CASE [GL]

After an hour or two, I felt Luna moving a bit. I had not really fallen asleep myself, as I was just having a rather good time being in the presence of my girlfriend. 

“Hmmm… Lauren….” Luna pushed herself into me just a tad. 

“Mhmm?” I hummed back. 

“I think I’m getting a bit hungry… But I don’t want to get up…” 

“So you are bribing me with your body so I go make you some food.” 

“I wouldn’t say bribing… Just convincing…” 

“I see.” I chuckled. “But if I want to do that, I would need to get out of the sofa first. Are you really okay with that?” 

“Hmmm…” Her stomach grumbled, after which she slowly turned her head towards me. She then squinted. “I suppose it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” 

I laughed and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “Alright. I’ll go and make us something.” Getting out of the sofa with an unwilling to move Luna inside of it too was a bit of a precarious operation. But I managed to complete it without any casualties. 

When I had gotten out, I used the blanket to wrap Luna nice and tight so she wouldn’t get cold. 

“What about some spicy tacos, would you be interested in that?” 

“I’ll leave the choices up to you.” Luna replied from within her blanket burrito. “But that does sound rather good.” 

“Alright.” I leaned in to give Luna one more kiss, after which I moved to the kitchen to prepare us some tacos. With my knife in hand and vegetables and meat in front of me, I would make short business of the task at hand. 

“Can I watch the television for a bit, Lauren?” Luna asked from the living room. 

“Sure, mi casa es su casa as the Spanish would say. It works the same as the one in my cabin.” 

“Okay.” My girlfriend called back. 

It had been a while since I’d actually made tacos by hand, but just like riding a snow cycle, it wasn’t something you unlearned easily. 

With a plate full of freshly made and rather spicy tacos, I walked back to the sofa, Luna was watching some kind of nature documentary. 

As I sat down next to her and put the plate on the living room table, she sat up. “Wasn’t there anything else on the television, or were you just terribly intrigued by the life of alpacas?” 

“I was more interested in the life of the people that they filmed in those villages.” Luna replied back. “Do people really still live like that?” 

I paid some closer attention to the documentary she was watching. It portrayed a small village in a mountain range, which I assumed was the Andes. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they still do.” I nodded. “It’s rather hard to build megacities in mountains, after all. A lot of those people who still live there are descendants from those who really didn’t like all the progress talk and things like that.” 

“It seems like a rather peaceful life.” 

“Surely, but I also think it's a hard life. Instead of going to the market for your taco ingredients, those people grow all their food themselves. It does have its charms, but I don’t think I could live like that to be honest.”  

“Mhmm.” Luna nodded and took one of the tacos I had prepared for her. The look of contentment after she had taken the first bite was plenty payment enough for the effort I’d spent making them. “I think I also much rather prefer this kind of life.” 

 

We ate our tacos in peace while we continued watching the documentary. It started talking about other animals as well who live in the Andes, like the Andean condor, llama’s, mountain tapirs and cougars. All by all, a rather interesting documentary if you asked me. 

With our dinner now finished, I decided that I should work a bit on Dusty the auto duster. 

“Are you going to call Ellie?” Luna had gotten up from the sofa to help me with the dishes. 

“Yeah, I’ll call her in a bit.” I took a quick look at my holo stick. A part of me had expected her to call back earlier, but she must really have tried to keep our privacy. Which was much appreciated.

When we were done putting the dishes in the dishwasher, we both took a seat at the dinner table, where the auto duster was set up. A quick dial on my holostick later, our lovely AI comrade picked up. 

“Hey there Ellie. I hope we aren’t disturbing your background program maintenance.” 

“No, I just finished with that.” Ellie quickly replied. “I hope you two have had a nice evening together.” 

“Yep. We just finished our dinner!” Luna replied enthusiastically. “Lauren made us some tacos.” 

“Oh, Commander, I didn’t know you had culinary talents?” Ellie’s avatar crossed her arms and she shifted her weight to one of her legs. 

“Don’t be so bratty, Ellie. I know for a fact you’ve seen me cook multiple times on-board.” I smiled.

Ellie chuckled. “Please do tell me if I need to tone myself down. I’m still quite new to human interactions.” 

“No, I think your sass level is just about right.” I replied. “Anyway, you wanted to help me with Dusty?” 

“Dusty?” 

“Ah, right.” 

“Sorry, I gave it a name.” Luna apologized. 

“Oh, well, yes, if you would allow me to help. I can definitely make several improvements.” 

“Do you need any materials?” I asked. 

“There’s a couple of parts I would need, yes. But adding those afterwards won’t be very hard. For now, we can already work on the software framework and maybe tidy up a bit of the hardware.” 

“Alright, you just tell me what to order then.” 

“I’ve already sent a list to your holostick, Commander.” 

“Diligent as always.” I pressed the pop-up that appeared in the corner of the screen. It wasn’t that much of a hefty list of parts, and it was honestly a lot less expensive than I was expecting. One part did surprise me, though. “Why do you need a hologram projector?” 

“Well… That’s actually what I wanted to ask earlier… I was thinking that perhaps… I could use the duster to project my image when we are talking with one-another. That way, you don’t always need your holostick around. I can remove it out of the list if you don’t want that.” 

 

I looked at Luna who smiled back at me, she gave me a slight nod as well. 

“I don’t mind, don’t mind it at all, in fact. I think that would actually be rather cool. But, Ellie, am I allowed to ask you a personal question?” 

“Yes, Commander.” 

“How would you feel if you actually got a body of your own. And then I’m not talking about a holographic one. An actual physical body.” 

Ellie stayed quiet for a bit. Even her avatar wasn’t really moving either. I was almost starting to get worried until Ellie finally replied. “I think… I would like that…” 

“I see.” 

“Ellie, since when have you started to feel this way? If I might ask.” Luna asked. 

“What do you mean, Lieutenant-Commander?” 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but on the ship, for most of the part that I can remember anyway, you weren’t really showing any intent of appearing more human.”

“I’d also like to know.” I added. “We were actually talking about this earlier, but is this perhaps an effect of you getting that update back on the precursor’s planet?” 

“...” Ellie stayed silent for a couple of seconds. 

“Just to clarify. Neither me nor Luna think you did something bad, we don’t think that what’s happening is negative. We do not want to force you back. We just want to know what you think. You are the smartest among all of us, you must have noticed it yourself, right?” 

“Yeah, we really don’t think what’s happening is bad.” Luna added. 

“Thank you.” Ellie finally spoke again. “That means a lot to me.” 

“Don’t worry about it. We are crewmates, after all. And as your Commanding officer, and friend, I am concerned with your wellbeing.” 

Ellie’s avatar nodded. “I do also think this is a side effect of what I have downloaded back on the precursor planet. At first, I tried to write it out of my programming. But it seems as though the data has fundamentally changed something about me, which I can not seem to stop. It did not pose any threat to the ship, however, so I decided not to worry you with it until I knew more. It has not affected my functioning as a whole, apart from making my systems more efficient. 

“It’s an interesting concept. An alien datapack making an AI more humanlike.”

“It is.” Ellie agreed. “I am really curious to why exactly it happened.” 

“Let’s keep an eye on it for the future. As for your body… Can’t really help too much with that apart from the hologram.”

“That’s all I’m asking, Commander.” 

I nodded and gave her a smile. “Then let’s order the stuff you need and then see what we can do about Dusty for now.”