//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: The Singleship 
// by Driverless 
//------------------------------//

"Personality and memory download in progress. Please hold all current thoughts until exocortex overwrite is complete or personality drift may occur." 

Where am I? Who am I?

"That information is not available at this time, all neural pathways and substrate bottlenecks are currently occupied by exoself download and personality recovery, please stand by."

That voice, it keeps pounding in my head, what the hell is wrong with my head?

"This system has been designed for the resuscitation and recovery of the subject only, any and all questions must wait until personality download is complete and the subjects exoself is connected to the ship brain." "Booting exoself now, please wait"

Awareness gripped me, everything rushed into my head, I remembered everything, who I was, my journey, an escape from the carnage of my home system, and my last conscious memory, the sight of my home habitat cluster atomized, dyson trees burning and the flashes of amat detonations from Version Tree forces all around me as I fled my dying home. I shook myself out of it just as my exoself fully booted up, instantly I called up the ship brain, tiring of the blackness of unconsciousness I called up a generic baby blue plain, apparently my physical body is out of commission at the moment as cascading errors about it's status blared in my head and periphery. I shut them off and directed my attention to my ship.

"[ship] what's your status? Why was I recovered from backup?" [ship], who manifested itself with an avatar with standard NoCoZo iconography and which pulsed as it spoke turned to face me.

"Greetings master, I regret to inform you of the disaster that has befallen us, the info streamed directly into my thought stream as [ship] explained it all the same out of politeness "Exactly 10 years and 9 months ago a previously undetected virus came out of it's dormant state and catching me by surprise managed to wrestle control of my maneuvering thrusters from me for roughly 3.6 seconds, it looks like it intended to take advantage of our relativistic speeds and have stray particles tear us apart. Luckily I managed to defeat it and regain control, not before the rear engine block was sheered from my body. Seeing as we were only 700 million kilometers from the edge of the nearest solar system I use the last of my propellant to put us on a collision course with a planet I had detected held a breathable atmosphere."

I quickly pulled up external views of the ship and saw the sorry state it was in, as well as the alien life that now occupied the various segments of the ship. The majority of which seemed to be crowded around my body's stasis tank. I quickly queried the info dump that [ship] had provided and had my exoself process all the video, implanting the desired knowledge directly into my short term memory. They were intelligent, organized, had an established hierarchy and according to the recordings seemed to be a survey party of sorts. They appeared to be making an effort to dismantle and study the ship. However looking at the tools they were using it appeared they were at the very beginning of their first industrial revolution. However without having a better understanding of their culture and society I couldn't say for sure. What was extremely odd though was they looked strikingly similar to the horses of Old Earth, making the possibility of them being a naturally developed life form statistically improbable, which is probably the understatement of the century.

An abandoned or unknown project of a Transapient or Archailect perhaps? I wasn't sure, going back through the telemetry [ship] collected as they entered the system didn't pick up any of the usual signs of Archailect activity, but then again, if one didn't want to be found then there's no way me or [ship] would be able to find them. Going back to the natives the majority were still gathered in front of the stasis tank, it looked like the auto doc systems were still functional and were reconstructing my body.

Receding back into my exoself I turned to [ship].

"Well, looks like investing in that low latency noumenal recorder paid off."

"Indeed" [ship] replied "Unfortunately the impact was so sudden that even it was damaged upon impact, it's density means it was ripped from your brain several microseconds before everything else, I anticipated this and had to offload large portions of your mind into one of my hind-brains in the instants before it was damaged, I was starved for time  however and unfortunately had to prioritize what I saved."

"How much was lost?" I asked

"Almost the entirety of the 800 years you spent inside the ships Virch as well a few dozen childhood memories of inconsequential importance."

Thinking about it for a moment I saw he was telling the truth, there were obvious gaps in my mind, a rather alien feeling for someone who was born into a society where perfect memory recall is as basic as food and water. Is this what hider and ludd cultures experience as they age? I wasn't sure, nor did I think I wanted to know.

"Well it could be worse I suppose, I can't thank you enough of going through the effort of doing that."

"That's what I'm here for sire." [ship] said. Smiling at him I turned back to the viewing windows. 

"What about them? Have you been able to gleam anything about them, maybe a language? [ship]'s avatar turned to face the windows as well.

"Well that what's so interesting, they're very communicative, they have a vocal range and ability almost identical to a baseline human, which was my tip off that this planet was seeded."

"That was my guess as well." I said. [ship] continued.

"I spent the hours while I was preparing to rebuild your consciousness analysing their language and it was remarkably similar to Proto-Anglish and it's derived languages so I was able to create a basic map of the language. Let me upload it to your exoself along with all the info I've gleamed about their civilization."

In an instant I was made aware of a massive amount of information. Looks like my guess about their technology was correct, they looked to be some form of monarchy however it looked like the throne was shared equally by a pair of sisters. What was most strange was the concept they referred to as 'Magic', I quickly scanned through all the references to it I had. It looks like whatever power seeded this planet also designed most forms of sentient life to interact with a massive planet wide utility fog network. By tapping into this network they can manifest their will in any number of ways. I'll have to study it at a later date.

Turning back to the feeds from the still functioning sections of the ship I turned the view towards the crowd gathered around my pod, it looks like my body was almost done. The two 'ponies' I recognized as the monarchs of this nation were also present. I realized I'd have to face the crowd and soon find a way to coexist seeing as there was no way I'd be getting off their world anytime soon. Turning back inwards I turned to [ship].

"What do our resources look like?" [ship] brought up several graphs and data sheets.

"At present with the damaged suffered from the crash, our main means of producing power is gone seeing as we don't have the engine blocks. However I was able to change the radiator cells spread out on the exterior into solar cells so power isn't an issue at the moment." He continued, "Due to the ship breaking up and the need to get you a new body the mattercaches for the autofabs have been depleted to only a few dozen cubic meters, and our recyclers are offline completely."

Well shit, that's nowhere near enough to get ourselves set up to get off world. That's barely enough for a dwelling. Let alone for the mining a processing equipment needed to refine further materials. While I was brooding [ship] spoke up. "You will be happy to know that our copy of the Encyclopedia Everythingiana did indeed survive.

"Now that is good news! You probably should have led with that." I exclaimed. That meant we wouldn't be totally helpless and at the mercy of the local inhabitants. Even though by all accounts they seemed to be nonviolent they also seemed to be an isolationist nation. I didn't want to take any chances. Here I was, stranded on an unknown planet, designed by an unknown party, one who may or may not like visitors, with nothing but a half destroyed ship, a sub-sentient ship brain and a few meters of feedstock for the fabs. All in all I've read about Terragens in worse situations. Things were looking up now that I know I had the Encyclopedia. It's famous throughout known space. It was put together by the Institute of survival some Millennia ago for the sole purpose of helping those stranded in the depths of space. Providing detailed instructions on how to build something from nothing. From the stone age to the nanotech age. There's been a few success stories that the institute used to make the guide standard on most Interstellar vessels, I guess now I'll find out how well it actually works. Seeing that I get out of my current predicament of course.

Well, there's no time like the present I suppose. With that said, I sent a mental command and began the process of downloading into my new body and waking it up from stasis.