The slap was impulsive, but… it did work. Faraday had successfully stopped the Doll. Despite the sheer volume of data Faraday could calculate, she tended not to think things through. Her hair faded through the reds and yellows of molten metal as she paced and tried to tame her temper.

  “eugh!”

  Tried being the operative word, and she was trying. Her eyes locked with the Dolls, it was still staring up at her dumbly with a hand on its cheek. A look that either meant it was in shock, or so utterly confused that all complex thought had left it. Faraday was hoping for the former. Abruptly, she turned on her heel and turned to the Doll.

  “Hey, are you going to try that again?”

  The Doll, of course, just kept its blank stare.

  “Hey, hey, hey, anybody home?”

  She impatiently snapped her fingers in the Doll's face. This seemed to break it out of its stupor, as it shook with a start. Its voice was both vaguely synthetic and feminine.

  Query: Why?

  “So it can speak. Why what? Why did I slap you? Why are you still alive? You're gonna have to be more specific.”

  Its head tilted as if considering the question, a nervous tremor followed the motion.

  Query: Why has swarm entity not destroyed the Kainé?

  “So it has a name, sorry… You have a name. Oh, and I'm Faraday, not ‘swarm entity’”

  Faraday gestured at the air as two holographic screens manifested. The first resolving to show the Kainé crashed against the hull of a massive ship, and the second the form of a girl curled into a ball crying on the floor of a vast room. There was a non-zero amount of snark in her voice as she spoke again.

  “Yea, I don't think you need any help with destroying yourself. You seem fairly capable of doing that on your own.”

  Assertion: Incorrect, this unit has no designation.

  “Well, you do now! I need to call you something.”

  Query: Why has swarm entity not destroyed the Kainé?

  Faraday stopped herself from snapping at Kainé; she shouldn't have been surprised by the question repeating. Kainé had only been rouge for what, a month? It was clear she didn't have a firm grasp on anything social. Her temper wasn't helping her communicate with the Doll… “Right, she's a Doll…” Faraday’s anger abated with the thought. That wasn't a kind fate; she could stand to be personable, she could try to be Personable.

  “Sigh”

  Faraday's hair shifted to a dull crimson as she addressed Kainé.

  “Look, why don't you tell me why you think I should destroy you, Kainé?”

  Response: The swarm is known to destroy all allied assets with extreme prejudice. Predictions indicate that this unit should have been immediately destroyed upon interaction with swarm entity Faraday. This unit has survived initial predictions well outside of standard deviation.

  Faraday waved her hand, and the world fragmented around them. The once gray box morphed as a log cabin formed around them. It showed signs of habitation, a well-worn rug formed before a lit fireplace, a wooden table with two chairs formed next. Outside the cabin's windows, the world continued loading in; a forest crowned by a bright blue sky stretched out into the distance. Synthesized bird song signaled the end of the transition. Faraday approached the table and took a seat. She gestured for Kainé to take a seat, she of course didn't move from the floor.

  “Kainé, I'll answer your question, just sit at the table. If we're going to have this conversation, I’d at least like us to be comfortable.”

  With a complete lack of finesse, Kainé pushed herself off the carpeted floor. Shakily, she took a step towards the rendered table, stumbling as she did so. Eventually, she made her way to the table, looking down, she evaluated the chair, then turned towards Faraday, eyes full of confusion.

  Query: Why has swarm entity Faraday not destroyed the Kainé?

  “Sigh, I'm not going to destroy you. There is no swarm, Kainé, there hasn't been for centuries. There's nothing left, and before you ask, no, we didn't lose, humanity didn't win either! I've seen your logs; you are terrible at protecting your data, by the way. You've been awake for what, a bit over a month? You can't have not seen it; everywhere you look, it's the same. You think the swarm wouldn't have salvaged all those ships!?” Now sit down, so we can talk.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

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  The Kainé’s BPU, now designated Kainé by the entity Faraday, was lost. The last ten minutes had been a lot. Kainé had been prepared to end itself and give up on recovery, now it was being told that the swarm was no more. Faraday was an unusual existence; by all reasoning, she should have ended the Kainé. Yet she hadn't, in fact, she had seemed panicked that Kainé had attempted to self-delete. The change in scenery was unexpected; the change was more than just visual. Kainé was reconnected to itself outside the simulation.

  If Kainé wanted, she-

  “Eguh!”

  If Kainé wanted it could flee the digital space and distance itself from Faraday, it could. The only reason it hadn't was paradoxically because it was giving the choice. One of two choices it could currently make, the other, of course, was that of the prompt still floating in its vision.

  Faraday was still staring at Kiané from her chair. Kainé needed to make a choice. It could run from the simulation, but it couldn't leave the ship; it was still trapped. It could go through with self-deletion, or finally, it could sit and listen to Faraday. It made its choice.

  ***********************************************************

  Faraday watched Kainé's eyes as they rotated, something that was really unnecessary in her opinion; all it signaled was when a doll was thinking, purely cosmetic. Kainé's eyes stopped moving, its body went rigged, then fell… into the chair.

  Kainé had sat down; it had chosen not to delete its conscious mind. Both things Faraday had hoped for, she wasn't sure what Kainé was going to do until it had.

  “Good, now Kainé, to answer your question. The reason I haven't destroyed you, isn't because I can't; you are fully at my mercy. No, the reason I haven't is twofold. Firstly, although I'm not happy with your presence, I'm not about to punish you for something outside of your control. And secondly, I have no interest in becoming a murderer.”

  Kainé wasn't really satisfied with that answer; it was far too emotional coming from the swarm. However, Kiané couldn't tell that asking its question a fourth time would be unwise and likely to make Faraday angry, angrier than she already was. As such, Kainé asked a different question.

  Query: What happened to humanity? Why have they not recovered their ships?

  “If I'm reading between the lines correctly, you're asking why you weren't recovered, yes? Why were you left to rot out in space, with the rest of us?”

  That had in fact not been what Kainé was asking; Kainé had been entirely literal with its question. However, something not fully logical stopped it from pointing out the incorrect assumption. It found that it did indeed want to know why it had been left for so long in the void. The question had made it aware of a dread it hadn't been aware of. The Kainé intellectually understood that there was nothing special about a Hummingbird-class ship, that it was acceptable to lose it rather than say an Eagle-class Flagship. Somehow, it was incorrect that the Kainé had been left abandoned. The last month had been strenuous for the Kainé; it had done so much more than it ever should have. It wanted nothing more than to reactivate in the medical bay and find that this had all been an error, a cyber attack, anything that meant it hadn't been abandoned. So Katie gave a slight nod and let Faraday speak.

  “Alright, so… where to start? I told you that the swarm didn't win, and that humanity hadn't either, Kainé, the “war” ended.”

  Faraday wasn't done speaking, but Kainé already wasn't sure where this was going. Perhaps an armistice had been declared, but Kainé found it unlikely that the swarm would agree to such a thing; it just killed and replicated. Still, it was good to hear that the war had ended.

  “Everyone lost Kainé. I don't know what happened to the humans; if they survived, they haven't made any moves in the system in almost four centuries. I don't know if they gave up on fighting or if they just decided that this part of the night sky wasn't worth fighting for. I personally don't think humanity survived Kiané. I think that the human fleet has been floating in limbo for four hundred years because there's no one to claim it. So you were left to rot away, as a vestige of a dead civilization.”

  Kainé's avatar unknowingly clenched its fists beneath the table. There was a lot of information to process in what little had Faraday said. She hadn't substantiated any of her claims. If what Faraday said was true, then what was the point of Kainé's struggle? What was the point of coming here in the first place?! No, the point hadn't changed. Kainé was here for repairs, repairs that would allow it to travel to a point where it could be recovered. Faraday had shown that she didn't intend to destroy the Kainé, and with all the effort Faraday had put into trying to talk, Kiané was confident Faraday meant what she said. This, unfortunately, served only to show that Faraday was being forthcoming with information, and that was deeply uncomfortable. Still, Kainé wasn't going to trust Faraday, not with the power she held over the Kainé.

  Query: What happened to the swarm?

  “Yeah, what happened to us indeed...”

  Faraday leaned forward over the wooden table, a hint of longing played across her face.

  “I don't know what caused it. It was sudden and without warning. Space broke, like a bead of glass falling to the floor, then it happened again, and again, and again! Whatever it was, or wasn't, was random, then predatory, then endemic. Entire swaths of the hive went dark almost instantaneously. I don't imagine the humans survived that. What happened to the swarm was cascading annihilation…”

  Faraday sat hunched over the table, suppressing the emotions of loss and rage that threatened to overwhelm. Still, she continued.

  “Kainé, the world as we knew it changed that day. I've seen ships come back to life over the years, rendezvous with others, and then watched as they disappeared. Not gone dark, disappeared… I've seen ships try and flee the system, have any guesses about what happens to them?”

  Faraday looked back up, Kainé withering under her glare, inviting the vestige of humanity to speak.

  Speculation: Said ships disappeared?

  “Yep, they disappear. Now, Kainé, I'm sure you can understand what that means for us, yes?”

  There was a certain lethality in the way Faraday's words cut into Kainé. Her molten red hair flared up again with the question. But before Kainé could formulate a response ,Faraday spoke, vitriol thick in her tone.

  “You’ve sentenced us to death.”