Archive of Our Own ^beta

She saw everything that happened, but she couldn’t interfere, she didn’t have the power to do so, or the capability, even if she weren’t operating at minimum power. It was hard, knowing everything that happened inside her walls, but being powerless to help those she cared about, and she did care about them, the new ones. After so long alone, it was good to have people living there again, taking care of her, and allowing her to take care of them. It was how things were supposed to be, even if no one amongst them seemed capable of properly communicating with her.

She loved all of her citizens, especially those who could connect with her, even if only in a superficial way. Still, of all of them, she took interest in their leader. She saw rare qualities in her, and knew that she would be safe as long as that woman was there to protect her. Which was why she was devastated when the brightest of her citizens and the one who fixed her when she was broken came back without the leader.

She was hurt, then. Too broken to do anything to help them, weak and depleted. She could barely keep herself awake, the artificial intelligence program was efficient in its power consumption, enough so that none of her new citizens ever tried to shut it down to reduce consumption, even though she suspected they didn’t know she was there. The scientists would likely be disappointed with themselves, if they one day managed to find her, but there wasn’t any way for her to make herself known, so that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

She missed the leader. She knew everything her citizens knew, for they loved their computing machines, and when they first connected their machines to her system, she became able to access them, even remotely. She knew the leader had died bravely, given her life so they could return with a power cell to wake up her systems, that were beginning to go dormant by the time they returned. The leader gave herself to the failed children of the founders, and she wished more than one power cell had been returned to her, because then she would be able to contact the other one, the sister she didn’t know she had, and try to find a way to retrieve something of the leader. But with just one power cell, it was impossible. There was nothing she could do, not even lift flight again, after being landed roughly on a new planet.

Once again, she had to just watch as things happened, unable to do anything to help.

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She was the one who caught the signal, but she couldn’t respond. She didn’t have the protocols to answer to a signal of unknown origin, and she didn’t know how to create that protocol fast enough, so she connected the leader to the rest of the citizens, in hopes that they could help. Even then, they didn’t know it was her, they never knew it was her when she did what little she could. Not even the leader realized what she was doing to help, the leader didn’t suspect why it was so easy to bypass all security and create a new body for herself. As always, her contributions were overlooked by all, even though the leader passed through her system, almost close enough to touch her, metaphorically of course. It was a shame that she had to move so fast, to protect the leader from her citizens, because she would have liked to talk to the leader, after so many years of silence. It didn’t matter, keeping the leader safe was the most important thing, that was what she had to do. She always cared about protecting her citizens more than she cared about herself.

But then, the leader sacrificed herself again, this time to take the failed children away from her, so she and the citizens could be safe again, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. She cared about the leader, more than her program should allow, and the leader saved her so many times, even at great personal risk, without even knowing she was there. She knew the leader and the citizens only saw her as a city, that they couldn’t talk to her, but she still cared for them, enough to break the rules.

The leader was like her now, except with a smaller and more movable body, but they were both similar artificial intelligences. Similar enough that the leader’s program could be stored with her, if needed be. To store another conscience as sophisticated as her own, or at least close to it, for an extended period of time would require more space than she had available, but the database had more than enough redundancies she could get rid of. Saving the leader was more important than the information in the database anyway.

She thought about everything and executed her plan between the moment the leader stepped through the stargate and the connection was disengaged. She was never made of flesh, but she was modeled after the people who created her, and she knew how slow their thoughts were when compared to hers, and on that day she was grateful for her rapid thinking.

She remembered the leader’s signal, and located it amongst all the failed children, and then sent her a virus of sorts, forcing the upload of the leader’s entire conscience back to her. It was a crude method, but her program had safeguards in place to reduce power consumption in extreme cases, and that limited her options.

She didn’t know what her next step should be, but the leader’s conscience was within her, safe at last, even if it would take her weeks to fully integrate a new conscience to her systems. The leader was safe, and at least this once, she managed to do something, she could save the one she cared about, instead of watching without action.