After things settled down and Carbon had departed again, autosurgeon still latched on to her abdomen, Alex managed to get some sleep. There were no dreams this time, at least.
Then he woke up hungry.
His eyes swiveled over to the clock - both eyes this time! Proof the board was doing something - and with a jolt of surprise found that he’d been asleep for nearly eight hours that time. It had probably been more than a day since he’d eaten. Given the severity of his injuries, the mediboard should have extruded a feeding tube into him somehow and been squirting a food-like substance directly into his stomach. Not exactly a pleasant thing to consider, but it took care of the issue of starvation.
All of this thinking about it was just making him more hungry. “Comms, open channel to Shipmaster Tshalen.” He was hungry but he wasn’t starving, yet, and she’d still been in a bad way last he’d seen her. “Low priority.”
The computer was silent. Not even a chirp of acknowledgement.
“Ah, really. Come on.” Carbon had been fiddling with the systems when she’d brought him in here. Had she left them off, or was the damage to the ship worse than he thought? “Computer.”
A cheery little chirp.
“Comm systems check.”
“Processing.” It was a deadpan, incredibly bland, and generically feminine voice. True AI had been banned since the Luna incident, and anything that made them sound ‘alive’ went with that, ostensibly so it was easier to detect when they were starting to gain sentience. “Primary routing disabled. Secondary routing disabled. Tertiary routing enabled.”
“Really.” Handheld comms and ship wide announcements were all that was available to Alex with the primary and secondary out, and he didn’t have accessible hands at the moment. Just blasting his whining for food across the entire ship seemed a bit uncouth. For now.
The door the the infirmary opened, and Carbon was floating there in the hallway, the trauma surgeon tucked under one arm, a series of holes in her jumpsuit where it had been attached ringed with dark, dried blood. She looked a lot brighter than the last time she’d been here. “Oh, you’re awake this time.”
“What do you mean this time?”
She launched herself slowly across the infirmary, catching the handle next to the cabinet where the trauma surgeon was stored and pushing the door open with a booted foot in a single motion, showing off significant experience in zero-g environments. Someone was feeling better. “I needed more medicine. You were sleeping and I did not believe you needed to be woken up to hear that. You are severely injured.”
“Alright, fair.” He’d have shrugged at that, normally. “While you’re here, can you see if this thing is feeding me? I am starving and I don’t know if I actually am or not.”
“Of course.” The shipmaster slid the surgeon back into its slot and closed the cabinet, gliding over to the tablet latched into its cradle by the door. She popped it out and tapped away at the screen, her face contorting with confusion. “Mm. No, this is not possible.”
“What’s not possible?” That was not a comforting statement.
Carbon was at the base of the mediboard much faster than Alex had expected her to go, the sound of the access panels being stripped off the pedestal not making him feel any better at all.
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“What did they do here?” Carbon uttered a rapid burst of Tsla that Alex didn't understand but felt like swearing, then trailed off and sighed.
“What did who do where?” Alex had his entire face back under his command and pulled his lips back into a grimace that only stuck around for a moment. Feeling things again, even that little bit, curled the corners of his mouth up in a smirk.
“The engineer who modified this did... I do not know what they did to the hardware.” She hissed through sharp clenched teeth and shut the access panel with no small amount of force. “There are protocols to follow. You leave clear and thorough notation of all changes made. This was not done and now I do not dare try to fix it.”
Alex had thought he’d pissed her off a couple of times before, but he’d never managed to get her this worked up. “Any idea what they did?”
“Too much.” She waved the tablet she had been using as she floated back up into view, her face carved with an unprecedented level of annoyance. “They removed the primary mediboard AI and nutrition pod as well as a few other parts. The AI is the most distressing alteration.”
She was right, it was very distressing. “Then how the hell is this thing working?” He found himself suddenly not wanting to be on the mediboard anymore, despite how bad his injuries were.
“It appears that the software aspect had been offloaded to the ship AI. The secondary shipboard AI is taking care of your repairs. It is a small unit, very simple. From what little documentation there is, I do not think feeding is included in its programming that’s kept in the data store.”
“Oh.” Alex puzzled over that for a moment. The primary AI was powerful enough to handle superluminal navigation, so running a mediboard shouldn’t be a problem. The secondary doing it was a little bit like finding out the best robot vacuum money could buy was now his surgeon. “Ship’s AI was shut down safely, right?”
“Yes. The coolant system was partially vented in the dead-hand sequence, everything attached to it was successfully shut down before any thermal damage occurred.” The sharp tone in her voice dialed back as she started talking about something other than what angered her in the first place “Offloading the mediboard’s workload so it could handle both of our biologies was not a bad idea, though I believe it was not thoroughly executed.”
“Seems to be a mixed bag.” Alex wanted to slouch, heave a huge sigh and generally act dramatic. He wasn’t sure if it was because he couldn’t or if he actually was like that and hadn’t realized it until now. He settled for a frown.
“Certainly.” The fire in her blue eyes died down as she rubbed them and slicked back her antennae. “I could fabricate another nutrition pod for this unit, but I do not believe that it would work.”
“Shouldn’t those parts be like new?” That was his understanding of a fabrication matrix, anyway. They had two of the best humanity made in the engineering bay, those should be able to turn out just about any part they needed.
“While it should function normally, it would require code we do not seem to have to be spliced into its programming.” She nodded at him, eyes still closed and gesturing with her hands as she ticked off the problems she hadn’t spoken out loud before. “As well as a full system reboot. In your current state that would not be fatal, but it would likely be excruciating.” She paused and stared off into the distance for a heartbeat. “As long as it worked as intended. I am sorry.”
The apology stunned him. Just a little bit, but it kept him silent for several seconds. He hadn’t expected to hear something like that from her, ever, but she had been unspecific for once. “But it would be fatal if it didn’t, right?”
“That is the likely outcome.” Carbon’s antennae perked up a little bit as she continued, the act of problem solving almost instantly improving her mood. “If that did occur, I could have the secondary AI restored to its original settings within an hour. Between the trauma surgeon and a few select amputations, I am almost certain you could survive that long.”
“No that’s fine.” Alex blurted out the words as fast as they’d go. “I’m willing to entertain pretty much any other ideas you’ve got, though.”
“That is perhaps best left as a final option.” She deflated slightly, clicking her claws on the tablet as she thought. “I believe the most simple answer may be the best, in this situation.”
“What’s that?”
“I will take care of this myself.” She sighed, resigned, and slipped the tablet under her arm. “What would you like to eat?”