The cargo hold was nowhere near as bad of shape as I had expected. The railing for the ladder was dented, but that was practically minor cosmetics. The big problem, however, was the four holes. Two fist-size punctures in the hull to the starboard of the lock, followed by another two in the back of the cargo bay. One of those holes was angled up towards crew birthing; the other was headed directly into engineering, which of course was one of the worst places to have a hole in your ship. More concerning than the hole was what the bullet might have hit as it traveled through the ship. This size of vessel almost never had shields. Sure would be nice. Technically, the Res-a-tesseract had enough room as far as I understood. It would require a separate power core housing as well as the shield generators and the shield points. The machinery would take up literally the entire cargo bay, which I suppose would make the ship pretty useless. Ships this size just weren't supposed to get shot. It also put a limit on how fast one could go. There was a certain point at which small rocks became bullets. Though in space, everything was relative. So, the direction of travel of those rocks was important. I certainly would feel safer if I had shields though.
Sparks of electricity, globules of congealed hydraulic fluid slowly boiling away, and billows of smoke all filling a dark room is exactly what I expected when I opened the hatch to engineering. Quite honestly, I didn't expect it to look completely normal. Everything seemed to be in good working order. There was no debris lying around, no loose fluids, no sparks, no smoke. Just engineering looking like engineering as far as I knew. Using the hole as a reference, I tracked the round's progression through the ship where I did manage to find some damage. Just a screen attached to what I thought was the Rift Drive. Theoretically, the Drive didn't require this screen. The broken pieces lie in a pile on the floor some distance away from said interstellar travel device and close to the exit hole. The cold harsh vacuum of space could be seen through the armor plating at this angle. Calling it armor plating sure didn't seem right. It was one of those reminders that I lived in a tiny tin can. I cannot believe how lucky we were. Had the round come in just half a meter to the left or right, we'd be experiencing a slow death drifting through the deep dark nothing.
Raiding the supplies closets for hull patch material because every ship had to have them, again because “speeds at which a rock becomes a bullet.” I found the patches I was looking for. Theoretically all I would need to fix four fist sized holes. Hull patches were made of some type of semi-flexible material that hardened when a UV light was waved over it. It came with a can of goop that did practically the same thing, but was more malleable. As far as I understood, it was basically the same material. It wasn't something you wanted to bet your life on, but it was supposed to help you repressurize. Patching the hull, the one exit wound in engineering, and the two entrance wounds in the front of the cargo bay, left me with only the one hole up top. That was a somewhat disturbing sight as the round had gone right through one of the bunks. Patching the hole was actually fairly easy, but the thought that I could be sleeping there and suddenly explode from a projectile rocketing through the ship, tearing through metal and flesh somehow unnerved me more than the fact that I could see space from inside the ship without a viewport. Patches done, I tried to repressurize the ship again, only to find there was no air with which to repressurize. Tracking that down, it turned out the large auxiliary air tank where most of the gasses had been pumped into had also been hit. I hadn't felt the explosive force of all that gas escaping. And of course, it left another hole to patch underneath the decking. I hadn't even thought to look under the damn decking. So now we had a problem. Theoretically, the hull had been patched enough that we could fill it with air. However, there was no air to fill it with. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. We have the Flying Brick.
Sam looked at me nervously as I entered back onto the bridge, pulling my helmet off and tasting the quickly staling air. "Well?" she asked, expecting something. She looked like she was hoping for good news, but expecting bad news. I guess I had both.
"Holes are patched, but the auxiliary air tank was punctured. We'll meet up with the Flying Brick and use its auxiliary air tanks to fill the void."
"Ok. What about Environmental?" she asked.
"It looks perfectly fine. I'm assuming it has something to do with the vacuum in engineering. I'm not quite familiar with that system and I hesitate to open it up in case it's sealed and just waiting for the air surrounding it to return."
"Are we stuck here?"
I could see the concern in her eyes and I tried to give her a reassuring smile.
"At the moment, that's kind of a yes and no. I don't really know how great the damage is. The Rift Drive got skimmed, but it looks like it's just a display. Obviously, we can’t survive the trip without O2, but there's probably enough parts in the Flying Brick that we can jury-rig something up. If the Rift Drive doesn’t work, that would mean we would be stuck here permanently. However…" I gave her a larger, more reassuring grin, "I filed my insurance claim. So we only have to wait about a month before somebody shows up."
She looked a bit relieved until I added the kicker to that. "Do remember I basically pirated this ship and you're a wanted criminal."
Her expression of relief fell, but not dying in the endless vacuum of space was always more preferable than avoiding arrest.
Docking with a Flying Brick was a breath of fresh air, quite literally. I took equalizing the pressure very slowly, keeping an eye to make sure that there were no actual leaks. While the Flying Brick had plenty of storage comparable to its habitable space, said habitable space was not as large as the cargo hold, let alone the cargo hold, birthing, and engineering areas of the Res-a-tesseract. The air was gonna be a little thin, but it was breathable. There was still going to be a cycling issue, but as long as we were attached to the Flying Brick, my currently dead-in-the-water little freighter would be able to supply most of the environmentals we needed to survive.
Fortunately, and this is not something I had immediately noticed, the environmental systems on the Res-a-tesseract once again started working once we had pressure. There was a foul, scummy smell as I was pretty sure the algae matrix was dead. I didn't specifically know how this system worked, but it didn't take very long to open up the operations manual and follow the step-by-step instructions on how to clean out the matrix and repopulate it with new specimens. In one of those good news, bad news situations, the good news was that it was completely fixable. Bad news was, because everything had died at the same time, it would be a week before it was fully operational again. All that algae had to repopulate. I try to remember the old rhyme: "filter the water and scrub the air down. Mix it together and make it all brown," or something to that effect. I'm not exactly sure if this particular strain of algae actually turned brown. I generally preferred the mechanical systems to the biological ones. Mechanical systems were less finicky, though in the end, they tended to work less efficiently, when they were working correctly.
The Flying Brick was mostly a mechanical system and it only had to support a single person with a max trip of about six days. The Res-a-tesseract could house about ten, so it had obviously been built to accommodate a larger environmental load. Either way, having the blowers working and air circulating throughout the ship sure made me feel a whole lot better.
Next problem was how to get the Rift Drive up and working again. Again, that scared the shit out of me because it meant we were stuck out here. The insurance company would eventually send some type of wrecker out here to pick up the Flying Brick and get that back into habitable space. I'd rather be long gone before that happened, but I was fairly certain we had enough atmosphere and food and water before I had to worry about death. While Plan B certainly sucked, it sucked less than plan D for death. There was, of course, the entire situation with not being a ship's engineer. I wasn't actually trained on how to fix anything and the Rift Drive was completely new technology to me. All I did was yank a spare console out of one of the storage lockers of the Flying Brick, splice a couple of wires together, plug the damn thing in, and crossed my fingers. Oddly enough, that's all I needed. When the console popped up with the operating system, drivers downloaded or uploaded or whatever the hell they did. The screen refreshed and asked me if I wanted to reset the Rift Drive system and run a system diagnostic. I hit the OK button since it was literally the only button I could press, and it took about three minutes for the thing to tell me everything was green. The capacitors were at 17% and now charging, and nothing else was damaged. We had gotten so incredibly lucky.
With all the mechanical problems taken care of, I walked into the Flying Brick with a smile on my face and then remembered that there was a second person.
"Are we going to be ok?" Sam asked almost excitedly. Likely, she had seen my smile and assumed it was good news, and I realized I had completely forgotten about her existence.
"Yeah, everything is going pretty well," I replied.
So, she was pretty much just pacing back and forth on the Flying Brick for several hours, wondering if we were gonna be stuck here permanently while I was happily fiddling with algae matrixes and pushing big green buttons.
"Sorry, probably should have mentioned it sooner. The, um, Rift Drive capacitor thing is charging. It'll be a few days before the environmentals on the Reser-tesser, ah the Res-a-tesseract or whatever the hell the name of the ship is. The environmentals should be good on the Res-A-TessERact, in a few days, and everything is working out okay."
The best news was that because we were docked with the Flying Brick, I got to take a nice long shower and put on a fresh set of clothing. I wasn't quite pleased with wearing other people's clothing from the mercenary/pirate ship.
Samantha looked completely relieved. She flopped herself down on the stool at the galley's small table and laid her head down in such a way that her hair just kind of puddled the best it could, considering its short length. I flopped down into my comfy chair first. I wondered if I should take this chair and put it on the Res-a-tesseract. Actually, we had other problems. I might have filed the insurance claim, but I was a little vague on how I had gotten off the ship. There's no way there wouldn't be an actual investigation where I would likely be accused of piracy and possibly murder. Had I gone straight to the authorities? I might have gotten over that, but now I had just slaughtered more people, and I was fairly certain I was kind of screwed. Certainly, the broker wasn't going to be happy that I shot the ship that was supposed to be keeping an eye on me to make sure that I brought the stuff back. I really didn't know if bringing the stuff back would be some type of appeasement or if I would just be murdered on the spot. I didn't even know what the stuff was. For all I knew, there could be a nuclear warhead in the damn crate. I suddenly wanted to be anywhere other than where I had to go. Maybe I should do just that. The Res-a-tesseract wasn't the light freighter I was used to, but I would end up leaving in it because it had the Rift Drive. I could just go fuck off to some other star system. I'm not sure what we should do.
"Hey, Sam, what do you think we should do?" I asked.
The demon-looking splicer girl pulled her head off the desk and looked at me like she hadn't actually considered it. To be fair, we were a little busy trying not to die. "What do you mean?" she asked in return.
"I mean, what do you think we should do? I'm pretty sure we can't actually return the crate considering we killed the broker's guys, and this technically isn't my ship. I know I've killed at least seven people and taken this ship. I keep referring to this ship. I mean, the ship over there," I pointed towards the lock. "I don't really know what we should be doing. As far as I understand, you're screwed if you ever leave this vessel and I'm not convinced that I'm not in the same boat. I quite literally, I guess. Just, what are your thoughts?"
Sam continued to stare at me like nothing I said was making sense. "Uh, sorry, I'm not actually used to anyone asking for my opinion," she finally said.
"Well, I'm asking. What's your opinion?"
She pressed her lips together in a tight thin line for a moment as though she was hesitating on whether or not to actually say what was on her mind. She must have come to a decision because she sat up in the chair straighter, looked me dead in the eye, and said, "We should verify that the people in the other ship are dead, and if they're not, we should render aid." Her tone made me think she expected me to dismiss her thoughts. She actually had a really good point. Even if they wanted to fight to the death, fighting to the death sounded better than slowly dying. I certainly rather be shot than starved or really, it was probably more of an asphyxiation situation.
I nodded. "Ok."
"It's not right to leave people out in the middle of nothing to slowly die. It's also our fault they're dead or dying. I think you should at least consider…" She paused, her eyes going wide and her mouth unhinging a bit. "you agreed?" she asked, as though the thought that I might agree with her was unfathomable.
"Yeah," I said with a quick nod.
"Oh, okay," she replied.
"Did you want to go now?"
"Um, sure."
***
Things did not look good. The other ship was dead in the water, metaphorically speaking. It rolled and twisted slowly in a pattern that made it completely undockable. Sam and I both stared at the hulk. I don't know what she was thinking, but I was trying to wrap my mind around how I would dock.
"How do we dock?" she asked.
The question made me chuckle, and I'm pretty sure Sam gave me a dirty look. "I'm trying to figure that out," I replied. "I kind of wish we had, like a drone or something, something that we could pilot out there and just kind of tap it a little bit, you know?"
"Would that work?"
"I have no idea, but a ship has a lot of mass and I'd rather not nose to nose it. I don't think we would actually get it to stop."
"Nose to nose?"
"Yeah, well, both ships have the docking ring on the, uh, the nose."
"Oh."
We continued to stare at the drifting ship. I wondered if there was a way that we could connect a cable somehow and kind of reel it in. That actually would not make much sense. I tried comm-ing the dead ship a couple of times. There's no way that would work with no power. Though theoretically, there would be some auxiliary systems online, while I had clearly caused the Power Core to detonate, it only split the aft end of the ship apart. People could still be on the bridge and if it was anything like the Res-a-tesseract, the galley and bridge might still be intact. With a shrug, I tried to maneuver the Res-a-tesseract so we could get a clear shot of the cockpit when it came back around. It took a lot of minutes and a lot of attempts to actually get a good view into the cockpit, which as far as we could tell, was completely dark.
“I don't think there's a way for us to get in there," I said.
"Could we EV?"
"It doesn't look like it's spinning that fast, but remember, that's a lot of mass, when it swings around we might just end up splatting against the hull," I replied.
"Well, that's kind of horrifying," Sam remarked.
"Yeah, I expect I would be the one doing the ill-advised EVA and you don't know how to fly this thing, do you?"
"So, what should we do?" Sam asked.
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I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't really see any point in sticking around. We can't dock with it. I can't stop it from spinning. We should probably go back to the Flying Brick and cycle the air through for maybe another day or so, but we should probably just leave. The ship needs some repairs," I said, letting the words drift through the nothingness much like the derelict light cargo ship in front of us.
It took a while before Sam shrugged and I pulled the Res-a-tesseract away. Theoretically, there was probably some maneuver where we could use the Gravity Drive to slow the other ship's spin, but I didn't have the slightest clue how to do that, and learning out in the middle of nowhere where a hull breach would get us all killed didn't sound like a good idea just for the off chance that somebody was alive in there.
We docked with the Flying Brick, and I tried to get a good night's sleep in my own bunk. Presumably, Sam was in her little medical cabinet and after breakfast the next day, we decided it was time to leave. I'd like to say there was a small argument over where we were going, but it was literally just me listing off the star systems with Sam giving a slightly uneasy look to each one, and we eventually just picked one at random. It'd be a three-day journey.
"This ship sucks," I declared.
Sam looked up from her breakfast and across the table at me. I had my tablet open and was looking over the schematics of the ship for the umpteenth time because honestly, I was stuck with it. I realized I had spent so much time alone that I had gotten quite used to just talking out loud to myself and I was a bit surprised when she said, "Why?"
I looked over at the girl and tried to replay what I had originally said out loud. I set the tablet down, leaned back in my seat, and began to explain.
"Well, for starters, the captain's quarters and the crew quarters are all sitting directly above engineering. Anything goes wrong in there and pretty much everybody dies. There's a massive cargo hold sitting in the center of the ship, which is just a great big volume of air with very little in the way of protection or, honestly, even structural support. The bridge and galley are set over a large chunk of the cargo bay and slightly back from the lock. Which, to be fair, that's mostly just me feeling like that's rather ugly. It really is an ugly ship. The Flying Brick was a big box, usually connected to another big box, and all the stuff was kind of jammed together, but that was a size issue. The Res-a-tesseract is big enough that they could have used a better layout.” I took a deep breath in, “Another thing that bugs me is that there are no mechanical life support systems in any of the compartments other than engineering. I really don't think it would increase the mass much to just add a small environmental system in the bridge so that the people piloting the vessel don't immediately die if there's a decompression issue in engineering. They could put a small system in pretty much all the rooms, and it would drastically increase the crew's ability to fix whatever problem happened instead of just falling over dead. Honestly, if we couldn't connect with the Flying Brick out in the middle of nowhere, I don't think we would have survived."
It was clearly a sobering thought because Sam's expression changed from one of vague interest to kind of a sick grimace.
"Yeah. So this ship sucks."
"How would you change it?" she asked.
The comment was launched at me much like the way this other vessel launched their flying death tubes. I shrugged. "Put crew quarters underneath the bridge and galley, and put the lock on the side. I'm sure there are other better configurations, but that alone would change some of the issues. And I’d put some mechanical redundant environmental system in each of the compartments. You can still use the larger algae-based environmental system for the ship as a whole, but seriously, in an emergency, it would be really nice to not have to worry about not being able to breathe."
Sam looked at me as though she hadn't expected an answer. I really did get the feeling that she had no idea about how ships functioned at all and that she had simply assumed that this was the best layout for a ship because it was the ship she was on.
"Ships aren't exactly my area of expertise, but correct me if I'm wrong, I think I know more than you do."
She shook her head. "No.”
“Well, what's your area of expertise?"
It was her turn to shrug. "Active genetic modification, gene therapy, and I've got enough basic medical knowledge that I could almost pass as a doctor." She put a heavy emphasis on the 'almost', and I wondered if there was a point of contention as her facial expression seemed to scrunch up a bit, telling me that there was more story behind the 'almost' part.
"Well, I guess that's good. I don't know a damn thing about the human body, I mean, beyond some of the limits of my own, I guess."
Sam hadn't changed much since I first met her. She seemed to prefer the black pleated skirt and heavy boots. Not that I could complain, she had nice thighs. The tail was a little weird, and it's probably the reason she liked skirts. I can't imagine working too well with pants, and her collection of t-shirts almost entirely consisted of various bands, almost none of which I have ever been familiar with, though to be fair, most music these days was computer synthesized, so I never really got into any of the actual human groups. Today's shirt was a dark gray with several weird symbols and stylized letters that said "Dark Witch." She was back in the lab coat and again had a collar on. This one was a bit lighter in material, still matte black, but thin and somewhat lacy. Honestly, my traveling companion who may or may not have been a psychopath, visually speaking, was kind of a hot, Gothic Succubus Doctor Chick. It kind of hit some personal fantasies, but I drove those out of my mind. Relationships are what I had a Neuro helmet for. I didn't really know how to deal with real people. Anything I did or said here could not be undone. I took a moment to think about my Neuro helmet. It was still sitting in my duffel bag. Come to think of it.
"I wonder what's in the crate?"
I spoke it out loud, and again, Sam brought her eyes up to look at me and said, "Crate?"
"Yeah, the crate. The one your previous crew pulled me out of the Rift to get, the one we came back for."
Sam turned her head from me to look behind her in the direction of the cargo bay. "Huh? I don't know."
"I bet it's a fucking nuke," I said with a long sigh, because that would be my damn luck. I couldn't sell a nuke, I couldn't deliver a nuke back to wherever it was supposed to go. The best I could think to do with a nuke is drop it into a sun somewhere or turn it into some type of authority. Actually, was it a good idea to drop a nuke into the sun? I suppose if I did it in some uninhabited system, maybe it'd be okay. Maybe I should get some advice on that before taking that product. Then again, maybe it wasn't a freaking nuke. Sam looked at me, I looked at her, and then we both scooted out of our chairs and started heading to the hatch for the cargo bay.
The crate containing the unknown object sat towards the front of the ship. I lashed everything else down towards the aft end by the hallway to engineering. I had the gravity over there dialed down to less than half because, honestly, 1 cubic meter crates full of lead likely weighed a ton. Well, more than a ton, a lot of tons. I didn't know what that would do to the deck plating. It was very weird to walk over there on VSI. The human body did not like shifting artificial gravity, but back to the crate. After a closer inspection, I noted that the crate was on its side. I unlatched the little hooks that kept it to the floor and with a grunt, pushed the thing back over so it was upright. I saw Sam wince out of the corner of my eye.
"What?" I asked.
She shrugged. "What if it is a nuke?"
I froze. It hadn't exploded yet, so that was a good sign. I looked at the clasps that held the lid shut. Pretty standard stuff. It wasn't even locked. I looked at Sam, I looked back at the crate, grabbed the latch, and as I started pulling it open, Sam said, "Wait!" I looked back up at her, and she looked at me, a slightly horrified expression plastered on her face. "What if it's some type of alien?"
I let go of the latch and stepped away from the crate before shaking my head. "It can't be, at least not a living one. It was in a cargo can. There's no heat," I said.
"What if the container has a heater?"
"Well, this was nerve-wracking." I approached the container, set my ear against it, and knocked on it. The thing sounded hollow and mostly made of plastic, or whatever material they make this stuff out of. I looked back at the hot Gothic Succubus Doctor Chick. "I don't hear anything."
"Ok, just be careful," Sam cautioned.
Before I could lose my nerve, I flipped the latch. Now, the crate was technically open and of course nothing happened. I put my fingers in between the groove that separated the lid and the lower part and pried slightly. There was a hiss of air as the pressures equalized, and I pulled the lid open just far enough to take a look inside. I paused. I could practically hear Sam's joints creaking slightly as she stiffly leaned in closer, waiting to see what was inside. Or maybe those were my own joints, yeah, more of a feeling than a sound. I was probably just imagining it. Seeing nothing trying to pop out and attack me, I pulled the lid off.
The crate was stuffed completely full of small asymmetrical blobs of some type of foam packing material. I picked one up and squeezed it. It was soft and foamy, and if it was smaller, it might make good pillow material. All the pieces kind of interlocked together haphazardly, which likely meant whatever was packed inside was pretty snug.
"It's full of foam," I said, again more to myself than to Sam, but Sam replied anyway, "No shit."
I shrugged and started pulling more of the foam away. "I swear, if this entire crate is just foam," I said, having cleared out like a full tenth of the stupid foam bits. I was getting really close to the point where I was thinking about just dumping the whole crate over and starting to scoop it all out onto the floor.
"Well, there's gotta be something in there," Sam remarked.
"Wouldn't it be completely hilarious if this 100,000-credit crate is just a red herring full of freaking foam?" I joked.
"That would be quite the red herring," Sam conceded, now helping me pull out the foam, having gotten over her temporary fear that there might be something biological and alive inside. However, if I had a nuke in a box, I might pack it full of foam too. I didn't say anything though, I was appreciating the help.
Sam's hand shot back, and she held it to her chest as though she had touched something unpleasant. I pulled another foam thing away to reveal something metal and vaguely cylindrical in shape. A little more clearing, and I looked at Sam and said, "I don't think it's a nuke."
She glared at me. "And do you know what a nuke looks like?"
I shrugged, seeing the point. I didn’t have the slightest idea what an actual nuke would look like without the missile housing around it. Careful removal of more material showed a kind of pedestal. I picked the thing up, pulled it fully out of the crate, and set it down on the floor of the Res-a-tesseract. We stood on opposite sides of the thing, and Sam reached down and pulled off a plastic card literally taped to the metal pedestal thingy. She examined both sides of the card before reading.
"Well, here you go. Don't let this end up as another Anthro Incident." Sam looked back up at me and flipped the card around so I could see the text; indeed, that’s what it said. "What is an Anthro Incident?" she asked.
I shrugged and turned my attention back to the pedestal. It certainly wasn't very tall, only about knee height. It looked like something that could be placed onto a desk, but then it would be too tall unless you were standing. The top of it kind of curved inward, but had a bunch of little tiny lenses or something.
"Looks like a holo tank," I said, because really, that's kind of what it looked like. A little holo projector, a little novelty holo projector mounted to a housing which probably had components inside of it. Examination of the thing revealed some ports and a switch, which I flipped because, you know, there was a switch. In hindsight, in all the stories and books and games, usually things went horribly wrong when the main character flips some random switch on a random device. This apparently wasn't one of those things because all that happened was that the little holo projector-looking thing at the top glowed slightly like a holo projector thing, and some type of image about 25 centimeters tall popped into being in kind of a thin line.
"That's weird." I quickly realized that it was a two-dimensional image. Moving my position to look directly at it, it appeared to be a girl. A two-dimensional image of a little animated girl in a three-dimensional projector. "What the hell?!"
"She's cute," Sam said in a very Sam-like way, seemingly missing the point that they were using a holo projector to project a two-dimensional image of an animated girl. Said girl was sitting down, her head buried into her knees, and her arms wrapped around her legs. The image was not moving. This made no fucking sense. We had a fancy holo projector that projected a two-dimensional image, and it wasn't even moving. Why the hell was this supposed to be worth 100,000 credits to obtain? Which meant it was worth more to whoever was paying to have it obtained. This was borderline stupid.
"I think somebody is getting screwed," I said, more to the cargo bay as a whole than to Sam.
"What? Why? What do you mean?"
I pointed to the stupid holo-projector. "100,000 credits to obtain this thing. I feel like it's a joke. Maybe it is a red herring. My guess is several shipments were sent out and only one has the correct whatever that's supposed to be in the crate. I think that's what I would have done if I was like a criminal mastermind or something."
"What if it's an AI?" Sam asked.
"So what if it is? Why the hell would you attach an AI to a holo projector? More specifically an AI that has a two-dimensional avatar? That doesn't make any damn sense at all."
It was Sam's turn to shrug and look confused. She pointed at the holo-projector and said, "I don't think it can hear or see us. Can you connect to it somehow or turn on some speakers or something?"
I examined the ports on the holo-projector. There was a single port for a rather substantial data connection, further supporting the theory that this was some type of AI. I left the holo-projector with its tiny two-dimensional girl and stuck my head back into the crate full of foam blob things. I decided to tip the whole thing over and start sifting through the padding material. "Nothing," I stated as I looked over at Sam, who was poking her finger through the two-dimensional image. She looked at me, screwed up her face, and said, "Connect wirelessly?"
I sat my ass down in front of the holo-projector and pulled out my tablet. Sure enough, there was a new device I could connect to. Once connected, I stared at my tablet and waited for something to pop up on it, but nothing happened.
"Oh," came Sam's voice, which I thought was weird because nothing was happening. A quick look at her face directed my attention to the projector where the two-dimensional avatar of the girl thing had stood up. She was now looking around with an expression you might have if somebody called your name in a crowded room. It was like the figure knew I had just connected, but wasn't sure where the connection was. She chose a direction and started walking. She never actually moved from the center of the holo projector. It just showed an animation of her walking in one direction, kind of looking around. Occasionally she would spin around as though she were gawking at the sights of some tourist area or something, all while having that expression of, "I heard something, where the hell did it come from?" I looked from the now-moving avatar to Sam.
"Ok, I guess it knows I'm connected." I pointed the tablet's speaker towards my face and said, "hello?" Nothing happened. The projection didn't seem to notice any other sounds and just continued walking and looking around. She stopped, put her hands on her hips, and slowly rotated, a puzzled expression on her face.
The avatar had light blue hair and light blue eyes. When I say light blue, I didn't mean it was just the color light blue. It seemed to be made of a very low-saturated blue light, kind of glowy and wispy. Her hair was long and straight and kind of moved as if the artificial gravity was down to something like 0.1 G despite the rest of her body and clothing acting as if it was in standard gravity. She had a cute, but low-res face, large eyes, tiny nose, her mouth went from just a tiny dot to considerably more complex depending on whether or not her mouth was open. She wore a coat/dress thing with a high collar that hugged her shape down past her waist and went to about mid-thigh. It had sleeves, but was missing a large chunk of fabric exposing her shoulders from the collar to about mid-upper arm. It was, for all intents and purposes, just a two-dimensional animated character. A lot of white and blue in the design.
"Is the microphone on?" Sam asked.
I looked at Sam; she herself was kind of bent over, her hands on her knees but with her legs straight. If I was behind her, I'd get a great view. I shook that image out of my head and went back to the problem at hand. I flipped through my tablet's settings.
"I'm not exactly sure. Normally when you connect to a new device, it gives you some type of UI. How the hell do I turn the microphone on just to have the damn thing on?" Going through some of the settings and did eventually find an option to have the microphone on. Likely that was for some app or something, but I flipped the switch, looked at the avatar, and said, "hello."
The tiny animated girl's head shot towards the side as though she heard me, though it was not in the correct direction. Her mouth moved, but I heard nothing, and I figured I'd probably have to figure out how to make the speakers always on as well. This thing seriously needed some type of UI, and I didn't know how to make one.
"Can you hear us?" Sam asked.
The avatar looked around some more then disappeared. Letters popped into existence that read, "I can hear you, can you hear me?"
I saw Sam grin out of the corner of my eye. "Not yet, we're having issues making things go through the tablet," Sam told the AI while I was flipping through screens trying to figure out how to work the speakers. I quickly gave up.
"I'm gonna search the crate more," I said, handing Sam the tablet so she could keep playing with the AI while I figured out if there were more parts somewhere in the crate. She took it and plopped her ass down on the cold metal of the ship's decking. In the background, I could hear her talking to the little animated avatar as I dumped the crate completely over. Once I verified it was empty, I started refilling it with all the little foam packaging things. It took probably a good 10 minutes before I got most of it scooped back in, and I didn't find any extra pieces. With a crate full of foam and still a bunch of extra foam that didn't seem to fit back in the box, I started walking around the ship, trying to figure out what might have a speaker that could connect wirelessly to something. Ship comms were hardwired. Theoretically, the ship could connect to the holo-projector AI thing, but that didn't actually fix the problem of not knowing how to force the speakers to be always on. At some point, I found myself in the server cabinet, looking at the wires and plugs in there. It was really just a server rack that ran all the computing for the ship, with one big thing of note: the plugs for the cables were exactly what I would be plugging into that holo-projector. Theoretically, I could plug her directly into the ship's systems cabinet, but I didn't seem to have any spare cables. There were ports I could plug her into, but I wasn't willing to unplug some ship system just to talk to an AI. I shrugged and closed the cabinet, walked back to the cargo bay, and leaned over the rail, looking down at Sam who was still communicating with the thing. Sam was speaking, and the little AI thing was replying with two-dimensional holographic text. How fucking weird.
"Hey, Sam," I called out to get her attention. "I found a place I can plug her in, but I don't have a cable. Good if we just sit on this little mystery for a day and a half or so?"
Sam bit her lip while looking up at me for a few moments before nodding once, turning her attention back to the little AI and shooting me a half-hearted thumbs up. Whatever. Little succubus demon doctor girl could play with a toy while I sat back and did more important things. Like wonder what the hell I was gonna do with my life now that I was probably gonna be a criminal. Did I turn myself in? Did I keep running? Shit, could I just go to a different sector of space and just leave this all behind me someplace? A little more backwater like the actual frontier. The sector that held the edge of human space was only like what? 100 light years away, it wouldn't take that long, would it? I sat down in my comfy gaming chair and glanced over at my duffel bag, which still had my Neuro helmet. I wonder if I could plug the AI into that thing. I shrugged to myself then fished for my tablet when I realized that currently it was in the possession of Sam. Oh fuck. I had to pick my ass out of the seat and walk into the cargo bay.