The AI, displaying Grubnash’s image, had separated Daegnon and Raknak once the bulkier Goblin had shown enough competence and had finally stopped shooting himself in the eyes with the mender beam. Now Daegnon was being led down a full-sized hall, with bright yellow arrows appearing on the displays along the walls to guide his movement.
“Since you are designated as captain now, I am taking you to the bridge. There are several systems there that need attention, and I believe it would be in your best interest, as well as the ship’s, if you knew how to repair them,” the AI’s projected Goblin voice said as Daegnon walked along the wide hallway where the previously invisible doorways now appeared as slight indentations along the wall.
Daegnon just grunted in response. While he was excited to be away from the mountain, this was not turning out to be the adventure he had dreamed of. Things were happening much too fast for his comfort. He was happy to have a new title, though, and captain had a good ring to it. He was already burrow-master, but since this wasn’t a burrow and he only had five other Goblins to command, the old title didn’t seem to fit now. Also, he had a sinking feeling that he would never see his old burrow again and wondered who would take over as burrow-master since he hadn’t sired a son yet.
As Daegnon was lost in these thoughts, he noticed the walls of the hallway beginning to change. The sleek metal surfaces gave way to panels of screens displaying various data readouts and schematics. It was as if the ship was revealing its innermost workings to him, layer by layer. The AI seemed to sense his curiosity.
“You will need to familiarize yourself with these systems,” Grubnash’s voice explained. “Understanding the ship’s internal mechanics is crucial for effective leadership and ensuring the survival of your crew.”
Daegnon nodded absently, his mind still lingering on the notion of never returning home. He pushed the thought aside, focusing instead on the task at hand. The bridge, as the AI had called it, sounded important. If he could master it, perhaps he could lead his fellow Goblins to a better future.
A large, familiar door slid open before him, revealing a room he had visited several times but never realized was considered the ship’s bridge. He had previously asked the AI why it was called a bridge, thinking in terms of a path over water. Hoshi had given him an explanation involving paddles and terms he didn’t understand, like "steamboat," leaving Daegnon quickly confused.
“You can call this place the command center if that terminology suits you better,” the metallic voice said.
“Command Center,’ he said, rolling the words around in his mouth. They were unfamiliar to him, not the tongue he spoke, but still he knew their meaning, ‘Yes. I like the taste of that,” he replied as he entered the large room and saw the darkness of space before him on the large rectangular opening which dominated the room.
“Cyrus will hopefully be finishing up his duties shortly, which means this room will once again have power. So, I suggest you begin repairs soon, before that step is complete,” the metallic voice of Grubnash said, breaking Daegnon's gaze from the viewscreen displaying the majestic darkness filled with uncountable pricks of starlight.
“Ummm… Can I ask question first?” Daegnon said, turning to the glassy display in front of the central chair in the room, where the image of Grubnash had moved to and was now visible.
“Certainly, what would you like to know?” the Goblin's voice responded.
“You show image of Grubnash, but you no, er… Don’t sound like Goblin, and human say you look different to him. So, what you actually look like?” the Goblin asked, his speech subtly improving as his intelligence increased.
“I don’t have an actual likeness. I take whatever shape is most effective for the person I am interacting with. Would you prefer I take a different image?” the AI asked as several different images flashed upon the display.
The first image was of Daegnon’s father, Friguk; the next was of his mother, the Elven female whose name Daegnon realized he hadn’t bothered to learn. Then came a Goblin image that Daegnon was unfamiliar with, but who felt closer to his own age and stature than the others. This was followed by a human face, before reverting back to the face of Grubnash. With each face the AI asked, “Is this better?” the voice changing to match.
“Do you prefer any of those other images?” the AI’s original metallic voice asked Daegnon.
Daegnon scrunched his face, his lips pouting and the wrinkles on his forehead bunching together. “That human face, is that how you look to Cyrus?” he asked.
“Something similar, yes,” Hoshi replied.
Daegnon took a moment to consider. Having the human face might make things easier since the AI would only be one face, although Daegnon had liked seeing his father’s image too.
There was also the thought of asking the AI to wear his mother’s face. He had been coddled by her, as much as any Goblin could be. The thought that he’d been so callous as to not even ask her name hurt him now for some reason. He guessed that it was this SCANT working inside him, influencing his thoughts, that was causing these feelings of loss and regret.
His father, Friguk, had been much more lenient with the breeding chattel and allowed them a full room to roam and interact with their children. Most burrow-masters kept the females used for propagation either chained up or on sleeping potions. Allowing them some freedom was all but unheard of, but it was due to his interactions with the Elf that Daegnon was considered smarter than most Goblins.
She had taught him many things, although her madness from being caged was evident, so he had to take much of what she said at face value.
What it ultimately came down to was the image he found most comfortable. “No… Grubnash is good. Everyone know Grubnash,” he said, gesturing with his hands.
“Very well then. If you will step to this panel,” Hoshi said, still wearing the face of Grubnash and using the same metallic voice as before, indicating the panel by sending a small burst of light towards it from the ceiling.
Glix was being sent from one place to the next in this huge circular room. She was told how and why to use one tool after another before being led to the next repair site, where she would learn how to use the next device to fix the next broken part.
She was having a lot of fun but was also getting rather hungry and tired. “Hoshi? That what I call you?” she asked.
“Hoshi is my designation, yes. How may I assist you?” the AI responded.
“Think I need to sit down for a minute, I very tired,” Glix said. “Got something to eat maybe?”
“I am sorry, Glix. That is why I am attempting to expedite the repairs, so that the ship can either be flown to a place where you can gather supplies, or I can power up one of the simple nutritional replicators,” Hoshi responded, a tone of sadness in the metallic voice.
“I know, but really nothing? No grubs, or even a rat? I would even eat a tuber if you have one of those icky things,” Glix said, sticking her tongue out as she thought about her distaste for tubers.
“This ship was fully stocked when…” Suddenly, a metallic grating sound was followed by several quick clicks before the voice cut off completely, leaving Glix blinking blankly at where the image of Grubnash had just been.
She stared at the dark glassy panel for a moment until a small light flickered and the image reappeared. As it did, the image cycled through several other faces: one being the Elf woman who had birthed her, and others she didn’t recognize, before reverting back to Grubnash.
“I am sorry, I am unable to access that part of my memories yet,” Hoshi’s metallic voice said as the image stabilized on Grubnash once again. “Perhaps once the ship is more fully operational, I will regain access to that data.”
Glix didn’t know how to respond, and she and the image looked at each other as the silence between them stretched. Finally, Glix gave a small cough and said, “Okay, I guess that enough break. What need fixing next?”
Raknak found himself in an even smaller tube than before, squirming his way through it by basically using his large shoulders to propel his body forward. He grumbled and cursed the builders of this ship. He also cursed Daegnon, the human with them here, and everyone else he could think of as he slowly shimmied his way along.
Once his arms were free, he pushed himself up and out of the tube. The sweat-moistened skin of his large, exposed midsection squeaked against the metal, the sound reaching a crescendo as he neared the exit. Then, with a wet pop, he was free. He flopped down on his back and panted as he caught his breath. He was used to work, to fighting, but those came in short bursts. The prolonged climb he’d just endured had taken more out of him than facing a stone badger on his own. But as he gradually caught his breath and opened his eyes to take in his new surroundings, he found himself in another, larger tube.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
This one, thankfully, was much larger, though it didn't look much different from the smaller one he’d just exited. In fact, this new tunnel was barren except for patches of discoloration speckling the smooth metallic walls, similar to the ones he’d seen as he’d shimmied along the last tunnel, though these were larger and more frequent.
A hollow thud echoed behind him as the hatch he’d exited sealed shut. He looked around, but this new tube offered no noticeable exit.
“What in the Sogging…” he began to say but didn’t recognize the words coming out. “What the Sog? Hey, did again. Sog, Sogging, Sog it!” he cursed, hearing the variation of the word which had replaced the ones he actually attempted to say.
“Why I no can swear?” Raknak screamed into the tunnel, the sound echoing off the metallic walls surrounding him.
For a moment, there was no answer. The image of Grubnash, which had been leading him here, had ended as he entered the smaller tube. He had followed, assuming the image would return to guide him once he finally exited. But there had been no new images, no new screens, and no sound until now.
Then, a familiar yet distant metallic voice echoed through the tunnel.
Raknak turned toward the voice, cursed a few more times when he determined he would have to walk a ways to find its source, and reluctantly started to move, his footsteps thudding heavily, causing a resonance within the tube due to their rhythmic, heavy falls.
It took him several long moments before he reached the place from where the voice had come. There was no image this time, only the metallic voice of Grubnash telling him, “This is the heart of the Dark-Matter Fusion Conduit. Once this area is sufficiently repaired, power can be restored to the majority of the ship.”
Raknak looked around. He could see the end of the tunnel from where he had entered. Shortly after where he had started walking, it tapered down into a tube he wouldn’t be able to fit in. In the other direction, the tunnel made a rounded turn, but the end wasn’t visible to him. If he were to assume the turn was the middle and the other side was the same length, then this large chamber would be close to four hundred footsteps long.
Raknak grunted, seeing the pock-marked metal surrounding him, and completely forgot to ask the metallic voice why his words were coming out differently than he intended. Then, with a sigh, “Sog,” he moved to the first discolored patch, his stomach rumbling to match his disheartened mood.
Studying the nebulaic clouds carefully, Cyrus finally determined that the original one, the one closest to him, had a peculiar color in one of the bands swirling within it. As he analyzed it and the others, he noticed that the emission lines within the spectra of the gasses were diffusing at different rates.
He didn’t quite understand why or how he knew this, nor how he had come to understand the amounts of visual and spectral data streaming into his mind. It was a strange sensation, as though the gathering of this data were being collected externally by someone, or more likely, something else. This made him question what was happening and how he was learning this.
He stared at the bubbles intently for several long minutes, trying to see if he could learn any more useful information while these new senses remained trained on the objects. Before long, he was able to determine not only the different gasses within the nebulae by analyzing their emission lines but also how their respective molecules and contaminants split apart the light in varying grades. Furthermore, he understood how the rotation affected the gravity surrounding the nebulae and the flow of linear time within them.
“What is going on here, Hoshi?” Cyrus finally asked once the data streaming into his brain felt more like learned knowledge and less like information he was still attempting to comprehend.
“At the moment, most of the ship’s sensors are non-functional,” Hoshi explained. “Therefore, what you are experiencing is a simulation within this mindscape, created to mimic the conditions once the ship is fully functional. Your senses are merging with the ship's, or at least in a way similar to how they should work at full optimization, allowing you to perceive and analyze the nebulae as though you have the ship's full sensory input. This synchronization is why the information feels both familiar and externally sourced.”
“The ship's sensors work not only in the third dimension but are capable of perceiving the fourth. Adapting to that array of sensory input may prove to be difficult, but I am optimistic you will be able to adapt via the SCANTs enhancement,” Hoshi continued.
Cyrus felt very overwhelmed, not only by the data streaming into his brain but also from the breakdown he had experienced earlier. His idea of flying this ship like in a video game had been completely shattered, and it seemed with each passing moment he was dealing with even more frightening and unknown information.
“Maybe I should have just asked for a better explanation in the first place,” Cyrus said, mostly to himself. It seemed as though in the mindscape, keeping things to himself was nearly impossible.
“There would have been too much information to relay verbally. I would have simply obscured such information until now so that you can deal with and understand it all in one session. I am sorry, Cyrus, but while your DNA is a decent match, your mental adaptation is taking more time to overcome than I had anticipated,” Hoshi responded.
Cyrus mentally nodded in acquiescence since he couldn’t physically nod in his disembodied state. He understood that he was a lot to deal with for most people. He had been very young when the explosion occurred, which left his mind broken. Half of his identity was still locked at age fourteen, while the other half had to grow up and had to adapt to being an adult much faster than he should have. Big chunks of what should have been his developmental years were simply blown away, just like his house and all his things on that fateful day.
“When you are ready, please verify which two nebulae are a match so that you can proceed with the neuro-registration,” Hoshi prompted while Cyrus withdrew into himself again.
“Yeah, sorry, again. It's the bottom right. That’s the same as the original,” he said in response.
“Excellent,” Hoshi said as the bubbles, filled with the swirling gasses, disappeared from view. “The second part of the neuro-registration involves coordination.”
A series of what Cyrus could only describe as pillars of white light appeared before him. They led off into the distance, creating a type of mid-space race course, with a row of lights on either side like a runway, and small white light-lines connecting them. The course wasn’t long, but it wasn’t flat either. It moved up, back down, around a twisting turn that barreled into a spiral before righting itself and ending at a plane of light cutting across the end of the course like a winner’s ribbon.
“You will need to navigate this course in under twenty seconds. You have three opportunities,” the AI explained.
“Can you explain how I am supposed to move?” Cyrus asked, but there was no response. In fact, the image of Hoshi was no longer in his vision at all. He could see around him with a greater than usual field of vision, as if his periphery was greatly expanded. Stars dotted the space beyond the track, and the small window containing the circling image of the ship still occupied the bottom right corner of his vision.
“Okay… I guess I have to figure this out on my own then,” Cyrus said as he began analyzing how he was going to make the ship move.
He thought over all that he had learned so far. He was connected to the ship in a way as if it were his own body. Hoshi had said that it needed him to move, just like his body needed a brain to tell it to move. He knew that walking took a baby years to develop, but he figured he had to be at least a little more coordinated than a baby would be.
He focused on the window with the image of the ship, bringing it back into focus and enlarging it so that the window occupied the majority of his visual field. He could still manipulate it, spin it around, and examine the exterior. Before, he had thought that some of the tube-like protrusions looked like some kind of engine or thrusters, so he focused on one, and the image zoomed in closer. He could see every detail now, and he studied it, hoping as before that some additional information would enter his mind, telling him how to ‘feel’ like the ship. And it did.
It was a curious sensation. He focused on the thruster engine, and it almost felt as though he could feel his own attention. It wasn’t similar to his body, but it was as if he could feel an overlay of something on top of his body.
An image of an anime series came to mind as he attempted to reconcile the sensation. It was of large mecha-suits with pilots inside. The pilots would use their bodies and reflexes to make the suit move and would somehow feel when a part of the suit was damaged.
‘There’s no way this thing is a mecha-suit, right?’ he internally questioned himself, but the idea, whether it was a ship, a robot, or whatever else, seemed almost to fit the sensations he had been feeling.
He zoomed out from the thruster and tried to think of himself wearing a Cosmic Sentinel suit over his body. He visualized his body, or at least a mannequin-like version of his body scaled to the ship’s size, and used the ratios to estimate where the thruster would approximately be in comparison.
Cyrus then mentally moved his mental hand to where the thruster should be and willed the engine to engage, like clenching his fist tightly.
The image behind the window holding the representation of the ship lurched to the left, and a timer began counting down. The numbers flashed over the other objects occupying his vision, rapidly counting down from twenty.
“Oh come on! That’s not fair, I barely moved,” Cyrus said as the numbers continued to decrease. Once there were only ten seconds left, Cyrus decided that this opportunity was blown, but he should make the most of what little time he had remaining. He extended his other virtual hand to where the thruster would be placed and willed it to activate.
Cyrus could see his perspective shift from a slow spin to the left, then stop, and slowly move to the right.
Once he was mostly centered again and the timer had counted down to three seconds, Cyrus pushed as hard as he could with each of the side thrusters and actually felt himself move forward.
It wasn’t fast, and he had no control over moving up or down yet, also he had no idea how fast he could actually go, or how to slow down, but he was finally moving. The entire process had taken a lot less time to figure out how to do so than he had expected, a fact that he was extremely grateful for.
Raknak had been in this large tube, clearing and repairing the tarnished metal for several minutes when his stomach growled, the loud rumbling sound echoing off the metallic walls.
“I wonder how human taste?” he muttered under his breath as he finished repairing yet another spot on the metal with the mender beam. He looked around and sighed, seeing the numerous additional locations he’d need to finish before he could move on. “These spots better be the last. I not last much longer with no food.”
He recalled the last thing he had eaten: a relatively ordinary grub that had been roasted over the fire pit and sprinkled with some salt. Nothing special at all, but the thought of the savory meat made his mouth water nonetheless. It also reminded him that not only was he hungry, but he had other bodily functions that needed attending to.
“Hey, uh… Hoshi, right? Where is bathroom?” he said aloud, not completely understanding how to communicate with the ship-spirit yet.
There was no response.
“I need piss! Get me out of here or I gonna make puddle right here in the middle of this cave,” he said several moments later, his ire growing.
There was still no response.
“Fine!” he muttered as he walked to the center of the room, right in the middle of the bend. He had warned the spirit, the AI, as Daegnon called it, that he was gonna pee right in the middle, and he wasn’t gonna go back on his word.
He glanced around once more and said, “I gonna go right here if you not let me out.”
The tube remained silent.
With a shrug of his shoulders, he slid the hide cloth covering his nakedness down around his ankles and started his flow.
