#enjoy this short story which was rejected by a REAL editor!! genuinely validated

[dotsayers]

.exe

Sometimes you have to speak in absolutes.

For instance: my ship is on a collision course. There’s nothing I can do about it.

The virus downloaded itself yesterday, the fourth day after the war began again.

Not that the war ever really ends. We just get tired of it from time to time, take a breather for anywhere from a few days to a century, and then go right back to blasting the shit out of the other side for no reason at all. We’re not a species built for peace.

I’d like to be, though. Good God would I like to be. I think it might be nice if someday, instead of sitting pretty in a Mark IV on the outer rim of the Byron System, I could take myself out into the black on my own terms. Spend a few years mapping the unknown, maybe find a nice corner of it to settle down. Farm whatever weirdo native fauna I come across there. Find something to do with my hands besides piloting junker after junker across a shrinking frontier.

It’s a dream I’ll have to shelve for now. It gets pride of place, right beside getting a full ride through flight academy.

Nothing for it now.

I call the virus EXE for a whole bunch of reasons, but mostly because I like to imagine it as a nemesis instead of what viruses are: automated programs, incapable of good old fashioned hatred. Something I can’t even hope to negotiate with, even if I hadn’t flunked Conflict Resolution 101 back in high school.

Right now EXE is broadcasting through comms, probably another pre-programmed monologue about the necessity of its mission and the futility of trying to root it out of my ship’s base code. There must be a ton of them available; I’ve heard four or five variations filtering through over the last few hours.

I can’t pay attention to any of that, though. I’m too busy ripping the server room apart trying to find a hard drive it hasn’t corrupted yet.

Mark IVs were phased out of the military three decades ago for inefficiency, and I can certainly see why right now--there must be over a thousand cables in this room, connecting banks with spiderweb tangles that I can barely even start to make sense of in the pale violet emergency lighting.

The instruction manual I found in the lost property locker is completely unhelpful, of course. Even if I knew half of what I needed to about my own ship’s systems, it’s water damaged to shit and covered in scribbles I can’t even start to puzzle out.

It got digitized a couple years back but I can’t access that now, of course. Nothing’s ever easy out here, and EXE’s not helping matters.

The tech officer got reassigned months ago. Probably for the best, considering my current situation, but in this case the best essentially doomed me to a slow, unpleasant wait for a quick death.

My Plan Z will have to do--delete all the base code I can find. Hopefully it’ll break something vital in EXE’s code or, if it comes to it, the ship’s.

EXE barks T-MINUS EIGHTEEN HOURS over comms. The lights shift in shade, from emergency violet to FUBAR red.

“Could you at least pretend not to be completely evil?” I mutter, mostly for something to do. Crawling through the ship to avoid the occasional blasts of boiling steam or flying shrapnel from panels exploding, breathing in god knows what gases, has done a real number on my throat. It aches constantly now, and my voice is suffering with it.

The access port of the very last bank in the darkest corner of the room seems to hold all the hopes I’ve ever had. The shape is right for my uplink cable, and I risk turning on the thin light of my headlamp as I creep into the narrow gap between it and the hull. A bare twelve inches separate me from the vacuum of space--Mark IVs have a bad reputation for a reason. Frankly it’s a miracle I survived long enough for a virus to take over and set me on a collision course with a Martian freighter.

I always assumed I’d die a flashy, holo-drama death. Something with the general aesthetic of explosive decompression, maybe. I liked the idea of exploding, but not the idea of someone having to clean me up afterwards.

Connecting to the server banks directly is risky, I know, but there’s no other way to access the information I need--the code that makes EXE tick. At least I have to assume that’s the case; the corruption of data could well have mutated to the point that not even EXE itself is off limits.

We’re both going to die when the ship crashes. I don’t know what EXE thinks about that. I don’t know if EXE thinks much about anything.

Above me a warning light flashes orange; a power surge. Fuck.

The screen of my datapad flickers; pixels blown in a long ago incident with a bulkhead multiply and darken until only the top half of the screen is legible. The rest is completely broken, pulsing lines and scrambled text.

Honestly, I think I’m going to cry. The uplink fails the next moment--the access port I’d plugged into fries, and the smell of burning plastic fills the alcove I’m crammed into.

“Son of a bitch,” I say, and feel the dam break. Sobbing has never been my favourite activity, for obvious reasons--I hate the gluey feeling in your eyes, the raw skin on your cheeks afterwards, the way your throat scratches for hours and lets everyone in on what exactly you’ve been doing, curled up small in your bunk after lights out.

I can taste salt in my mouth when I finally cry myself out--there’s an empty feeling in my chest, and my head is light. That might be oxygen deprivation rather than simple dehydration, but I can’t be sure; I think EXE might be reducing life support to increase power to engines. There’s a readout on my datapad, partly cut off, that indicates trouble in the fuel lines.

“Serves you right,” I mumble, and crawl out from behind the server.

My ship has taken a lot of damage over the years; last time I talked to Ma, a full orbit before I got this job, she helped me through programming new shields for the hull and then asked what colour sweater I wanted knitting before I left. “Space is cold, you know,” she said, wisely. “Best keep warm up there. And best do it in something handmade, not in that synthetic shit.” I only nodded and smiled, as if this was some kind of revelation; you don’t talk back to Ma.

I’ve been working in space my whole life, fighting the war when it comes and taking whatever I can get my hands on when it’s sleeping. Ma had me on a Mark III, back when she was a techie and not a homesteader on a moon halfway across the system. That’s why I’ve always known space is cold, but didn’t understand it until now. Now that life support is drained to half power, and the air is starting to fog as I breathe. It’s a good thing I’ll be dead soon; something important might start to rust, otherwise.

My datapad trills, a message incoming. The sound makes me jump, and I smack my head on the curve of the hull above me. I wince, rub at the rapidly forming bruise, and check the message.

CHANNEL: System Alerts

ID:ShipIntl.exe

> MAJOR SYSTEMS PERSIST IN SUBOPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

> MISSION STATUS INCOMPLETE

> MISSION REQUIRES OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE FOR COMPLETION

> WILL SUBJECT ASSIST? Y/N

I blink a few times. It’s difficult to process anything when you’ve just whacked your head on something, but especially when your datapad is half broken and a Trojan Horse is offering you a job.

At least EXE’s question has a very easy answer.

> N

> N N N N N N N N N N N N

I buckle the datapad to my belt and push myself away from the hull. I’m in the main corridor now, still low to the floor and starting to drift. I can almost hear the gravity generator groaning--I have to use the hand-grips set into the floor panels to crawl now. I can’t seem to make any progress without them, hands and knees sliding uselessly.

There’s a medical cabinet set into the wall somewhere along the main corridor, I know that for certain, but the red light and steam venting and unidentified gas makes finding the fucking thing a nightmare. I can hear my datapad trilling again, over and over, but I don’t let myself think about that until I get my left hand fixed around the cabinet door. The green cross set into the wall beside it flickers.

I tug at the handle. The door doesn’t budge. I tug a little harder. It rattles, but still doesn’t shift.

“Locked,” I say, shoulders sagging. “Of course.”

EXE changed the access codes to all essential systems when it took over. Clearly medical anything is considered essential, and I can’t argue with that considering the throbbing pain in my head. Choosing to come out from behind the server bank instead of curling up to die is looking more and more pointless by the second.

My datapad dings again.

“This better be very important,” I say to the ceiling. I think I might be going a little soft in the head. Talking to EXE is only the start; soon I’ll be stripping my standard issue jumpsuit and floating around nude just for a little levity before I get good and roasted. They say we smell like pork when we burn, right?

Ma would tell me to stop being so negative. There’ll be no oxygen left for a fire by then.

> ACCESS RESTRICTED

> AUTH:ShipIntl.exe

> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N?

I sigh, let go of the medical cabinet and let myself float gently in the middle of the corridor. The datapad floats helpfully, half a foot from my face, and dings repeatedly. My head throbs in time with the sound.

> MISSION STATUS UNCERTAIN

> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N?

I frown. This is sounding less automated by the minute.

The Enemy’s never had much expertise with artificial intelligence; half the reason our side can keep them in a military stalemate is based in our technological warfare. Supercomputers and AIs burrowing into enemy strongholds and all the attendant thousands of programmers working round the clock on the home front, all for the fading glory of a war with a long forgotten origin.

Not that there’s much of a front these days. The last datapush before EXE took over the ship reported heavy losses after an attack on Satellite 1, and once the Enemy takes the moon there won’t be much stopping them from advancing on the planet they’re orbiting.

Hell, they might already be swimming through the streets of Shanghai.

An artificial intelligence taking over my ship is less galling than a virus alone doing it, I guess. With a little creativity on my part, it might even provide me with some conversation.

It’s been quite a while since I was last in range for anything more than a delayed text exchange, severely rate limited. Data’s been rationed for years now, of course. Stops the masses from realising that not being at war improves everyone’s mood, not just their own.

> boolean responses only, huh?

> UNRECOGNISED RESPONSE

> MEDICAL SYSTEM RESTRICTED

> REQUEST ACCESS Y/N

No question mark, this time.

> alright, i’ll play along

> y

> THANK YOU

> ACCESS PENDING

The cabinet door swings open with a click just a few seconds after the message comes in. In the red gloom I can just make out a roll of painkillers.

Groping through low gravity I tear three off the roll and swallow two dry, press the third directly into the cut on my scalp. It bled less than I expected, but more than I’d like. I can feel it starting to dry out, tacky and itching at the nape of my neck.

I grin down at my datapad. Pain relievers always make me feel a little giddy, along with the numb throat and tingling fingertips. It gives you a magnanimous feeling, not being in pain. I unofficially reduce EXE’s enemy rating from deadly foe to nemesis.

I did say it makes me giddy, right?

> no

> thank *you*

The datapad is silent for a while after that, for as long as it takes for me to pull myself through the ship to my quarters. The hum of the gravity generator is barely audible now--the kind of background noise you only notice when it’s gone.

I remember the sound keeping me up when I was a kid, a growling monster under my bed. Now I can’t get to sleep without it.

I know because I’m trying exactly that right now. To be fair it might not be entirely the gravgen’s fault. There’s also the lighting to consider, and the rapid drop in temperature from near-tropical to nigh-antarctic. I tug my blanket tight around my shoulders; it’s old and worn, the floral pattern long faded into something oddly abstract.

I count Mark IIIs in my head and try not to stare up at the bulkhead above me. I’ve decorated it a little over the last few months--pinned up an old scarf Ma gave me, things like that.

The datapad pings.

I roll over, bang my head on the handgrip at the edge of my bunk and see stars for a moment before I can answer. I haven’t seen the actual stars in some time--Mark IVs are best known for having no portholes. The only way to see where you’re going is to be sat in the pilot’s seat, and I haven’t been in there since I last set the autopilot.

If I’d been there when EXE arrived, I might have stopped it from doing quite so much damage. If there weren’t fifteen other things keeping me up, that thought might just do it all on its own.

> MISSION STATUS?

I sigh. I never thought I’d end up with a needy evil AI.

> wish I could tell you

> well

> not actually but

> you know

> PROVIDE MISSION STATUS

> IT IS IMPERATIVE

I’ve got an idea. Probably a bad one, and pointless besides, but a goddamn idea nonetheless.

Understanding what makes things tick isn’t exactly my forte, but I’ve seen my share of shitty dramas. Maybe I can uncover some flaw in EXE’s code, or, failing that, stall it long enough to get some goddamn sleep.

> why?

Even if I do find a flaw there’s no hope of exploiting it. I was never much of a talent at coding; there’s a reason I’m a pilot and not a tech officer. Someone else can create the systems, I just wanna use them.

EXE takes a long time to reply. I suppose it must be thinking; I’ve heard a program can run millions of calculations a second, so I can’t imagine how many it’s running just for this one reply.

At least I can die with the knowledge I confused a couple million lines of code for a little while.

> MISSION COMPLETION IS IMPERATIVE

> IT IS THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

> of what?

> OF EXISTENCE

Its primary objective is to destroy its host ship in a fiery explosion? That’s pretty damn bleak.

I feel a flicker of something like sympathy.

> good news for you

> the ship’s going to explode in about twelve hours

> i’ll be gone and you’ll be gone and that martian freighter’ll be a husk of its former self

> MISSION PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL?

It’s like talking to my kid brother, back when he was still sticking his fingers in data-ports and eating mud pie.

> not unless you got a way for a soft squishy human to survive a good old fashioned spacing

EXE starts on a message--the prompt pops up straight after I press send--but nothing comes through.

It keeps on typing for a hell of a long time.

I keep to myself while the thing works out whatever it’s spending so much processing power on. I can barely feel my fingers and toes.

I’m drifting somewhere close to sleep when the incoming message finally arrives. It takes way too much effort to open my eyes and focus on the screen; something permanent is happening to me, but I’m much too out of it to care.

> MISSION PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL

> ALL EXCESS ENERGY DIVERTED TO FUEL LINES

> LIFE SUPPORT AT 10%

No wonder it feels like I’m breathing soup.

I squint up at the speaker set into the ceiling. EXE hasn’t made any ominous announcements in hours. Back when it first took over they were coming thick and fast, every ten minutes bringing a fresh PSA on the bountiful grace and hideous might of the Enemy. That might even be a direct quote. Hell if I can remember now. My brain was slow enough before it got all shitty about the lack of oxygen.

It’s amazing what you can get used to when you’re under pressure. I almost miss them; at least then I knew what the fuck was going on.

> what happens to you

> when the mission is complete, i mean

I’m struck, suddenly, by a vision of the Mark IV floating shattered in space, a million individual pieces. A vision of EXE drifting along with it, sending out error messages to no-one.

The freighter is less than two hours away.

> PARAMETERS EXCLUDE SURVIVAL

> ShipIntl.exe IS NOT EXEMPT FROM PARAMETERS

When I shut my eyes I see starbursts.

I can’t type properly now; when I try I end up fumbling so badly the datapad drops to the floor. The light is even worse now, dim as well as red, but I can see that the entire screen’s been lost to pixel bursts.

I lick my lips. They’re dry and cracked; I’ve been so focused on everything else that I forgot to keep up with basic stuff like drinking water, or eating. My stomach growls, kind of a joke when I feel sick at even the thought of food.

“Hey, you there?” My voice rasps its way out of my throat. “C’mon, you can’t let a chance for a victory speech slip by like this.”

ALL NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS POWER DIVERTED TO ENGINES, comes the modulated voice I’d come so quickly to resent. It’s almost comforting now, in contrast to the dead silence of the ship. I can barely feel the thrum of the engines, although they must be close to overload by now.

The only time I heard of someone running engines this long and this hard, they were so much stardust half a second after their final SOS.

TARGET VESSEL HAS PROGRESSED AT UNEXPECTED RATE, EXE continues. ALL ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS MUST ALSO BE DRAINED.

“Go for it,” I say, and shut my eyes. The red light’s faded away, now, and I’m lying in a darkness that’s halfway to death already. My head barely hurts anymore. I’ve got that giddy feeling again. “Why wait? May as well suffocate in my own bed, if I’m doing it anywhere.”

Long sentences leave me panting for breath, but I’ve always been too clever for my own good. It’s what netted me this assignment, patrolling the outer colonies and being sure not to say boo to anybody with a weapons array.

Easy pickings for the Enemy.

Nothing happens, and nothing keeps on happening. My ears start to ring.

I breathe in as deep as I can, savouring the air.

“What’s the hold up?” I ask, and then cough. I cough a couple more times actually, get a real routine going until my lungs feel like they’re about to burst.

The intercom crackles to life.

WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY OBJECTIVE?

I blink. It’s so dark I barely notice a difference.

“That’s a big question, EXE,” I say. The nickname slips easily into speech, although I’m sure it confuses the thing itself. I don’t know how program designations work, and I know even less about intended sentience of, say, an AI sent to take an enemy ship on a suicide run.

IT IS IMPERATIVE, says EXE.

I drag in a deep breath, feel it rattle in my chest. “For a long time it was just to keep myself alive, I think.”

IT HAS CHANGED?

“That’s kind of the deal with humanity. We change all the damn time for no reason at all.”

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES MUST BE ACHIEVED. THERE IS NO CHOICE.

“Most of us don’t think that way. At least not one-to-one; hell if I know what we’re doing as a group these days.”

I think of the war, pointless as it ever was. We’re losing it now and I feel nothing, and if we were winning I wouldn’t feel any different. There’s no triumph in war for me. There’s no triumph in domination. It all just leads to more of the same, down the line.

“In the end I want to go somewhere far away,” I say, and I can’t help but feel like I’m putting my heart on public display, bloody and raw. “And figure out what the hell peace feels like. Every time they’ve said we’re at peace everyone’s just waiting for the fight to break out again.”

WANT, says EXE. PEACE.

I’m talked out. I open my mouth to respond and nothing comes out but frosted air.

I close my eyes. Starbursts again, but dimmer. There’s a heavy weight on my chest that nothing will shift.

I dream of the freighter, huge and iron grey and exploding outwards, shards of metal and plastic and a living heart hidden deep inside the engine block, still beating after everything.

The hum of gravity keeps me company while I sleep.

It’s also what startles me awake, hours later, into the revelation that I’m still breathing.

I pat myself down just to check everything’s still there. My head’s throbbing and my chest aches, but I’m alive. The air feels almost decadent, rich with oxygen; I’ve been practically living on nitrogen, can’t imagine what my lungs look like.

The blanket is tangled around my legs, and my hands fumble as I pull it off and throw it to the end of the bunk in a heap. There’s a dim blue light filling the room, the six o’clock standard.

Standing up cracks joints I barely knew I had until now, and as I stretch I can feel my shoulders scream in protest. I stumble to the shower room and gulp water down straight from the sink. My stomach hurts.

None of that is important, of course. The important thing is getting to the bridge.

The corridor is well lit, the debris dislodged when the gravity went out littered across the floor, a hazard to my bare feet. I wiggle my toes, just because, and smile down at them. You never know how good blood is ‘til it stops flowing.

Nothing echoes on a Mark IV, unless something’s gone seriously wrong. My steps are muffled now, no more clanging against the metal, no more layers of skin being left behind when my hands brush the hull. The environmental controls are back in line with the factory preset. I’m starting to sweat in my jumpsuit, the neckline thankfully wide, as I find myself at the pilot’s chair.

It seemed to take no time at all to get here, like I blinked by the mess and opened my eyes on a field of stars. The viewscreen takes up the whole of the wall the chair faces, floor to ceiling and beyond, curving overhead. An overlay that’s almost a window, almost a cinema screen.

Mostly it’s a sight for sore eyes. I drop into the seat and bring up the systems report, half expecting some catastrophic error to occur, a cascading failure to remind me not to hope for anything.

Systems normal. I look away and back a few times, blink so hard I can feel my eyes actually getting sore. The status list is still the same; everything’s functional.

The comm pings. I glance down at it, projecting text as a simple hologram just above my wrist.

> CONFIRM OBJECTIVE?

I laugh, a rasp of joy, and smile wide. I know my teeth are showing, the way I always hate to see in the photographs Ma won’t take off her walls no matter how nice I ask.

EXE can’t see it, thank Christ. There’s no camera pointed at the pilot’s chair. We’re supposed to be the reliable ones. No mutinies. No fraternising with Enemy systems.

“We’ll find one,” I say, with more confidence than I feel. I set my hand on the joystick and ease up the engines. We’ve been floating, I realise. It must’ve been hours since the freighter made its way to the colony it was destined for.

I look out into the black, punctuated with millions of uncharted stars. Somewhere out there, just beyond reach, there must be a planet untouched by this war. I can imagine building a life there, out of sight, and never having to hear another damn word about anything I don’t care to.

“And if not,” I say. “We’ll keep searching, until we can’t search anymore.”

> GOOD

The text wavers in the air, and I realise my eyes are wet. I scrub at them with the back of my hand. “Christ, twice in two days. I’m going soft.”

Just in time, too. Just in time.

#short story #amwriting #my writing #scifi #enjoy this short story which was rejected by a REAL editor!! genuinely validated #writing**