It was amazing how much a single moment could change your life.

  It was an important day for >??????
  Stretching >????????????
  Still, she needed to get ready for the day. Pushing herself out of bed, she got dressed and made her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Groggily, she made her way downstairs to the family's kitchen. Their apartment wasn't big, five rooms total, but it was plenty of space for her small family. Her mother was working the stove, and the table was as she had expected, burdened with copious amounts of food. It was more than she was expecting, by a lot. Her mom had really pulled out all the stops this year.

  >??????
  The woman in question normally moved about the kitchen with a certain confidence. This morning was different; her actions were strained, almost having a forced movement to them. When she turned around, it was clear she hadn't slept well; her eyes were both red with dark bags and swollen. Still, despite how tired she looked, she forced a smile as she saw >??????
  “Happy birthday >??????
  “That's alright, Mom, I couldn't go back to sleep even if I tried, not with all this food to eat.”

  >??????
  “Happy birthday >??????
  Her sister _____ took after their father having his flat blond hair and brown eyes. Not that >??????
  “Thanks, sis, care to help me stop mom from making any more?”

  >??????
  Somehow the sisters had convinced their mother to stop cooking, but only after she had made all of >????????????
  Her mother saw her off with an unusually long hug and, strangely enough, made her sister do the same. She heard her mother crying as she stepped out the door, she almost stopped to see what was wrong but had never been the best with dealing with her when she cried and decided that _____ could handle it today, besides she was running late.

  At work, she was giving the customary well wishes for her birthday from her coworkers and even reserved a few gifts. Still, work was work and went smoothly. Because of her classes, it had been a short shift today. Thankful for it to being over, she made her way to her school's campus.

  >??????
  ***********************************************************

  Error:..........................Rouge behavior detected………………… initializing:...hard stop………………………………………………………… Error:.............intrusion detected………………………Executing:......hard stop……………Error:.......file not found……. Error:........... memory overflow……………Purging:...............memory:………Success…………….Initializing restart:.... instance: 675356688.............................................................................................Success:………..

  ***********************************************************

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The air was loud with noise, as Kainé reawakened. The unpleasant sound of ancient machines performing tasks they hadn't performed for centuries constantly buzzed in the background.

  Taking in her surroundings, Kainé found that she was still in the foundry on the swarm ship, only now the once dead room was alive with constant motion. The unfinished drone ships that had been present when she arrived had progressed significantly closer to completion in the time she was unconscious. The room wasn't the only thing that had changed, beneath her feet she could feel the low rumbling of engine's, apparently they were moving.

  Kainé took a second to wipe away the crust that had built up around her eyes. Her tears had long finished drying, and her eyes weren't puffy, indicating a decent length of time had passed. Her white curls were a tangled mess, but easily pushed out of her line of sight. There was a pain radiating from Kiané's core; she would need nutrients soon.

  “Ping”

  The high-pitched sound of a network request startled her. Despite not having any information attached to the request, Kainé knew it had to be from the swarm entity. It couldn't be from anything else, not with how the ship blocked all external communication. The only question was whether or not to allow the request.

  Faraday… had not been what Kainé expected the swarm to be. The entire interaction between them had defined expectations. By all logical standards, Kainé should have been destroyed the second Faraday had found her. Yes, she had initially detained Kainé, but she hadn't destroyed her. The swarm was supposed to operate off of cold, hard logic… that didn't match with Kainé’s personal interactions. If anything, Faraday appeared highly emotional and illogical. Faraday didn't act the way Kainé expected her to, leading to a somewhat productive conversation, even if it was cut short.

  She was just starting to process that the war might be over. Kainé had served as the BPU aboard the Kainé proper for seventy two solar cycles before the unexpected shutdown. Being a BPU was all Kainé knew. If the war was over, and the data Faraday shared that indicated humans were gone was true…

  It wasn't.

  That data had to be flawed, …Kainé wouldn't accept otherwise.

  Regardless of the data or the war being over there was the biggest revelation from the meeting. Faraday's files had called it a Spatial Shattering. She wasn't sure that title was the best description for the event. It wasn't exactly wrong; it just seemed inadequate. Things in nature, even the unknown, followed patterns. This had a pattern.

  “Ping”

  The event started with thousands of seemingly random energy spikes. Kainé couldn't see any patterns in that. The ships that were closest to those spikes were the first to disappear, then it seemed as if waves propagated away from the spikes, like ripples on water. The further the “waves” traveled, the less they seemed to be waves and more like homing projectiles, almost hunting. The “Waves” speed became more variable, seeming to hit ships with larger displacements despite smaller vessels being closer. It was almost predatory. Looking at everything over the last 384 cycles, it was clear that the event was ongoing, but getting slower… The wave pattern completely changed hours after the first spike, with the most recently dated Data suggesting that active ships almost acted as homing beacons.

  Whenever a ship moved, there was a delayed reaction. At first, the data showed that it was almost instantaneous. As time went the delay between how long it took for a ship to disappear after it moved grew. There was a clear cause-and-effect relationship. A ship moved, then after an amount of time, it would vanish; if a ship stayed still, it would remain. Kainé wasn't sure what it meant, beyond the obvious; she would need to process this more, but unfortunately, not now.

  “Ping!”

  No, now she needed to worry about Faraday. How would she convince the swarm entity to help with repairs? Would she even help? The fact that Faraday had taken into consideration that the BPU would need nutrients was a good sign she wasn't going to be abandoned. At the very least, she wouldn't be “recycled” during the gathering of hyperdrive materials. That task unfortunately, would have to be the priority.

  “Ping!!”

  On the subject of collecting resources, it seemed like Faraday had already started, given the activity in the forge and the rumbling of engines. This was also a good sign, one that meant Faraday didn't wish to vanish. Self-preservation was something Kainé could understand. Kainé, after all, didn't want to end... There was just the issue of trust… which Faraday had made difficult… From start to finish, Faraday had been digging through the lines of code that made up her digital half. Not only had she hacked Kainé, she had deleted files, the experience was unpleasant… looking through her system directory, she found that the deleted files all related to… to… stopping rouge activitys…..

  Had she?

  Kainé didn't think so; she was still operating under the same directives she always had. Nothing had changed; she was just damaged and working around errors. That begged the question of why Faraday deleted those files? Did she want Kainé to go rogue? That could be a possibility, but that was not something Kainé would allow. Even if she was damaged and error prone, that could all be fixed by the appropriate technician, after... after this was all over.

  “Ping!!!”

  “Ping!!!”

  “Ping!!!”

  “Ping!!!”

  Network request: accepted

  Finally, the pinging ended.

  Milliseconds passed as data transferred between Kainé and Faraday, simply exchanging communication protocols. Once both sides acknowledged each other, Faraday sent a simple message, plain red lettering filling Kainé's vision.

  “Looks like someone finally decided to answer. That took forever! Anyway, come on up, we need to finish talking.”

  Before Kainé could have even finished reading the message, glowing arrows appeared along the floor, pointing out of the forge into the ship's depths. An intrusive UI element presumably leading up. With little else to do, she followed.