###Chapter 17
Moss was mid-argument when Auburn realized something had gone incredibly wrong.
Not structurally.
Socially.
"You cannot simply annotate danger," Moss was saying, tendrils flared, voice clipped sharp enough to cut. "You mitigate it. You restrict access. You add redundant safeguards until failure becomes statistically improbable."
"And in doing so," Auburn countered, mandibles tight, "you reduce system flexibility to the point of brittleness. Which increases failure probability under novel conditions. This is basic-"
"I am not discussing theory," Moss snapped. "I am discussing a human. One YOU decided to keep, and then leave, unsupervised. Expansively inefficient."
Auburn gestured, exasperated. "You are discussing her as though she is not sentient."
Moss paused.
Barely.
His gaze flicked, belatedly, to the side.
Auggie was still standing exactly where she had been the entire time. Arms crossed. Weight settled into one hip. Expression unreadable in that very particular way humans got when they were deciding whether to laugh or dismantle something.
"Hi," she said mildly, yet with a bit of bite.
The silence that followed was… instructive.
"Oh my goddess," Auggie continued, rubbing her face with one hand. "You're arguing about me like I'm a loose cable."
"You adjusted gravity," Moss said immediately, as if that resolved everything.
"And returned it to baseline," she replied. "Without triggering alarms. Without cascading failure. Without breaking your ship."
"That is not the point," Moss said.
Auburn inhaled slowly. "Then what is the point, Incident Officer?"
Moss turned back to him, posture rigid. "Humans are not designed for this environment. They operate on intuition, improvisation, and-" His tendrils twitched. "Pattern-breaking curiosity."
Auggie perked up. "Yes."
"That is not a compliment," Moss said flatly.
Auburn pinched the bridge of his sensory ridge. "You are proposing what, exactly?"
Moss brought up a schematic with a sharp gesture. The human quarters bloomed into a lattice of restrictions, permissions layered on permissions, access narrowed to corridors of allowable action.
Auggie and Auburn both stared, with varying levels of depth of immediate comprehension. Even to Auggie, though, the psychic impression was clear.
"…You want to bubble wrap the ship."
"I want to human-proof it," Moss corrected.
"That is massively inefficient," Auburn said immediately. "You are redesigning a system for containment rather than coexistence." His tentacles snapped slightly around his head, as if to emphasize his point.
"Containment is the point."
Auggie uncrossed her arms.
"Okay," she said. "We're doing this now."
Both Keshin turned toward her.
"I am standing," she said carefully, "right here. A whole-ass adult. With a doctorate. And a long and deeply documented history of not needing to be managed like an unsecured object."
Moss opened his mouth, not to much to speak, as to take in the changes in her tone and scent.
"No," she said, holding up a finger. "I don't need you to make everything idiot-proof. I don't need rails on every thought or padding on every constant."
She gestured toward the hovering schematic. "What I need is a map."
Auburn stilled.
"A what," Moss asked.
"A map," she repeated. "Show me the systems. Show me the boundaries. Mark the places where curiosity becomes catastrophic instead of educational."
She met Moss's gaze directly.
"I don't touch live wires because I know what they do. Not because someone sealed the breaker box and told me I was easily damaged or killed."
The room was quiet again. But this time, the quiet had weight.
Auburn felt something shift - not in the ship, but in the model he had been using.
Moss's tendrils lowered slightly.
"You are proposing," Moss said slowly, "informed autonomy."
"Yes," Auggie said. "With consent."
Auburn exhaled, something like relief threading through his thorax. "That is… actually far more efficient."
Moss hesitated.
Then, reluctantly, the lattice dissolved. The schematic reformed, cleaner this time. Pathways annotated. Thresholds highlighted. Warnings contextualized instead of locked away.
A map.
"This does not remove risk," Moss said.
"No," Auggie agreed. "It removes surprise."
Auburn glanced between them.
Like tide foam creeping up the shore, the realization crept into his awareness - they weren't negotiating damage control anymore.
They were negotiating trust architecture.
And the ship, quietly, adjusted, not because it was told to…
…but because it understood what was being built.