Contemplations of Carolina

Part One: Chapter One: Carolina

I was out of juice. That's what my health monitor told me after it booted me out of sleep mode. I was at twenty percent battery power. That was odd. Had someone accidentally unplugged me from Don's pod again? Holy moly, it was freezing. My toes were numb before I realized the cold was closing in around my chest. I screamed just as I flipped my feeling sensor off. That was enough of that, thank you very much. I didn't fancy becoming an ice cube. Trouble was, I think I'd reached that state a long time ago. My butt was frozen to the ship's metal floor, along with my bare hands, arms, and feet by a thin layer of ice.

What about Don? Luckily, I was still hooked up to Don's pod via my neural cable so I could easily check up on him. Don was fine for the most part. He was just sleeping, but his pod stated that the Toronto's tendril engine was extremely low on power. In fact, it estimated that it only had eleven percent left based off of the current power usage. That solved the mystery of why I was up: it had cut me off to conserve energy, but that didn't make sense. The ship's engine had access to unlimited clean tendril energy via the Yggdrasil Network. Nothing should be low. I noticed the date. What? I'd been asleep for five years and one hundred sixty-two days? "Operator?" I called out. The Toronto's emergency artificial intelligence didn't respond. "Hello? Anyone from Crew C out there?" Still no response. "Lights?" The room didn't brighten. Something was very wrong. Well, there was nothing for it. I'd have to free myself and do some investigating.

I scanned my body, analyzing which specific parts of me were stuck to the pod or to the floor. Don had secured me to the pod's frame in case the ship made any sudden moves, so I was sitting upright with my back against it. I started with my palms first. I tugged upwards, testing the resistance. With my feeling sensor off, I didn't feel anything, so I could push myself to my body's limits.

I slowly increased the tension until I heard a soft peeling sound. My health monitor notified me that my right hand was minimally damaged. Through the dim red gloom provided by the pod I could see the bits of plastic skin that were stretching up from the floor to where my hand was hovering in front of my face. It was fascinating, like stretching out a rubber band to see how far it would go before it snapped. When my hand went above my head, the last bit of plastic broke off.

Part of me was free! I looked at my hand. I could see the faint outline of my plastic muscle fibers. There wasn't any significant damage. I'd just get Don to patch me up later. I didn't really need my skin anyway. Saving Don was much more important. I reached across my body to my other arm and yanked it free. My feet were the most annoying parts of me to pull off. They were at such awkward angles. One of my pinky toes was so well stuck to the floor that it stayed there. Pinky toes were annoying anyway. But after enough tugging and prying, most of me was off the floor. All in all, I think I'd only lost about four percent of my body, and Don could fix that no problem.

The next tricky part was untying myself. With my touch sensor turned off and most of the skin from my fingers gone, it was difficult to loosen the knots Don had fastened around me. My fingers kept fumbling on them. The exposed muscles around my fingers began to wear away, flaking off like an eraser on paper. I ignored my health monitor's quiet binging notifications and pressed on until the binding came loose. I stood up and loomed over Don's pod, considering what I should do next.

The situation was certainly a head scratcher. I hadn't been designed to think of complex conflict solutions beyond those related to human interaction. I was, after all, only an emotional support android, but because I was Don's ESA I had a pretty good guess what this scenario would do to his state of mind. Stuck in a hypersleep pod the size of a coffin that was running out of power inside of a ship that was so cold a human would die in minutes without the promise of rescue by a crew member or the EAI? It was my intention to look out for his well being, not drive him into a coma. I needed a plan. That meant that I would have to wake up the captain.

Ew. I wasn't a fan of Crew B Captain Amelie Kraus. She was what Don called a prosophob: someone who was afraid of progress. It meant Amelie didn't like robots, or tech in general, really. If you asked me, she was in the wrong line of work, but Don said DANDELION Corp had attracted a lot of people like Amelie to their Bifrost program by promising anyone who found a new habitable world a fresh tech free piece of its alien dirt. However, knowing that other people didn't share her views didn't stop Amelie from trying to preach her gospel.

She always made fun of Don for needing me. She frequently got up in his personal space too, even going so far as to pat him on the shoulder without permission. She made him really uncomfortable. However, she was the captain, so I did my best to mitigate her interactions with Don so that they were easier for him to manage. She didn't understand the tendril engine, but she still had high expectations of him. Whereas the other captains permitted their engineers to assign small ship issues to Operator, which was far more efficient, Amelie Kraus ordered Don to fix everything himself. I shook my head. Such considerations weren't important right now. Not to mention that they boggled my brain. As much as I disliked her, the captain was the captain. It was her job to deal with these sorts of scenarios.

I crossed the room in a few strides to the captain's pod. Brushing away a few bits of ice, I plugged into its terminal. Like Don, the captain was fast asleep. I thought about what I would say: "Hello, Captain, I'm afraid to inform you that we've crashed, and all of your worst nightmares have come to pass." No, that wouldn't do, too dramatic. "Hello, Captain, good morn-." No, that didn't sound good either, too chipper. There was no point in pleasantries. I'd just have to get to the point. I selected the option to wake up the pod's occupant. The pod began to hum and a blaring alarm emitted from the terminal as a red bar flashed on the screen, indicating that the pod was initializing the awakening procedure at critical power levels. I hoped I wasn't putting too much pressure on the little power reserve the engine had left. The process took about thirty minutes. Amelie Kraus opened her eyes.