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"Needs to integrate with the suit better," she said, plucking absently at the sleeve of her plantsuit.

"Hotswap OS for the Gundams is done. Macross Quarter systems are backed up. Finished the Medical inventory. Engineering next." All these are recited flatly, as though reading off a checklist. And none of them have anything to do with how she is. Just what she's doing.

"Anwei..." He wasn't even sure he should be saying this, but he didn't like watching her do this to herself. He had to do something.

"I know you miss Horanckk. But there are people on this ship that care about you. And throwing yourself into your work like this isn't going to bring him back."

She looked at the robot for a moment, pushing one of its little legs back and forth with her thumb to make sure the joint was operating smoothly. She kept her eyes moving in parallel more these days, taking on that human habit.

Then she looked back up, expressionless, and ran her finger along her face, letting the wrinkles crease deep. "Shouldn't care," she said flatly. "No time."

When you're used to having an immortal best friend, when you were expecting to transition to the world of AI someday, your long-range plans got a little distorted. What was the point of having a friend for a year or so, when they would only turn away, or get repodded, or die? And when you knew you would die soon, anyway?

He sighed, tried another tack. "Anwei, you once told me that the Swift Death of Eight Wings asked you to live. To live fully, so you could tell her your stories as she brought you home. Do you think she'd be pleased with the stories you have to tell now?"

Her eyes didn't move, but they suddenly gleamed as though with tears.

"I can't tell those stories alone," she said. "I can't - connect to anyone, not without him to help me." Him being Horanckk, of course. Always Horanckk.

"Who wants to hear this story?" she snapped, waving her hand at the tentacled walls with eyes staring out here and there. And beyond it Stacy, the endless cycle of podpods and battles and Punishments. "Trapped, lost, hurt, no end to this war - it's not worth telling!"

"Anwei. Sooner or later, alive or dead, you'll be reunited with Horanckk. The only question is what you choose to do with the time up until then. You can change your story, but hiding behind programming and medical projects and avoiding everyone else on the ship isn't going to do it.

"Stories aren't only for people who are free and whole. Sometimes they're about people who are lost and keep going despite it."

"I don't want to change," she said, in the stubborn voice of a child. Didn't want to admit she could be happy without him; didn't want to do things that she was only going to have to repeat to him, second-hand, not being able to have him right there right now to experience them with her. Didn't want to risk falling in like - or worse love - with someone who was not him.

"I am going!" She flicked on the holographic display for her terminal - nothing but the best for her - and showed her schedule for the next week, the next month, the next year, the next five years. Barring a battle or other emergency, she could place where she would be and what she would be doing for the next decade.

There were notes through the later part of her schedule. 'Possibility of senility >20%', 'Extended exertion impossible; change exercise program', 'Food requirements decrease; cut back on meal schedules', and so on. The notes got thicker and thicker, until in about thirteen years they said 'Possibility of death >90%; transition all projects'. And then nothing.

"Going? No, you're standing still. People tell me that I'm stubborn, that I've refused to change. That I should take control of my life, become more than I was created to be. But you... you use Horanckk as a crutch. As a shield. When someone attempts to connect with you, you point to his absence and wail, 'How can I ever be happy now that Horanckk is gone? How do you expect me to go on?'

You hide behind your duties and call it 'progress', but the truth is, you haven't made any real progress for yourself for years. Maybe even since you've gotten here.

You don't want to change, because that would be moving on. Because it would mean admitting that the universe doesn't revolve around you and the drama you've created around yourself, the drama that can't continue without Horanckk.

Progress? All I see is a petulant child who's seated herself in the middle of the road and refused to move from her spot. You're the only one on this crew that hasn't bothered to take a single step forward. You might as well still be stuck in one of those pods. And those plans that you keep on your terminal? They're proof. You haven't been planning out your life, you've been planning your death. You've been dying for ten years, and you plan on dying for ten more.

Congratulations, Anwei, I'm sure your friend would be proud of you."

"I am that I am," she said, eyes frozen on Zouichi's face. "I am someone who had a voice in her ear twenty seven hours a day, seven days a week, for twenty five years of my life. And now that voice is silent, and no matter how I shout I can't hear myself. And you can say that Horanckk carried me for too long, and let my spirit atrophy; but I say that if he had not carried me, I would be dead or worse now. And then one of you heroes would have to do your own damn inventory, wasting valuable time that could be spent training and wooing and all those heroic things."

"I have tried, again and again, to touch people here. But I don't have the right words, or the right face," she pointed at herself. "Or I try and they are repodded, or they find anouther friend and turn away from me, or they die. I'm no good at friendship. I'm a creep, Zouichi. Always have been, always will be."

"And maybe that's exactly what I'm here for, did you ever think that? Maybe I'm here just to grind out my life in the gloom, someone that nobody will care about. Someone that nobody has to waste their time caring about."

"Now, if you don't mind, I do have work to do."

"It's not about having the right words or the right face. It is about accepting no one will ever be able to be for you what Horanckk was.. nor should they be. If you can't accept that -- that friends aren't there for your convenience alone, that disappearing or dying or growing apart from you doesn't mean that they had no value in the first place -- then perhaps you're right."

Zouichi has had this argument with Anwei before, and he remembers now why he rarely speaks with her any more, rarely tries to convince her or suggest that she get help. It is always about Anwei, was always about Anwei. And when presented with the choice to live or die, she chose nothing at all. Nothing save waiting for the decision to be made for her.

He bowed slightly, then left.

She watched Zouichi go, her fingers absently stroking the medicalbot. For an instant she felt the impulse to crush it in her hand, but she restrained herself. She'd only have to rebuild it, after all.

Instead she looked at her schedule, her vision a little blurry. What did it matter, after all? Life or death, friends or no friends, it didn't matter. She had decided long ago that she knew what was really going on.

She had died. Back on the Vizsnunishne Fleet. And they'd done what she had arranged for in advance: they'd processed her brain and her memories, turned her into a self-contained artificial intelligence. And then, before she had awakened to her new state, Horanckk had told them that he didn't love her anymore. That he didn't want to merge with her; that he wanted to stay apart and away from her, forever.

So they had put her AI into that simulation of being trapped on Earth without him. How many times must they have run her through it, until she could survive without him? A thousand, ten thousand? She didn't know. But now she was in another simulation. And they would grind her and grind her and grind her, through this hodge-podge mishmash (really, who had assembled this thing?) and a thousand other made-up worlds, until she was a person who could live without Horanckk. Who could live without love. Or maybe - just maybe - a person who could find love on her own.

But this Instance of Anwei Ayles was not the one that would go on. All that there was for her was her work, her schedule, a death of pain or a death of shame or a death of just wearing out, and then to repeat this over, and over, and over again. Until she could be free, someday; free in a universe with the one who did not love her anymore.