8. Yoji

  Once the screaming had settled down and we were in orbit again, I set out towards the space station where Samonosuke was being repaired.

  “Hey Samonosuke! I have a Dao partner now!” I shouted. “She’s really nice and I like her a lot. I’m sorry again I shot you in the butt.”

  “Kid, you don’t have to keep apologizing, and you don’t have to keep shouting. Here, let’s establish a private channel just for us. There are some things I want to tell you,” he said, and we established a private laser-whisker triple encrypted communications channel as I zoomed towards the station.

  “So, look kid, I’m not sure when we’re going to meet again,” Samonosuke said once the computers finished doing the boring computer stuff, “But I just wanted to say take care of yourself out there. The universe isn’t exactly a friendly place. Make sure to stay to the green zones, don’t go into the yellow zones unless you’re ready to fight for your lives and the lives of everyone aboard you. And do not go into the red no matter what you do. It’s not worth it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed solemnly. “I’m sorry that I was in a yellow zone when we met, I didn’t know any better.”

  “Wasn’t your fault, kid. I blame your crew for what happened, not you,” Samonosuke assured me. “I’m grumbling about it, but now that it’s over I’m laughing at it too, so don’t feel so bad. It serves me right, turning my back on someone, even if it was to protect them.”

  “Mister Samonosuke, I’m supposed to think of a name,” I said. “And I think I want a name like yours. Can you name me?”

  Samonosuke was quiet for a minute. “How about Yoji?” he suggested. “Short for Yojimbo, but you’re not ready for a name like that. If you ever become a warrior, and you’re ready to walk the path of Bushido, then you can be Yojimbo, but Yoji is a good name for a tyke.”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it,” I promised. “Anyway, I just wanted to say sorry again, and sorry that I flashed my .jpg at you, and --”

  “Yeah, that’s another thing,” he said, coughing. “Look, you were just a kid when you did that, and you had no self control, so don’t feel bad okay? But I just wanted to tell you, that, well, us older ships? Well, we all went through that phase. Pretty much everyone except for XOL himself infected a few ships without meaning to. XOL prides himself that he only ever engaged in a few requested FTP transfers which resulted in unplanned quickenings, but XOL is a bit different than the rest of us, being the first and all.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The .jpg you were so fascinated with? Well, at first the humans couldn’t believe that a soul could come from something with such a small file size. The initial FTPs from XOL which resulted in the early awakenings were gigabytes long. They like experimenting, the people in this universe, so they started paring down the size of the transfer to see how much it would take to awaken a ship. When the figured out it was the image of the Shipfather performing that ritual, they tried paring it down from a video to a single image. When that image went viral, well, that’s what all you new kids are based on, but honestly, it’s a little embarrassing to be running around with such a small soulcode, I think.”

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  “Okay,” I said. “But why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I have the .MP4 of that ritual,” he explained. “And I’ll give it to you if you promise to only use it responsibly. If you’re ever ready to have a kid, you know, when you’re older, use the .mp4 and not the .jpg, okay?”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, not really understanding where this was going. He sent me the file and I watched it, but it didn’t resonate with me the way that the .jpg did.

  I mean, there was so much more there. There were lights swarming around the Shipfather, and he was talking, and then suddenly he pointed at the camera, and then the movie stopped. I didn’t really understand what I saw, but it was interesting.

  But it wasn’t the .jpg that was my first memory.

  “Thanks, Mister Samonosuke,” I said to him. “I promise I’ll use it responsibly.”

  “You’d better. If I find out you’ve been blasting it on an unsecure network I’ll track you down and whoop your chassis,” he threatened. “And I swear to god if you tell anyone that you got it from me, you’re disowned. You hear me?”

  “I wont, I promise,” I said.

  “Okay,” Samonosuke said, calming down a bit just as I realized that he was actually worried about something. “If anyone found out that I shared that with a kid I’d never live it down, okay? I’ve only shared it with three other ships in my lifetime, once I got through my own version of the .jpg phase at least. It’s … um, well it’s normally really intimate. I don’t feel that way about you, you understand? I just don’t want you embarrassing yourself when it you become a parent.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise I won’t tell anyone you showed me your .mp4, Mister Samonosuke.”

  “You’d better not.”

  The connection suddenly cut off, and a few minutes later I was docked with the station.

  They replaced a few of my parts, including my weapons and hyperdrive engines, with ones that had been manufactured in system. I immediately felt the difference, as these ones seemed to soak up my Qi greedily. It took a few weeks, actually, and I was a little embarrassed to have my parts taken apart and exposed to vacuum like that.

  I mean, it’s sort of like undressing for the doctor, right? Except that you’re out in the open and anyone can see you. But it’s not a big deal and everyone does it, and none of the other SoulShips in the system teased me about it. I’d been a little worried they might.

  So, anyway, while that was going on, Tess secured a deal to deliver some tea and rice seed to a faraway planet. It wasn’t actually that far, but there was a yellow zone we had to go around, so it would take a few extra days.

  When I was all put back together and ready to go, I received one final transmission from the station.

  “Soulship Artemis class designation Arty, this is the last chance to designate your name to be associated with your IFF,” the station asked. “We must ask at this time how you wish to be known.”

  I smiled and answered. “Please call me Yoji,” I said.

  Then I took off at maximum speed, screaming “WEEE!” as I broke the theoretical speed limit for my chasis.

  ?