codependency | o1 ( voicetest

o1 ( voicetest | SUNSHINE )

SYSTEM:QUERY_ DESTINATION:unknown_ STATUS:unknown_ LOCATION:processing... LOCATION:unknown_

[ There is a burst of static, followed very closely by a close-up of a very blank face that reveals nothing, not even in the miniscule. The voice that comes from her sounds too old. Or maybe she just looks too young. ]

I do not know where I am. Please clarify.

[ The video feed doesn't end. Instead, she just blinks and waits. ]

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[ Mace's feet are propped up on the helm. His conciousness is floating somewhere between Delta sleep and REM sleep. His arms are wrapped against his chest, fingers twitching as his brain sends delta waves through his grey matter. It's only after his legs slide a little too far to the left and crash into the sensors on the helm that he is jolted from his sleep. He wakes up in total darkness.]

[ Nothing but silence. Mace's hands are thrust out in front of him, groping for familiar objects, the curve of the helm, the arm of the chair, the moniters above his head. The emergency flashlight should be somewhere on the flight deck, usually under the pilot's seat. The darkness is so absolute. Mace begins to reach out when he crashes face first into the back of the chair he was sleeping in. He lets out a string of curse words before cautiously dropping to his knees. Found the wrong fucking chair.

His fingers grope through the pitch black, feeling for the famliar handle of the flashlight. Everyone who uses it is supposed put it back under the pilot's chair and he's lucky it's there when he feels for it. He flicks the on switch and the deck is illuminated. There is zero power to the helm and he wonders if they've drifted off course. Comms are down. The others are probably trapped in their bunks or in their labs.

Setting the flashlight on the command center he begins to manually reset the computers. Screens flicker to life around him but the ship remains dark. His fingers are gliding over the keyboard in front of him. His brain takes over his hands, strings of code errupt from his fingertips. Learned movement. Static shrieks across the comms.]

[ There is a brief crackle, another burst of static and maybe something that sounds like Mace. It echoes throughout the hull of a ship that houses life but is no home, not really, not in the way it hollows and closes in like a vice, not in the way a small planet spins and spins and wants for heat and sun and life. Or maybe it is, maybe it does for now— just differently, a shift in conjecture and theory and algorithm.

Another beat later and the lights flicker, dim, then flicker back on again. On the screens, his view of the coding is suddenly interrupted by a video feed of a small girl. Her background tells nothing about her location, nothing except that her eyes are blue and her hair is red. She blinks at him, wide-eyed and expressionless.

Her voice carries a familiarity the whole crew should be able to place. ]

There has been a terminal error in my processing, Mace. I am unable to carry out your request.

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o1 ( voicetest | SUNSHINE )

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