#volescu

I could have asked for more information, because that was something I’d become more neutral to over the years; subjects that strayed away from media or my little pack of humans. It was still strange, though, getting the burst of warmth in my organic neural tissue at random when I discovered that some new knowledge was actually interesting and worth retaining in my archives. 

Instead of asking, I reached toward the closest fauna in the framed and fenced-in enclosure. Fauna had become less stressful to interact with over time, which was probably all that repeat exposure to the small furry fauna my humans seemed to prefer. I couldn’t say that I “got it” exactly, but sometimes they were kind of funny to watch. Not to mention, humans did love to anthropomorphize them in ways that made me feel sympathetic to the small fauna many of my humans kept in their dwellings. 

At my touch, the small winged creature rose a little from the slender cylindrical rod that ran horizontally from one side of the enclosure to the other, and it spread its alternating dark and pale grey wings to flap them once, then twice in quick succession. I withdrew my hand quickly. 

“Watch,” Volescu said quietly, showing me how and where to touch. 

I tried again, brushing just the pad of one index finger over the feathered creature’s tiny head. It was sort of funny how most fauna seemed to enjoy head pats and head scratches, even humans themselves. To my surprise, it stepped carefully into my palm after a long moment of gentle, smooth pets of its ovular head. 

Expecting its tiny claws to hurt at least a little, I was fascinated to find that I hardly noticed. I could feel the vibrations of its soft cooing noises against my palms, and there was some strange urge in my organic parts to lift it to my face and press its downy, feathered body to my cheek. The instinctive trust it seemed to have of beings so much larger than itself, of even someone like me, did something to my insides. 

“You know, pre-interstellar travel, humans used these birds to send messages to each other.” Volescu’s face scrunched thoughtfully. “Well, these birds’ genealogical ancestor, at least. Wealthy people and community leaders, or battlefield commanders in need of quick communication.” 

I couldn’t help the face I made at this information. “Birds to send messages, instead of through the feed?” I knew there were other pre-interstellar travel words for what the feed had become in the present, but that was far less interesting than what Volescu was telling me now. 

“This was pre-feed, if you can believe it,” he was explaining, a strange smile on his face like it was hard to believe such a time had existed. Perhaps people hundreds of thousands of years into the future will think the same about us, someday. 

“The other options weren’t much better,” he continued. “Smoke signals and flag signals were used for distances within the range of the human eye. Some humans would even ride on animals bred for travel to carry their messages back and forth. Humanity didn’t make their lives easier on that front until they figured out how to transmit messages with electricity, about seven hundred years pre-interstellar travel. And it was roughly a century after that before anything close to the feed would be in common human use.” 

I didn’t know that much about human history, because why would I, when humans loved to talk about themselves so much? It saved a lot of storage space to ask half a question to the right human. They would tell me anything I wanted to know, and sometimes a lot of things I hadn’t asked at all when their excitement got the best of them. It was why I let Volescu continue as I slowly shifted my hands so that I could stroke the top of the fauna’s sleek, feathered head once more. 

“Humans built structures just for them,” Volescu was saying as he gestured to the wire-mesh enclosure around us. “Sometimes at the very top of their dwellings. They called them ‘dovecotes’. But keeping pigeons, particularly for sending messages, fell out of use and popularity as other forms of communication grew. It became a hobbyist’s occupation.” 

The small creature cooing in my hands didn’t know it was a member of a species that wouldn’t exist in the present day, if not for people like Volescu. It didn’t know and probably couldn’t even conceive that trillions of short fauna lifetimes ago, its existence was necessary for function, maybe even required, until one day something else could do it better. 

Volescu’s face changed a little as he looked at me again, the facial recognition program patch in my drone diagnosing his expression as ‘concerned’. “Are you okay, SecUnit?” 

“Does it have a name?” I don’t know why I asked that. Alright, maybe I knew a little. It had become harder to remain purposefully ignorant of my (ugh) feelings the longer I had been continuously operating, which was fucking annoying.