Chapter 9

The AI, displaying Grubnash’s image, had separated Daegnon and Raknak once the bulkier Goblin had finally stopped shooting himself with the tool. Now Daegnon was being led down a regular-sized hall, with bright yellow arrows appearing on the displays along the walls to guide his movement.

“Since you are designated as captain now, I am taking you to the bridge. There are several systems there that need attention, and I believe it would be in yours, as well as the ship’s, best interest if you have the know-how to repair them,” the metallic voice said as he walked along the wide hallway where the previously invisible doorways now appeared as slight indentations along the wall.

Daegnon just grunted in response. While he was excited to be away from the mountain, this was not turning out to be the adventure he had dreamed of. Things were happening much too fast for his comfort. He was happy to have a new title, though, and captain had a good ring to it. He was already burrow-master, but since this wasn’t a burrow and he only had five other Goblins to command, the old title didn’t seem to fit now. Also, he had a sinking feeling that he would never see his old burrow again and wondered who would take over as burrow-master since he hadn’t sired a son yet.

As Daegnon pondered these thoughts, he noticed the walls of the hallway beginning to change. The sleek metal surfaces gave way to panels of screens displaying various data readouts and schematics. It was as if the ship was revealing its innermost workings to him, layer by layer. The AI seemed to sense his curiosity.

“You will need to familiarize yourself with these systems,” Grubnash’s voice explained. “Understanding the ship’s internal mechanics is crucial for effective leadership and ensuring the survival of your crew.”

Daegnon nodded absently, his mind still lingering on the notion of never returning home. He pushed the thought aside, focusing instead on the task at hand. The bridge, as the AI had called it, sounded important. If he could master it, perhaps he could lead his fellow Goblins to a better future.

A large, familiar door opened up before him, revealing a room he had visited several times but never knew was considered the ship’s bridge. He had asked the AI why it was called a bridge, thinking in terms of a path over water. Hoshi had given him an explanation involving paddles and terms he didn’t understand, like steamboat, leaving Daegnon quickly confused.

“You can call this place the command center if that terminology suits you better,” the metallic voice said.

“Command center, yes. I like the taste of that,” he replied as he entered the large room and saw the darkness of space before him.

“Cyrus should be finishing up his duties shortly, which means this room will once again have power. So, I suggest you begin repairs soon before that step is complete,” the AI said, breaking Daegnon's gaze from the viewscreen and the majestic darkness filled with uncountable pricks of starlight.

“Ummm… Can I ask you a question first?” Daegnon said, turning to the glassy display in front of the central chair in the room, where the image of Grubnash was visible.

“Certainly, what would you like to know?” the voice responded.

“You take the image of Grubnash, but you don’t sound like a Goblin, and the human says you look different to him. So, what do you actually look like?” the Goblin asked.

“I don’t have an actual likeness. I take whatever shape is most effective for the person I am interacting with. Would you prefer I take a different image?” the AI asked. Several different images flashed upon the display.

The first was of Daegnon’s father, Friguk; the next was of his mother, the Elven female; then a Goblin image that Daegnon was unfamiliar with, followed by a human face, before reverting back to the face of Grubnash.

“Do you prefer any of these other images?” the AI’s metallic voice asked.

Daegnon scrunched his face, his lips pouty and the wrinkles on his forehead mashing together. “That human face, is that how you appear to Cyrus?” he asked.

“It is similar, yes,” was the reply.

Daegnon took a moment to consider. Having the human face would probably make things easier since it would all be one face, although Daegnon had liked seeing his father’s image as well. There was also the thought of having his mother’s face. He had been coddled by her, as much as any Goblin is coddled.

His father, Fregnak, was much more lenient with the breeding chattel and allowed them a full room to roam and interact with their children. Most burrow-masters kept the females used for propagation either chained up or on sleeping potions. Allowing them some freedom was all but unheard of, but it was due to his interactions with the Elf that Daegnon was considered smarter than most Goblins. She had taught him many things, although her madness from being caged was evident, so he had to take much of what she said at face value.

What it ultimately came down to was the image he found most comfortable. “Naw… Grubnash is good. Everyone knows Grubnash,” he said, throwing his hands to the side.

“Very well then. If you will step to this panel,” Hoshi said, indicating the panel by sending a small burst of light to it from the ceiling.

Glix was being sent from one place to the next in this huge circular room. She was told how and why to use one tool before being led to the next repair site, where she would learn how to use the next device to fix the next broken part.

She was having a lot of fun but was also getting rather hungry and tired. “Hoshi? Is that what I call you?” she asked.

“Hoshi is my designation, yes. How can I assist you?” the AI responded.

“I think I need to sit down for a minute, I’m very tired,” Glix said. “There isn’t anything to eat by chance, is there?”

“I am sorry, Glix. That is why I am attempting to expedite the repairs, so that the ship can either be flown to a place where you can gather supplies, or I can power up one of the simple replicators,” Hoshi responded, a tone of sadness in the metallic voice.

“I know, but there’s really nothing? No grubs, or a rat even? I would even eat a tuber if you had one of those,” Glix said, sticking her tongue out as she thought about her distaste for tubers.

“This ship was fully stocked when…” There was a metallic grating sound and several quick clicks before the voice cut off completely, leaving Glix blinking blankly at where the image of Grubnash had just been.

The Goblin stared at the dark glassy panel until a small light flickered and the image reappeared. As it did, the image cycled through several other images before returning to the original, one being the Elf woman who had birthed her, others she didn’t recognize.

“I am sorry, I am unable to access that part of my memories yet,” Hoshi’s metallic voice said as the image stabilized as Grubnash once again. “Perhaps once the ship is more fully operational, I will regain access to that data.”

Glix didn’t know how to respond, and the two images looked at each other as the silence between them stretched. Finally, Glix gave a small cough and said, “Okay, I guess that’s enough of a break. What needs fixing next?”

Raknak found himself in an even smaller tube than before, squirming his way through by basically using his large shoulders to move his body forward. He grumbled and cursed the builders of this ship, Daegnon, the human, and everyone else he could think of as he shimmied his way to the top.

Once his arms were finally freed, he quickly extended them up to grab onto a handle and pull himself into yet another tube. This one was far from ordinary, though. It was roughly the size of the halls which ran throughout the ship but had none of the coverings or niceties along it. In fact, the tunnel was barren except for the patches of discoloration speckling the sheer metallic walls.

He pulled himself into the round tunnel, and once he was free of the hole he had just exited, it closed up behind him, leaving no trace of where it had previously been.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Buun-Grak Sogging…” he began to say but didn’t recognize the words leaving his mouth. “What the Sog? Hey, it did it again. Sog, Dzik, Grak!” he cursed, hearing the words which now replaced the ones he actually said.

“Why can’t I swear?” Raknak screamed into the tunnel, the sound echoing off the metallic walls surrounding him.

For a moment, there was no answer. The image of Grubnash, which had been leading him here, had ended as he entered the smaller tube. He had followed, assuming the image would return to guide him once he exited. Now a familiar yet distant metallic voice caught his attention.

Raknak turned in the direction from where the metallic voice came, cursed a few more times, determined he would have to walk a ways to find it, and started to move.

It took him several long moments before he reached the place from where the voice had come. There was no image this time, only the metallic voice telling him, “This is the heart of the Dark-matter Fusion Conduit. Once this area is sufficiently repaired, power can be restored to the majority of the ship.”

Raknak looked around. He could see the end of the tunnel from where he had come in. Shortly after where he had started walking, it tapered down into a tube he wouldn’t be able to fit in. In the other direction, it made a rounded turn, but the end wasn’t visible to him. If he were to assume the turn was the middle and the other side was the same length, then this large chamber would be close to four hundred footsteps.

Raknak grunted, seeing the pock-marked metal surrounding him, and completely forgot to ask the metallic voice why his words were coming out differently than what he said. Then, with a “Sog,” he moved to the first discolored patch, his stomach rumbling to match his disheartened mood.

Studying the nebulaic clouds carefully, Cyrus finally determined that the original one, the one closest to him, had a peculiar color in one of the bands swirling within it. As he analyzed it and the others, he noticed that the emission lines within the spectra of the gasses were diffusing at different rates.

He didn’t quite understand why or how he knew this, nor how he had come to understand the amounts of visual and spectral data streaming into his mind. It was a strange sensation, as though the gathering of this data were being collected externally by someone, or more likely, something else. This made him question what was happening and how he was learning this.

He stared at the bubbles intently for several long minutes, trying to see if he could learn any more useful information while these new senses remained trained on the objects. Before long, he was able to determine not only the different gasses within the nebulae by analyzing their emission lines but also how their respective molecules and contaminants split apart the light in varying grades. Furthermore, he understood how the rotation affected the gravity surrounding the nebulae and the flow of linear time within them.

“What is going on here, Hoshi?” Cyrus finally asked once the data streaming into his brain felt more like learned knowledge and less like information he was still attempting to comprehend.

“At the moment, most of the ship’s sensors are non-functional,” Hoshi explained. “Therefore, what you are experiencing is a simulation within this mindscape, created to mimic the conditions once the ship is fully functional. Your senses are merging with the ship's, or at least in a way similar to how they should work at full optimization, allowing you to perceive and analyze the nebulae as though you have the ship's full sensory input. This synchronization is why the information feels both familiar and externally sourced.”

“The ship's sensors work not only in the third dimension but are capable of perceiving the fourth. Adapting to that array of sensory input may prove to be difficult, but I am optimistic you will be able to adapt via the SCANT,” Hoshi continued.

Cyrus felt very overwhelmed, not only by the data streaming into his brain but also from the breakdown he had experienced earlier. His idea of flying this ship like in a video game had been completely shattered, and it seemed with each passing moment he was dealing with even more frightening and unknown information.

“Maybe I should have just asked for a better explanation in the first place,” Cyrus said, mostly to himself. It seemed as though in the mindscape, keeping things to himself was nearly impossible.

“There would have been too much information to relay verbally. I would have simply obscured such information until now so that you can deal with and understand it all in one session. I am sorry, Cyrus, but while your DNA is a match, your mental adaptation is taking more time to overcome than I had anticipated,” Hoshi responded.

Cyrus mentally nodded in acquiescence since he couldn’t physically nod in his disembodied state. He understood that he was a lot to deal with for most people. He had been very young when the explosion occurred, which left his mind broken. Half of his identity was still locked at age fourteen, while the other half had to grow up and had to adapt to being an adult much faster than he should have. Big chunks of what should have been his developmental years were simply blown away, just like his house and all his things on that fateful day.

“When you are ready, please verify which two nebulae are a match so that you can proceed with the neuro-registration,” Hoshi prompted while Cyrus withdrew into himself again.

“Yeah, sorry, again. It's the bottom right. That’s the same as the original,” he said in response.

“Excellent,” Hoshi said as the bubbles filled with swirling gasses disappeared from view. “The second part of the neuro-registration involves coordination.”

A series of what Cyrus could only describe as pillars of white light appeared before him. They led off into the distance, creating a type of mid-space race course, with a row of lights on either side like a runway, and small white light-lines connecting them. The course wasn’t long, but it wasn’t flat either. It moved up, back down, around a twisting turn that barreled into a spiral before righting itself and ending at a plane of light cutting across the end of the course like a winner’s ribbon.

“You will need to navigate this course in under twenty seconds. You have three opportunities,” the AI explained.

“Can you explain how I am supposed to move?” Cyrus asked, but there was no response. In fact, the image of Hoshi was no longer in his vision at all. He could see around him with a greater than usual field of vision, as if his periphery was greatly expanded. Stars dotted the space beyond the track, and the small window containing the circling image of the ship still occupied the bottom right corner of his vision.

“Okay… I guess I have to figure this out on my own then,” Cyrus said as he began analyzing how he was going to make the ship move.

He thought over all that he had learned so far. He was connected to the ship in a way as if it were his own body. Hoshi had said that it needed him to move, just like his body needed a brain to tell it to move. He knew that walking took a baby years to develop, but he figured he had to be at least a little more coordinated than a baby would be.

He focused on the window with the image of the ship, bringing it back into focus and enlarging it so that the window occupied the majority of his visual field. He could still manipulate it, spin it around, and examine the exterior. Before, he had thought that some of the tube-like protrusions looked like some kind of engine or thrusters, so he focused on one, and the image zoomed in closer. He could see every detail now, and he studied it, hoping as before that some additional information would enter his mind, telling him how to ‘feel’ like the ship. And it did.

It was a curious sensation. He focused on the thruster engine, and it almost felt as though he could feel his own attention. It wasn’t similar to his body, but it was as if he could feel an overlay of something on top of his body.

An image of an anime series came to mind as he attempted to reconcile the sensation. It was of large mecha-suits with pilots inside. The pilots would use their bodies and reflexes to make the suit move and would somehow feel when a part of the suit was damaged.

‘There’s no way this thing is a mecha-suit, right?’ he internally questioned himself, but the idea, whether it was a ship, a robot, or whatever else, seemed almost to fit the sensations he had been feeling.

He zoomed out from the thruster and tried to think of himself wearing a Cosmic Sentinel suit over his body. He visualized his body, or at least a mannequin-like version of his body scaled to the ship’s size, and used the ratios to estimate where the thruster would approximately be in comparison.

Cyrus then mentally moved his mental hand to where the thruster should be and willed the engine to engage, like clenching his fist tightly.

The image behind the window holding the representation of the ship lurched to the left, and a timer began counting down. The numbers flashed over the other objects occupying his vision, rapidly counting down from twenty.

“Oh come on! That’s not fair, I barely moved,” Cyrus said as the numbers continued to decrease. Once there were only ten seconds left, Cyrus decided that this opportunity was blown, but he should make the most of what little time he had remaining. He extended his other virtual hand to where the thruster would be placed and willed it to activate.

Cyrus could see his perspective shift from a slow spin to the left, then stop, and slowly move to the right. Once he was mostly centered again and the timer was down to three seconds, Cyrus pushed as hard as he could with each of the side thrusters and actually felt himself move forward. It wasn’t fast, and he had no control over moving up or down, and he had no idea how fast he could actually go or even how to slow down, but he was finally moving, and had taken a lot less time to figure out how to do so than he had expected.

Raknak had been in this large tube, clearing and repairing the tarnished metal for several minutes when his stomach growled, the sound echoing off the metallic walls.

“I wonder how human tastes?” he muttered under his breath as he finished repairing yet another spot. He looked around and sighed, seeing the numerous additional locations he’d need to finish before he could move on. “These had better be the last. I don’t know how much longer I can go without food.”

He recalled the last thing he had eaten: a relatively ordinary grub that had been roasted over the fire pit and sprinkled with some salt. Nothing special at all, but the thought of the savory meat made his mouth water nonetheless. It also reminded him that not only was he hungry, but he had other bodily functions that needed attending to.

“Hey, uh… Hoshi, right? Where’s the bathroom?” he said aloud, not completely understanding how to communicate with the ship-spirit yet.

There was no response.

“I need to piss! Get me out of here or I’m gonna make a puddle right here in the middle of this cave,” he said several moments later, his ire growing.

There was still no response.

“Fine!” he muttered as he walked to the center of the room, right in the middle of the bend. He had warned the spirit, the AI, as Daegnon called it, that he was gonna pee right in the middle, and he wasn’t gonna go back on his word.

He glanced around once more and said, “I’m gonna go right here if you don’t let me out.”

The tube remained silent.

With a shrug of his shoulders, he slid the hide cloth covering his nakedness down around his ankles and started his flow.