The Scrapper, Ch. 7

 “REPEAT: MCJ-IFR contact in 4.8 days, Docking range in 5.1 days”

No. Nononono, we can’t go to the mining colony, ohhh Keeper no, NO. There was a negative possibility that they would see my clearly broken ship as anything besides “escaped criminal” and immediately arrest me. Maybe we could re-route, maybe Din would have an idea!

I rushed up to the cockpit, “DIN! DIN WAKE UP!”, frantically pulling up maps, charts, trying to find that window with the RbDrive stuff on it… The light to my right was now red and pulsing, why didn’t this ship have an owner’s manual?!

The window was still open where I’d left it, despite my frantic hunting for it. I pulled up the map function again and there we were, a tiny dot moving towards another dot. I backed out from the menu and opened the “Hotspot Map”, this was the same spacial map I was just looking at but it had some cloudy looking splotches around it, it meant nothing to me.

The last option was “Diagnostics”. That held some interesting info, but nothing immediately helpful. Rb Resonance, Frame Charge (listed as a percent), Q%, and some other general info, programs running in conjunction with all this, things like that.

Some beeps on the console, then my layout rearranged on it’s own, the new(old) window slipped away, suddenly hidden from view. “Kal! Are we safe? What’s going on?”

“Din! We’ve got a problem! We’re on a direct course for the mining colony!”

“Why is that a problem? Does that mean we are moving again?”

I swallowed, still flustered and trying to pull up the window that vanished. “I- the frame! The rubidium frame or whatever! I managed to… I don’t know, trigger it somehow? There was another window that popped up on the console here, it had a menu like this thing had a blackbox, b-but I can’t find it anymore!” 

“Oxygen levels appear to be stable… Why are you panicking, Kal?”

“I’M NOT PANICKING!” I caught myself panting, head buzzing, heart pounding. I forced myself to slow down and take a few slow, jagged breaths. “If we make it to MCJ, there’s a 100% chance they will impound OLGa, decommission everything inside of her, and arrest me. Arrest meaning you work for them until you die. No trials, no juries, no chances. So forgive me if I’m a little upset and maybe panicking a bit.” I was panicking a lot.

“Well, then it sounds like we just need to figure out where this menu went and change our course!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say!” I growled at him.

“ACK: Greetings, DIN.”

“Oh! Is that Palletbot? Since when did you get comms access?”

“Kal offered me a software package which I fixed for him. It allows me to utilize the overhead for his benefit.”

“Yay! Someone else to talk to!”

Oh Keeper, I’m going to get enslaved by the blackcorps they told us horror stories about as kids. I’m going to get enslaved and the bots are just going to chat it up the whole way there. I felt my chest getting tight, it felt like every breath I took was sucking air OUT of me; the nothing gasps of a dying man. The footage of Cauler crept back into my mind, further fueling the panic, the tips of my fingers and my lips started to feel buzzy, I could feel my arms and legs bending involuntarily inward.

“Kal? You do not look good! Kal?”

The world went black as images of jail cells, asteroids, and limbrippers flashed through my head. 

I woke up a few minutes later, slumped halfway out of my chair, my back and neck aching from the unnatural position, my arms were curled in towards my chest like I was a dried out EarthPlant. My breathing was better at least, the short, pitiful breaths I pulled in felt like actual air.

It was dizzying trying to right myself in the chair, my ears were still ringing. I put my head in my hands as I leaned forward, just trying to get myself back to something that resembled normal.

“-stems appear to be stabilizing. Kal, are you feeling better?” Din’s voice came through eventually. I couldn’t tell if they were talking about the ship’s systems or me. It didn’t matter, the looming issue suddenly reasserted itself.

“The mining colony! We- we gotta change course!!”

“We will work on that, Kal. We still have-”

“ETA: 4.6 days until contact, 4.9 days until docking range.”

“Thank you, Palletbot. That long until we arrive. We have time to plan.”

Din was right of course, having another panic attack would not only waste time, it would waste more oxygen. I stole a glance down at the current levels and, surprisingly, we were actually putting power into the reserves now. Air levels looked okay, guess the O2 candle didn’t go out. The newly moving bar that scared me was our actual course and heading. 4.6 days until we were in radar range of the MCJ. Maybe we could hail a passing ship before we actually got there, barter for some supplies or maybe a tow somewhere else…

“I need a drink,” I stood up from my seat slowly, my legs still shaky. Now that we were underway it seemed like there was a bit of local gravity starting to assert itself across the ship. It wasn’t aggressive, but it was noticeable. I walked down the stairs to where I’d left my tote and canteen, near the accumulator, and was stunned by what I saw.

The lattice of rubidium crystals that appeared in the frame earlier had taken on a steady red glow, they looked like they were radiating heat and yet, between the accumulator and whatever the frame was doing, the area was nothing more than a comfortable temperature. I wonder if that changed with a larger laser setup? Maybe that’s why they had retrofitted an actual blackbox and accumulator back in the engine room instead of just pointing a full scale device at the frame. I had trouble imagining what that might even do, especially because I wasn’t even sure what this was doing NOW.

I took a few sips from my canteen through the Survistraw, still amazed that the water was very palatable through this thing, it didn’t even need batteries! Speaking of -

“Hey Din, what’s the current usage to charge ratio we’ve got going on?”

“Currently sitting at 2.54MW out, charging at 3.46MW”

“Just off the solars? Did we actually find something nearby?”

“Negative, whatever contraption you set up seems to be generating and feeding energy back into our banks.”

“So, you’re telling me that the catchers are providing enough power for this little accumulator, and being aimed at… whatever alloy this frame is made from-”

“Rubidium, Iron, Chromium, Zinc, Ma-”

“Right whatever alloy it’s made from,” I interrupted Din before he gave me a full composition analysis, “is creating a blackbox-like effect, and to throw further confusion into the works, a ship this ancient has recyclers to capture some of that excess?”

“That was rude, but yes, that explanation seems the most likely right now.”

This was bizarre, even by modern standards. No one put recyclers on shuttles this small, let alone 80+ year old shuttles. I guess I should be thankful that we had some method of propulsion, and that I wasn’t going to starve to death out here (so long as I kept my repstrip consumption to reasonable amounts), but I really needed to figure out how to change course. Or, barring that, figure out how I was going to explain my situation and also manage to barter for supplies from a facility that would rather just capture me and scrap my ship.

I topped my canteen off and headed back up to the pilot’s seat, ignoring my stomach’s request for another assorted flavor repstrip (from the makers of Calorie Cubes(tm)!). “Did you manage to find that window I was talking about, Din?”

“Negative.”

I shook my head, sitting down and peering through what was available in front of me. “Din, when you went into hibernation, I saw a bunch of windows shift and move around. Is that you rearranging things when you load in?”

“Something like that! The interface rearranges based on how it needs to interact with the user, and you and I need to interact in a quick, efficient manner, especially up here. You need to see the most pertinent information possible, so I find and show that!”

“Okay, but suppose for a moment that the base system is very, very old. I hadn’t seen that menu show up before I started shooting lasers at the frame, but this light over here,” I turned to look at the now steady lit red LED to my right, “started doing stuff as the frame was… I don’t know, charging?”

“Hmm… Searching…”

“ERR: Search term HMMM not found.”

“I suppose Palletbot doesn’t quite understand open ended statements,” Din said, shifting to a nearby speaker on the console instead of the overheads. “I will work on that with them later.”

“Sure, whatever, Din.” I wasn’t exactly in the mood to discuss the speech capabilities of a cargo bot, but maybe one day it could learn speak, and roll over, and I’d hand it a tasty electric treat, and then it would win best-in-breed for the Cargo Bot category.

“Archive scan complete, no results found.” Din concluded after a moment of silence.

“No results? What did you search for even?”

“I was examining the underlying functions to see if there was an obscured path or anything similar, I am afraid I could not find anything.” It made a sad little noise that wasn’t eliciting any sympathy from me.

“Look, I know I saw it! It was here before I woke you back up and then the window just disappeared… somewhere.” I sighed, there was too much of this ship I didn’t know or understand and unfortunately I wasn’t going to get answers just by asking Din for help. I would need to actually research where this ship came from at some point, but that was a task for another day.

“I believe you, Kal. I do not see how we would have a Rubidium lock engaged and be moving at all unless you figured something out. Do not despair!”

“Until we figure out how the hell we aren’t all getting scrapped once we reach the MCJ-”

“ETA: 4.5 days until contact, 4.8 days until docking range.”

“YES, THANK YOU, PALLETBOT,” I yelled down at it, still sitting where it had been this whole time, hogging up the docking port and using it’s newfound power of speech to annoy me.

“Why is this mining facility such a worry to you?” Din asked.

“This isn’t just a mining facility. This is a penal colony where they send anyone with a working body and enough debt to work off their balance.”

“That sounds like a fair compromise.” 

“Sure, until you get there and they snap a tracking collar on your neck, hand you a manual pickaxe and a pressure suit, and tell you to get mining.”

“This still sounds fair, given the criminal status of these people?”

“You sound like a fuckin’ topsider, Din…” I scowled, “This isn’t a job people are accepting willingly, this is forced servitude. They walk you into a court room. They tell you it’s MCJ or death, and when you get to MCJ the ‘wages’ they pay you go towards room and board. Except room and board is always more than your wages. Food is always more than your wages. Break your pick? That’s more than your wages. Someone accuses you of stealing? Trials cost wages, lost time out in the field incurs fees. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“So… they demand you pay them back, but they sell you everything you need to survive, and charge more than you could ever make?”

“Now you’re starting to get it, but its worse than that. It’s not just that you’re forever in debt to the station operators. If you’re injured on the job, say a stray laser from the primary mining trawler happens to obliterate your arm while you’re out on tether? Well the trawler just sucks you up along with whatever ore is in the area. The organics get sifted out from the ore and minerals, and that gets fed right into the replicators back on station. Now your buddies get to have a tasty you-and-whoever-else-burger that happened to get caught that shift.” I shook my head, it was one of those horror stories you didn’t want to be true, but enough officials had come back with a traumatized, thousand-meter stare that screamed “shit happened at MCJ that you don’t want to know about”.

The Big 3 Producers demanded an impossible amount of raw material, always. Their insatiable appetite for production drove them across the universe forever seeking more stones to wring blood from, and their “productive criminal rehabilitation” services were the primary labor force across the universe.

And here I was, a nondex scrapper with a stolen ship, two bots that thought they were good conversationalists, and no good idea what I was going to do next.

The next couple of days passed by uneventfully. Din and I continued searching for the hidden RbMenu I had seen, either in the system itself or physically via switches and dials, but we didn’t have any luck. Meanwhile the tiny accumulator, I discovered, had been sapping power from the main batteries the ENTIRE time it was spinning up. Turns out I didn’t have the cable split wired correctly and that had been piping reserve power directly to it. It’s a good thing there were recyclers installed or I really would have been screwed out here, no do-overs, no second chances. I may very well have used up all of my luck right there.

Whatever the case, the frame itself was still glowing, the miniature accumulator was still doing it’s job, and we were still on a direct course to Mining Cluster Jail - Interpass from Radum. 

The interpass, you may have guessed, denoted this particular asteroid cluster as a transitory platform for other incarcerated people. It handled a decent amount of non-civilian traffic on a cycle by cycle basis, either to take away prisoners or raw materials, or to import prisoners and resources to sustain the station.

But Kal, you’re asking, you make it sound like the primary import and export of this station is human bodies? That’s right, dear reader. Human bodies are a key resource out here in this arm of the galaxy. You see, we don’t have large planetary resources that other galaxies do. We mostly have asteroids, stars, stations, replicators in very specific, key locations (locked behind as much security as StationAdmins can muster), and bodies.

Bodies are good for a lot of things: labor, keeping each other entertained, repairs, maintenance, procreation to continue building more of themselves, recycling their waste to feed back to them, recycling their dead to feed back to them, the list goes on and on. The last two have only been documented 5 times in a 12,000LY radius from the BRK, and those situations were, in fact, documented crises that called for extreme measures. Do I agree with that as a solution? Not in the slightest.

Would I want to try and convince 400 people of the ethical gray area they were walking into, taken out back, shot, and then fed into a replicator to keep others fed because I refused to eat human replicator strips? I’d like to think I would try the strips first, but… I don’t know and I truly hope I never have to find out.

The second part, the “from Radum” bit, indicated the destination station that the MCJ was originally built to support. Radum itself was MCJ but on HellCrack. Max security, zero privacy, zero tolerance, max brutality. If you got sent to Radum, you might as well try and do everything in your power to kill yourself before you got there. No, seriously. Prisoners were often times sentenced and then immediately put into a medical coma until they arrived, explicitly to avoid them taking “all the fun” away from the psychopaths that ran Radum Interplanetary Incarceration (RII-MSP). Chromes back on the BRK looked like orphanage volunteers in comparison. They would often threaten you with time on Radum if they picked you up for some petty crime and parents would threaten to call Radum Security for backup when their children were being unruly.

You may be thinking, how did the B3P allow this? How could they possibly benefit? Rumor had it every cell in Radum was filmed constantly, and the bosses within the Big3 could pull up any camera they wanted, at any time, to watch. Supposedly, they could call a guard to do whatever depraved thing they had in mind. I’ve heard that they had a control panel where they can deliver whatever torture to whatever prisoner they wanted to, all at the push of a button. The footage from the cells got sold off to painjunkies, different psychos that got off on this sort of thing. I hear a lot of those types exist in the nicer stations. It’s like the more credits you have the less human you become.

I panicked about going to MCJ because it was bad, but compared to Radum, MCJ was being attacked by someone with pillows tied to their hands. I still had no idea how I wasn’t going to be immediately arrested, but reminding myself that it could be much MUCH worse helped bring me back to reality.

For starters, OLGa still had the docking tunnel attached to the airlock. There’s not a single traffic controller that would see that and think “Oh yeah, that ship just had a rough time undocking, let them in, nothing to be concerned about!” At the same time I couldn’t risk trying to get back outside and draining the last of my air reserves attempting to remove that debris. We had battery now, so the CO2 scrubbers were working again, that alone stretched the air supply out a TON. At this point my only remaining bottlenecks were food and water. The repstrips would hold me over long enough to reach MCJ, and… well honestly unless I got really thirsty the water would hold out too. If I got DESPERATE I could try using the Survistraw on my urine but… I’m not that desperate yet. Actually I think I would rather die at that point. I certainly couldn’t use the straw afterwards without a full sanitation cycle.

A bit of vomit reached the back of my throat, I winced while choking it back down.

“It will be okay, Kal! We will figure out something to tell the docking attendants!”

I chuckled a bit, “Yeah, we will, Din.” I had gotten used to sitting up in the pilot’s seat, especially after I pulled the catchers out of the viewports. It was nice to see actual movement happening out there again. As well, since we had power again, I had my BG Mk2 suit fully charged, backups included, and the headset back in my ear. We got Palletbot connected to our secure channel so it could join in the conversation, but so far it only seemed fit to tell us our rough ETA. 

Speaking of… “Hey Palletbot, anything for us today?”

“ETA: 2.4 days until docking range, 2.1 days until contact.”

“Swapped them around this time, brilliant. Anything else to add?”

“I desire to return to BRK-GL1 as soon as the opportunity presents itself.” That was a new output, but not an unforeseen ask.

“I’m not sure when that will be, if I’m being honest. You might be stuck with Din and I for a while.”

“At least I am not stuck to the outer hull.”

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask… why do you have rubidium sensors?”

“ERR: Unknown inquiry.”

“When the frame started getting all glowy, you said you detected a rubidium signal. Why does a cargo bot have those sensors at all?”

A familiar series of grinds and chunky noises from down on deck, I stole a glance in it’s direction as it worked through the question.

“ERR: No log of this announcement. QUERY: When did this happen?”

“It was… like two days ago, right before I turned Din back on. How do you not remember that? You even repeated yourself.”

“ERR: Unknown. I do not have any sensors capable of detecting a Rubidium signal.”

I squinted down at the bot, was it lying to me? Did it have that capability? Was it just bullshitting me when it said it detected the signal? No… neither of these bots had outright lied to me. Maybe they’d been obtuse as hell because they’re not designed to understand nuanced speech, but they hadn’t attempted to deceive me outright… Maybe something as advanced as StationAI could, but not Din, certainly not clunky ass Palletbot down there.

“Hm.”

Undaunted by short-term-memory-loss bot, I remember what it said, which raised my next question:

“Ok, so how do you know how far away we are from MCJ if you don’t have sensors? You definitely don’t have the astrometrics package or the processing power to handle plotting that out on your own.”

“ACK: When you allowed me access to the overhead page, you added me as a crew member. I can view the astrometric data as a result.”

Oh. Duh, that should have been obvious. I glanced over at the oxygen levels for the umpteenth time, those were still good. Okay, we’ll blame it on the head injury(s). I responded with a lame, “Oh, yeah that makes sense.”

A pause as my mind slow walked into more questions, “Wait, does that mean you can see the rubidium stuff we’ve been looking for?”

“SEARCHING. . . . Negative.”

Well there goes that idea, but it was worth checking. My leg felt bouncy, I stood up and wandered back down to the deck, picking up a repstrip (Strawnana, great flavor, glad I got a whole box of it) and settled in next to the heavily powered overkill suit that nearly killed me once already. A good scrapper almost gets killed by most of their tools, that’s how you know they work well.

I got to work on installing a more consistent bleeder valve on the exterior of the suit, something I could reach and manipulate through the gloves easier than before when I was panicking and doing things on the fly. It wasn’t an especially difficult task, but it did require some time and concentration. Eyeing a fresh scuff on the side of my welder, I was reminded of the light I still needed to fix over by the accumulator.

The world grew quiet again as I focused on my task, just me and the beamwelder going in circles, the world darkened around me thanks to my goggles. I decided to make a poor choice and engage the digital beings. 

“Well, bot friends, I think it’s time we brainstormed. Once we’re in contact of MCJ, they’re going to ask who we are, why we’re here, and why there’s part of a dock hanging off the nose of the ship.”

“SUGGESTION: Tell the truth.”

“That will get me arrested and you scrapped.”

“They may return me to BRK-GL1.”

“Or just reprogram you and leave you at MCJ-IFR.”

“PROCESSING. . . That would also be acceptable.”

I sighed, “Din, any thoughts?”

“Hmmm, what if we told traffic control that we were thrown off BRK in a sudden accident? It would generally match what happened there and our present situation.”

I wiped some sweat from my brow as I considered, “That’s a good thought, except if we were just thrown off we wouldn’t have the connection tunnel and arms still attached to our shuttle.”

“Barring any closer inspection, we could just tell them we’ve been adrift this whole time.”

“I like the idea, but I think our approach vector would look too suspicious to play that off…”

“SUGGESTION: Utilize the previous pilot’s RegID.”

“Another great idea, except the ship didn’t have a registration when I brought it back to BRK.”

“CORRECTION: All ships are required to have docking permission and a registered ID with traffic control.”

“I know they’re supposed to, Palletbot, but when I sent my docking request I didn’t receive anything back except a port number. If a ship doesn’t have a reg…” something clicked for me, if a ship didn’t have a registration ID they would send out StationSec to tow the vessel into the main cargo docks to ensure no funny business. I shouldn’t have made it as far as I did… 

“Din, how long was StationAI watching me before it branched you off and sent you down to OLGa?”

“From the moment you produced your middle finger at the camera near Door M1C1 off Dock2A!” it announced proudly.

“So, if StationAI wasn’t already watching out for me… then… Palletbot might be onto something. Din, can you sift through the records for any kind of a registration?”

“On it!”

I returned to securing the valve to my suit. The new configuration looked good, easy open/close action and easy access on my hip. The suit itself set back into the hooks I had welded to the wall near a power outlet. Hopefully there was enough to hold fast this bulky monster in the event of more turbulence. If nothing else, it wouldn’t get sucked out of the airlock in the event of a hard decompression. I wonder how much it would cost to get some kinetic deflectors… I could install them of course. Last I knew they sucked up a ton of power while they ran though, and that might put a strain on OLGa’s systems. Maybe I should look into a bigger power supply once I get somewhere I can actually run salvage again. 

A beep from Din, “Aha! I found it!”

“Wow, really? Good job! What’s it say?”

“It is encrypted and I am not sure!”

“Okay… can you decrypt it?”

“Yes! But that will take some time.”

“How much time are we talking?”

“ETA: 1.9 Days until contact/Decryption, 2.3 Days until docking range”

“Thanks, Palletb-”

“Actually that is a fairly close given the encryption and assuming it has been hashed for added security. Current estimate is 43 hours.”

I narrowed my eyes at Palletbot, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of cargo bots being so… flexible. They rode magrails, they received limited instructions sets to go back and forth between the platform and a ship, they sat in place and waited for magnets to take their cargo. None of that screamed “high performance calculator” and yet here I was questioning everything I knew about these “dumb” bots. Or at least about this one in particular.

Watching it closely as I passed, like it would grow teeth and lunge at me, I made my way over to the overhead light I had re-purposed as a lighter originally. It was still on my list of repairs to make when I had a moment, and apparently I had about two full days worth of moments to go. The switch in question was turned on, “Crap, must have forgotten to flip it back off...” I flicked it down and traced the lines back to the miniature accumulator in the floor, still pointing at the frame and running full blast.

I stared at the setup I had made. Accumulator, control board, slightly corroded battery terminals, and then wires that led straight back into the switch panel on the wall, the same panel that I previously used as an igniter for the O2 candle. “When did I…?” This explains the direct power draw from the ship before we knew we had enough from the catchers to power it. I just distinctly remembered wiring the split up in cockpit and to route through the catchers before pulling from ship power.. Actually no, I remember wiring that CORRECTLY and then somehow the ship power still managed to get routed into the accumulator.

I was starting to get a bit upset now. “Okay, what the hell is happening on this ship?”

“QUERY: Can you be more specific?”

“Sorry, Kal. I am busy working on this encryption.”

“No, no, something weird is happening!” I stomped a foot like a petulant child.

“QUERY REPEATS: Can you be more specific?”

“You, for one, Palletbot, are a strange bot. You tell me you detected Rb signals, then deny it. You keep running the calculations based on the readouts from the ship itself, that still requires a hefty amount of processing power, which you were also able to leverage to estimate how long a brute-force decrypt would take.”

“RESPONSE: These are basic mathematical functions. Any construct could perform these tasks.”

“Cargo bots are NOT constructs!” I found myself gripping Palletbot’s chassis with both hands, “and THAT is why you are so suspicious! WHAT are you?”

Clunks, whirs, a light that was presumably some kind of indicator of activity inside the metal body and then… Nothing. The light continued flashing but it didn’t offer any further clarification. I stepped back, growled and kicked the edge of it’s frame in frustration.

“They make a good point, if I also swap to background mode I would be able to process this faster!”

“Din wait, don’t just leave me alone here!”

“You know how to wake me back up!” it was too late, I saw the panels in the cockpit dimming from where I was on the deck. I felt my eye twitch, what the actual hell was going on with these two? Were they just talking behind my back?

I busied myself to distract from my growing paranoia, walking around deck and actually securing things, making minor repairs as I could, routing my backup oxygen and nitrogen tanks into the ship’s system to replenish what I’d gone through so far. 

Time seemed to blur into one consistent piece, like a thick slurry that I was just wading through. I imagined images of myself around the deck, moving, repairing, adjusting, moving more, tweaking, making notes about the frame and the entire accumulator process. 

Actually, it was more like I stood still and these things were happening around me. I looked down at my own hands and saw these fuzzy traces, over-exposed images emerging. Some of them overlaid my own hand, some of them moved in a different direction or even flipped over. Stranger yet, my shadow on deck seemed to be delayed as it moved, as though the shadow I cast was moving through water after me.

Then I started hearing whispers. Not just in my head, but all around me. My own voice echoing off the hull, a yell here, a shout in the back, a distant fuzzy reverberation the sounded like the airlock tearing off the hull… But as I stared at the hull, waiting for something to happen, it sat staring back. My shoddy patch job was holding, but a freshly distant memory screamed it’s last breath. 

Okay, apparently I’m just going crazy. 

I moved slowly across the deck, up the stairs to the cockpit. I traced my own steps as my own feet followed, my (our) shadow rippled against the hull as I (we) passed across lights on deck. I stole at glance at the BG suit, paranoid it would start moving on its own. Instead I saw myself, multiples of me, working all over it, top to bottom, maintaining this port, adjusting that line, tweaking the servos on the exo-skel, patching holes I don’t remember making. It took all of my concentration to put one foot in front of the other. 

I felt like a man possessed, like I wasn’t in control of what I did. Except I was, I was actively doing ALL of these things, I could feel it, I could hear it, if I thought too hard (at all) about it, I could actually find the thread on why I was doing what I was doing in any of these situations. The logic existed, the memory existed, too many of them all clashing, fighting for prominence.

I sat down in the pilot’s chair and took a slow breath. I could hear my lungs rattle in echoes around me, ghost arms tapping the console in front of me, afterimages of windows and panels, diagnostics, information overlaid on information, a voice broke through the chaos, a new voice.

“KSHHHC -e have you on radar, over. Do you requi-shhhhhk-tance?”

I fought to move my body, trying to move towards the radio controls. My hand and the ghost images surrounding it all moved in a similar direction. With great effort I reached the panel and held down the “COMMS” button, trying to get a display to see who was hailing us. 8 out of the 11 hands pressed the button, 3 missed, then shifted over and found the button. 

A display popped up, the edges wavering in sync. An exponential memory reverberated in the back of my mind: just like the accumulator laser, must be the power fluctuations.

What?

“KSS- Roger that, Cordak. FlightAdmin is impreshhhkk-” the radio continued without my input. 

“SHhhweee expected you sooner, rea-hshhh-” A pause. I tried to look around and see if ‘I’ was having this conversation but all of ‘me’ looked confused. A blur of an image passed behind me, that me was either having the time of his life or something was going very very wrong, there was still too much noise in my (our) head to pinpoint. Who is Cordak?

“eeSEEHHHCK- to dock 14, and we’ll see what kind of deal we ca-shhhk” the radio fizzled out, the light itself fully flickered off. I tried to turn around, to look and see what more I could see, but as I turned to my right(left) I saw that red(green(blue(amber))) pulsing LED suddenly burn as bright as I’d ever seen it. 

Palletbot down on the deck, “RESONANCE CYCLE IN 4… 3… 2… 1… “

Everything around me, ESPECIALLY me, began vibrating as the countdown continued. The afterimages shifted, tracing back along their own paths, my hands looked like they were vibrating in place. So many layers overlapped that when I moved there was literally a trail behind it, each image delayed by just a bit more than the last. Shadows cast throughout the ship flattened, warped, extending and then whiplashed, collecting into one before rippling outwards from their source.

Then nothing. Just me, all of me, thousands of me all simultaneously aware of our(me)selves, a loud clap so forceful I couldn’t help but close my eyes. Opening them a split second later and everything was back to normal, it was just me. I didn’t have hundreds of other simultaneous thoughts happening, I wasn’t actively doing something all over the ship, it was just me.

My eyes darted around, I was slowly becoming aware of my own body again. My head was on FIRE. It felt like I had been spit-roasting in a thruster for the last hour. That’s when I started to hear the droning. It rose in pitch to a shriek so loud it physically hurt and I put my hands on either side of my head to try and stop my brain from melting out my ears. Eventually, blessedly, it started to fade, and I noticed I was screaming, my throat raw from the effort. 

I let my hands down slowly, paranoid the sound would come back. A drop of something warm on my hand, blood? Another drop, I swallowed, tasted iron. “Kal? Are you okay?”

I blinked, looked around back to the console. “Din? I… thought you were hibernating to work on the decrypt?”

“I finished that three hours ago.”

“Three… hours? But we were just… 47 hours from contact?”

“ETA: 1 hour until contact, 4 until docking range.”

“YOU!” I spun in my chair and glared daggers at Palletbot. My head pulsed as the cascade of fire swept across my skull again.

“Kal?”

“What’s a resonance cycle, huh?!”

“ERR: Unknown search term.”

“NO! No I’ve had it with this bullshit! You keep saying things and then pretending like they didn’t happen! What the FUCK just happened?!”

“Kal, are you feeling okay?”

“NO! How could I be?! I just sat through a fucking crashtrip feverdream and THIS FUCKER keeps saying things that coincide with the weird shit that keeps happening! I’m DONE! I’m over it!”

“QUERY: I do not know what you are referring to?”

“What do you think you saw, Kal?”

“Oh so you’re against me now too, Din?!”

“Kal, I don’t understand either? You have been talking with us and making repairs around the ship as far as my records indicate.”

“ACK.”

“I don’t know what a resonance cycle is, but can you try to explain what you saw?”