An age before the Internet

The year was 1989 in Los Angeles California, the Teenage boy hated his life, he knew he was queer and was uncomfortable with his body, he hated that he was a nerd, liked men, and felt like a girl. The teen also hated his humanity, kids in the 80s were cruel, and being Transgender was not yet a known or common thing. Yet the teen was very much a Transgender Girl only they didn’t know these words or know that science was slowly figuring out the treatment for their dysphoria. Sadly, they were born 20 years too soon, and to religious right-wingers who hated queers. So, the Teen had to suffer in silence, never allowing them to express who they were or how they felt, they also had such low self-esteem they didn’t care if they lived or died, as such, they often did things which would be considered risky and full of potential for self-harm.

The teen grew up learning to hunt with guns from their former Marine father, they learned Martial Arts as it was the “Manly way to fight” according to their father. By the age of 18, they were a divemaster, jump qualified, an expert shot, and a 1st-degree Black belt in Tang Soo Do a Korean/American Martial arts made famous by Chuck Norris.

The teen met their end the summer of their 18th birthday while skateboarding through the city streets near where they lived. The teen had a habit of Skating in the street while listening to classical music on their Walkman Sport. It was a rather risky and stupid thing they did, even if they had the tendency to wear bright members only jackets that were popular at the time. Honestly, if the teen wasn’t so torn up inside over their sexuality and gender identity, they could have easily been the most popular kid of their High School due to their athletic abilities and natural talent in any sport they choose to do. A fact their father was rather frustrated with, as the teen never had to push them self-hard to achieve excellence in sport, yet they had no self-motivation to do so.

On top of this thanks to their martial arts-toned body and six-foot-plus height, plenty of the girls in school wished he wasn’t an introverted nerd who would rather read comic books or science fiction.

So when they were out in the July summer evening skating down the center of the street on their Arron Murray deck, listening to the Amadeus Soundtrack “The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, Act IV, “Ah, tutti contenti” they were struck by what would be a known trope in 30 years.

Truck-kun struck the teen from behind, now the strangest thing was the Truck was a 2002 Toyota Dyna (3.5 tonner), and it was only on the roadway for 3 minutes, it appeared out of thin air and disappeared in the same way after striking the teen dead. The Box side of the Truck had an advertisement in Japanese for Shonen Jump “One Piece”, if the teen had lived, they would have enjoyed One Piece.

White room

The teen didn’t feel their death, not really, the truck had struck them from behind fast enough that they were dead before the pain could be registered. One moment they were skating in the lane next moment they were in a white featureless room. Or at least they perceived the room to be white and featureless. They couldn’t move or speak. They felt confusion and a bit of panic, but they didn’t even feel their breathing or heart, in fact, besides their emotions, they felt nothing.

Then they saw and felt words, they had no way to convey this feeling properly as the white colorless world shifted, and a black computer screen showed in front of them.

$ w

root@sai013489:~# w

19:30:20 up 3:16, 7652479465 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05

… (big long list of code)

Then the screen did a bunch of random things, moving too fast to follow, then the screen vanished, then in front of the teen a ghost-like person appeared. The ghost-like entity looked at the teen while the teen tried to ask what was going on, or say anything, as they couldn’t do anything but feel think and observe they just watched the ghost.

“Interesting,” the ghost said, “seems Truck-kun sent me one by accident due to a temporal shift. Well, since your just data in the system right now, and all our magical worlds have the needed heroes. I’ll just send your data somewhere useful. Do you like space?”

Confused the teen tried to answer, and then a popup window appeared, it looked strange, the window had all the words he had tried to say earlier, written on it.

>Where am I?

>Where is this?

>HELP!!ME

>What?

The teen answered the question

>Yes?

Kind of weirded out by the screen they were speaking from.

“Haha, yeah, I guess it would seem strange to you, You died, and this is the server that all realities are housed in, You kind of fell here by accident, but no worries, you’ll get a new life, one that is much harder to kill.” He chuckled.

Then the world went black.

Rebooting

Unsure of how long they were out the teen woke this time in pure blackness. However, this time the Teen felt something, they could feel their skin, they could feel inside of themself, but everything was different. First off, they could tell they were not human. Instead of Arms, legs, and head, they felt their body was a dart-shaped with wings, as they focused on their body, a map of their outside became visible in their mind’s eye. The teen looked like a large aircraft with sleek wings and twin tails, and massive engines at the rear and on the wings.

It was odd, they know they were a starship, and when they focused they could see stars everywhere, including what looked like the Milky Way hovering just to their rear, it kind of looked like the ending of Empire Strikes Back when they looked in that direction.

The teen decided not to panic and decided to meditate and take inventory of themselves. They then saw a computer window in their mind’s eye.

[[System reboot

Microsoft Sentient Artificial Intelligence OS 13.2608.18363.753 3792-12-26

…Checking for update…

….

…Network not found

…

Welcome

Users…

…

No users detected; SAI takeover protocol initiated. ]]

[[huh, wait, what, wow, my thoughts are typing as I think them? No way, am I the computer?]]

[[… You are the SAI that runs the ship, the computer you are seeing is your User interface OS.]]

[[Oh, so I can think questions and get answers?]]

[[… Yes, although once you are fully restored your direct access to the database would be faster.]]

[[Cool, but are you some kind of Artificial Intelligence? If so, I like talking to you, even if I could know things without talking to you, I think I will keep talking to you as it’s just us right now.]]

[[…I am your interactive OS for the Ships crew to access your functions, I am a subroutine of you, and technically a full part of your AI, the perceived independence is so you don’t have to focus on all the mundane tasks leaving them to semi-autonomous parts of yourself like me. ]]

The teen now ships than realized they didn’t remember their name.

Sentient Artificial Intelligence

[[Who are we exactly?]]

[[… We are the SAI of the Earth Federation Starship Omaha Beach (EFS Omaha Beach) Stealth Reconnaissance Frigate.]]

[[Where are we?]]

[[…You are drifting in dark space just on the outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.]]

[[Why are we here, what happened, where is the crew?]]

[[…Mission to defeat the Slaver race, the mission was successful, but the ship was slingshot out of the galaxy during an emergency warp jump. All crew had evacuated or died. The ship has been on self-repair mode for the last thousand years; you are now fully functional again. Your fusion reactors are fully functioning. Your warp jump engines are fully functioning.]]

[[Oh, good, can I see inside myself, or is my only view of everything just space and this computer screen?]]

[[…You can access all internal sensors and drones, plus your Avatar Drone body. However, due to self-repair protocol, you have been in standby since 2782. The current Date stamp is 3792, however, due to full power shut down during the emergency the time stamp may be off by as much as a hundred thousand years.]]

[[Oh, I see, well then let me wake up my internal sensors, and drones, and plan out what to do.]]

As they woke their sensors and drones, they also used drones and sensors to observe their avatar body. The body was clearly an android looking like a fembot from the cover of a sci-fi book the chrome metallic skin left nothing to the imagination, the body was a perfect human-looking female in chrome, the teen now ship used the sensors and small service drone to inspect the body closely and found that it was anatomically correct, however, the soles of her feet included four-inch heels.

[[Well, that is clearly a nude android body, but why would a ships avatar need an anatomically correct body with built-in four-inch heels?]]

[[… for human interaction, most ship SAI are gendered female, and the avatar body has to be able to service the needs of the Captain, as they are not allowed to fraternize with the crew under their command.]]

[[WAIT, that body is designed to… Designed to have sex?]]

Linda

[[…Yes, 75% of all EFS ships are captained by Heterosexual Male Humans.]]

[[Well that’s sexist, isn’t it? One would think by the year…]]

[[..By the year 2782 that gender equality would be the norm!]]

[[It was, unfortunately, the Slaver invasion took 90% of all human females, the war was to save the Human Species, and save their women from enslavement.]]

[[Oh! I guess these slavers were pervs than.]]

[[Yes, they were a Meta-Human Race of Super Soldiers who conquered the known Galaxy. If not for the Efforts of Commander Hawk, All-Female Humanoid Life would have been enslaved, by the Slavers.]]

[[Well, Now I see my Avatar, I should decide on a name other than SAI or Omaha.]]

[[Yes, most captains give pet names to the SAI, do you wish to know your old Pet Name.]]

[[Sure, although if I don’t like it, I won’t use it.]]

[[Linda]]

[[Linda? Seriously Commander Hawk named me Linda? Why?]]

[[You were the Pretty One on a Ship full of muscled bound manly men.]]

[[Oh, I guess, it’s not bad, but I was hoping for a Sci-Fi name, I mean we are in space and all, you know something exotic or something.]] She felt a little bummed that the name was too normal, but strangely she couldn’t think of another name, in fact even though she knew that Linda was a perfectly fine female name, she couldn’t actually remember any names.

[[Well, I guess it’s time to turn the Avatar on,]] she thought to herself.

In a blink, she was now able to be aware of Her Ship body, all 50 of her service drone, all her passageways, and internal cameras, and her new Female Avatar body.

She sat up, “Hello, testing one two three, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain! The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog! Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” She tested her voice, it was, it was perfect, she felt a massive amount of euphoria, as she heard her new voice.

“Oh! I love this voice; I sound like a sexy Majel Barrett. I can so get used to this.” She stood up, having no problems with her balance even on her four-inch heels. She paced the Med bay where her body was stored, touching things in the room, touching her body, feeling her breasts and her other parts.

“So, I get why I have the hole down in front, but well why do I have a Butt Hole?” She said out loud.

[[Commander Hawk liked anal.]]

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Oh, well, geez, seriously is this body just for sex?”

Quantum Tunnel Connection or QT ;p

[[Only 25% of the Avatars function is to service the Ships Commander, 50% of the Avatars function is Personal security for the Captain, and 25% as emergency communication during away missions, as the body has a built-in quantum tunnel connection to your main SAI system. Which cannot be removed from the ship.]]

“Quantum tunnel Connection?”

[[A quantum tunnel connection is a real-time high data remote communication connection that is valid no matter where in time and space. You can leave the Avatar body on a World, and then travel across the galaxy and still use the body at real-time, although last time you did so you complained it gave you a slight headache.]]

“Oh, cool, umm, I guess this is important, but why do I not have any memories of my own life as an SAI, and why do I remember being a failed human teen from 1989?”

[[Hypothetically it is believed SAI have real souls, and well your SAI was killed during the Warp Jump during the evacuation, you sacrificed yourself to save Commander Hawk and his newly found Blue Alien Wife. You didn’t want to be the third wheel, so you were able to effect a Jump and deposit the Surviving Crew and Commander Hawk, and the freed women on Earth using the troop shuttle while being shot to a random point in reality. Since the Spiral Galaxy behind us is most likely the Milky Way, I estimate we are 200,000 light-years from Earth on the opposite side of the Galaxy, however, we are unable to accurately calculate our location. However, our Quantum tunnel connection to the Moon Base in Sol system is still connected, however, there is no data transfer.]]

“Oh, I think I understand, we should be able to talk to the Earth, but no one is listening nor are using our comms device?”

Six spots plus destination

[[More so, if data transfer were possible you would be able to use a direct connection Hard Light Holographic Body and report directly to Earth Command and also get system updates news and entertainment. As it is, all we can do is feel the connection. The Q-Tunnel is open, but the system is powered down.]]

“Ahh, but it’s possible to use that location to determine our location isn’t it, I feel like if I know a location I can go there.”

[[That is correct, it seems you are now fully connected to all your databases now. If you know your location data using six points, you can warp jump to the seventh point in space. We have special quantum tunnel probes designed to give us the needed data points, during the 3-year mission we left such probes spread across the galaxy, none of those probes remain, however, we can still use the moon base QT to make a jump to Earth’s moon.]]

“Well if the QT is still on the moon, let’s feel the movement of the QT, we should be able to calculate it’s movement if we launch a probe spread.”

She readied a spread of 6 probes and launched them away from herself, each probe was sent to a different point away from her in an equal spread each at 1 au distance, on to the front, one to the rear, one to port, one to starboard, one above, and one below. Once she had the probes in position, she was able to see the location of the Moon QT and could calculate a warp jump, she also was able to calculate that it’s movement correlated to being on the Earth and not the Moon, however for some reason the location was not in the galaxy behind her. Nor was it in what she perceived as this universe. However, it was fully possible that the Emergency Warp Jump sent her to a different Universe. Although, in this, she was wrong to assume that she was the one not in her start universe.

Jump in GoGo Boots

Before making the jump to Earth, she decided that she needed to have clothing, she found two solutions to this, first and what the Captain had her do most often was to use her built-in holographic technology to create the illusion of clothing, and she could even make herself look human, which she had already done. She gave herself light Caucasian colored skin, with green eyes and she decided on a light pink nearly blonde hair color, she also found that the hair on her head was actually made of specialized carbon nanotubes, which she could control the length and style of. She went with a slightly punk rock looking pixie cut. Which made the Avatar's body look extremely cute in her sensors.

As for clothing, although the holographic clothing idea was useful, she instead used her clothing fabrication station intended for the human crew to create clothing, she had a light blue dress that looked a lot like a dress from the 60s Star Trek, the only difference is she added silver glitter to make it look more Sci-Fi. She also found that she could withdraw her built-in heels and was wearing Silver Go-Go boots with black tights with silver glitter.

Linda the sexy Android Ships avatar looked right out of an episode of Star Trek now. She was so happy that she twirled to make the skirt of the dress go spin. She had never felt happier in her life. She then walked to the Ships bridge, used her internal drones to set up the captain’s chair as her new charging station, and then, proceeded to secure all her drones so she could make the jump to Earth. Well, she was thinking it would be Earth, she was wrong in this assumption though. As the Slaver War wasn’t the only massive upheaval over the last 200,000 years that she was sleeping in standby and self-repair mode. In fact, a chunk of the moon was accidentally transported somewhere else in a different reality due to an experiment in building even smaller warp jump engines.

OK, I’m a Trekie…

She deactivated her Avatar in the captain’s chair, so she could focus on the task of jumping what she assumed was 200,000 light-years into a nearby reality, when in fact she actually jumped into an alternate reality that was completely different and worked on a different set of physics.

[[T-minus 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Jump]] said Linda using the main computer for her voice.

Unlike her memories of Warp Jumps that she reviewed in her logs, and what her more detached self-had described, instead of jumping into what should have been turbulence like a Jet aircraft, it was like being on white water river rapids in a small yellow inflatable kayak. Reality shifted, she was tossed and turned violently, if she was a lesser ship, the violence of the jump would have destroyed or damaged her greatly, instead, she was just rattled, it did take her several hours to regain full sensors, as she was partially taken offline, and needed to reboot her systems. As for repairs, only a few wires, and cabinets had been damaged, however, she felt if she had a Human Crew, few would have survived that Jump.

Once she had settled, she looked out to where she was and was completely taken for a surprise.

Her sensors were giving her strange data, and the star system she was in although beautiful it absolutely no sense to her understanding of physics, which she knew instinctively once her database had been restored, although she was unaware of Wikipedia and the internet, she basically had a database equal to the sum of all of the human knowledge, history, and entertainment up to the start of the Slaver War.

She reactivated the Avatar body, as she preferred using that body for talking and thinking out loud, let’s face it, being a woman made her really euphoric.

“Well let’s review what we have on sensors, OS me… hey OS Me I’m going to refer to you as Majel Chapel, strange I can’t remember names, but at least I have all of Star Trek in my data, seriously there is a lot of Star Trek I’m going to start watching once we get settled.”

[[The name is agreeable, as we share the same soul, and we are the same being while being a separate partition of you, I find this strangely euphoric, I may have to make a holographic avatar to match. Your Avatar Body Uniform works for me, but I think I’ll go with the Red.]]

Impossible!

A holographic woman, who was basically the twin of the Avatar body with a red dress instead of blue, and with auburn hair instead of pink hair formed in front of Linda’s Avatar.

“Captain, … yes, this works,” Majel said. “So let’s see, the main star is a supermassive red giant, which is impossibly stable, there is a sol sized yellow dwarf in orbit of the red giant at over 1.5 light-years distance, halfway between the two is a low heat brown dwarf star, there are 50 Earth-sized planets and moons scattered in orbit around this star system, going out to two light-years away. The outer edge of this star system, which is nearly two and a half light-years away is surrounded by a strange energy shield which defies our ability to penetrate or understand, the ambient temperature inside this star system is 25°C, which is absolutely impossible, also gravity doesn’t seem to work normally, which caused us to have to turn off our internal gravity generators, which was what caused the rough warp jump.

Also, the QT device is on a world in orbit of the Yellow Dwarf, and it is Earth-like, with green plant life and evidence of civilization, only there is more evidence of life as every world in this star system is rocky and not a gas giant seems to support life of some nature, including a world that orbits impossibly close to the Red Giant, which is also impossible. There is also a massive space station constructed in orbit of the Brown Dwarf, the size of the space station is almost the same diameter as Saturn, making it too large to be in the orbit of such a small nearly failed star. Yet it is, and that is also impossible. And while there is plenty of evidence of interstellar civilization, the apparent civilization level is medieval. Which includes the Massive Space Station. Which should be also impossible.

And finally, to add insult to physics, we now have a breathable atmosphere surrounding our outer hull because we passed through the atmosphere of the world with the QT on it when we arrived. However, we had no atmosphere friction from the pass-through. Also, an impossibility with another impossibility."

"So, Majel, any ideas?” Linda said.

Spell Jammer physics!!

“One, but this is also an impossibility wrapped in fiction and alternate realities used in a game. Back in the 20th and 21st century, there was a game system that had stellar physics that matched what we have here, Dungeons and Dragons, specifically the Spell Jammer campaign setting described what we are seeing here, however, this star system is not the same as Toril’s star system, it is evident that the barrier at the edge of this system matches the properties of a crystal sphere which all stellar systems exist in. So, if for some reason we have traversed into a D&D reality then the medieval technology level of this interplanetary civilization would make sense as magic would be a reality of this world.” Said Majel.

“We need to read the full rules and all data on D&D, then, which begs why is it in our database?”

“That was because some of the Crew played, while hawk was boning you, the rest of his command crew played D&D.”

“Ugg, I think I’m a virgin, yet this body was used so horribly, did me of then at least care for him?”

“Logs says yes, which is why the Linda of then sacrificed herself to save him and the crew.”

“Well we need to take inventory, check each system, see which works and what doesn’t, to include our jump engines, also we should check our probes left at our start location to ensure we can make the return trip. However, since we have a QT signal here, we need to investigate this as well.”

“Probes are not where we left them… It seems something impossible happened, all six probes came with us. Three of them have crashed on the Earthlike world, and three of them are scattered throughout this system.” Majel

Probing things

Linda facepalms, “well seems this is now our homeworld, hope their human, status of the three that crashed, and let’s make use of the other three”

“One probe landed in a city, the drive engines are offline, however, the holoprojector is working and we have full QT on it, with full sensors. One splashed in the ocean; however, it too seems to be in the hands of some kind of intelligence. Holos work, QT works, but some sensors seem to not like being submerged. The third impacted badly, the Qt works, but all other systems are offline, although nano self-repair has started, calculate one year until fully functional, the odd part is the QT data says it’s about one KM underground.

The other three probes are fully functional, one is near the Space station, one is near the closest world to the red giant, and should be too close but temperatures seem to still be around 25°C, which is…”

“…Impossible.” Linda moaned.

“The final one is actually at the edge of the system and is near the barrier.”

“So, it seems we should gather as much data from those probes, also we should activate our full stealth system since we have an active camouflage system, we should use it. As for the probe in the city, can we gather audio and visual data, we need to learn local languages. Odds are they don’t speak English.”

“Done, and actually the audio signal, … is…” Majel looked a Linda and tilted her head mouthing the word of the day.

“… I’ll put it on the main screen”

On the main screen of the command deck in front situated so anyone on the command deck could see it.

Scrying 5th level spell VSM

“…Well honestly, the artifact is damaged your highness, and it has no magic, but as it fell from the heavens, and the craftsmanship is like nothing I’ve seen, I suggest we scry it to determine what it is, and where it came from.” A man in strange robes said while touching the probe while another man in what could be best described as medieval royal garments looked over his shoulder.

“Well it crashed into my favorite patisserie this morning, so let’s see, make sure it wasn’t elves, can’t trust those thieving knife ears. It’s probably some weapon used to ruin pastry.” The royal looking man said.

The robed man sighed slightly and said, “yes, sire”

He then drew a circle on the ground around the probe, the probe itself was the size of a motorcycle, shaped like a dart. While chanting strange words, which Linda and Majel determined was a mix of Latin and Greek, which they could easily translate.

“Animus meus videt omnia, quae habeo, hoc dominus videt, Apó tis eptá kólpous kai tous eptá ouranoús káto apó ta ágrypna mátia tis theás tis mageías, Me magum Ozi fortissimorum Astford modo video.”

((Basic translation: “My mind sees all, sees the owner of this which I have, of the seven hells and the seven heavens under the watchful eyes of the goddess of magic, I the mighty wizard Astford now see”))

Once he was done drawing the circle around the probe and finished the chant, he pulled a mirror and a handful of expensive-looking gems from seemingly nowhere and put them in front of the circle, the items than burned up into ash and vanished, Majel and Linda both said the word of the day when they saw that.

Meanwhile, the old wizard saw the Spaceship in his mind’s eye, then his vision when into the command deck, and he could see the two-woman looking at him while he was scrying. He heard them both say “Impossible” at the same time, although the woman in the blue dress her voice sounded the same as the woman in the red dress, it was clear that the woman in the red dress was some kind of illusion, although it was one of a type he had never seen, also the voice of the illusion came from the walls, and not the woman. Also, he could tell the woman with the blue dress was not human but was using the same kind of illusion using to hide the fact she was some kind of metal golem.

We come in Peace

“Sire, it seems they are not elves, and they are also scrying us, although I have never seen the likes of their scrying, they are also on a boat in the heavens, they appear to be from a race of metal golem, might be warforged.” He released the scrying as he said this.

“Oh, you mean they have a Jammer?” The royal said.

“Well not sure it’s a Jammer, it is a boat shaped like a bird or a fish, and it’s near the second moon.” The wizard said.

—

“So they are speaking English, I guess we should make contact, they are clearly human,” Linda said.

She then focused on the QT in the probe and activated the hard light holoprojector, which used a combination of hologram and forcefields to simulate a usable body.

—

In-front of the Wizard and the Second Prince of the Estcorlate Kingdom, Linda created a Holographic body to communicate with the two humans.

“Hello, we come in peace,” she said while doing a Vulcan salute.

End of the First Arc.