Jewels cracked her knuckles as she stepped up to the capital's mainframe, a massive, ancient-looking terminal sitting at the heart of the room like a dusty relic from a time when people still thought Earth was fixable. The screen was dark, waiting for input.
Julio, still catching his breath from their previous near-death sprint, glanced around and whistled. "So this is it, huh? The big fancy computer that runs this tin can?"
Jewels smirked. "Yup. And it's about to get hacked."
Julio sighed. "Great. My favorite phrase. Right up there with 'We're out of food' and 'Julio, run.'"
Jewels ignored him, placing her hands on the console. Her neural interface linked instantly, and her vision flooded with code.
[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED]
[SECURITY PROTOCOLS ENGAGED]
[UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED]
[COUNTERMEASURES DEPLOYING IN…]
Jewels' eyes widened. "Oh, fuck me sideways."
Julio tensed. "What? What'd you do?"
Jewels was already moving, her fingers flying across the console as she manually rewrote security subroutines before they could fry her brain.
[OVERRIDE INITIATED]
[DISABLING COUNTERMEASURES…]
[ERROR]
[COUNTERMEASURES LOCKED]
[ADMIN OVERRIDE REQUIRED]
Jewels groaned. "You've gotta be kidding me."
Julio peered over her shoulder. "What's the issue?"
Jewels turned to him slowly, expression blank. "The issue, Julio, is that this system is more locked down than a nunnery during mating season. I need admin access."
Julio rubbed his chin. "Why not just make yourself admin?"
Jewels inhaled deeply. "Wow. Did you get the suggestion trait from your dad? Your mother must love being trapped with you both."
Julio frowned. "Why do I feel like that wasn't sincere?"
Jewels turned back to the screen, muttering under her breath. "Because it wasn't, dumbass."
She scrolled through the system, looking for an exploit.
[SEARCHING ADMIN PRIVILEGES…]
[ACCESS RESTRICTED]
[ADMIN USERS: 1]
[LAST LOGIN: 398 YEARS AGO]
Jewels blinked. "Okay, that's… concerning."
Julio raised an eyebrow. "How concerning? Like 'out of toilet paper' concerning or 'airlock just opened on its own' concerning?"
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Jewels smirked. "More like 'we've been drinking expired milk for a week and didn't notice' concerning."
Julio made a face. "I hate that level of concerning."
Jewels kept digging, scrolling through old user logs.
[LAST ADMIN: DR. RAYMOND ORTIZ]
[LAST LOGIN: MAY 4331 A.D.]
[USER PROFILE: DECEASED]
Jewels grinned. "Oh, perfect."
Julio narrowed his eyes. "That's never good when you say that."
Jewels started typing. "Julio, my man, today we commit identity theft."
>user.modify("Jewels") → identity("Dr. Raymond Ortiz")
system.override_security()
The screen hesitated, then responded.
[ADMINISTRATIVE PRIVILEGES GRANTED]
Jewels threw her arms up. "BOOM! I own this city now."
Julio groaned. "Oh, fantastic. The one person in the galaxy who should never have power has power."
Jewels cackled, she stood tall and mustered with the voice of a king as she pointed at Julio. "Bow before me, peasant."
Julio pointed at her face, his fat finger slightly shaking in the air. "I will slap you."
Jewels ignored him, diving into the files. Her neural interface lit up with endless streams of data.
"Holy shit," she breathed.
Julio leaned in. "What?"
Jewels scrolled through the ship's history. "This place was built in 4000 A.D., before Earth finally gave up the ghost."
Julio whistled. "When did Earth officially go belly-up?"
Jewels flicked through the files. "Looks like… 4198 A.D."
Julio snorted. "Damn. So they spent two centuries prepping, and it still went to shit?"
Jewels shrugged. "Sounds like humanity to me."
Julio cracked his neck. "And what year is it now?"
Jewels checked her neural interface. "February 4724 A.D., galactic calendar."
Julio sighed. "Damn. Over 700 years since this place was built. No wonder it's a rusty deathtrap."
Jewels grinned. "Well, it's my rusty deathtrap now."
Julio shot her a glare. "That is not a good thing."
Jewels kept scrolling, pulling up blueprints, schematics, old security logs.
"This ship was supposed to house ten million people," she muttered. "Full ecosystem support, AI-run infrastructure… It was basically a flying Earth backup."
Julio frowned. "So… what the hell happened?"
Jewels tapped a corrupted file. "That's the trillion-credit question."
She ran a repair script to recover what she could.
[DATA RECOVERY INITIATED]
[ESTIMATED COMPLETION: 5 MINUTES]
Julio groaned. "Five minutes? Do you know how long that is?"
Jewels smirked. "Oh no. However will we pass the time?"
Julio leaned against the console. "We could talk about how completely fucked we are."
Jewels cracked her knuckles. "Boring."
Julio sighed. "Alright, then you pick a topic."
Jewels thought for a second. "Okay. If you had to sleep with either a Mancer drone or a Ripper, which one would you pick?"
Julio blinked. "What the fuck, Jewels."
Jewels grinned. "It's a hypothetical, Julio."
Julio groaned. "Fine. The Mancer drone. At least it has some level of humanity in its design."
Jewels cackled. "Yeah, until it literally incinerates your dick for unauthorized access."
Julio scowled. "What's your answer?"
Jewels shrugged. "Ripper. They're feral, sure, but at least it'd be fast."
Julio stared at her. "I hate that you've actually thought about this."
Jewels winked. "I've thought about a lot of things, Julio."
Julio groaned. "I regret this conversation."
Before Jewels could keep going, an alert popped up.
[INCOMING SIGNAL DETECTED]
[ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION: ORIGIN UNKNOWN]
Jewels frowned. "Uh… Julio?"
Julio tensed. "What now?"
Jewels turned to him, her expression unreadable. "Someone else is in the system."
Julio stiffened. "Who?"
Jewels hesitated, then turned back to the screen.
[MESSAGE RECEIVED]
A single line of text appeared.
"Who are you?"
Jewels stared at it for a moment, then smirked.
She typed back:
"Who's asking?"