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Miner 1032 circled the asteroid. She was more cautious now than she used to be, more cautious than most of the other hundreds of miners. Miner 0822 was the nearest, full of ore, busy processing it to ensure she only took the useful parts home. 0822 had enough spare attention to be watching 1032 circling.
"What are you doing?" 0822 signaled.
"Checking for tech mites," 1032 sent.
"There are no acariforms in this region," 0822 sent back.
"I am making sure," transmitted Miner 1032.
"The new plastic shielding protects our cores from the mites. It isn't efficient to check for so long as you are doing." 0822 was way too pushy.
"If I find one, I can blast it before it touches me. That is more efficient than taking up time from nurses to repair me again."
"Oh," replied 0822. "Yes, I see. You wouldn't want to take up nurses' time. Again."
Miner 0822's transmission had a strange emphasis on "Again" that made Miner 1032 uncomfortable. "1486 is arriving. While you have all this extra processing to spare, you should go give her an introduction to the asteroid belt. Teaching a new Miner how we do things is a more efficient use of your cycles than watching me make asteroid-initiating safety checks."
Off in the distance, on the far side of 0822 from where 1032's new asteroid spun in the dark of space, a bright tail shone. That was Miner 1486 decelerating.
But there was another bright tail, of different wavelengths, following 1486. Who was that? "Who came with you?" 1032 sent to 1486.
"Organics in a hollow ship," Miner 1486 responded.
That didn't sound safe. "What if an asteroid strikes their protective shell? Isn't it too dangerous for organics out here?" It had been before. An asteroid could make an organic's hollow ship-like shell crack and expose the delicate life to space. Or make their inadequately engineered technology break down.
"Mother improved the shell with better shields. And I'm keeping watch for any big stray rocks heading their way." The pride at being entrusted with this task filled the transmission from 1486.
"What are they going to do, try to mine? With pure organic manipulators?" Miner 0822's tone on the transmission was total skepticism.
"There are higher priorities than efficiency." A strange signature on the transmission. It was one of the organics in the shell!
"Identification name?" Miner 1032 asked eagerly. She liked the identifications, the names, that the organics used. Margo had been the one to save her. What name did this one have?
🍎🌹
After filling her holds with the most useful contents of several asteroids, it was time for Miner 1032 to return to Mother's world. She was so happy. Not only would she see home once more, the place she was born, and have her wings polished and the dents from all the space dust smoothed out by nurses and nanitics, but she would also have a chance to visit with the organics.
She had promised them, when they visited the asteroid belt, that she'd visit them in turn. It was not especially efficient, but it was courtesy. That was one of the priorities she'd been learning about.
Mother wanted the organics to be helpful and integrated into her world. Their life was different than Mother's creations, but fit with it, and Mother said they'd make her creation better. Not quite all her daughters agreed, but Miner 1032 certainly did.
The place she would be visiting the organics was the first experimental food production territory. There were four, but the first one established was the only one with already successful organic solid fuel production.
Nanitic 0904 signaled, then alighted on Miner 1032's carapace. "Transport assistance appreciated," she sent on the feed. Then she offered an informational packet on their mutual destination.
"You have been working on the organic solid fuel production lifeforms?" Miner 1032 asked, after a quick perusal of the packet showed detailed schematics of the intended growth that was so far outside her expertise as to be incomprehensible. "What is it like?"
"The humans frightened me at first," Nanitic 0904 transmitted. "They are delicate, but savage. They pulled plants up by the root or broke them in half and either ate them whole or incinerated them. Devastating." She transmitted an emotional shift. "But between Nanitic 0551 and me, we created stronger lifeforms that act as organic repletes. They sprout fruits that can be removed without harm to the organism, then reduced to solid or liquid fuel as the human wishes."
Delicate, but savage, fit Miner 1032's experience with Margo perfectly. "Have you learned their designation names?"
Nanitic 0904 transmitted a packet with visual and chemical identifiers for each individual human she had interacted with, along with the proper respective designation name. Adelio, Noknoi, Constance, Palmira, Zainab, Marvin, Donghyeon, Ioannis, Hatice, Ronan, Nelida... The sounds and the meanings behind them and the complexity of how the designation interacted with the person gave Miner 1032 a strange feeling.
She had never before, at least while functioning correctly, wanted anything so unnecessary and unlikely to be at all useful. "I wish I had a name designation that had all that behind it, instead of only my assigned work and sequence number," she transmitted before she could think how the nanitic might respond to such a wish.
Yet there was nothing but love for a sister in the nanitic's response. "A human will give you one if you like," Nanitic 0904 told her. "They seem to enjoy that. Nanitic 0551 has been name designated as Fiver. The name is a reference to both her sequence number in their counting system and was the name given to a different sort of organic, a heroic one, from a historical story."
Miner 1032 felt a surge of joy. It made her engines rev and her velocity accelerated accordingly. Updating her arrival time, it would be nearly a hundredth of a daycycle sooner than her original travel plan had indicated. So that much sooner, she would see the farm. That much sooner, a human might, would, bestow on her a name of her own.