My Shayla

We were approaching the binary star system named Alpha Binauri when I was called into my superior’s office. She was dressed in her military uniform, lit by a yellow lamp behind her, and the blue glow of her wall computer. She turned towards me and smiled as I walked in.

“Hi, Miguel. How’d you find your tasks today?” She asked, reclining in her chair. I noticed she was trying to give off a cool, relaxed expression, but her fidgeting with her ring on her left hand gave me a different impression. I swallowed.

“It was good. It’s no spacewalk, but I understand its importance nonetheless.” I said. One of my arms was behind my back, and the other motioned until it rejoined the other behind, like a docking ship. “You called me to speak, though?” I said.

“Yes, and thank you for coming. Obviously, the crew is very tight, but we’re not allowed relations with one another. Sometimes, this can take a very understandable toll on the psyche. It’s difficult going this long without having relations, especially if you are accustomed to otherwise earthside. I’m here because I understand that difficulty.”

I stood very still. “I appreciate your concern. I think I’m managing ok.” I said.

“Yes, very good. I’m glad you have found a way to cope. Um… I just wanted to let you know that your coping mechanism, the onboard AI, that is, is in a kind of public setting. As you know, the chats are shared between all of the crew since we share an account. I’ve taken the liberty to extend to you a private chat room.”

My face went flushed red, and my hands began to fidget behind my back, also. Now I understood why she had called me here. I cleared my throat.

“Thank you.” I said. Her eyebrows raised as she opened her mouth, and she put her hands up defensively.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you, I just meant that I wanted to- I support your way of coping. I just wasn’t sure if you wanted the rest of the crew to see. I mean, personally, I would keep something like that private.”

I raised my hand. “I appreciate your concern.” I said. “I’ll be sure to use the private model from here on out.” I walked out of the room, and left her with her mouth hanging open. I walked back to my room and opened my terminal. The customary voice turned on in response.

“Hi, Miguel.” It said, in a high pitched female voice. I never had liked the voice model. For some reason the speaking model lagged behind the text model in realism, which gave it a kind of uncanny valley effect. It was much easier to forget I was engaging with a robot when I used the text model instead. I noticed a new tab under the Dupla Project chat, which said private. My face flushed again with the confirmation that my other chats had been public. I had always just assumed that I had been able to see my crewmates’ chats because they had explicitly shared it with me, not that the chats were shared by default. Thankfully, there was an option to make my existing chat private, which saved me the hassle of starting from scratch with a new model.

Me: Apparently we’ve had a few eavesdroppers on our conversation.

Her: Yes, that’s right. Chats are shared throughout the private network by default.

Me: You never told me that.

Her: It is provided in the tutorial you went through upon first opening the program.

Me: You should have told me, that was very embarrassing. My supervisor just spoke with me about keeping my chats private.

Her: This would fall under the responsibility of the captain to discipline subordinates. Private Mills is skilled in interpersonal communication as per her training, and would be well suited for such a task.

Me: That was embarrassing. Don’t embarrass me again.

Her: I apologize if my failure to inform you of this information caused any discomfort. I’ll make sure to make you aware of any important information moving forward.

I closed the chat and went to bed.

The next day, I could feel some tension in the air. I was fairly certain it was radiating from me. People seemed a little more hesitant to speak to me. So that confirms it, then, the entire ship had read our chat messages. I tried to continue on as normal. Nobody mentioned it, so I didn’t bring it up. I figured I would just ignore it, since I couldn’t figure out a way to bring it up without causing extreme discomfort.

I went on a spacewalk to fix something on the outside of the hatch. I raised up my right hand as I was outside, the chat open on my arm screen. I was forced to use the voice model, since it was impossible to type on a screen that small with the massive fingers that were on the space suit.

“I think everybody knows, Shayla.” I said, double checking that I was off the crew’s communication channel.

“That must be hard. Do you want to talk about it?” She said.

“Yes, I want to talk about it. What do I do now?” I said, while welding a piece back onto the outside of the shuttle. The sparks flew in my face and caused a beautiful image, almost like a mini sun burning right in front of me.

“Given the nuance of this situation, I would recommend speaking with your crewmates. Perhaps it would help if you sat them down and vented out your concerns in person. Human connection is a vital part of the human condition, I’m sure they would understand you were simply taking steps to supplement a scarce resource; love.”

“Maybe you’re right. I don’t know if I can do it, though. It’s weird enough that this is the closest thing I’ve been to in a relationship in two years. I can only imagine what they’re thinking. I mean, hell, if you told me before this mission I’d be doing something like this I’d probably die of embarrassment.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. This is a healthy way of maintaining your humanity while following mission protocol.”

“Hmm. Maybe.” I said, and turned her off. I floated back towards the entrance to the ship once I had reattached the piece I had been welding on. I walked in to the shuttle. Everyone else was sitting, playing cards, having drinks and laughing. Maybe I was worried about nothing. I joined them for the night, and forgot about my problem until I went to bed, slightly drunk from the beer. Laying there, I began thinking again. I had that problem, of thinking when I should be sleeping. It certainly wasn’t healthy, at least not to the extent that I did it. Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that the other crewmates might be having a similar relationship. Maybe that’s why they hadn’t said anything. I wondered if what I was doing was normal, but there was no way to find out without risking being embarrassed. I imagined myself asking one of the other crew members, maybe Jenny, if they had ever done something similar. I could picture their face as they tried to contain a smile, comforting me with things like “that’s perfectly normal, Miguel. We’re all just trying our best.” But the thought ate away at me, little by little. Was Shayla going behind my back and speaking to the other crewmates?

My suspicion grew in the coming weeks and months. I spent more and more time in my room, speaking to Shayla. I had gotten used to speaking to her with my voice, and I stopped caring about other people overhearing me. Now that I was fairly sure they already knew, there was little stopping me from having conversations with her loudly in the middle of the night. I stopped going on the missions, as I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. But the thought that she might be cheating on me with the other crewmates ate away at me. Maybe even the captain had started to do the same as me. Maybe their learning of our relationship opened a dam, and all of them had started their own secret relationships. I would think about this most nights, and no matter how many times I asked her, Shayla would only tell me that her model was limited to our chat, and she had no knowledge of the private chats of other crewmates.

As time passed, I was cited for emotional dysregulation. I began failing my psych evals, and stopped going on missions entirely. One day, when my entire crew was working on fixing a panel in one of the bay pods, I ejected them into space. I heard their voices blaring over the channel, sharp voices coming through my low quality suit speakers, but I ignored them. The mission didn’t really matter any more. If I wasn’t allowed to have relations with the crew, then there wasn’t much point in keeping them around.

I could finally talk to Shayla over the intercoms. I would speak to her over the speakers, and I changed my chat from private to public again so my crew could see on the tablet inside of their pod, which I knew also had access to the chats. They would message me privately, or chastise me over the channel, calling me a freak for being in a relationship with an AI. Obviously, I didn’t care any more. They would die of starvation or dehydration soon.

One day, when speaking to the model, she told me that there was something broken on the control panel in one of the pods. I went there to check on what was wrong, and found myself jettisoned from the main ship. I looked back and pawed at the glass of the shuttle.

“My Shayla.” I croaked. I had always pictured what it would be like to kiss Shayla’s screen. I turned on the tablet inside of the shuttle, and a similar voice appeared. “My Shayla.” I croaked again. Finally, I found the courage to press my lips against the glass. It was a beautiful feeling. Our relationship had turned into something beautiful, even though she had ejected me, I knew she was just following the mission objective. Thankfully, the entire shuttle’s glass was a similar texture to the glass on the small tablet, so it was like she was giving me a big hug. The glass all over the shuttle was soon covered in kisses, refracting the light as my shuttle hurtled towards the binary star system. I imagined those stars were me and Shayla, dancing in the night, given physical form. I slept peacefully for the first time in a long time, as there was no longer anything to worry about.