"I'm gonna kill him." Uka said stomping to the den.
"The robot?" asked Lawg.
"Yes, the damn robot." she barked.
"I think technically you can't because he is artificial. He'd have to be alive before you killed him. You could shut him down." yawned Marley, entering the conversation with a bowl of cereal.
"You shut up." she growled.
"Hey, I'm trying to fix him. He's an older model, do you know what happens to a hard drive when you design it 30 years ago and try to update it to modern drivers after being intended for combat, then reprogrammed for dancing, then reprogrammed for combat. The operating system is all solid state, its not designed to be re-written, let alone over and over. It’s a miracle he even functions at all." he protested.
"All he does is sing and dance, and then power down because he overheated. All he is good for is hand-to-hand combat and when we aren't being attacked, I have to listen to him recite show-tunes, and if we ever need him to kill something…he'll probably be overheated and shut-down." she barked, motioning to the very quiet android, slumped in mid jazz-hands near the airlock. Lawg peered up in thought. Shallow thought.
"Well, that's what you get with a gay robot…showtunes and drama. You add defective and you have random shutdowns and constant re-boots. What am I supposed to do?" asked Lawg, enjoying a bite of his candy bar sundae.
"If fluff-dexter doesn’t find a replacement part to fix him, I'm gonna have a meltdown of my own and reboot everyone." she growled.
"You really need to get laid more." Lawg muttered. Marley sighed in frustration.
"I can't fix him with toothpicks and glue you know. We have been scavenging the debris field for 3 days and all I got is junk. I can't adapt ancient technology." Marley defended. "So unless you can find something made this century with solid-state hardware above 800 terraflops, I got nothing." said Marley, throwing his last attempt at a solution across the room. They felt the slight shutter of the shuttle craft docking, Duffy returning with either a good find or good reason to stop looking. "So if you wanna stop complaining for a minute, you can help me dig through the junk Duffy just spent 4 hours scavenging and pray for a piece of modern tech." he said shuffling to the cargo bay.
"The hell is it?" Marley asked, getting nose-to-nose with an odd bit of alien tech, resembling a baseball-sized sphere with a tail of wires leading from it. He waved the scanner and looked shocked.
"Haooooowly jackpot." he muttered.
"Good find? Think it's got enough memory or ram or whatever you need?" asked Duffy.
Well, I needed 30 percent more than we currently had, this scans shows whatever this is could store about 600 robots and have room for my DVD collection in 30 million P quality. Whatever this is…its more advanced than anything I've ever seen…and it's super old. Where did you find it?" he asked.
"It sort of…found me." she explained. The bunny's eyebrow rose slowly as he turned with a concerned look.
"Oh do elaborate on that little alarming bit." Marley asked.
"Well, I got a signal that looked like a distress beacon from an old G2 class ship like the one I was stationed on before the SS shuttle pod. When I found it, it was drifting in my direction and it practically floated right to the shuttle grappler." she explained.
"A distress beacon wouldn’t have this kind of alien tech. Even a G2 doesn’t have this stuff. Maybe it’s a backup computer for the entire second ship with a distress beacon built in…like a black box with all the ship's logs on it." Marley pondered.
"We have too many logs on this ship already. The Captain thinks he may have caught Deliria flu from that space-hooker last week, so he has been keeping a book on his bowel regularity." Duffy noted.
"So…He keeps a Captains log, logging Captain Lawg's Captain-logs?" asked Marley.
"Yep, that's a thing now. So we gonna upgrade the robot or what?" she asked.
"This is unknown alien tech, far more advanced than anything I have ever even heard of existing, full of information I can't decrypt that could be literally anything and I am far from qualified to swap memory sticks without a manual."
"So no." she shrugged.
"No, I'll totally still do it, I'll just have to guess a bunch and if anything goes wrong you will back me up that the robot was already like that and I, in no way made it worse. See, if I explain this to Lawg, he'll just tell me to do it anyway because the universe provided and you can't live in the "what if" or some shit, and if I tell Uka, she will get mad and hit me. So if it fries the robot or something…he was totally gonna do that anyway and I just didn’t get the parts in time, right?" he asked.
"Good enough, plug him in." she nodded, grabbing her tools.
Uka hugged Marley, squeezing him uncomfortably tight.
"Knock it off." he wheezed.
"I'm just so glad you deleted the songs. Its one thing to prance around all the time but the singing was making me…" she paused.
"Homicidal?" asked Marley.
"I was gonna say irritable."
"Well, some of the files got corrupted, I had to dump anything non-essential into deep storage, and you would be shocked how much crappy music he had on file. Some of it was encrypted but I killed the favorites list. I couldn’t delete anything from the dancing subroutines because it could affect his movement, but now he has an abundance of extra memory and RAM like you wouldn’t believe, so he should be able to run without overheating and we won't have to swap files around for space anymore." he assured.
"How did you change his eyes?" she asked. Marley looked confused as he paused and looked back.
"I didn’t touch the eyes; all I did was an ugly soldering job to connect a new motherboard, all back-panel stuff." he said looking curious.
"Well, the eyes are blue now instead of red." she noted, pointing to him and realizing they were still red.
"Is your species colorblind or something?"
"No." Uka said squinting at Roy on the charger. "I swear they were just blue."
"Maybe he has a different mode for running scans, they're red now…like always." he shrugged. "I think Blue is combat mode."
"Yea…like always." she said nervously. Suddenly, the ABC song began playing a half step out of pitch. They rushed to the bridge to see the front glass completely purple. Every square inch of the ship's view was now showing the hull of an alien ship.
"Lawg, what am I looking at?" asked Uka as the crew stood in amazement. Marley hit his scanner.
"According this thingy here with the blinking light…it's abandoned. No life signs, but the ship is massive. scanner shows the ship is made of over 9000 different unknown elements, all better in every way to the ones we know, a ship so advanced that we couldn’t possibly understand it, but the scanner also shows it has been drifting for 49.7 quadrillion years." he said solemnly.
"You can tell all that from a 40 dollar scanner you got at computer-shack?" asked Uka. Marley smirked.
"Hell no, I made most of that up. You people really don’t understand how scanners work, do you? It’s a hand-held device. It's impossible to get that much unknown data on an unknown ship with just a scan. A damn R and D team couldn't tell you that with a year and a crew of 50. This isn't even my scanner, it's on the couch; I'm just collecting pocket monsters on my game-buddy color. The damn icecream ship has automatic scanners that are more sophisticated" he yawned.
"So what can we find out from those scanners?" asked the Captain.
"Not much: relative size, hull temperature. You can't expect any real data unless you board." he said sitting down. "And since I don’t have an EV suit in my size, I guess that's a job for someone else." he said with a grin.
Marley stood trembling as he looked around, feeling very naked and exposed as he carefully walked the hull, no suit on him, just a faint yellow glow over his shape.
"You guys really suck." he complained.
"Hey, we had to find out of the environmental boots worked. Nobody else can fit in those vent holes and you have avoided 5 space-walks so far." Said Lawg over the coms.
"I had a legitimate reason!" he barked, climbing in the vent. "Hey…if this is just a pair of boots that creates an environment around me…what happens if I get poked on something sharp? Does it cut the imaginary suit and deflate or does it act like a rigid shield? Or does it conform around it and just stab me with an energy-coated piece of sheet metal?" he said with a worried tone. "This is just a stupid idea, why not just make suits? It can't be an advantage to have a flimsy energy shield, it's like someone was too lazy to draw up a suit so they plot-filled some stupid yellow boots!"
"Stop over-thinking it." suggested Lawg as he watched on the tablet he had suction-cupped to the side of the hot-tub. Uka and Duffy passed around the snacks.
"What is that sound?" asked Marley. Lawg looked suspicious.
"That's just static on our end, don’t worry about it." Lawg yawned.
"You're in the damn hot-tub aren't you?" he hollered.
"No." he bluffed, cracking open a beer.
"I can hear the freaking foot-bubbler running. Don’t feed me a line of shit, Lawg."
"Alright, so why does it matter?" he asked. Sipping the foam before it overflowed.
"It’s the idea. You three are soaking in a warm Jacuzzi, drinking and getting your feet bubbled while I walk around the hull of an alien ship with a defective robot and suit made of glitter and lazy plot-magic. What if this thing just loses power for a millisecond? This is a terrible technology to put your life into, you can't even tape it if it gets a hole. Does it run on batteries? How long does it hold a charge?" he asked as Lawg sunk down in his seat.
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"It's fine, I used it that one time for like…an hour or longer. Seemed fine."
"Did you charge it after?" Marley asked. Lawg looked suspicious.
"Yes."
"Really…how did you charge it? Did the crate we found it in have a charger or did the Ontarian Federal Government just have a 110 adaptor handy?" he asked.
"Yep." he said handing the tablet to Uka.
"So aside from that…what do you see?" anything interesting on the scanner?"
"It’s a big ship, really poor design. Its like, mostly just open space and visually impressive organic structures. Doesn’t seem like a good design for a ship unless it was made just to look cool." he commented. "I'm gonna try another room. Door looks locked but there is a panel. I'm gonna use my universal key." he said. The girls looked confused, staring at Lawg as if to ask "do we have those?" followed by a loud pop on the tablet.
"Worked." he said lowering his pistol. Duffy smirked.
"Amazing how no matter what civilization makes a door and no matter what mechanism is used to close and lock it…shooting the panel always seems to open it." she said, opening a bag of cheeze poofs.
"I think I found the one console that controls the entire ship." said Roy, finally finishing his reboot scan and breaking his awkward silence.
"Oh good, you are awake. Are you sure this is the control panel?" asked Marley.
"Of course. It’s a big panel in the middle of a room so it's obviously the main thingy." Roy explained
"Is it written in English?" asked Lawg
"No, but it looks pretty typical. It’s the same big flat keyboard with 200 unmarked buttons you find on almost all alien ships. There is a good chance I can deduce from its grid-like randomness what single button does the thing we want it to do." Marley informed. "Oh no…we're in trouble." he added.
"What? Why?" asked Lawg.
"This isn't your universal 200 identical button panel…there are 210 buttons on this one, and only 12 blinky lights instead of 14." he gasped. Lawg's eyes got big.
"What sort of strange alien race would do such a thing? Can you figure out in a timely manner what the extra 10 blank keys and missing 2 lights do and how it affects the ship?"
"I can, but I'll have to scan some more." he said putting the scanner on a little tripod and leaving it. The robot looked at him with a perplexed look. Marley shrugged "What? It’s a scanner, it scans. It only has 4 buttons so why do I need to stand there and hold it. It'll do its thing without me." Marley said shuffling around.
Duffy and Uka materialized into the room, wearing EVA suits.
“Oh so you two get suits?” asked Marley.
“They don’t fit you, no point in us risking our lives with those weird life support boots.” Uka said checking the room for information. Marley looked at Duffy and noticed she wasn’t doing much. He strolled to Uka with his arms crossed.
“I assume the Captain will not be joining us, and probably still in the hot-tub?” he asked.
“Yea we got kicked out so he made us teleport in here to help. Any luck with the data banks?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, I already scienced it pretty hard. What did you do to get kicked out of the tub?” Marley asked.
“Farted.” She shrugged.
“And Duffy got kicked out too?” Marley asked.
“Well, I blamed it on her and then she poured beer on me. It was a whole thing.”
“Yea I can smell the…wait…why can I smell anything with the life-support boots on? It can't be air-tight if I can smell anything!” he asked growing alarmed. He noticed the faint glow was simply gone.
“Guess they ran out of power. Good thing this room has oxygen and no poisonous alien gasses.” Uka yawned.
“Son-of-a-bitch, people…I could be dead right now. Yall sent me on a mission with a pair of stupid force-field boots running on empty and nobody is bothered by this?” he barked. “See how quick I am to fix your shit when we get back on the Tast-E-Chill.” he barked, finding a seat to pout in.
Duffy walked down a corridor with Roy and tapped her scanner, looking like she saw something odd. She turned to Roy and noticed his eyes glowing blue instead of the normal creepy red.
“Did you detect anything just now?” she asked. He smiled a little.
“Not a thing.” He said looking a bit more confident then usual.
“I never noticed your eyes changing color before…you running another diagnostic?” Duffy asked.
“I never noticed your eyes before either. Always thought they were grey but you got a little blue in there when you look closely. Quite lovely.” He grinned.
“Um…okay.” She said nervously as he looked her up and down. “So…you feeling okay, Roy?”
“No actually. I can’t feel a damn thing.” He said tapping his hand on the ship’s bulkhead.
“Well, you are a robot, so…plastic skin and whatnot.” She said lightly touching her pistol.
“I am aware of my synthetic nature, just a little disappointed in my obsolete covering.” He said feeling around.
“Well, maybe we can get you looked over at the next spaceport. You seem to be having a little glitch.”
“Oh no, everything is fine…just need some upgrades.” He assured, moving around as if he had a brand new body. He checked his pants and looked upset. “What the hell?! Seriously?” he barked. “Not cool.” He said raising his voice as he shuffled angrily.
“So…anyone care to join me in corridor B? Roy is having a little malfunction and I would really like assistance here.” She muttered into her com.
Back in the ship, Roy paced the floor in the cargo bay as Uka pointed her gun and the others huddled to discuss the problem. They sat down and circled like parents about to discuss why little jimmy got sent to the principal’s office. Duffy spoke first.
“So, Roy…how are things?” she asked.
“Not the greatest actually. I woke up as a freaking display model with a few key things missing…so that would upset anyone.” He said looking oddly stressed out for a robot.
“What are you?” asked Marley.
“Trying to decide how I wanna present that, answer actually. Um, let’s try this one…So you know how you installed that thing you found in space with the homing beacon?” he asked. All eyes went to Marley.
“Oopse, guess that wasn’t a memory stick, funny how that happens when…remember how it wasn’t my fault?” Marley said with a nervous smile. Roy smirked.
“So yea. Not a memory stick. Worst upload I have ever experienced. Where the hell did you learn to compensate boot files?” asked Roy.
“Not to interrupt or anything but, as the captain of this ship I demand simple answers immediately…who and what are you?” Lawg asked.
“And he cannot stress the word “simple” enough…we’re talking child-like.” said Uka.
“Ah, perfect…simplicity simplicity…I am a sentient computer program contained in an emergency beacon that is designed to send a distress call and upon compromise. I intended to latch onto the first viable and mobile artificial system in order to have a body…only I assumed I would find something a bit more…familiar.” He said with a slight irritation.
“What were you hoping for?” asked Marley.
“Well…something more advanced. Something less cluttered, what the hell is all this crap in here? Is this a 300 year old musical adaptation of a live play about a witch and brick road?” he asked.
“Yep…kinda annoying isn’t it?” Uka mutteded.
“It’s horrible. Which brings me to my next point…how attached are you to this previous artificial personality?” he asked.
“I like him.” Duffy shrugged.
“Meh.” Shrugged Lawg and Marley didn’t seem to argue.
“Delete him. He sings, he dances and has system crashes every hour.” Uka said bluntly.
“Right to the point…I like her. So Aside from “Duffy” over there.” he said as if waiting to be corrected on the name. “Aside from her, nobody minds if I just save him to a backup file and hang out here for a bit?” he said as if answering his own question. He began popping open a crate and rifling through bottles.
“Hey, not my booze.” Lawg said getting up.
“Can this model taste or become intoxicated?” he asked. Marley shook his head. “Well, then there is no point in wasting it then, is there? Hmm, let’s see…plastic skin, no digestive tract, no organic brain to pickle with vodka…no sense of smell and apparently the designer of this thing felt that genitals were unnecessary as well. Remind me to look that guy up for his routine beating.” He said with a slight gnash to his teeth.
“Well, it’s a sparring model, for combat practice and it was re-fitted for dance choreography.” noted Duffy. Roy looked shocked.
“A dance bot…a robot built to dance…so this body is designed to take gunfire without breaking, and my sole upgrade is to jump around to show-tunes like peter-pan and they didn’t even give me a plastic peter to pan with? Wow…this is gonna be a fun existence. In space with 2 beautiful women…no scrotum…30 crates of alcohol…no organs…and I’m bulletproof so if I decide to end this mess I’ll just wing a round off my head and decompress the ship. Lovely.” He said pacing some more.
“Welcome to space.” said Captain Lawg.
“Well, clearly I need to make this work…I could adapt a bar-bot tasting sensor and write a program for intoxication…that will help compensate for the depression I’ll be experiencing by having no junk.” He said lightly kicking a crate.
“Couldn’t you just…make something?” suggested Marley.
“I’m not designed to have feeling so I wouldn’t have a central nervous system and that kinda defeats the point don’t it?” he sighed. “Beats floating in space as a dismembered consciousness though so I wanna call this improvement. What did Roy do to pass the time?” he asked.
“Tinker on the shuttle with Duffy, chores, musical numbers.” Listed Marley.
“First two sound okay. Well, that’s enough of a plan to start with…I’ll be taking apart this bike and re-assembling it so I can fill time with something other than depression.” He said grabbing a wrench and a rag.
‘Wait…if you’re a dismembered AI…no pun intended…why do you even have data for sex?” asked Uka.
“Oh, my last body was a sexmatron…lotta files there to re-locate. 50 years as a sentient vibrator…I’m gonna need some time to adjust.” He smirked. Flopping to the floor on his back and scooting under the bike to begin removing bolts in no particular order.
“So…” Captain Lawg said into the huddle. “Let’s vote on it.” Uka blinked a few times.
“What is there to object to? We now have a more intelligent mechanic, a more competent crewman, the same indestructible robotic body and no musicals… why is this a discussion?” she asked.
“Feels kinda weird just storing our new friend in a virtual folder. I mean, this guy could be a weirdo for all we know.” Marley added.
“Weirder than an illegally modified metrosexual android who skips as much as he walks and knows all the words to “Let it be” in 12 languages?”
“Ugh, I hate that song. It’s bad in English and even shittier in Bertolian.” Marley said shifting his vote.
“I dunno. Back when he was a gay robot I didn’t have any competition. Now he could really throw off my vibe.” Lawg whispered.
“He wasn’t…damnit. Never mind.” Uka started angrily. “Anyway that’s 3 votes to your 1, so the new guy stays.” she finished.
“According to section 3 of the Captain’s handbook, the Captain gets double the votes in voting matters.” Lawg recited.
“You wrote that book.” Argued Uka.
“So? It's my ship so I write the rules. My rules are final.I vote we switch him back.” he said crossing his arms.
“Alright, so that’s 3 votes in favor and both of the captain's total of 2 votes to get rid of him…so majority rules and we keep him.” said Marley, mystifying him with maths.
“Damnit.” Lawg quietly kicked, feeling outplayed as Marley went on.
“Besides, I don’t know how to retrieve the files, I just soldered a piece of ribbon wire to the old board and hoped for the best.” Marley shrugged. “I’m amazed anything happened at all.”
“Hey, none of that matters. I’m the Captain and I make the final decisions.” He argued. Uka cleared her throat.
“Fine…then you can tell the angry 250 pound combat robot that everyone but you voted to keep him and after he woke up without a shlong or taste buds you, decided alone, to force him back into a distress beacon so we could have a musical dance-bot back, all because you have such a fragile ego that you are worried the anatomically blank, artificial crewman might prevent you from getting laid.” Uka snipped. He blinked a few times to be sure she was serious.
“So that’s 5 out of 4 votes to keep him, and that settled that matter, That's 130 percent unanimous. Good huddle.” He said looking slightly nervous. “But if he expects a cut of our hauling profit, he better pull his weight and I won’t be loaning him anything for his expensive upgrades.” Lawg barked quietly.
Roy 2.0 sat in the hut tub, adjusting the electronic cigarette in his teeth as he counted out the hundred credit bills in the stack he was holding. Two android women sat on the edge of the tub and rattled on about how great and handsome he was as Lawg sat alone on the other side looking like he wasn’t sure how to feel.
“What’s the matter Lumber-Jack? You look depressed.” New-Roy grinned.
“I don’t know how I feel right now.” he said with a blank expression as if his puny mind was about to begin smoking from the ears.
“This is a win-win for you, buddy. Sure you lost a few hundred credits in the poker game but the important thing is all the money I won from fight club to afford the upgrades I wanted.” He said splashing him playfully and insultingly.
“You do still realize I am the captain of the ship, so by default that makes you the beta-male.” He said almost pouting.
“Your not thinking like a machine, you timber-head. Competition is only a challenge if you’re playing the same game. Sure, we both like booze and women…but there is plenty of booze in the universe, especially with me buying my own supply with all the money I just won. That’s 3 times the emergency rations for you if food gets low. I don’t need it to survive after all. And do you really think me raking in the robo-tail is gonna prevent you from scoring your organic chicks? It’s not like we are gonna be after the same thing.” He pointed out.
“That’s a good point…so why am I still irritated?” asked Lawg.
“Because you lost your ass at poker to the new guy and now you got no money for alien poon-tang, while I count my money with my pair of robo-floosies. It’s a natural human reaction, but you learned a valuable life experience…never play poker with a counting machine that has the ability to shut off facial expressions. I just made you slightly smarter. And now you know. So next time you will have your own money and your own groupies. And who REALLY won this competition?…sure I won the battle but you won the war.” He said as the LED cigarette dimmed and flickered.
“How so?” Lawg barked.
“You are the Captain of a starship and I’m just a peasant security officer under your roof. You get to ride off with a 50-thousand credit ship and all I got was 900 credits in cash and a couple of plastic bimbos you don’t even really want. Plastic bimbos, Lawg...plastic.” He said faking a very sad look. The left floozy looked offended.
“I’m not plastic, I’m carbon fiber.” she corrected.
“You’re right, Roy. I’m Captain William T Lawg, space Explorer and historian elite.” He said standing up as his fully drenched uniform dripped everywhere. “And next time…we play Chess…a game Man will always win against machine.” He smirked.
“Aye Captain!” Roy nodded as Lawg squished off into the other section.
“Is he really the Captain?” asked the carbon-fiber floozy.”
“Na, he just thinks he is. Poor bastard hit his head and I couldn’t bear to tell him the whole story.” He said taking a virtual puff of his e-cig. “Took him under my wing, couldn’t just leave him to die alone and ignorant in space.” He added.
“You are so amazing Captain Roy.” said the other.
“Yea I kinda am.” he grinned to himself. "Call me Captain Ominous…just not when anyone else is around."
"Is this a sex-thing?"
"It's a 150 dollar thing, sweetheart."
"Yes, Captain Ominous." she saluted.
"Good to be back in the game." he grinned Ominously.