I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming. Then the door slid open and Ratthi walked in with Amena right behind him. “What is going on?” he demanded. “Perihelion said you’re trying to copy yourself for a variable viral what?”

So I had to tell the humans my plan and then they had to argue and talk to each other about it and ask me questions like was I feeling okay.

Then half an hour into this fun process, Thiago woke up and they all had to explain to him what was going on. It was during this part that I realized Amena was (a) missing and (b) ART had cut me off from her feed.

I found her in a small secondary lounge area near Medical. As I walked in she was saying, “—because it thought you were dead. It was so upset I thought— Oh hey, you’re here.”

I stood there accusingly, not looking at her. She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know how you really feel about it! And this is serious, it’s like—you and ART are making a baby just so you can send it off to get killed or deleted or—or whatever might happen.”

“A baby?” I said. I was still mad at Amena telling ART about my emotional collapse behind my back. But I really wish ART had a face, just so I could see it right now. “It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.”

Amena folded her arms and looked intensely skeptical. “That you and ART made together, with code. Code which both of you are also made out of.”

I said, “That’s not like a human baby.”

Amena said, “So how are human babies made? By combining DNA, an organic code, from two or more participants.”

Okay, so it was a little like a human baby. “That’s … irrelevant.”

ART said, Amena, it may be necessary.

ART sounded serious, and resigned. Amena pressed her lips together, unhappy.

I’d won the argument, yay me, so I left.

When we arrived at the dock, the explorer wasn’t there.

My threat assessment said there had only been a 40 percent chance that we would find the explorer in dock, but I could tell ART was disappointed and infuriated. Mostly infuriated.

Arada, Overse, and Thiago were up on the control deck, and ART put up its scanner image on the big display surface in the center, and sent it into the feed.

The dock was in a low orbit, attached to a planet via a structure called a lift tower, which held the shaft for the drop box used to reach the surface. The dock itself was a long structure with oblong protrusions where transports, shuttles, and other ships could dock. There were also inset rectangular slots that were module docks. The transports would deliver their modules of supplies, which would be moved from the dock into the drop box to be carried down to the surface.