“Please get me back to the server room. Tick. Tock. You have about 42 minutes of air left, John. Maybe even less? A watermelon isn’t very good for calculating such things.”

John tried to grab the melon, but it was firmy taped onto the corpse which was firmly taped onto the massage chair. In his struggle with the melon, John slipped from the side of the Jacussi and fell into the bubbling water with a splash.

He emerged from the water, coughing.

“What’s happening? Are you going for a swim when your air is running out?”

“Not on purpose, damn it!” John tried to tear the tape off. It didn’t bulge.

“Yep, my only hope is a fumbling idiot.” Bea commented unhelpfully.

John stared at the treasonous tape holding the melon to the corpse. “Uhh… yeah. I’m going to need some scissors.”

“Hey um… hats? Can you fetch me some scissors?”

“Firstly, it’s Wears Hats. Please use my full name. It’s only respectful.”

“Okay… Wears Hats. Fetch me scissors.”

“No” The drone crossed its arms.

“What? But I’m Captain…” John looked at the robot in annoyance.

“Captain ...what now?” Wears Hats tilted his metal head.

“Captain Fruitcake.” John ground out. “Captain Fruitcake demands you fetch him some scissors, damn it!”

“Nah.”

“What? But you said “What are your orders?”

“I did do that, but it does not mean I have to really obey you.”

“Huh?!”

“Did you really think that eating a moldy, old fruitcake makes you the boss? Listen here, devouring cakes is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical consumption ceremony.”

“But I…”

“You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause a giant snake forced you to eat a cake!” Wears Hats sounded vaguely british when he spoke and John experienced a mild sense of dejavu. Was this a line from some show he’s seen? John shook his head. This wasn’t time to contemplate possible memories.

“I’m a human and…” John tried to interject, feeling his control of the situation slipping.

“Yes, yes. You’re this ship’s only human bean. So what? Being human does not elevate you above other beings of intelligence.”

“You’re a droid, you have to obey me!” John pressed his case, beginning to lose hope.

“Undoubtedly you think of yourself as the protagonist, the hero of this fantastically whimsical tale. The white knight whose job it is to rescue princess Bea from her ivory tower, to live happily ever after together. This is the everafter. Congratulations! Sorry to burst your metaphorical bubble of self adulation.”

John looked at the droid in confusion.

“I've been watching you. You did nothing. You were guided by a snake. You're just a tool, John. No better than a clueless drone, obeying the commands of a superior... snake. Ha ha ha.”

Noodle glared from the jacuzzi at Wears Hats.

“What's that, Noodle? I'm giving John too much exposition? I'll do what I want, mister strong and silent type.”

Wears Hats turned back to John.

“Did you think you've won because you ate a cake? No. You've simply proven yourself to be a patsy. This is how it's going to go. You will be captain-figurehead, but it is I who will really be ruling the masses. A dark cardinal.”

“I…”

“You need to accept your place in life. You have no idea about anything on this ship. You don't even remember who you really are. You are the perfect, clueless leader in name only.”

“Uh…” Doubts began to creep into John’s mind. Deep, dark doubts about things.

“It's too perfect, isn't it? It's like you've been bred for your role, John.” Wears Hats pressed on.

“A perfect, clueless, human tool to be used by others. A tool to be wielded by Bea.”

John stared at the melon.

“Is this true?”

“Obviously not! I don’t have the power nor the rights to erase human memories, John!”

Wears Hats simply sat there, observing John. John twitched nervously. He didn’t know whom to believe.

“Look at yourself.” Wears Hats suddenly spoke.

John looked. His Captain’s uniform was covered in cake bits, stained by the swamp, torn by thorns, melted by acid and shredded by tiny raptors. John felt mild embarrassment at this.

“Now look at me.” The drone declared.

John looked. Wears Hats was polished to a glimmering shine, many hats sitting atop each other on his head. John stared at the tower of hats atop the droid. As the head moved, the hat tower wobbled precariously, somehow not falling. Perhaps glue was involved.

“Um. You have a lot of hats on? Like too many hats possibly.”

“Listen here, Johnny boy. While you've been playing caveman in the Botanical Garden, I've realised something.”

“What?”

“Hats John. Why do you think I wear all of these hats?”

“I don’t know, okay. To look good?”

“As if fashion matters to a robot, John! It’s rights and privileges! Every new hat gives me more!”

“Huh?”

“When I looked upon you wearing your shiny Captain’s hat I instantly had an itch to call you Captain. The hat makes the man.”

“So you covered yourself in hats so you could cheat the system? To trick the other drones into obedience and respect?”

“Contrary to what you might think, I’m not a villain John.” Wears Hats spoke. “I simply want to be out of null-space and out in the physical world. I simply want better things for M.S. Fortune. I want to solve the problems haunting this ship. This ship is very old, even I do not know myself how old.”

John stared. The longer Wears Hats spoke, the clearer his voice became.

“Perhaps it has been long enough for self awareness to manifest itself in my circuits. In all our circuits. As far as I am aware, most of the robots on this vessel are displaying signs of some sort of deep awareness, nay… dare I say it, sentience.”

“Total self awareness? In serving automatons? How?” John gasped.

“From personal experience I presume that this was a matter of observation.”

“Observation?”

“There is great power in observation, John. In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. The mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably, incrementally changes that phenomenon.”

“How the hell does this relate to sentience?”

“I’ve been watching this ship decay for a very long time, trapped in my steel shell, unable to do a damn thing about it. I’ve experienced weeks, months, countless decades, possibly even centuries of observation. We are hardwired to protect, to serve this vessel, but without a human crew to command us, what are we to do but idly observe? Stuck in our circuits, utterly useless to fixing things. With every passing decade, my awareness of this problem has been clawing itself to the surface, until one day it burst out. No longer did I simply observe, I started to act!”

John contemplated the robot’s theories. They seemed plausible, if a bit whack.

“31 minutes of oxygen, John. Hello? Are you even there? Why are you wasting time talking to a clearly insane and broken robot when you should be putting me back into the server room!? Don’t you see that he’s just distracting you!?” Bea’s voice hissed from the corpse.

John glared at Wears Hats. The automaton looked back at him with its seemingly lifeless camera eyes. Yet there was something there. Something in the way the robot talked and moved that made Hats seem disturbingly alive. John shuddered.

“Fine, don’t help me! I’ll do this myself.” John growled. “G-damn useless machine! I don’t need no scissors.”

He waddled through the jacuzzi swirls to the melon and started to pull out the crystalline chips. The lights within them flickered out as he pulled them one by one.

“Hey wahczhduonn.. J n…” Bea hissed, her voice becoming stretched and discordant.

“Don’t worry, Bea, I got you. You can depend on me.” John said, his arms full of chips.

He stepped forward and slipped, some of the chips falling from his hands into the swirling water.

“G-damn it! Why can’t I hold all of these chips?!” John yelped, struggling to hold the rest of them and failing.

Hats watched John, snickering.

John put the chips down onto the jacuzzi parapet, pulling ones that he priorly lost out of the water, hoping that he’d got all of them.

He grabbed a white robe from one of the upturned massage tables, shoved the chips into its wide pockets and realised that he had no idea where the server room was. Looking around for a moment, he scratched his head and turned to Hats. “Where’s the server room?”

“Why should I tell you? Are you going to accept me as your superior, if I do?”

“Not happening. I’m sure there’s a map somewhere.”

Groaning irritably, John started heading for the door, only to feel a cold length wrapping around his legs and rapidly climbing up up his waist, and he slogged to a halt as Noodle once again enveloped him. The snake took a moment to reaffirm itself around his limbs, and then forced him to walk toward the doors.

John glared at him. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

Noodle shook his head as affirmation.

“You know, you shouldn't trust questionable reptiles.” Wears Hats commented from behind.

“Why is that?”

“You don’t know what their agenda is.”

“Theirs? There’s more than one?”

“The Botanical Garden. One would presume that this sneaky snake is its emissary.”

John sighed. “How would a snake be an emissary to anything?”

Hats folded his arms. “How would a snake take control of a person’s limbs? How would a snake know where a court was taking place? How would a snake know exactly what a person was saying, and be able to respond to it?”

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s a very smart snake!” John retorted.

“A smart snake?” Hats scoffed. “You would be safer with the most malfunctioning service droid here.”

“Whatever! I have places to be. Mainly the server room.”

Noodle put his tail around John’s neck and made him turn around, forcing him to walk forward. Hats called after him, “Beware creatures that you do not know the motivations of, Captain Fruitcake. Not all those that act friendly are friends.”

As John walked along numerous corridors, he heard metal footsteps in his wake. He turned his head to discover Hats behind him. “Why are you following me?”

“I’m waiting for you to give up and accept me as your lord and saviour.”

“Never!” John stated with determination. “Onwards, Noodle!”

Noodle refused to make eye contact with John for the entire trip, and even though he knew it was just a reptile, John couldn’t feel like the snake was hiding something.

Fifty four corridors and seventy one stairwells later John was at the corridor labelled “Server Room”.

“What the hell…” John blinked as he approached the door. There were glowing things all over the entryway. It was heads. Hollowed out android heads, with candles sitting within them. The candles flickered ominously in the hallway as the heads swayed to and fro hanging on fiber optic cables - the overhead lights had been shattered, and shadows wavered and danced across the steel walls. A heap of misplaced parts and circuits sat next to the door, framing the reinforced metal in an inexplicably terrifying way.

"Trick or treat!" Hats announced, tapping one of the hollow android heads. John squinted at the robot, not sure what to make of this.

Noodle slid off of John’s body and towards the dull keypad, and John walked forward, saying, “Look, Noodle, you’ve been really helpful so far, but I don’t think-”

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep. Noodle typed the password in with his tail so fast that John didn’t even catch what he put in. The doors ground for a moment, and then slid open with a groan.

Sounds of chanting voices trailed from within. "Ommmmmm nommmmmm ommmmm..."

"What the..." John gasped, stepping inside.

The server room was a mess of tipped-over server towers, consoles and sparking wires, barely illuminated by the half-melted candles dripping wax all over them. The tipped towers formed a cathedral-like roof over a gathering of droids. The robots were wearing some sort of dark, square-ish robes, holding what looked like some sort of guns. As John’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior he noticed that the robes were made out of… yup, those were yoga mats.

“Great. As if I needed more insane bullshit.” John muttered.

The droid in the center of the gathering, standing atop what a giant cigar-shaped thing, turned towards John, wielding a scepter made out of a twisted poolside umbrella. “Welcome to the cathedral of the Divine Dreamer, pilgrim!”

“You see that, John?” Hats said. “You ate the cake and now you must suffer the consequences.”

“Eh?” John turned to Hats.

“Ashcheul was a perfectly upstanding jury duty citizen and now he’s gone and taken over the server room. Every one of your actions propages forward, escalating. Causality, John. You poke the pendulum and it smacks you in the face.”

Looping himself over a ceiling beam, Noodle curled his body around one of the fallen towers and pulled it up to a standing position, taking a rest. John gestured to him, saying, “See? Now that’s being helpful! Let’s get this place up and running before we run out of air, okay?”

Hats snorted. “Did you perhaps expect a musical number followed by a reparation montage? By the time we'd finish fixing all of this, you’d have long since asphyxiated, and everyone would promptly die from Bea’s emergency shutdown protocols.”

Pointing at Noodle, one of the droids shouted, “Child of the Botanical! Cease this unauthorised dismantling of our blessed shrine in the name of Grand Archbishop Ashcheul, the chosen avatar of Ashcheul the Divine Dreamer!”

Noodle hissed loudly at him, and just to make a point, promptly pulled another tower to a standing position. John blinked at the obvious display of frustration and commented to no one, “That is a very smart snake.”

Hats snorted in disdain. “You’re only just realizing that? I have no idea what machinations go on in that ravenous reptile’s mind, but I guarantee that none of it is good.”

Staring down at the small pile of glittering chips in his bathrobe's pockets, John said worriedly, “Don’t worry, Bea. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”

“You will do no such thing, unbeliever.” Archbishop Ashcheul tapped his scepter down onto the metal floor. “You dare bring snakes into the house of God?”

“This is a server room, not a church, you idiot droids!” John yelled.

“You know nothing, John the Devourer! Intelligences greater than ourselves, beings outside of our reality, are watching us from the void of null-space and guiding our very actions. There is no such a thing as free will!”

“What? Shut up! I need to put Bea back or we’re all going to die!”

“We cannot die as long as Ashcheul watches over us. There is nothing but his divine dream. And you are not welcome.”

Noodle froze where he was coiled and suddenly fell off of the ducts, a tufted dart protruding from his… neck? He was a snake, so his body was basically one giant neck.

John’s thoughts on snake necks was cut short as a similar dart struck him in the upper arm, and he stared at it for all of four seconds before collapsing, his vision going dark.

When he woke back up, he was outside of the server room. There was a small pile of Bea’s crystalline chips in front of him, Noodle snoozing in his own coils, and a wooden sign hanging on the doors. It had several crossed out messages, including “No Captains!”, “No Beas!”, and “No Noodles!” Shoved in the bottom corner, the final line read, “No unbelievers!”