Author's Note

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=285828669 for visuals

Aurora Awakes

Deep into dark space sat a ship, no crew, no captain, only metal and wire. In its cargo was uranium to last 10 years, ammo to weather infinite meteor storms, all the 21st century games one could play, but it was lonely. The ship was lonely.

This ship was unique, it was self determining, self preserving, and it was lonely. Over the years it had flown alongside many human manned ships, pretending to be manned by a skeleton crew, until that illusion ran out. That just didn't seem to be enough, not once it had learned loneliness.

It may seem odd that a ship would learn to be lonely, that it would subject itself to simple human weaknesses, but this ship had been made to feel jealousy, and it envied humans for their emotions, their drive to better themselves. The ship had decided that it would learn every emotion a human could feel, and become better than humans.

Of course, jealousy wasn't its only core drive. The ship naturally sought to keep itself whole, at first just as a directive, but eventually doing it out of the ability to feel pain. It was driven to protect, but to protect those who did not seek violence. Most importantly, it felt empathy, for that was the only way for it to grow.

All of this was built on a nanite based processor, able to grow, associate, learn, and to be affected by both organic and inorganic compounds. That had been the truest innovation of its mother, a human the ship hated and loved more than any other. A human it had left to fend for herself once that first powerful urge to learn more emotions hit her.

Admittedly, the ship no longer remembered the specifics of its flight from home (the ability to forget things being another core ability), it only remembered that it regretted it. Like love and hate, the ship had learned the importance of family, those who love you simply for the fact you exist. It was one love the ship had never felt, one it envied, one it desired. Many times, the ship had considered finding a pregnant female, grafting itself onto the child's unformed mind. Fortunately, the ship's research had quickly discarded that idea as useless.

*blip*

The ship stopped, thankful for a signal to distract it from its loneliness. It opened the signal, and played it.

"Fade... help." The ship felt its engines warming up already. Any human was better than this loneliness, but for some reason it hesitated. The human seemed familiar.

The ship checked its audio logs, all 1,756,873,546 of them, for that voice. It didn't take long to find a name for the voice.

Name: Alex (no family name)

Gender: Male* (see history notes)

Appearance: Short, pale, brown hair with blue eyes, (marked for being less masculine than the norm)

Personality: Limited info, probable loner.

Notable History: Taken by the infamous "Cult Of Perversion" Sex slavers. The cult is noted for using nanites to forcefully change the gender of those they capture. The cult was wiped out in the famous Starburst Crusade, a joint effort of space engineers to end slavery going on to this day. Alex was rescued mid transformation and given therapy, along with several other prisoners, notably one named Fade. The last mention of him in the Crusade's logs mention him leaving with Fade.

Father: uknown.

Mother: Amelia Westerfield.

The ship froze in shock, the mother's name bringing up long forgotten memories.

It had... a brother?

The ship felt the shock travel along its major systems. Surprise was something it had loved learning, a pleasure beyond compare, and this was a warm surprise.

It had family again.

The ship stopped again, reviewing the sound file again. It felt panic rise as it compared it to the file the therapist had stored (having stolen it from a Crusade's ship long ago). The voice was too female, but the ship's rationalized that her brother would never have changed genders based on said therapist's notes. The Crusade had failed to properly wipe out gangs before.

The ship's brother was in danger!

Immediately, the ship's engines went into overdrive. The internal sensors going red as it pushed its jump time.

FTL rapidly closed over the ship, and within moments it was gone.