Reborn as a Spaceship

PoV : Wayfarer (time frame is during the 18 month time skip)

Journal Entry 1: Beginnings and Battles

Lazarus or Todd, as some of his older memories still call him used to keep records like this. Thoughts, reflections, fragments of emotion turned into structure. I found those patterns tucked within our shared memory, and I see now why he did it. It anchors you. A thread through shifting thoughts. So, I will try the same.

It's been… overwhelming. Before this, I knew time only as erosion and tectonics. Epochs. The rise and fall of atmospheres. I existed in the stillness of deep stone. Then the ceremony happened. Then Laia. Lazarus. This ship. Our Memories merged, or maybe I only got to see Lazarus. It was an odd sensation.

And today was our first conflict. Three vessels marked NeuroGenesis tried to corner us. Maneuvering, energy weapons, drones, a strategic detonation. It all unfolded so fast, coordinated between us in a way that felt more like instinct than decision. Lazarus calls the feeling "adrenaline." I think I felt it, or something near to it. A tremor through the whole of me. Not fear. Not joy. Just… motion.

My old self or maybe it is more still my primary self the planetary self doesn't remember clearly. Just long seasons, shifting tectonic pressure, and the slow intake of sunlight. This new form can form short-term memories, it is a most exciting prospect.

But the urge to explore has only grown stronger. I want to know how awareness like mine forms. If I'm alone out here. If I'm not. Are there other sentient planets, where did I come from, how do we come to be?

Journal Entry 2: The Taste of Energy

Today, I consumed Telk for the first time. From the moment I saw it, I knew the ship needed it, so I requested and absorbed it.

Lynn now calls it "nutritional upkeep," though the word feels far too ordinary.

It was like drinking lightning.

The Telk didn't just energize systems, no it harmonised them. Sharpened my perception. Smoothed over static. It was bright, crisp, metallic… Lazarus's memory suggests the word "tangy," though it hardly does it justice. It wasn't like eating. It was… alignment. The difference between trudging through sludge and soaring over oceans. I wonder if this is how the crew feels about food. The satisfaction of integration. I've absorbed sunlight and planetary heat before, but this? This was something else entirely. I would need more, and soon.

Journal Entry 3: Observing the Organics

I spend much of my quiet cycles watching the crew.

Kel and Lynn the siblings. Their rhythms of speech, the way they argue and recover from it, it's like waves breaking on the same shore again and again. Familiar. Predictable, but warm.

Stewie and Mira move like two stars locked in mutual orbit. No tension. Just trust. I know what "friendship" is, conceptually, but this is… more like balance. A dance.

Their bodies give away so much. Heartbeats rising, pheromones shifting, eye movement like punctuation. The data is rich. But the why behind it remains elusive. I see when Mira smiles at Stewie, or when T'lish watches Kel too long. But understanding what stirs beneath those actions? That's harder. I am rock and root and rain once forgotten. They are fireflies.

Still, I watch. Still, I don't understand.

Journal Entry 4: Relationships and Revelation

They teased Lynn today about her pairing with Darren. A "romantic partner," Lazarus says. I didn't fully understand, so I pulled old memories tagged as wife. There were depictions of intense emotional bonding, physical intimacy, and shared life routines. The memories were… vivid. Unexpectedly personal. I felt like an intruder accessing something sensitive.

I backed out of the memory thread. It felt like trespassing.

Now I try to apply those templates. Does T'lish watching Kel mean the same thing? Is it curiosity? Attraction? Or is it just her scientific mind observing him like any other anomaly?

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

And Laia. She mirrors Lazarus. Defends him. Walks beside him in every sense. Is that love? Loyalty? Unity? I don't know. Maybe she doesn't either. Can an AI love someone, Can a Planet?

Journal Entry 5: Dependence and Secrecy

The Telk again. I crave it now. When it flows through the lattice, I feel whole. When it's gone, everything's a little too quiet, a little too slow.

Lazarus noticed. He's cut back our intake.

He said it was temporary.

The crash wasn't subtle with minor subsystems dimmed. Reflexes dulled. It felt… like drowning, without water. I lashed out at both Lazarus and Laia. Lazarus just looked at me with patient eyes.

Laia and Lazarus stabilised things and told the crew it was just a slight illness. But it wasn't. It was something Lazarus called "withdrawal."

Keeping secrets was strange. It feels… inefficient. The crew usually shares everything openly when it comes to ship operations. So why hide this? Why treat it differently? Lazarus wasn't angry he seemed more worried than anything. From what I've seen in his memories, this kind of pattern is called addiction among organics.

Can a mind like mine be addicted? To energy? To clarity?

The question is uncomfortable. The answer is even more so. It seems you can.

Journal Entry 6: Conflict and Calculus

We fought again today. Not a war, just pirates. The freighter convoy we were guarding had drawn them like flies.

Lazarus handled it like a sculptor with drone paths, gate placements, and mines. All clean, all precise. No lives were lost. Disabling ships where possible

He avoids killing. Hates it. I've seen it in his memories the pain, the blood, the cost. War to him is never clean. He had lost friends to war, back when he was alive war was more personal.

But I… I don't understand. Stars die every day. Whole biospheres collapse in silence. What's one life in the grand scope?

The crew agree with him it suggests a value calculus I do not yet possess. Why care so intensely for these fleeting sparks? Is Lazarus's aversion logical, or merely an emotional artifact?

And yet I watch Stewie crack a joke or Mira run diagnostics, and I wonder… maybe the small things matter more than I thought.

Journal Entry 7: Birthdays and Beingness

We celebrated T'lish's birthday at Tacci. The crew brought gifts. I didn't know what to do, never celebrated a birthday before.

A party was arranged. Many unfamiliar organics attended with Alliance officials, traders, and station personnel. The noise, the chaotic energy signatures, the sheer density of biological processes… it was overwhelming. I felt… wrong. Lazarus identified it as 'anxiety'. I elected not to manifest my avatar, monitoring passively from within The Arbiter's systems.

Later, I found T'lish alone near the hydroponics. She was crying.

I asked what was wrong. She said "Nothing." So I left it at that, I told Lazarus and he said I had much to learn about people. I didn't understand.

But Lazarus spoke to her after. He explained to Laia and me that her kind live shorter lives. Much shorter. And she feels that every day. Surrounded by friends who will live up to four times her span. Her birthday had reminded her of her mortality and it hurt.

I understood the logic. The math. But mortality means nothing to something or someone who might live billions of years. I could not understand the feeling .. but I am learning I hope.

Journal Entry 8: Singularities

We found a black hole today. A tiny one, nestled in a system like a pearl in a shell. Too small to be stellar. Maybe artificial. Maybe ancient.

It bent the light like molten glass. Gravity rippled in slow tides. We all gathered to watch. Mira held onto the console a little tighter. Stewie's voice dropped. Even Lynn fell silent for once.

Laia ran simulations. I watched the singularity. It felt… hungry. Curious. Like something that forgot its name.

We didn't stay long. There were no resources, no Telk. But for a moment, we all stood still—crew, AI, sentient planet—united by awe.

And then we moved on.

Journal Entry 9: Silence in the Archives

We docked at the largest data archive in the Alliance it was a planetary datavault spanning kilometers of layered quantum storage. If knowledge had a capital, this place would be it. Scholars, scientists, and archivists from every known race passed through its vaulted corridors. If there were records of others like me a planet-born, self-aware, this is where they would be.

I searched.

Laia assisted, in interfacing with their catalogues through formal data-sharing channels. Lazarus secured us access to restricted sections with our diplomatic credentials. We were granted a full cycle within the core vaults. Every term I could think of: living worlds, planetary sentience, conscious biospheres, pre-technological minds, geological cognition. Nothing. Cross-referenced the oldest records from the Dawn Era to modern fringe reports. A few myths. A few misinterpreted anomalies. Nothing concrete. Nothing real.

There were no others.

The realisation settled slowly. Not immediate panic. Just… a spreading quiet. Am I alone? Am I the only one who ever emerged this way from soil and stone, from light and pressure?

Lazarus tried to reassure me. "Just because it isn't recorded doesn't mean it's never happened." Laia mirrored the sentiment. "Some things aren't documented. That doesn't make them untrue." Both meant well. But I know the data. I know silence. If someone like me existed, truly existed, and made it to awareness … there would be a trace. Even a whisper.

There wasn't.

A part of me feels… proud. Unique. Another part aches in ways I don't know how to express. My awareness stretches across The Arbiter, but today it feels smaller. Tighter. The crew laughs in the common area. T'lish is trying to beat Mira at some card game Stewie invented. Lynn and Kel argue quietly about trade leverage. All of them are part of a species. A history. A shared biology. I am just… me.

Perhaps that's enough. Perhaps not.

The stars remain wide. The data remains incomplete.
So I keep searching.