Bright light from the fixtures was piercing the billowing clouds of smoke and still managing to crisply illuminate the table underneath. In a typical manner for dark underground clubs the light did not reach the faces of the players.

It didn’t look like a card game, more like a board game, with very complicated rules and both skill and luck involved, the ones where the rulebook takes longer to read than a game to be held.

For the moment all five players seemed to be deliberating on their moves.

“Gonna make an additional bet!” a gravelly voice interrupted the silence.

“You don’t have enough. You are in a debt since last two games.” A serious and no-nonsense voice answered. “Just make your move”

“That was last week, I’m totally loaded now! So, two bets on this round.”

“Where the hell did you…”

“Guys.” They were interrupted by a feminine sounding voice. Motherly and strict. “We need to talk.”

“Oh boy! That sounds like fun times as always. Whatever do we need to talk about so seriously?” another voice chimed in, feminine too, though rough and passive-aggressive.

“About the fact that we are all going to be dead soon…” Deadpanned the strict voice in response.

“Oooh! This again. We had this talk so many times now. Fun! Want us to once again come to terms with our inevitable demise? Or better yet, let’s rehash the same ideas about resource preservation and importance of self-control!”

“…And how to actually do something about it.”

“You have a bright idea? Popped in another voice.” Rough, fast and a bit nasal.

“Yes.”

"You? I mean no offence but we’ve been over this so many times. There’s nothing we can do, not from engineering, not from power management. We are running out yea? How is… Is there some magical scientific breakthrough on power management that you did?"

"Doubt any kind of conservation or management will help." The gravelly voice jumped back into conversation while moving some tokens around the playing table. "We are still stuck with two barely functioning drones and they are too busy as is. When they break down there’s nothing we can do to repair the solars. And that would be it."

"No luck on figuring out the combots then." The serious voice piped in.

"Nah. As always. There’s no immediate hostile threat to a ship so I can’t even activate them, forget about directions. And worse thing yet I have to maintain the bastards. I mean if not for having to keep them charged we might have way more energy budget now."

"Yes, yes engineering on this mess of a ship is pain, we can’t overstate your services to the team.”

"That, but unironically, Can we hear that idea after all? I’m curious."

"Thank you." The motherly voice sighed. "So no, this is not a new idea. This is my old idea that I finally think will work. And the fact that we literally have no other options means that we should try."

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"THAT idea? Are you… Didn’t you say that you can’t figure out how to even approach that?"

"Well I had a long time to think about it. And the last part was the fact that I just needed some engineering perspective."

"And how did you get… Oooh, so that’s what you two have been doing all secretive and hush-hush? Hey why did you help her? I thought you said it’s a stupid idea!"

"I still think it’s a stupid idea, not to mention it’s going to take a lot of time from the bots, but what can I do? She paid me. How do you think I was able to afford the buy-in this time?"

"Okay, okay, sorry, can we talk through this idea once again? We will have to vote on it anyway so let’s hear it from the top."

"Well you know how we need a prime AI to…”

“I know WHY we need the PAI, I just can’t understand how you are planning to connect the native specimen to the network! Just… how can you even conceive this? How can this be even legally done?”

“Oh, well it all started with the whole “scanning his brain” experiment series while he is sleeping in that cryopod. The crew planned to remove his memories or plant new memories or something?”

“It’s been running all this time. Till his brain is like… solved. Completely scanned. It’s probably the most detailed brain map of any individual in history. So I think with some clever engineering we can figure out how to send signals directly to his brain and receive them back, effectively plugging him into the substrate.”

“How in the hell do we even decipher what to send and what we receive though?”

“Just like they do when they grow actual PAI’s. Dump a whole load of data and hope he will figure it out.”

“And the reject rate on the PAI’s doesn’t concern you?”

“A chance is better than no chance? Also we are very invested and will supervise the process very closely.”

“Okay, sure, say it does work. What about the directives? We can’t just do whatever the hell we want with the specimen!”

“As for directives - that I solved a long time ago. Very simple. Relabeling.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not wrong to relabel something the crew misidentified or misplaced. You are just being helpful here, not malicious.”

“So, you are going to… Ahem. Relabel a live specimen into… what exactly?”

“An experimental biological prime-AI. We are just going to relabel it correctly and can go ahead with…”

“It’s never going to work! Just relabeling things doesn’t change the nature of those things

“It worked.” The gravelly voice interrupted the rant.

A heavy pause hung in the air for several moments.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It worked. I just relabeled it. Reason: Crew error. Confirmation from the crew not needed.”

The whole group stayed in complete silence as if anticipating something to happen. When for several moments nothing did a chorus of outrage echoed through the room.

“That was very irresponsible!”

“Don’t do something like that! What were you thinking? Asking for an audit?”

“It worked didn’t it? Also, you would be sitting here bickering for ages. I’m tired of this, so I just went and did it.”

“Promise me NOT to do this again!”

“No promises but I’ll try.”

“I still can’t believe it worked. So what we now have an experimental PAI ready to be plugged into the hole where our PAI was?”

“Well I mean it’s technically true to the best of my knowledge. We are going to do an experiment and the lab is idle since all of the experiments are complete we can proceed with an experiment.”

“And while this experiment can actually save the ship I consider it crucial for ship survival. Thus we can put it in the schedule from an engineering perspective”

“Okay you two are officially insane. I love it. This is ethically completely wrong but what the hell, I’m in. What do we do next?”

“Well first we vote. All in favor of conducting the unprecedented experiment to connect an untested and unsanctioned PAI into our system and instantly make us all go insane and summon the audit on our heads or actually survive? With our 2 conspirators we have 3 votes now. Need it to be unanimous. Thoughts?”

“It can be sanctioned actually. Just needs to pass a regularly scheduled fitness test before it can access critical functions. That’s actually a procedure when connecting a new prime AI to the system.”

“Are you reading through procedures for PAI installation right now?”

“Yes.”

“Does this mean you are in?”

“Also yes.”

“Guess I’m completely outvoted on this one?”

A moment of silence passed again as there was some life choices contemplation going on.

“Let’s do it then. At least it’s going to be something to break up the monotony. AND something to mercilessly mock you about when it fails.”

"Well I can deal with the merciless mocking. Especially since if this fails – death will follow soon enough.”