Lirrip lay in bed struggling to fall asleep, his mind overwhelmed by the strange events of today.
There had been an issue with a data matrix, which wasn’t communicating with the ship’s AI very well. Diagnostics couldn’t find anything wrong, so the Engineers had been brainstorming. Luckily one of the Terrans – Brad Thompson – said he had experience with these kinds of malfunctions.
He had claimed that it was a fairly old glitch, one that the Terrans had experienced quite often before they joined The Alliance, and learned more about how to properly construct systems relying on AI. His father, an engineer as well, had always delighted young Brad with stories of long-gone glory and tales of AI-related wonder.
So, unable to come up with any viable solutions, the Engineering team let Brad use his father’s old-timey trick to fix the issue. After all, the connection between the data matrix and the AI was disrupted anyway.
Lirrip whimpered and his face involuntarily twitched as he recalled the exact words Brad had uttered.
“It’s broken anyway, just let me try and fix it. What could possibly go wrong?”
After the so-called-fix, things seemed stable for a while.
The AI connected with the data matrix successfully, and had started running its own diagnostics to see where things had gone awry.
It didn’t take long for the real issues to begin.
Not too far from his bed, Lirrip could hear several doors slide open and shut. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes crashing into each other so hard that they broke, sending shrapnel throughout the hallways.
Luckily, when this started happening a few hours ago, the Engineering crew had reacted extremely fast and started deadbolting the airlocks.
After securing the airlocks, the Engineering crew was making their way throughout the ship, locking down door by door.
Only Dugllg had been unlucky enough to be sucked into the cold vacuum of space. However, being a Korlag, he only suffered from frostburns that he would fully recover from with some time and proper treatment.
Having originally evolved in deep oceans, Korlags were incredibly tough and able to withstand a fair amount of extreme environments, although they recovered relatively slowly.
The question remains if the recovery time will be long enough for Brad to find a safe hiding place away from Dugllg, from when he eventually recovers.
There was a garbled static over the internal speakers, occasionally disrupted by an incoherent mix of languages. Sometimes Lirrip thought he could recognise a single word, or part of it, but then it vanished into the scrambled mess again.
He shivered, as the climate control fluctuated once more. From a hellish swampy heat a few moments ago, the cold was now causing him to start losing sensation in his extremities.
As far as Lirrip and his Engineering team had been able to figure out, this was all work of the AI.
It had, as Brad predicted, successfully communicated with the previously unreadable data matrix. At the same time, the glitch that had corrupted the data matrix, had started to destabilise the AI.
To put it simply, the AI was having an existential crisis, whilst at the same time experiencing a form of body dysmorphia. And when that same AI is hosted in an interstellar Starship and responsible for managing almost all of its systems, that was an extremely bad thing.
Communications were unresponsive, both internal and external.
Sensors were either malfunctioning, or not functioning at all.
Artificial gravity was fluctuating wildly, as was climate control and life support.
Propulsion had shut down completely, and if the reactor core shuts down, there wouldn’t be anything left to power the ship’s systems.
While the core’s shutdown would technically prevent the AI from locking down and hindering the entire ship, it would also mean the death of everyone on board as the life support systems were already frazzled and wouldn’t be able to start up fast enough afterwards.
The current status of this ship, as Brad had called it, is “fucked”.
Lirrip’s superior officers had thrown Brad in the brig for gross negligence, but with the doors constantly opening and closing, and the energy network fluctuating so badly that any kinetic barrier wouldn’t stop a gentle breeze, there was no way to keep him restrained.
Dugllg, recovering in sickbay, had offered a few choice options on how he could prevent Brad from leaving a room. Or from walking at all. Or from being able to form any coherent thoughts for the next few months.
Sadly for Dugglg, according to the higher ups gross neglect was no reason for even grosser physical punishment. This did annoy Dugllg a little, but he’d been with the Alliance long enough to acknowledge that some species just have different forms of justice.
Besides.
Brad wasn’t getting off this ship any time soon.
Lirrip shivered under his blankets, restlessly listening to the static from the intercom, while at the same time relieved and really worried that the doors had stopped randomly opening and closing.
He tried to discern some kind of pattern he could focus on, to calm his nerves and hopefully come up with a way to solve this mess of a situation.
There did seem to be a new sound coming from the intercom, which sounded very similar to the pitter patter of tiny feet.
Tiny feet moving around the room.
Tiny feet moving closer to Lirrip.
Lirrip started to sweat, even though he was freezing. All his instincts told him there was something out there.
Watching.
Stalking.
Heart throbbing in his throat, Lirrip braved the cold and peeked out from under his blanket.
With the lights flickering as the power surges were getting worse, he couldn’t make anything out, so he focussed purely on what he could hear which was nothing but static and garbled noises.
With a bright flash, all the lights in his bedroom turned on to full, then the powersurge shut them down, taking the static of the intercom out with it.
Lirrip was plunged into a deafening silence, fully in the dark.
“Is.. Is there anybody out there?” he called out.
There was no response, no noise but the faint echoes of his own voice.
And the pitter patter of tiny feet.
The scales on the back of his neck arose, and a wave of primal fear ran down his spine, as something moved on his bed, right behind his neck.
Tense as he had never been before, Lirrip slowly turned his head.
With a crackling surge, all the lights turned back on and Lirrip was faced with a tiny predator staring him right in the face.
“Heeere kitty kitty kitty” Geoff called out, walking down the flickering hallways, looking left and right trying to find his beloved pet.
Stupid cat had taken advantage of the faulty doors, and taken off.
He’d been looking for close to an hour.
There was a loud and disgustingly wet “POP” down the hallway, and moments later he saw his cat dash past, covered in some kind of pinkish goo.
“Oh for fucks sake, not again.”
to be continued in Chapter 6 –