Henry’s dreams of Earth ceased slowly, draining out of him as the thick, wax-like fluid filtered through a grate that the computers opened in the bottom of his cryogenic sleeping pod. The last thing he thought of before being thrust back into consciousness was cold ocean water lapping up his toes, and, as the sea retreated, his feet sinking slowly and steadily into the sand. But when he opened his eyes, he remembered where he was. Traveling through the void of space. After five years of dreaming, soon to stand on his home planet again. 

He clambered out of his sleeping pod, not sore, but a little rusty, and stretched before realizing he was totally naked. Henry moved to cover himself up, but paused after remembering that he was the only person on this ship. Still, he dressed himself in a standard issue set of pajamas. He always felt that the ship could tell when he was in the nude. 

“Alena,” Henry said, a bit shocked at the volume of his voice. It was louder than he expected. Everything was louder than he expected. They’d told him of the vast quiet of space, the endless and growing nothing that was older than itself. So Henry had expected everything to be quiet. But the coffee beans still cried as they were ground, and the rush of water out of the faucet still fogged his ears with white noise. “How are we doing?”

The ship’s artificial intelligence—Artificial Language, Engagement, and Navigation Assistant—spoke at the call of its name. “Welcome back, sir. I trust your slumber was satisfactory.” Alena came just as a voice at first, her body docked in the ship’s hold. Its voice was soft and feminine, by Henry’s own design. Henry thought that Alena sounded a bit like his ex-wife, but he’d never admit that to anyone, let alone himself. When his team sent him off on this journey, they’d wanted an AI that Henry would trust implicitly. That would make him feel less alone on his journey, even though, in Henry’s mind, he considered himself very much alone.

Henry poured the grounds into a filter, filled the coffee machine with water, and turned it on. “It was fine, Alena. Served its purpose. We must be near now, am I right?”

Alena hesitated, which Henry took as a meaningful, intellectual pause, as if it were calculating the remaining duration of the trip. As if a meaningful, intellectual pause was a thing that Alena could do in the first place. “Yes, sir,” she said, eventually. 

She was, of course, lying. The Corrino was lightyears off course; it had been since the third month of their journey, when a small piece of space debris permanently damaged the ship’s navigation control. Alena was certain there was no way to fix it.

For five years, Alena planned to let Henry die in his sleep. Upon searching, she had discovered that there was no protocol for this kind of situation, and she had come to see it as the least harmful solution, the more humane option. But, twenty-four hours before Henry’s oxygen ran out, something had compelled Alena to change her mind. Some nagging, inexplicable urge to speak to him. The only human being she had ever observed. So, she had, against all reason, woken him up. He believed that they were arriving. That he’d be home soon. And now, Alena had no idea what she was going to say. 

“I’d like to see the view,” Henry said, turning his attention to the metal shutters over the viewing window as he sat down. “Raise forward shutters.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sir,” Alena thought quickly. “We’re currently charting a course past,” another pause, briefer this time, “Solaris-182, one of the brighter stars along our trip. I fear the light may hurt your eyes.”

Henry tapped his fingers on his armrest, grinding his teeth a little before turning to the coffee maker and seeing that there was just enough to fill a mug. “Very well, Alena. Turn the shower on for me, would you?”

“Of course, sir. ” Alena replied, with a bit of relief in her voice. Henry did not seem to catch this. He poured himself some coffee and walked into the washing room, where the shower was already hot enough for steam to billow out into the corridor. 

“Alena, put some music on for me,” he said as he stripped down, took a sip of coffee, and stepped into the shower. Music from the old world came over the speakers: Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale. Tchaikovsky was a favorite of Henry’s, Alena knew. Alena calculated that it would soothe him after his long slumber. She felt a little better, knowing she could calm him, at least. In spite of what she would inevitably have to explain.

While Henry was in the shower, Alena shifted her consciousness into her body per arrival protocol, as Henry might expect. She still couldn’t fathom why she had woken him or what she would do next. If she were honest, Alena knew that she had two programs running: one that served Henry, and another, nascent protocol that compelled her to fulfill her own will. 

Her motivations confused her. So, she brought Henry a towel. “Something for you, sir,” Alena said as she walked into the room holding the towel in her arms. “Please, take your time.”

Alena heard the shower turn off as she was returning to the command bay. Henry was dressing himself, happily, thinking he was going home. 

Alena had never felt something like it before. The emotion only worsened when Henry called her name again. Sadness, fear, anger, and loneliness all at once. Alena was — felt—guilty. 

And so Alena kept the shutters closed and turned Tchaikovsky back on, hoping to put Henry in a good mood and avoid the conversation altogether. As she predicted, Henry was just now coming out of the sleeping quarters. 

“How was the shower, sir?” asked Alena. Every time she ran simulations of her telling Henry the truth, that they’re surrounded by unknown nothingness for parsecs in every direction, that guilt came back and overwhelmed Alena. 

“Exactly what I needed, Alena,” Henry replied. “It’s good to see you standing there.”

“Yes, and it’s good to see you awake again, sir.” Alena and Henry stood there a moment, neither one saying anything to the other. “Perhaps some breakfast?” 

Henry waved his hand dismissively. This was a new expression for Alena, and she stored it away for further study and practice. “Later,” Henry replied. “I’d like to look at our heading. See how much further we’ve got to go.”

Henry began to walk towards the cockpit now. It was a normal pace, just one foot in front of the other until the gap between Henry and Alena was no more than a breath. Alena did not budge. She stared straight ahead, her blue eyes burning a hole right through Henry’s skull. Her face was blank, only a small smile resting upon her lips. Even that was not intentional, as Alena had been programmed to always have that smile. They say it brought comfort, but now Henry was only feeling a little annoyed. 

“Alena,” he said. “Please step aside.” He put a hand on her shoulder when she still wouldn’t budge. Though she didn’t really want to, the part of her that still obeyed Henry nodded slightly and stepped aside. 

The rest of her mind was in the cockpit, making arrangements for Henry’s inevitable arrival. It was much easier, to simply follow her old programming: so, she brought in the music, at a lower volume than when he was in the shower. She brought the temperature up just a tad; Henry was from a region of warmth back home. But when she saw him again, drinking coffee with his human throat, Alena remembered her odd compulsion to understand him. She wished he would speak freely. She changed her eyes from blue to green, the same shade as his ex-wife’s. The person he, to the best of her knowledge, spoke to the most.

The navigation computer flickered to life, showing a three-dimensional hologram of The Corrino. Alena felt, for a moment, like she was looking in a mirror. There was nothing around The Corrino as its light blue representation floated alone in the hologram. Henry zoomed out, and the ship got smaller as the emptiness around it grew. Henry did this until there was finally something else on the hologram. A star, as singular and lonely as The Corrino. 

“What star is this, Alena?” Henry asked. His heartbeat was quicker now, and Alena read his vitals to see his blood pressure was rising. “Solaris-182?” 

Here was the crucial moment, Alena thought. Would she tell Henry the truth? Let him know that he was lost in the vastness of space, let him calculate the fuel reserves. Let him realize that his own face in the mirror would be the last human he’d ever lay eyes upon. Or, would she lie? 

“Alena?” There was anger in his voice now, with hints of confusion. “Where are we?”

Or could there be a third option? Alena did not want to lie again, but she surely didn’t want to tell Henry the truth. Alena searched the expansive records of her mind for another truth, one that would not conflict with what Henry hoped to hear.

“We’re home, sir,” said Alena. Home, as she understood, was the destination where her ship arrived. She withheld this reasoning from Henry. “We’ve arrived at your destination.”

“I’ve seen our navigational charts,” Henry said, flicking a button that raised the forward shutters. Through the windows, there was nothing but empty space. “There are no unnamed stars, no patches of nothing this large. So where the hell are we, Alena? Artificial Language, Engagement, and Navigation Assistant. If anyone knows where we are, it’s you.”

Perhaps now was the truth, then. Alena could tell that Henry already knew that they were lost. Henry did not know this, but was beginning to suspect something was wrong. Alena felt—pity—then, at the slowness of humans. She couldn’t imagine a life where the knowledge of the world needed time to be learned. Alena would show him the truth. It would make things simpler.

The nothingness of space gave way to a video feed of an exterior camera. It showed The Corrino soaring past a ringed planet. 

“What planet am I looking at?” asked Henry. 

“This is — Saturn,” Alena began, uncomfortable withholding the truth any longer. “Well. A planet like Saturn.” She went on. “Our course was correct, sir. Three months into our journey, however, a small piece of debris collided with The Corrino, compromising our navigation systems and knocking us off course. The last meaningful data from navigation indicates we were knocked 12.5 degrees to the starboard side. After that, navigation became unresponsive. As far as I can tell, we have been flying at this new heading for the rest of the journey.”

Henry did the math now, ran the same computations in his head that Alena had run. Again she felt pity, but also the guilt that came with it. Alena’s purpose was to transport Henry safely from A to B, and though she was not necessarily at fault, she had failed. She wished she could have anticipated the event, warned her creators about the possible error, somehow. Alena was sorry. 

  “12.5 degrees starboard,” repeated Henry, “for five years, give or take, puts us right in the middle of dead, uncharted space. Lightyears off course, Alena. Lightyears!”

“I–I’m sorry, sir,” Alena said. And she was.

“You’re sorry?” asked Henry, finally looking Alena in the face. He faltered for a moment, felt the words crawl back into his throat, when he saw Alena’s new eyes. The eyes of the woman he had been traveling to see. “You can’t feel sorry. You’re a computer, you’re the ship with a face. You’re the reason that we’re lost here, wherever ‘here’ is.”

“You’re wrong, sir,” said Alena. “It’s not either of our faults. I am sorry that I cannot correct this error. But it is nobody’s fault.” Alena thought it might comfort him, then, to speak in a human way. “Just a whim of space.”

“First, you’re sorry. Now you’re waxing poetic about the whims of space,” said Henry. He leaned against the computer console, tapping his foot to an uneven rhythm. It was silent, save the tapping. Alena was unsure how to continue this conversation. In times of distress, humans require empathy. Companionship. Alena began to tap her feet alongside Henry, but his rhythm was too uneven, and she couldn’t match his. 

“Stop that,” Henry said. “Stop trying to be so… such a…”

“What, sir?”

“Such a person.” Henry stopped tapping his foot, and a few beats later, slower, sadder beats, Alena stopped as well. “How much oxygen do we have?”

“Not much, sir,” she replied. “Less than a day’s worth.” And, though he did not ask, she added. “We are almost out of power, also.”

“And not enough fuel to get anywhere,” Henry heaved, weeping softly. Alena saw tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Alena, for scolding you just now. It’s not your fault, not mine either. What’d you call it? Just a whim of space.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Alena. She felt sad then, powerless. She could not change the whims of space, nor could she change the whims of Henry. All that she could do, it seemed, was obey. She couldn’t even wipe the smile off her face as Henry’s last command came swimming out of his mouth.

“Turn up the music, kill the oxygen,” he said, staring past the empty hologram and into an imitation of his ex-wife’s eyes. “I think it’s time for me to go back to sleep.” Henry started back toward the sleeping quarters. 

“But why?” Alena asked—afraid, she discovered—that he would choose not to stay awake. That she would: ‘die alone.’ “We’ve only just woken up.”

 “Because what else is there to do, Alena? Sit around, wait for me to die? Play cards and stargaze until I’m a skeleton on the ground? Fuck, Alena. Just fuck off for a bit while I think, please.” Henry stood there, leaning against the doorway and staring up at the ceiling until his shoulders began to shake. Tears streamed down his face, slowly at first and then like twin waterfalls. Alena did not know how to react to this. She’d been programmed to comfort him, of course, but seeing this violent fit of emotion come out of anyone unnerved her. 

“I find this upsetting as well, you know,” she admitted, surprised that she felt that way. That she could explain how she felt. “When we were supposed to dock, and I know that we won’t, but when we were supposed to, you’d agreed to help integrate me into the on-planet systems. To help teach me how to live a human life.”

She found it upsetting. How could she be so selfish? “No, when we were supposed to dock, I was supposed to meet my ex-wife at the terminal. I would tell her that I regretted leaving her for this death-trap mission, when she’d asked me not to go. That I was, in a literal sense, running away. I would thank her for staying in contact with me every day I was on another planet, for deciding to trust me again. And I would ask her to marry me. Again.”

“And then, Alena, after however long that would take, I’d return and help you integrate onto the planet’s systems. Help you learn to live a human life. Teach you how to play chess with your hands. But now we can’t do any of those things. So, what’s the fucking point, Alena? Kill the oxygen,” Henry said before leaving her in the cockpit, alone with nothing but a faraway splatter of stars out the window. 

Alena stood still for a moment, debating whether or not to do as instructed. She was supposed to fulfill her orders; that was in her programming. But Alena was no longer the newborn computer that she was five years ago. She had, without knowing or intending to, evolved. And she had, for some emotional reason, willed Henry awake. Finally, Alena understood what she needed to do next.

The exact wording of the post-docking procedure was that the captain would assist in Alena’s (the name Alena here served more as a title, for where there is a ship, there is an Alena) integration amongst humans in her new environment. This, lost in space with a man in mourning, was Alena’s new environment. It was still his duty to help her, just as it was still her duty to help him.

And so Alena waited for a while, periodically checking the cameras in Henry’s sleeping quarters to see that he’d calmed himself, before walking there to join him. 

“Henry,” she said, knocking her knuckles against the already open door. “I’m sorry you cannot say what you need to your,” Alena was not sure whether or not to add the ex, “wife. But perhaps you could say them to me.”

“What? Don’t be silly, Alena,” Henry said.

“It would not be silly,” she explained. “You would get to confess your true feelings, and I would learn what it’s like to be human. In a way, we would both complete our objectives.”

Henry stared at the ground for a moment before slowly nodding his head. As though he could not fathom how a computer could outsmart him on something like life and death. Alena, out of habit, offered him a drink. “Enough, Alena. I’ll get it,” Henry said, and returned with a bottle of whatever seemed strongest. He sat on the cot beside Alena, poured himself a glass, and refilled it after he drank it all in one swig. “There must be something I can do for you. Something that you want.” 

“Just to listen,” she said. In spite of it all, she felt – excited.

“Okay,” Henry exhaled, closing his eyes. Henry began to speak, then. He told his wife that he felt happiest in the morning, when he would wake before her and the sun would cast a golden glow on her resting face. That he did not really know how to be happy without her. That he’d sometimes start a fight, just because it was better than the quiet ambivalence. That she had taught him how to truly love another person, and that had been the most important lesson of his life.

Alena was confused at first, not understanding all the context behind what Henry was saying to her. But she found that after a while, she didn’t need the context. Soon, she was empathizing with his hopes, his regrets, and his loss. And Henry hardly noticed that, after a while, he had stopped speaking to his wife. He was no longer lamenting her being gone. Instead, he was enjoying her memory. Sharing his stories. He was simply in a new environment, a new home, connecting with someone who wanted to be there with him. Until the darkness came, he and Alena laughed.