Lightspeed Lucy: Space Detective [Ch. 1]

This is the full first chapter from my interactive story, check it out in the Experimental tab to vote on what happens in the next chapter!

Lightspeed Lucy: Space Detective

Chapter 1

"Ouch- dammit!"

Waking up from hyper-sleep, Lucy bashes her head on the cryopod's plexiglass door for the billionth time, before it slides smoothly into the side of the pod with a quiet hiss.

"Computer, where are we?" She asks with a yawn and a stretch.

I have a name, you know.

responds a soothing, genderless voice with just a dash of an Earthstralian accent.

"Oh, right. What was it, again?" Lucy says, rubbing a hand over her shaved head, wondering if circuit boards register sarcasm yet.

The computer lets out an annoyingly humanoid sigh as Lucy swings her legs over the side of the pod, having to balance her butt-cheeks on the annoyingly sparse edge to jump down, her five-foot-three frame not quite what the designers of this ship had in mind.

Perhaps it is a little complex for you to remember, shall I repeat it for you?

Ok, maybe they already have a pretty decent grasp on sarcasm... Lucy thinks as she shimmies into a fresh jumpsuit, rolling up the cuffs and cinching it around the waist, then yanking on a pair of thick-soled boots--all the better for walking around in the artificial gravity that wasn’t quite as consistent as the commercials made it look.

I like my name. I think I'll repeat it anyways– V2AI-667!

The ship’s computer booms enthusiastically, and Lucy winces. She grabs a tek-pak and a maintenance kit, and heads towards the cryosleep section’s airlock.

“Alright, got it, vee-two-A-I blah blah… wouldn’t you rather have a name like… Geronimo? Or… Aquamarine? Or Bill?”

Those are human names.

“Well it’s a mouthful.”

I have no mouth.

“Sassy, aren’t you?” Lucy says with a grunt as she tugs on the lever to release the airlock seal, the mechanism a bit sticky.

The sing-song rhyme from the academy that was pounded into her head spools through her mind, and she curses how easily she herself was programmed while dropping to her knees to open the maintenance kit.

"Comp--hmf. V2-AI667--music, please."

Anything in particular?

"Are we in range of any local signals?"

I'll scan around.

Lucy bites the inside of her cheek, selecting the appropriate tools to disassemble and clean the lock, an irritating tightness at the back of her throat.

She could have had a human companion on this rotation, but opted for the damn computer, saying the higher pay to work with the beta-test program was the reason.

The truth was--she didn't risk her life hacking her uni credentials for nothing, and even detecs had to go through boot camp to get a cert to take Company cases--- but it was the only way she'd ever get clearance to the sorts of facilities her brother might be held in. Not having another human on board was the best chance she'd have to deviate from her assigned missions.

Unfortunately, assignments ranged from 'sector based' to 'entirely-fucking-random,' so the chances of winding up anywhere near him were entirely too low--- and she still didn't even know where he was.

Speaking of which...

"You never answered my question, V2-- where are we?" Lucy asks, tugging a wrench against a corroded bolt underneath the mechanism plate, as a slightly glitchy radio station hums to life in the echo-y chamber, a moon-doom tune she was vaguely familiar with.

V2AI-667,

the computer corrects patiently, and Lucy bites back a retort as she searches her kit for a replacement part, bobbing her head to the music.

We are currently orbiting New Earth. Obtaining mission specs now.

"Fantastic," Lucy mutters, "I can bring a blaster for this one, right?"

Negative. No force necessary. Routine investigation of stolen property.

"Stolen property? On New Earth? Why are they sending me! That's like an hourly occurrence, the Company has insurance for that type of shit--"

According to the mission specifications it is vital that we re-secure the property.

"We?" giving the new bolt a final crank, Lucy replaces the panel and begins re-packing her kit.

Of course, I am your assistant on this mission.

"I can't exactly cruise around with you on the surface--"

There's a whirring noise above her head, and Lucy looks up to see the eye-cam above the door detach from it's dock and it comes to hover at her shoulder.

I am fully mobile!

The computer says with something like glee, if computers could feel "glee," and Lucy thinks of every curse word she knows.

Fine, she thinks, computers can be hacked, shut down, otherwise manipulated. It was a beta program after all, there were bound to be glitches.

She'd just find out how to exploit them instead of reporting them to the Company.

The orb hovering at her shoulder, Lucy opens the airlock door, satisfied that the mechanism now operates smoothly, and heads towards the com units to check in and read the mission specs, see if the coffee machine was working. This ship was a lot nicer than her last one, so her hopes were pretty high.

Punching her code into the unit, Lucy pretends to be scrolling galactic news updates while pondering her predicament.

Trying to hack the AI unit would be risky, but every minute that passed was another minute her brother spent locked up in an off-planet secret Company facility, where there was no oversight and no records and no telling what they would do to him to get what they wanted.

"V2AI-667, what is your base code system?"

I am a complex amoeba program with switch-based overlays.

"I know that, but which language did they write your base in?"

Cherry Pie.

Lucy has to bite her lip to stop from smiling so conspicuously, her leg starting to bounce. Of course they used the most over-wrought, AI-bloated coding system--it was actually great for security purposes because it was such a mess, but once you could see past the nonsense it was pretty straightforward.

"Are your directives hardwired or plug-ins?"

Both!

"Which directives are hard-wired?"

Only my prime directive is hardwired.

"Right--harm no human--"

Negative.

Lucy freezes, her skin going cold.

That had to be a mistake.

Since... well, since forever, but since the wars that preceded the scientific revolution of the 3100's, any unit down to tablets for watching vids was installed with the hard-wired directive "harm no human."

"Does your code contain this directive?" Lucy asks, trying not to let her voice pitch too high.

Negative.

Every hair on her body stands on end, and Lucy tries to blink the console back into focus, panic squirming in her gut, mouth going dry.

This was one hell of a glitch.

She bites back a sardonic laugh, thinking how moments ago she was probing the computers sarcasm parameters.

Even if it meant delaying her mission to find her brother, she should call in a no-go, shut the ship down to life-support only, and re-dock immediately.

But what if V2AI-667 didn't like that?

And what if... she could somehow use this to her advantage?

OR, what if... this was not a glitch? No one would expect a pilot, let alone a detec, to look under the hood, so to speak, at a ships computer code.

She had the next very obvious question on the tip of her tongue, and since the AI so freely offered up its information so far without throwing an airlock open or shutting down her life-support, she took the risk to ask it.

"V2A1-667, what is your prime directive? Um, please?"

Prime directive: protect Company assets.

"Would that include your pilot?"

Affirmative.

"But not, say, hypothetically, a human that was trying to destroy the ship?"

Correct.

This did not seem like a glitch. Not at all. But it was a conundrum.

In the hierarchy of Company assets, its human employees seemed to rank slightly above miscellaneous cargo, and somewhat lower than its intellectual property and monetary stock value.

Screwing around with the computer's code might not be a wise approach, at least until she had a better grasp on its operations.

The way Lucy saw it, she still had the upper hand here.

As long as she didn't do anything to jeopardize company property, she could proceed with her plan to locate her sibling---and possibly manipulate the uniquely programmed computer into helping her.

Proceeding with her current mission as planned would be the strategic move. Maybe not what she would have done in the past, but it's what her brother would have done if she were in trouble.

She could almost hear his voice, scolding her for lunging for a fish with her pike that was too far out of her short reach on a good day.

"Patience, kiddo. Wait for the right moment---get what you want. Act with no plan---scare all the fish."

"Don't scare the fish," she mutters under her breath, scrolling up her mission specs, wondering what in space could have been stolen on New Earth that they sent a Company detec to get it back.

END OF CHAPTER 1