day 1: winter

It is incredibly, extremity-numbingly, system-failingly cold. You are reassured that 'it's not normally this bad' and you are not sure if you believe them. The dome that is to be your new home is covered with thick ice. As you watch, a strange light shines through it. The ice breaks wherever the light touches, sliding off. The humans, and some of the other robots, are already heading inside. They want to be warm. Despite it being colder than you have ever experienced in your life, you are not entirely sure if you want to be warm yet. [[Look around more.]] [[Go inside, and be warm.]]

You turn around to look at the landscape before you. It's mostly white. Trees don't grow here; nothing really seems to grow here. If it does, it's buried under the snow, which is still falling rapidly. Twisted pillars of metal and stone loom in the distance, the only objects that break up the endless plain. For a moment, you think you see a light, breaking through the fog, flashing. Once, twice. But it's just for a moment. Then it's gone. [[It's probably just a glitch.]] [[Go inside, and be warm.]]

Whether you arrive late or early, you arrive in a domed room that is a terrible yellow. The recreational tables and couches and chairs are soft, and low to the ground, and are equally as terrible. (This is just your opinion. You tend to think, more or less, that all yellows are terrible. They are far too bright, and sometimes, they are green.) People are there, but you don't know anyone, so you ignore them. They talk loudly, or quietly, and the sounds blend together in a way that is easy to discard. Snow is falling, outside the window. Even if it is warmer in here, you feel better in the fading light, in the cold. [[Try to join in anyway, even if you don't know them.]] [[Leave the dome and go outside.]]

You remember seeing [[lights]], sometimes. Briefly there, and gone, and never in the same place twice. You have had the visual components of you checked a great many times. There has been no flaw. After a while, you stopped mentioning the lights, and that stopped the checkups, but you still see them, sometimes. [[Go inside, and be warm.]]

They were like falling stars. Bright and quickly there, and just as quickly gone. But they were beautiful, really. The memory of each star is seared into you. Even if you didn't have perfect recall, how could you ever forget? When you saw a star, it was like stepping into another world. Like walking on the outside of a spaceship. Drifting through darkness. For a brief and splendid moment it was you and that mesmerising light, and it was so burningly close you could catch it with your hands. Sometimes you tried. But they slipped through your fingers, and were gone in an instant, and you were all alone again. [[Go inside, and be warm.]]

Oh, but you can't. Did you [[forget?]]

You slip outside, and nobody notices you go, but that's all right. You would rather have nobody notice. Here, you feel like you do when you see the lights, those things that dance in your vision, that you're not supposed to see. The snow is falling harder. Any noise from the dome is muffled. The pillars crackle and hiss as night falls over the planet, like they're emitting a strange signal. Long gone, whoever listened to it, whoever made it. But. It's a song, almost. [[It's a song for you.]]

//You remember being thrown to the ground. Something that breathes with such force you can feel it has your voice. You tried to ask them to give it back, but you couldn't, and nobody else was there to ask them for you. You grasped at them, briefly, but they knocked you aside and took it with them for good.// [[Now you remember.]]

You can't join in, because you can't speak, and the robots here don't speak your language either. The only language you can communicate in, any more. You hover politely, anyway, listening to people chatter on about this and that, the terrible weather (You do not think it's that terrible) and how they don't want to be stuck on this backwater planet (You think it's quite nice) and so on, and so forth. People smile at you, though, and let you stay. They probably think you are a good listener. You are very good. Mostly because you cannot answer back, so there's nothing else to do but that. [[Leave the dome and go outside.]] [[Go to your quarters.]]

Time to go to bed, for the humans, for the people who need the sleep. For the robots, it's time to recharge, to gather their thoughts and take care of any problems they had. "Was the trip fun?" someone asks, and someone else answers, and you think about the rumble of the engines and the hum of the machinery in the walls, the shudder of metal as acceleration pressed tight. The warmth of the ship. How everything works, and belongs, and nothing is out of place. Not very much like you, at all, but you felt embraced and welcome anyway. You think about stars, and how bright they are, and how they shine without anything near them, and without even noticing you drop into your recharge cycle. [[You dreamed somehow]]

It's a song that only you can hear, and that's good enough. Your core hums, strong and bright. Your very own star. You're all alone in the world, for just a fleeting moment. You're floating in space, in darkness, with light all around you, and you've caught a star in your fingers. It shines magnificently. You don't know how long you stand there, but eventually, someone tells you to come in. You do so reluctantly. [[Go to your quarters.]]

You almost think you are awake again, that you've just disembarked from the ship, and you are watching the lights blink in the distance. But this time you can walk towards it, away from the dome, away from everything you know that is familiar. The pillars are singing now, and they are not twisted. They stand upright, no longer bent by wind and snow. They are singing, and your core is resonating. Almost without realising, you are singing, too, with a voice that was taken from you long ago. [[You shake yourself out of recharge when you realise you cannot remember how you sounded.->It's nothing, really]]

It's not much of a dream; it's something you'd like to be real, but if you made it yourself, does it really count? You're not sure. It's a patchwork memory, a piece of irrelevant data. When you boot up again, you keep it with you, anyway, because it seems important. It's one of the only things you've ever made for yourself, after all. [[Review day one again?->You have only just arrived.]]