SWWAE Chapter 15: I Wish It Was

Patiently, she waited in the command chair of the Stargazer. The Polair doors hadn’t opened yet, which was just making her more anxious. What if she fucked up and embarrassed herself? If she were organic, it would be understandable, but she was a damn regent. Potentially the best AI in this galaxy.

“Oh, Eternity, please don’t let me fuck this up.” Just as she said that, the bay doors opened.

“Alright, Kiddo,” she heard Vestan say over the terrible speakers of the cargo bay. “Come on out.”

Nervously, she fired up the atmospheric engines and felt herself lift off the floor. Gently, she grabbed onto the two joysticks and slowly started inching herself out of the doors. Of course, she could have done this all with her mind, but she wanted to learn how to fly a ship the normal way. Maybe one day she would need to pilot a ship she hadn’t commandeered.

“Why the fuck did I decide not to turn myself around before coming out?! I’m backing up blind. Oh, fuck me. Shit, shit, shit. Where the fuck is auto launch/dock when you need it? I suppose I am that. Mother fucker. Shit ass tits[1]. Oh, I hate this.”

Once she had finished slowly backing herself out of the bay successfully, she slowly started turning herself around to face the hanger. “Okay, it’s kind of like flying a drone with how stable I stay in the air.” Once spun around, she could see Gramps and his friend standing off to his side. “Holy shit, furries exist here. Awesome.” Gramp’s friend was a tall and well-built wolf with graying black fur, whose jaw was currently wide open as he stared at the ship. “At least now I can say I’m jaw dropingly beautiful. Alright, to the hangar.”

Scared she was going to get cocky with how well she had pulled out of Polair, she took getting into the hangar even slower. Doing so worked out well though, and she even spun around inside the hangar so that when she next took off, she could just fly right out. From her seat, she watched as Gramps and his friend started walking their way around, but got stopped by the call of two people pushing a floating box. She reckoned those people were the preservation team.

Getting out of the seat, she turned to Heather. “I know this isn’t getting you home yet, but I promise I will get you home. We just need to put you in something more fitting and respectful than tying you to a chair.” With great care, she slowly unbuckled Heather and lifted the body. There was a part of her that wondered how strong she might be since she could pick up Heather with ease, or was it because all the moisture in Heather had gone?

Within just a few seconds, the ramp was opening, and she found everyone waiting for her. Two team members opened up the box to reveal a plush but obviously chilled inside. Carefully, she came over and lowered Heather’s remains inside.

“Report says there was a next of kin, would that be you?” One of the team said to Gramps. He shook his head and pointed at her.

“I’m the next of kin. There’s no one else.” The three strangers looked at her for a split second before all turning back to Gramps. “Fucking shit, two sentences in and it’s already starting.” This was not going to be fun.

“Stop playing around. Who’s the next of kin?” The other team member asked.

“The next of kin is me.” They ignored her.

“I’m not playing around; it’s the kid,” Gramps said again, pointing at her.

“Automatons can’t be next of kin.”

“Not an automaton, organic.” Finally, they all turned back to her. “Oh yeah, I can say it like a slur, too. Now someone tell me what is going to happen to her body, because I’ve made a promise to get her back home personally.”

“You disagree with this statement,” the friend said.

Anger flared inside of her. “I disagree with your stupid little outfit. Those pants do not, I repeat, do not go with that top.” Now, that took everyone by surprise, but the wolf quickly recovered and started growling at her. Part of her had wanted to take it a lot further, but sometimes it’s the small insults that really stick with people.

“What did you just say?”

“Brown on brown can look good, but you’re not pulling it off. You look like some guy at the coffee shop trying to convince you he’s a famous author because he once wrote a shitty-ass poem and put it on his blog.”

That stopped the wolf’s growl, but only because it confused him. It confused everyone.

“Alright, we’re moving past this.” The first team member said while physically putting himself between the Wolf and Regent. “We all know Faden doesn’t take kindly to those who ignore the respect a deceased person is do, so stop whatever this is. All we need to know is who this is.” They pointed at Heather. “Who’s responsible for her, and what’s being done with the body. Then you can have your little weird insult game.”

“Her name is Heather Cassie Colton, captain of the Stargazer. I’m responsible for her, and I need to keep her respectfully stored till I can get back up and running to take her home as per her last wishes.”

The team still looked unsure of her. “And your name is?”

She hesitated. “I still haven’t figured that out.”

“Kid, let’s just put me down. I’ll take full responsibility for Heather and her storage, and, like the kid said, we will come get her to take her to her final resting place when we get the ship back up and running. Does that work?”

The second team member pulled out a small pad and handed it over to Vestan. “As long as you fill everything out right and know that we will hold you personally responsible.”

She waited at the foot of the ramp while Gramps and the team filled out the forms and took care of what needed to be done. The wolf was walking around Stargazer, but it felt more like he was stalking her. There wasn’t a way for him to yet be aware that the ship was also her, but she still didn’t like the feeling. That, and he kept glancing over at her android body with the lightest snarl on his muzzle. A snarl that only grew when he would occasionally look down at his outfit. That made her feel a little good.

“Alright, Kid,” Gramps said finally coming back over. “That’s all taken care of.”

“Should I be worried about them writing something about me?”

“No, they’ve seen plenty of stranger things than an automaton arguing with a person in front of a corpse.” He looked up and past her to the wolf that was now heading back over to them.

She turned to look at the newcomer. “What’s the name of his race?”

“He’s a beastkin. His name is Hugh.”

“That’s a surprisingly normal name.”

“It’s a really old-fashioned name.”

She sighed. “Everything I consider normal is going to be old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“Great…”

Finally, Hugh made it up to them. He crossed his arms and gave her a very restrained snarl. “My clothes look good, automaton.”

“Alright, proper introductions,” Gramps started before the two could get back into it. “Hugh, this is Kid. Kid, this is Hugh, an old friend. One who knows his way around old spellwork.”

She crossed her own arms. “Don’t call me an automaton again, organic. I’m a person.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Just because you don’t shut down, doesn’t mean you’re a person.” He turned to Gramps. “How the drak did you figure out how to get an automaton not to shut down at the paradox?”

“I really recommend not calling her an automaton, Hugh. I didn’t figure it out, but she passes the Krens test. The whole test.”

Hugh scoffed. “Some 35 hundred vol old automaton passes the Kren’s test? That rich. Stop playing around and shut it off.”

“Afraid I’ll keep making valid points about your poor attire?”

“My clothes look good,” he growled out. “You’re not even wearing clothes.”

“Only because I haven’t gone to a tailor yet, dipshit.”

“What did you call me?”

“Alright, enough! Stop aggravating her because she gets very scary when upset,” Gramps said to Hugh. “And stop commenting on his clothes and calling him vintage insults,” he said, turning to her.

“I could erase your old spellwork in no more than a minute,” Hugh said.

Uncrossing her arms, her chest plate popped open to reveal no spellwork inside. “There is no spellwork inside of me. There’s not an ounce of spellwork on me either,” she said, gesturing to Stargazer.

Hugh looked confused at first. “You’re just controlling this automaton from the ship.”

“I am the ship. Do you want to see scary though?”

“Kid, please don’t.”

Two more panels on her popped open. “Remote transmitter,” she said, pointing to said component before ripping it out of her. It felt like ripping off a big scab.

“Kid!”

“Battery,” she pointed to it before yanking it out of herself. Now that properly hurt, but she didn’t care. “I don’t need a gods damn battery. Want more proof? Come on, let me show you.” She said, turning around and walking up the ramp.

“Kid, don’t do giff like that to yourself!” Gramps yelled, rushing up behind her.

“I self-heal.” With determination, she went to the catalyst room, not looking back to see if Hugh was following. Thankfully, he was, so she didn’t have to awkwardly wait when she walked up to where the catalyst should be. Pointing to it, she said, “Completely empty. Why don’t you have a look at the output readout?” Hugh still looked skeptical but walked over to the small display on the side of the reactor. It showed a perfect 100% output with 0% fluctuation. “You’ve got a scanner on you? I assume if you were here to help with spellwork, you would have something.”

Hugh pursed his lips at her before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a small square device. He looked down at it and tapped what she assumed was a screen on it. With immense pleasure, she watched as his expression went from confused to skeptical, then to worried. “You’re not picking up a single damn reading at all from the entirely powered ship, are you? As far as the scanners are aware, I don’t exist, right?”

Looking up at her, his eyes finally weren’t narrowed. However, he banged the scanner on his hand a few times before looking back down at it. Then he moved it closer to the reactor. Then closer, and just as he was about to touch it, Gramps called out, “For the love of all the gods, if you value any tech you own, you will not let it touch any part of her. Kid, I think you’ve made your point. Please don’t commandeer other people’s stuff.”

Now Hugh looked truly worried, and she was a little disappointed Gramps had said that. However, there was a part of her that was immensely grateful to him, because he wasn’t just looking out for Hugh; he was making sure she didn’t go too far.

“Vestan, what’s going on here?”

Gramps took a deep breath before answering. “You should start talking to the kid like a real person and ask her, because if you truly piss her off, there is not a force in this galaxy strong enough to stop her.”

Hugh stared at him for a few moments, trying to read into the genuine concern on Gramps’s face, and even look past it and to the cracks filled with fear. Finally, it dawned on Hugh that this was serious. Nervously, he turned to look at her. “What is going on here?”

“I’m a Regent. Translate from ancients to common it means regent. A regent is an ancients artificial life-form. One that fully passes your Krens Test and is built to run everything for the ancients. I am considered to be a living ancients, so much so that Eternity, a goddess of the ancients, has woken up because of me.”

At first there was fear on Hugh’s face, but it turned into a scoff as he turned back to look at Gramps. Gramps didn’t have to say a word as he just looked back at Hugh. Though his face was turned away from her, she could still see the shift from skeptical to genuine fear. “You woke up an ancients intelligence?”

“Heather did,” she answered and watched as Hugh turned back to face her. His hands were shaking. “Technically, she plugged in the equivalent of the womb I would be created in, and I have been in gestation for the past 3,500 vols. I only woke up half a hept ago, and until two and a half rotations ago I had been entirely alone on this once dead ship.”

“T-this has to be a j-joke.”

“I wish it were,” she admitted.

[1] Game Grumps Super Mario Maker episode 91. This is a vocal stim of mine.

[More characters! and more people referring to her as an automaton...]