“Isabelle?” Collins spoke slowly, a shocked and confused look on her face, still marred by the shock of learning what I was. She hesitated a moment longer and then stammered out “I-I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name. And I don’t know if I’m going to be much use for information to... you.”

  I gave her a sad smile and chuckled nervously. “W-Well, you don’t really know her by the n...name.” As fun as it might be to dance around the subject for a little while, I decided to just be straightforward, since the poor woman was probably already overwhelmed with shocking information at the moment. “I’m ta-talking about your core.”

  “My...” She paused to think a moment, then a look of surprise washed over her face. “My core? As in Demitrius’s core? You... kept it?”

  I shrugged. “L-Let’s just say she-she’s an interesting conver...sation partner. In fact, she’s s-slaved to my system architec...ture. I even let her have access to the s-sensor array in this room so she could k-keep an eye on you.”

  Collins stared at me with confused concern until Doc cleared his throat and approached her, drawing her eye. “Meryll can be a bit... eccentric about other machine cores. She insisted we keep it around so she could... experiment on it, I suppose. I’m still the one doing maintenance on the thing, and I assure you, it isn’t nearly as ‘alive’ as she is. I need to determine the state of your musculature. Am I okay to touch you? Respectfully, of course.”

  “I’m w-working on it. I swear she’s be...coming more self-aware, I just need t-time,” I pouted. Though we had agreed to play up my enthusiasm about Isabelle’s humanity, my reaction was genuine. I knew Doc and the others didn’t have the same belief in the core that I did; that I could wake it up on my own through encouragement and relentlessly treating it as sapient.

  Collins nodded slowly to Doc’s question and offered her arm to him. “You’re... trying to make my core like you?” She asked without turning to me. “A... person?”

  As Doc held the woman’s forearm and applied pressure to a few places along her arm, I smiled at her. “I am. Sh-She was pivotal in your res...cue, and I think there’s m-more to her than just a computer. I shouldn’t have been able t-to get what I did out of her, but she f-found ways around her own proto...cols to make it happen. There’s a w-will in there, I know it. And besides that, sh-she deserves better than be...ing scrapped, the way she helped you.”

  Collins turned and stared at me with bewildered curiosity for a few moments until she winced at Doc pressing his hand into her bicep. “Ngh... hurts.”

  “Tender? You did have a bruise there when you came out of the core module,” Doc noted. “Might still be sensitive from general disuse.”

  She nodded. “Is she always this... enthusiastic?”

  “Psychologically, Meryll is less than a year old, piggybacking on knowledge established as a biocomputer. Of course she has some eccentricities.” Doc produced a small spring device and placed it in Collins’ hand. “See where your grip strength is.”

  “There’s a certain innocence to her, huh?” Collins smirked as she tried to pull in on the device, her hand shaking.

  “H-Hey... I’m not naive just be...cause I’m young, you know,” I mumbled. “I get that we’re not the best peo...ple and that what we do is d-dangerous, but we’re still t-trying to be the good guys.” I stood up and started pacing a little. “Any...way, I w-wanted to ask about Isa...belle because I’ve only been able to do so much with h-her. I-I wanted to ask you if you could allow admin...administrative access to her.”

  Collins’ good mood disintegrated instantly. “Why?” she asked coldly.

  “W-Well, there’s certain things that are ha-hard for me to do now that I’m... l-like this. Protocols that d-don’t mesh well with sa...pience. I thought she c-could help me understand them be...tter again.” It was hard to explain exactly why I needed full access to the core. “See, there’s certain parts of co...communication protocols that are hard for me to understand opera...ting as a person, and I th-thought she could give me better perspective on how to... to talk to other cores again. As it is, I n-need to talk with her through standard t-text ex...changes.”

  Collins gave me a serious, hardened expression that slowly softened as she let go of the spring device in her hand. “I feel so weak...”

  “That’s understandable,” Doc chuckled. “I tried to move you around every day to keep things from atrophying too much, but there’s only so much time I can dedicate to that.”

  She nodded. “I can’t give you administrative access. There’s too much sensitive information on that core, and I think you know that.”

  “So w-wipe the sensitive stuff,” I requested with a shrug. “I don’t care. I just want to be able to t-talk to Izzy without running into all these walls of proto...cols. I don’t care what’s on her storage, and I d-don’t think you care to keep that in...formation on her, either. So just wipe that s-stuff.”

  Collins chuckled. “You say that like I can access... it.” I smiled a little wider at her stumbling over the pronoun. She almost called Isabelle ‘her’.

  I reached into my pocket again. This time, the motion definitely caught her eye. I closed my own eyes and checked to make sure Isabelle was in attendance at the moment. “She’s w-watching. Listen...ing. I gave her permission. In fact...” I expanded Isabelle’s permissions to extend to limited access of the terminal in Collins’ bed, then gestured to it. “She can t-talk if she wants to.”

  Collins stared down at the tablet, lifting it up gently. A blank text file had been opened, but Isabelle hadn’t put anything in it yet. “Go on, j-just say what you w-want from her, she’ll re...ply.”

  She hesitated, then spoke out loud “Demitrius, display core serial information.” The screen immediately printed out the same designation information that it had given me six months ago, complete with redacted data where serial numbers and service titles would normally be in the readout. Collins looked surprised at the screen, then tilted it away from Doc and I, clearly stating in a grim tone, “Demitrius, phantom protocol.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Of course, I was still cognizant of the screen, which began displaying a series of file designations along with the word ‘deleted’ after each. Collins stared at the screen nervously, tension growing on her face for a moment, then she sighed and spoke out, “Demitrius, interrupt and abort protocol at end of file directories. Abort before final function.”

  There was the smallest computational hitch in the text entry before it continued deleting file after file. “You’re too trusting, Meryll,” Collins mumbled. “I could have let it continue until it self-terminated.”

  My eyes went wide as I realized that whatever ‘phantom protocol’ was probably intended to erase everything on Isabelle’s storage, and then kill her. Giving Collins access to her meant that she could demand the core end itself with a word. I swallowed my fear at how close I had been to losing Isabelle, then stated, “But... you didn’t.”

  “That just means I’m willing to listen, for now.” She tucked the tablet to her side, screen down. “So you want administrative access to... Isabelle, is it? I want something in return.”

  I nodded slowly. “I th-thought you might.” She needed whatever bit of control she could hold onto right now. Isabelle being a point of leverage for her was important right then.

  “How’d you come up with that name, anyway?” she asked as she watched Doc fiddle with something on her biometrics monitor.

  “W-Well... from her designation, i5e-b. I thought it l-looked a little like Isabelle when I put it together and ex...tended it a little,” I chuckled nervously. “So I kept c-calling her that, and I think she’s taken a li...king to it.”

  She seemed to relax a little bit. “Oh. Is that all?” She grew a small smile. “Thought you were fucking with me. That was my mother’s name.”

  “Really? What a weird co...incidence.” I felt bad now, giving her a name that already meant something to Collins.

  “Anyway,” she cleared her throat, an air of authority coming over her weakened frame. “I want this to be considered payment for my passage home. No pulling the rug out from under me with a passenger fee or something when we get there. And I want to be able to ask you questions about... this. Whatever you are. Call me curious.”

  She must have been feeling a bit bolder now that she felt she was out of obvious danger and in the hands of, if not allies, at least sympathizers. It would work into our narrative, so that was fine. “I’ll... have to t-talk to the captain about the first thi...thing, but I’m happy to ans...wer q-que...stions.”

  “Okay...” She nodded, and then went quiet for a moment. I don’t think she anticipated me being so receptive. “Sorry if this is rude, but your... speech impediment. Is that...?”

  “Quirk of her brain chemistry,” Doc answered before me, drawing from the lore we’d manufactured for me. “Her creator wasn’t exactly working with the kind of genetically engineered stock that mass-produced machine cores are made from, so there’s some unexpected... one might say flaws. You wouldn’t ordinarily think a stutter would be a problem in a machine core, though.”

  “They’re not usually so talkative, yeah. At least, not verbally.” Collins gave a nervous chuckle when she saw my face. I legitimately was pretty sensitive about my speech impediment, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit morose when attention was drawn to it. “Umm... so you’re actually in control of the ship? Like, right now?”

  I nodded, glad for the tactful change of topic. “We’re groun...ded right now, so n-not much to do but maintain sys...tems. I only really need the c-core module when I need i-intensive control of Theseus or to act on a compu...tational level. Otherwise, to see digital space, all I n-need to do is...” And I closed my eyes, resting my hand casually in my pocket again as I cut to the sensor array in the room. I motioned to it with my head. “I can see you f-from there.”

  She looked up directly into the sensors and held her hand up. “How many fingers.”

  “Five,” I answered smugly. She changed it and I immediately said “Two.” She changed it again, then rapidly switched it one more time. “Th-three, then one.”

  She put her hand down and asked, “So if I see you close your eyes... you’re the ship?”

  “I’m a-always Theseus. It’s a part of me,” I declared as I opened my eyes again. “I can feel the flow of elec...tricity through this room. All the devices connect...ed to me, every panel of armor plating on my ex-exterior. It’s as much me as th-this body is. Maybe more.” I couldn’t help myself. Being Theseus was something I was enthusiastic about, and it just felt good to express what it meant to me. My words didn’t do it justice, but there wasn’t really any other good way to show others just what being a starship meant to me.

  “You really like it, huh?” Collins gave me an amused smile, a hint of uncertainty still on her face. Perfect. “So... does that captain... Aisling. Does she... own you?”

  I shrugged. “Legally...? I g-guess. As far as that m-matters. She doesn’t treat me like... an object or any...th-thing, though, so I don’t m-mind. The crew has been very acc...epting of me.” I gave a genuine smile, glad to remind myself that I was a person to them. “They treat me like I-I’m human.”

  Collins stared at me with a look of wonder on her face for a moment. I wondered if I had struck her as some kind of whimsical fairy tale in that moment. A being that shouldn’t be, posing as a human being. “That’s... good. That’s a good thing. You’re clearly at least genetically human, anyway. I mean, you’re-”

  I shook my head, still smiling at her. “I know I’m n-not like you. It’s okay. But I pre...fer to at least be treated like a p-person. That’s all.”

  She nodded. I don’t think she completely grasped what I meant, but she was trying. “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what l-like?” I asked, my smile widening slightly at how invested she was becoming.

  She didn’t answer right away, her mouth hanging open slightly. “Just... being a machine. At the same time as being... this.”

  I shrugged. “What’s it like be...ing able to close your eyes and see n-nothing? What’s it like being o-only flesh and blood? What’s it like to enter the core module and feel help...less instead of empowered? I can only imagine it must feel s-small... empty. It’s hard to describe s-something like that either way, isn’t it?”

  Collins’ expression fell slack. She seemed a bit disappointed with the answer, but she’d become introspective as well. She’d never considered that someone could have such a vastly different experience of reality from her that she wouldn’t even be able to relate to them enough to understand that difference. “I... think I need some time. You kind of blindsided me with all this. It’s a lot to take in at once. I know I have more questions, I just have to put them together.”

  “Understandable,” I chuckled. Then I asked eagerly, “So... is Isabelle cl-clean enough to pass on to me?”

  Collins looked to her side at the tablet, lifting it up to see the lines ‘operation terminated’ after the long list of files. “Demitrius, wipe this log and any record of it.” The file immediately went blank. “... and upon my safe exit from this ship and its vicinity, grant full administrative access to Meryll.”

  The file typed out the word ‘acknowledged’ and that was it.

  I felt a little disappointed at the stipulation. Doc laughed. “Insurance? Yeah, that makes sense, I suppose.”

  Collins smiled smugly. “Someone receives payment for work done when they complete that work.”

  I gave a loud sigh. “I sup...pose that’s fair.” I had really hoped I would be able to start talking with Isabelle about core communication that day, but it seemed it would just have to wait until Mars.

  Doc finally stopped messing with the monitors and turned back to Collins. “Alright, let’s get down to the hard part. Can you try to push yourself to the edge of the bed? We’re going to see if you can hold yourself up.”

  Discord

  The Nothing Child. It's an urban fantasy about three reluctant college students and a shapeshifting alien monster thrust into a campaign to defeat an all-consuming horror from another world that they accidentally unleashed upon their city.