Jacob popped back into his drone body and began to prepare the documents that Katty would need to fill out. It didn’t take long to realize that it was going to take more than one session to register them. Some of the documents had dozens of questions to complete.
“I really should have done more research on the process,” he muttered as he worked.
Once everything was good to go, he popped back into the apartment.
“Okay, everything is set up and ready, but we’re going to have to do this in stages. To make things easier, I’ve prepared copies for each of you to look over so you don’t need to waste time once we begin the real process.”
Two sets of documents appeared in Jacob’s hands, and he handed one to Katty and the other to Franky. He glanced at Barry, then decided to plop one down in front of him as well. There was always the chance that the man would change his mind.
He let the pair read through the document.
Katty frowned almost immediately. “It needs our name?”
“Obviously,” Jacob said in confusion.
“Will this name be used everywhere?” she asked.
Jacob paused. “I’m not actually sure, let me check.”
He sent a message to the station AI, and it confirmed that the name a new arrival provided would be the legal name used on all following forms, correspondence, and legal documents.
Jacob informed the pair of that.
Katty seemed annoyed by that, but she kept reading. Soon enough, she sighed and put down the document. “I’m ready.”
Jacob nodded. “As I said, this will take multiple steps, so if the strain becomes too much, just disconnect. Don’t try to push yourself to prove something. If you pass out, the entire process will need to be started from the beginning.”
***
“Here’s the address,” Jake said before vanishing from the apartment once again.
Katherine took a deep breath, then steadied her mind as the exercises had shown her. Once she felt centered, she reached out for the address Jake had provided her.
It took time to locate the connection. She was used to how easy it was to find the addresses for the drones inside the apartment, but this new one felt distant, almost. It also felt more solid. The thought nearly sent her mind off track, but she quickly focused back on the connection.
She felt the return ping almost immediately and let her mind follow the ping back through the connection until she was looking upon an unfamiliar scene. She panicked slightly when she tried to blink and realized she couldn’t, but she quickly got hold of herself as her mind processed what was actually going on.
“I really did it,” she said, her words coming out sounding slightly robotic.
“Welcome to the real world,” the suited figure across the desk chuckled in the same robotic voice, only it sounded slightly male where hers had sounded distinctly feminine.
“Jake?”
The form flinched back slightly at the name.
“Please don’t call me that. I don’t have any pleasant memories of people calling me by that nickname. I would prefer it if you just call me Jacob.”
She nodded, or tried to, but her drone pitched up and down erratically. “What the hell!”
“Oh, yeah, don’t try to use non-verbal responses with these drones. They aren’t exactly anatomically correct, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can damage them. Here, I’ll show you.”
The suited figure removed its helmet, and a strange series of metal protuberances greeted her where a head should be. It was all connected to a central pole and gave her the impression of the world’s most demented-looking Christmas tree.
A timer beeped, and one of the objects on Jake—Jacob’s, she corrected, head rotated toward it. “Looks like times almost up for the first session. Honestly, it went better than I expected.”
Katherine wanted to ask more questions, but she could feel the fatigue quickly building in her mind and disconnected from the drone. Returning to the apartment felt almost surreal after experiencing the real world once more, and she couldn’t wait to go back. Unfortunately, she had overstayed by a few seconds, and a migraine pounded inside her head.
She knew the migraine wouldn’t subside for hours, so when Jacob returned to see how she was doing, she told him to switch to Franky even though it irked her to be second to that little puke. He may be acting all nice now, but she knew men like him. It wouldn’t be long until his true self peeked through the façade once more.
***
Franky barely kept himself from laughing at Katty’s failure, but he did manage it. He would have stepped up to be the first, but he knew seeming too eager might make Jacob suspicious. Besides, he knew if he bided his time, Katty would prove she wasn’t near his level, and he had been proven correct.
He smiled internally.
One to zero!
He would make sure that he never lost that lead until he reached his goal. There was no way he was losing to some girl or sitting around taking orders from that self-righteous prick Jacob for the rest of his life.
Franky watched silently as Jacob looked predictably concerned at Katty’s condition. Then the man turned to him.
“Ready?”
Franky nodded slowly, almost uncertainly, to make sure he sold his new persona as a meek bystander. He wanted Jacob to dismiss him.
Jacob shrugged and handed over the connection address. “Give me a minute to move your drone into position. Then I will ping you.”
When the moment came, Franky wasted no time connecting. He didn’t know this, but his way of connecting to drones was far more forceful than Katty or Jacob’s. Not that he would care if he did. Only the end result mattered.
The sensation of being in a different body was disorienting, but Franky quickly adjusted. He had played enough VR sim games that finding himself in an unfamiliar environment was hardly new.
Franky didn’t spend any time on small talk either, even though it might hurt his new persona. He recalled the exact layout of the form and quickly entered the information in it using the drone’s clunky movements.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Remembering all the questions on the form was easy for Franky. He had built his entire streaming career on painstakingly documenting his opponents’ move sets and quirks so he could dominate them during tournaments. Sometimes, he even went as far as making alternate accounts to track them down and fight them in-game when they didn’t post their matches. If that didn’t work or he knew his opponent was more skilled, he usually found alternative methods to win.
He wasn’t ashamed of cheating to win; being a top-tier streamer and gamer was a cutthroat profession. You either stayed on top or were forgotten quickly.
“You’re going with Franky D?” Jacob asked.
Annoyed, Franky almost lashed out at the question, but he caught himself. “It’s my name.”
Jacob just shrugged and entered the first document just as a timer pinged. Franky popped back into the apartment and had to suppress a shudder at the feeling of the walls closing in around him. He had been suffering from that sensation ever since being locked up.
He had to remind himself that this wasn’t the same small room that that bastard had locked him in for days. Never again would he let himself be subjected to such humiliation.
***Despite Jacob’s preparations, it still took most of the day before the two were registered with the station.
“Congratulations!” Jacob smiled. “You are both now individuals according to the station. Now, I would like to offer you roles aboard the station.”
“Roles?” Barry asked, setting down his document once again. “You never mentioned that.”
“I didn’t?” Jacob asked, then he thought back to their conversation earlier in the day. “Oh, I guess I didn’t. It must have slipped my mind.” He really needed to get more sleep.
“What sort of roles?” Barry asked.
“Station roles,” Jacob responded with a shrug. “I can’t give you any sort of head role or anything like that. None of you are qualified for those, but I can start you at like an entry-level position.”
That was a complete lie. Jacob could assign them to any role he desired, as both the Head of Station Services and the Head of Security. That being said, he wasn’t about to hand them the keys to the kingdom until he got to know them a bit better. It wasn’t only their lives on the line if they screwed something up; it was his as well.
Barry looked skeptical about that response, but if he suspected the lie, he didn’t comment. “What about an engineering role?”
“And what about pay?” Katty, or Katherine, as he had come to find out when she filled out her documentation, asked.
“I second that,” Franky added.
Jacob blinked at the pair, then shook his head and answered Barry’s question first. “Um, probably. I don’t actually know what roles are available, but I’m sure something would fit. I can even provide training resources. It would require you to go through the same process as Kath—Katty and Franky did, he added, catching himself before revealing the woman’s full name.
He caught the glare she shot his way when he almost slipped up and used her real name instead of her gamer tag. She was going to have to get over that hangup. As soon as the three started interacting with the station AI, it would use their registered names anytime they conversed with it, unless they changed that or had a unique title such as Head of such and such.
Barry mulled over the question. “I’ll need to think about it.”
“Fair enough,” Jacob replied. “As for pay… I guess I didn’t really consider it. I can offer either Astryx currency, which is essentially meaningless to you, or I can pay you with additional storage space so you can expand your personal residences to something less… prisonesque.”
The idea of giving them additional storage space had just sort of come to him.
“I’ll take the storage option,” Katherine said almost immediately.
Franky paused to ponder the issue for a bit before nodding as well. “I would like my own place. Can you provide a list of job roles and the amount of compensation for each? Being a janitor doesn’t sound all that appealing, but if it pays the best, I might just take it.”
“I can certainly provide a list of jobs, but I’m just going to pay them all the same. It’s not like you’ll have much, if anything, to do until you are trained up. We can revisit the pay scale in a few months if things change.”
“Change?” Katherine asked. “What would change? You said this station has been abandoned for centuries, and it’s in the middle of… What did you call it?”
“The dead zone,” Barry provided.
Katherine nodded in thanks. “The dead zone, whatever that means.”
Jacob blew out a breath. “Yes, it’s been abandoned, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had visitors since I arrived.”
He finally decided to fill the group in about the bounty hunters and the eiraxins who had shown up. He left out the part about why the eiraxins had come to the station, however. The ship was his issue to deal with, not theirs.
Franky burst out laughing when Jacob got to the part where Hallik thought he was some sort of criminal or pirate. The man seemed to catch himself until Katherine and Barry chuckled as well.
Jacob joined their laughter. It felt nice to laugh about it. He knew it had been a ridiculous situation, but at the time, it had felt pretty serious.
Once the laughter died down, Jacob cleared his throat. “So anyway, things are probably going to change. Which is why I needed you three to take the next step. I didn’t want to decide for you what to do. Our situations are similar, but not exactly the same. I’m tied to the ship, and my goal is to repair it, while you are all tied to the station. Both require a great deal of material upkeep. Being a shipyard, the station has potential. I’ve already discovered one way to earn money in this new universe we find ourselves in, but I imagine there are many more. That being said, there is only one transport ship, and it would take years to build a new one. Hell, it’s going to take years to fix my ship, even if we bring in traders and other elements.”
“You mean aliens?” Katherine asked in concern.
“Obviously,” Jacob replied. “We can’t exactly ask humans to fly out here.”
“Why not?” Franky asked.
The question caught Jacob off guard, but he quickly recovered because he had considered heading back to Earth at some point, even if just to recover some of the memories Melody had taken from him. Of course, he couldn’t do that while the dysfunctional AI was still around, the whole last directive issue, and whatnot. Now that Melody was dead, that issue was no longer a concern, but he hadn’t really thought of Earth in months. Even when he had been considering going back, all he saw were problems.
The biggest one that came to mind was that he had no clue what sort of ramifications a visit to Earth would have. He didn’t doubt that direct, irrefutable knowledge that aliens existed would destabilize the world. Jacob could probably lessen that impact, but that came with its own set of problems.
Providing humanity with alien technology would be a risky move. If he didn’t provide the technology to every nation, war would likely erupt to control it. If he did provide the technology to every nation, war would still probably erupt as the current superpowers fought to be the first to reach space.
Once one nation reached space with such a technological advantage, it would be able to control the others, and Jacob just couldn’t see the other superpowers allowing that to happen unopposed. That sort of doomsday scenario may or may not happen, but he had witnessed similar tactics used in a space empire-building game he had played a few years back. The name of the game may have vanished from his memories, but the brutal nature of how most people took control of the planet for the best outcome had not. If gamers realized that tactic was the best, he didn’t even want to know what the governments could conceive of.
He didn’t say all that to Franky, however. “I don’t think they could reach us with their current level of technology. At least not in multiple human lifespans anyway.”
The man nodded slowly in understanding, but he didn’t seem convinced by the explanation.
Jacob would have to revisit that problem before he gave any of them access to leaving the station. The last thing he wanted on his conscience was the death or enslavement of billions of people back on Earth.
“So,” Jacob said, clapping his hands together to get them back on track. “Are you all okay with opening the station to aliens?” He looked at the three. “Barry, you may not be registered yet, but you might as well weigh in too.”
Barry just shrugged. “Sure.”
Jacob nodded happily and turned to the others, who were actually pondering the question. Katherine nodded slowly.
“I’m going to need a verbal response,” Jacob smiled.
“Oh. Um, okay, I guess,” she said, slightly flustered.
It wasn’t the rousing endorsement he had expected, but it was a yes. He smiled wider and turned to Franky.
The man frowned. “Does my vote even matter?”
“Every vote matters,” Jacob replied.
“Then no. I’m not comfortable with interacting with aliens who might have agendas opposed to the survival of Earth and humans as a whole.”
Jacob hadn’t expected such a thoughtful response from the man. Perhaps Franky might have a different opinion if he had spoken with some of the aliens. Then again, if he knew how close humanity had come to being wiped out by Concord eight hundred years ago, perhaps not.
Jacob nodded in acceptance. “I vote yes. AI, did you register their votes?”
“Yes, Captain,” A voice spoke in the kitchen, making Franky and Katherine jump slightly at the unknown listener.
Barry just looked confused because he didn’t hear anything.
“The AI won’t speak with you until you register,” Jacob added with an apologetic shrug.
“That makes the vote two to one in favor. I thank you all for your time today. Get some rest, then feel free to explore with your new bodies. I’ll get a list of job roles listed on the terminals. If you need assistance picking, you can ping me, and I’ll get you all set up.” With that, Jacob vanished from the kitchen, leaving the three in stunned silence at his quick departure.
He hated to have to spring that on them so abruptly, but he wanted an answer sooner rather than later, even if the vote was just a formality.