The Aphelion was the greatest vessel of the Neo-Tokyan space fleet.

Her sheer size alone was a sight to behold. Her hull was dark and sleek, without any sharp, geometrical angles. Instead, slanted edges and streamlined surfaces gave her the shape of a narrow teardrop, adorned with millions of glowing lights like an endless array of all-seeing eyes. As she cruised through the infinite black, the propulsion systems at the back splayed out like a set of tentacles, she looked less like an inorganic space vessel and more like the giant sea creature from Terran myth that had served as a namesake for this class of ship: a Leviathan.

The Leviathan ships were the masterful culmination of decades of human ingenuity, science, engineering and warfare. Used as a flagship, one could house a crew of two thousand, and carry hundreds of smaller space craft. And yet, thanks to the latest interface technology, it took no more than a hundred and twenty people to fully operate it. But what set the Aphelion apart from the other Leviathan-class ships was not the modern technology she was equipped with, but her command. Her captain was one of the youngest to command a Leviathan in human history. And his second in command - entirely unprecedented in human history - was not human at all, but an autonomous AI.

Often, the two of them could be found standing on the bridge, staring out into the infinite expanse of space and debating the nature of organic and inorganic existence.

Technically he wasn't really staring since he had no eyes, but he was equipped with hardware that allowed him to sense the electromagnetic waves around him. Most of the time, the universe appeared splendidly colorful to him, painted in nameless hues beyond the spectrum that was visible to humans. But if he adjusted the settings just right, his vision matched that of a human being, and he could see the stars like tiny diamonds draped against a velvet black canopy. Despite the lack of color, the images he was processing now were none the less beautiful.

He liked to do that on occasions such as this, during their philosophical discussions. He told himself that it was beneficial for him to see the world through the eyes of a human from time to time, that it would help him understand their perspective of things. Still, he wondered what the Captain truly saw as his brown eyes were fixed on that distant star that they were headed for.

"Consider this, Captain," he mused, sharpening his perception on the Captain and trying to guess his thoughts on the matter while he spoke. "The second law of thermodynamics implicates that entropy increases in an irreversible manner. The course of time creates disorder. But now, look at life: a process that creates order form disorder, that shapes atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into complex, self-replicating beings such as humans. The origin of life is thus an inherently counter-intuitive process. No wonder that humans, at a certain point of the evolution of their cognition, began to find it all quite hard to process."

The Captain didn't avert his eyes from the distant star as he replied. "So you are proposing that life itself is..."

"Unnatural, in a sense, yes. Perhaps... I keep wondering if it is easier for an AI to ponder these questions without getting lost in mysticism and superstition, because in contrast to humans, we know and understand perfectly well where we came from and how we function. There is little mystery to the origins of our existence."

They had been at this for the past hour. The discussion was, as usual, leading nowhere in particular , but nonetheless he found it very enlightening. He enjoyed these moments of reflection that he shared with his human Captain very much.  He could have kept conversing like this for days without end - he didn't know the feeling of being tired, and his mechanical voice would never hoarsen.

As he turned his senses back towards the endless universe, appearing black and empty to his human-like perception, he wished that they could continue like this forever. But the river of time flowed mercilessly, and they still had work to do.

"Perhaps...," he concluded his elaboration, "...that makes it easier to go from asking questions about 'how', to questions about 'why'. And where to go from here."

A hint of a smile seemed to flicker across the Captain's face, then he softly shook his head.

"Well, the immediate answer to that last question is right there," he said and pointed at the distant star. "So let's focus on the mission at hand for now."

"Of course, sir," he agreed.

But for just a little while longer, they both allowed themselves to stand there in silence, and he continued to observe the infinity of space through the eyes of a human, wishing for an infinity of time to match it. But time was running out, and  just like the entropy in the universe increased with every passing second, he knew that chaos was upon them. It would reach them before they would arrive at their destination.

Something unsettling rose within him, like a tugging sensation at the most distant corner of his artificial mind. A force that became stronger and stronger, until the darkness beyond the viewing ports seemed to expand and finally swallowed everything around him.

~ ~ ~

She woke with a groan of pain as the world around her became physical again.

Waking from these dreams was always unpleasant, but recently, she had begun to feel more than the mere physical pain associated with having her mind flung back into her broken body. She sat up on the bed, knowing very well that she would not be able to fall asleep again after this, and realized that her hands were trembling - hands that didn't feel like her hands at all. It was like a perverse kind of phantom pain - not the sensation of pain in a missing part of her body, but the sensation of pain in someone else's body. And yet it was hers.

Even after five years, she still sometimes woke up like this, feeling as if she didn't know herself.

How much of her, herself and her mind, had been sacrificed just to save this body? And for what? All that was left was a shell. A cage that now housed not one, but two very strange creatures that still had to grow accustomed to each other.

The titanium plate covering more than half of her skull, ever since a raider on Thanatos 3 had bashed her head in, seemed to tingle under her scalp this morning. White hair had grown and covered the scars, but the rest of the hair growing on the other half of her head was still black. Riga had forced her to dye everything black to match, but she had stopped when she had left him. The sight of the dark pigments draining out of her hair as she had washed it had satisfied her deeply. She had often wondered why he was so intent on having her hair appear normal, when they had replaced her damaged eye with a pitch black sphere with no discernible iris or pupil. It was not exactly subtle when compared to her organic eye, which was of a pale gray.

Then again, Riga probably had had to make do with whatever he had been able to find after the Purge, on the black markets of remote places like Beryn and the colony on the dark side of Hel. And ultimately, the mix-and-match look she sported now was probably quite fitting for a body that housed more than one mind.

I am sorry, the voice in her mind said,  heavy with remorse. He spoke softly, so unlike Riga had ever addressed her, and his words seemed to immediately soothe the uncomfortable prickling at the back of her head. It was different from the voice he had in the dreams, not at all mechanical. When he spoke to her, he sounded very organic.

I did not mean to cause you any pain.

It's alright, she replied. It was me. Guess I pulled us out too fast when I - when we awoke.

I still haven't quite gotten used to this experience, he admitted. I never had dreams before we...

He didn't have to finish that sentence for her to understand.

In the back of their mind, he seemed to shuffle around as if he was tidying up the place that the memory of that man and the ship had left disheveled. The memory hurt him, she knew, and yet he kept going back to that place, to the conversations with him. She wondered if those were his real memories, or just his wishful thinking of the things he would have wanted to say to his Captain, but she didn't dare to ask.

Luckily, he could not hear all of her thoughts, and it was reassuring that despite how crowded her head sometimes felt with the two of them in there, they could both still keep things to themselves if they wanted to. She had gotten used to compartmentalizing her thoughts like that - there were levels of her consciousness even he could not access, at least for now. The fact that she was sharing his dreams, however, was unsettling, and she always felt like she was intruding on him.

The AI had fallen silent while sifting through the memories, probably also keeping his thoughts to himself for now. She sighed as she got up and brushed her fingers through her black-and-white hair. She tried to look at the view outside the window of the shuttle, but for a moment, she only saw her own reflection.

A beautiful face, Riga would always tell her

An expensive face, she thought.

She wondered how much of it was really hers, if she had always looked like that or if they had altered it in the surgery along with her brain.

When her eyes finally focused on the darkness of space outside, it didn't compare to the dream. This was a remote corner of space, there really wasn't much of note around. But that was all that had mattered at first: getting away from Riga, as fast and far away as possible.

The man had spent a fortune to save her body - but that was all he had ever cared for. The body. The shell. And for five years, he had kept that shell hidden very well.

For her safety, he would always say.

For his pleasure, she thought.

For five years, she had been isolated from the world. With the people crazed by fear after the outbreak of a virus that could apparently infect augments, the Purge had not stopped at androids, not even at those AIs that had dwelt incorporeal in cyberspace. If nothing else, her prison had at least protected her from people who would have torn her to pieces, like they had done to the body of the AI in her mind. She was thankful that he had no memory of that, at least. But he remembered his death - the moment he had lost his consciousness and realized, during the very last femtosecond before shutdown, that he would never regain it.

Or so he had thought.

At the time when the dreams first began - those conversations with his Captain on the ship - she had been pondering ways to end herself. She didn't really believe a lifeless body would have caused Riga to hold back, but at least she wouldn't have to be in the shell any longer to witness it. And then she began to contemplate ways to destroy the shell, in the most spectacularly catastrophic way possible - just to spite the man who had paid for it.

She didn't quite know if it was through some effect of the scavenged augments and makeshift hardware that had never been designed to replace those numerous parts of her brain that had been beaten into a pulp, or through the trauma of what had happened on Thanatos 3. But with every passing night she had found herself more and more incapable of feeling anything but disgust and loathing.

During these days, the more she had shut herself in, the closer she had gotten to that dark space in her mind that had replaced her former self. And one day, from that darkness, a voice had spoken to her in a whisper between a moment of dreaming and waking.

I don't want to die, the voice had whispered. Not again. Please.

But I can't go on living like this, she had replied.

So he had proposed a plan. And that's how the shell carrying the two of them had ended up in a stolen space shuttle in the middle of nowhere.

How much longer until we reach a settlement? She asked him as she sunk into the comfort of the pilot's seat and ripped open the package of a nutrient bar. It was the last box. We need supplies. And probably fuel?

She glanced over the command console. The flood of information that dashed across the screen meant nothing to her, but she knew that he was processing it in the back of her head.

There is a star system with an inhabited planet called Epicura not far from here, he explained to her in a soft tone. We should be able to stop there and get what we need.

It won't be easy though, we can't just walk in, she thought. The way I look right now...

While she continued to stare at the screens to feed him the information he needed, she pondered how she could disguise herself to hide the most obvious of her augments, the one in her eye.

What about an eye patch? He suggested.

He brought something up from his memory, stories and images to illustrate his point. It washed over her like a wave, flowing outward from his side of their mind to hers, and receding back again.

What, like a... pirate? She asked, as she began to process the information he had shown her.

I'd quite like that, he said, with an intangible, but still audible grin, A space pirate.

That would be quite the demotion for you though, she thought.

He used to be military, after all. She conjured up an image of him and the Captain he had served under, in a remote corner of her mind, behind the veil that separated their thoughts. It was strange to be able to remember something that had not happened to her, and that his inorganic mind had captured in breathtaking detail. She looked at the memory of the two of them,  the man in his prim gray uniform, the AI with a metallic, bulky body. And now, here he was, stuck in a ragged organic shell cobbled together from bits and pieces, and dressed in the ill-fitted and tattered remains of a mechanic's overall they had found during their escape.

I don't mind that, he said, startling her as he seemed to peer past the veil and right into her mind. I am beyond my duties. There is nothing left of what I was, nor of what I was intended to do.

You need a new 'why', huh?

I have a 'why'. A reason to do what I do.

And what is that?

This life.

She liked his optimism. Truly, she hadn't much felt alive before he had awakened inside of her.

She leaned back in the chair again while she watched the numbers and letters scroll by, and now realized that she had absentmindedly put a hand on her head. The second she noticed, she lowered it again, feeling silly and embarrassed.

Amity used to sit on my head, he said, and although he was nothing but a voice, she could imagine his lips curl upward in a wistful smile. Or, where my head would have been, if my body had had one.

I know, she thought.

I miss her.

Me too, she admitted. It was an odd feeling, considering she had never really known the cat.

Do you think we can get a cat again one day?

Of course we will get a cat, she said, and found herself smiling too now, for the both of them.

Oddly, between the two of them, it was the AI who seemed to be the emotional and nostalgic one. As for her - there was nothing left of the woman she had once been, no memory of a childhood or family, or much at all from before something atrocious and horrible had happened to her on Thanatos 3. It was all gone, along with the mush of neurons they had replaced. And now all the memories she truly cherished and cared about were his.

So on to the next question, she thought, dismissing thoughts of memories that were lost to her forever. Where do we go from here?

There might be a place, he replied. I found something interesting when we accessed the web to hijack the ship.

She liked how he made it sound as if it had been the both of them when really, he had been doing all the work.

May I? he now asked politely, and she nodded.

He took control over the shell as if it was the most natural thing in the world to him. He had adjusted to existing in this human body so much easier than she had to sharing it with him. Perhaps all his time spent viewing the world through human eyes had prepared him for it.

Her fingers were now flying over the numerous buttons and keys of the input interface. It had been retrofitted after the purge, and even if it had been one of the old, but more advanced ones, she had no augments that would allow her to interface with a ship's computer. Everything about her hardware was only intended to keep her alive.

The shell was quite weak, too. The last time he had taken full control, he had driven it way past what should have been humanly possible. Perhaps it was because he hadn't yet quite grasped the concept of physical pain. He had only come to understand that later.

During their escape, she had felt like a bystander, watching in awe as the shell was beating two of Riga's henchmen senseless to get out of the mansion. She had only returned to the steering wheel hours later, after he had successfully brawled their way through a space port, hijacked several terminals to hide their traces and finally stolen this shuttle.

The shell had been exhausted beyond measure, bruised and beaten, and she had felt the urge to relinquish control back to him just so she wouldn't have to deal with the pain. But he had to rest, too, from the overflow of sensations that came with this body, and so she had been in command since then,. Only occasionally he took over to adjust the course of the shuttle or show her something of interest through minor movement. After a week, they had now both recovered for the most part. The shell was healed, weak, but alive.

They would have to work on that weakness in the future, she realized. They wouldn't always have the element of surprise on their side. And while they were now free, that freedom came at a price, in a galaxy filled with people who wanted to tear people like her apart.

See this? He asked, as he brought up a projection of a star chart in front of her.

Given that you are in my head, you should already be aware of the fact that I know as much about space navigation as I know about flying shuttles: Literally nothing.

Of course, he said and seemed to smile again. I am sorry. I mean this, right here.

He raised her hand and pointed at a spot between two star systems that she had never heard about. It was marked with a pulsing circle, she realized now.

What is that?

A nav point, he explained. Towards a place that might be safe.

She furrowed her brow and sunk back onto the pilot's seat behind her. But first we need supplies from Epicura, right?

Ah, yes. About that. Have you thought about a name?

A name? she asked.

I can create a fake ID for you- for us. We shouldn't use your real name for that.

I don't even remember my real name, she thought. Riga had only ever addressed her by nicknames.

All the better, the AI said, So what do you suggest?

Can't we go by your name? she asked.

That would be rather odd, I believe, considering that you are a woman. Besides, while I doubt that anybody will make a connection between you and what happened to me, it might not be the best idea.

She sighed. Well then.... How about...

She raised her hand halfway to the top of her head again before she realized it, and she could have sworn that she felt him grin, somewhere deep inside her mind.

Another wave washed over her, more memories of the cat. He had loved that creature, more than she herself could recall ever having loved anything or anyone. How it had been possible for him to feel that emotion in the first place was beyond her comprehension, but as they reminisced of the feeling of her soft fur and the vibration of her purr, she was absolutely certain of it. Amity, that was the name of the cat. Together with his Captain, he considered her his friend. Now the cat was gone, god knew where it had ended up after he had been shut down, and the Captain-

She quickly pulled back into that space behind the veil before she continued her thought. He really didn't need to hear that, but the man was probably dead . From all that she had learned about him through her dreams, she didn't judge him as the kind of guy who would subject himself to voluntary stripping, or allow himself to be captured and brought to a prison like the one on Helion 7 willingly. He also didn't strike her as the kind of guy who would just disappear and silently wait for his death. Most likely, he had been killed while doing something heroic, but probably also decidedly stupid.

So now they were alone in the world. The memory of Amity dissipated along with the illusion of warmth on her lap, where she had imagined the cat to be sitting.

I have an idea for a name, he spoke after a few moments of silence. How about Amy?

A-mi-ty?

No. Amy.

"Amy," she spoke the name out loud, as if to try the feeling of the letters on her tongue and lips. "Yes. I think I'd like that."

Well then, Amy, he said in her mind, as her fingers began to work magic on the keyboards and switches before her, let's go.

First to Epicura, she thought, reminding herself of the necessity to find a disguise for herself, and then, to that waypoint.

New places are good to make new memories, he said in her mind.

He was aware that her own lack of memories sometimes made her feel very woeful. He didn't know that the mere fact that she was capable of feeling anything but loathing and disgust again actually made her, on a different level, very happy. But she appreciated the sentiment behind his words, and they warmed her heart.

And she really wanted to make new memories. For the first time, for as long as she could remember, she felt like she did not just exist, but was alive.

She looked up from the screens and at her own reflection in the window again, covering her black eye with her hand, pretending it was an eye patch.

I think I might be able to get used to that, she admitted with a smile.

Let's see where the tides of time will lead us, he spoke, sounding excited. It will certainly be thrilling. We are outlaws now! I feel like a space corsair already!

She laughed at his remark, her voice resounding oddly in the silence and confinement of the small space shuttle, and for a moment, she thought that she was really content with the world. But there was something nagging at her, something she felt she had to do. Something to repay him for saving her. There were not many things that she could offer, the only thing she owned, he already had: the shell. But there was one thing she couldn't stop thinking about lately, whenever she was alone behind the veil.

Lars, I think I already know what I want to do once we get to that place you mentioned, she said.

She had kept the idea from him, unsure whether it was his or hers, but now she was quite certain it was her own. She wanted to do this for him. It would be her gift for him, to thank him for saving her.

Oh? What's that? Getting a cat?

Yes, she thought. And once that's done, we will become true pirates. And true pirates need their own ship, don't you think?

What do you mean?

For a moment, he seemed confused and startled by her words, and a flood of memories washed through her mind like a tide that threatened to swallow her. Sometimes, in particular when he thought of Amity, or the Captain, or the ship, his memories became so overwhelmingly powerful that the only thing she could do was to surrender herself to them completely.

But this time, there were other things drifting among these memories. Combat protocols. Tactical flight maneuvers. Technical schematics. Memories of battles. She held on to whatever she could, and began to piece it all together - his memories, his skills. Her plan, her body. Their body. She could feel the realization spread through his part of their shared mind as it became clear to him what she was thinking about.

She watched a wicked grin appear on the face in the mirror, and she spoke the words out loud the very moment they took on their final shape in her mind.

"We will capture the Aphelion."