A-ee-den…

A shocking pain explodes from the base of my skull, arcing down my spine and igniting a wildfire in my brain. From living in a world of black, everything comes back in a flash of bright light. I can feel my limbs again, move them, and I remember what just happened. Felix happened. He’s hellbent on threatening everyones lives in exchange for a life free from Libertas and the Shield, and a life beside Rin again. I couldn’t change his mind, and he’s armed.

Taking in my surroundings, I realize that I’m back on the table in the operating room, and both April and the scruffy surgeon are standing over me. He’s holding a tablet, and I can see the worry on their faces wipe clean as I try to sit up slowly.

“Aiden! Thank the heavens!” April says. She pats the other doctor on the back with a sigh of relief, then tells him, “Well done.”

I reach for my head to rub the headache from my temples, but realize it’s pointless when I don’t have any tissue to massage. My next human reaction is to run my hand down my face and rub my eyes, another pointless thing in this metal body. The fact that I have a headache is strange to me, now that I think about it. I can’t have an old school disc-and-platter style hard drive in my brain, it would be too fragile, but the discomfort I’m having tells me something isn’t quite right. Maybe it’s something programmed into this body to give me feedback.

“Take it easy, Aiden. You took a nasty blow to the head,” the surgeon says. “After I got to the stasis pods like you said, I had a bad feeling that you’d run into trouble. You're lucky I did. I called April here, and we had to re-map a part of your brain that had suffered some corruption. I guess it’s a good thing you took that bonk, it shut down your systems before the insatiability caused a complete collapse on its own. You should be better now, we took more data from your organic brain, but you’re far from perfect.”

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

The squat, bearded doctor smiles. “Please. My name is Richard. Also, I’ve taken a quick minute to make some small adjustments to your neural processing. You should feel a bit more limber, senses sharper, but don’t think you're invincible just because you’re piloting a mecha.”

I laugh at the unexpected joke, then smile at Richard. “I should have expected that the tech-surgeon working on my robot body would be an anime guy.”

“Hey,” Richard says, holding out his palms. “You’re not the only person with a lot of free time. Well…” His demeanor straightens. “Maybe not now. We should get to business. What do you know about the mutineers?”

“Enough, I think, to know that there’s no way to change their minds. There’s two of them; Felix Brandt and Alloy… Something. I never learned his last name. But the most important thing is that Felix is armed with a 3d printed gun, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Alloy has one, too. Plus, they’ve got their hands on the ship’s radioactive fuel.”

April nods solemnly. “That’s not the worst of it, Aiden. You’ve been out for a few hours and things have gone sour. Felix is in the bridge with the pilot and Captain Royal, holding them at gunpoint, and theirs no way to get to them. Felix opened the canister containing the plutonium and dropped it in the security chamber that connects the cockpit to the rest of the ship. Now the only way in and out of the bridge is highly radioactive. Exposure for a few seconds would result in radiation poisoning and sickness. A few minutes would kill. Not to mention, if the rod is damaged there’s a chance it can’t be used again.”

“What a waste of fuel…” I murmur, thinking back to what Felix had said about the ship’s limited resources. “Don’t we have hazmat suits to get through with?”

“We did. Right before Felix took a knife and cut holes in all of them but his. Which is why I, begrudgingly, agreed with Richard here to repair and wake you up. We need you, Aiden.”

If I had cheeks, I would blush. Both from being needed and the nervousness my metal belly seems to still feel. I understand what she’s getting at and the task ahead of me, then wipe the thought aside and ask, “How did he even get into the bridge? Didn’t the Captain know what was going on?”

April shakes her head. “Not soon enough. Before everything started shutting down, Alloy and Felix did two things to secure their dominance of the ship. Firstly, they secured a big piece of leverage: Captain Royal’s daughter. As far as I know, Alloy has her held hostage in one of the bunk rooms used for staff. That whole section is locked down, so there’s no telling which room they are in exactly. Secondly, they purged all the air in the Armory, ensuring that there’s a very minor possibility of an armed resistance. At the very least it buys them a few hours of time. There’s usually one guard stationed in there at all times, and I don’t know what happened to him. Hopefully, they pulled him out, but… I don’t know. Regardless, with those two things that’s all the pressure they needed to get Royal to allow Felix into the cockpit. I imagine the Shield is already turning around, if it hasn’t already.”

“Sounds like we’re in a bit of a pickle,” I say as I get to my feet. “But I think I’m just the guy you need. Wish me—”

Richard puts a hand on my chest, stopping me and forcing me to look at him. He says, “I know this is what you have to do, but you must understand a few things first. If you take another blow to the head like that, there’s an even greater chance that your consciousness could be severely damaged and altered. There’s a chance you could become a different person altogether. You must be more careful from here on out. There are wires and motors that are still exposed, especially around your joints. So please, be careful.”

“I understand,” I say. “Are there cameras in the security chamber leading to the bridge?”

Richard pauses, his mouth hanging open, as he thinks for a moment. “Ah, yes. I think so. Do you want them off? I can try to see if I can get into the security system and disable them.”

Shaking my head, I say, “No. I want Felix to know I’m coming. Maybe he’ll get nervous and start to question what he’s doing. I want that.”

In unison, April and Richard nod. Both of them wish me good luck, and with nothing else to say or explain, I head for the door. Passing through the metal corridor, I know what I have to do. A nervous buzz rattles me as the doorway to the bridge comes into view, its dark metal dully reflecting the red strobe lights. If I had lungs, now would be a good time to sigh. Man, this new body going to take some getting used to, but how do you unlearn an entire lifetime of human nature?

I shrug the thoughts from my mind as I reach the door. My humanity matter. In fact, it’s lack is a benefit right now. Checking the hallways one last time to be sure that no one is around, I press around on the keypad to the door and the small screen blinks red at me. It’s locked. I should have known. But then the panel flashes green, a clunking sound of deadbolts disengaging and the whirring of running motors in the walls greets me. The door slides open, retracting into the ceiling.

The security chamber is about five feet wide and ten long. Bare metal sheeting that serves as the walls and floor protects the ship’s inner working from tampering or destruction in the event of an armed insurgence. The room could also serve as a prison or a trap, with no way out but the thick high-tech security doors. Right now it’s more of the latter, for laying on the floor is the discarded silver canister.

I consider the amount of radiation that must be pouring out of that room and quickly step inside. The door slides shut behind me without me doing anything. In the far corner, where the wall meets the ceiling, there’s a small black half-sphere of a camera and I know I’m being watched. By who, I have no idea, but I stare directly at it for a moment, in the hopes of reaching Felix and letting him know I’m coming for him.

Bending a knee, I take the silver canister in my metal hand and realize it’s a bit more complicated than I expected. Glancing inside it, I notice it’s lined with a dark grey metal that I assume is lead. The radioactive rod is smaller than I expected; about the size of a finger. Only this finger belonged to a ghostly smurf with its faint blue glow. I pick it up carefully, unsure of how fragile it is, and slide it inside the silver container slowly. The cap screws on with a few twists of my wrist, then latches like those on a metal lunch-box secure the lid in place automatically.

The door ahead of me opens. Revealed from feet to head, a yellow radiation suit stands before the controls and screens of the cockpit, and the star-filled expanse of space beyond. Felix smirks through the see-through plastic of his helmet, then taps the crowbar against the gun in his other hand like he’s clapping. His voice is muffled when he says, “I knew from the beginning that you were a devoted person, very passionate just like me, but damn I am surprised to see you here. Again. Now step into here, and be quick. There’s still radiation lingering in there and you’re poisoning our dear captain and pilot.” With a wave of his crowbar, he motions to them.

Seated on rotating chairs, Captain Royal’s dark skin is slick with beads of sweat that reflect against the blue light of the screens around him. His left eye is bruised and swollen shut, a sign of that he tried to fight Felix, and a trail of dried blood leads from his bottom lip, down his graying beard, and onto the casual long-sleeve shirt wrapped tightly around his belly. The pilot is faring a little better other than the way he’s holding his arm. His blue flight-suit doesn’t have a speck of blood on it.

When I’m inside the cockpit, and the door shut behind me, Captain Royal clears his throat with a cough and says, “Aiden, since you’re up and here, I guess there’s no better time to say I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Didn’t even start an investigation. You were right, and I’m a fool who neglected his duties. Maybe you should be Captain.” A sad chuckle accompanies his lowered gaze.

I’m amused. “So you knew about my experimental procedure? I wondered, not that it matters. And don’t be so hard on yourself, Captain. I understand why you didn’t believe me. Don’t worry and let me handle this. It’s been my fight since the day you didn’t believe me, so let me finish it.”

Felix lifts his head in a mocking laugh. “I’m standing right here, you know? There’s nothing to finish, at least for you. After a little convincing, the Shield is turned around and headed towards the Dream’s general vicinity. We were just about to send out a broadcast when you came knocking. I figured it would be rude to leave you out there, and I wanted to give you one last chance to understand how dire things really are. But don’t take my word for it. Captain, would you do the honors? Tell him how much time the Shield has left.”

Royal glances at Felix, the gun in his hand, then to me. He looks ashamed, and says nothing.

Felix raises the crowbar threateningly. Royal winces and covers his face with his hands as Felix shouts at him. “Tell him, Captain. Tell him the plan. Now.”

“All right! All right! Please, just calm down, Felix. In two years time we’ll begin what’s called Project Prolong. A multi-stage program for all refugee ships that gets incrementally drastic over ten years. The project is standard and given to every captain before even a single ship launched. While each ship runs on different systems and has different capabilities, Project Prolong was instituted on all of them due to the rapid construction of the ships. Since they were put together speedily during an alien invasion, quality engineering is lacking a bit. None of the ships are expected to last more than twenty years, total.

“Going on six years now, we’ve already started the first stage of Project Prolong by reducing the amount of active staff to twenty-five percent the initial number of crew members at any given time. It keeps the air scrubbers, lighting, and terminals drawing the smallest amount of power as possible while still keeping the ships fully functional to a degree. The next step, in about a year and a half, involves shutting down and sealing off certain areas of the ship like barracks, the weight room, some storage areas and their connecting hallways, and reducing all lighting in the rest of the ship by another fifty percent.

“After that, it gets much harder to follow orders because the people will begin to suffer… Stasis pods get put into a permanent power-saving mode. That means that Libertas Online and other games will be largely unplayable. Graphical fidelity will be slashed and a max-player cap will be instituted. Most will be stuck in their personal habs. Alone. The team behind Project Prolong knew how much that would upset people, so when that happens only stasis pod operators will be able to initiate the log out procedure.”

“Jeeze… Stuck in a virtual box… You make it sound like a prison.”

Royal raises his eyebrows and half-nods. “It kind of is.” He looks to Felix, looking at him for a long moment, almost like he hopes he’s said enough. But Felix isn’t satisfied; he motions with his hands to signal ‘get on with it’.

With a sigh, Royal turns back to me. “It’ll be like that for… more or less ten years, God forbid we can’t find a home before then.”

“And then? Is it true what Felix said?”

“Barring a catastrophic internal failure or an external threat, alien or natural, the ship will enter a hibernation-like state that’s the equivalent of throwing your hands in the air and expecting Jesus to take the wheel. A handful of different lists are made, categorizing people by how ‘essential’ they are, before all staff goes into stasis pods and a computer program called Exodus Mori takes control of all the ship’s functions. It’s still a work in progress, the coding’s not done, but the hope is that it will pilot the ships and continue scanning for habitable planetary bodies. Every person alive will be locked into stasis, and Exodus Mori, based on the lists provided to it, will terminate stasis pods to conserve power as needed. Once it’s turned on, there’s no going back. No logging out for anyone. And I wouldn’t place a wager that any artificial intelligence would be comprehensive enough to get the ships out of every possible situation. It’s the final ‘hail mary’. ”

“You see, Aiden?” Felix says with a small grin of triumph. “I wasn’t lying to you. These ships weren’t made to last forever. For decades and decades, scientists have been saying that the Earth is rare and habitable planets are exceedingly uncommon. Considering the Culicidae, clearly they’re out there, but far out of the reach of our technology. Not to mention, even if we do find a planet the right distance from its sun and with liquid water, and all the other necessities of life, who’s to say the Culicidae aren’t already there? An astrophysicist from Sweden once said that the Earth is a one in seven-hundred quintillion. That’s a seven with twenty zeroes behind it. Twenty!

“Don’t you see what I’m getting at? This mission is hopeless! We have to go and take back what’s ours. We gave up too soon and left loved ones behind who are suffering. Fighting for survival without us, the best of what humanity has to offer. Most people on these ships are elites. Military, doctors, engineers, scientists of all kinds, and apparently lucky snot-nosed kids that are little more than guinea pigs.” He laughs and motions to me.

Shaking my head, I’ll admit that handing the future of mankind over to a computer program sounds grim and inhumane. I know Felix’s concerns have merit, but I have to make him see that what he’s doing isn’t the lesser of two evils. It’s worse and far more threatening to mankind. The only hitch is, I don’t see him budging, but I have to try.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s hopeless. What matters is that what you’re doing is wrong. You can’t threaten everyone on this ship to wrestle it into your control and then call yourself a hero. There has to be a different way to do this, and our future isn’t set in stone. We can change Project Prolong in any way we want. Who’s going to stop us? The ship can decide what it wants, as a whole with no voice silenced. Maybe we’ll even avoid the final stages of Project Prolong entirely and find a way to return to Earth without being detected, but you’ve jumped the gun and used violence and coercion to gain control of others. It’s unwarranted tyranny and entirely unforgivable, but you aren’t alone in this. We’re all in this together, so we should decide together. Isn’t that right, Captain Royal? Is this something you’d be willing to compromise on? To let the people of the Shield decide what we do?”

For a long moment, Captain Royal’s eyes scan the room like he’s searching for a sign to tell him what the right thing to do is, contemplating. Nearly two full minutes pass in uncomfortable silence before he says, “The Shield can’t break protocol alone. It would have to be brought up with rest of the fleet. But perhaps there’s a way we can vote on it. Like the electoral college, every person aboard every ship can vote, and their captains declare their ship’s vote. Seven ships, seven votes. Four would be a majority opinion.”

Felix scoffs and shakes his arms, enraged. “That assumes every ship would honor the majority vote. What’s to stop the three ships with the losing opinion to just ignore the rest of us? No. That won’t work. You might not be able to see this, Aiden, but some things require brutal force. Someone strong to take control and do what has to be done, villain or hero. I know this is what’s good for us in the long run. You want me to say that Libertas is my home to bide my time in until I die, but Libertas is a figment of the imagination of men. It was designed. Created to entertain and placate us, and to me it’ll never be a home. I’m going to see Rin. Hold her for real. And if you think you can stop me, go ahead and try. I’m done talking to you.”

Felix raises his handgun, pointing the muzzle in my direction. I was afraid it was going to come to this, and I know now that there’s no other choice but to try to take him out. The bridge is only the size of a small room, and I estimate there’s eight feet between me and him. This metal body certainly has its advantages; resiliency and speed, but I know that it’s incomplete and certain components are fragile. Remembering what the doctors told me, I might not walk away from this the same, or even at all, but it’s a chance I have to take.

Before he has too much time to think, I bolt into a diving tackle. The gun goes off, filling the cockpit with a flash of orange, fiery light. The bullet punches a hole into my shoulder, ripping wires and leaving the area entirely numb. Felix side-steps, leaving me colliding into the floor at Captain Royal’s feet. Without knowing where Felix is, I swipe my arm out, aiming for his ankles and hit something hard. An electrical buzzing and snapping sound registers in my mind. Looking, I see my wrist clipped the a metal support underneath the pilot’s chair, shearing my hand clean off. The stub sparks and crackles.

Felix grunts, swinging the crowbar down violently into the back of my head. My aching head feels foggy, but I’m still conscious enough to roll onto my back and block the next blow with my arm. I can see the anger in Felix’s eyes as he looms above me.

As he straightens his arm, pointing the gun at me again, I lash out with a metal foot and connect with his hand. The gun goes flying, cracking eerily hard against the cockpit’s glass. Now Felix looks afraid. He dashes for the gun immediately, ignoring me as he races against an insurgent Captain Royal to the firearm.

The crowbar catches Royal on the side of his head, sending him sprawling over his chair, limp. I’m on my feet again, pressing into Felix’s back as his fingers scramble to reach the gun on the ship’s dashboard. My sparking, stubby wrist connects with his rib cage, making Felix grunt in agony, but unfortunately his rubber suit insulates him from my +5 shock damage. I wrap my arms around his waist, intent on picking him up and tossing him across the room, when the black opening of the gun’s barrel greets my face.

In a flash, the gun fires and it feels like my head splits open. Thee physical sensation of every limb flicks on and off rapidly as my systems stutter. I drop to the floor, cowering on the ground as I clutch my head. I lose control of my limbs. They erratically lash out at everything around me, and I’m left helpless as my vision begins to cut out. Everything around me seems to be shaking. Garbled text appears in front of my eyes before a screen of static, but I can’t focus enough to make it out.

And then everything goes black. There’s nothing. No sensation of pain, or the cold floor beneath me. There’s no thoughts in my mind. Just empty acceptance. Just waiting. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.

~[ERROR]~

[RETRIEVING ANALYTICAL DATA]

[SITUATION: DIRE]

[DAMAGED COMPONENTS IN: SKULL, RIGHT SHOULDER, RIGHT HAND]

[FULL COUNT OF AFFECTED PARTS: 327]

[COMBAT DETECTED]

[ANALYZING THREAT LEVEL… HIGH]

[RECOMMEND UNCONVENTIONAL METHODS OF COMBAT, INCLUDING TRICKERY]

[OPTIONAL REBOOT POSSIBLE]

[RE-ROUTE COMMAND SIGNALS USING SECONDARY SYSTEMS CONNECTIONS?]

[WARNING: INCREASED LATENCY AND RISK OF FURTHER DAMAGE]

[Y/N?]

I mindlessly stare at the text for a long time. Hours, maybe, before I seem to grasp what it says. Slowly, my mind comes back together again, recovered from its stunned shock. Its hopeless wait for death to take me entirely.

The first sense that returns to me is sound, garbled at first but clearing up the more time that passes. Felix’s voice, and the scraping of metal against metal, are the first things I can make out.

In my robotic voice, I say, “Systems rebooting in ten seconds. Warning. Corruption detected. All personnel stand clear. Caution is advised. Erratic behavior possible. Rebooting.”

I try to straighten my limbs, my whole body into a wooden board, in an effort to appear mechanical. A moment passes, and I relax. Another few seconds, and I begin to sit upright as best as I can. Felix gasps, but I can’t see him yet, only sparks from my forehead whizzing past my vision like fourth of July fireworks. Everything hurts, but I manage to clumsily get to my feet and stand upright. Looking straight ahead, I can see that my body was pulled to the side of the room, and I’m facing Felix, a conscious Captain Royal, and the pilot.

“Primary personality system online. Warning. Compromised.” I jerk my head side to side like I’m coming too, then settle my gaze on Felix, who looks like he’s shaking in his yellow suit. Calmly, I say, “I understand your logic, Felix. By accepting Libertas as home, we are lying to ourselves. Our real home, and our loved ones, are far behind us on Earth. How can I assist you?”

Felix’s eyebrows narrow. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

I shake my head. “No. This whole time, I was fighting for a home that wasn’t my home. I let myself think that I could forget everything that happened on Earth. The family I lost. Now I realize that the past will always haunt me unless I accept it. Unless I face it. Both my past and my future only exists in my imagination, and I can choose to focus on the present. I can choose to do the best I can right here and now. By focusing on my virtues, the good things about me that I can control, I can block out all those negative thoughts and focus on making today my best day yet. And the best I can do is what’s best for mankind, regardless of right or wrong.”

“Shit…” Captain Royal murmurs, burying his face into his hands. “That shot to the head completely corrupted his systems. He’s not even Aiden anymore…”

Felix laughs nervously, and scans me up and down like a book. Luckily, my human emotions can’t easily betray me with a robot body that reveals little to no human nature. As I stand there, acting all robotic under Felix’s searching gaze, I notice Captain Royal peek out from under his hands and wink at me.

Felix’s shoulders relax. He lowers the gun and glances down at Captain Royal, letting out a loud sigh of relief. I move.With a quick jaunt and an uppercut to the base of his radiation suit’s hood, I clobber him in the jaw, sending him into the control panel behind him. Light panels flicker as his weight triggers buttons and switches. I feel the ship shudder beneath my feet, but this isn’t over yet. Felix growls, lips curled as he prepares to club me with the crowbar, but I’ve already got a metal fist-shaped missile headed towards his skull. He drops to the ground like a doll.

And there I am. Bullet damage to the head, and standing over a guy I just knocked unconscious.

“Damn,” I say to myself. “All it took was a little trickery. Thanks, mecha-suit.”