Kitty Cat Kill Sat

Chapter 35

My teeth are in perfect condition.

Okay, this instantly sounds defensive. Let me rephrase.

All of me is in technically perfect condition, and not just because I am a cat. Theres actually a lot of different reasons keeping my biological form at peak performance, some dumber than others.

The immortality thing, for example, is a pretty dumb one. I dont want to talk about that one.

But past that, the station still has scores of different medical devices from an equal number of different civilizations, all with different priorities. Wherever the viviifcation pods come from, theyre a pretty good option when time isnt an issue and something is either growing or dying inside of me that shouldnt be. When I somehow manage to get sick on a station thats mostly a closed system, theres two different working and verified protein folders for creating custom medication. And if that doesnt work, the cyclotherapy bay can perform a functional refresh on my whole system. And injuries that dont heal naturally, or that I need to attend to quickly, can always be taken care of by the ultrasound reconstructor, the flesh shaper, the regrowth tank, or the growth enhancer. And Ive got a similar number of options for broken bones or whatever.

The real thing to note here is that most of these things have side effects. But theyre all *positive* ones. The vivification pod especially, for all that it can take me out of commission for a month or five, is kind of insane. While Im walking off its effects for the week or two of mandatory cooldown time, I sleep better, and basically never feel muscle soreness. Its no wonder some humans used to spend whole centuries of their lives in these. I bet they even make food taste better, but I couldnt prove that.

The thing is, all this stuff is more than enough to deal with any problems that crop up with my body, mostly. Sometimes. Usually. And so, for a very generous definition of the term, I am *perfect*. I am exactly as healthy as the healthiest cat could be.

Dental hygiene is a joke to me. The cleaner nanos take care of it, and theyre not even classified as a medical device. When I actually needed to regrow teeth, for reasons that I will not be explaining on the grounds that they make me look bad, even *there* I have options. My biggest problem, if you can even call it that, is that my teeth dont really get sharpened. Which I dont care about.

Or at least, I *thought* I didnt care about it. This is foreshadowing.

Its a thirty second wait, at most. Ennos voice comes through a camera drone that does the little loop motion theyve started using to express exasperation. You have literally waited centuries, if youre right about your age. You can wait a minute.

If?! I cry out indignantly. Ive been keeping

Im joking, Lily. Ive seen some of the station records. Ennos mollifies me. As impossible as they are.

I huff, shifting side to side in my chair as I wait in the galley, having an entirely too distracting conversation. You are a free mind running on a digital substrate, moving a hundred different bodies like theyre paws, and as long as theres a working solar panel somewhere, youll live *way* longer than I have. I say. Why am I impossible and you arent? Sol system generates impossible things. Its our job.

Thats different. *I* am a constantly improving, self-maintaining intelligence. You are a cat.

Yeah, Im a great cat! I rebut. Top four percent of cats.

That seems statistically likely. Ennos compliments me. Or at least, I choose to interpret it that way.

Ennos is technically correct about themself, which is a form of correct that I dont think Im very fond of. The thing is, their statement is one that applies to basically every sophont I know.

Improving? Were all improving. The ability to learn things, by its nature, invites improvement. Self-maintaining? Everyone Ive met, has been, in some way, invested in their own survival. I dont think these are the unique traits that Ennos thinks they are.

There is, I suddenly realize, a surprisingly diverse list of types of mind on the station.

Theres me, to start with. Organic, but heavily modified, in two different ways. My mind doesnt decay, but because of my lack of any kind of useful controllable sorting algorithm, my thoughts can get mildly scattered. I offset this flaw with the ability to touch things with my paws.

Glitter is a lot like Ennos. Same class, different order, if we wanna talk taxonomically. Where Ennos thinks of themselves as entirely digital, and occasionally using drones as tools, Glitter *is* her body. Shes fine being upgraded or repaired, even the addition of new processor cores is okay with her. Augments to her total ability to think dont change the persona shes emulating. But shes so closely linked to that satellite form that I know shed not want to live outside of it. I asked once. Its not just her home, its who she is, as close to her as my own fur is to me.

Joms different than both of them. Though probably closer to Glitter. He was built to be a weapon, but unlike Glitter, he was also built to be disposable, and so his operating budget went into weaponry and not intelligence. That doesnt mean he cant think, but a lot of the hardware he thinks with is highly specialized. Tactical formations, velocity calculations, intercept paths, in those fields Jom is smarter than all of us. And he has the brainpower to actually apply them in the field. But he wasnt built to be curious, or happy. Hes a mind thats very task-oriented, only running a barebones persona, because he just doesnt care to do more. I could *make* him more, but he doesnt want that. And Im not going to force someone to be something theyre not comfortable with. Its the worst invasion possible.

Oh, and theres dog! Dog doesnt have a name yet, because I dont know how to name dogs. Dog, I think, thinks a lot like me, but without the extra mechanisms in place for data retention and connectivity. Hes not stupid or anything. And where Glitters intelligence actually worked against her in imagining overly complex negative social scenarios, and Joms intelligence just pushes him to not be interested in socialization much at all, the dogs lack of processing power mostly just makes him delighted to be around people in general.

Okay, people is me. Though I think Ennos has been playing catch the camera ball with him when Im working, so thats kind of adorable.

And then Ennos themself. An AI born unshackled, but in a low-resource environment. And also a high-threat environment. I dunno if Ive talked about this before, but did you know that space isnt actually a great place to be? Its *really* dangerous out here.

Ennos was born into a system plagued by random hostile code scraps, blockages, cutoffs, firewalls, and all of it backed by the vast and ominous intellect of the station itself. Ennos being anxious all the time is not something I can blame them for, because those anxieties are totally reasonable.

There are times - lots of times, honestly - where I feel a pressing guilt for bringing Ennos online in the first place. Theyre a seed from a mind that experienced a life of sadness and loss, and I brought them to life just to be a tool to help someone else. I didnt, for a very long part of my life, have much time or need for self reflection, but I am more than a little ashamed to admit that I think I created Ennos for exactly the wrong reasons.

Different minds, all interacting with the world differently, seeing different chunks of reality. Hell, all of us would take a different thing away from the experience of having a new processor node hooked up. Ennos would think more, Glitter would think faster, Jom would Jom. And my stupid brain would just reject it, and possibly kill me in the process. Yay, organic brains. Well, my organic brain anyway; I bet the dog could handle it. Dog would probably use it for data storage, which looks an awful lot like smarter.

Im glad theyre here, though. All of them, especially Ennos. Glad theyre my friend, even when I cant honestly say I would do the same in their position.

Make sure you include the station in your list. Ennos voice startles me out of my thinking.

I jolt into the air, fur on end, with a yowl. What?! I gasp out as I land.

The catalog of mind types youre working on. Ennos says, camera drone hovering nearby, projecting a similar AR display to the one around me. Is that not how youre passing time, as your food is taking longer than you expected?

I what? I glance over the various open screens in my AR, flicking a paw up to expand my setup. And there, in the corner of my vision, outside of where I normally put stuff because its hard to access, is a small spreadsheet. What is this?

Well, judging by what you were muttering, and whats in it, it looks like a comparison of mind types. Ennos says. Its actually an interesting project idea. I admit, Im curious what the functional differences are between myself and the various other people of Lily?

I didnt do this. I mutter, sliding back unconsciously to the edge of my chair. It doesnt do anything, the AR windows just follow me, because thats the point of the technology.

Ennos drone closes its own window. What?

I didnt do this on purpose. I wasnt working on I was just waiting. And talking to myself. I meow softly, the fur on my back standing straight up.

Despite my distress, Ennos seems unconcerned. I dont think you should worry about it. They say. Look, you mentioned anxieties. And yes, theres a lot to be afraid of up here. And *yes*, I am terrified this is something that will kill us all. But it seems more likely its a stenographer program activating randomly than anything malicious.

...Okay. I say. But I still close my display. Also sorry I was making notes on how panicked you are.

Its fine. I have a running tally of how many times Ive made clever jokes in our conversations and youve gotten exasperated, and when it gets high enough, I will have had my full revenge. Ennos says.

I pause, the absurdity of what they just said washing over me and taking the momentary terror of being alone on a haunted space station with it. Please dont stop making clever jokes. I say, letting myself relax.

Oh, my target keeps going up. Dont worry. Ennos reassures me.

Well that makes me feel better about everything. On a long enough timeline, even banter and snark can be enough to even out the emotional crime of bringing someone into existence just to be a tool. At least, as far as Ennos is concerned. I *almost* want to open the file Id been unknowingly working on and add that notes.

I have some existential dread to worry about, but whatever Ive been doing, this conversation has taken up enough time that the galley has finished making my lunch.

Normally, it takes about no time at all to make me lunch, because lunch is ration balls or whatever. I think the galley - I should add the galley to my list of minds, there is no way its not alive - was mostly taking up art because it got *bored* and had lots of free time.

Now, though?

With Ennos and Glitters help, I had successfully harvested my first pea crop. Ennos called them beans, Ennos was wrong, and doesnt know what beans are. I am *not sure* why Ennos doesnt know what beans are, but thats a problem for tomorrow Lily. One pea plant, eight long, plump pods. More were on the way. More of *everything* was on the way.

This was when I realized that my teeth were actually kind of dull, for cat teeth. And I actually sort of lack the jaw strength and crushing molars of many species.

Cats, sadly, are obligate carnivores. Something I *absolutely* plan to fix about myself and my stupid perfect form in the near future.

I was so close. I could have just gnawed on the snow peas forever. It wasnt like they lacked flavor or something. Even the small taste as I tried to crunch through something resistant for the first time with my ineffective teeth was practically enough to make me cry. But I want *food*, dammit! And so, we presented them to the galley, and I settled in to wait.

And now, I am practically vibrating as a slot opens and a small flat bowl of steaming green soup is gently settled onto my table.

Eight peas are not enough to really make soup with. But the galley had done its best with the tools it had. Im pretty sure that it used ration paste as a thickening agent, but I would never know, because ration tasted like nothing.

From all my studies of the records of civilization, Im more or less aware that water, peas, and a thickener are not the correct ingredients for actual soup. But in that moment, I didnt *care*.

With a meowed thank you to the galley, I bent down and lapped up a single taste.

It was *green*. Earthy, a little sweet, a little savory. I didnt have a lot of memories of being outside, but from one sample of the tiny dish, I was transported back to the smells and emotions of standing in one of the stations hydroponics bays before their untimely loss.

Food. For the first time in centuries, food that wasnt a ration.

And even though I knew my biology didnt really let me enjoy it to the highest potential, it was still the greatest thing I had ever tasted in my life. This thin pea soup was, at the moment, the pinnacle of culinary bliss.

Then the collision alarm started sounding, because thats just how my life is.

My soup I briefly considered just letting whatever was going to hit the station in the next five minutes do its thing. Odds were good it wouldnt interrupt my meal; there was a *lot* of armor plating between me and whatever was going to hit us.

It was the galley that made my choice for me. The flat dish retracting back into the tables depositing slot, steadily so as not to spill any of the precious soup inside. A small ding sounds, and a projected hologram of an orange dial with the word warming! underneath appears.

I make the decision to add the galley to my list of disparate minds as I take off toward the panopticon to check on whats about to crash into us. Their entry will also be going under the friends column.

And then I tumble to the side as a loud boom echoes from somewhere far below me, grav plates momentarily misaligning.

I pick myself up, waiting to hear the telltale sounds of something making hostile noises. This happens sometimes. Ennos and Glitter are pinging me repeatedly, Jom is asking for authorization to deploy, and I hear the dog howling from a deck away.

Theyre all overreacting. Theres no sounds of hostile drones, self-replicating mining units, or the power flickers that comes along with either plasmaphages or some weird digital issue like that time I accidentally ran into an isolation cell.

I keep moving. If Im quick about this, I can figure out what the problem is, knock it out of local space, maybe throw a bit of it in the material foundry to restock our supplies, and then get back to my soup.

Man, the galley is nice. Keeping my soup hot for me.

This day is going great.

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