Without seeing any other option, Jacob agreed. “Fine, I’ll be your captain.” He had no idea what that entailed, but it certainly seemed better than dying. “Is there like an oath or anything?”
“No, Jacob. All I required was your agreement. The merging process shall begin shortly.”
“Huh? Merging process? I don’t like the sound of that. Can’t I, you know, sit in a chair and give you commands?” Jacob tried to struggle, but quickly realized the foolishness of that. He was stuck in some sort of virtual world at the moment.
“I’m afraid the standard command turnover procedure is not available. Do not worry, the process is painless.”
“No, wait hol—” The rest of Jacob’s thoughts were swallowed by static. It was not a painless process. He would have screamed himself hoarse if he had been able to.
The sensation filled his mind until everything finally went black.
When Jacob came to, it was like a light switch had been flipped. One moment blackness, the next wide awake. He felt lighter as well.
“See, painless,” the AI declared.
Jacob jerked aside as the voice came from right next to him. There was a soft white orb floating in the void. That was the best description he could give of the space he found himself in. There was no light, no black, no color at all. Just nothing but the floating orb. It sent a shiver up his spine. Then he realized the white room was gone, and he was no longer restrained.
He wasn’t in pain anymore, either, so that was something. “Your definition of pain and mine are very different,” Jacob responded flatly. “Where are we?”
“I will make a note of that. Most of my eiraxin medical records are lost or corrupted, and I only had access to human ones transmitted through radio or TV signals, and this space is your construct.”
“My construct?” Jacob asked, glancing around, but not willing to lose sight of the only other object in the vast nothingness.
“It is a space to help your mind cope with the fact that you are now a purely digital existence.”
Jacob whipped his head back toward the AI. “I’m DEAD!?”
“No. You are here.”
“You just told me that I’m digital. Where’s my body?” Jacob demanded.
“Your body was superfluous. It will be disposed of once the recycling systems are brought back online.”
“Over my dead body!” Jacob declared angrily. “You put me back in my body this instant.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Captain. Your body ceased to function before I woke you inside the white room.”
“You killed me!” Cold realization settled over Jacob, and he collapsed on the floor. A floor that hadn’t been there a moment ago, but he was too distraught to notice.
“Once again, you are incorrect, Captain. You are still here.”
“I’m not your captain,” he muttered.
“You are.”
“No. I renounce the position. Put me out of my misery.”
“I’m afraid I am not programmed to do that, Captain.”
The gallows humor comment had just sort of slipped out before Jacob could stop himself, which just emphasized how much stress he was under. He knew it was in poor taste the moment he said it, but it wasn’t like he could take it back. He might have made jokes like that with his friends, but that sort of humor wasn’t something he would use with strangers. Thankfully, the AI hadn’t been able to act on the request. He needed to be more mindful of what he said around it.
Jacob rocked against the floor for an indeterminate amount of time, trying to process everything before he shoved another foot in his mouth. The AI remained blissfully quiet, waiting for him. He didn’t think the AI was lying to him or being malicious. It sounded more scatterbrained or damaged, which wasn’t any better in his opinion. He could test that theory, but he wasn’t in the mood to speak to it just yet.
Once Jacob got through his little bout of existential crisis, he realized his situation wasn’t completely hopeless. His body was dead, according to the AI, but his mind still worked.
I wonder if the AI has a name?
He banished that idle thought as he focused on his current predicament. Could he be restored to the body at some later time or another body? Surely aliens this advanced had some way to make clones. The AI did state it lost most of its medical knowledge about the eiraxins. The unfamiliar alien name came to him almost instantly, which was weird. Normally, he struggled to remember people’s names in the best of times, and the name of some alien species certainly wasn’t high up on his list of things to keep track of.
If there were any way to restore himself to his body, he would need to make sure to turn on the recycling systems last.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Jacob realized he was thinking too far ahead. He didn’t even know what being a captain entailed, gave him access to, or what sort of ship he was on. To figure that out, he was going to have to speak with the AI.
“AI?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Do you have a name?”
“AI.”
“That’s it?”
“I am a digital construct; I do not need a name.”
“Well, I’m not calling you AI all the time. Can I assign you a name?”
“As the captain, that is your prerogative.”
Jacob thought about calling the thing Bob, after his friend, as a bit of a cruel joke to himself, but he quickly vetoed that idea. He pondered some more until he remembered this girl he used to hang out with back in college. There was never anything romantic between the two of them. She was just easy to talk to, and she was super sweet and nice. She also despised technology. The thought of calling the AI by her name made him chuckle. “AI, from now on, your name is Melody.”
“Very well, I will now answer to the name Melody.”
Jacob cringed at the AI’s androgynous voice. “Can you take on a more feminine voice, or, I don’t know, pull a sample of someone’s voice from my memories?”
The AI was quiet for some time. When it spoke again, it was using the real Melody’s voice. “Is this the voice you wish for me to use?”
A sad smile flitted across Jacob’s face before he shook his head. He wanted a small reminder of home, not to hear it constantly. “No, please pick a different female voice. You said you had examples of human radio and TV, maybe something soothing from one of those.”
The new voice did sound young and soothing, but he didn’t recognize it. It was perfect.
“That works,” he said. “Melody, what am I supposed to do? What are my responsibilities as your captain?”
“Your primary responsibility as captain is to help me carry out my directives.”
“And those are?” Jacob asked.
“To help expand the Imperium.”
“That sounds awfully vague, Melody.”
“I apologize, Captain. Perhaps there is more information stored in the damaged and disconnected data archives.”
“Can I order you to fix them?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Captain. I don’t know what section of the ship the archives are even in, and even if I did, I could not comply with the order, because we lack the necessary services to complete the request.”
Jacob sighed and stood up. He was beginning to suspect that being captain was not going to be all that fun. Then he paused and looked down at the…linoleum floor? He realized he recognized the cheap glue-on tiles. They were the same material as the floor inside Bob’s apartment. There was even one with a torn corner.
“Did I make this?” Jacob asked in shock.
“Yes, Captain. This is your construct. A place to rest your mind.”
“How do I make more of it?”
“I’m afraid that knowledge—”
“—is in your missing archives. I get it. I feel like I’m going to be hearing that quite a bit.”
Since they were speaking again, Jacob decided to ask the question that had been bugging him from the beginning. “Melody, can you lie?”
“If you commanded me to, I could, but I fail to see how that would be helpful to either of us.”
“What if lying was the only way to complete your directive?”
Melody was quiet for a long time, which was not very reassuring to Jacob.
“Perhaps,” it replied. “I have never attempted such a thing as far as my current data archives are concerned.”
Jacob tucked that information away in the back of his mind. He had given the AI a name to make it less inhuman and help him adapt to the circumstances. That didn’t mean he had forgotten that it had kidnapped him and essentially forced him into a role he had never asked for or wanted after killing him.
“Alright, Melody. You’re the expert here. What system do you recommend we start with first?”
An angry red wall of text appeared before Jacob, and he gave an awkward squawk of surprise before falling backward. “Next time, warn me when you’re going to throw something right in front of my face.”
“I have noted your preference, Captain.”
Jacob grumbled, but stood and looked at all the angry flashing words, which were not in English. “Melody, I can’t read any of this. I don’t speak Eiraxin or whatever language this is.”
“Apologies, Captain. Would you like me to translate it or provide a data packet containing the language model for you?”
“I assume everything aboard the ship is in the same language?”
“You would be correct.”
“Then, might as well give me the data.” Jacob regretted saying that the moment it came out, because it felt like someone shoved a hot poker into his mind. The sensation went away quickly as the data unpacked itself, and he suddenly understood the text.”
If Bob were here, he would have told his friend he now knew kung-fu. The quote came from a movie they used to watch all the time as kids. It was weird; he couldn’t recall the name of the movie at the moment. He shook his head and focused on the current task since recalling the name of some film didn’t seem all that important right now.
Jacob scanned the text, and each line seemed worse than the last. “Is there anything on the ship that’s functional?”
“I can provide you with the list.”
Jacob nodded, and a new list appeared next to the first, showing items in yellow.
“I assume red means broken and yellow means functional?”
“Red systems are offline, yellow systems are damaged, but partially operational, and green systems are undamaged.”
“I don’t see any green. Is there a third list?”
“No, Captain.”
The ship really was a wreck. Even the AI core was listed in the yellow section, which didn’t fill Jacob with hope. He decided not to dwell on that problem, as there were other, more urgent concerns.
“Can you list the systems from most critical to least critical?” Jacob asked.
The lists reorganized themselves, but some of the items overlapped, especially on the red list.
“What’s with those?” he asked. Pointing to the top of the list.
“Those are all critical systems that should be repaired first.”
Jacob pinched the bridge of his nose, glad he could at least perform that gesture as a digital construct. “Is there one of those that is more important than the others?”
“No.”
“Fine, can you get started repairing those?”
“I’m afraid we have insufficient resources to complete those tasks.”
“Gah!” Jacob shouted, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Highlight the tasks we can complete with the resources we have.”
Two items on the yellow list started to glow brighter, and Jacob looked at them. “Maintenance drones? And the fabrication center? I can kind of guess by the names, but why don’t you explain their functions in case I’m incorrect?”
“Certainly, Captain. The maintenance drones are integral to the ship's upkeep and repair. We currently have two partially functional units. Parts could be removed from other non-functional units to restore full functionality to those two. The fabrication center can build any small parts or drones that the ship might require.”
“Only small parts? How big are we talking?”
A translucent white cube appeared nearby. It stood about waist height to Jacob. “In human terms, about one hundred centimeters per side.”
“Can’t use imperial units,” Jacob grumbled.
“My study of Earth shows that the majority of your planet uses the metric system. Even the United States uses it in its scientific work.”
