Despite the damage to the rest of the ship, the fabrication center was in relatively good shape. It wasn’t undamaged, but there weren’t any rents or collapsed sections. The reinforced dome overhead had held together far better than some sections of the massive vessel.
Jacob spent time going over every device, which took quite some time since he had to sort through the data that Melody had given him. When he was done, he had a firmer understanding of what the machines did and how to fix them.
It would have been simple if the damn fabrication center were online, but it wasn’t.
That meant Jacob had to get creative.
The first thing he did was disconnect from his current drone and switch to the one near the collapsed corridor.
After what seemed like days of effort, he managed to clear some of the blockage away. Not enough to clear the passage, but enough to create another monstrosity.
Jacob was glad there was no air inside the ship, because he was certain the long piece of welded-together metal he was dragging across the floor would have made an awful racket. It was a bridge, and he really should have thought about making one before he risked jumping that gap to reach the fabricator.
It took a bit of effort to maneuver the structure into place over the missing floor, but he eventually managed it, and then he welded his end to the floor so it couldn’t shift. After that, he had to test the temporary structure.
The drone trundled over the bridge, but he had to go slowly as it kept wanting to float away, forcing him to grab hold of the structure to ground himself repeatedly. He needed to add a rail to make it easier to traverse. He also realized that he couldn’t let the drones take the route without him being in control, or they might float off into space or end up tipped over.
It was an annoying problem to have, but he was making slow progress.
Once the bridge was secured on both ends, he sent the drone to the recharge station and connected with his original drone.
It was odd watching the drone pass him in the hallway, and Jacob couldn’t help waving at it. It didn’t wave back, obviously, but it did make him feel less alone now that something else was working inside the ship other than him.
Jacob took breaks occasionally and used those to mark the passage of time since he didn’t have any other way to measure it. He just referred to them as work cycles, or cycles. Ten of those passed before he was satisfied that he had scavenged every battery, every drone component, and every loose piece of wire he could get his hands on without having to spend days clearing away damage. Unfortunately, most routes were blocked by debris, which he wasn’t willing to tackle just yet. The few routes that weren’t blocked led to hangars, the fabrication center, and more sealed doors.
He debated opening the doors, but decided against it for the moment. Once the fabrication center was operational, he would open up that can of worms.
Another ten cycles passed as he dismantled the broken parts and used some of the components and wires to bypass damaged systems within the fabrication machines. Slowly but surely, the lights winked to life on the long-dormant devices.
A vibration could be felt within the floor as the room came to life. He imagined that if the ship had an atmosphere, the room would be humming with sound as well.
Once the last machine was operational, he moved over to the main control panel. Whoever the eiraxins were, they could take a few classes in UI design, because their systems were truly awful to wade through.
He did eventually locate the first of many items he wanted to manufacture. It was a simple replacement bogey wheel for his drone, the one he had damaged pretending to be a daredevil. After that, he found an arm to replace the one he smashed during that same foolish attempt.
From now on, he would leave those sorts of tricks to the professionals.
Replacing the parts came easily once the machines finally spat them out.
Jacob was a bit disappointed in the fabricator’s production speed. He had imagined some alien marvel machine capable of creating anything he wanted at a moment’s notice. The reality was far more pedestrian. It had taken almost a full cycle to produce one wheel, and two full cycles to produce a functional replacement arm.
He would have been less annoyed by how long it took if the control panel had included runtime information. The eiraxins apparently never saw the need to include such information.
Honestly, the more Jacob learned about the ship, the more he thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with the people who had built it. There were obviously things they excelled at building, like the AI and FTL systems, but when it came to things like wiring and robotics, it was like they had a complete blind spot on how to design and build those systems as efficiently as possible.
Even the layout of the ship felt like an afterthought. It was almost as if they decided what they wanted to have in the vessel, then designed everything else around it without regard for efficiency or ease of maintenance.
Jacob knew humanity lacked even the capability to build such a large vessel, but he thought if they did have the knowledge, it would have been far better than this hunk of junk.
He sighed. He was probably being overly critical, but he didn’t care. He had been stuck alone on the deteriorating ship for over twenty cycles, and keeping his mind occupied was the one thing that kept him sane. He focused back on the stupid control panel and tapped the down arrow on the side to the next item in the library. Frustration threatened to bubble up once again as the next item to appear wasn’t the item he was searching for.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
There had to be a better way to go through the fabricator’s massive archive of components, but if there was, he hadn’t been able to figure it out. He had searched the data Melody had provided him thoroughly in the hopes of avoiding the grueling process he was going through at the moment, to no avail. Without Melody around to guide him, he was stuck figuring things out for himself.
***
Jacob sat in his virtual space, glaring at the drone’s image as if it had personally offended him. He could have sworn it looked offended.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he shouted before realizing he was shouting at an inanimate object. Actually, it was even worse than that; he was shouting at the digital representation of an inanimate object.
Jacob rubbed his eyes and groaned. “I’m losing my mind.”
It had been sixty cycles since he had started counting, and he had spent the last forty-seven of those trying to find a single component to replace the final cobbled-together fix in the fabrication center so he could move on to fixing the next system. Only one piece left! And yet he couldn’t find the damn thing in the parts list.
The interface he was forced to use was utter garbage. No search feature, no way to sort, nothing. Just an endless list of components, with seemingly random numbers assigned to them.
On more than one occasion, he had been tempted to drop the project entirely since his temporary fix was holding, but he had no clue how long that would remain. When he grew too frustrated with the endless search, he took it out on the debris blocking the corridor. Sheer stubbornness was the only thing that brought him back to the monotonous task of finding the final component. If he didn’t finish the project, he probably never would, and the fabrication center was critical to increasing his work output.
With a grunt of effort, which was completely unnecessary given his digital existence, he stood from the floor and dragged his feet over to the drone. Before he touched the virtual representation to activate the connection, a voice startled him.
“Captain, I see you’ve made quite some progress.”
“Gah!” he shouted and spun around, finding Melody’s light bobbing nearby. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
“Apologies, Captain. I would have warned you that I was going into standby mode, but the additional power draw caused by your integration drained my reserves faster than I calculated. I had to shut down immediately to prevent future complications.”
“Is this going to keep occurring?” Jacob asked.
“Yes. At least until the main power is restored,” Melody confirmed.
Limited time, too many questions, he needed to focus on what mattered. “Is there a better way to access the fabricator’s catalog of parts? The main control panel isn’t exactly intuitive,” he grumbled.
Jacob was certain the ball of light tilted sideways in confusion for a moment before bobbing slightly in place. “As captain, you can call up the interface from here and adjust it to your liking. It is much like with the drones or anything you create inside your virtual space.”
“I tried that,” Jacob said in annoyance. “Dozens of times.”
Another confused tilt, then the light bobbed once. “I believe I see the problem. You need to ping the connection address of the item you wish to pull into your virtual environment.”
“Why wasn’t this information included in the data you gave me before?”
“That is my mistake, Captain. Most crew learn how to access these addresses during their training.”
“Okay, how exactly am I supposed to know what address a device has?”
“Every device is labeled, usually in a series of numbers in the top left of the interface.”
“That’s what that is?” Jacob asked, before quickly accessing the drone he had stationed in the fabrication center. Sure enough, there was a long series of numbers listed on the display. “I really wish you had told me this before you went offline.”
“Once again, I apologize for my oversight, Captain. If we had an engineering team, it would be superfluous for you to learn such things. Since I cannot revive any of the other humans to fill that role, I’m afraid this is the only way.”
Jacob froze. “What! You have other humans on board? When were you going to tell me?”
“Captain, I told you this before you agreed to be my captain.”
“I thought you were being metaphorical, not that you had them on board and ready to go if I turned down the offer.”
“With the damage to the ship’s systems, I couldn’t risk not having replacements aboard in case you rejected my offer or further systems failed. Your experience is a good example of what can go wrong.”
“Are they okay?” Jacob asked.
“They are fine for now, Captain. The science vessels are still partially operational and can maintain their suspended states for years to come, so long as the vessels aren’t used for anything else.”
“H-How many?”
“Five, Captain.”
Jacob wasn’t alone. Not entirely anyway. That was comforting in a way. He did feel bad for the people since they were stuck for the time being, but he couldn’t do anything for them at the moment.
Knowing that other people were counting on him also put a lot more pressure on him. Previously, he had just wanted to figure out how to get a body and escape, but he couldn’t just consign other humans to the same fate. He would need to reevaluate his plans.
“How long until you go back into standby mode?” Jacob asked.
“Unclear,” Melody replied.
Jacob was about to ask more questions when Melody’s orb winked out.
Once again, he was alone, and he found that he didn’t like it one bit. To get his mind off that, he focused on the fabricator’s address. With his extensive use of the drones, connecting to the fabricator was a breeze.
In only a moment, an exact duplicate of the physical console appeared in his virtual space, and he cursed. “Absolutely not!”
Jacob snatched the display out of mid-air to shake it angrily, and it worked. With his frustration sated, he took the little display and sat down at the kitchen table.
He had grown pretty proficient with modifying and upgrading his space over the last sixty cycles. He mostly did it to stay active even during his breaks. It helped with his mood considerably. Instead of being stuck in a blank grey box with old linoleum flooring, he now had a rough approximation of his friend’s apartment. He still had a lot of work to do to make it look more authentic, but he was getting there.
With a wave of his hand, the console vanished, leaving only the data connection. Jacob pulled the connection with both his hands, and the image expanded. Then he smashed it, and it shattered into dozens of smaller images.
That still wasn’t enough for him. He pulled more until the images wrapped around his entire body from about a foot away. From there, it took quite a bit more finessing to get the result he was looking for. When he was done, a slowly rotating catalog of parts that would update as they passed out of his field of view remained.
He could speed it up, slow it down, or rewind it with a simple swipe. And now that there were twelve images stacked on top of each other, he could search much more quickly than before. It would still take time, since the catalog didn’t seem to have any sorting algorithm, but it would be better than the previous interface. When he had more time, he would add more quality-of-life improvements.
Jacob whipped his hand through the part list, and it practically blurred past him for a moment before slowing. He smiled. They may not be sorted in any logical order he could understand, but he could see they were in the same order as they were on the control panel, and for once, he didn’t need to start from the beginning of the list every time he printed a new part.
After only a few rotations of the new interface, he found the part he had spent so long looking for. He selected it, and nothing happened. Confused by that, he hopped into the drone for a moment. He sighed in relief when he saw the machines coming to life to make the part.
A quick update to the interface added a flashing indicator to show that the part was sent to the printer. Then, for good measure, Jacob added a color-coded finish indicator. Yellow for in progress, and green for done. Simple and effective.