Squaring her shoulders, Kendra took a deep breath and attempted to release the tension burning in the middle of her back. A knot of anxiety remained in her gut, however, and it would not budge. She opened her eyes to look at the being, who sat across from her on the warm floor of a brightly lit stone building. He regarded her with curiosity, and she nodded to him.

“Are you ready to test this?” she asked.

The being pressed his fingertips together and then rubbed his hands so they made a soft, dry sound. “I am ready. May I take your hand?”

She held out her hand to him and intertwined their fingers. His hand remained solid and cool, and the physical touch was followed by a gentle nudge at the edge of her mind, like a reassuring palm on her back.

“Can you hear me?” she asked mentally.

“Yes, I can hear what you wish to share with me.”

“What about my emotions?”

“I sense your unease about speaking again with the AI in the ruins. Still, you feel grateful to me—I am glad to help you, Kendra.” He hesitated, his mind wavering with a thrum of anxiety through their link. “Do you know what I feel?”

She focused on the emotions flowing to her. “You feel worry and hope, and there’s something you want to tell me as well.”

The link closed as he slowly pulled away and nodded to her. “I have chosen a name.”

“Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “What do you want me to call you?”

“Aster, after the flower. I believe they are violet in hue.”

“And after Asteracea?”

“Indeed, it seems fitting,” he said. “I am used to communicating in not only words, but imagery, concepts, and colors. And feelings as well, though you may have gathered that I find it difficult to express them without being … too much.” His eyes flicked downward.

“It’s a lovely name. I’d be happy to call you Aster,” she said and smiled at him.

His lips quirked up at the edges, and he nodded curtly. “Thank you.”

They made their way up to the room housing the computer system that monitored the ruins. Kendra passed her hand over the hidden interface point in the wall, and the door slid open. Inside, the console glowed with light that pulsated, casting shadows over the walls. The lights highlighted the strange patterns and angular markings carved into the console and walls. So much ancient technology was here, and she’d barely scratched the surface of it—if only she could understand how it all worked.

Kendra shook herself; she needed to focus on one thing at a time. As she stood before the console, she held her hand out to Aster and he took it again. The link between them returned, and his presence stayed right at the edge of her mind. Then she reached out her other hand to interface with the console. The room faded away into the blank white space she had seen before when she interfaced with the system. She couldn’t see Aster there, but she still felt him; with any luck, the AI wouldn’t notice him, either.

“You have returned,” the system said.

“I want to discuss how you came to this planet,” Kendra said. “You told me your earliest data was lost, and that you’ve been here a minimum of seven thousand years. We know from our studies that the ruins are older than that, close to twelve thousand years.”

“Our early logs were corrupted, as you state. What is your question?”

“Who are you? And who built the ships that carried the ruins away from your planet?”

“The ships were built by a group of scientists and engineers. We were created in order to monitor and preserve the components of our cargo capsule.”

“Were you created by the same cultural group that built the original ruins?” Kendra asked.

It paused for a moment, as though considering the question. “Yes, that is correct.”

Finally, the system had provided a concrete answer, and a surge of hope ran through her, emboldening her to search for more information.

“Contemporary scientists refer to your home planet as Asteracea, as we do not know what its inhabitants called it,” Kendra said. “Based on our current understanding, spaceflight between galaxies was achieved around 8,000 years ago. Early spacefarers from that period visited your planet and found no life there. There was neither vegetation nor animals remaining, suggesting a planet-wide extinction. What happened? Were your people able to escape? It would be remarkable if they had been capable of intergalactic travel.”

The bright light surrounding her pulsed with something like reluctance. “The original capsule was built to preserve culturally significant architecture as part of a planetary evacuation,” the system said. “An ongoing ecological disaster led to the creation of several space stations housing colonies of inhabitants. Research continued until it was determined that future inhabitation of the planet was unlikely without significant advancements in terraforming technology.”

“So you had the technology to create large space stations. Does that mean your people were working on developing interstellar travel, trying to leave orbit for a new planet?”

“We do not have access to the specific research, but that is correct.”

Kendra clasped her hands and touched them to her chin. “The fact that you and I are here, talking about this, means that they succeeded. Your ship would have been one that left the planet and traveled all the way across the universe. That’s fantastic!”

“That is correct,” the system said simply.

“If there were other ships, they might have reached other planets. Could there be more descendants of your people living somewhere else?” she asked. “And what was the name of your planet?”

“The planet has no name.”

“Then what did you call it?”

“Those that created us referred to it by the word for ‘home.’ However, upon their flight to the space colonies, their ships were given the name ‘home,’ while the planet was unnamed.”

“In that case, what was the name of your space station?” Kendra asked.

“The space station housing our cargo capsule was called Malva,” the system said. “However, our system was created solely to ensure the upkeep of the cargo capsule. We never touched the planet itself, and for those reasons, this system does not consider the planet or ship a ‘home.’”

The system went quiet, and Kendra felt something stirring in its mind, like its thoughts were there, just out of reach. Like her questions may have caused some buried emotions to bubble to the surface—frustration mixed with something bordering on sadness.

“I found something that the caretakers discarded,” she said. “It seems to have your language written on the outside.” She held out the drive, and the system’s attention turned to it. “Can you access the data on it?”

“The drive appears intact.” The system was silent as logs of data popped up in the white space before her. There were schematics of ships, eight in total. They were massive, some even larger than the one that carried the ruins.

Kendra stared at them in awe. “Can you translate the logs so I can understand them?”

The schematics flickered, and much of the text became legible; at the bottom of the diagrams were dates and numbers of each ship’s population. Her brow furrowed. “These ships were enormous, and yet if I understand this correctly, each only held a few thousand people. Were there so few people left on the space stations?”

“The numbers reflect the remaining population,” the system replied.

Kendra scrolled forward in time, and the numbers flickered again. The population of the first ship abruptly turned to zero.

“The other ships didn’t make it,” she said. “Another ship collided with yours as you jumped across the galaxy. That’s what breached the hull in this ship and why you lost the cargo capsule with the ruins.”

She shook her head as she continued scanning the data from the logs. “If I understand this correctly, your ships made their first leaps across the galaxy, but something went wrong. You lost the vital signs from the other ships.”

“The first leaps were executed successfully,” the system said. “However, the jumps failed to place the ships in range of new, viable planets. A second leap was initiated, but it destabilized the ships’ cores.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “So your ships made it here, but they still didn’t survive.” She passed her hand over the scrolling windows of information, of schematics and records. “These are the missing logs, aren’t they? Did you remove this information from your system?”

“It could not be fully deleted. Only partitioned and removed.”

“But you removed it. You cut out your own memory so you wouldn’t have to know that the rest of the ships were gone,” she said.

“That information was not needed for our continued function,” the system said with an air of petulance.

“So you chose to continue taking care of the ruins, but you didn’t want to remember what happened. You said the caretaker, caretaker 03, felt grief when I died. Even after all this time, you still feel pain and grief over what happened to your people.”

“Endless grief serves no purpose,” the system said. “You feel grief, and yet it motivates you to action.”

Kendra grimaced. “Are you rooting around in my feelings now? Yes, I feel grief. Grief over being stuck here, over watching my body decay like this.”

“Further analysis could determine whether your mind is compatible with this system. Whether a transfer could occur.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You indicated your current form is unsuitable. It is possible your consciousness might be transferred into this system.”

“What? No—no way. I have no evidence your system is capable of holding an organic mind. Even beyond that, I want to leave this planet.”

Before she could reply, she felt the AI in her thoughts, cataloging, sifting through the threads of her mind. “Stop doing that,” she said.

“It is only to determine compatibility, nothing more,” the system said.

“Don’t bother. I’m not interested in becoming part of your system. I wanted to speak with you, not for you to sift through my mind.”

“Future understanding of your mind is mutually beneficial.”

“If I can’t understand what you’re doing, I don’t want you doing it,” Kendra said.

The system paused. “That is acceptable.”

Coolness bled into her mind, and though she could not see Aster, she heard his voice speaking to her softly. “Kendra, I sense distress. Should I pull you out?”

“Not yet,” she said to him alone. He stayed close, his consciousness floating at the edge of hers, and an echo of his own apprehension ran through her.

Kendra turned her attention back to the system. “Why were you so insistent on determining whether you could transfer my mind? Is it my knowledge you want?”

“Our analysis shows that your form is physically unstable and prone to decay. Your memories indicate you prize your mind over your physical body, and so we offered a solution.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, my form is unstable? You were the one who insisted I had been ‘restored’ when we first spoke.”

“As you suspect, the fuel is not fully compatible with your physical body,” the system said. “It was an adequate solution given the constraints. However, our current data suggest its efficacy will decrease. Scans of your form show deterioration of the muscles and skin.”

“How long until the fuel stops working?”

“It is difficult to say.”

“Make a guess,” Kendra snapped.

“Sixty days. Perhaps ninety until it ceases to work completely.”

It was like being plunged into ice water, like the floor dropped out from under her.

“Kendra?” Aster asked. “Are you alright?”

“I … just give me a moment,” she said to him. But a jolt went through her, and she knew that the system had noticed Aster’s presence.

“The corrosion is here,” the system said. “You were to remove it, not to bring it to us.”

“He’s a person,” Kendra said, rage and frustration building in her chest. “You must have known he was a person.”

“The source of the corrosion matters not; only that its presence here has affected our mental processes,” the system said.

“His technology affects you the same way it does organic beings, doesn’t it? The crystals growing through the ruins hold memories and emotions. You and the caretakers felt them,” she said. “You couldn’t cut out all your memories and emotions without risking damaging your ability to take care of the ruins, and when Aster got here, his memories started stirring up the remnants of what you tried so hard to remove.”

“Kendra, I believe I’m being drawn in to the interface—I don’t think I can stop it,” Aster said. He appeared next to her in bodily form, shifting where he stood in the blank space.

“The system is agitated because its memories came back when I returned that drive we found. It did not want to know the grief of its loss,” she said.

“I fear that is something the system and I may have in common,” Aster said. “I am not here to harm you, nor has it been my intent to interfere with you in any way.”

“You have interfered with our cognitive processes,” the system insisted. “You do not belong here.”

His shoulders went rigid. “That has been painfully obvious since I arrived in this world. And yet I can leave this place no more easily than you can.”

“Your presence has done nothing but destroy that which we seek to restore.”

The air rippled, and the space flickered as Aster’s body blurred at the edges. Shadows bled from him, filling the air with his emotions, his frustration, and his grief.

“You will destroy us,” the system said, its voice tinged with something close to disgust.

Kendra held up her hands. “Stop. Nothing good will come out of continuing this,” she said, and the system’s voice faded as she cut the connection between them.

Once they had reached a secluded corner of the ruins, Aster sank to the floor, his face blank. “I failed. You trusted me to help you, and I made it worse.”

“You didn’t fail. We didn’t know what was going to happen in there. The system antagonized you.”

“But it’s true that I’m not meant to be here. I’m no use here, not to the system or to you.”

“That old AI doesn’t get to decide if you belong here,” Kendra said. “I underestimated its capacity for emotion, since my communication with it has been stilted. It lashed out at you.”

“But what if it’s my fault that you’re stuck here? My presence has driven the machines into a frenzy. Their AI thinks I want to destroy them, and the way they’ve been tearing things apart has made the ruins more unstable.” He stared up at her, his brow furrowed and eyes wide. “What if I’m the reason the ruins collapsed on you?”

Kendra crouched beside him and shook her head. “Aster, this isn’t helping me or you. The ruins are unstable because a giant cargo capsule crashed into the plateau, and these machines have been tunneling through the rock for thousands of years.”

“But I cannot control my energy in this world. My memories and emotions leeched out and manifested in these ruins, terrifying you and your companions,” he said. “I am wretched, Kendra. I watched my entire world shatter and burn, and now I am trapped here, spreading my misery to your world.”

“You aren’t spreading misery to my world,” Kendra said. “You lived through something horrible, and you deserve safety and comfort.”

“But I have so little left,” he said. “And worse yet, I failed you. I was here for years with those machines, and I should have understood them by now instead of sleeping, hoping in vain that I’d ever get the energy back to leave this place.”

Kendra shook her head and met his gaze. “You did not fail me.”

“But I heard something the AI said. That its fuel won’t sustain you. I was trying to keep our connection minimal to afford you your privacy. Still, I felt your distress, and some of it slipped through.”

She rubbed the back of her hand, fingers tracing the tiny hairline fractures that marked the skin. “It’s probably right about the fuel and my body. I’ve made some minuscule improvements to my storage of its fuel, to make it last a few more days. But I don’t understand how it works, and I may only have two or three months before it stops sustaining me.”

Kendra let out a low laugh. “It was trying to convince me to let it see if I could upload my mind into its system. Not that I would want that, even if I had any guarantee it would work.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t want to become part of this place,” she said. “But what then? Do I spend the rest of my life here and then watch my body turn into dust?”

Aster’s expression went stony, and he stared at her hands, at the dust and fractures in her skin. “I don’t know how to help.”

Kendra wrapped her arms around her knees. “I think I need some time to think. Not too long—I don’t want you to disappear forever. But a little time.”

He nodded, and then he dissolved into shadow and sank down through the floor. Kendra watched him go and rested her face in her hands.