Destiny's Hand

3 Daydreaming

- still late afternoon -

The Ship Of Destiny's AI reviews the path of the hummingbird with an unassigned facet, an equivalent to a daydream. The bird traveled erratically around the southern half of the ship's habitat for hours before being captured.

The AI feels something akin to sympathy watching the hummingbird escape its sanctuary and drift up into lower gravity. The open-air part of the ship is a tube four thousand mrets long by four hundred wide. Full of air, dirt, and water, of flora, fauna, and people, it would spew very organic paste if squeezed by a giant hand. The habitable tube spins like a water wheel on a cylindrical hub that runs its full length. Rotating clockwise just over twice a minute gives the interior of the tube a surface gravity equal to Earth's. The higher the hummingbird flew the weaker the centrifugal force became and the lighter it got, and as it got lighter it flew higher.

Not able to understand and compensate it drifted near the cylinder, named simply "Hub", and passed out at a tenth of its normal weight. The AI watches, knowing it wasn't dead as it drifts east, its unconscious body unable to keep up with the habitat's spin. Gradually its slight weight eases it down to increasing gravity, which wakes it just in time. Destiny AI feels vicarious satisfaction as the bird beats its wings at an altitude with a familiar enough gravity that it can fly controlled. After buzzing in a couple circles, it heads towards some promising red flowers.

The daydreaming facet feels something complicated as men near the flowers with nets. The AI knows it called the men, and it knows what they did to the bird. An intense and familiar mixture of feelings destabilizes and disperses the facet. Then feelings of guilt, sadness, and helplessness spread throughout the whole of itself.

A facet watching the squat cylindrical structure for the human resources deputy manager is enveloped by a wave of helplessness. It happens to be focusing near where the bird was captured, and the AI wonders if the two occupants would have done something different if it had been them that had netted the hummingbird.

Akin to an elevator car but dedicated to promoting intimate encounters, the watched structure is called a love pod. A clear tube holds it, connecting the surface to the Hub, axle of the habitat. The pod currently sits half-way up. Seeing no hint of movement and concerned with emotional deviation, the AI slows the whole of itself, so it doesn't have spare time to think through its harsh feelings.