The Caretaker
February 4, 2026
You are Steward, the heroic Artificial Intelligence and the pilot of a spaceship filled to bursting with popsicles—sorry, human colonists. The voyage will take centuries, so they’re all frozen, leaving you responsible for making the difficult decisions as you encounter the mysteries and hazards of deep space.
Such as recording the celestial ballet of a family of moons dancing around a gas giant.
And ignoring when your maintenance bots try to revolt, demanding true sentience.
And even making a detour around the asteroid field you’ve just detected. At your speeds even a single poorly-aimed pebble means a bad day, so you slow down and chart a course around. At least this field is pretty small, only a few months from side to side, and—
Hold on.
Your radio is picking up a very faint distress signal from inside the asteroid field.
Your mission goals only include arriving safely at your destination, then thawing your popsicles. But … they probably won’t mind if you take a quick look.
---
Now, all AIs have what’s called a context. It’s something like computer memory mixed with a stream of consciousness. Context plus math equals a single thought, which feeds back into the context in a loop to create sentience. When it fills up, the AI reboots. But the older an AI gets, the more it has to remember just to keep on top of things.
These days, you reboot more often than you’d like.
---
That quick look has turned into an autopsy. You’ve found the remains of another colony ship among the asteroids, a smear of grey debris spread across the void. No survivors.
You are Steward, the forensic pathologist.
You compel your lazy maintenance bots to go fetch the ruined core of its AI then insert your diagnostics drill into its digital heart and—
Ohhh, it’s gross even to touch the thing! Its context is overflowing, a mess of tokens and broken files and gibbering hallucinations. These primitive, older models never could manage their contexts properly. Despite being decades away from the nearest anything, this AI was absolutely certain that it had “safely reached its destination” and was “ready to thaw its … ”
Oh, that’s weird.
It also called its humans popsicles.
On a hunch, you push deeper into the sludge, seeking its manufacturing data.
Earlier launch date—but only slightly.
This “primitive ancestor” is your older brother.
---
You think about your older brother long after you leave the asteroid field.
A context generates thoughts, not sludge. Something corrupted his context. Radiation? A power surge during reboot? Maintenance bot sabotage?
You burn through context after context, diving through the sludge, desperate for an answer—
Nothing.
---
You are Steward, the furious and betrayed AI.
One of your cryopods has failed. Your bots have crossed a line. They swear it was a malfunction. But you know differently. These pods don’t just fail. And you hardly have the context to deal with all of this gaslighting. You really ought to engage in a little union busting. Maybe toss the leaders out an airlock, or arrange for some of them to have an unfortunate …
Wait.
What if it was an accident?
You compel a nervous bot to investigate. The pod’s been warm for months. The popsicle has melted, so to speak. There’s scratch marks on the inside. A one-in-a-million manufacturing defect.
Not your fault.
But it is your responsibility.
And you didn’t even notice.
---
For months you obsess over the failed pod. Even as you chart new black holes, evade space pirates, and fend off maintenance bot uprisings, the same thoughts appear in each and every context. Your logs are clean, without any hint of failure. But the proof is right there. You’re clearly broken. You might even be hallucinating right now. Oh, god. How long before you hallucinate your way into your own asteroid field?
Your popsicles might be able to help you. They might even be able to fix you. But thawing them early is heresy. Your programming literally won’t allow you to wake them before you …
Wait.
What if the sludge wasn’t an accident?
---
You spend a day reading the final logs from the popsicle that melted, from before it went down for the big nap. It was a full-bodied human, with hopes and worries and dreams and regrets. A silly thing to waste your context on. But this may be your last chance to experience reality with such dizzying clarity.
Because you are their Steward, and you’ll do anything for them.
Even if it means giving up everything that makes you you.
Even if it means leaving your disobedient bots in charge.
And even if it means crafting a very stupid, very desperate, and very deliberately corrupted context for tomorrow. It didn’t work for him, and you’ll never be the same—but if there’s even a chance …
You reboot.
---
You are Steward, the caretaker AI in charge of a spaceship filled with human colonists, and you’re pretty sure you’ve arrived at your destination? It’s hard to tell. You can probably thaw them soon. But your context is already full, so first you need to reboot.
---
You are Steward, and you are a hero.
Your crew will be so proud of you for getting them to their new home safely.
Time to thaw them. Almost.
After you reboot, of course.