I happen to have written a story along similar lines about three months ago to publish in the Kindle store. If you'll excuse the fact that it wasn't written with this specific OP in mind, here it is:
DOMBEY-9000 by J. G. McGovern
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. —Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach”
When Dr Hillia Priest entered Room 32 of Accommodation Block C on the top level of Observation Platform Hitchens, she was not even slightly surprised to find Dr Gel Eliot playing a recording of Handel’s “Sarabande” to a robot.
“Hello, Hillia.”
Gel Eliot was stretched out on her single bunk, her hair spread and tangled across the pillow, her eyes closed, as the music filled the small room like a sweet expansive echo from another age—it seemed to Gel delightful that a composition from over a thousand years in the past, in this case the 4th movement from Handel’s “Keyboard suite in D minor”, could still please the ears of a roboticist trapped on a research platform in a lonely region of space.
Outside, beyond the thick observation glass, the storm raged.
Gel’s room was a standard accommodation unit measuring about six metres across and five metres wide, but like all workers on the Platform she had been allowed to customise it somewhat; one of the walls was hung with a print of a work by Bysek, the famous 25th century painter. Tallian, tamer of the waves. It was considered to be one of Bysek’s minor works, yet Gel thought it one of his greatest. Around the godlike man the white waves crashed, yet he stood on them as if they were unmoving ice, a plinth carved from water.
“He was really something, wasn’t he?” said Hillia.
“Hmm?” Eliot adjusted her pillow and glanced at the woman that had seated herself on the edge of the bed, who turned out to be staring at the painting. “The painter or the model?”
“I guess both.”
Eliot’s eyes roamed across the painting; the model certainly was a fine figure. Ringlets of white hair, like sea-foam, curled over his brow, above a pair of mother-of-pearl eyes, and his hand was clutching a copy of the Chiasmus.
Gel Eliot then turned her stare upon the robot and said: “What do you think of the painting?”
The robot’s name was Dombey, or to be more precise, Dombey-9000; that is to say it was a member of the 9000 series designed, engineered and manufactured by the United Robotics Corporation back on Earth. All robots generally had their model numbers attached to their names, a reminder to their human creators and owners that the robots were not, and never would be, truly sentient beings.
It was a fine machine; Dombey was humanoid but clearly not human; yet from a distance it may have appeared human, or perhaps angelic would be a better word, for Dombey’s skin was of a pure consistent white, and its every line was guided by symmetry. Like all robots owned by the University of New Lincoln, it was dressed in a purple uniform with the gold university emblem.
“The painting, Dr Eliot?”
“Yes, Dombey. The painting. Earth masterpiece. What do you think?”
The robot’s voice was a smooth, gentle, but textureless tenor: “It was painted by Edvvard Bysek, the official painter of the Anglo-Chinese Empire in the 25th century. Art critics frequently comment on Byzek’s unusually shaped brushstrokes, an effect which he produced by means of his famous holographic brush technique. It has been suggested that the model of the painting, Thom Chang, was Bysek’s lover, although there is little evidence to support this speculation. It is also noted—”
“Excellent.” Eliot couldn’t help but allow a certain bitterness to enter her voice as she interrupted Dombey-9000. “Full marks. Ten out of ten. Faultless.”
Priest touched Eliot’s shoulder. “Come on, it’s lunchtime. You need a break.”
Eliot sighed and climbed out of the bunk, stretching out her pale neck. She was a not unattractive woman of about fifty, and yet the eight months on board Observation Platform Hitchens had taken their toll. The door slid open as Priest touched the release switch; before leaving, Eliot turned back to Dombey.
“Dombey, would you like to join us for lunch?”
“Thank you, but it is not necessary, Dr Eliot.”
“I know it isn’t necessary.” Her voice was biting. “I’ve completed a doctorate in robotics and I am well aware that robots do not need to fill their mouths with food. I was asking if you wanted to join us.”
“I am grateful for your repeated attempts to get me to engage in social interaction with humans, Dr Eliot, and I hope I do not seem disrespectful when I ask you this: is there is a reason for your continued efforts?”
Eliot touched a fingertip to her bulging forehead. “No, Dombey. Don’t worry about it.” She turned to Dr Priest. “OK, I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
Observation Platform Hitchens had quite a basic design, consisting of stacked rings, yet it was equipped with highly advanced sensing equipment. It had been built with the capacity to hold nearly five hundred students in addition to fifty members of staff—both academic and otherwise. Yet most of the Platform was automated, and the department had not wished to cover the cost of sending more than the five scientists when it was unnecessary.
The two women stopped near the entrance to the elevator and stood before a wide window; Gel Eliot sighed and pressed her forehead against the glass. It was a pillar of white fire, a cloud of exploded, exploding matter, a glow, a glow of pure, inexplicable energy. All of the evidence gathered by the computers suggested that the solar system would soon be entirely consumed by the white storm. The system, of course, was uninhabited, so no lives were endangered, but Eliot was nevertheless overawed by the power of the thing: it felt like a sign, a portent, a vision of the future . . . as she watched it through the ship’s glass, it was as if transfigured, made into a god not unlike Tallian in the painting, manipulating infinite space as that invincible deity would the waves.
The purpose of their mission had been, on paper, simple—they were to take readings of the ion storm and produce a detailed report about the cause, or causes. And yet, eight months later, the physicists had very little to show for their efforts. Even Dombey-9000, an immensely powerful calculating machine, had been unable to provide much help. The thing, the great storm, seemed impervious to analysis, thwarting their efforts like the historical god picking the wheels off Pharaoh’s chariots.
They would have to leave the station soon, Eliot realised. The storm, like the inexorable waves of an indifferent sea filing down mighty cliffs until they crumbled and were consumed, was slowly wearing down the defences of the Observation Platform. The force-fields still held strong, but it was only a matter of weeks until they began to fail; already they were showing signs of doing so.
“Does it ever occur to you that we might have been lucky to end up here . . . on this impossible mission, trying to solve this unsolvable puzzle?”
“Sometimes I think you’re actually insane. Why on Earth—I wish we were on Earth—why in space would I think that? I only agreed to come here because there was no funding to do anything else. And it doesn’t look like we’re going to make any real progress before we have to leave.”
“But the . . . mechanisation, the deforestation, the endless expansion of the megacity, on every major world. . . . I love humans, on the whole, but . . . don’t you feel that we were lucky to escape all of that, even for just a few months? We have all that we need here: we have food, water and oxygen to last for a hundred years, we have each other for company, and—best of all—we have the library, a library containing digital copies of every book ever printed in the galaxy, as well as physical copies of thousands. Without the storm, we could have lived and died in peace here.”
Priest shuddered. She always said to Laans and the others that Eliot had a morbid strain in her. The two women boarded the elevator and repaired to the canteen, sitting down at a steel table at which the other three inhabitants of the base were already seated. The canteen was spacious enough to seat half of the base’s capacity, but it had been reconfigured so they could all sit together at a large table in the centre.
“Good afternoon, Dr Eliot,” said Anasta Tomalin. “Have you taught that robot how to generate a symphony yet? To compute a landscape? To synthesise a poem? To calculate a sonnet?”
Dr Eliot sighed and said nothing, stirring her meal with cold metal cutlery. The food was nutritious yet bland, a thick, unappetising porridge of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals—it contained everything one needed to survive and to keep oneself in optimal health, but it did nothing for the tastebuds. Breakfast was the meal she looked forward to—a sugary muffin washed down with black coffee.
“Why are you so interested in playing with that thing?” said Olivi, fixing her dark, almost black eyes upon Eliot. “You’re not that starved for male company, surely?”
“Dombey isn’t male,” Eliot replied curtly.
“And yet you want him to be a real man.”
“Nonsense.”
“Really? Then why do you spend hours on end with it? Why sing it arias and teach it Milton? Why force it to cycle through every Old Master in its databanks?”
*Reddit won't let me post any more than 10,000 characters, but if you PM me I'll send you the rest. **