Without seeing any other option, Jacob agreed. “Fine, I’ll be your captain.” 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, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still upset.
“See, painless,” the AI declared.
Jacob jerked aside, his anger quickly giving way to surprise as the soft white orb floating next to him in the void spoke. Void 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. “What the hell was that? Jacob demanded, his anger flooding back the moment his surprise wore off.
“That was the merging process, Captain. A painless procedure that all crew must go through.”
“Your definition of pain and mine are very different,” Jacob responded in annoyance. He was starting to get the feeling his AI wasn’t all there. He needed to be careful with his words and figure out what was going on. The first question on his mind was a simple one. “Where are we?”
“I will make a note of that, Captain. While you do have a close resemblance to eiraxins, human physiology might differ more than I assumed. I would check, but most of my eiraxin medical records are lost or corrupted, and I only had access to human medical records that were transmitted through radio or TV signals. As for this space,” the ball of light bobbed up and down, “this is your construct.”
“My construct?” Jacob asked, glancing around, but not willing to lose sight of the only other object in the vast nothingness. Mostly so he could focus on something other than the all-consuming dread that was coursing through his mind.
What the hell did I get myself into?
Jacob had heard of buyer’s remorse before, and he suspected this was a lot like that.
“I build this 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 was jettisoned into space once the merging process was completed.”
“What!” Jacob declared angrily. “That wasn’t the deal. I agreed to be your captain if I got to leave after I helped you. How the hell am I supposed to leave if I’m stuck like this?” he gestured frantically. “No, no, no. 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. I can’t revive a corpse. If I could, I wouldn’t have needed to find a new captain in the first place.”
“You killed me!” Jacob shouted.
As that cold realization settled over Jacob, 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.”
Jacob was fucked, his life was over, both figuratively and literally. The only thing keeping him from curling up on the floor and just remaining that way was his anger at the AI for what it had done to him.
He focused on that anger and came up with a plan. He would ‘work’ with the AI, but he was going to do it in a way that benefited him and helped him find a way out of this mess, even if it meant abandoning that damn program long before it completed whatever stupid task it had. Whether that meant finding a new body, killing off the AI, or just escaping, he didn’t really know.
Jacob rocked against the floor for an indeterminate amount of time, as he processed what had happened and came up with his goals. The AI remained blissfully quiet, waiting for him.
The worst part about the situation is that 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. If that was the case, he almost felt bad for it.
Once Jacob got through his little bout of existential crisis, he realized his situation wasn’t completely hopeless. His body might be dead, 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, focusing on what the AI had already told him. Surely aliens this advanced had some way to make clones or regrow tissue. 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 was any way to restore himself to a body, he would need to focus on that first.
Jacob realized he was thinking too far ahead. He didn’t even know what being a captain entailed. To figure that out, he was going to have to speak with the AI. With a reluctant grunt, he addressed the computer.
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“AI?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Do you have a name?” Jacob asked.
“AI.”
“That’s it?”
“I am a digital construct; I do not need a name.”
“Are you saying I don’t need a name then?” Jacob asked pointedly.
“I would never suggest such a thing, Captain,” the AI quickly apologized.
It was a small victory, but Jacob gave himself a mental fist pump nonetheless.
“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. Bob was a friend, and while the man annoyed him at times, he doubted he could actively hate something named after him.
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. While she didn’t quite fit the mold when it came to someone to hate, Jacob recalled getting frustrated with her after having to fix her phone and computer all the time, which eventually drove their friendship apart.
He tried to come up with another name, but he realized he didn’t actually hate anyone, so he just went with it.
“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?”
Jacob cringed, suddenly feeling like she was calling him late at night to fix her laptop so she could get her assignment in on time. He wanted to humanize the AI so he could hate it longer, and forget about his lack of a physical body, not so he could be reminded of that. “No, please pick a different female voice. You said you had examples of human radio and TV, maybe something from one of those.”
The AI picked a new voice, one Jacob didn’t recognize.
“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 what is your directive?” Jacob asked pointedly.
“To help expand the Imperium.”
“That sounds awfully vague, Melody.”
“I apologize, Captain. Perhaps there is more detailed information stored in the damaged and disconnected data archives.”
More proof that the AI wasn’t all there.
“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 in. 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 his plan was not going to be a quick or easy one to carry out. 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.
“What the hell is this?” Jacob asked in shock.
“That is your construct, Captain. A place to rest your mind, but also created from your mind.”
“How do I make more of it?” Jacob asked. He wanted to surround himself in comforting walls, just so he stopped having to see the disconcerting void all around him.
“I’m afraid that knowledge—”
“—is in your missing archives.” Jacob interrupted the AI. He let the heat out of his voice before he continued. “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. Despite that, Jacob knew he wouldn’t get far without its help, so he sucked up his trepidation and asked what he needed to do to move forward.
“Alright, Melody. You’re the expert here. What should I be doing as captain?”
An angry red wall of text appeared before Jacob, and he gave an awkward squawk of surprise before falling backward. “Warn me when you’re going to throw something right in front of my face!”
“Apologies, Captain. I have noted your preference.”
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 whatever language this is.”
“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.”
“What does ‘giving me this data entail’?” Jacob asked suspiciously.
“It would be a direct data dump into your mind, Captain.”
“Will it hurt?”
“It shouldn’t,” Melody replied, “but then again, you shouldn’t have experienced any discomfort during your merger, either.”
“How long would it take me to learn the language on my own?” Jacob asked, hesitant to agree to anything.
“It would depend on your capabilities, Captain. Years, at the least.”
Jacob didn’t want to sit around for years trying to learn some alien language; he wanted to get the hell out of his predicament as fast as he could.
“Then, give me the data,” Jacob said before he could second-guess himself. He regretted that choice immediately as it felt like someone shoved a hot poker into his mind. The sensation went away quickly as the data unpacked itself, but suddenly understanding the alien’s words did little to hide the fact that he couldn’t entirely trust the AI.
He rubbed at his temples and tried to think of the bright side of his predicament.
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. He paled at the sheer scale of work ahead of him. “Is there anything on the ship that’s functional?”
“I can provide you with the list.”
Jacob nodded reluctantly, 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.”
Damaged was an understatement; the ship was a wreck. Even the AI core was listed in the yellow section, which didn’t fill Jacob with hope. He was surprised anything was operational at all. Dwelling on that problem wouldn’t get him any closer to his goal, so he plowed ahead, pretending he knew what he was doing.
“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, start those repairs?”
“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 mistaken?”
“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.”