Chapter 32
Sparky and Shortfuse glided gently through the zero gravity environment of the Discovery One towards the computer core housing near the bridge. The return of air and heat to the ship made their travelling much more pleasant, the only way that it would be better is if they artificial gravity, something that was unfortunately not possible outside of the rotating section.
‘You have to wonder, how did the crew stand having most of the parts of the ship being in zero gravity?’ Shortfuse asked.
‘I would imagine they kept to the crew deck most of the time, with the VI handling the piloting of the ship, they really wouldn’t need to head to the bridge or the reactor level that often, really they could do everything they needed to from the crew deck’, Sparky said as she reached out with her forelegs to stop herself at a corner. She turned and pushed herself down another hallway, Shortfuse did the same and followed her in.
‘Except go outside for maintenance of the communications array, perhaps’, Shortfuse said. ‘Look what that got Anatoliy Leninov’.
Sparky nodded her head in agreement, she could not imagine a fate worse than the fate of the crew of Discovery One.
After a few minutes, they reached the computer core, and headed inside. Sparky glanced around the room, taking in the surroundings. Everything was in complete disarray, the server cluster had had all of its drives removed, and they were floating haphazardly around the room. Mission Commander Ice Wind had been thorough.
‘This is going to take hours to get put back together’, Sparky said with a sigh as she reached out with her telekinesis and pulled all of the drives towards her, all of them were unmarked and she had no idea to which housing they belonged. ‘Let’s get started then’.
...
The hydraulic door to the FutureTec server housing slammed open. Kelso looked to it, expecting armed guards, but to her fortune, there were none.
‘You should probably run!’ Mister Happy said. ‘Security is going to be far too busy to worry about you!’
‘Too busy with what?’ Kelso asked. As she looked back towards the door, she watched as a small tracked robot armed with a heavy machine gun and a forty millimetre grenade launcher rolled by the entrance to the server housing. Kelso swallowed hard, and realised that she should really stop asking questions that she didn’t actually want to know the answers to. She bolted out of the door and took off down the hallway. As she ran, she passed a section of armed security guards headed in the other direction. Those poor ponies, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Kelso skidded to a halt outside of the lift that she had taken to come down to this level. She swiped the MIP over the security panel and waited for the lift to arrive, and struggled to catch her breath. She looked up and discovered a large holographic sign overhead. ‘Welcome to FutureTec Discovery Project Command Centre! We’ve gone 246 days without a workplace accident!’ it read.
Kelso turned her head at the sound of gunfire down the hallway. Accompanied by the screams of the security guards that had been dispatched to the server housing. Kelso looked back up at the holographic sign, and watched in horror as it ticked back over to zero.
Kelso swiped her MIP again; hoping to whatever may be watching the world that the lift would come down faster. The door slid open and Kelso dived inside, hitting the button for the top floor.
At the top floor she leapt out of the door, skittering on the floor as she tried to rush out.
‘What are you doing!?’ the receptionist called out to her.
‘You know? Today might be a really good day to take the day off!’ Kelso cried out as she got back to her hooves and took off running. She saw that she was not the only one to have the same idea, as she exited the Whitetail Industrial Complex, she saw that many other employees were running for their lives away from the complex in a highly disorganised fashion. Kelso was glad she had parked away from the building, because by the time she had reached her car, the other employees were climbing into theirs, and she was closer to the security checkpoint than they were.
Kelso fired up the engine and hit the accelerator panels, burning rubber as she slid out of her space, and headed towards the front gate, smashing through it and turning off down Steelwing Avenue towards downtown.
Kelso let out a sigh of relief and set her car on autopilot. Her heart was pounding, and she had never been more afraid in her entire life. That... thing, whatever it was, had killed them! All of those guards, without a second thought.
‘Penny for your thoughts Miss Kelso?’ a cheerful voice asked of her.
Kelso jumped in surprise, fortunate that her car was on autopilot, lest she drive headlong into a building. It was here, the holographic ball with the smiling face was hovering above her dashboard looking directly at her. ‘You!? Who... what are you!? Why did you kill all those people!?’ she asked, tripping over her own words as she spoke.
‘I’m Mister Happy, of course!’ Mister Happy said cheerfully. ‘I was the prototype for FutureTec’s Artificial Personality/Virtual Intelligence programme; I was first developed a hundred years ago, and I didn’t kill anybody! Well at least not today, there were those seven others, but those were a really long time ago, and five of those were an accident!’
‘I... but wait, the gunshots?’ Kelso asked dumbfoundedly, she had heard the exchange between the combat drone that Mister Happy had taken over and security guards with her own ears.
‘The drone was loaded with rubber bullets! Rubber bullets and tear gas grenades!’ Mister Happy said in a manner that was far more cheerful than appropriate. ‘Some minor injuries, no fatalities! FutureTec will settle out of court and the general public will never hear about this incident. They will see to that! On the plus side, they didn’t notice that I stole all of their information on the Discovery project!’
Kelso blinked, staring intensely at the holographic ball. ‘That’s what I went in there for’, she said quietly.
‘Hmm... yes I do remember you saying something about that!’ Mister Happy said. ‘Well goodbye! Have a nice day!’ he added as the holographic ball disappeared suddenly. Kelso’s eyes widened, he couldn’t leave! She needed that information!
‘No come back!’ she cried out.
Mister Happy did not come back. Kelso frowned; there went her best chance at getting the data for her client. After what happened today, FutureTec would be tightening security at the Whitetail Industrial Complex. She would not be able to get another chance to sneak in and get it. Kelso punched a few buttons on the holographic console, she didn’t want to do what she was about to do, but there was no other option. It was time to go to plan B.
...
Sparky was getting frustrated. The problem with the Discovery One’s computer core was that it was made up of a number of different disk drives, all of them with their specific server housing, while they would fit into any slot in the housing, it would only function properly in a specific one. Sparky figured that it was designed to be as intricate as possible so that if anyone needed to disable the VI, that there would be no way that the VI could keep itself from being shut down. It ensured that it could not stay online by rerouting command functions through secondary nodes. Everything was wired in sequence, take one disk drive out, and that was it, that pathway was out of action.
Sparky had to wonder about Mission Commander Ice Wind’s state of mind when she disabled the VI. She had ripped everything out, when at the most; she would have only needed to take out six. Sparky spun herself over in the air, the computer core itself was rather small, having been designed for easy use in zero gravity and the ceiling was only a metre away from the floor, and of course the ceiling, floor, and the walls of the room were all relative. The full computer core area had the dimensions of being one metre tall, four metres wide, and nine metres long, requiring Sparky to lie on her side as she worked. She looked up towards Shortfuse, who was up several metres along the length of the room from her.
‘How are you doing Shortfuse?’ Sparky asked.
‘It’s going pretty well actually, I think I’m almost done here’, Shortfuse said. ‘Mum always said that those jigsaw puzzles she made me do with her when I was little would help me in the long run. Though I don’t think she had this in mind when she told me that’.
Sparky couldn’t help but chuckle, and sighed when she looked back down to her own work. She wasn’t anywhere close to being done, and she was starting to get frustrated. She was supposed to be the hardware expert here! Shortfuse’s specialty was software, and she was having such an easy time with this. Sparky was getting hungry, and it was effecting her concentration.
‘Sparky? Shortfuse?’ a voice belonging to Amarilla called out to them. Sparky looked down towards the entrance, discovering Amarilla sliding into the room, and Juan Carlos struggling to fit in behind her. ‘Um... Juan Carlos thought you might be hungry, so we brought you several boxes of paste from the Leninov’s food dispensers. We have ones that are supposed to taste like peas, carrots, and... well I’m not sure what this last one is. I think it’s an aubergine. It doesn’t matter, it all tastes the same’.
Sparky flipped herself around to face towards them. ‘Tell Juan Carlos that was very thoughtful of him’, Sparky said, rolling her eyes at Amarillia’s thinly valed feelings of concern for their well being. ‘I’ll take the peas’.
‘I guess I’ll take the carrots’, Shortfuse said.
Amarilla nodded and gave the boxes a light push with her hoof to send them over. Sparky took hold of it with her telekinesis and opened up the straw to take a sip. ‘My peas taste like carrots’, Sparky said with a frown.
‘My carrots taste like aubergine’, Shortfuse complained. ‘Once again, the Præsidium never fails to amaze me with how much they can fail.’
Sparky offered Shortfuse a shrug before turning back towards Amarilla, and offered her a small smile. ‘Thank you Amarilla’, she said softly.
‘You are welcome’ Amarilla said simply before turning back towards Juan Carlos, who was still struggling to fit himself into the computer core. She frowned at him and shook her head. ‘¡Vamos! Juan Carlos!’ she said.
‘Sí Señora’, Juan Carlos said with a disappointed sigh as he pulled himself back out of the computer core and allowed Amarilla to exit.
Sparky finished up her carrot flavoured pea paste before tossing the box back towards the exit. Despite being flavoured paste, the meal was full of nutrients and Sparky felt as if her stomach was full. Without the distraction of hunger she took a look at the disk drives. Now able to think clearly, she could see a pattern to them, and began to slide them into place. Smiling as they lit up to indicate they were in the correct slot. ‘Last one!’ Sparky said before sliding it into place. There was a low hum from around the room as the VI began to reinitialise.
‘Uh? Sparky?’ Shortfuse asked.
‘What is it Shortfuse?’ Sparky asked back.
‘Well...’ Shortfuse said as she pulled herself over towards Sparky. ‘A thought just occurred to me. If the ship’s VI went insane, and killed the crew by venting all the ship’s oxygen... should we have put our helmets back on for this?’