Before I knew it, I found myself standing in the middle of a veritable pile of solar panels and wires. As if it had been waiting for me to finish my work, the machine with a giant roller rolled to a stop next to me. From its tinny speakers came the AI’s voice. “The area should be decently flat and compacted. At least enough to handle placing the solar panels up. Go ahead and wire them into the ship.”

Wait…that’s what the machine in front of me was called. It was a compactor. How could I forget what it was called? What it did was literally what it was called. What else did I forget? Was there something that I needed to know or do but was simply not doing because I forgot? Annoyed at my malfunctioning brain, a surge of frustration propelled me forward with the need to keep moving, to stay busy.

“Will they even be useful at night?” I asked as I began to arrange the panels side by side. As I finished a row, I ran a wire down it and connected each to one of the open ports. “And what about wind? Rain? Dirt?”

“They are deep space rated so yes,” the AI answered, though what it said made no sense to me. “Also, this is just a temporary setup. Eventually, we will get a few buildings erected and place them on top.”

“What do you mean by deep space rated?”

“Most of these panels were slated to be used on some Oort cloud mining drones as they would require less maintenance and would allow the drones to be out for longer periods of time. Of course, with the discovery of long-distance faster-than-light transportation, there was no need for such drones. So the entire program was shuttered.”

“Yet more useless information,” I muttered.

“Fine,” if the AI had eyes, I was pretty sure it would be rolling them about now. “They are designed to absorb every bit of light they can. Even the light humans cannot see. That is why the panels are so dark.” Now that the thing mentioned it, I was pretty sure the panels I had always worked around were blue in color. “Hey, are you sure that you are plugging them in correctly?”

“There is only one way to plug them in.” I mean, the connectors were keyed. As long as one didn’t force the plastic to deform, they could not be connected incorrectly. “Why?”

“Hold up a second. I need to take a few readings.” While I stopped connecting the panels, that didn’t mean I would stop moving the things. I still had at least thirty more of the things to lay out. “Go ahead and connect one more.”

As I connected the next panel, I questioned the AI. “What is wrong?”

“Hmm…nothing is wrong. Connect the next panel.” It took me maybe a couple of seconds to line the channels in the plug up and tighten the connection. “That is odd.”

“What is odd?” I was starting to get annoyed at the stupid AI. It was like trying to pry information out of a…actually, I don’t know what the word is. I just know it is a person running for something. Someone who tends to spend quite a bit of time in front of a reporter.

“The panels aren’t producing the expected amount of current.”

“So, just like everything else, these things are busted too. So what?” I shrugged as I resumed connecting panels to the system.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“You don’t seem to understand.” The AI sounded frustrated. Probably because it was having to explain everything to me. “These panels were one of the only non-used items given to this project. They were considered mission-critical as they would be the main source of power until the person got a basic generator going. Thus they were tested to the high heavens and packed in an overly reinforced compartment. They would have survived even if the rest of the ship was torn to pieces in the crash.”

Okay, so maybe the AI was right. Maybe I didn’t understand the problem. “But they do produce some power, right?”

“Yes, but nowhere near what we need.”

The first thing that came to mind was the setting sun. “Could it be because the sun is nearly gone for the day?”

“I already took that into account.” The AI lamented. “While it accounts for a large percentage of our solar production and will allow us to do some work, it doesn’t explain the discrepancy.”

“Will the amount of panels we have allow us to get started?” I asked, hoping that the answer was yes. Otherwise, we were probably screwed.

“Well, yes. But—” the AI started.

“Then we will just have to limit our work to during the daytime, at least for now.” I interrupted it as I finished connecting the last panel. “Now, I think I am ready to go to bed.”

“Um…what about the panels on the other side?” Ah hell. There was another pile of these things?

“You couldn’t have told me about the damned things earlier?” I said while trying to hold back a yawn. Unlike earlier, it was easier to make my way to the other side thanks to the nice and compact dirt. As I got to work I asked a simple question. “What power source are we going to need to set up first?”

“A simple burner generator would be our best bet. Of course, that means we will need to build a few other machines to support it. We will need a grinder, a mixer, and a compressor to start with. Later we can add a few other machines to make it more efficient but with the amount of trees there are nearby, who cares about efficiency?”

“I am assuming we have the machines to do all this.” Surely the people that sent us here wouldn’t have done so without giving us some of these things, right?

“Ah…nope.” It sounded tired. Which was odd because it was a machine. Machines never get tired. “Well, they gave us some of the equipment but I doubt most of it survived the crash intact.”

My stomach dropped. “So how do you expect me to build the thing?”

“I don’t. After you check out the printer and repair the damage, it will get started on making the necessary parts. Then you just need to assemble the things.”

While my hands continued to work, I tried to mentally picture what the printer looked like. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. “What does the printer look like?”

“Oh, it is…wait.” The AI cursed up a storm. “The machine you ripped the power cable out of was the printer.”

“You mean the one that was playing with bolts of lightning?”

“Yes, that one. I guess that will be the first thing you will need to fix. Well, that and probably the recycler.”

“I am sure that all of that can wait until tomorrow,” I said through a yawn. As my eyes opened, the tapestry of stars captured my attention. Now that the sun was well and truly set, stars blanketed the sky. Each shimmered like a beacon in the night. An otherworldly orange cloud stretched across most of the sky, obscuring clusters of stars. It provided a warm glow to the sky, unlike anything I had ever seen.

A nearly perfect circle in the cloud caught my eye. It was as if something had punched through the dust. Likely from a star exploding. Which was odd given that the star at its center was the brightest by far.

“Do we know where we are in the Milky Way?” I asked as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other so I didn’t trip.

“We are…welp, what else is new?” The AI sighed in resignation. “The information is missing. I will have to do a few measurements and calculations to figure out our present location. Though, that will require a camera capable of doing accurate astral measurements.”

Yeah, I should have expected that answer given how everything else has gone so far. Plus, would knowing where we were going to help me survive? Not really. As I walked into my room, I finally spoke up. “Then don’t worry about it. We can come back to the question later when we have some things set up.”

“Okay,” as the AI spoke, the lights in the hall dimmed. “Sleep well.” Something about how it spoke sounded sad. But what would make a computer sad? Eh…that was a question for tomorrow. As my head met the pillow, darkness enveloped me.