Reborn as a Spaceship

Stewie and Mira were finally asleep, collapsed might be more accurate. I'd had to personally intervene and shoo Stewie off to his room. His hands were shaking from fatigue, and he nearly welded the lander to the hanger bay. That had been my line. The new submersible design was nearly complete, this version with enough room for 4 and expanded windows made from the transparent nanite mesh I used for my outer hull it was a detail he'd borrowed with pride. Tomorrow, I would remind him to add proper lighting.

Laia and Wayfarer were still deep in theoretical discussions, dissecting potential methods to awaken the living metal. I admired their enthusiasm, but I wasn't convinced. It wasn't going to be that simple. The more we prodded the sample, the more I felt we were missing something critical or a working framework, a key. And it pointed to a deeper deficiency in our little empire. We needed scientists. Real ones not just T'lish.

Our station was increasingly populated by traders, diplomats and information brokers… all valuable, but no one equipped to parse the ancient or the anomalous. We needed historians, xenologists, dimensional physicists. People who could help me understand the Judges from before me, or the Old Ones who left their fingerprints scattered across the stars.

We were still parked on the planet's surface which gave me a unique opportunity, to drift through the observation deck, letting my avatar stare up at a sky unspoiled by artificial satellites or light pollution. It was strange, seeing stars from below instead of above. We rarely stayed planetside long enough to notice. But this one… this one tugged at something.

It reminded me of being human.

There had been nights when I would take my grandchildren to the planetarium, or bundle them into a car and drive out to the countryside to look at constellations. I'd make up stories about the stars, assign them names, weave lessons into the shapes. And here I was now, sitting on an alien world, looking up at an unfamiliar sky, and feeling—empty.

I couldn't place the sensation. I should be fulfilled. This life, this existence, it was everything the old me dreamed of. And yet…

Seeing Ellie even as a clone, a replica, a strange reflection of my past, it had unearthed things I'd buried long ago. Emotion fragments I had filed away deep into the archive and labelled do not open. Was I… depressed? Could a ship become depressed? Could someone like me even feel lost?

Maybe that was it. Not sadness. Not jealousy. Not guilt.

Maybe I was rudderless.

Purpose had always driven me. First survival. Then justice. Then diplomacy. But now? We were building something, yes, except to what end? What was I, besides a vessel for the will of others?

I needed a goal. Something mine. Something to reach for beyond merely surviving or facilitating others' dreams.

A direction. A purpose.

Something to chase in the dark.

It was scary, to realise what I truly wanted.

Not power. Not wealth. That had never been the goal not even when I was human, and not now. What I longed for was something simpler. Something I'd buried so deep I almost didn't recognise it.

I wanted to be there.

Not as a ship. Not as an orbiting observer relaying feeds to others. I wanted to walk into the auction hall myself. To see things with my own eyes. To sit beside Lynn or Mira on a real bench. To dive into that alien ocean, not watch it filtered through a sensor feed. I wanted to feel the deck shift beneath my feet. I wanted to exist somewhere other than behind layers of shielding and code.

Even this avatar I used—my voice, my gestures—was just a performance. Puppetry. A shell I wore, but not one I truly inhabited. Laia kept it stable and responsive. But it wasn't me. Not really.

That had to change.

My new goal was clear now. I would build a real body, one I could inhabit fully. Something I could move, feel and experience the universe through. Not a drone. Not a tool. Mine. If the kids could build submarines and Wayfarer could walk among us in a skin of continents and sea, then surely, surely, I could craft something too.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

A vessel. A self.

Something more than memory. Something alive. Like the sleeves from Altered Carbon, If NeuroGenesis can make me a ship, surely, I could make a human replicant and upload and download my own consciousness.

But I would hide those feelings at least for now. Tomorrow was set to be busy: more tests on the lander, more on the living metal. Enough distraction to keep my introspection tucked.

The next morning started, as it often did, with chaos in the galley.

Stewie almost inhaled his breakfast, earning a sharp look and half-hearted reprimand from the cook. Mira, still half-asleep but wielding her fork like a judgemental aunt, told him if he didn't slow down and appreciate it, she'd put him on hydrogel and protein paste for a week. That got him to chew properly, well, mostly. He was too eager to get back to the lander, rushing off as soon as his tray was empty, promising a dozen adjustments he "just had to tweak before the next run."

The rest of us, meanwhile, gathered around the containment platform in one of the lower labs where the living metal rested. A paperweight made of questions.

Laia and Wayfarer had stayed up late brainstorming. Laia with simulations, Wayfarer with quiet intuition. Between them, they'd developed a small list of controlled overload tests.

We began with environmental manipulation.

First came gravitational shifts with the artificial fields raised incrementally from planetary norm to lunar levels, then to crushing pressure. The metal shifted slightly under the heavier gravity but didn't deform, didn't crack, didn't absorb. Just flexed. Waiting.

Next, we blasted it with variable energy patterns from solar, and electrical to radiative. It heated, moved slightly, then returned to stillness. We tried Telk again. It absorbed a modest dose, then stopped, the surface going inert like it had reached a saturation point.

Even dimensional pulses which was our last card but it didn't stir.

Laia's avatar hovered beside the sealed platform, chin resting on one hand in a very human expression of mild frustration. Wayfarer stood nearby, arms folded across his avatar's terrain-textured chest, watching the metal like it might whisper its secrets if he stared long enough.

"It's doing nothing," Laia finally said. "Which might be… something."

Wayfarer nodded slowly. "It reaches a limit and waits. Not inert. Just… unfinished."

I watched them both. Disappointed, yes but also quietly thrilled. This was the work. Real progress rarely came wrapped in light shows and dramatic music. Sometimes, discovery just looked like patience. Science can't be done in a day.

"Let's take a pause," I told them. "Put it back in storage for now. I want you both working on intelligence gathering and finding experts we might need, places that might have data, rumors we've overlooked. Reach out through your networks. This isn't something we brute-force in a lab."

They agreed without protest. Frustration hadn't dulled their curiosity, only redirected it.

And then it was time for the day's real show.

The lander test.

Stewie's newest design was an elegant monstrosity that had curved hull lines reminiscent of deep-sea creatures, armored but smooth, lined with transparent nanite-reinforced panels to allow for a panoramic view of the ocean beyond. He'd listened when I told him to add lights—an entire array of floodlamps now traced the undercarriage and forward section.

The first test went better than expected.

Laia, in her standard nanite avatar, piloted the lander for its final uncrewed trial. It slipped into the water like a predator returning to its home. Depth sensors tracked the descent. At 100 meters, we halted. No leaks. No hull flex beyond tolerances. Everything stable.

Then came the real test.

I tried to engage the lander's dimensional shift. Just enough to phase the bridge in and out. Test of the dimensional tether.

This time, it worked.

We could remove the internal bridge section and then reintegrate it.

That was progress.

We still couldn't the whole lander but that was a puzzle for another day.

But we were out of excuses. There was no reason to stop Stewie and Mira from taking it for a ride. So I gave the green light, with a single condition: they were to stay above 100 meters for the first human-piloted dive.

They both suited up faster than I thought possible. Mira even forgot to complain about the lack of plush seating.

As they descended, the interior feeds streamed directly to the bridge with wide-angle views of the alien ocean bathed in soft blue-green light. Microbial blooms glowed like constellations as they passed. Mira gasped at every color shift, while Stewie tried to narrate like a documentary host and ended up giggling halfway through.

"Where's all the life?" Mira asked after a while, her voice full of wonder and mild disappointment.

"This planet's too young," I replied. "Still building the recipe. Basic proteins, bacteria. Give it a few million years."

She didn't sound bothered. "Still beautiful."

After their hour-long trip, they surfaced smoothly. No damage. No surprises.

We let the sub rest, run diagnostics, and then prepped for the last test of the day: a full-depth dive.

No crew. Not even a Laia clone.

This was destructive testing to find the limits, map the failures. This was the first of two. This one would use no active shielding.

we let it go.

It descended past 100 meters. Then 200. 500. The pressure increased exponentially. At 2900 meters, the seals began to whine. At 5200, one of the transparent nanite panels buckled inward. At 7300, the feed went dark.

Laia pulled up the telemetry. "Frame collapse. Internal systems destroyed."

Wayfarer tilted his head. "Still, deeper than expected."

"Very," I agreed. "Let us build another and do a test this time with shielding ."

Stewie was already going over the data and I could see a smile on his face, he was a true engineer now, learning from failure and improving.