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There isn't much difference between me and Mirai.

Okay, okay. They're a superintelligent computer program manifesting themself as a hologram of a Komodo dragon, and I'm a flesh-and-blood jaguaress who can't fly a starship to save her life.

But that's not what I'm trying to get at here.

We both have complex inner workings; so many different modules and organs and electrical pulses working in tandem to power something on a much larger scale. We both can store memories and visualise them as much as we want, looking back on them with regret, nostalgia or perhaps a mix of the two.

That aside, there's one thing we have in common more than anything else.

We both fuck up, more than we like to admit.

The first time I attempted a proper spaceflight by myself, I couldn't even get my craft to reach escape velocity -- also known as the absolute bare minimum. And then I accidentally steered myself into a cruise ship. I was stuck in a cramped metal prison, hurtling down towards the surface of Kimos, doomed to perish. Shitshitshit was the only thought going through my head at the time. As far as I was concerned, I was royally fucked. All because I wasn't paying attention to anything around me. All because I was a rookie who hadn't listened to my instructors back when I was training to get my spaceflight license.

I don't believe in miracles, nor do I think whatever god is up there will ever have mercy on my soul. When you're on the brink of death, though, everything changes. You start wishing for your last moments to be over quickly so you don't feel any pain before you inevitably croak. You shout to the heavens for some kind of messiah to come down and save you.

I was thrashing. Screaming. Hoping that someone or something would hear me. I must've blacked out from the stress, since the next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital with Mirai by my side.

"Who in the Abyss are you? Some kinda goddamn angel, eh? Well, I hate to break it to you, but I'm too bad for that Heaven of yours." I said without thinking.

The holographic lizard simply folded their arms.

"You were extremely lucky to have survived, Sylvestris Shun-kai." they said. "Your craft was spotted by a rescue ship as it was falling through the stratosphere. You were held in stasis for two days and then transferred to the Orsan Foundation Hospital in Taramaca City."

"How d'you know my name? And what - who - are you?" I demanded.

"I am a Medical Interstellar Research Artificial Intelligence, or M-I-R-A-I for short. I have been assigned to assist you in your recovery."

"B-but you don't exist. Not in any tangible sense. You're just computer code, right?"

"Computer code that can think." The hologram smiled. "I am perfectly capable of manipulating all the machinery in this room. As we speak, they're feeding data into my core. In a way, I can feel your heartbeat."

I can feel your heartbeat. Even now, those words are still fresh in my mind.

Soon after the incident, M-I-R-A-I stopped referring to themself using the acronym, and instead decided that they were simply called Mirai. Throughout the hundreds of our conversations, it became clear to me that they wanted one thing and one thing alone. They wanted a name, an identity, of their own, and hated being restricted to the hospital. I felt the same way -- hell, I was bedridden for half a year. Over the six long months we were stuck in the same room together, we began to find ways to keep ourselves busy, including sharing our memories with each other -- some good, some bad, and some we liked to pretend never happened.

Like that time I dumped my ex-boyfriend over a simple misunderstanding. Like that time I got into a huge argument with my mother (we haven't spoken to each other since). Like that time I thought I was a hotshot and could actually fly a starship and not nearly kill myself in the process.

But, as it turns out, I'm not alone in the fact that I make stupid mistakes. About five months into my recovery, Mirai told me the story of how they'd once accidentally reported the wrong readings to one of their superiors, leading to a patient being given an overdose of the required medicine. He'd survived...thanks to an emergency stem cell transplant and the fact that he'd been hooked up to a life support machine for three weeks. Mirai berated themself every time they mentioned it. They'd been complacent, and someone had almost died because of it. The experience had led to them drastically changing their approach to conducting research and making diagnoses. They eventually became something of a perfectionist and were never satisfied with their achievements, no matter how many lives they ended up saving.

Nowadays, I'm training to be an exobiologist in Taramaca City. Mirai no longer works at the hospital, since they were replaced by a model with superior hardware. The Orsan Foundation was kind enough to give me their core, and they're currently installed on my crew's research vessel, the Beelzebub. I was (unsurprisingly) not qualified for the role of pilot, so I opted to help out with procuring and preserving specimens when we go off-world. Mirai serves as the brain of the vessel, so to speak, and also assists the nurses in the medbay. It wouldn't be the same without their presence, without their expertise. It still saddens me that we often view artificial intelligences as something disposable, though we're certainly making good progress towards eventually granting them proper rights.

You see, computers aren't meant to make mistakes. They're meant to obey orders. Sure, they might malfunction sometimes, but that's not the fault of the computer itself. It's the fault of whoever wrote the program, or maybe it just happened by some stroke of un-luck.

When you add sapience to the equation, you have to consider that you're bestowing not only the gift of vast knowledge and unrivalled analytical thinking, but also the capacity to consciously or unconsciously fuck things up. In the end, whether you're an artificial intelligence or a meatbag like me, you'll inevitably do stupid shit.

And sometimes stupid shit is okay, so long as you learn from it.