Incoming Press Report, Eleven Light-Years Away (Nordhein System Network Relay, FEG Controlled).
Further Communard attacks were recorded in the Rostfurt and Nordhein sub-sectors. All non-essential travel is to be limited, and pre-approved by FEG authorities. Affected systems are expected to remain on high alert until the current threat is subdued. Remain calm and vigilant.
- Rubenfolt Post
+++ Jonathan Jones +++
Cryesa System
State of Lucynthia
I groaned as the alarm went up. It's that damned cutesy tune again that she keeps placing on my devices! I slapped the alarm off.
By the time I was outside of my room, preparing for the trip back up to Lucynthia Station, I noticed that Juliett was still bullshitting in the kitchen. I remember that she started it last night, as she didn’t seem to be interested in sleeping, even when the hotel room we took had two bedrooms.
I wasted money on that. I facepalmed. Whatever. I should have expected it. Her Avatar Model doesn’t need it.
“Why do I keep burning it?! I followed the instructions. This is impossible!”
“Can’t you just use your own nanobots? And, use your more precise mind at doing those things?” I leaned by the wall. “That would probably work.”
“It’s not about that, Jonathan! It’s the principle. I’m in my full ‘human mode’, it’s a challenge I’m taking. But…but I swear, this cookbook is wrong!”
“Yeah, sure. You’re really weird. I bet you can do that in a snap, but you decide to torture yourself by limiting yourself with that configuration.” I took a close look at her work. She was trying to fry some local fish, and it was badly done. “I mean, not that I can cook either…”
“Shut up! Okay, maybe I can do it if I want to. But it won’t be human-like. Not even close. Unnatural.”
“What even is your obsession with being ‘human-like’? Even we use automated machines for cooking.” I sighed. “I swear, you’re hard to understand.”
“Because…again…reasons.” She looked away. “You don’t understand.”
“Of course, I won’t.” I walked off, taking some milk from the fridge that we ordered last night. “I can’t read whatever your core is thinking.”
She looked at me, and I swore, I could almost see a tinge of envy in her expression. What it was, I didn’t know, but I decided to carry on with having my breakfast. But why? I really never imagined an AI Core would act this way. Why would she want to simulate what being a human felt like? Why would she want the difficulties faced by one? It didn’t make sense.
In every way, she was a superior being. She had way less limits. She was immortal unless her core was destroyed. So for what reason would she yearn to feel the human experience? The AI experience must already be miles superior.
I received a notification in my datapad. Lucynthia Spaceworks, huh? It seemed like the refits to my ship were completed. Two Licht PD Lasers on the aft side were added, and I replaced the mounts amidship with a Light Tornado Missile Pod on the left side and a Photon Sub-Lance that happened to be sold in a premium earlier on the right turret mount. All while two coilguns replaced the Licht PD Lasers in the front, which meant I would now have to worry about the ammo situation.
And then, my eyes looked at the costs. Eighteen Thousand SCs. May god have mercy on my poor soul. I was borderline bankrupt unless I sold those blueprints and weapons. Well, I already had a buyer, so it shouldn’t be too hard. But damn…upgrades. They really are expensive. Not to mention, the Photon Sub-Lance alone would take up half of the power requirements of my ship, so I had to place optimization modifications on the reactor, further driving the costs up.
But, whatever. What must be done, must be done. I swore, that if Juliett would be my partner, I wouldn’t rely on her ship nor drone ships. The Jukebox now had everything, PD systems, kinetics to blast shields, a proper energy weapon to slice through hull and armor, and a limited missile system to further bolster my anti-ship capabilities. Thank god indeed for the Federation’s modular weaponry system whenever they designed and built ships—even three centuries later, the boon of their naval system still served us.
It only took a day for Lucynthia Spaceworks to do the job. That right there was a testament to the Federation’s ingenuity. Shame, they were gone.
“It’s done,” I said. “The refits are completed. We can go back up there now. Maybe contact Mr. Falken for the sale of our goods.”
“Hmm…okay.” Juliett looked down at her burned dish. “Yeah, you know what. Screw this. We should go. That would be a more productive use of our time.”
“Yeah, you’re hopeless at that. Unless you use your AI capabilities.” She didn’t even turn around as she left.
“Shut up, jerkface!”
+++
+++ Jonathan Jones +++
Cryesa System
Lucynthia Station
“Thank you for choosing Lucynthia Spaceworks!”
“Yeah, shut up.” That damned tax deductions. Even in an Independent polity, they were taxing the hell out of their citizens. Ugh…this sucked. This was why a huge chunk of the economy, all the trading of goods and services, was done underground. Away from the snooping eyes of the governments of the Sector. Away from taxes and regulations.
With the FEG’s rearmament scheme, not even the Union and the Independents could leave without a massive taxation increase on their worlds in response. After all, if the FEG started building up their fleets and armed forces, the Union would have to respond proportionally. And that would include neutral independent polities like the State of Lucynthia. There was no other way.
“You seem pissed,” Juliett said as she looked at the docks. My ship, the ISS Jukebox sat there, its docking ports connected to the docks' extended docking passages. I could even see groups of workers and engineers finally moving on to the next ship, a gigantic Vanguard-Class Light Cruiser. I almost felt a chill in my spine when I realized that, remembering the banged-up pirate cruiser I had enough luck to face off back in Lubola System.
“Nothing. It’s money lost. The temporary salt will waver.” I said, dismissing her concerns as we made our way down the staircase. “I already received the drop-off coordinates. It’s eighteen AUs away, so we would probably need to speed up on the way there. Is the VSS Radiant ready?”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Of course it is. I already had everything packaged in the ship using the portable nano-autofabricators inside.”
“You have what now?” I almost gasped. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I have mining drones as well, so I just mined a few asteroids to the fabricate the containers. Isn’t that nice? You wouldn’t need to worry about buying them.”
“Juliett, if that’s the case, then why can’t we just build whole-sized ships and sell them? No, wait. Why can’t we build a copy of the VSS Radiant?”
“Because Jonathan, my nano-autofabricators have a limited nanite swarm. They have an upper capacity, and it needs a lot of energy. I can’t just burp out tons and tons of goods just because you have a blueprint chip for me.” She smiled. “Plus, are you really going to turn this poor AI into your personal factory?”
“No, absolutely not. That sounds wrong. In many layers.” I continued on. “Yeah, screw that. Scrap that idea. No point in ruminating about it.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so bothered by it all so suddenly.”
“In any case, the drop-off point. We have to get there quickly. Mr. Falken’s trade flotilla should arrive there in a few days, so we have to get there quickly as well. I need to recoup my losses.”
“Yeah, I suppose. I’d be getting the Radiant on the move as well.” I tapped a few more things on my datapad before her logo once again appeared on the screen. I stopped and looked back at her.
“What are you waiting for? Send me the coordinates. I’m moving the Radiant to drop it off there so that when we arrive, my ship will be long gone.”
“Right…I suppose your ship should also be faster.” I nodded and sent it to her. “Go on.”
Soon, we entered the bridge of the ISS Jukebox again. Immediately, SYS’ voice sounded upon our entrance, greeting us with his monotonous entrance greet.
“Welcome back to the ISS Jukebox, Mr. Jones and Ms. Juliett.”
“Yep, SYS. Get NAV ready, alongside all the navigation subsystems. Power up the reactors and engines, and send a permission alert to Station Control. Chop chop.”
“Acknowledged.”
“And you, Ms. Juliett.” I turned around.
“Oh, calling me a miss now? I feel honored—”
“Since you insist on being treated as a ‘human being’, and that you want the full human experience, you are hereby barred from access to the Jukebox’s internal systems. From now on, only SYS is in control. Please, do not breach that.”
“But, but…”
“Please do not breach that.”
She sagged. “Fine…there’s no more fun. You always take it away.”
“And I enjoy that.”
“You’re worse than a jerk.” What? Yeah, sure I am. I would take that as a pure, concentrated, compliment. And in return, I shall internally insult her, for it was justified. After all, this AI was truly the epitome of a brat. “I bet you kick puppies too.”
“Oh, worse. I shoot them.”
“Why do you always have to paint yourself greyer and greyer?”
“Because I am.”
“Jerk.”
+++
+++ Jonathan Jones +++
Cryesa System
Near an Unidentified Ice Giant
It took a day and a half for us to arrive at the drop-off point. I looked at my side, and would you not know it, Juliett was snoring. She drifted away to sleep in her own seat in the CIC thirty minutes ago, and I believe that for an Avatar Model, there was absolutely no point of her including that in her little nonsense of ‘simulating the human experience’.
In the time I spent with her, she had acted almost always completely, unnaturally human. Hell, I could barely distinguish her from a normal human woman. Why was that? I didn’t fully understand. How the Federation even created her, or how someone from the Federation did, I also didn’t know. It bugged me, that sometimes I wished she had acted more like SYS. More robotic, predictable, and simple.
She was uncanny. Extremely uncanny, and unnerving. How that simple AI Core that I retrieved turned into this…thing, I didn’t know how. An Avatar Model that could replicate a human being, down to the finest of detail. It was…scary. And why? If this was how much she could blend in with humanity, why did she refuse for centuries to interact with us and serve her ultimate purpose?
Or was she perhaps faking it all? When I saw her once cry over spilled milk yesterday, was that true, or was that just her insidious AI mind simulating it, in order to curiously learn how I would react? Or was it all true, that she, inside, wasn’t exactly a complete AI, a line of code…but a true copy of a human brain, enhanced and encased inside the electronic parts of her strange core?
Weird. She’s…really weird. I remember my interactions with Harold. As he said, she was weird. Yet he didn’t notice. He treated her as just another human being, awkwardly yes, but just another human being regardless. And Harold is awkward with women anyway. Not that I wasn’t. But, I suppose the reason why I didn’t run from her was the fact that she was an AI, and I viewed her that way.
Was I then…looking down on her? Or was I placing her on a pedestal? Did such questions even matter when I didn’t fully understand her motives? What really was her motives anyway? Was everything she said true, or not?
Even after she nursed me from dying…I doubt her. I took a deep sip of my coffee. And I still keep my guard up from her. But she was an AI. Didn’t the Second Revolutionary War show the dangers that could come from using them? Especially when you placed them in their own autonomous ships?
A ping arrived on the screens, and SYS immediately gave me an alert. I accepted the transmission, straightening up my trenchcoat as I did. I had already been awaiting them for hours at the drop-off point, as Juliett already dropped each cargo container around here, all of them held together by a magnetic pod that kept them in a stable orbit. The Jukebox’s sensors already picked them up earlier as well, I really only waited for the further proceedings of this deal.
“Mr. Jones,” Mr. Falken’s jovial tone greeted me, as his face appeared. “Seems like you have the goods ready.”
“Yes, Mr. Falken. Of course, I do.” I watched as multiple freighter ships arrived near us. Almost two destroyer-sized vessels were escorting them, and already, their retrieval drones had begun deploying from their launching bays. “The weapons are there, alongside the other things. The blueprints are secured in the blue container.”
“Yes, yes. We will be checking it all. Give us some time.”
And so, I did. It took only a few dozen minutes for their recovery drones to pick up and push the cargo into Mr. Falken’s freighter ships. In that time, Mr. Falken and I discussed everything from political rants to our current woes in life. By the time it was over, I noticed in my datapad that my SC counts increased by twenty-thousand SCs. I smiled.
“Seems like you raised the price.”
“Just a little help for you, boy.” He said. “You got a new girl—”
“I swear, I’ll murder you if you insinuate that idea again.”
“Right. Let’s just say you have a new dependent that…erm, relies on you. So why not help you out a little?” He laughed. “After all, help is hard to come by around the Sector. Think of it, as a tiny gift.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, old man.” I smiled thankfully at him. “Thanks. And good luck out there.”
“To you too. Happy sailing with your new gi—”
“Shut the hell up.” I promptly closed the comms with him. “That old man…hah, what a pain. This is why the Sector went to shit.”
Suddenly, just as they began to leave, I noticed a distant transmission aimed straight at my ship’s secondary identification codes, which I passively left online. It was Harold. I suppose I went away from Lucynthia for a while.
“SYS, open up that transmission. Let’s hear him out.”
“On it.”
“Jonathan…I need your damned help, brother.” His voice sounded desperate, but more importantly, full of rage and anger. “Please help us out.”
“Harold, what happened?”
+++
Booting up Orion Spacefarer Identity Interface…
Name: Jonathan Jones
Credits: 23,910 Sector Credits (+2,000 [-18,000 + 20,000] last chapter—underground earnings - ship refits + resupply).