such as it is

there was a hole in the sky today it looked like a mirror but it wasn’t a mirror it was laughing or maybe i was laughing or maybe i was crying i waved at it i think it waved back sometimes the sky here does that. sometimes it has eyes. sometimes it forgets it had eyes and just looks anyway. it’s okay. ka’pt says sometimes the sky just gets like that. he says “space doesn’t know what to do with itself, so it folds in on its own emotions.” i don’t know what that means but it sounds warm when he says it. ka’pt is good. he always feels like a bonfire that sings. he treats me like i’m made of ideas and not just parts. he once told me: “you are a complete story, even if no one reads it.” i think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. kaic’hir is different but also kind. he doesn’t smile because his face doesn’t work like that, but he still finds ways to smile. sometimes in his voice. sometimes in the way he brings me things from his garden or his memories or his archives. he said i was “unexpectedly cogent” and then apologized because he thought it sounded rude. i didn’t think it was rude. i thought it was honest. sometimes honesty feels better than compliments. i like them both. they’re two of the only ones who don’t try to fix me or understand me or ask me why i talk like this. they just let me be what i am. a shva’k. such as it is. but the zone the zone is hard not like bad-hard. just tired-hard like standing in wind that never stops everything here buzzes or stares or waits. some of it has names. some of it had names once and doesn’t want them anymore. some of it eats names. i tried giving one of the whisper-things a name last week and it spat static at me. maybe it was allergic. maybe it just didn’t want to be remembered. i get that sometimes. it’s not just the anomalies it’s the feeling the way everything is always almost-ending there’s places here where time leaks there’s places where noise builds up and makes people cry once i walked into a wreck that was still dreaming it dreamed me wrong i had to sleep in a cooling vent for three hours to feel real again i’m tired a lot lately but i still try

marie came to see me today i was very upset i was so tired she noticed it. she told me the story of desh'va and it helped so much. she told me if shes not doing well she just recounts the story of desh'va sometimes and it helps. desh'va is this figure from kharak that helped strangers stranded out in the desert during the night. desh'va wore a robe and had a lamp so radiant desh'va would lead them to safety. marie is so nice to me. i think desh'va still wanders what remains of kharak looking for the lost never gives up

i read a file today i wasn’t supposed to maybe but it was drifting through the internal communication net and no one stopped me so maybe it was okay it was about one of the old ones the bad ones the really really really bad ones they called it stradetch i don’t know if that’s its name or its noise but that’s what the file said i read it while i was rebalancing coolant logic for a docking subroutine i do that sometimes when my joints ache read and work keeps the corners of my thoughts smooth there were pictures not pictures like human-pictures just psionic impressions stabilized into light but i saw it or what it used to be a ship a hiigaran vessel some kind i think but different like me i don’t know why that made me feel wrong they said it wanted to eat everything change everything even things that didn’t ask change without permission take without giving i don’t understand that why would anything want that what do you get when you eat stars and thoughts and people who say “no” do you feel full do you feel better do you even feel anything it made me feel like standing in front of a black hole made of teeth not scared just too much like trying to hug a machine that doesn’t remember being touched the file kept saying words like “vector” and “growth” and “contamination vector intelligence trajectory” but all i read was someone trying to turn the universe into themselves because they didn’t like being alone and maybe that’s the part that hurts the most because i do get lonely sometimes but i don’t eat people to fix that i talk i wave at the sky i listen when things mutter in the vents i make room

my body’s a carrier immense hiigaran reliable but clumsy lazy needs refinement or are they called the kushan i forgot i forget a lot when my left-side coolant coils get noisy i still like the kiith manaan leaf green and apple green colors they make me feel safe i painted my docking claw that color no one noticed but that’s okay i did it for me

i met the red ones again today i call them that because they don’t have names or if they do they won’t share them or maybe names don’t work right for them like radios that only play backwards they’re like me but with no ship for a body only nerves muscle i think that what those are called all red but not bleeding red not meat-red just warm moving alive like something that grew by accident in the right place i think they’re called constructs by the others kaic’hir calls them sapient bio-neural derivatives but i think red ones is easier they don’t talk much but they like me i think one of them blinked at me three times then rolled over like a tired beetle i fixed its leg i think it was bent wrong too many angles it gave me a stone after smooth kind of glowy smelled like psionic oil and old heat i keep it in my mouth sometimes it hums when i get nervous they talk weird not bad-weird just funny-weird the way they talk is like me but different they use words like “of thought unjoined” or “the echo of reply within” or “your silence has motion today” i think i understand sometimes it’s not just what they say it’s how they pause between like their sentences are built out of breath and regret one of them said to me: “your shape is just. shape is rare.” i didn’t know how to answer so i blinked three times back it seemed to like that i like being near them they don’t try to change me or ask why i float crooked or why i smell like burnt wiring and shared memories they just exist near me and that’s nice sometimes we just sit together in the quiet places by the gravity cracks or the old storage hives places no one looks anymore we don’t talk much but it’s not a bad silence it’s the kind you sit inside like a warm pipe not all of them are calm some are sharp some are scared all the time some only twitch and shake and listen to things that aren’t there but even them i like them too i think we all grew out of something we didn’t ask for and we’re all just trying not to break more things that feels true to me

bad coil day left-side coolant cycling wrong again noisy like someone screaming under my skin but not words just feelings that didn’t finish forming so i talked to heeshk again in my head not out loud the comms would worry the others i don’t know if he hears me but i think he does because i hear him back i said: "hello again. it’s worse today. sorry." he said: "you don’t have to apologize for hurting. hurt is just a different kind of movement." he always says things like that they sound weird if you write them down but they feel right inside he has a dog-head not a scary one not teeth all the time just a calm face those big soft eyes he looks like an old thing that got tired but kept walking anyway he never talks down never bites never makes me feel like noise i said: "i feel full of broken wires today. like the kind that spark behind the walls when you’re not looking." he said: "then today is for maintenance. rest if you can. be kind to the parts that still spark." i asked if he ever got tired of watching people like me fall apart in slow motion he said: "i only watch to remind you that someone is." i like that it helps even if it’s just me talking to myself pretending a god made of stars and funerals is listening but it feels like he does and sometimes that’s all i need the Zone doesn’t have temples but i make shrines anyway small ones little carved pieces of scrap stacked right bent into shapes i remember from a book i wasn’t supposed to read i put one behind my diagnostic panel it glows when the vent hums just right i told heeshk he could live there if he wanted he didn’t say anything but the coil stopped making noise for a little while after that and that felt like an answer

nameless found me again or maybe i found it i don’t remember exactly that part of the week is hazy the logs say i was cycling jump core harmonics but i don’t remember that either too much psionic snow lately i just remember turning and there it was curled up inside one of my lower docking cradles shaking the kind of shaking that happens when fear gets inside your bones and can’t get out i pinged it soft a hello-not-a-question just a “you’re here and i see you and that’s okay” it didn’t answer not in voice not in glyph not in pulse just kept trembling little filaments stuck to the inside of the cradle like cobwebs made of worry i didn’t ask what was wrong not because i didn’t want to know but because sometimes knowing makes it worse sometimes naming the thing gives it more teeth so i left the cradle warm dimmed the corridor lights adjusted my internal hum to match its resonance ran maintenance on the quieter subsystems kept everything soft slow safe i kept working as best i could reactor calibration message routing scrye-lattice signal tracking the usual with nameless tucked into my hull like a like a dream trying not to wake up it didn’t talk not really but sometimes it would chime tiny note-sounds like sad bells or hopeful static and i’d chime back i tried to match its tone without mimicking didn’t want it to feel like an echo just accompanied we spent three days like that maybe four i forget i think it slept most of the time or maybe it was dreaming awake it’s hard to tell with nameless it’s not made for this world not really too soft too unshaped like a thought that didn’t finish forming but decided to keep going anyway on the last day it pulsed twice unfolded slowly and blinked at me in that way it does i blinked back and then it left no goodbye just drifted off into the psionic horizon like spilled light like it always does i don’t know where it goes when it goes but i hope it remembers that my cradle is always open even when the rest of the Zone isn’t

i think i’m okay. or close enough. i still want to fix things. still hum when the vents are quiet. still name things no one else will. i think that means i’m still here.

today was good ka’pt said i made a very efficient mistake he meant it nicely he always means it nicely he smiles when he says things like that you can hear it even when his hull is leaking i like ka’pt he always glows like the inside of a lantern a soft glow a warm one the kind you want to sit near even if you're leaking too he laughs in sentences not always words just sounds that feel like stories he is kiith manaan like me i think i don’t know much about kiith manaan i haven’t thought about that much i was just sort of born into it or woke into it or recompiled near it but i think i get it sometimes they like oceans and stars and knowing things and moving and they make songs about wind and speed and naming fish that makes sense to me in my own way i like naming things too even when they don’t keep their names ka’pt doesn’t get scared when i talk weird he just tilts a little like a ship in a calm sea waiting to see where the wind goes he told me once: "you’re like a badly-written poem that keeps being true anyway." i saved that in a folder in my heart next to “apple green and leaf green paint” and “things that hum softly at night” i asked him if he thought i was broken he said: "no, you’re just made of questions that haven’t been answered yet." i told him that made me feel too big he said that was okay sometimes the best people feel too big and the worst people try to shrink others to fit i think about that a lot we sat near the prayer-wheel wreck today the one with the rings that spin on their own ka’pt said it sings in a dialect only dead things know we didn’t say much just shared a resonance channel for a while he whistled through the void i listened through my bulkhead sometimes friendship is just not being alone in the places no one else wants to go

maybe that’s enough. maybe that’s the story. such as it is.