**if modeSleep== yes

**get batteryStatus( )

**activate(chargeBattery)

**if (cablesPresent) == no; numberOfMistakesAutoHasMade++

**else begin charging

**while charge100

**run chargeBattery(slow) /to avoid overheating

**end chargeBattery () /or you'll damage yourself

**set modeSleep == no

**end code.

Auto opened both eyes, dilating his pupils to their maximum setting to admit as much light as possible.

It wasn't much. Save for a few lights on the Axiom's control panel, all was dark. He needed to get the power back on, but wasn't confident that such a thing was possible.

At least he had been (so far) successful in his other directive: keeping the passengers alive. Well, keeping the passenger alive. He was down to one now. If anything happened to her, Auto would be a complete failure.

But for now, she was alive and healthy. He switched to infrared—her core temperature was a warm, glowing 96.7 Fahrenheit, her limbs a slightly cooler purple. Her breaths came slowly and gently, slightly lifting and lowering the arm he'd draped over her. He counted thirteen cycles in sixty seconds—normal for a human at rest.

She fascinated him. In all of his 700 years working alongside humans, he'd never bothered to notice the intricacies of how they functioned. The medical droids had handled that—giving everybody medicine for their high cholesterol and blood sugar, ensuring that they changed positions frequently enough in their chairs that they didn't develop pressure sores, giving them a bare minimum PT program so that their bodies didn't completely atrophy, etc.

(The PT had been more useful than Auto had expected. During their final battle, Auto had calculated that McCrea's legs wouldn't be able to support 400 pounds of excess fat in the absence of anything to lean on for support, let alone walk up an incline that Auto had created by tilting the ship. Wrong.)

Though there was work to be done, Auto found himself strangely unwilling to get up. He didn't think he could move without disturbing her, not with the bed (um, chair) being so small. It definitely hadn't been designed to hold two.

So he waited. The decision didn't make logical sense to him; Auto turned the thought over in his central processing unit several times before he decided that it must be his "keep-the-passengers-safe" directive causing him to act this way. Maybe the directive extended to "don't wake them up when they are sleeping peacefully" or something like that.

Fortunately, he wouldn't have to sacrifice very much work time. He'd only been awake for three minutes twenty-five seconds before she started to stir against the confines of the overloaded hoverchair. Lily stretched—it required reaching all four limbs beyond the edge of the chair—yawned, and opened her eyes.

"Good morning, bolt boy," she mumbled sleepily.

"I estimate a 57.23% chance of a good morning. Variables include how quickly we progress with repairing the ship, and whether or not McCrea gets back with us."

Her hand flew to her mouth, suppressing a sound that was halfway between a giggle and a hiccup. "Auto, you're funny."

Auto didn't see what was so humorous about a mathematical calculation, but at least Lily was smiling instead of crying. It was an improvement.

"I'm starving," she mumbled. "I need my breakfast. Just wish I didn't have to put on a spacesuit to go get it." She paused. "No, wait, there's a coffee machine here in the control room. Phew."

Lily sat up, climbed out of bed, walked over to the coffee maker, and clapped her hands two times. The machine creaked, gurgled, and released a thin trickle of rust-colored water that dribbled down the side.

"I recommend you do not attempt to drink that."

Lily snorted. "No kidding. It looks even worse than the regenerator mush that I'm going to have to eat. Well, I suppose I need to change out of my pajamas."

She pointed her index finger at him. "You. Turn the chair to face the wall. I'm going to change clothes."

"Why do you care? That task is not affected by whatever direction I'm facing."

"Because humans don't watch each other undress! That's creepy!"

I'm not a human.

…so what am I? A program? A bunch of wires and semiconductors wrapped in Kevlar?

Auto pushed the "on" button and the chair floated up a few feet. He used a few more controls to raise the chair's back into a sitting position instead of laying flat, and turned it to face the wall. He waited until she gave him the clear to turn the chair back around.

"So…what's on the schedule for today?" Lily yawned, raking her hair back into its usual high ponytail.

"Repairs." Auto unclipped his cables and directed the hoverchair to the middle of the massive control panel. He flicked a switch; power slowly trickled through the circuit, lighting up the displays one by one. Backlights now highlighted numerous buttons, above the digital clock appeared a display of a cheery blue sky with little animated clouds floating in the background and a round ball of light rising in the east.

The little picture was meant to show the ship's captain what artificial sky was currently on display beneath the Axiom's ceiling. Now, it seemed to exist for the sole purpose of mocking him, a glowing middle finger just to remind him of the ever-present dark on his beloved ship which he could not keep in working order.

His vocoder made an involuntary beep of overwhelmed exhaustion as Auto scrolled through the past 48 hours of temperature readings in the ship's power core. "Several components experienced temperatures outside of their specified tolerance levels during moments of peak power usage."

"So…we're overworking the few power cells that still function?" Lily sighed.

"Correct."

"And they could fail?"

"Correct."

Her shoulders drooped. "At this rate, we're both going to die in space."

Her appearance reminded him of how he looked when his batteries were drained—and he realized what the issue was. "Lily, you need to eat. You're out of energy."

Her stomach growled. "Yeah…you're right…I should suit up…" She glanced up at the closet where the spacesuits were kept, then she deflated a little more—probably in anticipation of doing up all the zippers and buckles and hoses of the complex suit.

"Lily—"

She looked up at him with exhausted eyes.

He realized that he hadn't put together the rest of his sentence. Thousands of possibilities flickered through the finely etched microcircuitry of his CPU.

Lily, you need to stop moping and get up.

Lily, this isn't helping us.

Lily, there's work to be done.

"Lily—I have to go outside anyway to get myself a new shirt that doesn't have nail polish or insect insides all over it. I can get you something from the food regenerator if you need a few more minutes to rest."

Her eyes said it all. "Thank you, Auto…thank you."

*0*0*0*0*

A/N: This book now has a cover! You can find it on Wattpad