Round 1

Round 1

Thomas, Engineer

Part 1

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Watching Tranquility Base drift away as the Noah launched on its maiden voyage from Earth’s moon left Thomas Hibbs with an odd feeling of deja vu. He’d worked on dozens of ships, but always in the engineering decks where the only windows were peering into the mechanical arrays. Peering out into the void of space was…actually pretty damn cool in Thomas’s opinion.

I wonder if this thing has a VR Grid, he thought.

In the 50 years since humanity had joined the GAIL, it hadn’t been all space hoppers and life saving medical breakthroughs, the entertainment industry had made huge jumps in realism and simulated realities. One species in particular, the machine people known as the Padrino, had such a realistic virtual reality environment code that practically every other species in the assembly paid top dollar for a copy of it. Thought most used it for information storage and practical exploits, Humans were the first to turn it into a hyper advanced game simulation. The Padrino weren’t exactly pleased to learn the code they used to store their memories and experiences was being used to fight monsters with supernatural powers at weekend game tournaments on Earth, but they didn’t complain that much. Thomas had the idea to upload a compatible version of an old game called PAC-MAN where you’re your own avatar running the mazes into the ships computers. He couldn’t wait to get that high score again.

The engineering deck was right below the science labs, and Thomas saw one of the 3 other humans on board with him. He thought her name was Liz or something, but didn’t stop to say hi. She looked preoccupied with something, and talking to people was hard. Machines were good listeners. Thomas could talk for hours to machines while he worked, even if they weren’t the kind that could talk back, thought this ship did have those. Maybe here he could meet some people who get him.

The engineering deck was all catwalks and overhead piping, service lights and ventilation ducts. Computer terminals threw blue light against the opposite wall as Thomas made his way to the Engineer ‘locker’ room. Thomas figured that’s what it was, given the cubbies for the crew’s personal items and racks and shelves of tools and equipment for the ‘fixers’ to use.

There were about two dozen people moving around the room, none of them human, several of which were non biological as well. 2 Padrino were there, speaking their machine language while they sorted tools across a long workbench against the far wall. There were several other species as well that Thomas didn’t recognize, lots of different shapes and sizes. He felt a little insecure, being just the basic human he was.

Thomas found his name on the cubby wall and stuff his own tool bag in there, as well as a change of clothes and safety gear. Then he very carefully hid a hand held game pad under his spare jumpsuit, for emergencies. He’d been stuck in an air duct once before for hours twiddling his thumbs. Never again.

Just as he finished stuffing away his gear, something small bumped against his boot. He looked down, and saw a small robot waiting patiently for him to lift his foot. Apparently he’d been trailing confetti from the launch ceremony around the ship the whole time because these droids weren’t supposed to be down here in engineering. It had probably been following him since he’d walked in. The little guy had a cylinder torso, no real neck but his head looked like it turned in circles with two tiny exhaust pipes sticking out the top. Two ‘eyes’, or sensors with aesthetics, were all that made up the face. His little feet reminded Thomas of a chicken’s, and he had two little arms with tiny hands on each.

“Oh my god you’re so cute I love you,” Thomas half squealed as he picked the little robot up like a baby. “Have you been following me this whole time? Doing such a good job, keeping the ship clean. Did you get lost? Do you need help?”

The little machine just looked at him and wiggled its legs, probably the gyroscope trying to compensate for the sudden shift in balance.

One of the other engineers laughed.

“It’s just a service drone, it can’t actually understand you. It probably just followed your trail of waste and its sensors can’t get it back to the upper decks anymore.”

Thomas looked up from the tiny robot to see a fair number of his co workers looking at him, some trying to hide smiles, some not bothering being so polite. He felt his face begin to burn as a blush came to his cheeks and surged down his neck.

Oh my god I can’t believe I did that but it’s so freaking cute how can I not how can they not love it maybe there’s more on the ship this cute, his brain might implode at the rate it was going. The service drone continued to wiggle in his grip. To Thomas it was almost the size of a toy, maybe a solid 4 inches tall. It stopped squirming and looked up at his face, its tiny head whirring and clicking as gears shifted inside its chassis. It reached out one of its tiny hands and poked his thumb.

“Beep.”

“Beep.”

“Beep.”

Thomas’s mouth dropped. How could a machine with no higher functioning AI be this adorable?

“I’m gonna call you Roomba.”

“That’s just its service alarm. It’s processing an inability to perform its tasks so it thinks it’s stuck somewhere, ergo it’s alerting other drones to come assist it. It probably thinks you’re rectifying the obstacle.”

There were some snickers, a few openly laughed, but Thomas couldn’t care about them right now. The little droid was so adorable in Thomas’s eyes it was like looking at puppies.

He did, however, notice the 2 Padrino staring at him, motionless. For a moment he worried he’d maybe offended them by gushing over the little toy like robot. One of them approached. The Padrino had a clearly mechanical body with chrome plating encasing its joints and limbs. Its torso was thin but solid, whirring quietly as it walked over. Its head had a single antenna with a tinted face plate, which Thomas figured just was it’s ‘face’.

“It has been observed that Humans form an emotional bond to many different species and objects. Is this what is occurring, Human Thomas?”

Gauging the inflections of their voice was difficult, they didn’t have any kind of body language and the voice itself was entirely synthesized, adding layers of difficulty. Thomas thought for a moment, then just shrugged.

“I didn’t mean to cause a scene in here, I just got excited. It’s small and kinda cute so I just lost control for a moment.”

“Apologizing is unnecessary. We’d simply like to understand how Humans function to better improve the efficiency of this division.”

“Beep.”

The service drone wiggled in his hand again.

“It appears the small droid is out of range of its directive. It is asking for assistance with a new objective to replace its task queue.”

“Wait, you can understand it?”

“Yes, the alert sound is not a language. It’s sending out a very short range signal burst with information embedded in it, which I can receive with internal sensors. It’s AI is crude and simple, but it does have the basic functionality to form an artificial language. You’ve replaced its designation D7 with the name Roomba.”

Thomas looked from the Padrino to the little droid and back again.

“Does it like the name?”

“Beep.”

“It says it is a sufficient new designation and is awaiting a new task queue.”

“Oh good, I’m not good at naming stuff so I was worried-”

“Since the ship has launched, the service drones have gone inactive due to safety features. Since this one, new designation Roomba, was here on the engineering deck, it was outside the proximity of the ship’s AI core transmissions. It has exhausted its task queue and requests a new one.”

“Beep.”

“It is repeating the request.”

“Yeah, yes, got that, thank you. Okay, and I can just give it something to do?”

“That is correct.”

“Beep.”

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“Roomba, can you hand me another bolt please?”

“Beep.”

[Primary task in the queue has not been completed: obtain high score]

“I know buddy, but you can pause it with that little button on the side there. I need that bolt real quick.”

Roomba looked where Thomas was pointing on the game pad. The pad itself was bigger than the drone, by a good half inch, so it was like Roomba was standing on a flat screen built into the floor, or playing one of those retro dance machine games from way back.

“Beep.”

[Acknowledged]

The Padrino had been kind enough to give Thomas’s ear piece translator an quick upgrade, so now he was able to receive Roomba’s signal burst data and understand what he was ‘saying’. They’d even given Roomba’s AI a little tune up so he could understand more complex tasks and ideas. Roomba had disconnected from the ship’s core code when he’d gone to the engineering deck so Thomas figured it’d be fine, the little guy could hang out with him now.

It took Roomba’s whole hand to get the game pad to register the pressed button and pause PAC-MAN, which was cute. And what was even cuter was the bolt Thomas needed was half the little robots size so it struggled just a little to bring it over the few feet to him.

“Good job buddy, thank you,” Thomas said, grinning.

“Beep.”

[Acknowledged. Returning to primary task]

“You do that. Good luck Roomba.”

At the time, the only thing the Padrino had asked for in return for their help and upgrades was the chance to observe biological lifeforms and their tendencies to ‘bond’ with others. The Padrino were a sort of hive mind it seemed, each unit being just an interface with the main AI back on their home planet. When units were out of range of communication with the home office, the main AI base code was copied into the machines and split off to collect information. When they got home, they dumped the data into the main computers and integrated back into the main AI core.

Thomas thought they were the coolest people he’d ever met. He’d said ‘sure, observe all you want, I just wanna thank you guys for your help.’

The game pad trilled, a little tune to congratulate moving up a level.

“Beep.”

[Update: progress has been made. Continuing primary task: obtain high score]

“Good work Roomba. You keep at it buddy, you’ll get there.”

From down the hall the 2 Padrino watched the strange little robot ‘playing video games’ next to the human doing an actually productive task.

“More data must be collected. The human, a deathworlder, has bonded to the drone.”

“We will continue to observe.”

“Agreed.”

Somebody tell me why in the deep fried FUCK is there a bag of dead fish heads in my parking lot???!!

Like

I really WANNA shitpost

But I don’t wanna be known for shitposting

You feel me?

We think since humans figured out stuff like shoes, phones, and stop lights we’re actually something super special on our planet but we’re basically just anxiety riddled monkeys.

Worse, even. At least the monkeys figured out you don’t have to pay taxes if you just keep your mouth shut.

Ahh but consider this!

*smokebombs*