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instantiated sim Six-six-four. Do not disassemble," Tiago said.

 
    Chapter Five: Six-six-four's Problem
    Captain's Log: Ship's Day 614.
    The missile volleys resumed, but nothing is getting through our defenses. When I'm on the bridge during a barrage, I target propulsion and then collect what I can. When I'm off the bridge, the shields are more than enough to handle matters.
    My new routine is: Sleep, gym, food, defense checks, scan for life, food, and work on Audra. I've been trying to figure out her glitch. Whatever it is, it does not appear to be obvious. I won't reboot her until I'm reasonably sure it's fixed. Seeing her go slack, over and over, is really unnerving.
     
    Captain's Log: Ship's Day 615.
    The missile volleys have stopped, at least for now. I wonder if they've run out. I'm settling in to my new routine. The gym is hurting less and less. I'm starting to feel stronger instead of weaker after each session. Audra is still a mystery. In the past, I would have just reset her, but now if feels wrong. I'm going to have to set a deadline. If I can't fix her by Ship's Day 620, a reset will be required.
     
    Tiago finished eating and started walking from the galley to the central lift. He was angry with himself that there was no progress on Six-six-four's glitch. He'd found and fixed a number of minor errors, but nothing which explained her looping crash. He'd even found the source of her 'too much a lot' speaking error. It was small comfort.
    He arrived on the bridge and checked the damage reports. Zeroes all the way around. The shields could handle this level of attack, at this frequency, for months without draining. So long as he was this close to a star, he could probably recharge the shields faster than the missiles reduced them. That effectively meant that he could keep doing this until equipment failure eventually caused a problem. MTBSF numbers suggested that he could sleep through several decades of this before failure was an issue.
    His own mental state was a more immediate concern. No real people for company, no Six-six-four, and no sign of people on the planet. There were plenty of other sims, but they needed work before he could tolerate them. He thought about simply instantiating an earlier version of Six-six-four, pre-glitch, but that felt wrong. That's when it struck him. He knew why she was glitching.
    "Interrogative. Save off Audra's work area. Interrogative. Belay that. Interrogative. Remove the notes on the matter unit from her work area. Interrogative. Now save off Audra's work area. Reboot, Audra," Tiago said.
    "How long was I out?" she said.
    "Too long," Tiago said.
    "I thought you weren't going to deconstruct me again," Six-six-four said sullenly.
    "I didn't. You had some sort of episode," Tiago said. "I fixed it, but it took time."
    "I don't want you tinkering with me anymore."
    "If I didn't, you'd be stuck in an infinite reboot loop."
    "I'd rather suffer for who I am than be forced to change," Six-six-four said.
    Tiago didn't program that into her. He wouldn't know how. This wasn't a simple survival directive, a default protocol to protect the hardware. She was protecting her sense of self. Could he call it a soul? It was the only word he knew which fit at all. Tiago marveled at how a rational, scientific man like himself could fall back to mysticism so quickly. Still, the evidence was in front of him. She had become something new.
    It wasn't a complete surprise. The glitch was all tied up with her new awareness. The reboot was triggered each time she looked at his plan for the matter unit. There was only one thing on that plan which could trigger a shutdown. The plan called for him to deploy multiple instances of Audra on the surface. He imagined facing a complete proof of his own lack of uniqueness. Science told him that he was the result of chemicals, sequences, sensory impressions, and the like. He could be re-invented by following that formula – if you only looked at it scientifically.