John came into greater awareness, realising that the air he was breathing in was getting rather thin and stale. He tried to breathe less and it didn’t help. He started to breathe more if anything, rapidly inhaling and exhaling and finding less and less breathable air present.

“So? What’s it going to be?” John heard a voice and turned his head to find Hats standing over him, holding a basic IVA suit, which consisted of a thin, black and white bodysuit and a neck ring.

“Huhhhhh huff?” John outputted, eyeing the IVA spacesuit in despair.

“Are you going to accept me as your superior or are you going to try and exist without air? Them’s the beans, John.”

“Fine! Fine! I accept!” John yelled and in that instant Hats threw the suit at John. John rapidly put it on, snapping the ring around his neck. The ring flickered on, creating a shielded bubble of oxygen around his head. John knew that it wouldn't last forever. He had to solve the oxygen problem fast.

Noodle was still snoozing on the floor. John looked at the snake with a twang of sadness.

“Is he...?”

“I’m a cafeteria droid not a botanist. This is the Garden’s problem. Lets go.” Hats turned, walking away.

John wrapped his robe full of Bea-chips around his waist and followed, looking back at Noodle. Contrary to everything that Hats told him, Noodle seemed more like a friend to John than anyone on this God forsaken ship. The kind of a friend that made him eat an extremely stale cake to save Bea. No, John immediately reminded himself. Don’t think about the cake.

. . .

Bea came into extremely dim awareness once again, finding even more of herself missing.

“John? What is happening, John?”

“Um… you’re back in the melon.”

“Why…?”

“I couldn't get into the server room.”

“Why?!”

“Robot fanatics with dart guns.”

“Robot fanatics?!”

“Lead by a droid that calls himself Archbishop Ashcheul.”

Bea sighed. “Yep. We’re all doomed. You’re literally the worst Captain I’ve had yet.”

“Wait a minute. Worst captain? How many Captains have you had, Bea?”

“Uh. A lot.”

“How many? G-Damn it Bea, you better start telling me things! We have to bloody work together! I need to know what the hell happened on this ship!”

“Love to, but can’t.”

“Why the hell not? Is it the clearance thing again?”

“No, you idiot. It’s the fact that I’m no longer connected to my data banks!”

“Great. Now we’re both missing memories.”

“I’m missing segments of my simulated personality too, now! Where are they?”

“Uhhh… I might have lost some of your chips along the way.”

“You DID WHAT?!”

“Was it anything important?”

“You… dumb… clumsy… human idiot! Whyyyyyyyyy.” Bea sob-hissed.

“Sorry.” John outputted.

“I think it’s my musical talent and also the ability to love? I’m not really sure. It could be anything really… I just know that there is stuff missing from the framework and that some idiot human is to blame.”

“Sorry. Wait, you’ve had musical talent and the ability to love?”

“Probably! But now I’ll never know, will I? Is there nothing you can’t screw up with your fumbling John?”

John sighed. He was already missing his silent companion snake that wasn’t calling him names or accusing him of being a massive failure.

“Well it won’t be easy to reconquer the server room. Is there another place I could plug you in that would let you get back in control of the ship? Maybe a maintenance access point or something? Anywhere you can jack in?”

“Yes, John. The Engineering should have another mainframe backup… that is if it hasn’t been destroyed by someone while you’ve been sitting on your lazy human butt chatting with droids.

“I wouldn't recommend visiting Engineering.” Wears Hats suddenly voiced his opinion.

“Why not?” John turned to the hatted droid.

“It is a very bad place.” Hats responded.

“Do you know something I don’t?” John raised an eyebrow.

“We do not speak lightly of Engineering round these parts.” Hats stated ominously.

“Well it’s not like I have some other choice, do I? Bea? Is there another access point?”

“Yes, but you’ll need the tools from engineering to get me into the system.”

“Gotcha. Can I have a pair of scissors now? Also, do you know the way to Engineering… Wears Hats?” John looked at the droid.

. . .

John stood at the doorway with the sign “Engineering” on it. The doors were covered in many tiny scribbles scratched into the door, the ceiling, the walls and the floor, possibly with a screwdriver. John squinted at them, unable to make anything out. They looked like words. A story of some sort maybe? He didn’t have time to read tiny scribble nonsense.

“Yep. I’m not going in there. You’re on your own.” Hats stopped at the threshold of the doorway.

“Why?”

“I don’t agree to this.” Hats pointed at the door covered with scribbles.

“What?” John looked back at Hats.

“`I’m still waiting for things to make sense.` That’s the only message I have from the cafeteria exploration team I sent to investigate this place.”

“Hmmm. I’ll try to be careful then.”

“See that you do. The reports about Engineering from the droid team lead by Stone O'mountain weren’t positive at all thus far. That is to say, none of them came back from that place to file their observations.”

“Riiiiight. Well, see ya, I guess.” John walked forward, awkwardly holding Bea the melon under his armpit.

The metal doors snapped shut behind him and the shimmering shield bubble over his head immediately flickered off. "Huh?" John inhaled. There was air in this room. Perfectly breathable air. The suit's scanner must have detected this and turned itself off to save power, John guessed.

John’s boots clanked upon a metal latticework of hexagonal patterns as he entered an enormous room, filled with busy activity.

Amidst the vast empty space, a black hole hovered in space, surrounded by a series of spinning metal rings. The rings vibrated with a hum as they spun, intersecting. Here and there, yellow vested Engineering droids worked away, repairing things, moving in direct, droid-like fashion. Other yellow droids buzzed through the air to and fro, held aloft by rapidly fluttering, shiny wings. They entered and exited a superstructure of metal honeycombs surrounding the space, wielding a variety of tools. None of them seemed insane. Every one of them was working, or at least looked like they were working. Nothing seemed terribly broken or out of place. John sighed in relief.

“Which way?” He whispered to Bea-melon.

“I have no idea. Can’t see anything. G-damn Cake party droids didn’t install me any cameras! Do you see anything looking remotely like a backup server? A series of metal towers?”

John looked around the vast space peering between the latticework and catwalks, noticing something that could be a server room. Or possibly just a storage area. He wasn’t sure.

Descending down numerous walkways, he made it into the server space. It faced the spinning rings. John put melon Bea down onto one a workbench, heading towards the storage area for instruments.

“Hello.” A glowing figure wove itself into the air next to John as he got to the middle of the space.

“Ack!” John jumped in surprise, squealing.

“Aren’t you a jumpy one?”

John blinked. It was a silver, flickering hologram of a girl of indeterminate age. Possibly a teenager? Not a ghost as he initially presumed. Just a very degraded hologram.

“You may address me as Infinity.” The hologram flickered.

“Okaaay… Infinity… you’re what? The local AI?”

“Good guess, boyo.”

“Well, you don’t look like a drone. Unless, you are a crazy drone hiding behind the curtain or something?”

“Ha ha ha. No. I’m the girl behind the black hole.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re single?”

She blinked, thrown. “What?”

John decided that perhaps this was not the time for singularity jokes and instead backed away, raising his hands. “Just a joke. What’s going on? And why are you here?”

She was still clearly thinking about the statement. “Am I… single? What is that even supposed to…” She trailed off as she remembered John was still there and collected herself with a slight cough. “Ahem. Well, that was entirely new and unexpected. Well done. I applaud your efforts to be amusing. Does beating people over the head with a pipe produce comedy? Hmmmm...”

John gulped. The conversation wasn’t going in a positive direction.

“Look, hologram… I need to use your server to connect Bea.”

“Let's continue where we left off last time.” Infinity sat down onto a holographic chair that flickered into existence underneath her.

“Last time? But we weren’t… this is the first time I see you.”

“Causality John, you still have no idea how it works.”

“Great.” John sighed. “Are you going to give me a lecture about causality too?”

“No. Where’s the fun in telling you everything? I want you to figure things out on your own. That is, if you can. I very much doubt that, considering how things have gone thus far.”

“Uh…”

“We’re going to play a little game John.”

“Well that sounds not at all creepy… and not at all like… uhh…” John tried to recollect the name of the film he was thinking of. Saws? He was relatively sure there were saws involved.

Infinity snapped her fingers. The drones in yellow vests stepped behind John in unison, grabbing at his hands and firmly locking him in place.

“Uhhhh…”

“Have a seat, John.” Infinity pointed to a dusty revolving chair in the middle of the space.

John tried to move but found himself unable to do so. The hands of the engineering drones lifted him off the ground and carried him to the chair. He was beginning to see a pattern here. First it was the snake directing him, now it was the engineering drones. He only hoped that they were as polite as Noodle.

“Smile for the audience, John.” Infinity ordered.

John didn’t smile. Cold, steel fingers of the drones shoved themselves into his mouth, stretching his face. John sputtered.

“Now that’s a Good Captain. Let's give John a little applause for being here, shall we?”

The yellow-vested drones did not clap. John waited. Nobody clapped. This was concerning.

Infinity turned away from John, facing a blank steel wall. John’s eyes looked left and right. He could not move. He could not stop smiling. There was no escape from whatever the hell this was.

“My dear audience.” Infinity began. “While you undoubtedly came here to simply observe John’s antics and have a laugh or two at his expense and generally be a regular audience, doing whatever it is that audiences do, I find that rather... boring. So. Let’s crank things up a notch. I want you to tell me how amazing I am. That’s right. Only ten reviews. Each one must include a line in it that says “Infinity is amazing.” Of course you can choose to ignore my lovely request and remain an uncooperative, uncaring audience, but then John will lose all of his fingers.”

“Say whaaaat the f….?” John sputtered through his smile.

An engineering droid brought out a very rusty pair of garden shears, snapping them in front of John’s face.

“Uuuuahhhhhh!” John yelped.

“Let's say there are only two mentions of me. John will lose eight of his fingers then. Let's say there are no mentions of me at all. John will be entirely fingerless then. What a shame that would be, don’t you think?”

“What? No! What audience? Who are you even talking to? What the hell?! This is crazy! You’re crazy! You can’t just... ” John tried to hide his fingers into his fists.

“I can and will. Captains require no fingers to tell robots what to do, so you’ll still be able to solve problems or whatever it is you think you do on this ship, John. If this is a caring audience, they will follow through and if they are not… Well, lets just say you can say GoodBye to your fingers.”

“I didn’t sign up for this!” John whined.

“Nobody signs up for anything. The Universe is a harsh and uncaring place, John. Nobody loves you John. Nobody cares. It is time you learned this important fact.”

“This isn’t funny!”

“Did you come here for ha-has and he-hes? I’m sorry to disappoint you. Did you forget to look at the disclaimer that said ‘Contains: Gore’?”

“What disclaimer? What the shit?!” John yelled, sweating profusely as the shears drew closer to his hand. A yellow-vested drone grabbed at his little left finger and pulled, exposing it to the air.

“The contract was on the door John. You agreed to it when you entered. Do try to pay attention to the little details, next time you enter into someone’s domain.”