Ah, the joys of keeping my record on a panel. I can't describe how wonderful it is to try to press the right keys only to be met with poor feedback and typing errors. Back on the ship, I have voice recognition and a proper word-entry system. Here I have to make do.
I have other things to complain about, but as I have to do so using this panel, it felt appropriate for me to complain about it first.
I arrived on the colony ship over a week ago - I'd been somewhat mistaken in thinking that it'd be full of useful cargo. Instead, it was full of people. The strangest thing about it, though, was that the people it was carrying weren't Ulix. Tens of millions of creatures in the dark-sleep of some strange species the computer couldn't identify. They did look vaguely Ulixian, some more than others, but none of them were what I was used to.
As a result of there being far more people than I expected - thankfully they were all asleep, so I wouldn't have to explain to them what I was doing on their ship - it took me a bit longer to find the cargo hold. It was, predictably enough, full of food and other supplies that colonists would need. It took me nearly a full day to drag one pallet full of food to my ship, and I didn't want to make the same mistake twice so chances were good I'd need more. It took forever to transport it, though. Being lazy, I figured out how to activate the cargo bay's forklifts and put instructions in them to bring the items to my ship. It'd take less time and be no work on my part. I'd always been told that the best slicers are the laziest, and I did my best to live up to that motto.
Of course, something happened between now and then, otherwise I'd be writing this up from the comfort of my own ship.
The first thing that happened was that I was tired of being suited up the entire time. Life support was off - in fact, power was off to everything but the dark-sleep chambers - so I found my way to what was either the bridge, one bridge among many, or possibly just a computer terminal. With the translator's help, I could operate it. The first thing I did was bring everything back online. I briefly considered hijacking the entire ship for my own and flying it out of Ulix space, but to be perfectly honest I was a bit creeped out by all the sleeping people.
You've probably heard the stories. In deep-sleep, you dream. Your dreams are unusually vivid and long-lasting, usually pleasant but not always. There's no lasting harm in them, however. In the dark-sleep, you do not dream. There's no brain activity whatsoever, in fact. The dark-sleep chambers have very sophisticated equipment beyond even my understanding (due to lack of interest, mostly, and also that if I understood how they worked I'd feel compelled to stop avoiding using them) just to figure out whether the patient inside is dead or just sleeping.
Sometimes, however, people in the dark-sleep do dream. The brain activity goes way up and stays there; beyond that of any waking person. It's theorized that the lucidity and impact of dark-sleep dreams are orders of magnitude more intense than those of ordinary dreams or even waking life. Nobody knows this for sure, of course, because people who've dreamt and were subsequently revived from the dark-sleep have usually been so utterly twitchingly psychotic that their families have them put down if the authorities haven't already seen to it.
If I can help it, I'll never go into the dark-sleep. Deep-sleep's fine if you only want to stay out for a bit, but if you're going to be out for more than a month or so, you've got to go deeper. I know it cuts off a lot of the universe to me to not make that step, but personally, I'd like to retain my sanity. It's all I've got, flimsy though it seems to be much of the time.
So far as I can tell, however, this is not a dream. It's an annoyance. A potentially fatal annoyance, true, but just annoying so far.
On my third day here, I was doing a bit of wandering. I said before that it would take more than a lifetime to explore the ship, and my cursory milling-about had done nothing to dispel this idea. The place was huge. Still, I figured I should get to know the area. I headed down toward the center of the ship - or at least as close as my panel reckoned the center was - for no better reason than to see what was there. The strangest feeling came over me; it was as though I'd been there before. Not deja vu, at least not precisely that. I didn't feel like I'd wandered around a derelict ship until I'd found a hallway that looked pretty much like any other sometime in the past and I was now doing it again, instead, I got the feeling that I should recognize this particular hallway somehow.
I did recognize the hallway. Again, not in the deja vu sort of way. I remembered specifically the last time I'd seen it, over 30 years ago. I did a lot of contract work with the Ulix back then; they were good customers, had entertaining jobs for me to do, and were very trustworthy. At least, I'd thought them trustworthy. They'd always dealt fairly with me; in the decade or so we'd worked together, they came to rely on my input more than that of anyone else. I wasn't freelance back then, I was military, so that might have given me a bit more repute. Still, I wasn't Ulix. While the late lamented species wasn't exactly xenophobic - after all, they ran an entire empire based on trade - they did have a bit of a reputation for not trusting outsiders.
But I'd seen this ship. At the time, it hadn't been a ship; at least, if it was, I hadn't known it. I'd been on one of their planets and they'd taken me down below into a research base. I didn't understand anything I saw happening there, but I didn't really expect to. It wasn't until later that I came to understand that the experiments they were carrying out were beyond the understanding of most sentient beings. It was far too late, then.
I'd only been shown a portion of the ship, and the entire time I was within it, I thought I'd been in the base. At some point we must have gone from the base to the ship, but I didn't notice a transition. I don't even recall walking through hallways that looked like the ones I'd been through more recently. The hallway I currently faced, however, stuck in my mind not because of anything special about it, though there were signs that this was indeed the place I'd been before, but rather what lied beyond.
The Resonator.
I had to see it again, of course. The first time I'd been exposed to it, it'd been an overwhelming experience. I'd had a guide then, and he'd prevented me from getting too close at the time. Later I had all the time in the world to examine it, or rather the data that had been compiled on it, but I'd seen it only that once. If it was still there, I'd see it again. I had nothing else to do on this ship, and suddenly realizing that I'd actually been aboard once before had infused me with a sense of purpose. At least, that's what I told myself was the reason for my newfound energy.
I walked down the hallway; it had initially seemed like all the others, but the lights were in a slightly different configuration, and the markings were somewhat off. To the Ulix eye, apparently, this was enough to set it apart. If I hadn't been there before and become so struck by what I'd seen then I wouldn't have given it a second glance.
A door like any other was at the end, but of course I knew better. Opening it, I rushed inside to see if the treasure I remembered was still there.
It was.
The Resonator. Mysterious relic from millions of years in the past, said to be a left over artifact from one of the Predecessor species. Nobody knew its function except for the Ulix and me. The former are gone and even the latter doesn't have a very clear idea of what it's supposed to be doing.
The Resonator was a sphere the size of my fist, placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. Dozens of slim wires seemed to lead from it, travel along the floor, and disappear into the walls, but I knew they were for show; the Resonator didn't work by electronic command, those wires were there to monitor it. They had the same purpose I'd been given so long ago; figure out what it was doing.
Except in my case, I'd actually done it. Or so I'd thought at the time.
But you're not here to hear an old man gripe about his past failures, are you? No, you're wondering what happened to the rest of the week, between when I saw the only object of technology in the universe that I'd been unable to figure out and now, where I'm sitting in a cramped ductway fiercely typing out these words and hoping they won't be my last. The answer to that is simple; I tried to take the Resonator.
Granted, when I left Ulix Crossroads, I'd thought I'd make quite a bit of cash trafficing the many valuable artifacts of their dead civilization, and when I got here I was determined not to do that and instead get food. Why the change in thinking? Because I had no intention of selling the device. It was mine, and it had been ever since the first moment I saw it.
<!--Whatever Ledford's motives in interacting with the device the way he has, it's quite clear that it does not belong to him in any sense. The Ulix were notoriously protective of their secrets and the fact that they had a non-native in the presence of such a device speaks volumes of their trust for him. Or, I suspect, their desperation.
Regardless, interviews with the very few others allowed contact with the device - Dr. Fallon and his team among them - indicates that the Ulix never in any way transferred ownership to the Captain. Further investigation of the way the Resonator is thought to function - including Ledford's notes while he was part of Project Archetype and his referrences to it here - seem to lead to the conclusion that while Ledford had no claim over it, it seemed to have quite a large claim over him.
-->I'll readily admit that I wasn't exactly thinking straight at the time. Had I been thinking about the proper way to go about this, I'd be back on the bridge or engineering or whatever that section was I was in earlier to disable whatever systems might be in place to protect it. But it'd been decades since I laid my eyes on that thing, and I wanted it back. You'll likely think I'm a bit obsessed with it, and that's entirely true. I won't even argue the point but to say that, if you saw it, you'd be obsessed too. You've probably gathered that I'm a bit of a technology nut; tuning my Sleeper drive is my idea of a fun afternoon, after all. I'm good at it; good enough that the Ulix called me in to figure their precious Resonator out. Ever since then, it's been an unsolved problem spinning through my mind. I can't let it go, inspiration will strike me in the middle of the night and I'll think of some other way I could have tapped its secrets, some new method of making the other one perfect.
Yes, we tried to make another one. It didn't work. I've no intention of going into more detail.
All these thoughts went through my head, they were a constant babble under the main thought, which was a far more simple "Holy Shit". Once I'd made up my mind to have it again, nothing could have stopped me.
Nothing, of course, except for the half dozen security robots which activated the moment I touched the sphere.
The Ulix were naturally paranoid about their secrets, and this was the biggest one of them all. Apparently they didn't want anyone digging through their stuff while they were away. The only reason I survived that is because I spotted the robots, inactive, out of the corner of my eye in the split instant before I touched the prize. I then dropped to the floor as blaster fire nearly deafened me. Better deaf than dead, though; I bolted out of the room while the smoke was still clearing and the bots wouldn't be able to see clearly. Really, it was the only choice I had. I didn't recognize the bots; I'd never ran into them before, but they certainly seemed to behave like other robots: Deadly, remorseless, and precise. Not to mention these were the personal security robots of a paranoid and xenophobic race tasked with protecting the millions of lives aboard and, oh yes, making quick work out of anyone who might try to steal what could possibly be the greatest treasure in the entire universe. Running like hell was my only chance. I had been hoping that those security bots were the only ones on the ship, but I hadn't been hoping very hard because, when you've got a ship this big, chances are good you want a bit more security than just 6 bots.
My pessimism once again proved correct; I turned down the hallway to see a door slide open and a robot emerge. Before I could even draw my blaster, it had turned toward me and shot its own.
I'm alive because this ship is very, very old. The equipment is likewise old. It must have gotten by in the past through meticulous upkeep, but with its caretakers long since turned to less corporeal pursuits quite a bit had run down. Since my first few encounters, I'd seen more broken robots than ones who were likely to try to kill me; it made sense that the ones more likely to stand the test of time be stationed closer to the thing they were protecting. Not that disabled robots don't try their little best to end my life, bless their hearts, but it's hard to shoot well when your joints are malfunctioning and making your legs move in random directions. Along these lines, it's important to note that blasters in particular do not age well; the one which should have been my death blew up in the robot's hand and destroyed it.
After that, I made my way back toward my ship, thinking to get out while the getting was good. Yes, I'm obsessed by the Resonator, and it was my full plan to come back with powered armor, EMP weapons a-plenty, and maybe a squad of mercenaries for good measure, but for now survival was the highest priority.
That's the other thing about robots. Most species think of them as dumb, because they tend to be built that way. Sentient life in general does not like machines smarter than it. However, there are many cases in which you need to build smarter bots. For instance, guard duty is one area where drones shine - so to speak. They've got better sight and aim than a person without the nasty risk of putting a sentient being's life on the line.
Yes, yes, fully half of known species recognize robots of aforementioned sophistication to be sentient in their own right. So my statement may not be exactly correct, but in my opinion guard duty just isn't as hazardous if you can be restored from backup.
These robots, being the last hope of a long-dead species, were insanely intelligent. By the time I got to the cargo bay, they were already there. If I hadn't had the presence of mind to be sneaky about getting there, I'd have been blaster fodder at that point. Even then I'm surprised I made it. I had the chance to see how many there were guarding my ship - a half dozen encircling it and about four more in pairs on patrol around the docking area - before I had to duck back into the ventway or be spotted.
These vents have been my salvation; the ship has somewhat larger than usual vents for air; I suppose whatever species it is it's carrying has a higher need for air pressure or maybe it's more efficient that way, I didn't design it so I have no clue. The point is that if I try and am not particularly concerned about comfort, I can fit in them. The robots can't; they're quite a bit larger than I am. They don't seem to be expecting anyone to be in them either; their charges in the dark-sleep tubes were around their size, so my guess is that they're programmed to either protect against an invasion in which case the invaders would likely not use the vents, or stay on the lookout for rogue sleepers.
I couldn't get back to my ship. I still had this panel, as I'd been using it to interface with everything, so at least I had some primitive sensors which could tell me if the robots were headed my way, but I had little choice other than to retreat.
I tried moving my way over to the bridge/engineering/computer terminal that I'd used to activate the ship's systems (including, to my current dismay, security) but it, too, was heavily guarded. The robots here looked slightly more decrepid than their autonomous friends in the bay, but there were more of them. I couldn't take my chances just yet. Instead, I retreated to a crawlspace to get all of this down and hopefully wrack my mind for a plan.
And that, to use an idiom which likely won't translate at all, was how I spent my summer vacation.