Now that all of Jacob’s cobbled-together repairs were replaced with proper components, he wanted to celebrate. Celebrating alone felt pathetic. He was already talking to himself and yelling at random objects; the last thing he needed was to start throwing parties for himself.
To keep his mind occupied, Jacob pulled up Melody’s lists and looked at what was next.
He was confused at first when the fabrication center was absent until he realized it was no longer there because he had repaired it. It took a few cycles to figure out how to access the correct system report to confirm that, but he managed to find it thanks to the tip Melody had provided before it went offline again.
He was right. The fabrication center sat alone on the green list. Seeing his hard work pay off sent a thrill of accomplishment through him that he couldn’t quite put into words.
Jacob pinned that list to his virtual fridge, just so he could stare at it and smile when he was eating his fake food. It may not be a party, but it was motivation.
He had started eating fake meals to break up the monotony of his day. The food didn’t do anything for him, but he could “taste it,” and that did a whole lot to help his mood. He wasn’t sure why pain and taste had been built into the simulation, but he was glad for the latter.
As he shoveled a spoonful of the recreated-from-memory-brand cereal, he looked at the list of issues that awaited him. There were still a bunch of red systems stacked on top of each other, all fighting for importance, but he ignored those for the moment and browsed down the list to the fifth item.
Jacob thought the main power feed would have been higher on the list, considering the AI required power to remain active for more than a minute at a time, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t quite sure what criteria Melody was using to sort the priority of the items, but he decided that fixing the power and getting the AI online was more important than the items above it.
He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, even before he selected the option. A map with a white line appeared, and he groaned. The disconnections were all in the collapsed sections as he had feared. He would need to clear those out before he could get to the lines.
“I’m going to need more help,” he muttered as he chewed.
***
For the next ten cycles, Jacob had the two drones working to assemble a third from spare parts and replacement components, a time-consuming process, but worth it. A fourth joined them five cycles later, easing his concern that the old, cobbled-together units might fail, leaving him short on helpers.
He could have delayed his task to assemble more of the maintenance drones, but he didn’t know if the emergency power would hold out indefinitely. Based on Melody’s increasingly short visits, it was clear that there wasn’t a large surplus of power for the AI to draw on. If the backup power failed, Jacob would go with it, and that wasn’t going to work for him.
It was already risky enough pushing back the start date of the repairs to add two more maintenance drones, but he knew he was going to need them.
The four drones moved to the nearest blockage to the fabrication center, bypassing his makeshift bridge. Three were on autopilot, while Jacob manned the fourth, the trusty beat-up model he first started with.
He wasn’t sure how efficient the drones would be, so he mostly monitored them while they worked, making sure to keep clear of the areas where the drones were working, just in case the debris shifted and buried the units.
Losing three units would be a huge blow if everything came crashing down, but losing all four would be a death sentence. He hadn’t found any other salvageable units, and the parts for unit five were still being produced. He had automated that process, so they would continue to be produced until all the parts were there to make the fifth unit, but without a functional drone to put those pieces together, they were worthless.
It was clear by the way that the drones constantly knocked into each other while removing the debris that they had never been programmed to handle material removal on the scale they were being asked to do. It was a far cry from the nearly seamless work they did putting the other units together and helping with the repairs on the fabrication center machines.
He regretted not building more units, but other than the time it would take to do so, he was also short on power cores. After digging through all the broken parts in the hangar, he had managed to locate a total of nine working power cores. They weren’t in very good condition, but they still functioned, which was more than he could say for most of the stuff on the ship. Even so, they were so old that they had to be swapped out at the end of every cycle, forcing him to keep five of the power cores in the charging unit.
Unfortunately, producing new power cores with the fabricator wasn’t an option, at least as far as he could tell. He had gone through the parts list a dozen times by this point without finding an option to build more.
It seemed that the eiraxin had never considered that their super-advanced energy storage methods might be prone to the rigors of time or failure.
Speaking of, Jacob sighed and disconnected from his unit, sending it back to the charging unit while he took over one of the other machines. He had avoided helping directly for fear of being crushed. The pain of losing an arm and a leg was still pretty clear in his mind. It was also uncomfortable.
Jacob wondered if it was just him, but each machine felt slightly different. He had noticed that back when he had the two damaged models, but he chalked it up to damage and lack of experience. However, now that he had done it a third time, there was definitely a difference. It was almost like he was wearing someone else’s clothes that didn’t fit quite right.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The thought was weird, and he tried not to think about it too hard as he helped cut away dangling wires, twisted metal, and large beams. The feeling never truly went away, but he learned to ignore it for the most part.
He lasted a full cycle in that unit before deciding to send it to the fabrication center and recalling his instead. They were functionally the same now that they were repaired, but he felt an immense sense of relief when he was back inside his own. His unit just had a lot more character, and it didn’t feel awkward to be in control of it. That alone allowed him to work much more efficiently.
After fifteen cycles, the three units managed to clear up enough debris to allow passage through the corridor once more. At some point, he realized that having one idle nearby was pointless, so he just decided to leave one unit inside the fabrication center to start assembling the next drone.
The spare material that was cleared away wasn’t wasted either. Some of it had been welded across the gap where his makeshift bridge was, making it impossible to fall into the massive rent inside the ship and disappear into open space. The rest was piled along the corridor because he had no idea what to do with it. The fabrication center didn’t have any way to break down the material for reuse, which seemed like a huge oversight by the designers. That brought up another concern. How much material did the machines have for new parts?
Jacob had not seen any display in the fabrication center that showed material levels or anything like that, but he decided to take a break and see if he could figure it out in his virtual space.
Once out of the drone, he stretched and popped his back, sighing in relief, even though he hadn’t actually been sore. It just felt like the right thing to do.
“Alright,” he said to himself, “there’s got to be some sort of material level indicator in here somewhere.”
Jacob poked around in the control program for a few cycles with no luck, so he branched out and connected to the other machines in the fabrication center one by one until he finally found what he was looking for.
Once again, the eiraxins or whoever had designed the vessel had tucked the information away in an obscure spot. Jacob only discovered it by accident when he came across an old build log, stating the material supply was low. That log included a helpful connection address.
When Jacob followed that connection, he found one hundred and twenty-two individual entries. He was only aware of one hundred and eighteen elements, thanks to his high school science class. All of the heavier elements that didn’t exist naturally were empty, which made sense.
He doubted he would need exotic elements anytime soon, or ever, so he moved on to the more important elements. Some of the gas and liquid storage tanks were also empty, and he hoped that wasn’t going to become an issue. He had watched enough shows on how things are built to know that many manufacturing processes relied on gases or liquids.
The other elemental storage tanks were at least half full, which didn’t really mean much to him, since he had no clue how large these material storage containers were. He would have to manufacture something, then check the levels to get a feel for the remaining supply. He didn’t want to waste any material until he actually needed something, so that would have to wait.
“No pile of metal can defeat the mighty Jacob!” he crowed loudly as he cleared the last of the blocked corridors to the ship’s main power. It had been fifty cycles since the last time Jacob had spoken to Melody, and the silence was once again getting to him.
Jacob knew that, but he was running out of things to keep his mind occupied during his brief breaks. He had completed his friend’s apartment after only ten cycles, and then he spent the next fifteen recreating his friend’s gaming setup and Omacron Six, from memory, just for something to do. He didn’t even want to play the damn game anymore. Living it for real sort of soured any fondness he held toward the space sim.
With his mind slipping further with each passing day alone, the AI’s continued inactivity became a growing concern for him.
Many things could be contributing to the extended downtime, including his increased activity, the fabrication center repairs, or even just the power core charging. He just didn’t know. All he could do was push forward with his repair work and hope he had enough material to repair the main power systems.
Clearing the corridors was the easy part, but once again, the ship’s asinine design bit him in the ass when it came to patching the broken power conduits. Instead of running the cabling through the wall, so the maintenance drones could easily access it as needed, it was in the ceiling, which was a good six meters up.
He was forced to construct a ramped scaffolding from the leftover junk to allow the drones to reach. Then he had to manage all the repairs himself, because the drones didn’t seem to understand the command to patch the power cabling.
If whoever designed Melody’s systems wasn’t already long dead, he would have slapped them.
The only upside to his predicament was the fact that the ramp could be moved and reused.
After two frustrating cycles, he finally pulled out the first damaged section of cabling. He didn’t know how long he would need to make the replacement, but he had verified that the fabrication center had multiple lengths available for manufacture.
The one smart thing the designers had done was add bulkhead connections to each end of the cables, so sections could be replaced as needed. With the way they designed the rest of the ship, Jacob almost expected to have to pull out the entire length of cable leading from the main power to the AI core. That would have been a time-consuming and nearly impossible task with only four working maintenance drones.
The ship builders had even helpfully labeled the length of cabling, and he was starting to suspect someone other than the ship designer had been responsible for wiring. If so, he would have to thank them personally.
Jacob sent the job to the fabrication center and waited another two cycles for the cable to exit the machines. With material supplies at a premium, he didn’t want to manufacture the cables ahead of time in case one section needed to be longer or shorter, so he was forced to wait.
Speaking of material, he checked the storage levels after the cable was completed. Some had dropped by as much as a percent, while others looked not to have moved at all.
That was not ideal, given the state of the ship. He would have to figure out some way to replace those supplies, but he believed he would have enough to finish repairs on the main power conduit. If that fixed Melody, he could work with the AI to find a solution to that problem.
While Jacob retried the newly produced cable, he assigned the other three drones to building a second ramp. That way, he could move to the next work site without having to wait for his existing ramp to be dragged there.
It worked, too. With the ramp and the added experience of replacing the first cable, he shaved a full cycle off removing the next one. He even got lucky with one section. The cable hadn’t been torn in half. It had simply been pulled out of the bulkhead fitting. He did have to repair the bulkhead connection, but that was a far cheaper fix than replacing the entire length of cable.
After another fifteen cycles, he let out a giddy, almost hysterical laugh. He had finally reached the last of the damage. He had to be more careful from here because that section connected directly to the ship’s power, which sat behind a closed hatch. He knew that because he had come across the door after clearing the last of the blocked corridors.
Luckily, the maintenance drones had power testers onboard, so he probed the exposed wires to see if they were live. They weren’t. He frowned because he expected to see some sort of power flowing through the wires. Since there wasn’t, that meant something else was going on.
“One issue at a time,” he told himself.