Franky took full advantage of his new freedom to get used to the body he now had access to. It was shit! He mentally cursed Jacob for giving him access to something of such piss poor quality. It was so bad that he tried connecting to anything else. One of the maintenance drones that he knew must be around would have been preferable. He was familiar with controlling those, at least the small-scale ones. Unfortunately, any time he found one of the drones on the network, the connection request was rejected.
“He probably kept the best bodies for himself,” Franky grumbled, his tinny voice echoing down the silent corridor as he stumbled along trying not to fall or collide with the wall again.
He experienced a moment of panic when he realized he let his true thoughts out, but when Jacob didn’t appear and lock him away once again, he sighed with relief. Jacob must have been busy with his secret project, while those other two losers were still hanging around in the apartment.
Franky couldn’t understand how anyone could stand being caged like that, and he didn’t spend much time thinking about it either. Still, he needed to be more careful until he figured out how to get off this damn station and out from under that smug bastard’s control.
The first step was figuring out where his mind was stored. “AI?” he spoke quietly, not sure if the AI would respond outside of the virtual space.
“Yes, Franky D?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Where are we stored?”
“You are not authorized to know that information,” the AI replied, making Franky’s fear spike. He thought he might have alerted Jacob to his plan before he had even begun, but the AI continued. “I can only disclose where you are stored.”
“That’s what I meant,” Franky said in annoyance, pretending that was what he had been after the entire time.
“Your storage units are located in room 6310. Would you like directions, Franky D?”
He didn’t have any plans to head up there at the moment, but a map would be useful for when he did need to see what he was dealing with. The AI helpfully provided a map of the station with a pulsing icon on the room.
Franky actually stopped and stared at the image in shock. The station was enormous, and he was nowhere near the room he needed to get to. He zoomed in on the map until he could actually see the hallway he was standing in, and the line leading from his position to the room disappeared off the edge of the visible portion of the map. One thing he noticed was that every single other room was blanked out.
“Fog of war,” he muttered. That was going to be an issue. “AI, where can I sign up for a job role?”
Jacob had mentioned that helping out would be possible. Franky had no intention of helping that prick do anything, but he needed a role that would give him access to more information about the station. Preferably, information and access to the whole station, but he would take what he could get. He doubted Jacob was stupid enough to give him unfettered access, and if he was, Franky would grab that opportunity with both hands.
“The Head of Station Services has made position assignments available at all security terminals. The closest terminal is located in the security office. Would you like directions?”
“No,” Franky said hastily.
He knew where the security office was; he had just come from there. He didn’t plan on heading back either, because that was Jacob’s seat of power.
“Where’s the next closest one?”
“The next closest one is located in the main cafeteria. Would you like directions?”
“Just mark it on my map!” Franky snapped. His automated home assistant was more helpful than this stupid AI.
A dot appeared on the map, and a helpful line appeared on the floor. It was only visible to him, not that he cared about that fact, as he stumbled along.
After ten minutes of walking, he finally reached the cafeteria. It was a large room, with tables and chairs spaced evenly. The emptiness made the place feel like he was in some zombie apocalypse show. He pushed that unwanted thought aside as he trudged across the room until he reached the terminal.
Franky cursed up a storm as he tried to get his robotic arms to work like normal human arms, but they just didn’t. Once again, he wished he could switch to the more familiar tracked form. It took him over an hour to move the arms the way he wanted. Most of that was downtime to rest his mind.
He was getting better at spending time in the drone, but he could still only manage a minute or two at best before he felt exhausted. He did notice that the other two had left the apartment sometime during his absence.
That old fuck must have finally caved in and accepted Jacob’s offer.
If that was indeed the case, Franky was doubly glad that he hadn’t gone back to the security office. There was nothing those washed-up idiots could offer him. And besides, he was almost certain they would rat him out to Jacob if they thought it would earn them some brownie points. He wasn’t going to give them that opportunity.
After finally figuring out the whole arm situation, Franky navigated the god-awful terminal interface.
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“Who designed this crap?” he raged.
Thankfully, there weren’t many menus to go through. As he suspected, Jacob had locked down most of them, leaving only entry-level job roles. The man had said as much, but Franky had hoped that Jacob might overlook something with how distracted he had been.
Franky shoved down his growing annoyance and looked over the responsibilities of each role. There were a few that might give him access to what he wanted, but only one that would guarantee it.
He stared at the role, almost rejecting it outright. Seeing it brought up too many uncomfortable memories of working general maintenance for his uncle since he was fifteen. He still experienced nightmares of crawling around dirty boiler rooms and crawl spaces to fix heating pipes, sewage pipes, and all sorts of other bullshit for unappreciative and often hostile building superintendents.
When his streaming career finally took off, he quit that job and never looked back. His family was furious with him for quitting without giving notice and stopped speaking to him after that, but he didn’t care. It was his life, not theirs. If they wanted to live a life of mediocrity, they were free to do so, but if they thought he would go along with it, they could go fuck themselves.
“Do whatever it takes,” he told himself quietly before selecting the Junior Maintenance Technician role.
The next time he glanced at the map, he smiled internally. Most of the rooms were still hidden from him, but now he could see all of the maintenance corridors. He studied the map for a bit before his gaze landed on a large open room. The room wasn’t what interested him; however, it was what was sitting inside it.
***
Barry lifted his arms and moved them around. “This is a very odd sensation,” he remarked.
“You get used to it,” Jacob assured him.
He lowered his arms and looked at the other suited figure across the desk. “Why the suits? Wouldn’t the drones be much easier to operate outside of them?”
“They are,” Jacob confirmed, lifting his own arm until the suit stretched dangerously at the joint, “but I found that the suits help protect the delicate parts a bit, and looking at the suited hands helps me forget that I’m not alive anymore. It’s also a requirement to use them in space, since my version of the drones isn’t exactly designed to operate outside of an atmosphere.”
Barry nodded, or tried to. He realized the bipedal form didn’t have any sort of neck adjustment. It couldn’t even turn all that far either. The sensors could turn slightly as well, but they were limited by the helmet’s ability to rotate.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but these things are rather crude. Where did you even get the design from?”
Jacob didn’t say anything, but Barry could practically feel his embarrassment inside the digital space. He hadn’t gone out of his way to develop that sort of sense, but it seemed to come with his deep dives into his own existence.
Most people might find it distracting, but Barry quite liked having the extra sense, even if he didn’t know how to utilize it properly. When he was human, he hadn’t been very good at reading people’s emotions. He wasn’t autistic; he just didn’t enjoy spending time with people, so he never wasted his time on figuring out social cues, which made him seem awkward and oftentimes, introverted.
Jacob cleared his throat. “I sort of just slapped something together from spare parts. I never really had the time or inclination to make something better.”
“Would you mind if I took a look at the design?”
Jacob paused to think about the request. “I don’t see why not. You’re not going to have access to actually build anything, but I can give you read-only access to the parts catalogue. That will allow you to throw things together or design whatever you want inside my apartment. A little warning: the interface is garbage. I built a custom interface for myself that works much better. If you want, I can give you a copy along with my notes.”
Barry waved the man off. “I would prefer to figure it out for myself, if that’s okay?”
“Suit yourself,” Jacob replied. “Do you want to pick a station role before you head off once again?”
Barry glanced over the list of positions. Most were not very interesting, but he came to one that sounded promising. “How about that one?” he asked.
Jacob looked at the role. “Junior Design Technician?”
“That’s the one,” Barry confirmed.
“That’s not what I would have picked, but if that’s what you want, who am I to argue?” Jacob replied before adding that role to Barry’s profile. “Good luck, and if things don’t work out, we can always change it.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Barry replied before moving the drone body outside the office and leaving it there. He had no interest in exploring the station currently.
***
Katherine slowly moved about the massive atrium, taking in the very ordinary desks next to the very futuristic video screen showing dozens of camera views from both inside and outside the station.
She even chuckled once as she saw a screen showing that idiot Franky stumble into a wall. Walking in the drones was not easy, but she got used to it rather quickly. It was a lot like walking in heels, and she had plenty of experience doing that in her modeling and cosplay work.
Katherine tracked Franky’s movements for a few minutes before growing bored and tired. She took a short break, making sure to time her exits back into the apartment so that she didn’t have to be in the room at the same time as Franky. She didn’t know where that parasite was heading, but it was probably off to cause trouble for Jacob. She had warned Jacob to keep an eye on the man, but he only nodded distractedly.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn him,” she said quietly, before making her way to the elevator.
She found the silence of the station to be unsettling as she moved in the exact opposite direction from Franky.
Katherine didn’t have any destination in mind; she just wanted time to practice using the drone and time to herself to think. The only other place she could be truly alone was the room Jacob had made for each of them, and she shuddered at the thought of spending time locked up in there. Technically, the drone was a similar digital prison, but it didn’t feel like it, which helped her gloss over that issue.
She had agreed to Jacob’s proposal to open up the station, but she was regretting that choice already. Unfortunately, he had kind of dumped the question on them without warning, giving her no time to consider the larger implications.
The thought of interacting with actual aliens freaked her the hell out, but in the moment, she had been thinking about the drones, and she feared Jacob would take away the drones. It was obvious to her that he had chosen that time deliberately to leverage the drones in his favor.
She didn’t know what he was trying to hide that required him to manipulate them in such a way, but she hated that she had been manipulated. That single act had lowered her estimation of Jacob by quite a lot.
What irked her even more was that Franky hadn’t seemed to care what Jacob thought. She had to give the man some credit for having a spine, or at least not enough intelligence to realize what Jacob was doing. Then again, the man hadn’t punished Franky for his vote, so it was possible that Jacob wasn’t some narcissistic, controlling asshole like she was thinking, but since he got his wish despite the man’s refusal to agree, she wasn’t going to dismiss the possibility either.
Despite her feelings on the matter, she would still try to stay on Jacob’s good side. Even if he turned out not to be a complete asshole, there was no doubt in her mind that he had total control over everything on the station, which included their lives. That’s not something she was willing to risk because of a single bad action on Jacob’s part.