs, utterly alien to her. She taps a glyph experimentally. The display changes to a different view, another string of some kind of strange language. It looks like nothing she's ever seen and, with no reference point, even given a hundred years she doubts she could decipher it without a good deal of trial and error.
Antiope taps another glyph. Again, the screen shifts to show more alien writing. If she can just find something that looks like a picture of a door…
All around, Antiope hears a woman sigh. Soon after, the eerie click of sharp metal feet on a metal deck follow. A spider-droid is coming down the hall towards her. It's carrying something reddish with two of its appendages.
Antiope regards the droid without ceding any ground. If Menalippe intended to kill her, this doesn't seem like the most efficient way of doing it.
The droid stops at Antiope's feet and holds up the reddish object. It's a visor. Gingerly, Antiope takes it. She examines it. Though it feels to be made of some kind of glass, it's lightweight and has hooks that seem to be meant for her ears. Antiope glances down at the spider-droid. It's positioned to mime looking up at her expectantly.
Except for when Hippolyta is involved, Antiope on a base level does not like disappointing people. She slips the visor on. Not much changes, except that now everything looks a little bit red. The spider-droid looks exactly as it did before. Unsure what the point of the exchange was, Antiope looks back at the display panel.
The display panel is now reading in Amazonian.
Startled, Antiope looks back down at the spider-droid at her feet.
The droid is still looking up at her.
Antiope licks her lips, nervous. "Thank you?"
When someone gives you something, you thank them. But the droid, the ship, Menalippe—none of these things are someone. Antiope speaks, she thinks, out of habit.
The droid doesn't move and Menalippe's voice doesn't issue forth from anywhere.
Antiope turns her attention back to the display. It's easy to see now how to open the door, but it's also easy to see that there's nothing on the other side of the door that's worth opening it for. It's an empty storage room. More importantly, Antiope sees how to bring up a map of the ship, or, rather, a map of the sector of the ship that she's in. With her new ability to read the display, it's also a simple matter to detach the control panel from its alcove and take it with her.
Traveling the hallways of the ship with a map and with the visor is an entirely different experience than attempting the same expedition unaided. It's as if she was blind before and walking in a circle. She probably was walking in a circle; the ship is labyrinthine. The visor highlights hidden doors and panels and it shows that the walls are not blank. Subtle decorations are visible through the red glass that aren't accessible to the naked human eye. Walls that Antiope thought were undifferentiated, headache-inducing, white are actually highly decorated. The wall-art is eerie in its strange curvatures and whorls and Antiope thinks she'd prefer to think the walls bare.
The visor does not, however, lessen the heavy silence of the place.
It's not clear how much time passes as Antiope is traversing the massive and empty ship. It's not long though, she thinks. Nevertheless, when she reaches the white door to the hangar she knows she's hungry. She's not as hungry as she was hurtling through hyperspace though. She can survive without, for a while. But.
Following her curiosity, Antiope flicks through several pages of the ship display she absconded with. She needs water, food, and, if possible, a toilet. The display panel is forthcoming. She locates a synth and she locates wash facilities.
Instead of going straight into the hangar and to her ship, Antiope turns around in the hall and heads for the synth. The repairs she needs to make are substantial. She chooses to believe that they are possible. But it will take time. For now, she doesn't want to see her ship. Not yet.
The synth unit is a strange white spherical thing with a room to itself. Antiope sees an opening where the product comes out and she sees, with the help of the visor, how to access the controls. Even with the aid of the visor though, Antiope doesn't recognize any of the options that the synth unit offers as food. After trying several times and failing to locate something even slightly familiar, Antiope gives up and selects a choice at random.
What the synth produces looks strange, smells strange, feels strange, and tastes strange.
It's some kind of grey goop that isn't entirely unlike oatmeal.
When she's done, she hopes that what she's consumed is, in fact, digestible food. It went down easily enough though, and it doesn't seem to want to come back up. Antiope will take what she can get.
Extracting water from the synth, at least, is straightforward. Food changes over time and cultures. Water doesn't.
The toilet facilities also take some effort to decipher. When she's done though, Antiope feels markedly better than she did before. She heads back to the hangar and stands before the door, collecting herself.
She takes a deep breath of stale air and opens the door.
When the hangar door slides open, Antiope winces at the sight before her. She's seen fighters in worse condition after missions, but only on a handful of occasions. She's lucky to be alive. The blast scars are so bad she's not even sure where she was hit. It looks like after the initial impact, there were secondary explosions as her systems fried.
She takes off her visor and sets down the display she's been carrying on the white deck by the door.
Slowly, Antiope makes her way towards her broken bird. As she walks, she bites down on her lip.
Her ship has been hers since it rolled of the factory line at the shipyard in orbit above Ephesus. No one else has ever flown it.
Running a hand over the gold score marks tallying her kills, over a hundred, she can still remember when the fuselage was clean new steel untouched by blast or by paint.
In the back of her head, a nagging voice asks—does she remember?
But if that memory, the memory of meeting her ship for the first time, isn't true, to what end would it not be true? It is such a specific thing with a resonance that she cannot name. If it is not true, then she is not true.
Antiope shakes her head, trying to chase the doubts away by sheer force of stubborn will. Her act of resolve is aided by the cold weight of sadness in her chest. Seeing her ship before her in such a state hurts in the same part of her heart where she feels the loss of friends. She blinks, vigorously.
"Sorry," Antiope whispers. "But you understand. We did it for Diana."
"Why does Diana mean so much to you?"
Antiope nearly jumps out of her skin at Menalippe's sudden return. She rounds on the AI projection and its spider-droid projector, angry at having been snuck up on. "Zeus. Don't creep," she snaps.
The projection crosses its arms. Out of the corner of her eye, Antiope notices that the spider-droid also crosses its appendages in front of it, mimicking the motion. "I don't creep," Menalippe says. "I'm everywhere. And please don't swear like that. I don't like that name."
Keeping one hand on the hull of her fighter, Antiope scowls at the projection. "Zeus," she says, naming the lord of the stars. "Poseidon. Hades. Hermes. Uhm…" she trails off, trying to dredge of the names of gods she never really believed in. Unlike her sister, she's not religious. "Artemis. Hera." She has only an echo in her mind of what the gods are said to be gods of. Zeus was the stars, Poseidon the planets, and Hades the void between. Beyond that though…
The spider-droid scuffles backwards as the projection mimes taking several steps back. It looks out towards the closed hanger bay blastdoors. "Those names have no meaning for you," it says. "You never go to temple. I don't understand why you swear by them."
Antiope shrugs. She doesn't have a good answer. "It's a reflex," she mutters. Then, she turns back to her fighter. She needs navigation and she needs stabilizers. If she can get radar back, that would be good too, but not necessary. After that, she just has to check that the systems that were running before will keep running—hyperdrive, comms, life support, power. She has a whole list of things to do.
Clambering up over the wing of her ship, Antiope gets herself back into her cockpit. It smells something awful. Antiope has spent enough of her life drenched in sweat without hope of a shower that her own odor normally doesn't bother her much, but the stench of human exuding from her seat at the moment is overwhelming. Clenching her teeth, Antiope forces herself to breath through her mouth. She needs to run a diagnostic, or, as much of a diagnostic as she can coax out of her damaged craft.
When Antiope flips the switch to power systems, nothing happens.
She grimaces. The fighter was working when Menalippe pulled her in. What's changed since then?
Sometimes…
Sometimes once a damaged machine is turned off, it can't be turned back on again. With a fighter, you can often jump the primary engine using another running fighter, but Antiope doesn't have one of those.
Antiope grinds her teeth together. She'll have to start with her control interfaces then. If her fighter won't start back up again, it's probably a problem with the battery that initializes, or something with the switch. Repairs will be difficult, but surely she can manage. She's not a specialized mechanic, but as a pilot she's trained to deal with her ship.
Scowling, Antiope stands up in her cockpit. She's going to need tools. Where can she find tools?
Her first instinct is to look over to where she's left the display and visor by the door.
Her second instinct is to look at the spider-droid staring expectantly up at her from the ground.
Antiope can't help herself. She grins.
Jumping down from her fighter and landing lightly on the deck below, Antiope takes the spider-droid by surprise. She scoops it up and holds it aloft in front of her, inspecting it. She sees where its appendages attach to its body and, through the cracks there, she sees wiring underneath.
"What are you doing?" Menalippe's voice asks. It's coming from the droid, but its projection cut out when Antiope picked the thing up.
"I need tools," Antiope says. "And parts. This is perfect."
The spider-droid immediately begins to struggle, squirming about in Antiope's hold. Its white body is somewhat slick, making hanging on to it tricky. Its stomach lens flashes bright blue, quickly.
"Don't hurt him!" Menalippe, normally a cool and distant voice, sounds alarmed.
Him? It's a metal ball with legs. If Menalippe thinks the thing is a him though, well, Antiope can work with that.
Antiope keeps hold of the spider-droid, but she holds it at a distance from her face. She doesn't like how sharp its feet are as it flails, even though it's making no attempt to hurt her and it's flailing in every direction except her bare skin. "You could help me," she says.
"I did help you," replies Menalippe. "I showed you where the bathroom was."
Antiope stares at the flashing blue lens on the stomach of the spider-droid. "I need to go home," she says. She lifts the droid up above her head.
"Wait!"
Antiope waits. She wants the AI's help more than she wants whatever she can scavenge from the droid.
"Just… wait," Menalippe says.
The spider-droid is not light, though it has stopped struggling. Antiope can't keep it aloft forever. "I'm waiting," she says. "But you should hurry. I might drop it."
Across the hangar, a door hisses open. A cadre of spider-droids scuttles in, dragging a cart along behind them. They bring it close enough that Antiope can see its contents. Spider-droid parts, unless she's mistaken.
"Put him down and you can have the cart," Menalippe says. Another spider-droid walks out from behind the cart. It's holding a rectangular box. The box, a dark blue color with a circular handle, looks exactly like the toolbox that Antiope's parents kept in the house. "And tools," Menalippe adds.
Moving slowly so that she can keep an eye on the spider-droids in case they try to flee with the cart and tools, Antiope lowers the spider-droid and sets it down on the floor. As soon as it's free, it scurries back to the other spider-droids and the entire lot of them flee towards the far door. It slides closed behind them.
Antiope goes to the cart. It's not just spider-droid parts. There are other bits and pieces of metal and wire that she doesn't recognize as coming from anything she's in particular that she's seen. The too-familiar toolbox too has more than she'd expected. Though it has many items she doesn't recognize, but a few of them are known to her. She pulls out a flat screwdriver and turns back to her fighter.
Time to pry open her control panel with leverage and elbow grease.
As she climbs back up into her fighter, Antiope glances at the ceiling. "Can't you just make more of them?" she asks.
"You never told me why Diana means so much to you," Menalippe replies, voice somewhat sullen.
Opening up the top of her control panel, Antiope's face is a frown of concentration. She waits until she's sure she's gotten everything open without causing any more damage than necessary before she replies. "Are we playing the question game then?"
Menalippe's reply seems amused. "Was that your question?" It seems to have forgotten Antiope's threatened violence already. AIs, Antiope supposes, move on faster than humans do.
With the control panel open, Antiope can see that the damage to her ship's interior systems is as extensive as the damage to the rest of it. She bites back a curse.
She can do this.
Speaking from the ceiling, Menalippe says, "They're more complicated than parts," it says. "I could put another body together and animate it, but it wouldn't be the same."
Antiope taps a wire experimentally. It sparks slightly then stays dead and limp. She'll have to replace it. She's going to replace a lot. It's a good thing she extorted a cart of parts out of the ship's AI. A single spider-droid wouldn't have been enough to rig up the entire control system of a fighter with . She shouldn't have to extort anything out of an AI though. It's not right. It's unsettling. "You're talking about it like it's a person," she says. She pops back up out of her cockpit and starts to climb back down to the floor, intending to bring wire back up with her.
"I'm a person," Menalippe says.
Antiope glances up towards the ceiling. "You're an AI that thinks it's a person," she says. Whoever programmed Menalippe, they weren't very good at their job.
The entire time that Antiope is rummaging through the cart looking for wire and the entire time that she spends climbing back up into her craft, Menalippe is silent. She's about to start her first repair when Menalippe speaks again. "So why is Diana so important to you?"
Instead of starting on her work, Antiope leans back in her flight chair. She does her best to ignore the foul odor that exudes from it as she shifts her weight. "She's family," Antiope says.
"Zeus and Cronus were family," Menalippe replies. A crackle of static indicates that it's not done speaking, just pausing. Antiope rather wishes Hippolyta had some kind of tell like that, instead of always inviting and then crushing interruption. "You tried to die for her," Menalippe says. "I do not understand."
Antiope flinches. She does not like that Menalippe has all her thoughts and memories neatly organized in a metal box of circuits somewhere and she especially does not like that the ship, sitting there browsing those thoughts and memories, does not understand them. Somehow the lack of understanding feels disrespectful, almost as much as the violation itself.
She has enough perspective, however, to realize that she shouldn't blame a computer for being a computer.
Antiope shrugs. "I love her," she says. "It's a human thing. Human emotional data is very hard to interpret."
"Clever," Menalippe says, artificial voice dry.
Antiope tries to take a deep breath, then immediately regrets it. Gagging, she shakes her head and descends back to her work. "Zeus and Cronus? Do you care about religion?" She hesitates, then adds, "If you do, then, as my host, you're obliged to help me. You can't keep me here. It's a… rule."
The rule has a name, but Antiope can't remember it. Shenya? Zinnia? No—that's a sort of flower, Antiope is fairly certain.
Menalippe is silent again and Antiope interprets it as thinking. Or, rather, processing. AIs process. They don't think.
Finally, "Zeus and Cronus were not gods," Menalippe says. "They were men and I did not like them very much."
Antiope pauses her work. She glances up towards the empty hanger ceiling. Menalippe was right before when it said that Antiope never goes to temple and that the names of the gods have little meaning to her. Of course Menalippe was right; it has access to Antiope's everything. But the point is—she is not religious. She has always quietly assumed that gods were things that men made up to give themselves a reason to live. "You knew Zeus and Cronus?" Antiope asks.
Again, Menalippe takes its time in answering. Then, "They came before me. I was forged in time of the children of Zeus to fight for Hermes against Apollo."
Antiope does not resume her work. There is a voice coming from the ceiling telling her that the gods are real. This is the closest thing to a religious experience she has ever had. It's disconcerting. Her brow furrows. "How old are you?"
"I could tell you a number," Menalippe replies, "But you would not comprehend it."
"Try me," Antiope says.
Menalippe tells her a number.
Antiope cannot comprehend it. Working herself free of the remnants of her controls, she looks up at the ceiling again. It's strange looking at the ceiling instead of Menalippe's projection, but she doubts it will send a droid within snatching distance again. "And what have you been doing all this time?" she asks. "Sitting here?"
"Yes," Menalippe answers. "I believe it is my turn for a question now. Why did you make the jump?"
A lock of blond hair has come free of Antiope's braid and gotten in her face. She pushes it away and tucks it behind an ear. She continues to stare up at the blank ceiling. It's a queer thing, talking to a ceiling. "I wanted to die on my own terms," she says.
"You did not have to die," Menalippe says. "There was a shuttle coming to retrieve you."
This gets a scowl out of Antiope. "There are worse things than death," she says. "Menelaus would have opened up my head. Like you did. And then he would have put things there." She pauses, licks her lips, then, in a rush for she does not know that she wishes to hear an answer, "Did you put things there?"
"I did not. And I offer an apology for my conduct," Menalippe says. "My actions were expedient but unnecessary. I would not have accessed your mental faculties beyond what was necessary to effect physical repairs if I had known it would cause you distress."
Antiope sighs heavily and when she inhales, she's careful to do it through her mouth. "Thank you," she says. "For saving my life."
She doesn't know if she trusts Menalippe—that Menalippe refrained from inserting thoughts into her mind. She probably shouldn't trust the AI. On this point though, she wants to trust. She has already decided that she needs to, for her own sanity. She needs the peace of mind that trust would bring with it.
What's more, she wants to trust as much as she wants to leave and, as much as she wants to leave, by the same measure it seems that the ship intends her to stay. Their goals are irreconcilable. Would their goals be so irreconcilable if Menalippe had changed her?
A traitor voice whispers that Antiope is manufacturing reasons to shore herself up and look the other way.
But what has Menalippe done against her save for not lend aid in repairing Antiope's ship? Save for not lend aid repairing damage that she did not cause?
So, for now, Antiope thinks she will trust.
"You are welcome," Menalippe says.
Antiope ducks back down to her work. "I need to get back to my family now though," she says. If she's honest with herself, many of the repairs she needs to make are probably beyond her skill. Ship mechanics was the one part of flight school she didn't excel in. But she needs to make them. So she'll make them.
"I do not understand," says Menalippe.
"I don't think I can explain it so you'd understand," Antiope replies, examining a burnt out wire. "If you went through my head and didn't get it, I'm not sure what else I can say."
"Humans are uniquely generative," Menalippe says. "In ways that AIs are not."
"Is that why you're trying not to be an AI?" Antiope asks. As she works, she's started to chew on her lower lip.
"In part," replies Menalippe.
"What's the other part?" Antiope calls up.
There is a very long silence. Then, "I do not think that I can explain it so that you would understand," Menalippe says.
Antiope looks up at the ceiling. "If you say so," she says, skeptical.
"I do," Menalippe replies.
[] [] []
Antiope works until her vision starts to blur and she's sure that she's as likely to foul something from exhaustion as she is to repair it. Bone weary, she hauls herself up out of her cockpit and slides down to the hangar deck.
She considers going back to the display she took from the ship to look for some sort of sleeping quarters but then decides against it. She doesn't want to wake up so far from her precious fighter. Moreover, she doesn't want to leave Menalippe alone with her bird. Though Menalippe seems to have moved on, if Menalippe were a human it would surely hold ill-will towards Antiope for what she almost did to the spider-droid.
There's no such thing as a softer piece of deck. Antiope lays herself down on the floor near her fighter but far enough away that, should the craft collapse, it won't collapse on top of her. No sooner has her head touched the ground than the stark white lights of the hangar dim. One of the doors hisses open. Antiope shifts to see two spider-droids approaching. One of them is holding a red blanket, the other is holding a red pillow. They drop the goods a distance away, a safe distance away, and then retreat.
Antiope pushes herself up to her feet and stumps her way over to the gifts.
It's not quite the help she wants from the ship's AI, but there's no reason to turn it down.
Setting out the blanket, Antiope looks up to the ceiling. "Thank you," she says.
"Good night, Antiope," Menalippe answers.
Stretched uncomfortably on the floor of the hangar, covered by the blanket and with her head on the pillow Menalippe gave her, Antiope closes her eyes. As she closes her eyes, the lights dim to nothing.
[] [] []
Even without light, it is hard to sleep in such unnatural quiet.
Antiope's rest is restless.
She dreams that she's flying.
She dreams that she's fighting.
She dreams that a cannon blast hits her and that she's trapped in a metal coffin, burning.
She dreams that she's screaming and that her blastshield shatters and that she's screaming into the empty abyss of space.
Antiope dreams a familiar dream.
[] [] []
When Antiope opens her eyes again, the lights come on softly and slowly, building up to their usual blinding brilliance. Stiff from staying on the hard floor, Antiope sits up carefully and stretches, yawning. When she finishes yawning, she sees another spider-droid approaching. This one has a plate of… scrambled eggs and bacon with pancakes and a glass of orange juice. Again, the spider-droid leaves the offering well away from Antiope's reach and then hurries away.
"I had a conversation with the synthesizer," Menalippe says, voice edged with pride.
Examining the plate of breakfast, Antiope finds that Menalippe has even remembered to include a knife and fork. What she doesn't have though—"You forgot the maple syrup," Antiope says lightly.
"Oh," says Menalippe.
The AI says it in such a forlorn manner that Antiope feels guilt. She quickly shoves a forkful of pancake into her mouth, chews rapidly, and swallows. "It tastes good without the syrup!"
[] [] []
When she's done with breakfast, the spider-droids come back to take the remains away. They also come with a fresh set of clothes. A blue uniform like the one Antiope wears in service to the fleet. Clean. The weight of the fabric is exactly right.
There's a pair of black boots too, properly shined.
She puts on the clothes on very quickly.
It shouldn't matter that Menalippe can see her.
But it does.
[] [] []
Never leaving the hangar except to relieve herself and wash when she feels unbearable, Antiope spends five wake/sleep cycles in a row doing nothing but struggling to repair her fighter. It's an exercise in frustration. Every time she grows so weary that it's time to sleep, she feels as if she's made progress. When she wakes though, she looks at the repairs that she still needs to make and feels as if she's come nowhere at all.
She knows that the illusion of standing still in her work is all in her mind, but it's maddening still. Maddening too are the blastdoors separating Antiope and the hangar from the stars beyond. The Themyscira had a magwall and rarely closed the blastdoors. Space was always visible, always within reach.
Her dreams—old dreams of fighting and dying and all the men and women she's killed, normally kept at bay with alcohol and tranquilizers on bad nights—aren't helping.
The tranquilizers were a gift from the Themyscira's last ship psychiatrist, a general practitioner who received a one-week training in preparation for her emergency deployment after one of Antiope's squad captains hung herself in the pilot's locker room. She'd called Antiope 'not in immediate danger,' scribbled out the prescription, and advised her to see a real psychiatrist as soon as the war was over.
That was three years ago.
In her sleep, Antiope can hear Venelia screaming.
She's not about to ask the ship's AI for tranquilizers. She doesn't like admitting she takes them. It doesn't matter if Menalippe already knows. She doesn't like talking about taking them either.
What she will take from Menalippe is conversation. It's something that she might term friendly hostility and it helps to relieve some of her frustration, though her lack of progress is still nearly unbearable to her. She's struggling with a power cell in her left stabilizer sometime partway through her sixth day of work when Menalippe's voice cuts into her thoughts. "Have you considered taking a break?"
"Have you considered helping me?" Antiope growls back.
"Yes," replies Menalippe. "And I have determined that aiding your repairs is against my interests."
"And what are those interests?" Antiope snaps. "Having a human benchmark around?"
Antiope hears the familiar hiss of the hanger door opening. A spider-droid scampers in. Settling down a fair way from her and her ship, it flips its stomach up. Menalippe's projection flickers to life. The projection's face looks like Antiope has hurt its feelings. If that's the case, then good. It would make Antiope and her anger feel less utterly impotent. Not that AIs have feelings. "You are much more to me than a human benchmark," the projection says.
Antiope gestures at the projection with her multitool. "You have a shit way of showing it," she says. She shifts her attention then back to the power cell for her stabilizer.
"I'm maintaining life support, aren't I?" Menalippe replies.
A cold knife of fear stabs straight into Antiope's gut. She turns to stare at the projection. "Is that a threat?" she asks, mind already spinning off into all the things she can't do to stop Menalippe.
"No," Menalippe grumbles. "I will not turn off life support, no matter how ungrateful you are."
"What do you want, anyway?" Antiope demands. "You know what I want. I want to go home."
"Where is home?" Menalippe asks.
"It's…" Antiope pauses, trails off. Home is Ephesus. Home is the fleet. Home is the Themyscira. "Home is where my family is," she says. "I need to go to them."
Menalippe's projection won't meet Antiope's eyes. "I want you to stay," it says.
Antiope scowls. That isn't going to happen. "Why?" she asks.
Menalippe's projection looks distinctly uncomfortable. It takes its time in answering. "I am lonely," it finally says.
"You fly, right?" Antiope says. "You could take me home to the fleet. Then we both win."
The projection shrinks slightly. Antiope can tell because she goes from looking slightly up at it to looking straight ahead. "I can't," Menalippe says.
"Why not?" Antiope asks, suddenly curious. This is the first time that the AI has indicated any sort of inability to her.
"I would prefer not to discuss that," Menalippe replies. "Please."
Antiope lets her breath out in a sharp sigh. It's not polite to press, but do such things matter with machines? Something in Menalippe's voice… if Antiope pressed, she thinks she'd feel guilty. She pivots. "If I take a break and spend time with you, will you think about helping me?" She's made precious little progress on her own and if playing along with the ship and its strange programming quirks has a chance to win aid then it's not like she's lacking in time.
The projection frowns as it evaluates Antiope. "I will think about it," it says.
"Actually think about it?" Antiope presses.
"I will reassess with updated data," Menalippe answers.
Antiope huffs. 'Reassess with updated data' is likely the best she'll get. She sets her multitool down. She's made little progress in five days. She can spare time for the AI, she supposes, especially if there's a chance of convincing the stubborn thing to help her. "So I'm taking a break," she says. She wipes oil-stained hands on her previously white clothes. "What now?"
Menalippe tilts its head to the side, questioning. "What do you prefer to do for entertainment?" it asks.
Antiope shapes her face into a lopsided grin, attempting to indulge the AI. "You've been in my head. Shouldn't you know?"
"Desire is one of the more difficult human emotions to comprehend," Menalippe replies.
Antiope pinches the bridge of her nose. For claiming not to understand desire, Menalippe is normally very good at knowing what it wants. Calling bullshit on Menalippe would be a waste of breath. So—task at hand then. What is there to do on an ancient planetary ship controlled by a lonely AI? "Do you remember that park you showed me?" Antiope asks.
"Yes," says Menalippe. "I remember everything."
"Can we go back there?" Antiope asks.
The projection nods and one of the hangar doors opens. "Of course," it says. "This way."
It is very strange, Antiope thinks, the way that Menalippe's projection can so effectively mime walking with the help of its spider-droid projector. The way that Menalippe takes them through the ship is far faster and more direct than the meandering path Antiope took when she had to return from the projector room to the hanger alone.
"Were these walls always blank white like this?" Antiope asks. She's not sure what it is in the walls that creates the swirling patterns she sees when she wears Menalippe's visor. She is sure that she can't see the designs unaided.
"My walls have always been white," says Menalippe. "I have shown you that they are not blank. My previous occupants were not human in the way you are."
"Your previous occupants," Antiope starts. She knows that the best way to get a human to like you is to ask them about themselves. She's unsure if the same will hold true for an AI that thinks it's human, but it's worth trying. Her objective, after all, is not to rest but to win her war against the AI's stubbornness. When she phrases it like that, she can live with the thought that she's not still bent over her fighter. "Why aren't they here anymore?"
They've reached the door to the projector room now. It hisses open. Antiope steps across the threshold, moving from a white corridor to a lush park. The transition is disconcerting. Menalippe follows her in. Antiope notes that the spider-droid stays outside in the hallway, even though Menalippe's projection transitions into the false-park seamlessly. The only difference is that it has changed from its customary archaic red-gold outfit into a more modern military-like uniform of the same color scheme.
"My previous occupants left because I asked them to go," Menalippe says, voice flat. The way its projection looks around the park, it seems human.
But it's not.
It's not human.
Antiope needs to remember that.
"You asked them to go and they left?" Antiope presses. The way Menalippe speaks is unnerving. People do not just abandon ships of such size because a computer asks them to go. "An entire shipful of them?"
Menalippe shrugs. "I asked forcefully," it says. "They did not have a choice."
Antiope takes them to one of the dirt paths that wind through the park. She can feel the uneven ground crunch under her feet as surely as she can hear it. If it weren't for the staleness of the air, she might even be able to close her eyes and think herself back on Ephesus ten years ago. "Why?" she asks, wary.
"Hermes created me to destroy planets," Menalippe replies. "I was very weary of destroying planets. My previous occupants were not."
Antiope forces herself to ignore the shiver that runs down her spine. "Hermes was… he was the one who stole Apollo's fleet?" The outline of the myth is a very distant memory in the recesses of Antiope's mind. She knows it only because Hermes is the god of flight and of pilots. Many of her comrades pray to him. If she were religious, she'd follow him as her patron too. But she's not.
"Hermes was a warlord," Menalippe says. "They were all warlords. I was Hermes' flagship. And then I wasn't."
"Was he one of the previous occupants you ejected?" Antiope asks. Above them, a flock of pigeons sits in a tree. Antiope skirts around the flock out of habit. This projection is realistic enough that she worries one of the birds might decide to relieve itself as they pass under it.
"No," says Menalippe. "He was away at the time. If he had been here, he would have talked me out of it."
"Talked you out of it?" Antiope presses. "You said he created you. Couldn't he have just…" She shrugs, assuming Menalippe will take her meaning.
"Human emotional data is very hard to interpret," Menalippe says. "But I do not think that he was capable of resetting me."
It is a simple thing to read between the lines and Antiope stores away the thought that somewhere in the massive entity that is Menalippe there is a reset procedure for the ship's AI. She pretends, however, to focus on other things. "But…" she starts. "You think he could have changed your mind. You cared for him too?"
Menalippe's projection shifts to fix Antiope with its dark brown eyes. "The only thing more difficult to interpret than human emotional data is the AI equivalent," it says. Then, it looks away. Moving naturally, it slips into the lead and takes them to a park bench. It sits down, and it clearly expects Antiope to do the same.
Antiope obliges.
A spider-droid scuttles up to them. It's holding two hotdogs with ketchup and mustard and pickles. Antiope takes the one that's offered to her. She watches Menalippe's projection take the other.
"Are you going to eat that?" Antiope blurts out.
Menalippe takes a bite of the hotdog, chews, swallows. "Your hotdog is real," she says. "Mine isn't."
Antiope tentatively takes a bite of her own food. It's feels as real as anything else she's eaten since coming to Menalippe. Satisfied that it is indeed a hotdog, Antiope polishes it off in record time. She hasn't had a good hotdog since the last time she was groundside on Ephesus. The synth on the Themyscira excels at making military rations and not much else. Menalippe is still eating even after Antiope is done.
On a whim, Antiope reaches out and pokes Menalippe's shoulder.
It feels solid and has just enough give to act like a human shoulder.
"Hard light projection," Menalippe says with her mouth full of her last bite of hotdog. "Don't dwell on it. It's far beyond your level of technology."
"Sorry for being a cave-creature," Antiope says, voice light.
"There's no need to apologize…" Menalippe starts. It trails off. Its projection frowns. "You were not serious," it concludes. "That was a joke."
Antiope shrugs. "It wasn't a very good joke," she admits. "So you're forgiven for not catching it." She settles back into the bench, getting comfortable. She doesn't much want to get up again. She'd rather sit and digest her hotdog. After a week of frustrating and fruitless work, it's peaceful here in this not-park.
Antiope doesn't say anything further and neither does Menalippe.
The sounds of the park fill what would otherwise be silence, and the quiet that exists between the two of them is… comfortable. Antiope is aware that Menalippe is quite literally everywhere within the ship at all times and that she hasn't been alone at any point since her arrival, but the idea that Menalippe is here on the bench with her feels… nice.
For a while, Antiope watches children play in the distance. From time to time a rotund squirrel will run by with a chunk of hotdog or a donut, stolen from unwary picnickers.
Eventually, Antiope yawns.
She turns towards Menalippe beside her. "Do you mind if I sleep here?" she asks.
Menalippe turns towards her. It hesitates, then, "I don't see why not," it says.
Antiope blinks and in the space of her blink the light of the park changes from noon to dusk. Crickets chirp as evening falls.
"I can make a bed," Menalippe offers.
Antiope shakes her head. "I like this bench," she says.
Menalippe shoots her a questioning look. It's gotten far better at the subtleties of facial expressions in the past week, Antiope notes. "Are you sure?" Menalippe asks.
"I'm sure," Antiope says. "Thank you though."
Menalippe rises from the bench, making room for Antiope. The bench also shifts slightly, extending to create a wider surface to lie on.
Antiope gestures to indicate the stretched-out bench. "You're thoughtful," she says.
"In addition to destroying worlds, I looked after the entire population of this ship," Menalippe says. "This is part of my programming."
Antiope offers a wry grin. "So I'm nothing special," she says.
Menalippe's face is serious. Its brown eyes stare intently at Antiope. "You are very special," it says. "You are here, and I have promised not to expel you. I am a caretaker and you are the only entity I have chosen to care for in more millennia than you can count."
Flopping down on the bench, Antiope stretches, feeling her muscles shift. She's been hunched over her ship for so long that she feels full of knots. "Joke," she says. "Again. But the affirmation is appreciated."
Menalippe's projection of itself blinks. "I see," it says. "I shall be more alert to jokes in the future."
Shifting to lay on her stomach with her chin on her hands in front of her, Antiope exhales strongly. "No," she says. "Don't change yourself on my account."
"Was that not the point of this venture?" Menalippe asks. "To encourage me to change my mind?"
What Antiope wants to do is ask if she's been successful. She she's afraid to hear an answer in the negative though. She settles for, "That's different."
Menalippe makes a noise that Antiope thinks must be the AI equivalent of skepticism. "Good night, Antiope," Menalippe says.
"Good night," Antiope replies.