Malfunctions occur. Irregularly, but they happen. The majority are shutdowns; a circuit comes to the end of its life cycle and shorts, causing the affected area to darken, cease to exist. More severe are the fires; externally harmless, lasting microseconds before cold and vacuum snuff them like matches between rough fingers, internally they cause havoc. Squat, square fire-bots cruise empty corridors on antigravs. They are unhurried and precise, spraying thick yellow foam, as most on-board fires are electrical. Done, they rehouse themselves in unobtrusive compartments throughout the ship. A shatterproof glass door shucks closed. They power down, waiting for the next explosive flower to bloom. Much as the cargo, they sleep.

Not long before blast-off, some first-time crew members found the bots’ lack of motion control and communication skills troubling. They bumped the rear ends of many, unable to correctly steer after contact, crashing into walls. More experienced astronauts explained that they had been built to exist in a world without people, a barren place of stillness and cold. The humans who experienced this genetic flaw in their digital DNA cursed the machines, nerves getting the better, ignorant of the fact that their lives would be saved by these simple journeyman creations time and again. The fire-bots would right themselves, cruising onwards to their destination, wobbling from side to side like a child’s play toys.

With luck, nothing will occur that jeopardises the cargo and brings the Sigutolo’s music to an abrupt end. In four centuries the worst that happened was a frozen outcrop of ceiling fans that cooled the machinery, which that in turn maintained the Hive, causing the CHB1 to shut down before AMA2 corrected the malfunction. Nobody heard the sizzling eruption of shorting cables, the crumpled explosion as the board went into overload. The resulting damage caused a spontaneous ejection of thirty pods to shoot into space like slim, silver bullets, whispered fireworks streaking against the backdrop of a midnight canvas. Some might say this was a beautiful occurrence, a joyous interlude in the monotonous, constant rhythm of engines and computers. Others might say such analogies were morbid, unemotional, inhumane.