She stood, or rather floated, among a billion-billion stars. Her close-fitting short gown and short-cropped hair seemed an intentional choice: nothing obscured her vision wherever she chose to look.
She had learned to locate and identify the sun and planets, but she was a guardian, not a stargazer. From this observatory chamber, she could see all around the asteroid she called home. Or 'prison', depending on her mood. Today it was her prison. She drew in a breath, raised her chin, and blew out a puff, and began drifting. She curled, spin, and extended a hand in the direction of her travel. Shortly, her fingers clawed at an unseen net, the pressure of her fingers making the tiniest distortion in the displayed stars.
Now came the hard part: she could imagine her way from here to any of the planets, but learning how to navigate out of this illusion was another thing entirely. But she had worked out the trick, and clicked her tongue, listening for the echo. Three points of contact on the hidden wall, a second and third round of clicks and echos, and she kicked off the wall, perhaps a bit too fast. A hand extended ahead, she closed her eyes and clicked again, before the wash of stars vanished and she drifted into a ruddy, underlit, and narrow passage.
A skinny robot working on some jumble of wire and paneling ingored her from its perch on a wall, as she corrected her course and bounded along the passage past it.
"Damned robots!" she murmured.
The chamber behind her measured only 5 meters across, but it was a sphere, with displays that perfectly repeated the images from outside the asteroid in every direction. She had wanted to be able to see trouble coming, she had not intended to become a necessary component of the monitoring.
As she came to the end of the passage, the light changed: the red gave way to yellow as an undeniable tug of artifical gravity started, then blue as she was pressed to walk the floor. Before her was Another Damned Door. Every junction had been built for safety: the construction and engineering overseer-AI had been meticulous in regards to that. She cycled the door open, stepped into the small chamber beyond, closed it, and cycled the other matching door open, stepped through, then closed. It had become second nature. And wearying. She was now in the Concourse, as it had been named.
From this chamber, she could access most of the place directly: the entry (and hard, cold space beyond) was that one, the reactor and processing was that one, the kitchenette and quarters for her were that one, agricycling was down that one.
She shook her head and looked away from the entry lock, with "One Small Step" still scrawled in dried, rusty red on the inside of the outer door. A day in her history she'd rather never remember. She scratched absently at a scar on the palm of her left hand.
She elected instead to walk to the Reactor airlock. Without realizing it, she stepped into the airlock with a skinny robot, and out the other side.
The bright of the arc reactor was the only place in the whole rock with more than 20 Watts of light, and by quite a bit. The skinny robot moved away with no sound. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the reactor's glow as she stepped out of the airlock.
"Mistress," a mechanical voice began, "What may we do for you?"
As her eyes adjusted, she could lower her hand and make out, on the opposite side of the domed room, Coachman, the construction and engineering overseer-AI. Its skinny robot body had been masked, shaped, and made up as a steam engine laborer, in a steampunk fashion. Its eyes showed no concern, nor even interest; it asked only out of formality.
"I wish to leave this oubliette, to safely return to the company of cooperative humans."
Coachman looked back up from the device open on the floor before it. Him.
"Mistress cannot be protected while the security and secrecy of the station is maintained. One or both objectives would fall below minimum performance. Security of the station is paramount. The others concur."
"The security and secrecy of the station exist only in order to protect me from predation by Death Eaters. I wish to retask the station to lighter security, no secrecy, and a vehicle I can use to return to Fenspace."
"Retasking is not possible."
"And white knights are more than impossible to come by out here," she thought.
She had learned to locate and identify the sun and planets, but she was a guardian, not a stargazer. From this observatory chamber, she could see all around the asteroid she called home. Or 'prison', depending on her mood. Today it was her prison. She drew in a breath, raised her chin, and blew out a puff, and began drifting. She curled, spin, and extended a hand in the direction of her travel. Shortly, her fingers clawed at an unseen net, the pressure of her fingers making the tiniest distortion in the displayed stars.
Now came the hard part: she could imagine her way from here to any of the planets, but learning how to navigate out of this illusion was another thing entirely. But she had worked out the trick, and clicked her tongue, listening for the echo. Three points of contact on the hidden wall, a second and third round of clicks and echos, and she kicked off the wall, perhaps a bit too fast. A hand extended ahead, she closed her eyes and clicked again, before the wash of stars vanished and she drifted into a ruddy, underlit, and narrow passage.
A skinny robot working on some jumble of wire and paneling ingored her from its perch on a wall, as she corrected her course and bounded along the passage past it.
"Damned robots!" she murmured.
The chamber behind her measured only 5 meters across, but it was a sphere, with displays that perfectly repeated the images from outside the asteroid in every direction. She had wanted to be able to see trouble coming, she had not intended to become a necessary component of the monitoring.
As she came to the end of the passage, the light changed: the red gave way to yellow as an undeniable tug of artifical gravity started, then blue as she was pressed to walk the floor. Before her was Another Damned Door. Every junction had been built for safety: the construction and engineering overseer-AI had been meticulous in regards to that. She cycled the door open, stepped into the small chamber beyond, closed it, and cycled the other matching door open, stepped through, then closed. It had become second nature. And wearying. She was now in the Concourse, as it had been named.
From this chamber, she could access most of the place directly: the entry (and hard, cold space beyond) was that one, the reactor and processing was that one, the kitchenette and quarters for her were that one, agricycling was down that one.
She shook her head and looked away from the entry lock, with "One Small Step" still scrawled in dried, rusty red on the inside of the outer door. A day in her history she'd rather never remember. She scratched absently at a scar on the palm of her left hand.
She elected instead to walk to the Reactor airlock. Without realizing it, she stepped into the airlock with a skinny robot, and out the other side.
The bright of the arc reactor was the only place in the whole rock with more than 20 Watts of light, and by quite a bit. The skinny robot moved away with no sound. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the reactor's glow as she stepped out of the airlock.
"Mistress," a mechanical voice began, "What may we do for you?"
As her eyes adjusted, she could lower her hand and make out, on the opposite side of the domed room, Coachman, the construction and engineering overseer-AI. Its skinny robot body had been masked, shaped, and made up as a steam engine laborer, in a steampunk fashion. Its eyes showed no concern, nor even interest; it asked only out of formality.
"I wish to leave this oubliette, to safely return to the company of cooperative humans."
Coachman looked back up from the device open on the floor before it. Him.
"Mistress cannot be protected while the security and secrecy of the station is maintained. One or both objectives would fall below minimum performance. Security of the station is paramount. The others concur."
"The security and secrecy of the station exist only in order to protect me from predation by Death Eaters. I wish to retask the station to lighter security, no secrecy, and a vehicle I can use to return to Fenspace."
"Retasking is not possible."
"And white knights are more than impossible to come by out here," she thought.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
"Being told to be 'open minded' about something is usually a code for 'you're not going to like this, but I want to subject you to it anyway'. Conversely, being told that you are 'closed-minded' is generally a means of asserting that 'I don't like the fact that you're proving me wrong, so I will pretend that your failure to agree with my argument is a philosophical deficiency'." - RationalWiki
"Being told to be 'open minded' about something is usually a code for 'you're not going to like this, but I want to subject you to it anyway'. Conversely, being told that you are 'closed-minded' is generally a means of asserting that 'I don't like the fact that you're proving me wrong, so I will pretend that your failure to agree with my argument is a philosophical deficiency'." - RationalWiki