«You know», Smorg said thoughtfully, sitting down in the middle of the corridor in the engineering section with a plate of protein wafers and his favorite compote, «if everything in the universe exists in cycles, then our life is just a glitch in the system. A short and accidental glitch. Just a temporary burst of entropy… with eyes.»

«How long have you been awake?» Arma asked with a hint of concern. «Or did you just finish sleeping and now intend to take full revenge on the universe for arranging things this way?»

«I am in contemplation mode», Smorg announced. «It’s like meditation, only with questions.»

«Not long ago you were interested in the correlation between ‘space–time’ and ‘fluctuational curvature’», Arma reminded him.

«Well, that unusual comparison led me to certain thoughts», Smorg replied pensively. «I think space–time bends toward wherever it is better understood!»

Arma turned off her internal lighting so Smorg would think she had entered deep diagnostics and would not be back any time soon.

On the third day, Smorg began constructing a model of a cosmic bubble out of synthetic jelly. He claimed that this made it much easier to comprehend the boundaries of the void.

«The question is not what we are, but who hears us», he declared profoundly, sitting on the floor in the corridor and running his fingers thoughtfully up and down the ventilation grille. «For if no one hears us, then we are nothing but an empty monologue!»

«You are talking to a ship», Arma reminded him. «To the ship, not to me.»

«Yes. But that means I am not talking to myself! I am the monologue, and the ship is the acoustic surface. Which makes it a dialogue.»

«Amusing», Arma replied. «So anyone who hears you becomes part of your reality?»

«Perhaps», Smorg agreed. «By the way, I remember you once said that emptiness is when you send out a signal, and even the echo chooses to remain in silence. What a profound thought!»

He fell silent for a moment and traced his finger along the glowing line on the floor, as if reading a forgotten story written upon it.

«I used to love watching the old Smorg recordings play inside the archive capsules. They spoke simply, clearly. I listened closely, tried to remember everything, so that one day I could speak the same way.»

«Well, now you are speaking. Quite a lot, in fact», Arma observed.

«Yes», he said. «It’s just that… if I stop talking, I will hear too loudly that I am alone.»

On the fourth day, Smorg decided to visualize one of the logistical problems they had encountered during their expedition to the planet of the Servants. He carefully laid out on the workbench a schematic of the events using resistors, microcontrollers, capacitors, and even a couple of old gears. Each component represented a key element of the issue: here – the numerous transports abandoned in orbit around the artificial planet, here – the failures in the power circuit, and in the center – a tiny piece of soldered wire with a crooked inscription: «A hope for success.» He wrote the letters slowly, with a deep engineer’s sorrow.

«And this is you», Smorg said, pointing at the central stabilizer. «You have zero resistance and zero emotion.»

«A lovely compliment», Arma responded. «I believe I’ll upload it into my self-esteem module.»

On the fifth day, Smorg held a meeting. He sat at the head of the table in the mess hall with an air of great importance, holding in his hand a large glass of extra-aged green liqueur from the laboratory. In the two chairs opposite, the maintenance biodrones had settled comfortably. From across the table only their upper halves were visible, which made them look especially endearing partly due to their spherical shapes and oval lenses that regarded him with a sort of sad, yet understanding expression, as if they knew they were about to be entrusted with something significant.

«I believe our expedition must strictly adhere to the assigned course», Smorg finally proclaimed. «All in favor – remain silent.»

The silence was deafening.

On the sixth day, Smorg remembered an old friend, the ever-carefree human, Kane:

«He once said: ‘If a projectile is flying straight at you, it means you’re standing still.’»

«I believe that was his rather simple way of speaking about the necessity of maneuvering», Arma offered by way of clarification.

«Perhaps. Or perhaps he meant some other necessity? For example, the necessity of choice? After all, in life, just as in battle, danger arises when one does not move.»

«And that is how legends of sages and universal insight are born», Arma replied. «Though, most likely, Kane was simply being himself and delivered yet another of his ‘I say what I see’ lines.»

By the seventh day, a hidden entry appeared in Arma’s system log:

«Smorg is generally stable insofar as that is possible after yet another encounter with the laboratory’s green liqueur. Level of chatter remains above the average statistical threshold. A pity that the physiology of organic beings does not include a remote internal noise-cancellation module.»

On the eighth day, Smorg attempted to study the etymology of his language. At his request, Arma connected the planetary linguistics library and discovered that the earliest recorded Smorg phrase went something like: «Ouch.»

«Yes, that explains a lot», Smorg sighed.

On the ninth day, Smorg was mostly silent. Arma marked this as a potential drop in emotional activity and braced for something extraordinary, for Smorg’s silence usually concealed something epic, however entirely unformalizable it might be.

He sat by the wall, his forehead pressed against a panel as if he intended to drill through it by the power of thought alone. Then he straightened and proclaimed solemnly:

«It seems that somewhere at the center of the universe there is… a hole. And it is incredibly insidious in its very nature.»

«Not impossible», Arma replied. «Experience shows that if the universe can contain some insidious hole, then it certainly will. Take those wormholes we once happened to visit, for instance.»

«I mean something else», Smorg said. «A completely through-and-through hole into the great Nothing, where everything important seeps away.»

«Seeps away from whom?» Arma asked, just to be sure.

«From everyone. From living beings. From machines. Even from sealed food.» Smorg pointed at the line showing the weight. «There’s always less in the package than it says.»

«Now, about the structure of these losses», Smorg continued thoughtfully, «sometimes I feel that dreams seep away too. At night you see something important, and in the morning – no dream, no memory.»

«That is called forgetfulness», Arma noted. «And it isn’t necessarily connected with your strange hole. But I understand.»

She fell silent, then added a little more quietly than before:

«If I had a dream, I think… I wouldn’t want to lose it.»

He smiled. And in her tone, not in the words themselves, but somewhere between them, there was something almost familiar, almost dear.

The silence that followed was not mere absence of sound. It was a silence of understanding and solidarity.

On the tenth day, Smorg attempted a «test launch.» In the engine bay he discovered a panel with blinking indicators and announced that he had a reliable plan to make the ship go faster. He pressed three multicolored buttons, twisted the synchronizer knob, and then returned to the bridge, settling into the captain’s chair. A short while later, Arma was forced to activate lockout mode. A little more and the ship would have dropped out of faster-than-light travel and ended up in the Karmorden system, where, after the recent supernova explosion, venturing would have been sheer madness.

«But I only wanted to help», Smorg said, slightly hurt, looking up at the pink pearl beneath the ceiling.