SWWAE Chapter 7: I've Done All I Can Now...

Chapter 7: I've done all I can now...

Captain’s Chronicles 1265 / Unknown Date / Unknown Location:

“So it’s mid-afternoon of day two… I was never one for journaling nor making voice recordings, but I actually like my voice now. I’ve been constantly talking to myself, so why not give this a try? Where do I start?

“The first thing is that last night (night being subjective to around hour fourteen of being on this ship) I slept. I actually strapped myself into the chair, turned off my eyes, and fell asleep. It was wonderful, and I even dreamed. The only thing was that some part of me was still aware of my whole physical self, in the sense of what I have commandeered. I don’t want to compare it to putting a computer in sleep mode, so I’ll compare it to dolphins. They sleep with one half of their brain at a time while the other stays awake to keep them breathing and safe. So my human self went to sleep while my regent self kept aware enough to notice if something was wrong.

Second, I have a physical being that doesn’t consist of stuff I’ve commandeered. It’s in the chest of this body, but it doesn’t appear to have bore a hole to get inside the android. Looking in the mirror in the shower room, I find that this body is perfectly intact. That means it either did bore in but healed after or that it phased through like Vision[1] does. But I know if it did phase in, it’s not in that state now. I’m a little scared to get it out to have a look because I’m worried if I let go of it I will lose connection to the body. The regent part of me knows that won’t happen, but the fear I felt at the idea of floating in space comes to life at the idea of my center of being outside a body. I need to come up with a better name than center of my being.

“Third, commandeering does tire me out to a degree. Comparing my attention being split between tasks to the RAM of a computer doesn’t make me feel good, but it’s accurate. That attention and dedication coincide with how complicated the item I’m commandeering is. The chair, for instance, was simple; it’s a monitor, keyboard, and mouse basically. The central hub is vastly more complicated and takes way more time and focus. I’m not even done with it yet. It also needs to be said that even though I am in control and have access to do what I want, I don’t inherently understand how the item functions. At least not in the human part of my being. The understanding is probably somewhere in the back of my regent mind as I don’t understand how I could work something if it didn’t, but who the fuck knows. I sure as hell don’t. Not yet, at least.

“Enough about me. What about the ship? It is absolutely fucked with a capital F. The power lines are a goddamn mess, if not entirely destroyed in places. The sphere didn’t just take the power; it altered the cables, destroying what was there, to create a system to better transfer power to it. I started commandeering the line, hoping that my self-heal might kick it only to find that the sphere didn’t just do this to the power lines. I haven’t spread myself a ton, but when I found some other, what I am assuming are, major systems for this ship, it had done the same to them.

“I’m trying to piece this out while I speak, so bear with me. The sphere didn’t want just the power from the reactor; it wanted power from every single thing on this ship that it could pull it from. So, in its own commandeering way, it created a tree of mangled lines to every major system of this ship. Then, when one of those branches stopped production power, it cut itself off and then melded back into the main line for better transfer from the reactor.

“What kind of power was it pulling from other systems, though? Back-up power reserves would make sense, but I think I know the actual answer. Well, I think it’s the thing I don’t know. Was that confusing? Anyway, the reactor has components missing, and when I commandeered what I believed to be other major systems, I found that they too had missing components. Components that are essential to get this machine to work. I can commandeer and provide power, but there’s something I’m just missing. Whatever that was, I believe the sphere drained it out of existence.

“I also have another big piece of evidence that supports this theory, and gives me a few ideas. Remember how I said my center of being was inside my chest? You’ll never guess where I’m slotted into in this android. That’s right — a goddamn missing component. My center of being appears to stand in for the component, though some part of me knows I don’t even need that component to control this body. I think the original component was crucial to the AI this android used to have. I say that because there’s no other entity inside here trying to take control. Sure, there were anti-virus programs still built into the body, but the actual intelligence it had is gone. Anti-tamper would be a better word than anti-virus.

“This brings up an interesting conundrum, though. The original component was drained out of this body like every other system on this ship. The only problem is that the sphere didn’t appear to have altered the wiring to do that for the android. Was the component not powerful enough that it required alteration of cables, or was the sphere aware that I would need a body and didn’t want to damage the one available?

“I think I’ll get the answers if I commandeer the sphere, but I’m still terrified to do that. Maybe tomorrow… For now, I think I’m going to look through Heather’s books and see if I can find anything entertaining or helpful.”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1266 / Unknown Date / Unknown Location

Music blared in the background. “I found Heather’s speaker system! There’s also a music player with thousands of songs on it! I don’t know who Flix is, but fuck, his music bops!”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1267 / Unknown Date / Unknown Location.

“I don’t like what I see in the mirror… Not that there’s much to look at. I don’t even really have a face. Just the vague shape of one with two amber robot eyes. My body is not much better either. I don’t have an ass. I didn’t have much of one before, but it gave me some gender euphoria. Now everything I liked about my body is gone…”

Captain’s Chronicles 1269 / Unknown Date / Unknown Location

“Heather, I’m thrilled for you that you clearly had special interests. I’m thrilled for you that you collected quite a number of books on geology and astronomy. But there isn’t a single novel on this ship. Not one book has a story. Not even a crappy romance novel. It’s been five days of slowly commandeering this ship and finding more and more missing components and getting frustrated with nothing working, and I just want one story-based piece of entertainment. I’ve been listening to music non stop and I’m tiring of it.”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1275 / Day 7 / Interstellar Space

“I figured out how to manually enter time and location. I also found the physical systems for the date and location while commandeering. Wouldn’t you know, missing fucking components! How much of the forsaken ship runs on equipment I don’t have?!” Metal dangs happen in the background. A sob can be heard. “How can I get home if I can’t even get this ship to do anything?” Silent pause.

“I figured the date and location systems would be really useful, so I tested the theory of plugging my heart into them to see what happens. I think I’m going to call it my heart. Nucleus would also work, but heart sounds more romantic.

“It was terrifying and extremely hard to figure out how to phase my heart out of the android. I did it though. I’m a little, gold and glowing orb. There’s no fancy patterns or marking, it’s just a gold orb, albeit glowing. It was honestly a little disappointing. The sphere looks like a flower, so I thought this would at least look cool, but sadly not. I also get a strange sense that I’m fragile. I don’t know to what extent, but I don’t think my heart can take a beating. Anyway, I then plugged myself in, and, for the date, nothing happened. It appeared to be working, but my heart just wasn’t giving it the right input to produce a date. Maybe the original component ran on a connection to something produced outside the ship that I’m just not connecting on.

“The location system had similar results. Again, I feel the original component received a signal of some kind to give it a relative location to however this society tracks coordinates. My heart doesn’t do that or doesn’t know what frequency to tune into.

“I’m so fucked…”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1279 / Day 9 / Interstellar Space

Intense sobbing could be heard. “So… so I f-finally had my first m-major meltdown. I’m impressed I-I held it o-off for so long… Having a h-healing factor i-isn’t as fun as it so-unds, because when you’re autistic meltdowns i-involve self-harm you can…” Another intense episode of sobbing. “Y-you can r-really do a lot o-of harm to y-yourself and then c-continue to do more w-when you get fixed up.” Minutes of sobbing pass before recording ends.

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1288 / Day 15 / Interstellar Space

“I have just about finished commandeering the ship. It’s taken me forever, but I learned that if I really focus on commandeering and take it real slow, I can have a more conscious understanding of how it works. I’ve learned a scary amount over the last fifteen days, but it’s not enough. I found repair data, but even that doesn’t fucking tell me what the missing components were or if I could recreate them. Plugging my heart into one of these empty areas does for some reason work, but the problem I run into is that my heart can only be in one place at a time. I can get part or even an entire system running, but the Stargazer needs more than one functioning system to work.

“A fucking scary amount of this ship functions on the missing parts. Not mundane things like the kettle and screens, but the important systems. The engines, for instance. I took my time with those, and I understand how the regular fuel-burning system works. Fuck, I even burned the engines for a little while and picked up some speed to head for the closest star, but I can’t get anywhere near the speed of light, so the trip will still take me hundreds of years.

“I don’t think I can Mark Watney[2] this…” A brief pause fills the audio. “I still haven’t commandeered the sphere yet. I’m too fucking scared that if I’m alone and find out that I’m not a real person that… Well… I think I might understand why the gun was named Last Resort.”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1312 / Day 27 / Interstellar Space

“I think I’ve done all I can now… I sent out a distress signal, but without the missing component I can only send one out at the speed of light. After spending some time manually finding my position based on star positions, I found that according to Heather’s records the closest inhabited planet is fifteen light-years away. The closest star is a little under two, and maybe in the time since she died it’s been colonized, but there are no promises.”

A deep breath can be heard. “I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a sort of hibernation mode I can go into to wait it out. There isn’t… I suppose as a Regent I’m not meant to ever truly be turned off or put into a sort of stasis. I always need to be aware on some level. The best I can do is sleep, but that only functions as it would for a human. That isn’t even an ability I think I’m supposed to have.

“I still don’t want to commandeer the sphere… I know that’s stupid, but I’m barely holding it together as is. Even if I find I am in a true isekai and I have a soul and a past, I just know fate will be cruel and the sphere won’t be able to return me home. That’s how this goes, right? No one gets isekaied and then gets to go home in just a month… I’m just so scared. I don’t know if I can handle this alone…”

~~~

Captain’s Chronicles 1318 / Day 31/ Interstellar space

“This is it. I’m going to commandeer the sphere. I’m so fucking scared…” A long pause fills the recording. “Depending on how this goes, this might be my last recording… I know that sounds like I’ve given up and I have… There’s no one here to talk me out of it and I’ve spent the last thirty-one days talking myself out of it. I can’t do it anymore.” A few sobs can be heard before she speaks again. “Either this gives me some hope and I get another few weeks out of that, or it cements that I can’t take living here any longer.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know who to, but I am. I might be a regent, whatever that truly means, but I’m not strong enough. If someone ever finds this, I hope you never suffer a similar fate. My only request of you is that you get Heather home and fulfill her last wishes…

“See you on the other side.”

[1] The Marvel character

[2] Main Character from The Martian who survived alone on Mars for over a year.

[There was part of me that wanted to write all this out as it happened for her and not as logs, but I realized with my writing that would take multiple chapters. I just couldn't wait that long to get to the next part of the story. How do you guys feel I handled passage of time whilst also giving lots of exposition?]