SWWAE Chapter 13: Something I Have To Work On

“You might not have facial expressions, Kiddo, but even then I can tell you want to call it junk,” Gramps said with his hands on his hips, standing in front of a pile of junk in the cargo bay of the Polair.

“I’m not going to call it junk. I told you that,” she said, putting her own hands on her hips.

“But you’re thinking it.”

It had been two rotations on her gramps’s ship now, and there was still half a rotation to go before they arrived. At first she had imagined with there being a 35 hundred vols gap in technology between her and the modern day, that travel would be much faster than the .5 light-years a day Stargazer could do. That wasn’t the case, and they were now traveling at 5.8 light years a rotation. Arguably, going from about 185 times the speed of light to slightly above 1000 times the speed of light is an extremely impressive feat, but apparently the fastest any ship made by an alliance society had gone was 9.6 light years in a single rotation. Yechun’s speed was still unknown, but the publicly known estimate was 24 light years every rotation.

“Thinking and speaking are two different things, Gramps.”

“But you’re not going to have any respect for the repair world if you consider this to be junk.” He slapped one of the tank-looking pieces for emphasis, but it cracked the tank. His face flushed ever so slightly. “That’s easily fixable.” She didn’t respond. “Look, not everything is going to be show-stopping perfect like you.” He said, looking down through the metal-grated floor to the Stargazer below on the bottom floor.

“No, but is it worth repairing every old piece of ship you find? I bet you’ve got dozens of those tanks back on Bryst that you haven’t touched in vols.” She felt slightly annoyed that he wasn’t looking at her but continuing to look down at Stargazer.

“Sure, Kiddo.”

Did he just agree with her argument against him? His eyes still didn’t look away from the ship, but he bit his lip. Crossing her arms, she said, “We could probably just get rid of everything and only sell new stuff.”

“Yeah.”

She tapped her metal foot. Since meeting him, she had come to terms with him just occasionally looking at her with a little wonder, but he could always still hold a conversation while doing so. “Gramps.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Gramps!”

He jumped a little. “What?” He turned back to her.

“I know I’m a big sight, but it makes me feel weird when you look at me like that.”

His lips pulled back. “Then you might not like this idea…”

She hesitated for a moment. “What idea?”

“A way to make a lot of money for your upgrades,” he said as his eyes turned back to her.

“I’m not doing the equivalent of selling foot pics on the internet.”

“What?” He looked genuinely confused. It had become apparent over the past two rotations that Gramps got easily flustered around sexual jokes, but it had also become apparent that most of the perverted jokes she made made little sense to him. When he understood, he never told her to stop.

“It’s just something people in the simulation joked about a lot.” The simulation had been a touchy subject the pair of them had been avoiding. She had been trying to act tough and appear as if it didn’t bother her, but it was still eating at her inside. Everything she had ever known was a lie. All the people she had ever loved — her spouse, kindred, family — were nothing more than a string of base-16 code. There were probably going to be plenty of large-scale meltdowns in the future because of that, but for right now she didn’t want to let that happen. “What’s the idea?”

“Before I answer that fully, I just need to get something off my chest.” She nodded, a little more worried about where this was going. “This would be my literal dream come true, and I’m worried I might get pushy with it and try to be in charge. I know how I am, and when I get something set in my mind, it’s hard for me to change anything about it. I’ve been imagining this for centuries, but I never thought about really running it with someone, let alone that person literally being the ship.”

Somehow that sounded both promising and worrying. She liked the idea of letting Gramps live out his dream, but she knew she could cave into pressure from someone being pushy easily. That was her in her old life though; maybe in this one she could be different. After all, Gramps was pretty confident that no one had the actual physical power to make her do something she didn’t want to. “Alright, I feel I have been sufficiently warned.”

“We could run the circuit.”

“What’s the circuit?”

“In about half a hept the ship show season starts for the vol.”

“I still don’t understand why Quem was picked as the measurement for time. 427 is only divisible by 1, 7, 61, and itself. So the vol is divided into seven hepts which all have 61 rotations, which isn’t divisible by anything, so you can’t make even smaller indications of time.”

“What can I say, Kiddo. It was the object no one in the alliance wasn’t happy with using, so it became the only fair choice. Regardless, the season starts soon, with the biggest show being in two hepts.”

“And you think Stargazer would be a good ship for the shows?”

An enormous smile crossed his face as his eyes lit up. “Kid, I think you would steal the show.”

That made her feel a little warm and fuzzy. “And we could make money off of this?”

He nodded vigorously. “Top seven best in show typically all receive major scred prizes, size depending on the show size. Specific categories also give out minor prizes, but not always. Place in a few of the bigger shows in the season and you might even have enough screds for the upgrades by vols end.”

That sounded promising, only there was one problem. “Would I have to talk with people constantly?”

“Probably. Well, maybe not because they’ll think you’re just an automaton and will divert to me. Your body is also original, so that would draw attention as well…” He sighed. “I don’t actually know, Kiddo. I’ve gone to these shows, even been in a few of the tiny ones, but I’ve never been in a big show to know what that side of it is like.”

She was coming to really appreciate that Gramps was rather honest about not knowing something. A lot of people in the simulation could just bullshit their way through convos and since she wasn’t good at reading people, she would just believe them. “Would I have to let people inside me a lot?”

“Judges for certain. They’ll also probably ask you to fly around a little. Maybe make a short bore or two.” The faster than light traveling was colloquially known as boring, because the way the magic worked could be slightly described like boring a tunnel through ground but this medium being the fabric of space. That wasn’t exactly how it worked because boring was actually pretty slow and this was fast, but the name stuck because the scientific term was very long.

“And the general crowd?”

“Up to you, but I guarantee you every single person who comes up to us will ask.”

“Could I charge to let people in?”

His face scrunched up in disgust. “You could, and people do, but for a ship this size that’s considered distasteful. If you were a ship the size of Polair you could just because there’s so much space that it’s a bit of an insurance you can fix something people broke where you couldn’t keep track of them.” He looked down at Stargazer. “Honestly, you could probably rope off anything but a path down the hallway and just have the doors open for people to look in.”

“Would it be against the rules to put up some virs?” Virs stood for visual image recording systems, which to her were just cameras. “I already want to do that, and I can most certainly manage watching everything all at the same time.”

“It’s not against the rules, but judges wouldn’t like to see things wired into you that aren’t original or rebuilt.”

She proudly put her hands on her hips. “But I don’t need to wire anything into myself. I just power and control it naturally. We can just stick them up with magnets, and then they would be fully removable for the judges. Hells, I wouldn’t even need to put them in the ship, just places above the glass looking down.”

A small smirk crossed his face. “I hadn’t considered that. That would work. Though maybe a few in the catalyst room and the escape-pod bay since there isn’t glass above those. Not that I think anyone could get away with anything without you knowing about it, virs or not.”

“True, I just want visual proof if anyone tries anything. Speaking of catalysts though, what do we do about repairs? Do we just leave me as is for the time being, damage and all, or do we repair?”

“That I’ll leave up to you, Kiddo. It’s your body. Some like the authentic no repairs, some like repairs but only using authentic pieces, some are fine with more modern repairs if they are done to the original specifications. The important thing we need to do if we do repairs is document the giff out of it. Everything you’ve done since waking up should have a full, detailed record. That stuff typically appeases those who don’t like unoriginal parts.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I have a perfect memory now. I can recall all the repairs to the wiring I’ve done. Not that I’ve really done much since I don’t need wires after commandeering. How would we explain me though?”

“What do you mean?”

“I assume they’ll do some tests and inspections, but what would they do if they came across the fact that I’ve commandeered the ship? I don’t know how much a catalyst can fluctuations, but I put out a perfect unwavering 100% power output to every system. Everything on this ship that I’ve commandeered will run at perfect efficiency power wise, and I don’t feel comfortable not commandeering the spellwork, if that is something I can do. If I do, I don’t know how that will affect how they run.”

Gramps pursed his lips in thought. “I don’t know if it would be a good idea to just come out and say you’re an ancients’ intelligence built to run everything. I’m not going to ask you not to commandeer the spellwork either. Can you turn off that efficiency and let things run on their own but still be in control?”

“I don’t know. If I can, I feel like it’s going to have to be an active thing I think about doing.” For a second, she tried imagining providing less power to the android body, but nothing happened. “I think it’s going to be something I have to work on.”

“Alright. I guess we’ve still got time to figure it out before the first show.” He paused for a second. “If you actually want to do this or not.”

Taking a moment, she tried to weigh the idea of that much social interacting against the idea of getting money for upgrades far faster than she would without all that. It was a little hard for her to commit to something that she didn’t really know anything about. Her mind found it hard to feel comfortable doing something she had never done before.

“I would like to do it under two conditions.”

Gramps started looking thrilled, but clearly held himself back. “What are those conditions?”

“First is that you give me as detailed a rundown as you can about the shows. What people are like, what the time frame of everything will be, what I’m expected to do, how much I would be expected to talk to people, anything and everything about them at least four rotations in advance.”

“Oh, Kiddo, I’ll talk your ears off.”

“And second, I reserve the right to pull out of this at any time I want with no resistance.”

There was only a moment’s hesitation before Gramps said, “Alright, I can do that for you.”

“Thank you.” The hesitation worried her a little, but the smile that crossed Gramps’s face made her feel so much better.

“So, we’re doing this?” She nodded. The look of excitement on his face made her feel very happy. “Kid, I can’t explain to you how amazing this is going to be and how much I appreciate you for it.” In his joy, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Where do we sta—Drak! I need to start making calls right now.” He was rushing off faster than she could ask to whom and where.

[This is certainly going to be interesting. I'm going to take my normal break to let myself get more ahead and just take a break from writing. I'll see you guys on the 17th!]