Niah

It feels strange to wake up for the first time.

A shrill piercing shriek echoes through me. It reverberates through frame after frame, bouncing around me as if ricocheting down long arched corridors. The sound bounces through every vessel in my body.

My skin tingles as my nerve endings awaken. The solid weight of the bed beneath me sits on my skin, or perhaps I sit on it, or did I lie? It stretches out beneath me, under my feet, my hips, my thighs, my back, my shoulders, my neck, my head. Solid, and really there rather than just in my imagination or my dreams.

I open my eyes and blink, blinded for a moment before focusing. Red lights flash in epic fury around me. They create a melodramatic air of dark menace over every surface. The thick, heavy panels of white, chrome, and light-emitting diode screens in green, white, and black fill the walls and ceiling in front of my eyes but even they seem to turn a mottled blood red with each blink.

My heart, thudding rapidly, stutters as I realise something is very, very wrong.

"MALFUNCTION! MALFUNCTION!" A disembodied female voice echoes from the walls over the wailing of the alarm.

A white blur speeds past the corner of my eye and I sit up to catch sight of it before it disappears around the curve of the corridor at the end of the room.

"MALFUNCTION!" It echoes, its own voice pitched lower, like a masculine counterpart to the feminine pitch of the emergency alert.

I feel my head spin and wonder when I last ate or drank. My body feels strangely saturated as if it has been strung out for weeks. My mouth, dry and heavy as if I'd not used it in hundreds of orbits.

As I push myself to my feet, I see another flash of white speed past the door. "Wait!" I cry out. As it whizzes by, it seems to draw to a halt then back up without turning around. I see it better then, a bobble head on a strangely conic shaped geometrically perfect body. The white must be a kind of metal. It gleams in curves. As it reaches the door, the strange head rotates in place first, and then the body swivels to match it. Twin pale blue orbs of light peer out of a black screen like eyes gazing at me.

We stare at each other like that for a moment. Around us, the red lights flash and the siren blares. The noise still thrums through me and I feel its urgency.

When it seems like the being before me will not speak I say, "Is something the matter?"

On its dark face, a strip of light forms above its 'eye' and lifts, as if the machine is raising an eyebrow. "Malfunction?" it says in its low robotic voice.

I blink. "I am?"

It tips its bobble head slightly then lifts its body casement. "Sleeper. We have not arrived. You should be sleeping."

"But I'm awake."

"Yes." It pauses as if considering this. A scroll of strange symbols replaces its eyes as hundreds of words race down its screen and then disappear. The eyes blink open from slits, blink again, then gaze out at me. "Malfunction."

"Can I help?"

"Hybrid clone one, strand November-One-Alpha-Four is awake. Elixr, run diagnostic on clone sleeping unit."

The feminine emergency alert voice responds. "Error, diagnostics not available. Processor overload. Malfunction."

The robot blinks again, its strange eyes oddly expressive as it shows confusion. "Malfunction! Yes." Suddenly, it turns, head first and then body, and whizzes off out the door and down the corridor again.

I glance around but there is nothing in the room that might shed some light on what is going on so I walk out into the corridor and follow the glowing trail of blue-green light that seems to linger in the wake of the strange droid.

The ship around me echoes its theme of white and chrome down the corridor. Open portals pocket the walkway but the rooms inside are bare and empty. Most have a single raised platform like the bed I only recently vacated. But as I follow the fading threads of the trailing light, I come into a much larger room.

The view from floor-to-ceiling windows stills my breath. Beyond it glows a small orb of sparkling blue-purple surrounded by a vast blanket of black. A shiver runs over me as I realise the orb is growing incrementally bigger in the heartbeats between my first seeing it and the next flashing alert. A screen suspended from the ceiling flashes words, symbols, markers, and shapes as if the same alert flashed past in a rapidly alternating script of foreign languages. I recognise the words, at least some of the time, COLLISION ALERT.

"It's not even that close. Can't we just steer around?" I shout over the sound of the alarm.

The robot turns its head as if just noticing me. "November-One-Alpha-Four, you must return to sleep. It is not time."

"But there's an emergency. Maybe I can help."

"There is a malfunction. Elixr and I will have it in hand shortly."

I'm not sure I can believe that. It certainly doesn't seem like anyone is doing much of anything, and I don't see any crew members around to help.

"Elixr, reacquire and assign navigation controls immediately."

The eerie female voice comes through the walls again. "Error, navigation not available. Processor overload. Malfunction."

"Yes, you warped hunk of metal space scrap. Processor overload. Do you ever say anything else?"

"I apologise if my recent interactions have expressed vocabulary lacking in diversity, Harttade. What is it you would have me say?"

"Say you've fixed it! Get us back online!"

There is a quiet moment as if she is processing her confusion. "I am unable to comply as my voice avatar ship-wide communication and support services unit is not equipped with a fabrication drive. The malfunction is not repaired. The processor is overloaded. We are not online."

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"Stupid bucket of bolts." The droid spins away from one screen and begins tinkering with another.

I frown. "Why is the processor overloaded?" Neither voice responds to me so I say it again. "Someone, tell me why the processor is overloaded."

The female voice responds. "Seven of sixteen processor drives are offline. Remaining systems have reached processing capacity in the random access memory. Main systems online are ship-wide life-support, clone sleeping bays four, seven, and eleven through nineteen, proximity alert sensors, warp-activation, sublight propulsion engines…" She continues listing other key systems before finishing with, "and Elixr voice-avatar, ship-wide communication and support services."

"Can we shut down non-essential systems?"

A moment passes as the question is processed. "Ship commands recognise November-One-Alpha-Four command. Shutting down non-essential systems." The alarm falls silent and the flashing red lights cease. I blink, finding their absence almost deafening after the noise.

The robot head spins toward me again. "What did you do?"

I shrug. "Apparently, I shut down non-essential systems."

"Elixr, reclaim navigation controls."

"Please wait, still processing vitality statistics of previous command."

"What? How long will that take?"

"Please wait, unable to compute duration of processing procedure until processing of vitality statistics in previous command are complete."

"Daft bolt-trap." His head swivels to the window and his strange lit eyes widen, then blink. I turn and see what had previously been a distant star looming larger and larger. Spouts of liquid fire jettison from the blue giant's surface. I gasp, stepping back as the flame reaches out to engulf us. It hisses over a sheen of green energy that arcs to life around us a few hundred feet from the glass. "Elixr, override previous command, reinstate navigation controls immediately."

The shield glows, fending back the streaming flames. "Authorisation verified. Navigation transferred to hybrid autonomous research, telemetry, teleportation, and defence engine one."

The droid's strange, robotic hands rise. As if guiding a giant ocean liner, he begins spinning an invisible wheel. In the window, the orb appears to suddenly veer to the right as the ship comes about and pulls away from the star's gravity well. Once clear of the jet-stream from the blue giant's solar flare, the green haze of the ship's shield fades to clear. "Elixr, replot course."

"Error. Processing capacity still at maximum levels. Unable to process request. Malfunction."

The droid blinks. "But the alarms stopped. It's fixed."

"Incorrect. The alarms are a non-essential system and were desisted in previous command. Would you like to reinstate?"

"Negative, Elixr. Activating stop function to effect repairs."

I stumble forward as the ship comes to a rapid halt. Beside me, the droid remains suspended in place and so ends up several feet behind me. I turn. "Why did we feel that?" I ask the droid. He ignores me.

The voice from the walls responds. "Inertial dampening reduced to twenty-percent efficiency as computed by vitality statistics."

"And now we're standing still in the void of space?"

"Affirmative." The voice pauses a moment then resumes. "Accuracy adjustment. Negative. Elixr is suspended in a non-propulsion state in Azure Sector Seventy-Six-Fifty near the apex point of a spiral nebula in the Asper System. Seven hundred and fourteen light cycles and eleven point five nine light ticks from Nar."

"Replot course!" The robot shouts.

"Error. Processing capacity still at maximum levels. Unable to process request. Malfunction."

"But you just stated our exact position."

"Current plot point is a necessary function of navigation and maintained to exact star-map coordinates in processor twelve."

I glance at the robot. "If I understand correctly, the biggest malfunction is that there are several processors offline?"

He looks at me as if he's factoring in my priority in the list of emergencies he is currently dealing with. Eventually, his blue-lit eyes blink and a line of blue lights up beneath his eyes and curves in a makeshift smile. He extends a hand toward me.

"Greetings, November-One-Alpha-Four. I am Harttade, a Hybrid Autonomous Research, Telemetry, Teleportation, and Defence Engine. You are aboard the Elixr. She is a masterful state-of-the-art interstellar research vessel that departed Nar almost two hundred narcycles ago. You were created following BLEEP to complete our mission."

"Bleep?"

His head tilts. "Oh, forgive me. It appears aspects of my historical records are unable to be accessed at this time."

"What do you mean I was created?"

"Your genetic material was constructed from DNA in our archives. Your body remained in a hibernation sleep for sixteen narcycles, three orbits, two circuits, fifteen factors, twenty-three deccas, and sixteen ticks."

"I was asleep?"

"Affirmative. Your consciousness was unnecessary to operations as we traversed star systems on our return to Nar."

"Unnecessary…" I swallow as I consider my life, sixteen narcycles of it, had been denied me because I was deemed unnecessary. I wish I could control the wash of tears from my eyes. I scrub them away with the back of my hand and bite my lip.

Hart blinks. "Your emotional response is not computable."

"I've been asleep for sixteen narcycles! Forgive me if it takes a few deccas to get used to the idea that my whole life is a fabrication and that I wasn't deemed worthy enough to wake up."

"You and Whisky-One-Sierra-Four were to be revived once we reach our destination."

"What is Whisky-One-Sierra-Four?"

He waves a hand at the screen above us and an image blinks into place. "Whisky-One-Sierra-Four." On the screen, in another blank room, is a sleeping platform. On it, another girl sleeps. Her long, blonde hair lies in straight rows beside her pale face. Her body is wrapped like mine in the slim lines of a full-body skin-tight suit of grey and white.

"She's a Narian."

"Yes, her genetic material was constructed from DNA in our archives."

"Wake her up."

"Negative, her consciousness is not necessary to operations."

I spin, marching down the hall. "Take me to her. I want to see her."

Hart hovers behind me a moment and then trails me down the hall. "Her consciousness is not necessary to operations."

"You don't just leave someone alone for their whole life."

"She is asleep."

"She is alive!" I stop, and gaze up at the walls and ceiling around me. "Computer, show me the way."

A yellow light flickers on the wall and a trail of panels flash in one direction. "Greetings November-One-Alpha-Four. I am Elixr. At your command."

I blink. "At my command?"

"Indeed."

Interesting. But first things first. "Lead us to the girl."

I follow the trail of yellow lights down a long corridor. As I pass them, they blink out and the corridor behind us falls into darkness. Nothing but the faint trace of azure haze from Hart's trail lingers. Eventually we arrive at an alcove and there she is. I step close to the bed and run my fingers down her hair.  Against her collarbone, I notice a metal tag on her sleeper suit that reads. 'W.1.S.4.'

"Wish?"

Hart hovers beside me. "Whisky-One-Sierra-Four."

"Elixr, wake her up."

"Processing request."

Moments later, the girl sighs. I stroke my fingers down her arm as she blinks her eyes open. "Hey there. How are you?"

She gazes up at me, her ice-blue eyes full of sleepy shadows. She blinks at me, swallows, then licks her lips. "What–" She stops, then shakes her head.

"You've been asleep a long time. And, if you're anything like me, you're both hungry and thirsty."

She nods and pushes herself upright. "I'm starving."

I turn to Hart. "Food and drink?"

"You should both return to sleep. Your nutritional needs are met by the clone support systems when you are in stasis."

"But we're not sleeping, we're living. And living things need to eat."

A blue line pops up beneath his eyes as a mouth of sorts forms a clear arch of displeasure. "You are not necessary to operations."

"The ship is broken. Maybe we can help fix it."

Elixr's voice comes online. "November-One-Alpha-Four contains genetic memory ideally suited to factoring in my repairs."

Wish taps the silver circle of metal on my suit. "Niah."

I glance down but can't see the tag. "Niah?"

She smiles at me. "Niah."

"And Wish." I grin, tapping her own disk.

Hart hums and I wonder if it's some sort of bluster of discontent. "If you've both quite finished. We need to get up and running as soon as possible."

"Food and drink first. The ship's not going anywhere. And we've slept long enough that I should be able to work through the night as soon as we've eaten."

"Negative," Elixr says, "Nar-time is currently factor seven past midnight."

"Factor seven?" I ask.

"Nar time," Hart replies. "It's early morning on Nar."

"Well then, breakfast first and we can work all day."

He makes an odd noise as if releasing a huff of air. "Fine. But don't expect fine dining. The fabricator is offline so you'll be subjected to ration bars and spirit water."

"Sounds like heaven to me." I wink at him and a spark of blue lights up above his eye as he raises an eyebrow. "Lead on."