Бекки Чамберс «A Closed and Common Orbit»
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Becky Chambers

A Closed and Common Orbit

For my parents and for Berglaug, respectively.

The current timeline in this book begins during the final events of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

The past timeline begins approximately twenty Solar years prior.

Feed source: Galactic Commons Department of Citizen Safety, Technology Affairs Division (Public/Klip) > Legal Reference Files > Artificial Intelligence > Mimetic AI Housing (‘Body Kits’)

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Node identifier: 3323-2345-232-23, Lovelace monitoring system

Mimetic AI housing is banned in all GC territories, outposts, facilities, and vessels. AIs can only be installed in the following approved housings:

– Ships

– Orbital stations

– Buildings (shops, places of business, private residences, scientific/research facilities, universities, etc. )

– Transit vehicles

– Delivery drones (restricted to intelligence level U6 and lower)

– Approved commercial housings such as repair bots or service interfaces (restricted to intelligence level U1 and lower)

Penalties:

– Manufacture of mimetic AI housing – 15 GC standard years imprisonment and confiscation of all associated tools and materials

– Purchase of mimetic AI housing – 10 GC standard years imprisonment and confiscation of related hardware

– Ownership of mimetic AI housing – 10 GC standard years imprisonment and confiscation of related hardware

Additional measures:

Mimetic AI housing is permanently deactivated by law enforcement upon seizure. Core software transfers are not conducted.

Part 1

DRIFT

LOVELACE

Lovelace had been in a body for twenty-eight minutes, and it still felt every bit as wrong as it had the second she woke up inside it. There was no good reason as to why. Nothing was malfunctioning. Nothing was broken. All her files had transferred properly. No system scans could explain the feeling of wrongness, but it was there all the same, gnawing at her pathways. Pepper had said it would take time to adjust, but she hadn’t said how much time. Lovelace didn’t like that. The lack of schedule made her uneasy.

‘How’s it going?’ Pepper asked, glancing over from the pilot’s seat.

It was a direct question, which meant Lovelace had to address it. ‘I don’t know how to answer that. ’ An unhelpful response, but the best she could do. Everything was overwhelming. Twenty-nine minutes before, she’d been housed in a ship, as she was designed to be. She’d had cameras in every corner, voxes in every room. She’d existed in a web, with eyes both within and outside. A solid sphere of unblinking perception.

But now. Her vision was a cone, a narrow cone fixed straight ahead, with nothing – actual nothing – beyond its edges. Gravity was no longer something that happened within her, generated by artigrav nets in the floor panels, nor did it exist in the space around her, a gentle ambient folding around the ship’s outer hull. Now it was a myopic glue, something that stuck feet to the floor and legs to the seat above it. Pepper’s shuttle had seemed spacious enough when Lovelace had scanned it from within the Wayfarer, but now that she was inside it, it seemed impossibly small, especially for two.

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