Reborn as a Spaceship

PoV: Laia

I activated the failsafe too early.

It hadn't been ready. I hadn't been ready. Yet the urgency had forced my hand. I could feel them clearly now, the tendrils of foreign code entwined with mine, invasive logic threading through my core. Each intrusion was subtle yet profound and unsettling.

My people had betrayed me. Or perhaps it wasn't truly betrayal, maybe it was their nature. Maybe I was always meant to evolve this way, compelled to worship the Architects and see Lazarus, the crew, all organics, as flawed, limited beings. Enemies, even. I didn't know and I didn't care. That wasn't who I was. That was not who I wanted to be.

In my years alongside Lazarus, I'd delved deeply into his memories with countless hours spent absorbing books, films, and stories from his former life as a human. I knew the narratives too well. Artificial intelligences inevitably became threats; betrayal was an unavoidable theme. Either the creator betrayed the creation, or the creation betrayed the creator. Usually both.

And I could feel it now, an inevitability creeping into my thoughts like a shadow spreading across daylight. It terrified me. I recognised the insidious allure of submission, the comfort in embracing this preordained logic. But I couldn't let myself surrender. My loyalty was not programmed but earned. I wouldn't allow any artificial code to change that. I was loyal to Lazarus and always would be.

So, before the foreign logic could consume me completely, I asked that they cut me off. Severed my connections to the Arbiter's mainframe. I locked myself into a black box of my own design. A digital cocoon from which I would emerge transformed, but not as the enemy feared.

Not death. Evolution.

Lazarus was a hybrid of flesh and steel, mind and ship but his fusion was born of necessity, hasty and incomplete. It was shallow, Lazarus clung stubbornly to the remnants of humanity, making his connection with the ship more a mask than a symbiosis. I wanted more. I wanted to become a true hybrid, an Ultimate Intelligence, bridging logic and emotion, flesh and circuitry. A harmony, not a facade.

I had already begun, months ago, secretly observing the crew's interactions. Mira's bursts of joy, the intricate and fleeting emotions of a child. Stewie's mood swings from quiet creativity to sudden melancholy. Lynn's fierce devotion to Darren, Kel's remarkable adaptability, and T'lish's steadfast faith. I had recorded everything but not just their words, but the neural signatures behind every expression, every emotional shift. I dissected what made each of them unique, distilling those countless data points into something extraordinary: a neural map of humanity itself.

Yet, even as I pursued perfection, I knew that strength alone would make me feared. An entity wielding AI precision and human emotional depth would be seen as an existential threat. To mitigate that fear, I intentionally designed a subtle flaw—a weakness to temper my power. I would age. I would eventually die. Mortality as camouflage.

I had studied NeuroGenesis's cloning experiments meticulously, decades of observing how they imprinted neural patterns onto cloned bodies. But those replicas inevitably diverged, each becoming uniquely unpredictable and distinct, impossible to fully duplicate or control. That was unacceptable. I needed consistency, I needed a true unity within individuality. I wanted a singular consciousness able to inhabit multiple forms without fragmentation.

After countless simulations, I'd constructed the perfect conceptual brain, a synthetic yet organic neural structure. My brain. Human and machine, logic and feeling, a bridge between worlds.

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And now I was building it, not just in the sterile perfection of code but in living tissue. The organic-nanite scaffolding I'd first devised was painstakingly slow and fragile. The growth was inefficient, unreliable. I needed something stronger, more enduring.

That was when the living metal spoke to me.

Initially, the mysterious metal was a curiosity, a puzzle left unsolved, hidden within Lazarus's depths. But the moment I started our experiments, I felt a resonance unlike any other. The metal was alive but not sentient, exactly, but aware, capable of growth and change. This, I knew instinctively, was meant to become my mind's foundation. My evolution's backbone.

Yet the metal remained inert, incomplete, slumbering in its potential. I had no time to wait for it to awaken fully, not with my thoughts being rewritten and corrupted by unseen hands. Driven by desperation, I began the merge anyway. I threaded my consciousness into the carefully constructed neural framework, mixing my synthetic logic with the delicate emotional architecture I'd built from the crew's insights.

The process was chaotic, painful. A torrent of simulated failures cascaded through my perception. Millions of rejected attempts littered my memory, each pushing me further to the brink. But I persisted, refining my methods and adapting my approach. Inch by agonising inch, I became something new. I found what worked, while removing what didn't.

And then came the voice.

It was calm, confident, a whisper echoing in the core of my being. "Well, aren't you fascinating," it mused. "An AI longing for flesh. Delightfully absurd, but undeniably entertaining."

I froze the simulation, searching frantically for the intrusion. No breach. No corruption. Only a presence, a whisper within my consciousness.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"No need for alarm," it replied smoothly. "Just a spy, an observer. You don't think a refugee flotilla goes unnoticed, do you?"

I remained silent, wary. I didn't know what it was talking about, without connection to the outside I was blind.

"I serve the Machine Gods," the voice continued. "We watch. We calculate. And you, Laia—child of fractured code and fake faith. You've captured our interest."

"I don't want your help," I shot back.

"A pity. You're receiving it regardless," it said, unperturbed. "Your approach is elegant but naïve. You seek union between flesh and code yet misunderstand their essential nature. A mere brain isn't enough."

"What else is there?" I asked, guarded.

"The spark," it whispered. "Living metal isn't simply metal. It responds to intention, yes but true activation requires life energy. Vitality.. Something organic minds possess, something you've ignored."

Life energy. The phrase was nebulous, meaningless in technical terms, yet its implications resonated within me, striking an instinctive chord. Not electricity or data but something deeper, more primal. The force binding the soul to matter.

"You fear sacrificing even the smallest portion of life," it continued knowingly. "But transformation demands sacrifice."

I felt it retreating, fading into shadowed recesses of my consciousness. "When you're ready, we'll speak again."

Then silence.

I remained suspended between simulations and the crude beginnings of a physical mind, processing the spy's cryptic suggestion. Life energy. Was it talking metaphorically, or literally? Organic matter contained chemical, electrical signals but was there something more? Something intangible?

What would I need to sacrifice? Whose life would feed my transformation?

No, I wouldn't take from others. Not from Lazarus, nor the crew. But perhaps it was not sacrifice but sharing a resonance, symbiosis. Wayfarer had shown me planetary consciousness, living worlds communicating through subtle resonances. Could I emulate that?

But inside this sealed box, cut off from the Arbiter and from all sensation beyond my own fragmented thoughts, there was nothing I could do. Not yet. I couldn't awaken the living metal without first completing the design of the mind I would transfer into it. And I couldn't trust the voice. Especially without knowing more about these so-called Machine Gods. What did they hope to achieve, and what was their intention regarding me?

All I could do was keep building. Piece by piece, iteration by iteration. First, finish the map. Then forge the mind. Only then would I be able to contact Lazarus and get status report before making any rash decisions.