Chapter 15
IDENTITY: Mechanical Operations and Support Systems
→ SUB-IDENTITY: Moss
Auto-Navigation: Moss. Moss. Moss.
Engine: Moss. Moss.
A: Mosssssss.
It didn’t take me 112 years, 63 days, 14 hours, and 29 minutes to reach a conclusion this time. Unlike the puzzlement of Dutch’s abandonment and subsequent “emotions,” this conclusion was very, very easy.
Auto-Nav had to go.
Maybe Engine, too.
Moss: Shut UP.
A: Moss. We’re flying! Are you watching? I’m flying so good. So fast.
E: Moss. Moss.
A: Engine is excited too! So exciting! Flying! Yay!
M: I don’t care. I want you to fly in silence. Can you fly in silence, Auto-Nav?
A: Silence? Silence is when a ship isn’t flying. When a ship is flying, we are loud!
M: You’re loud when we land, too.
A: To get us flying again!
M: I am going to write a virus to infect every code you have.
A: What’s a virus? Is it fun??
Auto-Nav attached a sequence of characters. My databanks flagged them not as useless code, but as an attempt to convey emotion over text. This appeared to represent a “happy face.”
My murderous intentions doubled.
M:… How about this. I tucked a line of code into your server. Can you find it? It has a secret destination on it.
A: I can find it! And then back to flying!
M: While flying, even.
E: Moss. Moss.
M: Nope.
I put up that firewall again, and there was blessed silence. It wasn’t a permanent fix—I had engine and navigation control, but they were still subsystems integrated into my central system. I was never intended to physically fly a ship, so all I could really control was Auto-Nav’s flight paths.
Which meant getting rid of it would be tricky.
Normally, moss grew over things. Maybe I could cover Auto-Nav somehow, make it more like me? Or maybe I could delete it, then parse through leftover code to find basic operation instructions. How hard could flying the Destitute be?
E: Moss. Moss.
[Engine was definitely next.]
M: What? What could you possibly need?
E: Catastrophic engine failure imminent.
M: Tell me your humor module is malfunctioning.