“Every fire begins with a whisper.”

  SolDiri truth

  The vast SolDiri Seed-Arc drifted through space. A once majestic combine of science and art. A legacy, gifted to the universe.

  The asteroid hit amidships, the shields saved it from complete destruction, but the kinetic impact bent and fractured the ship. The 'scar' from the asteroid hit glowed faintly and slowly cooled. The ship bent around the impact.

  When the asteroid hit, many resources and services failed immediately. The asteroid, embedded in the ship's belly, was held there by the ship's field structures but these were failing too. If they failed, the ship would fall apart.

  The AI was cut off from half the ship. The front half, which included many of the crew areas. Fortunately, it had access to engineering where there was redundancy built into redundant services.

  The seed arc and its precious cargo were safe; for now.

  It was death by a thousand cuts for the ship as systems slowly failed with the resources it had overloaded. Even the SolDiri had not predicted this outcome.

  To make things worse, the ship's AI could feel its own resources diminish. It was experiencing mild cognitive decline. It would forget things and get distracted. Corrupted mission logs didn't help. It recovered some but front of mind and directing its actions were mission imperatives.

  'Establish colony, protect seed, ensure continuity.'

  Help was needed so it started making self-thinking, self-replicating, even defensive units. It also spent considerable resources modelling how best to secure the mission. Slowly a plan started to develop that predicted a degree of success. A small degree with too many single points of failure.

  The AI reworked the plan.

  The asteroid, the cause of the problem became part of the solution. During a moment of clarity, the AI directed a research drone to investigate the asteroid. It discovered that it had a high metal content, mostly iron but also nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, and magnesium. There were also traces of rare earths.

  The asteroid was treated like a resource store, 'body fat', and mined. So much so, it was increasingly recognised as self.

  It had everything it needed but time. Somehow, it also needed to gain access to the other half of the ship.

  Meanwhile, somewhen else… The Long Quiet reported.

  THREAT: Extreme

  OBSERVATION: Systems Failing. Future action unclear.

  PRIMARY ACTION: Establish The Silent Flame. Restore Balance.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  STATUS: Update to ACTIVE

  And now…

  The AI had another moment. An 'idea'. But before it could action it, the memory was gone. It knew it was important, without it, completion of its primary tasks would be difficult. Maybe impossible.

  It back tracked, reviewed its logs and re-worked the moment. The idea came again.

  "PRINT A HUMAN."

  'What a bizarre thought. What's a human?' wondered the AI. It queried its corpus.

  HUMAN: a biological animal, Homo sapiens, bound by physical needs, yet a conscious being capable of altruism, art, and imagining a future that does not yet exist... The system glitched, more resources failed ...two sexes Fe eMale… and...Male.

  The AI queried the Engineering corpus. 'Do we have a template for Homo sapiens?'

  'There are many templates. Checking...'

  The AI got distracted by a message, an alert of sorts. A solar flare had been detected from a sun in a galaxy at the edge of its perception. It drilled in. Pictures appeared, analyses...

  It was interrupted by the results of the search through the Engineering corpus.

  'One human template remains uncorrupted. Type Fe e...' It glitched again, 'Version B. This can be printed.'

  'Proceed. Print human designation Fee B. Highest priority.'

  The local Engineering AI took over and commenced work on the FeeB print. It had three print stations that were still operational, but it was concerned. Systems and resources were failing, and it may not have time to run them serially if one dropped out or died. It made the decision to run all three in parallel. It would take longer but it significantly reduced the chance of failure.

  Two entities watched the progress. The Long Quiet and the Beast. Each with its own agenda. Both competing.

  As it turned out, the AI did right. The earliest print became unstable, not a lot but enough due to some Gs having been incorrectly substituted within the genetic code. The Beast cursed. Its changes to the genetic code had failed early, as it was being printed. It was upon this base code that the FeeBs would be built. The resulting mess from this failed print were washed away as waste and forcibly spaced. A genetic soup that could later create who knew what.

  The Beast adjusted the Gs in the remaining two prints. They progressed and were force grown. The pressure caused one of the birthing pools to develop a leak. The amnio-fluid drained away across the floor of engineering. Drones cleaned the mess.

  The foetoid died.

  It was spaced.

  The Engineering AI was getting nervous. All resources and maintenance droids were devoted to progressing the last print. They fussed and doted on it, everything that could be done was done.

  Then, PING! Yes, the print station actually PINGed.

  Amnio-fluid drained away into space. A halo formed around the Seed-Arc as the fluid level fell in the print station. This was no foetoid, it was a fully developed human.

  A female. Naked. Imprinted with the base memories of a fourteen year old; its muscles exercised while in the print station were developed, toned. Athletic.

  It twitched. Alive.

  Secreted within her were the Beast's changes. They had developed into a single black mote. Hidden, dormant.

  The default human template had built-in SolDiri memories, old memories wrapped around her bones like threads of ancient myths, and a ‘dormant’ AI; a meshed code base distributed across its nervous system.

  They came as standard with SolDiri prints, unless a box was checked within the print setup. People rarely ventured that far into the template details.

  A droid led her to a small room with Fee B on the door. The door closed automatically as she entered and crossed to the bed. She thought nothing of it; that’s what doors do.

  The room held a metal framed table and a single metal framed chair. The metal framed bed in the corner had a thin mattress on which lay a steel grey and light blue camo backpack. She looked inside. It had her specific loadout. Too small for a Stomp Pack, essential gear only.

  Under the bed she found matt black combat boots, size 6, webbed sides and tops that laced to above the ankle.

  In one corner was a toilet and at waist height above her bed two sinks. She tried the taps. Running water came out the spouts. There was a sign above one, ‘Suitable for drinking’.

  She played with the taps. One controlled cold water and the other one, “Ouch!”, controlled very hot water.

  She spun around. Arms out wide. Delight written across her face, “Ha! My own room!”