It didn’t take as long as I’d initially thought to reach the bridge. Once I had a bit of adrenaline in my veins, I was able to deduce that the bridge could only be in one or two places. At least from how I suspected these types of ships were built. Eventually I figured out the deck lifts which allowed me to move up to the first level. One of the most important places for a bridge, at least that’s what I suspected. I didn’t have any idea, I was reportedly a technician, not a ship architect.
I approached the doors, this time holding out my link to the terminal. There was a small green light and chime, and the doors slid open. I took a step inside.
“Captain on bridge!”
I froze as several other people made themselves known in the room and stared up at me expectantly. Each person threw some sort of salute at me, though none of them were exactly the same. Judging by immediate appearances, it seemed that I wasn’t the only one that had been woken up. Once again, that made sense, there were several people that could very well be part of my team, or I was under one of them. The fact that they called me their captain was an interesting touch.
“At ease,” I said coolly, my brain knew enough command jargon for at least that much. “As you were.”
“Oh thank god,” a woman who looked to be in her mid thirties said. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing an identical uniform that we all were. Aside from that, there wasn’t an easy way to determine rank or station. As far as defining features went here, there were people’s heads and height for now.
“We’ve been waiting for you.” She said, looking down at her station. “We’re in the middle of a bit of a crisis.”
There were several such stations around the room, laid out in a ‘U’ shaped pattern, with several other stations in in the center. The wall furthest from me was devoid of any station or any other activity, in fact it was pitch black. Probably some sort of main display that wasn’t operating. Similarly, the room itself seemed to be rather dim, the glow of some stations seemed to be the only thing illuminating the rest of the crew.
I held up my hands before letting them take further control of the situation. “Alright, hold on,” I said. “That was a bit of a stupid joke. Apparently I do that when given the chance. I’m fairly certain I’m not the captain, at least, as far as I know.”
At my confession, the room seemed to deflate a little.
“Shit.” The woman said. “You’ve got the fog too then. I guess it’s to be expected at this rate.” The rest of the crew nodded in resignation.
“I’m sorry, the ‘Fog’?” I asked.
“Brain fog,” She said, looking back at her display. “There are five of us here, and we’ve been struggling to recollect our memories, any of our memories. We all woke up in the same cryosleep ring, so we wondering when somebody else would show up. Someone who would be able to tell us what went wrong with our hibernation.” She looked up, her eyes piercing me as if it was my fault. “But it seems like it’s just one other problem that’s plaguing the ship, captain.”
“I see,” I said. “Another terrible problem added to the list, but why do you insist on calling me the captain?”
“That’s who you are, sir,” one of the men said, pointing at his display as if that answered the question. “When you came in we all got the alert. The computer warned us the captain was here. It’s protocol…probably. We’re just figuring and remembering as we go…sir.”
That didn’t sit right with me for some reason. I clearly remembered the title ‘Technician’ beside my name on the display that woke me up. I was being called out of hibernation to repair the issues going on.
“Computer, user profile, ‘Joel Kupler’,” I asked the air and saw someone wave to stop me mid sentence. The already dim room dimmed even further as the computer shut off immediately, before entering its reboot cycle.
Ponytail looked at me as if I should have expected this to happen. Which to be fair, I should have, but it was still nice to have confirmation.
“Yeah, don’t bother,” she said, giving up on her console as it ran through its startup routines. “The computer is part of the problem. It really doesn’t like working with us in its current state. It’s amazing that we can get anything done as it is. That’s why we’re here, to get this ship back up and running.” She straightened her jacket and walked over, only to stop short of me before throwing a sharp salute.
“Navigator Justine Langley, reporting for duty, sir,” Justine said. As if breaking an unspoken tension in the room, the rest of them quickly followed suit.
Apart from Justine, there were four others. Two other women, Pat, and Celia, as well as two men. One of which called himself Freight. I couldn’t get a clear answer if that was actually his name, even my fogged brain didn’t think that could actually be someone’s name. The other, the one that told me I was captain, was Garrison, he said that he thought he was a systems engineer. By his large build alone I would hazard a guess that he was right.
All told in the room, we had two technicians if I counted myself, a botanist, two engineers, and a navigator. And supposedly I was also the captain. I couldn’t really complain, since I couldn’t have told anyone how to be a technician in my current state. Either way, it wasn’t a lot to work with.
“Well, unfortunately I don’t know how many people are supposed to be here,” I said. “I was the only one that exited Cryo’ that I could see. I suppose there’s no telling how long it might take for others to come out.”
“We all were within a few seconds if not minutes,” Justine said, arms crossed. While the others and myself seemed to be getting our bearings together, Justine held herself like this was just any other day to get work done. “But the fact that you’re here much later than us at least tells us something.”
“That anything is possible, basically nothing,” I said. “We’re trapped behind our own minds and a misfiring computer.”
Justine nodded, and Garrison spoke up.
“The fog doesn’t seem permanent, a few of us have found ourselves putting some pieces back together.”
“I have as well,” I agreed. “So the other side of the equation is getting the ship back into working order. As great as it would be to have time to recover, a few of the alerts I went through seemed rather urgent. Do we know if there is any other crew being called up at this time?”
Freight just pointed at the computer only just now finishing start up. Justine answered for him.
“Every time we ask questions like that, the main computer reboots. It seems to have no problem working with subsystems, doors, displays. But as soon as you try to access data, it crashes.”
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“Sounds like a failure in the data storage link,” I found myself saying. “The subprocesses are separated from the data for extra redundancy. So in an event like this…” I gestured at the working computer terminals. “We still have something-and that just came out of me. I did not know any of that before speaking.”
“Fog. It happens, it keeps happening,” Justine said. “But that’s good to know, we didn’t really have an explanation before. That might shed some light on how to attack the problem.”
“Problems, yes,” I said, walking over to one of the computer terminals. “We need to take stock, we need a plan, and we need to get to work.”
“What about any others?” Pat asked. “Should we wait for them?”
“I’m surprised you waited,” I said. “We can fill anyone in on the details as they arrive, but I think our highest priority is saving this ship.”
“See, I knew he was the captain, I told you,” Garrison said, only for Freight to shove him in the arm.
“That was the computer,” Freight said and left it at that.
I got the ship to start parsing through the alerts like before. The larger display helped immensely, but also showed the intense scope of the damage. Dozens of amber lines began to fill the screen until they too began to scroll more.
“It’s bad,” I said, stating the obvious. “Unfortunately, too many things are critical. I don’t have a great answer on what needs to be resolved first or not. It seems the most critical systems are operating, at least at the point where we won’t die immediately. Hull, life support, the basics.”
“I’d vote on the computer,” Justine said. “Then we’d actually have a crutch at least to help us with our jobs.”
“I agree, except for the fact that we’re vastly unprepared for even that task,” I said. “We need to start lower than that, we need to gather our bearing, at the same time that we approach these tasks.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to wait for the fog to clear?” Garrison asked. “Then we could get to it worry free after that.”
Something continued to prick at the back of my mind. It was times like this that taking a step back could be the worst thing to do. I thought of the scenarios again.
“The first thing that I think of is also one of the first things on this list,” I said, pointing to the amber words.
Navigational Computer Offline - Stage 1 Emergency
Redundant Navigational Computer Offline - Stage 1 Emergency
“There are more issues than these, and potentially more important. That is, unless… Computer, navigational status,” I asked the computer. Thankfully, the computer didn’t reboot this time. It seemed I might have been correct about the core memory separation. I watched as more specific information filled the screen.
Navigational Computer Offline - Stage 1 Emergency
Redundant systems offline, no recovery possible. Requires immediate repairs, high priority emergency. Navigational system required for next mission stage. Estimated time remaining till next mission stage [-70:12:32:12].
My stomach sank. We were almost three days late on whatever the next navigational stage was. “Well that’s not good.” It hurt to have your fears confirmed, especially when you still struggled to know what anything meant.
“What?” Someone asked.
“At the very least, I seem to recall a bit how space travel works,” I said, looking around for something to demonstrate with, only to fail. I held up my hands instead. “There are three critical points in a journey. Launch burn, flip, and slowing or landing burn. If we don’t have our navigational systems during any of those three, then things get rough really quickly. And we’re already past something in our navigational data. Any moment we spend with these systems down makes it harder to rectify. We’re either lost in space forever, or worse we’re a pancake if we’re trying to land.”
The crew got quiet after that bombshell, the amber text of the computer glowing with the alerts that could be life threatening. And if the threat of death wasn’t enough, their coffin would be headed into the blackness of space, never to be found again.
After a few moments, Justine spoke.
“Well that’s just great, and apparently I’m the navigator to boot,” She said, as if blaming herself and not the brain fog. “He’s right though. Space is vast, yes, but if we were already on a very specific trajectory, there’s a chance that without navigation, we could have a crippled orbit of where we’re trying to park, or worse, hit it head on.”
“And just where are we going?” Celia asked.
Everyone looked at each other blankly.
“I haven’t any idea,” I said. “But according to this, we’re three days late for whatever step the ship was supposed to make. We’re on this mission for a reason, and we’ve been currently been tasked with making sure it doesn’t fail. Let’s see what we can do. Fog or not, we need to get moving. Who knows how much leeway we actually have in the mission plane. Hopefully this will help more Ethan anything, anytime my mind get running on a problem or thought, I felt pieces of myself coming back. Even if I don’t even know that my name is Joel.”
They all nodded, murmuring in agreement.
“Probably the biggest problem we have is that…I don’t know where anything is,” I said. No one seemed like they did either. “Recalling data seems to throw the computer on the fritz again, but its sensor data is still pulling miraculously. Surely the sensors have their own location data.”
“That would be very helpful, but the computer is text only. Some sort of minimum routine or something,” Justine said. “Even if we could get the data, how would we use it? I couldn’t tell you coordinates more than actual locations. At least in my current state.”
“Text is still a visual medium,” Pat said, cutting in excitedly. “We can map the sensor data on a graph or something. It won’t be perfect, but it should give us a rough idea of where things are located..” She shrunk back after realizing she’d taken everyone’s attention. “Sorry, it only just came back to me. We don’t have to, there—”
“No, that’s perfect,” I said, piecing together my own thoughts. “It doesn’t have to be pretty, we just need enough to be effective. Pat, get back over here and take a look. Take the other console, I’ll try to pull the data from each of the sensors and send them to you.”
Pat visibly gulped, but nodded.
I tried not to get too much into my own head. There were traces of ideas and projects now floating around my head. If I focused on any of them too long, I would find myself recalling things much less important than what I was working on. I held on to the small bit of computer knowledge that had just popped into my brain with all the attention I could muster. Since I was already looking at the warnings, I put my hands on the console and got to work. Voice commands were unfortunately inefficient for this kind of work. Plus the computer crashed half the time you tried to use them, even though I knew it wasn’t strictly the fault of voice commands.
The sensors and subsystems themselves each had vast amounts of data. Usually you’d want it to parse through and see how things were working and what not, most of the current logs were error codes that we’d need to chew on later. But they also should have basic information about themselves when they installed in the ship. What system they are, how they’re attached to the network, and more importantly where they’re attached.
The script came out of my fingers faster than my fog riddled brain even processed it, it felt like a second nature, as if I’d be born with it. Before too long, I had a working script that would grab of all the systems and sensors and their coordinates inside the ship as a whole. I sent it to Pat’s console.
“Alright, here’s the data,” I said, leaning back. The rest of the crew loomed behind the two of us. Pat was also rapidly typing, more so now that I had given her the data.
It took a few minutes before she said it was done. “I can’t be certain it’ll work, but let’s give it a shot,” she said, pressing a button on her console.
The lights dimmed, I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding, sighing in frustration.
“Wait!” Justine said, pointing at the screen. “It’s still working.”
The computers hadn’t died this time, apparently just asking them to do some routine tasks was still taxing on them in their current state. That was good to know, perhaps this was all a power issue, I mentally added it to the list while Pat’s console began to resolve. The sensors and systems began to trickle across the graph like some weird math equation. Apparently the ship had a rather boxy shape to it, multiple decks, a little like a sandwich of sorts. Apparently I knew what those were too, I would probably need to look into food shortly.
The program finally finished and we had it, a reasonable idea of what the ship had in store for use, and where things were.
“Why are all those parts red?” Garrison asked, pointing to part of the display.
With all the amber text being used, I hadn’t noticed the shift in color. A good third or more of the ships sensors and systems were labeled with this red color. I looked at Pat, she looked worried.
“I uh, just added some logic so that any system with empty values would have a different color,” She said, looking at the screen. “I wasn’t sure what data I was going to get, so I covered a few bases.”
I looked at a few, trying to remember some as I went back to my script. I pulled up those specific sensors myself. They all reported as missing or down.
I turned to look at everyone, my face grim. “We’re missing half the ship.”
