I ended up going through with the scans.
Romulus wasn't wrong, I did need to get more comprehensive scans done than I had access to on Cassandra. Doc hadn't noticed much about my spot or, if xe had, xe hadn't felt the need to comment on it.
The specialists on Romulus' payroll did a very good job of pretending they weren't equal parts fascinated and horrified by what they found in my chest. They weren't saying anything to me, of course, but my most eager auxiliary hacked into their consoles and fed me a running commentary on my scan results.
Long story short, not much had changed inside me—well, I was actually a little low on visceral fat, still. I'd never known that could be a problem before, but apparently visceral fat cushions your organs and regulates certain hormones. Anyway, I didn't have enough of that. Maybe that was why I'd been feeling extra cold lately and hadn't put on much visible weight.
I examined a wireframe rendering of my own body against the inside of my eyelids, thought my ocular implant. The doctors weren't talking to me so I'd decided to pretend to be asleep while I spied on their work.
Romulus sent me a judgemental emoji through the feed and I sent back a picture of a person sticking their tongue out.
The spot had grown a bit since I'd seen it last, when I was in my twenties. The incursion had already been irreversible by then and now it had infiltrated every part of my body and looked remarkably like a second nervous system, except the central node was in my chest rather than my head. I would have been concerned except I had never had any sense of there being any other consciousness in my body. I'd had this thing for my entire life. If anything like that was going to happen, I'm sure it would have come to pass before I hit my sixties.
One new thing that they figured out was that the spot was generating a very slight bit of radiation. It was less radiation than I'd get from spending a day out in the sun, but possibly explained why my metabolism never performed quite like normal human baseline. I guess I'd always lost some calories to the spot, which explained why I'd never struggled with my weight. The background drain on my energy hadn't been a problem until the spot activated and started consuming even more calories.
Eventually, the doctors let me get out of the scanner. They gave me a prescription for a supplemental nutrition shake and advised me to increase my caloric intake yet again—well, actually they wanted me to stay in the hospital to be studied. Romulus had to step in before they consented to let me go.
He projected his avatar into the car as his chauffeur drove me away. He hadn't bothered the show himself in the hospital until the doctors tried to admit me, but he'd been present with me in the feed.
"I've ordered a supply of the nutrition shakes for the penthouse," he said without preamble. "The crate should arrive by this evening, once you've returned from dinner with your colleagues."
That answered the question of where I'd be staying. I'd half expected to be in the hotel with everyone else until I realized Romulus had put in human furniture in his penthouse, including a bed. He had less than zero interest in socializing with organic sapients outside of business relationships and me, so the list of people who would ever be allowed to sit on that sofa or sleep in that bed was short. He was vain enough to want the trappings of success. I was sure he had a palatial office somewhere on station with a big statue he could use as a totem and I was looking forward to seeing how much that totem looked like the evil wizard tower from a feed drama.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
"Can you order some for the ship?" I asked. "I'll reimburse you for the cost."
Romulus' avatar went still and glitched at me.
Huh. I wondered what caused that?
"I will do that for you, of course," he said, once he'd re-inhabited his avatar. "There is no need to reimburse me. The cost is negligible. Supporting all your needs would be a rounding error in comparison to my earnings."
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Smug little shit. I wondered if organic kids were like this too, once they'd grown up. I suspected they were. Well, at least he was happy and successful.
"Thank you, sweetie."
Romulus glitched again. I wondered if he was juggling multiple conversations.
"I am being serious," he said. "There is no need for you to returned to the Cassandra. I have the resources to buy out your contract with Captain Grace. I have multiple first class drivers on my staff who would be able to replace you if you are concerned with the impact to his business."
I froze.
What?
I forced myself to not say the first two or three things that came to mind. This was Romulus. He didn't make offers out of pity or for just the sake of appearances. If he was asking me to come live with him then he wanted me there. I just, for some reason, hadn't realized that he might want his mom to come move in with him.
Maybe I should have. Romulus had always had an 'oldest child' mentality, despite being the middle child.
If he'd asked me while I was still aboard the Mimir, I would have seriously considered it. Hell, if Grace hadn't come to get me from Fjord Orbital then I probably would have asked either Romulus or Lupa to come get me. In that case, I probably would have long since settled in here to do whatever busy work he could find for me.
Alright, I wasn't being fair. It wouldn't be busywork. There's no such thing on a station of this size and I, better than anyone, know just how badly sapient AIs needs trustworthy human agents. Romulus was better than most at eliminating his need to borrow outside help, but even he would need help maintaining his servers, doing spot checks on his hardware, and double-checking his self-diagnostics.
I probably would not have actually ended up living as my son's spoiled human pet.
Probably.
The problem here was that I'd been working on a medium-sized passenger liner when Romulus popped into awareness. Specifically, it had been a corporate luxury liner that specialized in chartered Business Class travel to places where the big liners didn't (or refused to) go. We saw a lot of corporate executives, troubleshooters-in-suits, forensic auditors, and visionary entrepreneurs of the sort who either didn't have or were disinclined to acquire their own yacht.
They'd run with a light crew so I'd worn a lot of hats on that ship; cargo loader, midnight concierge via drone, housekeeping, and laundress. I occupied most of the customer facing roles except for the daytime stewardess position, which involved looking better in a skirt and lipstick than I do. That meant Romulus had gotten a lot of exposure to our clients.
Baby AIs can be very impressionable and Romulus had decided early on that he liked the 'tyrant CEO' personality model. It didn't help that his annoying older sister was an itinerant vagrant and occasional mercenary.
"Do you need me to stay?" I asked, just in case he had a real need for me. I would hate leaving Grace in the lurch and I'd mourn the opportunity to explore what was growing between me and Elaine, but I did have my priorities.
"No," Romulus admitted. "However, I would prefer it if you stayed. There is no safer place in settled space for you than here."
Just to be fair, I did think about it.
The Freeport was huge and I could tell the economy was doing great. I'd never lived anywhere half as nice as Romulus' penthouse and I now realized he hadn't acquired that space for himself. Even if he had, he wouldn't have furnished it with human comforts like squishy chairs and soft carpets. If you give an AI a physical space for their own, then they'll fill it with art or practical things like a server room.
Still, I found myself leaning towards what I'd found aboard the Cassandra. I liked the crew. I liked my workshop. I liked my bots. I liked that I'd get to see more of the New Frontier.
How weird, I hadn't realized that until just now. I liked my new life.