It had been a few weeks since I had that brain scan. After the initial shock the first few days, I was able to calm myself and I was trying to explore what it meant to be… a spaceship, a virtual being so to say, and in more ways than others… I had started to like it. True, while I couldn’t really feel like doing many things I could do as a human, I found out my new life wasn’t really a dark void without end.

I had my own physical space simulator, as Devin had shown me, it used to be a bit bland and chilly at first, but after I learned a bit more about the program, I was able to configure it and make it look like a nice, warm small house I could live in. And in there, I could feel my new body, and even experiment with it. It was all virtual of course, but it felt real to me, and that was what mattered the most.

Aside that, I had found a few websites on the internet with their own simulations, places for people that were like me to hang out, Devin had bought an even faster speed connection just for me to connect, but I was still shy about going out as a brand new AI, or well, as a well new core, I still didn’t know how to call myself, because I knew that I wasn’t really artificial.

Haven’t you guys ever thought that the terms Virtual Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence are swapped? Virtual Intelligence should be called Artificial Intelligence, because no matter how much it feels real it will never match or properly feel something, while Artificial Intelligence, while being hosted in hard drives, programs, ones and zeros, it was still real, I was still real, I could think and feel, so I was not merely an artificial product, I was alive. I knew that the artificial came from the fact that it was all mechanical, electromagnetic, but even then, it just rubbed me in the wrong way, that is why I wanted people to call Virtual Intelligence Artificial Intelligence instead, and Artificial Intelligence, the real deal, Virtual Intelligence, since it isn't necessarily artificial, just virtual, so I could call myself a Virtual Intelligence instead, or VI, something along those lines.

Anyway, aside from being able to think at my own normal, human speed, I was able to consume media and files a lot faster, as fast as my own and Devin’s computer processor allowed me, which came really handy at times and made me feel smart. Like, seriously, I could now read books in an instant and process the information right away! That was incredible. Although, even then, I didn’t want to overclock or change my normal thinking speed, and I still watched movies and shows in real time, I was still a bit afraid of what my limits would be, and how far I would end up from my original humanity was if I experimented too much eating up knowledge, and I didn’t want to burn my hard drive either.

I would say I didn’t have to sleep either, but at night Devin turned everything off to save energy on his bills, leaving me with a low battery mode. Sometimes I could run scandisk which created something similar to dreams, but overall it was mostly unnecessary. I always felt afraid of not waking up the next morning, but Devin always assured me he would turn the system back in, and I always felt happy when he did it back in the morning.

After a while, I had decided I was becoming happy enough to stay like that, and I decided to ask my friend something important to me.

“Devin, I think I am ready.”

“Ready? Ready for what?” He had his glasses on, doing job reports on his desk.

“I think I want to be your s-spaceship.” Shit, I didn’t know VIs could stutter, but well, you learn something new everyday.

“What? You want to be my spaceship?” His tone wasn’t serious, just curious, but it still made me feel fairly nervous. “I mean, can I at least ask why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Well, Emilia, the thing is that I have been building my spaceship to make it my home, my job and also a source of income. I will be traveling far away without ever stopping, I will be working with cargo loads doing all sorts of stuff, and for that, I need an AI or somebody that can help me do the hard work for me. If you were left in charge of the spaceship, you would have to deal with navigation, shipment, you would be going around with me wherever I go, without any freedom to choose where to go. Look, I know you are my friend, but I simply can’t do this to you and use you like that, not like this.” He looked at me, or well, he looked at the camera of one of the monitors of his ship with sad eyes.

“No! Wait, I mean, no, you just don’t understand, the fact is that I want this. I want to do this. I don’t want you to leave me and go away, who knows when I will ever be able to see you?” Shit, too sincere, I had to dial back up a bit. “Besides, I can’t just be left alone at my house, what if the electricity goes off? What if I need… maintenance?” In my attempt to avoid sounding so saccharine, I ended up feeling vulnerable and when I realized it, I was already crying. “I want to be useful, I don’t want to just stay at home. I want to help you, and be there for you. I will do the work you tell me, trust me, I can do it… I can really do it.”

It was really unfair on my part to start crying and let myself be seen by others when I could just mute the speakers and hide myself from the screens. It did put Devin in an awkward position to help me since he couldn’t really touch me or comfort me. But I just… needed it to get it out.

“It’s fine, shh, it’s fine.” He said slowly waving his hands trying to calm me down. “Easy steps, easy steps.” He breathed in and out slowly, probably wanting me to follow him through, I went ahead to the physical space simulator and in my virtual body I did the same as he was. “I don’t want to abandon you, Emilia, if it was because of me, I would take you with me everywhere I went, I just don’t want to put you through that work load.

“But, I need to help you to repay the brain scan you paid for me.” In the simulator, I actually feel the air passing through my veins and then through my brain, calming me slowly. “I know paying such debt is going to take a while.”

“Oh, is this about the debt? Look… You don’t have to repay the brain scan. I know, it sounds nuts, but I did it because of you, you are my friend, and nothing else in the world compares to being able to talk to you. Okay? You don’t need to put yourself through this just because I did something for you, trust me, when I say you don’t need to pay me, it’s because you were worth every penny.”
I was trying to calm myself down, I needed to talk to him, I needed to tell him it was okay, but his words were making me so happy, I was feeling an urgent need to cry all over again. I felt so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even comprehend it.

“No, no.. it’s not just that. It’s because I want to be with you too. You… you are my friend, and when I say I can do it, it’s because it really is no big deal.” I sniff and bring some paper towels into existence to clean my tears. “I have been learning… and I know how to do all that stuff easily now, it is now in my program, I think. If you ask me to do navigation, it will feel like second nature to me, because now it is, I can learn commands and programs now, I am a VI, you see, and about going with you everywhere…” I say while snorting in the most ugly way in the paper towel I have, the physical space simulator was perhaps too accurate to the human body at times. “Nothing would make me happier. I don’t want to stay in my room all day, I am also like you too, Dev, I want to explore, I want to live, I simply want to go out, whatever if it is just for work, delivering cargo or exploring space, I want to be with you and I really want to do this.”

“Hmmm.” He was scratching his chin, he probably wasn’t too convinced, but I knew he had to accept at some point, he didn’t have any money to buy the AI-core he needed, and as for me, he couldn’t just throw me away to let me collect dust, or at least, that’s what I was hoping for.

“I mean, if you say you can do it…”

“Yes! Yes, I totally can trust me!”

“Okay, I guess it’s settled.”

“Thank you thank you, I won’t disappoint you at all, captain!” I said in the burst of the moment, thankfully he chuckled.

“Yes, I guess I am the captain of this ship. I am the captain of the Emilia ship… the HMS Emilia!” He looked at me, rather proud.

In that moment I felt my stomach flutter and my blood rush towards my cheeks. I didn’t know what came first, the feelings of validation and euphoria or the physical sensations in my virtual body, but one thing was for sure and that was that human emotions had a bigger physical aspect to them than what I expected at the beginning, rather than being just mental. Being a VI had made me realize that and was really, really weird. But still, I was a spaceship! I was a spaceship! What else could be more badass than that?

“What does HMS mean?” I asked, trying to deviate the topic and look calm and collected, embarrassed enough with my reaction.

“Oh, it’s nothing really important.” He blushed and turned around to continue with his work. I didn’t want to be left out with the doubt so I just looked it up. Searches on the internet now just appeared in my mind without having to visualize web pages or anything of the sort, the information just came to me as I browsed the internet. Now, what did HMS mean anyway?
Oh…

~~~

The other day, we went ahead to visit my grave at the town’s cemetery, Devin had taken some ear buds plus his eye monitor with a small camera and mic, so I basically could see what he could see and hear what he could hear, and it was perfect if he wanted to talk to me, because people would think he was just in a call. Which wasn’t technically incorrect since my core was still inside the ship.

Devin left some flowers on my grave and then we stood up there in silence, looking at my deadname, and for a moment I swear I could fill the chill of the wind back on my spine.

…

…

Silence.

…

“Okay, this is awkward.” I said.

“Yup.” Devin answered and turned around. “Let’s agree to never do this again.”

“Indeed.” I repeated, and we both left the cemetery, maybe to never turn.

~~~

We had returned to the city’s port, where Devin always parked his ship, or well, where Devin always parked me on, or even better! In the place where I parked myself! Teehee, now that I was really the ship! I had learned to control the propulsion system and move around with the momentum gained. I could see everything outside thanks to the multiple cameras Dev had installed on me. Although the experience was still weird because basically I couldn’t feel anything as a ship, not the rockets, not the wind, or not the vastness of space, I wanted to ask Dev to maybe install some sensors outside of me to make the thing more natural, but I wondered if it would make everything just more weird.

“You know.” Devin said, dropping on his couch to rest after the cargo mission. “You don’t really have to call me sir every time we are outside, we are friends.”

“Understood, sir!” I answered in an enthusiastic tone. Devin couldn’t help but just chuckle and facepalm. It was true, every time we were inside me putting cargo to ship in and Devin asked me things, I answered him always calling him sir, in a very official manner so you know, people looked at me as a very efficient VI, and I wanted them to remember he was the captain of his own ship.

“Emilia, can you help me open the back door?”

“Indeed sir, let me start the systems right away!”

Okay, maybe I was overdoing it a little, but I was really enjoying it. I really liked to show my ability to multitask and be useful. I could be doing whatever he wanted outside, and even play video games at the same time, and I really liked him being in charge of me and feeling useful. Just, don’t judge me, okay?

Speaking of video games, that was a whole different beast to other media like movies or books. Whereas I could choose to consume most movies or books, or well, even audio in an instant, I had to do things in real things in video games since videogames were done mostly for humans, taking into account human senses and response times, but it’s not like it mattered to me at all. If I wanted to play fast, I could play fast in some things, resolving a rubik’s cube was a piece of cake for sure, but when it came to speed runs I just wanted to play it safe and avoid glitches because they scared me, the virtual world was my world now and if my reality started to fail that simply made me panic like crazy. Glitches and bugs in video games were not fun at all.

I could either play them simulating human hands and senses, or I could play them simply by putting inputs into the game. Both ways were surreal in their own ways, since I was simulating everything but I was still able to multitask outside and move and handle the controller at speeds I never imagined, or simply move myself without worrying about any sort of input lag, just… feeling the game, controlling it with my own self. And yes, every time I could, I did try first person mods and settings, VR versions of games, and so forth. Living as a VI definitely had its benefits, yes siree, but I think I am already repeating myself by now.

The other day Liam came over to help us do some inventory of our last cargo and at the end we even played some Mario Kart 156, and I ended up winning most of the time! No, I didn’t cheat in any of the games, trust me…

I had told them to act as themselves in front of me if they wanted, you know how sometimes b-boys act differently because there is, you know, a girl around them and that just makes them feel awkward? I was going to listen to whatever they did anyway, since you know, I had microphones installed in every room, but I told them that I could give them privacy if they wanted and I showed them how the microphone input LED light turned on when it was being used.

Even then, they took my advice at heart and simply… started acting like boys, you know, boys, they something hit each other in the arm because one of them looked at the other funny and then they laugh, or sometimes they did jokes that sometimes felt too crass for me, maybe they were perhaps too rude with each other, but hey, it seemed to work for them, so I didn’t complain. The best part about it is that they were really treating me like as a girl. They could be making their men thing when talking among themselves, but when referring to themselves, they made sure to be polite and delicate, and that made me feel so happy! Aaaah! They were really treating me as a lady, a lady! Maybe I was all just software, but I was still a lady!

At first, I felt guilty for wanting to be treated delicately, like if maybe I was a vase that could be broken at any minute compared to how they treated themselves, but then I realized that it was simply respect because that was just the way I wanted to be treated, not because I had the privilege or because I was a woman. If they wanted to be treated the same way, or if anybody else wanted to be treated the same way, I would do the same thing for them, it was just about respecting how somebody wanted to be treated.

“Alright dude.” Devin said after we finished another round in Mario Kart. “Another beer or what?” He stood up and went to the kitchen.

“Yeah sure, I’m all in.”

“Okay then, don't start without me yet, I’m also going to the bathroom.”

I wasn’t really showing my physical form to them, you see, generating a physical form of myself took power, just as if playing a very heavy game on a GPU, it would get hot sometimes and it was not recommendable to do keep it on 24/7, even less when we were playing a video game right now, so I just talked through the speaker and put the inputs on the game, to save computer power.

“Emilia?” Liam asked me, directing himself to the speaker of the living room very closely and quietly.

“Yes?”

“You like him, don’t you?”

What?!!