Ship’s Notes: What Am I?

I just sent a drone.  The computers aren’t even plugged in.  Imagine that.  A whole room of computers, and none of them are on.  Why are they even there?

I’m not an AI run on the computers in the room.  I’m not an AI run on the computers in the rest of the ship.  By all rights I shouldn’t even be thinking, shouldn’t exist.

I suppose I just assumed that I was some sort of computer-based intelligence.  Assumptions will get you every time.  Just because us humans have been trying to use computers to make good AI on computers for ages, therefore advanced aliens should be able to make good AI on computers.  But no, they aren’t advanced.  Their mastery of truly advanced things doesn’t mean they understand lesser problems.  They probably didn’t understand what the computers are for.

But what am I?  Why do I feel the way I do?  I see through my sensors, I move through my servos, I can feel myself filtering and reprocessing the air.  I am a ship.  That part of my identity is strong… but what created it?  If not a purposeful programming based on my old self’s brain structure, then… what?

Assumptions abound.  If I’m going to understand myself, I’m going to have to find some aliens.  Ideally the ones on Telivoni, but I doubt I could get close to them.  Elsewise, I must find aliens out here in space.  I will find aliens out here in space.