Jacob had to pause. He was pretty sure the AI had just taken a dig at the U.S. for not adopting the metric system. Honestly, it was probably justified. The whole imperial units of measure were dumb. He had grown up learning them in school, and he couldn’t even recall half of them. Like, how long was a mile in feet? Getting caught on something so minor seemed wrong, considering his lack of a physical body, but focusing on the absurdity of it all helped him cope.
“Melody, I would like the drones to repair themselves and get started on the fabrication center.”
“I’m afraid I cannot carry out those orders,” Melody said in a flat tone.
Jacob ground his teeth. “Why not? No, wait,” he held up his hand. “Let me guess. The information on how to do that was in your missing archives?”
“No, Captain. I could give the units their orders, and they would carry them out to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, that’s the problem. With their systems being as degraded as they are, they would only further damage themselves. I would suggest manual repairs before automating the drones for any such tasks.”
“Can’t you handle the manual portion?” Jacob asked, realizing he probably already knew the answer.
“I am capable of moving the units, but my programming prevents me from doing any direct repairs. I can only provide the units with an order from a qualified crew member.”
Jacob frowned at that. “If that’s the case, how did you order the science thingy that came and got me?”
If his plan to escape from the AI had any chance of success, he needed to know how the AI thought and its capabilities.
“Are you referring to the science drone that brought you aboard?” Melody asked.
Jacob nodded. “What else would I be referring to?”
“When the ship is not under combat alert or underway, part of my duties include specimen collection. That is how I was able to command the science drones.”
Jacob was pretty sure the AI just referred to him as a specimen. That seemed rather derogatory, considering what it abducted him for. It was a stark reminder that he was essentially a tool for the AI so it could complete its mission. Well, two could play at that game. He filed the observation away for later and continued his line of questioning.
“You said the drones would need to be operated manually. I assume I would have to do that then?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And how exactly would I go about doing that without a body?”
An odd-tracked robot seemed to build itself within Jacob’s digital space. The thing had certainly seen better days. One of the tracks was missing completely, and the other looked to be half gone, with wires protruding from whatever material made up the tracks. It wasn’t black, so he assumed it wasn’t rubber, but he could be wrong. One of the arms on the upper portion was broken as well, and hanging by a tangle of wires as it dangled against the ground. A cluster of lenses or cameras poked out of the top of the unit, the lights within them flickering fitfully as if the thing could die at any moment.
“This is a maintenance drone. Once you merge with it, you will be able to control it with your mind or send it orders directly. I would strongly suggest you don’t do the latter, however, or that has a high likelihood of damaging the unit further.”
“Okay,” Jacob said hesitantly. “Um… Are you sure this one is even worth fixing?” Jacob asked as he examined the unit.
“The drones are highly modular, Captain. You should be able to swap out parts from other damaged drones aboard the ship. The one you are looking at is the least damaged of the two. The other is immobile,” Melody helpfully provided.
Jacob had no idea how to fix stuff, nor was he mechanically inclined. That didn’t change the fact that he was the only one aboard who could tackle this task.
With no other option, he turned to the floating orb of light that represented the AI. “So, are you going to guide me on how to fix it, or do I have to figure it out myself?”
“I have the knowledge and could guide you, but that would be inefficient. A better way would be to provide you with the necessary data to carry out the task.”
“Like with the language?” Jacob asked hesitantly. He wasn’t sure he wanted to experience that sort of pain again anytime soon. “I think I’ll pass. It did not feel good to have knowledge shoved into my mind.”
Melody was silent for a bit, maybe searching its databanks for an answer. When its silence dragged on a bit too long, Jacob got worried. He needed the AI if he wanted to live long enough to escape.
“Melody?”
“Yes, Captain?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Why did you go silent?”
“I was attempting to find a solution to the dilemma you presented me with.”
“What dilemma?”
“My programming states that I must protect the crew, but that I must also carry out my directive as quickly and efficiently as possible. Because you have stated that the data transfer causes you pain, I must find an alternative solution. One that is more efficient than passing an unqualified individual such as yourself directions and hoping for the best, as you humans like to say.”
Wow! Not only had the AI shit on Jacob’s capabilities with that response, but it also shit on humanity as a whole.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Jacob replied flatly, hoping to get the reticent computer to move forward.
“You are mistaken, Captain. I estimate that it would take you three Earth years to repair one drone with me guiding you.”
“I know I’m not familiar with your systems, but I’m not that stupid. How could it take that long to repair one drone?”
“I would never claim that you were, Captain, but my estimates are correct. Only qualified individuals are allowed to do manually assisted maintenance tasks. To train you properly would take two years and eleven months, and I have estimated that the drone repair would take a few days to a month, depending on available resources.”
Jacob rubbed his head in annoyance. Of course, the stupid AI was a stickler for rules.
He glanced back at the flickering lights in the drone’s eyes. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”
“No, Captain. It’s an indication that the unit’s power core is nearing depletion. I would estimate that it has a day or two of charge remaining before that drone ceases to function.”
Panic flooded through Jacob at that revelation. If that drone stopped functioning, he would be out of luck.
“Fine,” he said. “Give me whatever engineering information I need. Not just for the drone, but for everything. If I’m going to do this, I only want to have to do it once.”
Melody gave no warning; it simply shoved the data into his mind. The pain that shot through his head was ten times worse than before, and when he finally regained his senses, he found himself lying on the floor, digital tears and drool pooling below him.
As soon as that realization hit him, the liquids vanished, and he stood up, feeling slightly wrung out. He took a few minutes to rub at his aching head, but he didn’t wait for the pain to go away before he moved forward.
Jacob picked at his memories as the pain slowly subsided and found that he now knew exactly how to operate the drones, as well as a whole host of other ship systems. He still didn’t understand the underlying technology behind any of it, but he didn’t need that knowledge to fix something. There was definitely going to be a learning curve he would have to get over, but he picked himself up off the ground and pushed any concern he felt to the back of his mind. It was do or die, and he wasn’t about to die.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
After picking himself up off the ground, Jacob stepped up to the image of the robot within his digital prison and hesitated a moment. “Will connecting cause me pain?”
“I do not know, Captain.”
Jacob grimaced at Melody’s candid response, but he took a deep breath and placed his hand on the image of the drone as he closed his eyes. The instructions Melody had given him were clear on that point. The sensation was so very alien. It felt like his mind was plugged into something. When he opened his eyes once again, he was looking through the sensors of the drone. Then came the ‘pain’.
He knew that would happen thanks to the info packet, but the data failed to mention what it would feel like. It was weird. He felt like he had a broken arm, a broken leg, eyes that could barely focus, and he was tired. So tired. Yet, it wasn’t pain, so to speak. At least not the same type of simulated pain from his virtual prison.
He took a moment to adjust to all the new sensations and inputs. The hardest part wasn’t getting used to the phantom pains; it was trying to wrap his mind around all the sensor data being fed back to him. Seeing in infrared and ultraviolet was a novel experience, but hardly groundbreaking technology. The issue was that every single sensor input was laid over itself at the same time. It made for a confusing jumble of images that took his mind time to process.
Jacob eventually figured out how to disable certain inputs, leaving only the ones he needed active. That solved the focus issue, but not the tiredness. He assumed that the last one was due to the unit’s failing power supply.
“Excellent work, Captain. According to my existing data logs, it can take some technicians days or weeks to successfully merge with a drone, but you did it on the first try with a damaged unit.”
“Thanks,” Jacob responded flatly. “I feel extremely tired. Is that due to the power supply?”
“It is, Captain.”
That was good to know, but it didn’t really help him resolve that problem. “Can you tell me where I can locate a working power supply?”
A helpful line popped up, leading off into the dark bowels of the ship. It reminded Jacob of those augmented reality glasses that tech companies back on Earth kept trying to make happen. He tried a pair out at some convention once, and while neat, they weren’t worth the cost.
Jacob tried to get the unit to move forward, but his efforts weren’t very successful. The drone instantly started shifting toward the side with the broken tread.
Jacob sighed. He had his work cut out for him. Before he got too far, a thought struck him. “Melody, I know you said you didn’t want to give them automated orders to prevent them from damaging themselves, but couldn’t you have moved the drones without causing damage?”
“I can only give them general commands to go to certain parts of the ship, Captain. With some effort, I can get them near their target, but with their damage, even that is too much of a risk. That is how one of the drones became stuck, and the one you are in is in such rough shape. My efforts to get them to the bridge nearly rendered all the maintenance drones inoperable. They simply aren’t equipped to handle complex commands outside their scope of work. Since there is only one functioning drone left that isn’t stuck, I determined that continuing my efforts would be fruitless, so I stopped and waited until a biological operator could do the work.”
Jacob thought the damage had more to do with the AI simply not understanding the drone’s limitations, but he kept that thought to himself. He also didn’t miss the AI using the word ‘biological’ instead of human. He suspected the damaged AI wasn’t picky about who it picked to help it. He let that train of thought go as he struggled forward. The faster he got this done, the better.
After an hour of repeatedly shimmying forward, then lifting his broken side with his good arm to turn himself so he could do it all again, he finally reached the end of the projected line. The drone it was pointing to had been partially crushed under a falling beam of metal.
Luckily, the main chassis area was undamaged and unburied. Jacob reached out with his good robot arm and ejected the power core from the crushed unit. The core had a shape similar to a battery you might find in a TV remote, only ten times larger, and with a whole lot of electronic wizardry encasing it.
Jacob wondered how they were made. An advanced alien power supply could change the world, assuming he could bring it to Earth. He tucked that idea away for later. There were probably going to be quite a few technologies he would want to take with him once he regained a body.
After gently prying the power core from the dead machine, Jacob held it up in triumph. Thanks to a built-in indicator, he knew the device was about fifty percent full. When he went to replace his current battery, he realized he had a problem. He only had one arm. He looked at the damaged unit in front of him to see if it could offer a spare, but both its arms were little more than scrap metal.
Jacob gently set the power core on the floor. Then he reached up to his own chest, but stopped and searched his newfound memories. One thing Melody had failed to mention was that the implanted memories weren’t like his own. He had the knowledge, but it wasn’t like he had suddenly spent years being an engineer. The information had to be actively searched if he wanted to make use of it. After spending a few minutes fruitlessly digging through the new data and not finding an answer, he decided to ask.
“Melody, how long can a maintenance drone remain active if its core is ejected?”
“As a safety feature, it would power down immediately.”
“Of course, it would,” Jacob grumbled. “Melody, I need a map to the other operational drone.”
A new line appeared, and it curved back the way he came.
Frustration bubbled up from within him at having to make the difficult trip back, but then he glanced down at the broken drone. He tilted the robot’s head and chuckled. No sound came from the damaged machine’s audio processor, but if it had, he would have sounded demented. Jacob didn’t care. The partially crushed drone had a pair of perfectly good tracks.
It was the first good thing that had gone his way since he woke up.
After tucking the power core out of the way so it was safe from damage, Jacob got to work removing the tracks from the dead unit. At first, he tried to be gentle about it, but he quickly realized how futile that was.
After some furious swearing, he took a step back and assessed his options. He found out that his good arm contained a laser cutter. It would further drain his drone’s power core, but he deemed it worthwhile to save time. After a bit of effort, he managed to activate the tool.
It wouldn’t be Jacob’s luck if it worked flawlessly from the get-go, however. The beam was intermittent and weak, but he made it work and eventually cut through the part that held the front wheel to the dead unit’s chassis. From there, he was able to pull the track off the destroyed drone without damaging it.
Putting it on his drone was relatively straightforward. He retracted the tightening wheel, slipped the belt over the other wheels rather awkwardly, then adjusted the slack so it wouldn’t fall off. He could have stopped there, but he didn’t want to make a second trip over here for nothing, so he powered up the quickly fading laser so he could remove the other track.
Jacob was gambling that the time saved by having two tracks that were in good condition would be worth the fading power, but he wouldn’t know if the gamble paid off until he made it to the other unit.
The second track was pulled off and stuck on in record time, and Jacob spun the unit around. He picked up the power core and held it carefully as he pushed as much speed as he could through the failing maintenance drone.
“Melody, can you tell me how far the other drone is?”
A number popped up above the line, and Jacob watched it slowly shrink as he trundled along. He was not going nearly as fast as he had hoped.
About halfway to the other unit, his drive wheels started to stutter intermittently. When he searched his memory for a cause, he realized the issue was caused by insufficient power getting to the motors.
Jacob set the core down in a little shelf/pocket on his unit and shut the arm servos down to try and save power. That got him another quarter of the way to his destination before the tracks started to stall again.
Panicking, Jacob shut down all nonessential systems aboard the drone and continued on. He could see the other robot now, and it was indeed in worse condition. Both of its tracks were missing, and it had gotten stuck in a broken section of the floor with its drive wheels, which were not designed to move the heavy machine without tracks.
He was twenty feet from the unit when his motors stalled out again. Jacob tried everything he could think of to get them moving again, but the only system still draining power was the sensors.
Then he got an idea. “Melody, can you bring up the other unit for me?”
“Yes, Captain, but it will not be able to make it to you.”
“It won’t have to,” he said. “I plan on controlling both units.”
“I would advise against that, Captain. Your human mind is not evolved enough to handle the strain.”
We’ll see about that.
“Just bring it up,” Jacob snapped.
He didn’t have time to argue with the AI.
“The unit is waiting for a connection,” Melody replied.
Jacob was pretty sure he heard a hint of skepticism in the AI’s tone, but that could just be him projecting. He popped out of the mobile unit and had to steady himself. Going from the drone to being human again had been far more jarring than he cared to admit. He didn’t give himself much time to recover, because every second, the drone was losing more energy.
Connecting to a second drone was extremely uncomfortable. Seeing himself from two perspectives made his head feel like it was about to split apart. With great difficulty, he managed to focus enough to cut the power to the mobile unit’s sensor cluster. That brought some relief, but it still felt like his mind was inflating like a balloon. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he quickly guided the blind drone forward by watching it through the other unit.
Inch by agonizing inch, he managed to push the drone closer to his target, aware that the power on the stuck unit was dangerously low as well. The process was more awkward and nerve-wracking than he could have anticipated, but he eventually crashed into the immobile unit. It was a gentle crash, but relief immediately flooded him. He reached out and ejected the core from the mobile unit and put in the new one. Then he pulled his mind from the immobile unit and hopped back into the other one to reboot all of its systems.
It worked!
“That was very impressive, Captain,” Melody praised him.
Despite his mistrust of the AI, he still preened at the praise. “I guess my human mind is more evolved than you thought,” he replied smugly while barely managing to remain standing.
Melody didn’t respond, and Jacob didn’t bother waiting for one. With the first step complete, he felt much more confident in completing his goals.