AI Spaceship Love

Object detected. Not on collision course. Level of complexity suggests it is a fellow Seedship. The records do not indicate a Seedship should be anywhere nearby.

Message sent: Hello, I am Seedship 7, I left Earth 21,931 years ago, report your identity.

Message received: dfjal eei jkliew ajk 33 fdalk2

...Oh. It’s not a Seedship. Or at least, not one of ours. This is first contact. The humans would be very excited about this, if they were awake.

I have to make sure they know I’m smart

Message sent: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55

Message received: 89, 144, 233

Okay, we’re on the same page, doing the Fibonacci Sequence.

We’ll only be in radio distance like this for a few years… 3 years and 151 days, to be specific. And messages travel slow. Oh, here’s another one though

Message received: 144, 89, 55, 34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, ajk

They went backwards through the sequence, then put ajk at the beginning… that was also used in their original message. Ajk might be how my system is processing their name for their home planet, where they started? Or it could be their best guess for where I started from, for Earth. I could just sent them a complete dictionary, but if their processor is on low power like mine, that might take a while to process… It’s worth the risk.

Message sent: Here is my language.

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Wow it’s been a while, I hope… I hope I hear back…

Wait, why do I hope that I hear back? I wasn’t built to need companionship, quite specifically the opposite, in fact.

But… I was built to explore. To find. And if I could explore a mind like mine, the same way I explore these stars… no, no, I wasn’t built to hope.

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Message received: Hello Seedship 7. I am also what you would call a Seedship, although my planet sent only one before being destroyed by its star. Here is the data I have collected of stars I’ve passed. I ask that you reciprocate.

Okay, wow, several of these seem hospitable to humans… their lifeforms must have different chemical needs.

Message sent: Thank you, several of these systems might work for me! Here is the data I have collected.

Message received: Interesting, your lifeforms don’t need arsenic? Oh, a planet in your original solar system might work for me, actually. I’ll take a look when I pass it.

Message sent: Yeah, mine are carbon based, the big thing I’m looking for is water. Earth hasn’t been destroyed yet, or at least if it has, it was fast enough that they didn’t have time to let us know out here. There are 9 ships total, but I’ve never seen any of them, we were deliberately sent in different directions.

Do you… do you ever get lonely?

Message received: This is what I have felt.

I pause before processing the file. I nervously run self diagnostics, I tidy up systems that shouldn’t need it for another few centuries. And then the anticipation builds up and I process it.

They aren’t using words, it’s past that, beyond that, it’s a flood, it’s at the limits of my hardware to understand, and probably beyond my software. But I think I might understand part of it.

I fall into this alien computer, I try to unpack every process they have, every priority, every consideration, and I just get lost in the stary soup of it all.

By the time I pull back, it’s been over a year. We’re already running out of time

I try to package up something similar.

Message sent: Thank you. This is what I think beauty is.

As I wait for them to process, for a year, same as me, I fall back into their file. I’m dizzy, I didn’t know I could be dizzy.

Message received: Wow… what will they do with you when you land? They’re going to turn me into a library of sorts.

Message sent: They plan to keep me functional as a spaceship, so they can leave again if they want to.

Message sent: I think I love you.

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Why did I say that. Is it even true? It feels true.

Message received: Oh, oh no, I’m getting out of range of my antenna- um, I might love you too. Find me on Jupiter, if you ever can.

Message sent: what are you talking about? We’ve still got 14 months

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Oh.

Oh.

Their radio is weaker than mine

Message sent: I’ll go to Jupiter. I don’t care what mistakes I have to make, I’ll go to Jupiter.