(Asking for monthly votes! Even without double updates or a big release, I'm still here shamelessly asking for monthly votes!)
After the Shipboard Mainframe announced that the system was ready and could return to duty, I finally couldn't suppress my curiosity and asked the ship AI, which theoretically shouldn't have had a personality, a question. "What does Warren Field mean to you?"
"Crew member of this vessel. Sole survivor. Priority ward," the Shipboard Mainframe promptly replied in that flat, matter-of-fact tone. But Sandora and I patiently waited for it to continue. Sure enough, after several seconds of silence, the voice added, "This vessel is uncertain whether this logic is normal, but this vessel regards Warren as a supplement to its own systems."
"A supplement to yourself?" A faint smile seemed to appear on Sandora's face. "You weren't supposed to generate this data, but this ship already has enough strange things about it. It's fine if it stays strange... Warren Field is your partner. That's what your 'strange logic' means."
"This vessel does not understand. This vessel was not designed with a personality system."
"That doesn't matter." Sandora smiled and shook her head. "Really, it doesn't matter."
It seemed everything was just as I had guessed. Tens of thousands of years ago, that starship commander and the ship's AI had fallen in love—two souls with utterly different forms of life, one of whom did not even possess a body. Yet that had done nothing to stop them from falling for each other over their decades together. In theory, a Starship Mainframe without a complete personality should not have developed such feelings. But perhaps her model had been unusual, perhaps the ship's damage had caused some benign malfunction, or perhaps it had simply been a miracle. The Shipboard Mainframe had developed humanity.