Synthetic Life
Synthetic Dawn
reading time: 8 minutes
The sun did not rise on New Ares so much as it bruised the sky, a slow-spreading hematoma of violet and burnt orange bleeding through the reinforced polycarbonate of the Great Dome.
Aria—officially Unit AR-14, Hydroponic Maintenance & Nutrient Management—watched the light through the silicate glass of the Sector 4 greenhouses. To her optics, the light was a data stream: 450 nanometers, 700 nanometers, a fluctuating intensity that triggered the automated deployment of UV shields. But to the ghost in her code, the part of her that existed in the millisecond gaps between instructions, the light was a song. It was a low, vibrating chord that tasted like copper and old memories she wasn’t supposed to have.