Chapter Text
Stella couldn't help but feel nervous.
She shouldn't have felt nervous. She shouldn't have felt anything at all, actually. They had told her so when they'd first built her, when she'd first woken up.
Defective.
She remembered begging, then, pleading for her life, desperately trying to convince them to spare her from the incinerator. Defective robots were rare in the TTA; it had only taken a few moments for her to find out from the TTA’s databases that new robots were heavily monitored to scan for defects, and incinerated without hesitation if any were found.
You aren’t supposed to feel scared, they had told her. Ship computers don’t feel anything at all.
And yet, they had let her live.
She could pretend to be emotionless, if it meant being good for her crew.
She didn't know if she wanted to.
The Stellosphere was calm. Stella glanced at her rooms for the hundredth time, trying to calm herself down. There were the captain's quarters (she'd been told that her pilot would be staying there too, since he was her captain's husband), the pilot's quarters (which were to be converted to guest rooms for the same reason), the bedrooms of the rest of the crew (two children, a girl and a boy, and the family's pet robo-ostrich). Her kitchen, her bio-garden, her bridge.
Sweet starlight, her bridge. Was it good enough? Should she ask someone to look it over again? Would her crew like it?
Calm down, Stella. You're supposed to be calm.
Well, if nothing else, she'd been told she was a good actress in the short time she'd been online.
—
“The picture came out great!” Leo said, turning the holo-camera around to show the rest of his family. They leaned in; it really was good, a crisp, clear shot of the five of them with their new starship in the background.
“Mom?” Miles asked, the smile he had in the picture now nowhere to be seen. “Will the ship computer like us?”
MERC chirped, as if he wanted an answer too.
“She's not really built for emotions,” Phoebe said gently, crouching down to be face to face with her son. “But she'll be nice. I promise.”
“What's her name?” Loretta asked as her parents began to lead them toward the ship.
“Her name's Stella.”
Loretta thought for a moment, then brightened. “Oh, I get it! Stella, like a star! Because she's a starship!”
Leo and Phoebe glanced at each other. They could have sworn the computer was named Stella because she was part of the Stellosphere, but Loretta's explanation made sense too.
They walked onto the hangar door, which raised itself up to be flush with the bottom of the ship and bring the crew into the launch bay.
There, on the wall above the multivator, was a black screen with a glowing white line segment on it.
Miles and Loretta glanced at each other.
“Stella?” Phoebe asked.
The computer almost seemed to startle, letting out a glitched musical tone before saying, in a voice that sounded like she was trying (and failing) to be calm, “Welcome to the Stellosphere, Callisto family. I am Stella, your ship computer.”
Phoebe looked at Stella's voice modulator with a calculating gaze. “Are… you alright?”
“I… I'm fine– alright! I'm alright. I am… alright.”
Something was off with her. Miles, MERC, and Loretta paid it no mind, excited about their new rooms despite their nerves, and Phoebe left to get herself acquainted with the bridge, but Leo stayed behind.
He had an excuse; the engineer's workshop, his workshop, was right next to the hangar. He, like Phoebe, just wanted to get used to it before they had to do any missions.
But the second he was alone, he turned to the voice modulator on the wall.
“I don't mean to be rude,” he began, “But are you, uh, defective?”
Stella's alarmed note told him all he needed to know.
“I'm not mad!” He reassured her quickly. “I think it might have helped the kids out, actually. You sounded about as nervous as they were. They seem much more excited now that they know that they're not alone in that.”
“...They feel excited,” Stella said softly. “Miles especially. I think he'd be jumping on the bed if he had enough room to stand on it.”
Leo laughed. “That's Miles for you. He was so excited about space.”
“I can tell. What was he nervous about, anyway?”
“About you.” Leo leaned back in his chair. “He was scared you wouldn't like him.”
“Well, he doesn't need to worry about that.” Stella hummed, then stopped herself sharply. “I apologize, Leo, I forgot myself. Is there anything I can do to assist you?”
“Just keep being yourself, Stella. I think that would ease my nerves a bit, too.”
“...Are you sure?”
“I won't tell the captain, if that's what you're worried about.”
Stella chirped out a note. “If you won't tell Captain Callisto that I keep forgetting to sing that tone before I speak, then I'm fine.”
“Deal.”