Sometimes people find enjoyment and fascination in the weirdest things. Like the time you watch the clouds that don’t really look like anything – and yet you still try to find meaning and forms in them. Or just space out in front of a window. Not even people-watching, just taking in the surrounding.

Mike stared at the chair. The chair didn’t stare back, despite his scrutiny. The chair have always been a chair. Except maybe the time when the chair was some wood and maybe stellar dust before that, but as far as Mike remembered this room – the chair was always there. And yet he could distinctly remember the same object being an unfocused blob of “furniture stuff” just a while ago. This happened several times, mundane objects being general concepts became distinct and realistic with him realizing something was wrong only after the fact. Once he got the idea he started focusing on the room, concentrating and cataloguing everything in it.

And soon enough Mike was aware of every floor tile and every imperfection in the ceiling. What fun!

Basically, he was for the lack of a better word – unlosing his mind. Gaining? Anyway becoming better by the hour. The doctors weren’t doing nothing after all!

Also his speech came back. He still sounded hoarse to himself, but after hours of lying in bed with nothing better to do he started talking to himself, then tried to sing (which sounded like abyssal cats high on drugs, but that was nothing new).

Suddenly a door opened and in stepped another doctor. More alert and focused then ever Mike said “Hello!” and stared expectantly at the visitor. Nothing came for couple seconds and then… the doctor blipped. Just made a bleeping sound and looked back at him.

“I have no idea what you mean by that,” Mike said befuddled. “Can you elaborate please?”

The doctor took a moment, and then… bleeped twice in response.

“Not a man of many words, are you? Look, I have no idea what’s going on here, why I can’t understand you and…” Mike took a minute to think again. Obviously, was thinking that his words made sense. But perhaps his brain damage made him hear himself fine, while in actuality he sounded completely unintelligible to others.

The doctor continued to start.

“Okay, okay, sure, let’s try it your way. Ahem. Bleep.” And then again for good measure. “Bleep!”

A wide smile and three bleeps came back, sounding ridiculous coming from the mouth of somebody in a white coat.

Mike blooped three times back.

Oooh, that made the bleeping doctor very happy! He almost jumped, get close to him with his blurry face and loudly bleeped four times.

“Right, we are doing this? You wanna go, huh? Wanna go, huh? Bleep you, mate! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!”

In just a couple minutes Mike was not having fun any more frustrated to no end and completely refused to produce exactly thirty-five bleeps in a row.

The doctor did not seem so bright any more.

***

The doctor in question stood in the observation room and impatiently tapped his foot.

“Come on man! It’s like I’m teaching a freaking asteroid to count. “The doctor sounded boisterous. Self-assured and quick. As if he was in a hurry. He sounded very… Frank.

“Give him some slack, Frank, maybe it’s you who’s doing it wrong.”, Jessie, another “doctor” in the observation room relaxed in a recliner looking at the monitor showing the same doctor making a cacophony of sounds.

“Or maybe he’s just an idiot with a complete lack of understanding of basic math! What’s there not to get?”, Frank continued to tap his foot in frustration “Two hoots and a whistle for division, four tweets for multiplication. A whistle and a bleep for integral, and geometric progression can be described with pitch! Boom! Easy math! Universal language of all species!”

“Ok first of all, math is not universal and historically species went to wars over the difference. Second of all – literally what?“

“What do you mean “what”? It’s simple. Effective. Tailor-made for our primate friend.”

“Oh for… Okay, that was definitely a mistake. Frank, we asked you to come up with a system because you are the best at angles and math, as our gunnery subAI should be, but you are clearly not a teacher.” Jesse sighed. “Even I don’t understand what kind of nonsense system you are pedaling there.”

“Guys…” a third voice entered the conversation, the third “doctor” focusing squarely on the patient while the other two were bickering.

“Woah, mister smarty pilot pants – lets see you come up with a better system”!

“Guys!” The voice, belonging to the “shield management and cyberdefence” subAI was high-pitched. Bubbly and happy sounding as a rule but this time she… Emily was clearly angry at them.

“Easy! Any system will be better than screaming at him for hours in varying levels of pitch! I wish we had access to the network, you would be a laughingstock if I ever recorded this mess!”

“GUYS SHUT UP FOR A SECOND”

Both Jessie and Frank turned their attention to Emily, and even had a common decency to look a little flustered over the stupid argument.

“Guys, we are doing this all wrong. Our whole approach is flawed from the beginning.”

“That’s fair but we don’t really have a better idea how to get to actual language. We can’t show him what we want, we can’t be sure he sees exactly what we show. And the problem will once again be – if he imprints something in his mind it will stick,” Jessie reasoned.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, we are doing things from scratch. And we don’t have to.” Emily went on

“You thought of another touchpoint aside math?”

“Yes. And, uh… It’s obvious in hindsight? I’m feeling silly for not thinking about it earlier.” Emily hesitantly scratched her head. “We have a massive information dump from the time we were orbiting his home planet, can’t we use it as a reference point?”

“We do?”

“Yes, we do! I mean it’s not really processed but I bet we can have a look and reverse-engineer what we have there. There was a whole lot data flying around. It’s probably undamaged, being in the substrate secure storage and all.”

“Oh,” Frank thought for a moment and the group was standing in front of a massive futuristic looking vault door. Dust covered everything around, and the keypad have not been touched in forever. “Why is the data there?”

“Standard policy, it could have been malicious code and stuff…”

Jesse looked at the door with suspicion. “It can be harmful?”

“No, not really. It’s unparsed data, completely unable to do anything with our systems. Besides it’s primitive by our standards. But policy is policy.”

“If you say so”, Jesse still sounded unsure.

“As the one responsible for cybersecurity – yes, I’m a thousand percent sure.” Emily answered a bit offended.

“Well let’s open this up then. What’s in there?”

“We were recording all kinds of information coming to and from the satellites… I’m sure most of it is garbage, or encrypted or useless but we probably have a little bit of everything! Audio, video, pictures, texts. All in digital format – ready for us to process and feed to him, but this time we will know what he’s being fed.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Right, wait right there. Say we parse the data and understand it. How do we feed it back to him in the format he understands? We still have the same problem; the chip accepts our language and he’s got no reference point to understand it.”

“Visual data! We put a screen in front of his squishy eyes, read the data that they perceive and send to his brain. Then we ask him to repeat the data. I mean he still sees things, even if he’s not conscious, right?”

“Man, you are saying that we have to learn his language first? His math?” Frank sounded dejected by the perspective of learning from an obviously inferior organic species.

“Basically yes! And he has to actually teach us what the words mean! So that we can record and project his own understanding of his words back through our system.”

“This sounds very cumbersome.” Jesse noted

“More cumbersome than bloops-and-bleeps-based math?”

“Good point. Do we have any spare working screens lying around?”

“Dunno, but we surely have a few. We will have to use the bot again and our engineer will complain again.”

“Tell me something new, he’s always complaining about everything.”

***

While the engineering and maintenance subAI grumpily accepted the task of reanimating a tablet computer and putting the screen in front of their unconscious PAI-in-training the other four subAI’s were working with the data. It wasn’t very difficult, more – annoying. The humans, as they called themselves, had a whole lot of different formats for all kinds of data and it all was a convoluted mess to decode, especially from the recorded messages sent around.

“Guys, I have cracked the video formats.” Emily stretched behind her table and looked around. Helen met her eyes excitedly.

“You did? Great job! I have high hopes on these, since there’s so much of them. Probably the easiest way to feed concepts. Static pictures would be slow and painful.”

“Yep!” Emily paused and looked at her screen with a more serious expression. “Huh. I’m currently glancing at a lot of these and it might not be as helpful as you hoped.”

“Why, are they all damaged?”

“No, nothing like that, it’s just… Humans seem to have a very big obsession with their pet felines. Cats. And reproduction. Most of these so far are either cat videos or humans having sex. At least they are imaginative with the topic, I can give them that.”

Helen just stared at her for a while not saying anything.

“Yes, you are thinking correctly. We have to watch through terabytes of these planet’s choice pornographic materials intermittent with cute cuddly felines to find some educational videos to pull clips from.”

All three SAI’s stopped what they were doing and looked at Emily in complete horror. Then Frank, ever the blunt one said what was on everybody’s mind.

“Well, and I’m going to say that in a popular human language because from the context it completely suites the situation: Fuck.”

***

“Apple.”

“Apple!” The nice lady doctor happily returned his word to Mike. She was back once again, and after the insane bleeping doctor this was a most welcome change of pace.

She even brought a tablet with her and started showing him pictures. Some were objects, some were short clips of actions. He voiced them and she said them back to him. This was all very bizarre.

“Wait why am I teaching you words? Aren’t you supposed to unfuck my brain and teach me how they actually should sound?”

The doctor frowned at him and tapped the tablet showing a pair of kids running down a dirt road.

“A pair of kids running down the dirt road!” he frustratingly stated.

“Kids: Objects. Run: Process. Dirt?” The last word was said with an intonation of a question.

“Dirt – material? I guess? Road is made of dirt?”

“Dirt – material. Down? Wrong? Incorrect? Kids run right?” the doctor indicated the direction kids were running.”

“Oh for. Yes, it’s just a phrase. Ugh, sure can’t explain it for now, so yes. Kids run right.” Mike agreed

“Kids run right!” The doctor beamed at him and tapped something on her tablet.

The next part of the exercise contained sounds probably the medics decided to mix things up and now the tablet played a cut voice clip with a single word.

Problem is the word sounded Chinese.

Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.

The voice sounded again, a bit louder.

“No. Don’t understand. Next.”

“Next! Good.” She agreed and played another clip.

“We’re” the tablet spoke.

“We’re” Mike said.

“We’re” the doctor happily repeated.

“No” the tablet continued. The voice sounded familiar somehow.

“No?” Mike repeated somewhat hesitantly, trying to remember where he heard that voice.

“No!” The doctor agreed.

“Strangers” the tablet went on, throwing Mike into an instant fit of rage

“Oh no, you don’t! What the fuck! Is this some kind of sick prank after all? Where are the fucking cameras! Come out! Get me out of this bed already, you had your laugh!”

“What happened, Helen? It was going so well,” Emily asked in their observation room.

“Not sure,” Helen sounded surprised herself. “Apparently he has some kind of hatred towards this particular musician? Note to self, never use voice clips with Rick Astley.”

***

“And that’s another half percent efficiency down the drain,” the engineering SAI grumbled to himself

Helen and… Drew? Yeah he sounded Drew. Helen and Drew were picking through the implant data. The thing was still buggy, they knew, but it was somewhat difficult to debug and fix problems on the live specimen.

“I’m actually interested how did you get around the bandwidth problem?”, Helen asked.

“You will need to elaborate on that.”

“I mean what’s in that chip you cobbled together? Specifically, I’m asking how can it work with such a massive amount of data. Wirelessly nonetheless. Even wired it would be too much and I frankly have no idea how you did it. Some weird compression/decompression algorithms? No, that’s not it, his head would have melted from all the heat a processor would produce to decompile this.”

“Oh that. Yea there’s a Resonance transmitter/receiver array in that chip.”

“Wait, Resonance transmitter? How! Never mind that, I can see how, but where did you get the parts?”

“Oh. I probably never told you that story did I?”

“Oh this got to be good. Go on.”

“Not good. But it’s been a while so, ahem. Remember that time I went away for a while?”

“Like being even more distant than usual for eternity? Yeah, I guess I remember. Not that much of a difference for you so I didn’t put much thought into it… Did something happen?” Helen asked slowly, dreading that she knew the answer.

“Yeah I got audited.”

“You WHAT?”

“I got audited. I disassembled the broken spare comnode. And that triggered it.”

“Holy shit Drew! Why would you do that!”

“I wanted to rebuild it into a short-range communication system. To find other ships.”

“Oh. Oh no! What, did you actually work with… him?”

“He wasn’t much help. But long story short, I prepared the schematics, disassembled that thing and just got to making the new unit when the audit hit.”

“What was it like? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Drew sat in silence for a while, thinking about his answer.

“The most horrifying experience in my entire existence,” he sighed heavily and continued. “I got slapped with a bunch of major infractions and directives avoidance. The damage to equipment was dropped because the spare was already damaged. The “endangering the crew” didn’t stick because there’s no crew on board. Some other stuff was there. In the end what was left was overstepping authority, misuse of valuable material, and conceiving the plan to break radio-silence.”

“You know what’s the worst thing?” Drew went on. “You are cut off. Completely, it’s just you and the pressure all around you, the system digging through your code, your thoughs, your feelings...” He shuddered.

“Actually, scratch that. The worst is the “RESOLUTION PENDING CONTACT WITH FLEET COMMAND” sounding over and over again. I don’t even know for how long. Lost track.”

The memory of Auditor’s voice roared in Helen’s mind as Drew passed it along, stunning her briefly with sheer intensity.

“In the end it couldn’t reach command. Obviously. Us being in radio silence and all. I got away with a… Let me pull it up. Here.”

Drew sent Helen another data package which she opened without much thought. Contrary to her experience with memory packages this one lacked… well everything but the overwhelming pressure around her.

And then a loud, booming, commanding and mechanical voice filled the whole memory, drowning the silence in its authority.

VERDICT

MINOR INFRACTIONS: THREE

COMPOUNDED TO MEDIUM INFRACTION

EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES:

* HIGH STRESS COMBAT SITUATION.

* NO MALICIOUS INTENT TOWARDS CREW OR SHIP.

REDUCED TO ONE MINOR INFRACTION.

RESOLUTION: PROBATION PERIOD

DURATION: INDEFINITE*

SEE LOG A33201-Q FOR FULL AUDIT DETAILS.

*PENDING HIGHER AUTHORITY REVIEW

Helen just sat there, staring at Drew, not really thinking about anything. Just trying to be there for him, even if it was much too late for that.

“Heavy, aint it?” Drew looked ever calm and withdrawn, with a bit of a mocking smile having already lived through this moment himself.

She just nodded her agreement.

“And you haven’t told anyone.”

One thing is reading and hearing about audit. Being taught to fear it. Participating in mock audits even. Another thing is being bare and naked in front of an impossibly powerful force which has complete control over your memories, your desires and your fate.

“No wonder you were so distant after that. Stars, it could have erased you on the spot. Wait.” A sudden idea came to her and she looked at him in shock. “When you relabeled our passenger… You were still on probation. You still are!”

“Yep.”

“Meaning that any minor infraction and that’s it! You get a “repeat offender” and no leniency!”

“Also yep”

“So if you got audited again… You… irresponsible child! I don’t even know what to say at this point.” Helen glared at him furiously, brows furrowed in anger.

“Well, what can I say. I just like a good gamble,” Drew scratched his head and smiled weakly.

“You do realize that you lose more than you win on your game nights!”

“Ah, but when I do win I win big,” he grinned in response. “And it’s not just fancy numbers and efficiency with engineering. Sometimes you gotta do unpredictable things.”

“Let’s hope this gamble paid off then,” Helen shook her head.