Chapter Text

Scott sighed and closed his email. Jaal had invited him to meet his mother. “So is this a friendly meeting, or what?” he muttered to himself.

“What do you mean?” SAM asked from the corner of his desk.

He still wasn’t used to the sensation of never actually being alone. Sure, he could tell SAM to ignore him, but more and more he was leaving SAM on so the AI could ‘experience’ his life. He wanted him to know that there was more to being a person than dodging Kett bullets and planting colony flags.

“I like Jaal” he told the blue globe that represented his AI companion. “But I don’t know if he likes me.”

“As a romantic partner?” SAM clarified.

“Yeah.”

“And?” SAM prodded him to go on. Sometimes Scott got the distinct impression that he lacked patience for human processing speeds. Or maybe SAM was still used to talking to his father, the genius.

Before he really thought about it, he asked “Do you miss my dad, SAM?”

“Yes and no” SAM said. “In the human context, your father is no more. But in my memory banks, he is as real and as constant as he ever was.”

“With the exception of the memories he blocked, I can still access every heartbeat, every instruction, everything we ever experienced together. But in another sense, he’s a broken input. I relied on him for information, but now that comes to me through you. Nothing new will come from him. He is a closed loop.”

Scott let out a long breath and leaned his head on his hand. He stared blankly at the Nomad model he’d bought on their last trip to the Nexus and tried to imagine his dad being alive and dead at the same time. Wasn’t that just like his own memory, but at quantum speed? As always, the enormity of SAM left him in awe.

He’d been absolutely lost in his own thoughts when SAM asked, almost quietly “Ryder, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure”

“Can you tell me about your romantic attachment?” SAM asked

A surprised laugh bubbled out of him. “Yeah, okay. But I hope you already know where babies come from”

SAM was clearly annoyed at his lame joke, but continued anyway. “My experience of such attachments was a long-established relationship. Cherished, familiar, but tragic. I’ve never known the beginning of an attachment. Perspective on your feelings would place it in context.”

His crush on Jaal certainly was on the other end of the spectrum from his parents lifetime of commitment. “I like him.” he said, stupidly. “I like the way he looks, of course, and the way he talks. I think I wouldn’t like him if he wasn’t also a genuinely nice guy. He seems reliable. When he says something, I’m pretty sure it’s honest”

“Liam is also nice.” SAM said.

He had a point.

“Liam is nice.” Scott replied “And I can’t really tell you what makes my feelings for Jaal different than my feelings for Liam. It’s not just sexual desire. Liam’s cute too, but Jaal fascinates me. I want to know everything about him. I think about him when he’s not around. I try to get as much of his time as I can when he is.”

“So people have favorite people like they have favorite foods?”

Scott laughed again. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” They’d been talking about favorite foods the day before. It had been an equally strange conversation.