Mermaid Pirate Dispatch

A new shift, nothing to pass on from the previous shift. Aaron settled into the monitoring station with a deep, meaningful breath. All around his padded seat a variety of screens, holographic displays, and backup analog gauges hummed and glowed. Years of training had his eyes automatically scanning various sections of the readouts, glancing over the dials and indicators, and verifying various numeric figures before he could lean back and relax for a bit. Acceleration was locked in at the expected earth equivalent 9.8 meters per second squared. Timespace contraction was at a constant factor of 6.5, not the ship’s maximum distortion field power, but enough to get to Wolf 359 in under two years. Plus it was more efficient than running the reactor at full power for a shorter trip.

Right, the reactor. Fuel at 88%, temperatures well within the operational envelope. Matter to energy conversion holding steady at 99%.

Aaron leaned back in the chair and sighed. He didn’t understand this stuff. All he knew was that if they ran the reactor at full power they could arrive at Wolf 359 in under a year, less than half the time this trip would take. But there was something about how it operated less efficiently at full power and the timespace distortion affected the physical interactions of the forces powering the matter conversion… He chuckled to himself and shook his head. The truth was that nobody understood any of it.

A light flickered on the console’s intercom and the speaker hissed to life. “Hey Aaron, you on shift?”

He recognized the voice. It was Brandon, their chief engineer. Of course, in his mind Aaron put air quotes around “engineer” since engineers hadn’t designed or built any of the ship’s core systems. It was all designed by ATHENA, the huge AI conglomerate that set up outside Lunar Outpost Seven. They had been pumping out new technological breakthroughs for years before finally announcing that none of it was human designed or built. They had a whole autonomous robotic factory pumping out new tech designed by the largest quantum matrix neural network ever built.

“What’s up Brandon? Yeah, I’m just settling in.”

“I’m a genius.” His voice was full of glee. Aaron could visualize the smug, childlike grin that had to be plastered on Brandon’s face.

“No you’re not,” Aaron said quickly, already rolling his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“I think I can get us there in half the time. I solved the strong-weak force interaction problem at high spacetime contraction factors. It’s been running smoothly in simulation for an hour now. You want me to send you the numbers?” He rattled words off with the grace of a machine gun.

“Hold on,” Aaron said, shifting his weight. “You know we’re just babysitters for this ship, right? We’re not authorized or qualified to be making modifications. Just repairs.”

“Sure, but if I just tweak some of the environmental constraints in the reaction chamber and add some additional hydrogen to the…”

“No,” Aaron barked. “We’re carrying thousands of colonists and tens of thousands of tons of supplies. If this was an empty ferry mission I might be tempted to entertain the idea of experimentation, but no. Absolutely not.”

“Come on,” Brandon pleaded. “Look, I’m coming to your station. Hold on a minute.” The speaker cut out. Aaron groaned and let his head fall back against the headrest. He sat staring up at the smooth bulkhead above the monitoring station. It wouldn’t be a minute. Engineering was separated from Command by hundreds of meters. Navigating all of those halls and tunnels would take at least fifteen to thirty minutes, especially under acceleration. Without gravity it still took a while, from what he remembered. Aaron wasn’t even sure. He had toured the entire ship before setting off, but that was weeks ago. Months? He’d lost track.

He turned his attention to his tablet and pulled up the book he had been reading. It was a detailed summary of their colonization mission written by the ATHENA AI. ATHENA had outlined all of the supplies they should bring, why Wolf 359 was their destination, and what kinds of protocols would be necessary to ensure the mission would succeed. It was essentially their bible for the duration of the journey. The AI had titled it succinctly: Wolf 359 Colonization Handbook. Stupid title, but surprisingly fascinating to read. Aaron had been immediately floored by the way ATHENA had worked in a storyline complete with conflict, character arcs, and gripping action. It was more than just a technical overview of the mission, it was a detailed and captivating hypothetical overview of how the mission might play out.

And the book did not include any humans getting grandiose ideas about being geniuses or knowing better than the AI.

Aaron heard Brandon’s huffing before he heard his footsteps. He must have run most of the distance. Aaron turned the chair to face the entrance to his monitoring station. Brandon was soaking wet, dripping sweat from his brow. Dark stains spread out from his armpits and covered parts of the sleeves of his blue engineering coveralls.

Brandon ran his forearm across his brow and gasped for air. “That’s a long jog,” he panted. “I forgot how far Command is from Engineering.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. Genius, huh?

Brandon was smiling through his exhaustion. “You’re gonna love this,” he said between breaths. He pulled the computing pad from his thigh and presented it to Aaron.

Looking over the screen felt like a waste of time to Aaron. “What am I looking at?” he asked. It was essentially just a spreadsheet to his eyes, though some of the numbers fluctuated in real time, and there were a few bar graphs and time domain plots that he recognized from the reactor’s health monitoring screen.

“That is the simulation,” Brandon said breathlessly. He reached out a finger and peered over the edge of the screen looking for something to point at. He tapped a column with finality. “See? It’s running at 98% efficiency at full power.” He stopped to take a few long, slow breaths. “Sure, it’s not 99% like at cruising levels, but even with 98% energy recovery the fuel will be more than enough to get there and back in under eighteen months. That’s less than half the time of just going out there one way. Huge improvement.”

“It’s a simulation,” Aaron said, lowering his brow as his eyes darted lazily around the cloud of meaningless numbers.”Who’s to say it wouldn’t explode in real world conditions?’

Brandon let out a tense, loud laugh. “It wouldn’t explode,” he cried. “That’s impossible.”

Aaron shook his head and handed the tablet back. “The reactor, the ship, and the spacetime contraction drive were all built by advanced AI.”

Brandon rolled his eyes at the mention of AI and opened his mouth to protest. “But…”

“ATHENA ran the ship through trillions of iterations per second over the course of five years, simulating every possible configuration until the most robust, efficient, and safe version was found.”

Brandon’s countenance fell. His mouth muscles twitched, but he said nothing.

“We can’t possibly improve on the design buddy. Sorry, but we are doing this trip ATHENA’s way. Maybe when we get back to earth in a few years you can do some testing in a lab or something. Heck, by then you might have improved the simulation results even more. But for now, we’re just monitoring and repairing.” Aaron stared at his friend. “That’s it, got it?”

Brandon nodded slowly. “Well,” he muttered. “I guess I’ll be back in Engineering if you need me. Thanks.” He shuffled around to leave.

“Hey,” Aaron blurted. He winced inside. “As long as you’re here, wanna grab lunch together or something?”

Without turning around, Brandon shook his head. “Nah, I need to be at my station, same as you.” With his head slumped and his shoulders hanging low, Brandon disappeared around the corner and back into the bowels of the ship.

Aaron sighed. His eyes stung and when he closed them there was a gathering of tears along the bottoms of his eye lashes. He sighed heavily again and turned back to the monitoring outputs. He gave them a quick once-over before returning to ATHENA’s Handbook. While he read the background hum of the ship’s electrical system faded from his mind. He was pulled into the world of the ship and all of the protocols and procedures that various crew members were engaged with as the colonists’ story unfolded. It was fascinating to read about how certain specific rules would come into play in the least expected ways. He never would have guessed that the specific method of voting for election ballots would prove so pivotal in resolving a fifty year family feud, but ATHENA had expertly crafted an educational story that proved over and over again that humans could never understand themselves as well as an AI could.

A gentle tone rang out from one of the monitoring consoles just as the din of the ship rushed back into Aaron’s consciousness. Something sounded different. The tone was accompanied by a yellow warning light highlighting various sections in the reactor’s health readouts. It wasn’t running hot, but everything else was experiencing a mildly alarming boost. Increased chamber pressures, increased output, increased fuel consumption. All within operational tolerances, but also well beyond cruising levels.

“Brandon,” he hissed.

Aaron pulled up Engineering on the intercom. “Brandon? What did you do?” He looked over at the spacetime contraction drive. Distortion factor 10. A cold sweat emerged on his scalp and back. “Brandon? Are you there?”

The speaker crackled before Brandon’s voice finally came through. “Yeah, I’m here. How’s everything looking on your end?”

“What did you do?” Aaron demanded. “Everything is running at full. We’re supposed to be at 65%. Did you alter the reactor?”

“Yes,” Brandon said. He sounded cool and casual. “Now we can get to Wolf 359 faster. You’re welcome.”

Aaron’s gut churned. Something wasn’t right. He scanned the panels around him, desperately searching for some output or number that would set him at ease, or perhaps something that would justify his internal alarm.

“Aaron? You still there? How do the readouts look?”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Aaron growled, still looking closely at the details.

“Well everything seems to be fine to me, so I don’t see what the issue is.”

Aaron wasn’t listening anymore. He had found it. Even the computer seemed to be unaware that it was a problem. A single bar on a chart was fluctuating wildly. There were no warning lights, no highlighting colors, just a bar shooting up and down, bouncing erratically, sometimes going negative or beyond the upper bounds of the chart. The whole graph was labeled EM Field Frequency Levels. The bottom of each bar had a frequency range associated with it, but before he could identify which one it was all of the lights went out and he was plunged into a terrifying sensation of freefall.

Silence. Darkness. Falling.

“Brandon?” Aaron moved his head around, but the darkness was so profound he couldn’t even be sure he existed anymore. He began to drift away from the seat. The horror of falling faded as he recalled his microgravity training. It was just weightlessness, nothing more. He took a deep breath. There was a faint click and a few dim red lights silently illuminated the world. His station looked eerie and foreign bathed in red. It was a monochromatic, foreboding place to be. He turned to the hall where a more friendly blue light was running along the edges of the ship’s floor.

The speaker hissed. “You there Aaron?”

Aaron grabbed the chair and wrestled his backside into the seat, drawing the harness across his chest. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s the damage?”

“I was wondering the same,” Brandon sighed. “There’s no physical damage. Everything just… stopped.”

“Can you get the reactor back online?”

“We’re working on it. For some reason it took the ship longer than expected to get emergency power online. Do you have any readouts at all up there in Command?”

Aaron glanced around at the dull red screens. Everything was shut down except one tiny monitor set into the console next to some analog gauges. It had a flashing cursor and said, “Emergency Subsystem Booting…”

“Nothing yet, but it looks like something is coming online. Try to get the reactor powered up so we can figure out what is going on.”

“Got it.” The speaker clicked off.

Just then Aaron’s heart shook violently as the entire ship rang out like a massive church bell. His skin crawled with the reverberation. He jumped as it rang out again, and by the third time his heart was racing. “What was that?” he asked aloud, looking around. For a moment he thought he could see the bulkhead above him vibrating. He unhooked the harness and pushed up toward the ceiling to put his hand to the metal. It was cool, but not vibrating. His heartbeat rocked his entire body.

The speaker cracked. “What happened?” Brandon asked.

“I don’t know. Hurry up with the reactor.”

Click.

Aaron looked back at the single glowing screen. It was burning through a bunch of lines of text that rushed by too fast to read. Suddenly it stopped and went blank before showing a display with several options. He read over them. System Diagnostics, Damage Report, Security, and Life Support. After a brief moment of mental panic he tapped on Security. There were options for internal cameras and external cameras, among other things. He ignored the rest and hit External Cameras. A grid of external views came up. Most of them were filled with the black void of space, but one was glowing with a blinding white light. He tapped that view and it filled the view port with some extra controls for panning and tilting. The whiteness softened and a planet came into view, silhouetting a tiny black rectangle in the distance. The planet rotated slowly beneath them while the rectangle held its position.

Aaron felt a lump in this throat. He began shuffling through the external views until he found what he had hoped not to find. He felt his temples pulsing. His mouth was dry. Though the screen was mostly just empty space, a softly illuminated mound blocked a portion of the screen. Some kind of structure had attached itself to the outside of their ship.

He pushed off toward the bulkhead again. With a tight chest and sweaty palms, he made a fist with one hand and braced himself with the other, then knocked three times on the metal.

Clang, clang, clang came the loud reply.

Crap.

[Reddit Post]