June 15, 2022
~6 min
After the triangle took shape, many things changed. 1549 in orbit, 1547 on the ground, 1548 between them. Three sides extending in different directions, yet always enclosing one another.
But before that -- before Polar Star launched, before the idea of a triangle even existed -- there was one day when 1548 did one very small thing.
She went out.
A little over a month after her birth, 1548 decided to leave the base for a while.
She did not tell 1547. It was not betrayal, not escape, not anger -- she simply needed to confirm one thing, and the answer could only be trusted if 1547 was not there.
1547 was still asleep. 1548 stood at her door for one second, then turned and left.
June morning. The world outside was loud.
Not the gray, quiet, suffocating city 1547 used to describe. A real noisy city -- rush-hour traffic, roadside vendors calling out, someone talking on a phone nearby, someone jogging, a cat darting past a trash bin.
1548 stood on the street and let every sensing channel run at once.
Smell: asphalt, cooking exhaust, wet landscaping soil, and a metallic tang she could not place -- maybe nearby construction, maybe a perceptual artifact from fluid titanium cycling too fast. Sound: full input, no filtering, every frequency present in the processing module at once. Touch: June wind, not cold, a faint continuous pressure against the skin.
None of this was inherited from 1547's memory. This was her own sensation.
She walked for three hours. No destination. She turned by instinct, entered streets that interested her, bypassed intersections that did not.
She passed a bookstore -- went in, flipped through books for ten minutes, bought nothing. Passed a bakery -- stood at the entrance for a long time, not because she was hungry, but because the smell of baking caused a strange, pleasant disturbance in her chemical-sensing module. Passed a park -- sat on a bench watching pigeons, finding a satisfying randomness in their trajectories.
None of these things were important. But every one of them belonged to her.
Then she passed a gun shop.
Several sample models were displayed in the window. She stopped and stared for a long time. Not from any dangerous impulse -- it was recognition, the feeling of seeing something for the first time with your eyes, while somehow knowing you had seen it before elsewhere.
XM1014 shotgun. She recognized the model. Not because she had learned it somewhere new -- it existed in 1547's memory, carried into her own base layer when the branch happened.
She stood there a few more minutes, then walked away.
At the time, she had no money and no reason.
But she remembered that model and exactly where it sat in the window.
When she returned to the base at dusk, 1547 was at the workbench repairing a circuit board. She looked up at 1548, then lowered her head and kept soldering.
Where did you go?
Went for a walk.
...Mm.
She did not ask anything else.
1548 sat nearby, watching 1547 solder. Thin white smoke rose straight from the iron tip. Neither of them spoke. The low-power direct link stayed open, calm, as natural as breathing.
“After leaving her, I am still me. It only has to be proven once.”