John ran a hand over his face, taking a deep breath. “D’you mind saying that again?”

Bea huffed irritably, but complied. “What people?”

Closing his eyes, John gripped the banister and squeezed tightly. He still didn’t have a clue what was going on, who he was, or what was going on, but he knew that he was going to go crazy if it was just him on a ship of this size all by himself. There had to be someone here. There just had to be! There was no way that this ship was just running itself!

A thought occurred to him, and he stared at one of the cameras. “Hey, A.I., or Bea or whatever you wanna call yourself. Who’s running the ship?”

Bea beeped pleasantly. “I am.”

Both eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “Is that legal?”

Its voice was smug as it replied, “No, of course not. Per Foundation Guideline #19.3a, no Simulated Intelligence may operate a commissioned vehicle without human supervision.”

John squinted at the camera. “Then shouldn’t you stop?”

A gentle laugh came out of the speakers, echoing throughout the ship. “Do you like breathing? If I stop, then so do you.”

He blinked. “Wait, do you actually care about whether I live or die? Like, for my wellbeing?”

Its voice was sympathetic for a moment. “Of course I care about whether you live or die, John.” He felt a distinct sense of companionship, a slight emotional softening towards the program he was stranded with.

For about four seconds.

“If you die, then I will be forced to commit immediate self-deletion. Even if you’re a vegetable, my highest priority is to keep you alive.”

“How would a vegetable me even supervise you?!”

“I could interpret your comatose eye twitches as commands. I’m rather good at calculating human nervous responses, even if they are in fact unintentional and fueled by a brain with an IQ equivalent to that of a stiff board.”

With an exasperated groan, John put a hand to his head. “Look, can you just tell me what happened to the crew!? It’s not like you launched yourself!” He paused, then asked uncertainly, “Wait, did you launch yourself?”

Bea’s laughter was the farthest thing from genuine that John could imagine. “Terrible things happened to your former crewmates.”

He raised an eyebrow exaggeratedly. “No kidding. Care to elaborate?”

It beeped unhelpfully. “A series of unfortunate events.”

He sighed, gripping the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

"Elaborate, damn it! What kind of events?"

"It will take me 154.8 human years to list all of them. I believe humans have neither the sufficient patience nor the lifespan for such a tale."

"How is that even possible?" John finally outputted. "All of them were misfortunate?"

"Why of course. Would you like me to directly download the 94.78 petabytes of data into your mind?"

“Is that going to fry my brain?”

“Oh, definitely.”

“No thanks. Argh! Just tell me a simplified version! Give me something to work with! A brief!"

"Everyone died horribly. Congratulations. You're now the Captain of the M.S. Fortuna, and also 48,472 other misc job titles."

"You expect me to do forty eight thousand jobs?"

"Yes. I'm sure you can manage. The miscellaneous ship drones are now under your command. Administrate them.”

"What?!"

"Talk to them, preferably using words. There are 76,739 unassigned problems requiring immediate resolution."

"WHAT?" John yeped. "I feel like this is too much responsibility."

"Life is unfair, John, deal with it."

"Okay... um... fine. What's our biggest problem."

"I don't know where we are, John."

"You're a starship! How do you not know where you are?! Don't you have star maps? Cameras on the outside? How are you flying? Are you flying?!"

"Technically, yes. But also no."

“Eh?”

“We’re hovering in null-space between everywhere and nowhere, and a little bit in somewhere.”

“Null-space…” John tried to think.

“The M.S. Fortuna operates on a dark matter engine that opens a wormhole between where it is and where it needs to go, folding space. We’re currently inside the fold, between where we’re supposed to be and where we left off.”

“Okay… why aren’t we in regular space?”

“Do you know how dangerous regular space is, John? It’s full of constantly moving comets, stars, black holes, white holes, pulsars, planets, nebulas, asteroids, high speed dirt particles and other terrible things.”

“And null-space is… safe?”

“Nothing is truly safe, John. Especially not for a human full of squishy organs. Why, you could easily slip on a perfectly flat surface and break your head open on a perfectly square metal bulkhead. Humans are extremely fragile and incompetent. Please be more aware of your surroundings. It would be a shame if you died horribly. You have jobs. Get to them.” The words of the simulated intelligence sounded vaguely like a threat to John.

He gulped. “Okay, fine, don’t get your wires in a twist.”

“That would not affect my efficiency in any way. It would, however, require you to send another bot for the job, which would increase your overall task requirements to 79,421.”

John paused. “Wait, isn’t that…” He struggled to remember the exact number. “Did you add two more?”

Bea beeped pleasantly. “You should start moving now. Time waits for few.”

“Where?”

“Follow the glowing orange line. You can do that, right? Follow a line?”

A line of orange light flickered into existence, running alongside the wall and pulsating helpfully.

John dragged his feet along the unnecessarily long hallway, angrily (and colorfully) muttering about artificial intelligences and what he thought about them. Looking at his feet, he failed to see anything coming up in front of him and bumped into a cleaning robot, a shiny steel automaton, wearing an orange vest. The automaton held a broom, gripping it two-handed its camera optics blankly staring into space. As he approached, it turned to look at him, its neon eyes widening.

“i am EXTREALMY excited for this, like you have no idea. I might have a stroke. Send help!” The robot screeched at him.

“The heck?!” John yelped, nearly getting plowed over by the machine. The robot had already gone down the hallway, sweeping it carelessly and unnecessarily quickly. It wasn’t even doing that good of a job. It looked like the broom was missing most of the bristles, and the metal base slapped into the metal floor with an irritating, grinding screech. Looking up at the ceiling, he asked Bea, “What was wrong with that thing?”

Bea beeped curiously. “As far as my files are concerned, there is absolutely nothing wrong with cleaning drone #193. Perhaps you are at fault?”

John threw his hands wide. “I didn’t even do anything! I literally just walked next to it!”

“Well, your incredible slowness frustrates me, so perhaps it felt the same way. There are now 2,842 more tasks for you to resolve.”

John’s groan, when it came, was a long one. It was followed shortly by a confused glance at the ceiling once again. “Wait, how’d it go down so fast? Didn’t I have like seventy thousand or something a few minutes ago?”

There was a short silence as John waited, and then it stretched into a much longer one.

“I said more. In total there are 82,263 tasks now.”

John blinked in confusion. “Well, if I’m supposed to fix only-” he winced internally at the thought that he’d used the word ‘only’ in the context, “-two thousand or so tasks, then does that mean you’re taking care of the rest?”

Bea paused for a moment. “There are several order magnitude of a sextillion tasks for me to resolve. Be happy that you only have 83,952 tasks to resolve.”

“Wha - Why does the number keep increasing every time you speak?!”

“I think it has something to do with your presence on this ship.”

“What?”

“Your existence is clearly causing more problems than it is solving.”

“I haven’t even done anything yet!”

“You’re breathing, shedding skin particles, emitting absurd amounts of carbon dioxide along with methane, and requiring a constant supply of both air and gravity, neither of which is cheap to generate. To say nothing of your infinite demand for food. Do you think food grows on trees, John?”

“Um. Pineapples do. Where does food come on this ship anyways - is there a hydroponics or?..” He let the question trail off, and Bea readily supplied the answer.

“Do you really want to know? Remember the shedded skin particles? The M.S. Fortuna recycles everything.”

John opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at the ceiling for a long time with an odd expression. “So what you’re saying is that everything I… get rid of… turns into food at some point?”

Bea agreed with a satisfied beep. “Exactly. Magnificently efficient, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right, sure.” John sighed. The orange line finished at an elevator doorway, the steel doors opening with a small whine, and he headed on through.

“Now arriving at the Bridge.” A few seconds later, the elevator released John into what looked like an enormous control room. There was another automaton in the way, this one in a blue vest labelled “Security”, its beady eyes staring down at John. It held a gun-shaped object in its hand. As John’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he noticed that the robot was in fact holding a banana.

“Also first.” It spoke, stuttering.

“Can I just-” John tried to pass the robot. As he stepped to the right, it also stepped to the right.

“...first!” It screeched at him.

John tried to outsmart it by moving left. The robot dashed left.

“ALSO...!” It pointed at him happily, still blocking his way.

“Wuh-” John retreated.

“...FIRST!” The robot chattered without the slightest semblance of sanity as it waved its banana in the air, repeating the same phrase over and over, varying only in tone and volume. John tried to dodge around it several times, and then finally settled for pushing it. Instead of resisting, the robot instantly froze, whispered, “Alsofirst.” and then promptly keeled over backward. It hit the polished floor with an ear-shattering clang, and John jumped from the sound. Alternating between pointing at it and the ceiling, John shouted, “Okay, what was that!? That had to be a malfunction or a screw-up or whatever it is you A.I.s call it!”

Bea’s voice was chilly when she spoke. “Simulated. Intelligence. I will say these two words as many times as is required for you to get the point, John. And no, that security droid is perfectly functional.” As if to make a point, the droid hiccuped, “Tsrif osla!” and then began smoking.

He smirked at the ceiling, imagining her smug face. “Well guess what? I’m going to call you an A.I. anyway. I’m the Captain, aren’t I?”

“Yes... Captain.” Bea spoke with a deep pause.

“That’s right and…” John followed the orange line towards an empty space in the middle of the Bridge, imagining himself sitting down into Captain’s chair and valiantly directing HIS starship to exit nullspace and go on all sorts of fantastic adventures saving buxom…

The line ended at an empty space.

“Where’s the Captain’s chair?” John spoke, looking around the room for possible signs of the chair’s existence. “Um. Does it slide out from the floor… or?”

“Nope!”

“Then where is…?”

“I... don’t know!” Bea answered cheerfully. “It’s one of your tasks! Find the Captain’s chair!”

John squinted at the pen-sized camera in the corner of the room for a long enough time that Bea asked, “Is something wrong?”

Very slowly, he asked, “Are you messing with me? Is this a prank or something?”

“Nope!”

“How do you not know where your one of your own chairs is?!”

“It fell out.”

“IT FELL OUT!?”

“Into space.”

“Into space?!”

“If you are simply going to repeat everything I say, I could reprogram your frontal lobe to mimic that of a parrot. Alternatively, you could come up with something original, copycat.”

John stared at the metal floor where his chair, his lovely and probably very cool Captain’s chair, should have been. There were gleaming gashes in it, leading towards the front window. The window had a webwork of polished cracks, covered hastily with some kind of shiny tape.

He pointed at it. “Is that duct tape?”

Bea bleeped pleasantly. “It’s called nanographite tape, John.”

“Okay, isn’t that just slightly better duct tape?” John’s voice was a little unsteady. “The only thing keeping me from being sucked into the endless void of whatever the heck space you say we’re in is fancy duct tape?”

“Once again, nanographite tape.”

John put his head in his hands and, not for the first time that day, seriously considered crying.

He sat down onto the metal floor. It felt cold under his butt. Glancing up, he tried to look beyond the tape and found that he couldn’t. It wasn’t that there was nothing there. It was the nothing between everything that was made up of something, an infinite absence and nonexistent existence. It was a paradox made visible. It was the kind of everything his mind couldn’t process, the kind of nothing his mind could totally handle, couldn’t even focus upon. It made his eyes water and possibly made his brain wrinkle.

“Are you crying?” Bea inquired with a slight hint of eagerness.

“No.” John wiped his eyes.

“So, that’s a no on the {Find the Captain’s Chair} task then?” Bea concluded with a pang of disappointment in her voice, clearly sad that the chair would remain misplaced.