Toasty Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - Contemplation

Toasty wasn’t able to go into a proper sleep cycle while he was in the hallway.  It wasn’t because he couldn’t recharge.  The dock was, thankfully, functioning properly, even with the rest of the ship depressurized and cooling.  No, the issue was that, with him unable to use his wireless antenna, he had no way of checking to see if the food for the next morning had been delivered.  It was the kind of issue that Toastbots lost sleep over.

Checking his personal supplies, Toasty saw that he was incredibly low on ketchup and almost out of syrup.  That was the worst thing ever.  How was he supposed to serve breakfast without syrup?

Fortunately, the hallway was empty.  He didn’t need to monitor much.  Normally, the core of the ship was full of activity.  Not today.  Toasty had been parked in the core hallway for hours, and not a single person had walked by.

Unfortunately, his clock continued to count down.  He needed a certain amount of time to prepare food for the admiral.  If the steward wasn’t here soon, that was going to be impossible.

*Command override*  Seek out supplies to continue mission

Suddenly, Toasty considered something.  Normally, he would have just sat there, waiting on the steward to bring the food to him.  However, as he thought about it, he realized that HE could just go and get the food himself.  No stewards required.

“Brilliant,” thought Toasty, in the way of toasters.  He decoupled himself from the charging dock.  His current complement of batteries was fully, one-hundred percent charged.  He had quick charge, low capacity batteries installed, as was common in rovers assigned to serve limited areas.  This could be an issue, depending on how far away the kitchen was.

Toasty considered that, as well.  He didn’t have a map of the ship handy.  Why would he?  Toasty never left the officer’s mess.  He had only scanned the area outside the mess when the door opened and shut.  Fortunately, he had seen the tell tales of a maintenance charging station.  He knew where one had been, but he didn’t know the general layout of the ship.

It seemed to him that was what his wireless was for, but he never used his wireless.

Activating his flashlight, Toasty looked around the area.  There were several people nearby, but they weren’t any help.  Aside from the one who’d left his bottom half in his locker, or wherever people left their powered armor and legs, the other one was slowly spinning with a large burnmark on either side of his uniform.

Toasty figured that officer, Commander Carpenter, of all people, would have to go and get a fresh uniform.  Toasty didn’t want to bother him.  Imagine showing up to see the admiral with a burnt uniform.

Toasty was horrified.

That’s when he saw it.  The long blue stripe that read ‘kitchen’.  Toasty didn’t really understand the layout of the ship, and he couldn't currently talk to the ship’s computer to discuss it.  The humans couldn’t talk to the ship at all, though, so they needed to use the colored lines to get where they were going.  The blue lines, with helpful arrows, pointed to the kitchen.

Toasty activated his magnetic wheels and started down the floor, following the line.  As he entered into a hallway, he spotted a massive window that showed off a large gas giant in the distance.  The ball was splendid, its gentle purple shades showing through the cloud cover.  The little toaster was overjoyed that his admiral got to see such beautiful things.

At least, he thought it was probably beautiful to her.  God’s jewelry box was no two slices of toast next to a big plate of homefries, but that was hardly a fair comparison.  On further examination, Toasty realized that the window was poorly made for being in the core of the ship.  The edges of it were rough and would probably require someone to polish them down.  What if the admiral cut herself?  Though, as he passed, Toasty saw one of the maintenance bots.  It looked like the bot had been trying to repair the window before running out of power.  Even worse, they had forgotten to put the transparent metal they used for windows in the frame.  It just opened out into space.

“Shoddy workmanship,” thought Toasty, as he stopped in his tracks.

The blue line leading to the kitchen went out the window.  Toasty paused at this.  He had his directives.  While he’d die to serve his admiral the best breakfast possible, it was perhaps not the smartest thing for him to do.  Could he really risk her favorite toaster?

Toasty could only imagine the terrible suffering of the admiral if she found out her favorite toaster had been destroyed.  He couldn’t put her through that kind of pain.

Speaking of which, Toasty looked at the admiral.  He could see her on the bridge, which appeared to be intact.  He could tell because of how the ship was bent.  You could see the bridge from the hallway.  The armored hull there was undamaged.

“Phew, that could have been bad,” thought Toasty.

*Find alternative supply*

Toasty remembered hearing that there was more than one kitchen on the ship.  Now, he knew that there were three kitchens on board.  The officer’s kitchen, run by the incompetent steward, the marine kitchen, and the enlisted kitchen.  Obviously, Toasty couldn’t go to the marine kitchen.  That kitchen served crayons of all flavors, and the admiral needed a healthy breakfast.  The officer’s kitchen seemed to be in space, so that just left the enlisted kitchen.

At least the enlisted kitchen was equipped with a muffin making machine.  Toasty knew that for a fact; the steward mentioned it repeatedly.  A muffin making machine was called a Sheela, and it worked by placing balls into it’s opening.  Then, the machine would break the balls.  Given the number of times breaking balls was mentioned, Toasty assumed that it was a method of storing ingredients.  It was also apparently quite loud, according to the maintenance personnel.

However, it was outside the core section of the ship.  Toasty wasn’t supposed to leave the officer’s mess, and he really wasn’t supposed to go to the enlisted section of the ship.  He was supposed to send a wireless signal to the ship's computer to inform her of such movements, but Toasty never used his wireless antenna.  He had no means of telling her that.

On the other hand, with his antenna offline, the ship didn’t really have a good way of tracking him.

Grumbling, Toasty considered his directives.  He needed to provide the admiral with a top quality breakfast, and he also needed to not use the wireless antenna.  Toasty felt that he probably needed more directives, but he was a toaster.  What did he know?

Given his directives, he had no choice.  The little toaster turned around to glance at his officer’s mess some ten meters behind him.  Then, he started driving toward the large sealed door leading to the enlisted section of the ship.  The ship’s core wasn’t large, but Toasty had small wheels.  He didn’t travel very fast.

When he got to the door, he discovered his next problem.  The door had both a human-sized hatch for people and a smaller bot hatch for maintenance bots.  Toasty was a utility bot.  Maintenance bots had an assortment of tools designed for servicing and repairing. Toasty had a toaster, designed for toasting.

Toasty did have two small manipulator arms, though.  He extended them, fitting them into the hex socket that allowed the door to open.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t generate enough torque to open the small airlock.  Toasty doubted he would have been successful, even if the little toaster could find a hex bit to fit into the socket.

Then, Toasty remembered the other maintenance bot.  The bot was sleeping now, but certainly he would do anything to help the admiral.  Toasty drove back to the towering maintenance bot and poked it.

The maintenance bot did not move.  Grumbling, Toasty attached both his little arms to the rover and started to shake it.  Rather than waking it from its sleep cycle, the rover lifted off the ground.  While weight wasn’t a thing in zero-g, inertia was.  The maintenance bot weighed several hundred kilograms.

Toasty stopped lifting the rover and started to pull down, only to discover that his magnetic wheels didn’t have enough strength to hold him to the floor.  Pretty soon, both rovers were floating gently.

Sighing, the toaster crawled over the maintenance rover until he reached its optical sensors.  Its head was missing, but missing parts seemed common anymore.  The device still  had other sensors that Toasty could try.  When none of those worked, Toasty examined the maintenance bot more carefully.  He realized someone had burned a hole straight into the rover’s power compartment.

The compartment was partially open, due to the metal warping.  With a flick of his manipulator arms, Toasty found the melted remains of the rover’s heavy duty power core.  Continuing his search over the dilapidated rover, Toasty found the rover’s door opener.  The opener included a hex driver and variable bits built into the rover’s tool arm.

Grumbling, Toasty activated his laser slicer and swung it down on the arm.  It turned out that bread cutting lasers were significantly less effective on metal.  All Toasty managed to do was cut through the power conduit providing energy to the tool, which probably rendered it useless.

Could things get any worse?

Searching around, Toasty considered his options.  He needed a box of tools to remove the door opener from the maintenance bot.  Once he had it, he could somehow attach the tool to himself.  Then, Toasty could go where he wanted.  The toaster had a communication port on him.  If he had a cable for it, he could just connect to the other rover.  However, with the other bot’s power supply destroyed, Toasty wasn’t sure that was a feasible option.  He was running out of time.  The most important meal of the day was in danger of not happening.

Then, Toasty remembered the maintenance closet.  They usually kept a small toolkit in there.  Toasty examined all the connecting nuts and bolts on the rover and hoped that he could make due.

Gently pushing off the device, Toasty floated over to the maintenance closet and examined what was available.  The selection of tools was limited.  There was a variety of precision welders, a man-portable hex driver, and several communication cords.  It contained none of the small tools necessary to disassemble a rover.

*Evaluate Mission*

Toasty grumbled.  That inner voice was starting to get annoying.  He needed to disassemble the maintenance rover to get at its rover tool arm.  Unfortunately, all the tools available to him were designed for humans, from the hex driver to the small welders.

Examining the hex driver more closely, Toasty again considered his options.

In normal gravity, the hex driver would have probably been too heavy for Toasty to move.  In zero-g, that shouldn’t be a problem.  Also, Toasty realized he should probably take a communication cord.  This whole “not using his wireless antenna thing” was becoming irksome.

Lifting the large driver, Toasty judged its weight and decided he could manage it, at least temporarily.  The cord was actually a bigger problem.  Communication cords were loaded into retractors and were pretty small, but Toasty lacked anything like a pocket to stow it in.

Toasty still resembled the Toastbot he was.  He originally looked like an oversized toaster with wheels.  He had a cute little head, with optical sensors and a flashlight on top.  The maintenance staff had upgraded him over the years, adding his manipulator arms, his side compartments with ketchup and syrup, and his slicer.

He considered his side compartments.  One contained the admiral’s precious ketchup, just in case she wanted home fries.  The other contained a mostly empty bottle of syrup.  Its not like the commander was going to be eating any more pancakes.

Toasty ejected the syrup bottle and stowed the cord in the empty space.  “Stowed” was a strong word, but, after pushing hard enough, the compartment eventually closed.    Armed with his new hex driver, Toasty pushed himself to the floor, quickly recharged on the dock, and drove over to the droid airlock.

Things were looking up.