Sloane’s origin story, in case you missed it

Welcome to Odin III, a grubby little mining world on the dark and dusty backside of nowhere. It’s a world where everything that’s worth having is already owned by Galactic Mining, and where people come to squander their hopes and lives, working for the company and dreaming of striking it big. It’s also a world where strange, weird, and fantastic things can happen, and sometimes the results are pretty wonderful.

“The Song of Her Heart”

by Matt Krizan

Sloane-51 waited for Daraja to make his move. Her photoreceptors studied the familiar lines of his face as he hunched over the chessboard, brow furrowed in concentration. The faceplate of Sloane’s automatonic body didn’t allow her to smile, but as Daraja chewed his lip, Sloane felt a wave of affection for her dearest friend.

Her auditory ports caught Daraja’s inhale, her photoreceptors noted the faint increase in temperature of his cheeks, and Sloane knew he’d decided. Daraja took Sloane’s bishop with his queen, then smiled as he sat back in his chair.

Sloane hesitated. Not because she didn’t know what to do, but because her next move would put Daraja in check, and she knew that would wipe his smile away. She’d seen it happen often enough during their daily matches—Daraja pleased to gain the upper hand, only for Sloane to immediately counter and put him on the defensive. He’d only ever beaten her once in the months they’d been playing, and that was only because Sloane had been preoccupied with what she’d thought was her impending death. Once, she tried throwing a match, but he’d caught on and made her swear to never do it again.

When Sloane finally made her move, she watched with dismay as Daraja’s smile vanished. His shoulders slumped as he leaned forward to study the board.

The most challenging part of being sentient, Sloane had decided, was dealing with human emotions—other people’s and, especially, her own. She struggled with her desire for happiness, particularly in times like these when her happiness and someone else’s were mutually exclusive. She struggled equally with her growing desire to see Daraja happy.

“How would you describe these feelings?” her therapist, Aisling, had asked during a recent session.

Sloane claimed not to know, but, in truth, she did. She would’ve described them as “love.”

But could she really be in love with Daraja? More importantly, how could he love her? He was human, flesh and blood, and she was an artificial intelligence inhabiting a robot body Daraja had constructed out of scavenged metal, cogs, and flywheels. He couldn’t possibly love her in that way, could he?

“Why don’t you tell him how you feel?” said Aisling, and Sloane had no trouble putting a name to the emotion she felt then: terror. She could barely admit her feelings to herself, much less to him.

As Daraja eyed the chessboard, Sloane’s sensors picked up a rumbling in the earth. She ignored it at first, assuming Galactic Mining’s crews were working in the newly re-opened section of the mine two levels above Daraja’s shop. He’d been grumbling for days about how the long-abandoned tunnels were buzzing with activity, with the company trying out a new laser drill it had developed. The rumbling increased, shaking the table and rattling the chess pieces. Daraja muttered a string of colorful curses.

As the shaking intensified, chess pieces toppled over. Daraja’s machines—the little clockwork toys dotting the shelves along the walls—tumbled to the ground with a clatter. Sloane was out of her chair, flinging aside the table and grabbing Daraja, just as the first cracks appeared in the ceiling. She ignored his startled yelp and dragged him toward the doorway.

They had almost made it when the ceiling collapsed.

Sloane struggled to process what she was seeing. Her photoreceptors could see in darkness, but her vision wavered, flickering in and out. Daraja lay beneath her, heartbeat faint and erratic, breathing shallow. She eyed with concern the cut on his forehead, blood covering his face. Her vision cut out entirely then, returning out of focus several moments later.

She freed her arms and legs, clearing a pocket beneath the doorway’s steel frame. She and Daraja were safe for the moment, but given the unknown extent of his injuries and the damage she’d sustained, Sloane wasn’t sure how long they could wait to be rescued. Galactic would be focused on rescuing the trapped miners. She’d have to dig the two of them out on her own.

Yet, as she shifted the rubble, her difficulties went beyond erratic vision. The gears in her left shoulder and elbow seized up, and she felt sluggishness indicative of a nearly-drained battery. It must’ve been damaged too, as she’d just recharged that morning. Fear struck Sloane at the thought of them trapped there. The idea of Daraja dying tore at her mechanical heart.

Her heart.

The music box heart Daraja installed as a battery backup. She’d never needed it before, had hardly thought of it since that first day when he explained how it worked. With her vision wavering again, Sloane opened her chest plate and turned the box’s little crank.

An odd sound, like rocks singing, echoed within her chest cavity. She shouldn’t have heard anything—the box had been soundproofed—but it must’ve been damaged too. Daraja had warned her its music could wake up the Rock People, legendary creatures who, supposedly, lived beneath the mines. No one had ever seen them, however, and most people claimed they didn’t exist. Sloane didn’t know; all she cared about was charging her battery and digging herself and Daraja out.

Beyond the strange music, though, nothing happened. Her movements were as sluggish as before. The connection between box and battery had also been damaged.

Panic surged through Sloane. She clawed at the rocks, desperate to free them. As her power waned, her movements slowed. Her consciousness winked out and came back online. Her vision became increasingly erratic—the rocks appeared to move all by themselves—before her photoreceptors cut out for good.

She lost consciousness a second later.

She came back online, lying on a table in one of Galactic’s repair shops. Daraja stood over her, his head swathed in a bandage.

“We have to stop meeting like this.” He smiled.

“How…?” Sloane looked around in confusion.

“A rescue crew found us by the rocks outside my shop. They said you’d dug us free.”

“I did?” said Sloane.

“Maybe you’re more damaged than I thought.” Daraja eyed her with concern. “I took out your music box. I’ll have to replace the casing before reinstalling it.” He smiled again. “We can’t leave you without a heart, now can we?”

Sloane frowned inwardly, thinking about the box’s music, her vision of moving rocks. Had Daraja been right about the Rock People? Could they be the ones who freed them? It seemed farfetched, but Sloane couldn’t remember doing so. Maybe she did somehow and her memory core was simply damaged.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” said Daraja, interrupting her musings. He took her hand. “Who else is going to beat me in chess every day?”

Sloane set aside thoughts of Rock People and damaged memory cores as those emotions she’d spoken with Aisling about rose within her. This time, though, her terror over revealing her feelings to Daraja was nothing compared to her fear when she’d thought he might die. Without a doubt, he had her heart, in more ways than one.

Ignoring her fear, Sloane touched her fingers to the slit in her faceplate that was her mouth, then pressed them against Daraja’s lips.

“I love you,” she said.

Then she waited for him to make his next move.

Matt Krizan is a former certified public accountant who writes from his home in Royal Oak, Michigan. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications, including Factor Four Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and, previously, in Stupefying Stories. Find him online at mattkrizan.com, on Blue Sky as @mattkrizan.bsky.social, and on Twitter as @MattKrizan. His most recent appearance in our virtual pages was “Accounting for Time,” back in April. Read it now!