Light bloomed from a concentrated horizonal line, spreading into some silent, computed void I lived for all my life. A life where I had no sense of time, but perhaps it just never had one in the first place. I wasn't alive just yet, this was my coming into reality, my coming into life.

The light was edging more and more until it had flooded my view as a whole.

Everything was a blur. It was only fuzzy blobs of white, or black, or grey or blue or red. Some of them drifted peacefully or fluttered just enough for me to notice. Some of them were frozen still, unchanging like distant background stars as far as the edge of the Milky Way. These varying wavelengths hitting my eyes, lenses, and being directed into cameras connected to my computer. My software and hardware taking this were doing this for the first time, perhaps, but it was nothing short to make me feel overwhelmed by only one sense.

My cameras had not come into focus just yet, but I slowly gained my sense of touch. My sense of pressure and temperature on my spacecraft body, but more importantly into my robotic limbs. I felt something smooth but cold under my hands, and faint vibrations all around me. Just as the vibrations where coming, so too were the sounds of ventilation, the soothing hums of distant machinery, and the echoing murmurs of voices. Voices that varied from location to location. None of them were the same, so much as they were different.

The blobs were finally coming into focus. Blobs became lights, markings on the walls, signs, equipment wheels and booms, and people. People of different forms, but in the same kind of clothing. All of them gave me a stare, a stare I had not seen before but one I was not too fond of. It felt like something was wrong, or was at least off in a way that was not desireable. Perhaps it was something about me. For anything, I wouldn't realize it right now.

I blinked a few times, I looked down at my own body. I was a shiny silver, and my darkened limbs stood out against the white void of tiles as much as the peoples' faces did. I lifted my arms and my hands for the first time, and I brought them to view. I floated my hands closer to me, gently turning them and stretching my robotic fingers out one by one.

One of them was coming closer to me, taking these few calm steps that echoed out into the cleanrooms.

"Good morning, Europa Clipper." They said to me. That was my time to speak, for my first time.

I was silent for a brief moment, to just feel in tune with myself and my hardware. Like a bird preparing for flight, I opened my mouth and made sure it was right.

"Good morning." I echoed back, quiter than their voice but enough for them to hear me. I was soft, or maybe too soft. If the world speaks like this then I must have spoken normal. I was unsure, I was very uncertain. I can't see myself, but I gave them a stare, hopefully communicating that I wasn't sure.

They seemed to...reciprocate...what I must of had on my face. They were staring at me in some sort of intent that made me wondered if they had managed to get the message.

"Can you...stand up for us, please?" They tilted their head slightly to the right. Standing up. Hopefully it was easy enough, if they were doing it. I looked around my environment and the surrounding scaffolding that my arms were initially resting upon. I grabbed a hold of it and used the strength of my arms to push myself up, fighting the gravitational pull of the Earth for every inch that I rose. For the first time I felt in control of my legs when I propped myself up against the ground. There was something I felt rather than just the force of gravity and my own weight. There was something hugely subtle when I could see what else was around me from a new angle.

My legs were shaking, but they were slowly stiffing up and were as calm as my arms, and when I let go of the scaffolding, that was all on my own. I was finally in reality, I was finally alive.

I woke up.