“Any chance we can run, hide out somewhere?”
“None.”
“No shit.” Eamon whispered to himself. All of this old/new experience and now no time to enjoy it.
“I shit you not.” Guardian replied emphatically.
“No slur intended Guardian, just my Human side coming out to play.”
For a minute he simply sat there, exhausted by the effort of trying to regain all that he had lost. Who, what was Eamon Ducane in reality? Once a Traveller of the glorious Iss Ngi, now an ignominious Human/explorer intelligence complex hybrid scheduled for termination. Strange how when he let it all go the data just seemed to slide back into his head, fragmented it might be but somehow it was still there. A smile touched his lips, and he raised a languid hand before his eyes, rubbing finger and thumb together.
“When tempted by so much rich sensation, even an intelligence complex can stray.”
“Stop playing with yourself.” Guardian commented tartly. “We are shortly to be reduced to little more than fundamental particles, the least you can do is not remind me why.”
Eamon raised a derogatory finger to his bodiless companion then sat up straighter.
“Guardian, your language is pretty earthy isn’t it?”
“So.”
“Seriously, you are an AI, you should be speaking perfect English, but you use slang, swear you even put emotion into what you say. That’s way beyond your programming.”
“I’m contaminated.” Guardian replied shortly.
“Even before you tried to download me?”
“I…”Guardian started and then stopped abruptly.
“Classic example, you shouldn’t be at a loss for words, what’s going on inside there?” Eamon asked tapping the blob he was sitting on.
“I have obviously assimilated Human cultural baggage whilst watching over you Eamon.” Guardian stated as a preliminary diagnostic programme reported its finding. “My neural net has undergone modification, I should investigate this…”
“Whoa.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you start playing with yourself now.”
“This could affect my ability to protect you.” Guardian protested.
“From what you’ve told me so far that seems to be the least of our worries.”
“But what else can I do? It is my function to protect you…. until the end.”

“Well one advantage of being a terminally messed up Traveller is that I am not tied down by any programming crap. I want to stay alive. How long before the Hunter is likely to show up?”
“From current ship dispositions I would estimate 5.9 cycles.”
“About a couple of months.” Eamon mused without stopping to consider how he knew what the conversion factor was he was too preoccupied by survival.
“How will the Hunter proceed with the termination?”
“It will de-warp in a empty part of the outer planetary system and proceed upon the fastest intercept course to our known position and fire its disruption beam, end of story.”
“How does it know where we are?”
“I constantly output my position in my ID signal.”
“Hardwired then.”
“I am incapable of turning the signal off.”
Eamon stroked his chin; he was getting a bit of five o’clock shadow.
“How does this disruption beam work?”
“It is an anti particle beam, wherever it hits will undergo annihilation. The resulting energy burst will effectively reduce both of us to a very pretty plasma cloud that will puzzle the astronomers down on Earth big time.”
Eamon smiled at the little outburst but carried on his line of questioning.
“How wide is the beam?”
“At aperture 1kgt, it will spread to about 270 kgt at impact, give or take a kgt.”
“Hmmm, only a few metres across, and you are?”
“In human terms 1572 metres beam, 3601 metres stem to stern and 73 metres thick at my narrowest point.”
“Pretty big target broadsides.”
“Yes.”
“Which you will just sit and present.”
“I can do no more Traveller.” Guardian stated in a flat monotone.
“Now there speaks the old Guardian.” Eamon said with a raised finger. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to turn round this situation. First I need a decent place to live, and your core doesn’t quite fit the bill.”
“Okay, I’ll get a section pressurised and heated.”
“I’ll need a computer console and stuff I can work with.”
“A what?”
“Don’t get pissed Guardian, I’m not asking for some stone-age Human junk, just an autonomous data retrieval routine and holo-projection facility. It might be easier on us both if we can have some ‘space’, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And before you go off in self diagnostic mode make sure I can access all your memory cores, we don’t have much time to work up a defence strategy.”
“Defence Traveller?” The question was almost hardwired. “There is no defence Eamon, I cannot fire upon a Hunter ship and running is not an option.”
“We’ll see Guardian, but when push comes to shove I don’t have any scruples about pulling a trigger on a Hunter that wants to burn me.”

Guardian remained silent at the revelation but then a large port opened in the wall to Eamon’s left.
“I have done a rough configuration of your quarters, there is an extension to the retrieval routine to allow you to refine it further.”
“Okay let’s see it.” Eamon said getting to his feet and stepping through the portal into a corridor of eerie beauty.
Pulses of light raced in complex patterns along the walls, shifting hue and intensity as they flew by him.
“Wow.” Eamon breathed upon seeing it and then laying a tentative hand on the glassy surface. “What is this Guardian?”
“This is one of my primary data conduits and these are my beautiful thoughts, or some of them anyway.”
“This would go down a storm back home.”
“Ngithion? I don’t think so.”
“No Guardian, not Ngithion, Earth. A bit of my organic selfs memory. They would love all these patterns, an art installation.”
“Oh understood.” Guardian responded but it had no true comprehension of beauty and could only ‘see’ the flow of data. “Your quarters are here.”
A port opened further down the corridor on Eamon’s left and he strolled up to it and stepped through only to freeze as his eyes swept the room revealed.
“Is something wrong Eamon? Eamon? Your bio readings are well beyond normal.”
His world was spinning out of control, memories searing through his mind, memories of this place, memories of another self. Eamon grabbed the wall with a hand to prevent himself from falling and he felt the encompassing darkness wrap itself protectively around him. For a moment he surrendered to that now welcome blankness but a stubborn and independent self railed against such weakness and was determined to explore the reality of those hard memories.
Guardian felt Eamon’s bio signs stabilise, the vice-like grip on the wall supporting him, it let the field dissipate and Eamon stood free once more. His free hand lifted and stretched out towards the motionless tall carmine blob just before him, trembling, the fingers encountered the smooth surface and stroked it. Tears welled in his eyes, as the cold calculating identity knew emotion brought about by the Human side of its new hybrid character.
“Eamon, Traveller?” Guardian queried as the brainwave patterns fluxed.
“Ohhh god.” Eamon moaned softly. “Did you have to bring me here?”
“Traveller?”
“Did you have to use my own core?” Eamon asked tonelessly. “My dead core.” He continued in a pained whisper.
“Apologies Traveller.” Guardian replied abjectly. “An error, I did not realise that you would retain any memory of your proper self.”
Eamon released his grip on the wall and moved slowly around the room touching the inert blobs that had been shaped into table, chair, bed, fashioned from the non-functioning units of the explorer intelligence complex that comprised the Traveller while it was resident in its Guardian ship.
“I will prepare another space.” Guardian announced but Eamon just shook his head.
“No Guardian, a waste of resources.”
“But your reaction was not healthy.”
“It was the shock of remembering Guardian. This organic system of data storage is not linear and it seems to have stored much of my core programme but in a fragmentary manner that I cannot access logically.” Eamon said in a flat voice then looked at his hand and shook his head. “I can’t believe I just spouted that technobabble.”
“Traveller?”
“Eamon.” He corrected. “It will be okay Guardian, I’m over the shock, I’ll make changes to this so I’ll be more comfortable.” He glanced down at the ‘chair’ in its unmodified vermilion hue and shivered as he recalled its function. “Less chance of recalling my old self.”
Guardian reviewed the readings, for a time Eamon’s brainwave patterns had conformed to the expected pattern for a functioning Traveller within an organic host but they were now fluxing again and the random noise was reasserting itself. It wondered if it could use the shock treatment to resurrect the Traveller long enough to download it.