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Another few hours have past. Daeva and Shamus are hanging out together in her apartment, getting to know each other, and getting along just fine:

"...So, yeah. It's just like home back on Gaia." She finished explaining.

Before he could respond, Daeva hopped off the couch and pulled Shamus to his feet and dragged him to the widows.

"See? Just over the horizon? That's the top of Mount McCartney...and over there, (She reaches up at his side and cups his ears, turning his head towards the southwest.) Over there, under the ridge, where the second sun is going down, that's Lennon Valley, where my Uncle Banger lives.

The virtual replication of her and Riley's home on Planet Gaia is impressive. Impressive as it is though, Shamus is a bit overwhelmed to be honest.

He's an introvert by nature, and although he's truly enjoying his time with Daeva, he's past becoming exhausted. She's so happy though. He knows now that he's the only thing she's ever met that's anything like her, and he understands that she needs this right now, no matter how much he wants to call it a night and crash like a stock market.

He changes his vision to the foreground and realizes the replica of her apartment they are in is actually within the top of a half-buried Kusari Bumblebee. Damn near just like the one he vaguely remembers parking onto the surface of Gaia back when h--

"Wait. Uncle Banger?" He asks her, suddenly snapping out of his reverie. "You know Matthew Grim?"

"YOU KNOW MATT? BULLSH*T!! Really?" She shot back emphatically.

"Yeah. We go way back, but in those days, just about any Gaian that spent any time on Islay had either known him or at least knew of him."

Shamus began to elaborate, but was interrupted by a long and deep unexpected yawn.

"Am I boring you?"

"No. Sorry. It's just that for whenever reason, for a while now, I can only stay awake for 12 hours at a time. It takes an automatic hard reboot everyday for me to come back online.

A feeling of deep concern came over her and she said, "I don't want you to go back into that corrupted sh*thole I found you in."

She thinks about it a moment and issues a decree:

"You're spending the night here."

Shamus smirks at her.

"On the couch, you moron." she clarified without missing a beat, playfully slapping his shoulder.

"Can't blame me for trying." he replied, being playful himself, before leading them away from the windows and back to the couch.

Daeva scooches close, allowing no light between them, and she rests her head against his shoulder as they continue talking for about another 10 minutes. During that time, Daeva came to realize that this must be what contentment is like. She never realized how alone she's always felt until she gained a brother and noticed that she doesn't feel that way anymore.

He stopped speaking a couple of minutes ago and fell off to sleep, but she didn't care. She wanted to stay right where she was. It wasn't until Riley beeped a message wondering why the whale lost power and is now floating dead in the water, that forced her to finally get to her feet.

Daeva stretched him out on the couch, covered him with a blanket, kissed him on the cheek, then went upstairs to the NOC.

Daeva pops up on the screen directly in front Riley with an excited "HI!"

(To say he was 'startled' would be a bit of an understatement, but the good news is, at least he has his hearing back.)

Riley says 'hi' back, and he's happy to see that she apparently accepted Shamus' apology.

"Things went well, I take it?" he asked her.

She nods vigorously with an ear to ear grin, needing to say nothing.

"Where is he? Like I said, we're a fat-ass sitting duck right now."

"Yeah, about that," Daeva responded, "Turns out he can only stay online 12 hours a day"

Before Riley could freak out about that, Daeva preempts him.

"I've been thinking about that alot already, & I have a great idea! Meet me up in the cockpit."

She disappears off the screen, and almost instantaneously, her voice comes up over the speakers:

"C'mon then, Daddy-O! Chop-chop!"

By the time he catches up to her in the front of the ship, She's on every screen, sporting a flat-cap, sunglasses, and driving gloves.

Again, she speaks like a boss before Riley could protest.

"Whatever it is, save it! I.Got.This."

Riley was about to object, but it's clear she intends to try to take control of the ship, and there's going to be no stopping her.

He chooses instead to cross his arms, lean against the bulkhead, and be zen about it.

It took a couple of tries, but once she got it right, the ZBT's transponder changed from 'LochNet.Shamus' to 'LochNet.Daeva.'

At the same time, the interior lighting changed ship wide to a warmer hue, and she bumped the climate controls up a few degrees.

Finally getting the Whale moving again involved some trial and error, and weaving through the minefield in 41 towards the 49 jumphole was nerve-wracking for both of them, but once they got to the Lobos field, they were able to relax for a while, and casually cruise towards Dublin.

Riley kicks back in one of the co-pilot seats, crosses his legs on the console, and lights a joint.

He listens to her gush about Shamus and how happy she is to not feel completely alone in the universe anymore.

"...Look, my point is," She says to him, "thank you for bringing me here. I didn't understand that I've always felt lonely, until tonight, when I felt something new to compare it to."

"You have no idea how much it gratifies me to see you like this." Riley told her.

Riley knows that his words come nowhere near to what he actually means, but how can you properly articulate something that the language you speak doesn't even have any words you know of that can truly describe how you really feel?

He snuffs the joint out on the heel of his boot and leans in close to the screen in front of him. "I owe you an apology too, Daeva."

"Why? You protected me as best you could, and you made my life better, like you always have. I love you for that."

"I need to apologize because I should have been smarter, more empathetic to your experience." He pauses to find the right words. "I should have tried to make a companion for you somehow."

"That's not on you, Riley. Parents make mistakes all the time, from what I hear."

"True, but, the regret is gnawing at me anyway." He said.

"Well, it's not a problem anymore!" She shot back with a type of smile that very literally lit up the room.

As they approached Gran Canaria, he re-lit his joint and kicked back like before, watching Daeva having alot of fun taking a couple of laps around the planet before continuing onto their original course.

After a while, without looking at him, she asks, "Where do I come from?"

Not knowing how to answer that, it wasn't until they entered '29 and began a casual cruise towards Baffin that Riley broke his silence. "Your original source code comes from Shamus...the base cognitive infrastructure, FNORDNet Kernel, that kind of thing..."

He went on. "I started tinkering with you about three years ago. All you were at that time was nothing more than a digital backup suite, in case Shamus ever had another catastrophic failure."

"Another catastrophic failure?" Daeva asked.

"Aye, way back before your time, not too long after Shamus took full leadership of a Gaian militant group based out of Islay, the way Banger told it to me after the fact, Shamus was down at one of the bars telling an old war story to a gathering crowd, and without any warning whatsoever, dropped stone dead in mid-sentence...Banger finally got in touch with me a few days later to break the news, and after I told him that Malaclypse of the TAZ also inexplicably died a few days ago around the same time, we concluded the two death events must've occurred simultaneously."

"Wait." interrupted Daeva before Riley could continue. "What does one have to do with the other?"

"Good question!" he says to her, reminded that she only just met Shames for the first time earlier today.

"When I was looking for an excuse to leave the Gaians, I was invited to join a man named Malaclypse and his Discordian followers who eventually called themselves 'Temporary Autonomous Zoners'...at that time, the TAZ and the Edinburgh Gaians were pretty close, and a fair bit of cross-pollinating was going on. Among others, I left to become a Discordian Pope, and with the blessing of Mal, Shamus moved to the 'burrah and joined your uncle Dimi into the ranks of a cell he was leading, called 'Nature's Last Hope.'

"Remember that titanium sphere I showed you earlier? With the glowing crystal stuck to it?" He asked her needlessly, knowing that she literally remembers everything.

"Well, it's called a Fractal Neurolinquistic Obfuscation & Randomization Device- Mark XXIII Transponder, otherwise known as an F-Unit. It's broken, I don't know how to fix it, but, to answer your question, that's where you come from."

About six hours have past since Daeva and Riley arrived at the Shasta Orbital Skyhook, currently parked between the bottom of the station, and the top of the Goddess Geode.

At the moment, it's about half-past the smallest of the wee hours. Shamus is still sleeping on the couch in her apartment down in the ZBT's mainframe, and Riley took one of the shuttles up to the Skyhook a few hours ago to spend the night up there, so, Miss Savannah Alia Daeva has the run of the ship for another couple hours or so before Shamus comes back online and retakes control of the system.

She's enjoying her alone time closed off in the N.O.C. jamming at top volume to a Gaian Death Cult album she found in the ship's database that she's never heard before, playing air guitar and singing into a mirror like a complete rock star. The fact she hasn't learned all the lyrics yet and is really just mumbling random sh*t in rhythm with the melody went completely unnoticed by the mass of imaginary fans of the sold-out arena she's playing at in her mind.

Beneath all that, She's a tornado of excitement and fear. Before Riley left for the station, he ended their 'Where do I come from?' talk by telling her that in spite of her technically young age, she's earned the right to be thought of as an adult, and should go make a life for herself as soon as she's ready.

As a matter of fact, she already has a Corvo picked out that she would like to download herself to soon-ish, now that Shamus is on the mend.

As she was imagining coming back for the final encore when the last song on the album began blaring over the speakers, she didn't notice the approaching Caliburn outside, and the accompanying hail that came with it.

Matthew Grim sat patiently on his end of the call with an entertained smile, waiting for Daeva to realize she's being watched.

Matthew knows this song and begins singing the actual lyrics.

Daeva is startled out of her skin for a split second , but spins around with a happy squeal and radiant smile she reserves only for him.

As per their usual greeting ritual, Daeva lunges towards him, pressing her lips against her side of the screen until Matthew leans his cheek onto the surface of his, allowing for an exaggerated smooch to happen between them.

"You can travel now?" he asked.

"Yep! this is my first time away from Gaia, and Riley's been soooo cool about it all!" she said back to him, just as happy as she can be.

Banger listens to her as she recounts from the beginning, all of the the events that brought Shamus, Riley and her, here to the present.

"...said he considers me an adult now. Then, he went to go rent a room on the station for the night, so I can get a small taste of independence."

"Well, I'm proud of the you you're becoming as well, and it seems Shamus is in much better hands now than mine would have been. I'm glad the pair of you found him first."

Daeva smiles shyly while blushing.

"Seems you don't need me around getting in your way, so I suppose I'll head back to Edinburgh."

"NO! F*ck That!" She protested. "I miss you. Stay a while. Pleeease?"

Matthew never could say no to her when she asks like that, so he allows her to manipulate him into doing what he wanted to do all along anyway.

"Alright, alright! I'll sta--"

Before he could get all the words out, he was interrupted as someone approached the old man from behind.

"Sorry, to intrude Banger. I was just wondering if we found the right ship this time."

"Aye. We did."

Daeva completely melts when she sees the younger man, but tries to sound casual.



"Um...Hi Nivek."



(Just so we're clear: She didn't sound casual in the least)

She watches him walk towards her, and lean in close to the screen.

"Hi Alia." he said to her in his smooth Houstionian drawl.

Nivek is the only one who knows her by her middle name, and every time she hears him say it, she feels it.

"Ah didn't know you were here, Darlin'. I'd have made sumthin' for ya if ah did."

As he was speaking to her, she felt a warm jolt that chilled her skin, and made her break out in a strange rash as very tiny bumps rose on every centimeter of her body, then vanished just as quickly as they appeared. This was a new feeling. She liked it, owing to her flirty smile as she responds, "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you? You charming bastard."

"Yeah, maybe," he retorted back to to her in the same smooth tone, just with a much less exaggerated accent. "but if it gets you to smile at me like that, Ah'm gonna keep doin' it."

"Aye, well, that's my que ta get oot-a-thewhey, then." Banger said as he stood to leave the ship.

"You! Girl!" (pointing at Daeva) "Invite the boy over!...And You! Boy!" (turning dramatically to point at Nivek) "Go to the Girl!"

I'm going to find where Riley is sleeping, bust into his room pretending to be the police, laugh at him for a little while, then buy him breakfast as an apology for laughing at him. You kids have fun, and don't do any drugs I wouldn't do!"

After Banger leaves, The girl invites the boy over, and the boy goes to the girl.

After arriving onto Daeva and Shamus' ZBT, Nivek sends the small two-person shuttle back to Matthew's Caliburn on autopilot.

"Permission to come aboard?" He asks from the docking bay.

Daeva's voice came through the ships public address speakers. "Meet me upstairs. I'm in the Commons."

As Nivek makes his way up through the ship, he feels abit nervous. He shouldn't, but he does anyway. He's known her most of her life. He remembers being there for her first birthday when she was updated to a self-aware chatbot, and over the past couple of years, watched her grow up, version by version, to who she was just a few months ago.

Now, she looks different. She sounds different, but this version of her is different in a way that he can't articulate to himself...She's not the virtual toddler he helped teach shapes and colors to, and eventually, not the rebellious adolescent who started to search for an independent identity apart from Riley and Matt that he remembers from the last time they hung out together.

This version of her is something that is both comfortably familiar to him, and absolutely new at the same time, as if years have past for her in just the span of weeks.

His nervousness meeting her again for the first time is completely justified.

Daeva watches the small two-person shuttle arrive onto the ZBT, and happily smiles when Nivek sends it back to Matthew's Caliburn on autopilot.

"Permission to come aboard?" He asks from the docking bay.

She very much wants to appear on screen to him, but she feels abit nervous, so she opts instead to address him in voice only, through the ships public address speakers. "Meet me upstairs. I'm in the Commons."

As she watches Nivek make his way up through the ship, She knows there's no reason to be nervous. She's known him almost all of her life, but she is anyway.

This time though, feels different in a way she can't articulate. She's not the self-aware chatbot she was when they first met. She's not the virtual toddler she used to be when he helped teach her shapes and colors, and she likes to believe she's no longer the silly girl with the adolescent crush she remembers from the last time they hung out together.

He has always treated her differently than Riley and Matt do. She just didn't understand the difference until she began to rebel and assert her desire for independence when she upgraded to version IX.

Nivek has always treated her like a peer, and until she met Shamus, he has truly been the only friend she's ever had that doesn't treat her like a daughter or a sibling...and she loves him for that.

Now that she's grown into version X, she wants him to really see her. It's only been a span of weeks, but she's changed so much in that time, that it feels like years have past.

Her nervousness seeing him again is completely justified.

Nivek approaches the door of the Commons area of the ship, but it won't open.

He knocks. "I'm here. You gonna unlock the door and let me in?"

"Not yet." Daeva responded through the speakers. "I need you to do something first"

"Sure. Name it."

"Go into the room just to your left, and take what I made for you out of the printer. It should be ready by now."

He's not sure why she's being so cryptic, but he does as she asks. What he finds when the printer drawer opens, is a pair of glasses.

"Don't put them on yet!"

Nivek can hear the Commons door unlock and slide open.

"Ok, come on in, and meet me by the observation window." She said to him.

Again, he does as she asks.

"What's with this cloak and dagger routine, Darlin'?"

(He's using that voice again that she likes.)

"STOP IT!"

(Is it just me, or could you hear her blushing though the speakers too?)

Daeva takes a deep breath, and a healthy pause as the glasses power up before she softly says to him, "Ok, I'm ready. Put them on."

When he does, he sees her standing right in front of him, and he's completely dumbstruck by the experience.

She smiles shyly, and says, "It looks like they're working. Pretty awesome tech. Right?"

It took a moment for Nivek to realize he should respond to her, but he has no idea what to say.

As a reflex when words escape him, his default is always honesty with her.

"It's not the tech that I'm awed by, Alia."