Ugh, what happened? The ground is soft, is this a bed? Am I laying on it? I should get up.
Getting up from my bed, I feel an odd lack of tiredness or that refreshing feeling of a full sleep. Opening my eyes, I can see quite clearly that this is not the walls of my bedroom. In fact, this is also not my bedroom ceiling either. And this bed doesn't seem like…Yeah, yeah, this is not my bedroom. Alright, body check. Arms, legs, fingers,… checked. My clothes are the same and my smartphone, yup, is still in my hand. Great, now, where am I?
The room is brightly lit, but the tone of the colors is dark. There is only a bed here, no window and what seems like two metal sliding doors at each end of the room. Hmm? There is a pistol next to me and a note attached on it:
"Don't worry, you won't need this. Just for your assurance that you are safe."
That's somewhat reassuring. Picking up the pistol, I notice that the note has words on the other side:
"Before you need to think about it. Yes, the reason that you won't need it is because you can't do much with it anyway."
Huh. After spending a good minute, I managed to take the magazine out. It is not empty, I have no idea how many bullets are in there as I can only see the top, but it is not empty. Putting the magazine back in and pulling the slider back, a bullet flies out. So, a loaded gun. That's even more assuring, at least I can shoot myself if things seem too bad.
After putting that round back into the mag, I stand up and walk to the door. As I scrutinize the wall around it for anything resembling a button, switch or display, a voice sounds out:
"Do you need me to open the door?"
!
I leap back slightly from surprise, very slightly, just enough to fall flat on my ass. Focusing on the voice, it seemed womanly and came from…actually, I can't pinpoint where it was coming from. Maybe from multiple directions to confuse me? Anyway, since it doesn't seem like the host is particularly hostile, let's talk to them.
"Um, hello, my name is Danh, uh, good to know you. May I ask why am I here?"
The voice replies, its origin still indiscernible: "Yes, you may."
…
"Ah, well, why am I here then?"
"I have no idea as well. I was ordered to follow your orders."
My orders, hmm, the host most certainly has overriding authority over me, but why do they want me to have some powers. Maybe to test my decision making skills and obedience. Possible.
Well, before anything else, I should get out of this room and have a look around.
"How do I open the door manually?"
A small square part of the wall next to the door slides open, revealing a button. "The door is automatic, so you probably won't need it. But, here it is, just in case."
I step through the door as it automatically opens and closes after I pass through. It leads to a different room filled with plants and much brighter light.
The voice helpfully introduces the room to me: "This is the farms, the plants here are all being grown with artificial light and can be made into a variety of meals using a combination of 3D printers and chemical processes."
Very interesting. No, seriously, it seems like this is some kind of automated life support system that will be useful for isolated survival. Well, as long as the power generator lasts. But, that's not what I expected, or want to see.
"Um, is there a hallway or any window?"
"There is no hallway to minimize volume usage. As for the window, there isn't one to minimize weak points. However, there are cameras and screens to simulate windows. I will now turn it on." The black ceiling reveals itself to be a screen as it turns on, showing a bundle of black tethers stretching to a long and relatively thin black cylinder. Behind and around the black cylinder are a few more bundles of tethers connected to a large ring that stretches all the way to…here?
"Please enlighten me as to what I am looking at."
A projector screen rolls down from the opposite side to the 'window'. The voice says: "Please take a seat, there's a presentation in my database just for this."
How routine has this been so that there's a presentation just for this? I sit down on the bed as a projector from below the bed is turned on. When the images have finally loaded up, I have to change my seat because my legs are blocking half of the light.
The first slide shows a gif of the cylinder, tethers and ring, which I now recognize as a space station, maybe. The stars behind the main cylinder seem to be spinning, which I can confirm is true by looking out of the 'window'.
The voice begins its presentation: "Introducing you to the Queen Ant class Mothership, the Pioneer. This ship is made for cheap, reliable and isolation with systems designed for independent sustainability. It is capable of doing every kind of mission, rather badly, but capable nonetheless. It is also very modular."
The voice takes a pause for me to memorize: "This one, specifically, has been modified greatly and made a lot worse than its factory version. The technologies were significantly reduced to an archaic level, though it is still versatile."
Nodding absentmindedly, I decide not to mention that most of it seems to be just a tiny bit too absurd and irrelevant for my situation right now.
The voice abruptly changes topic: "Oh and if you feel that this is not relevant to your situation, it does and you will see why soon enough. For your information, that wasn't my words, that was in my database with instructions to say it about 2 minutes into this presentation."
Alright, so whoever behind this knows me enough to give me a gun to calm me down and give me a reminder the moment that I start to blank out. Well, let's see what they put me in then.
I nod, hoping that counts as a signal that I am paying attention. The voice seems to consider that it is and continues with the presentation: "Alright, so to save you the time and also considering your lack of any qualifications, at least according to my database, I will cut out all of the technical details and go straight to the usage. The ship, with the current loadout, can be used for survival with regular-ish replenishment of fissile, or fertile, and less regular replenishment of…nearly everything else, which is lost during inefficiencies in the recycling process."
The slides show a long list of materials and the average rates that the ship needs. I have no idea how much that actually is. As in, I can understand that the ship needs dozens of grams per year of this specific material and those materials, and their respective values, can act as replacements. However, I don't know what those materials are in the first place, their properties and how to harvest them. Fortunately, the host doesn't plan for me to perish…yet.
The voice continues after that slightly longer than normal stop: "Now, you probably have just thought about how you also lack further information to actually make use of those. That is when I come in, the ship's AI. My assigned product code is technically…Huh, that has been wiped from the database. Oh well, my new name is Linh and I will do the vast majority of the work for you. This ship is, in fact, designed for it as well, with a decent amount of drones, equipment and a mini factory. Granted, all of them have been greatly weakened for some reason with far inferior technologies than what my information on this ship said."
A sudden pause before Linh continues: "Actually, now that the benchmark has completed, why am I also made with such primitive computers?! I mean, proportionally speaking, this should be just right to be equal with the rest of the technologies on this ship. But still, this ship is far too below advertised standards, who even modified it to this level?!"
Linh falls silent, seemingly to focus on something else. Obviously, that something else is trying to figure out who has made the changes, at least I think so. A door, the one opposite to the one that I previously asked to be opened, opens. From it, a small robot, closer to a large toy than a robot, rolls out. It moves on tracks, 2 of them, and has a chassis similar to a tank. Instead of a turret, it has 4 mechanical arms and grabbers, which it uses to hand me a nice cup of iced chocolate milk. Then it returns to wherever it comes from, which is probably the kitchen, based on what I can see just before the door closes.
As I sip on the chocolate milk, I glance back at the ship's main body outside the 'window'. Now that I know that this is a spaceship, I can…actually, I can't see anything more. I have no idea how large is the radius of this ring, which I assume is used to emulate gravitational force. However, I can see that I am too far to see the details on the main body. Kind of. I do see the bright red radiators that probably connected to the power generator.
The background shows that, indeed, the ring is spinning at a nice pace of…1 RPM? Yeah, that feels right. Fortunately, before I can make myself nauseous by making my brain realize that I am on a spinning ring, Linh returns, "Okay, I have just checked my database in full. It seems that the information about the modifier has been deleted. Not only that, a lot of other information has also been deleted, enough to violate the EULA of the software on this ship."
Linh pauses for a moment, "Now, according to protocol, I need to contact…Okay, the name of the company that made me had also been wiped, but I am supposed to contact them. However, the ship's communication system has also been downgraded to the point where FTL communication is no longer possible. In fact, not even STL communication works, the signal would be so weak that it will be indistinguishable from background radiation after leaving this star system."
Alarms go blaring for a moment, red flashing lights, emergency sounds and everything. Then it stops and Linh continues: "That was necessary to activate the emergency protocol. Since this is an extraordinary situation that I am unable to deal with, I have considered it an emergency and will now enact the next part of the protocol." Linh stops for some reason.
"Which is?"
Linh answers: "To override all authority and give full control to the closest qualified personnel. In the other words, you now also have admin privileges over the ship and everything that goes with it."
Me, Me? ME! "How am I qualified for this?!"
Linh responds: "Actually, in the list of conditions for who are qualified, there is only you. Seriously, it is just an if-else condition that says you are the only qualified personnel for this. Though logs do show modifications here as well, a severe violation of the EULA, mind you."
So I am in charge, if this AI is to be trusted, which I will temporarily…This temporary decision is going to become permanent, isn't it? Ignoring that, I should hear the rest of the presentation. It will give me enough information to make further decisions. "Well, let's hear the rest of your presentation."
Linh says: "Back to the topic, the ship currently lacks any FTL travel system and the sub-light system is also primitive. Consequently, it is limited to interplanetary travel with limits."
The next slide shows a star system from the top down perspective, "Fortunately, we are in a star system and not stuck in interstellar space. As you can see here, I have turned the observation data into a map. The system consists of a yellow star and, in order of closest to the star to furthest, 4 rock planets in the inner orbits, an inner asteroid belt, 3 gas giants and an outer asteroid belt. Presently, we are in the asteroid belt. What's your order?"
Hmm…Alright, so I am in space, on a multi-purpose spaceship that has technologies at least equal to modern day. Wait, how much of the modern world does she know?
"Hey, Linh, how much do you know, well, in general?"
Linh pauses for a moment, "To put it short, I am mildly competent in most duties and have some basic knowledge about you."
That explains the chocolate.
Linh continues: "As for anyone else, I don't know. I also have a wide range of knowledge about just about everything, though it is limited to just enough to equal the technology on the ship."
Hmm, "What are some of the most modern pieces of tech that you know?"
Linh pauses for a sec as the slide switches to a white page.
An image of the molecular structure of graphene is dragged onto the white page, "How to mass manufacture this at macro level. It still requires massive facilities, that's not on this ship, and produces low quantities of graphene, in comparison to steel at least."
An image of a nuclear fusion reactor, "A theoretical working fusion reactor. It would be vastly more massive than this ship and it is still theoretical only."
An image of a very complicated metal part being seamlessly 3D printed, "3D printing with quality almost equal to CNC, only almost and still significantly slower."
An image of a neural network, "Lastly, how to create an inferior version of me. It seems that I am limited to this. There's significant precautions ranging from suicide programs to a literal nuke next to my main server, all to ensure that I can't reverse-engineer myself."
So whoever, or whatever forces behind them is genuinely concerned about a potential AI threat. Considering how I will be relying on Linh for the foreseeable future, that's absolutely excellent.
Now, what to do, what to do. I am who knows how far away from home, given a ship with state of the art technology by a person with a civilization behind them that surpasses the ship by an insurmountable margin.
Well, I can try to come back home. However, for that to happen, one of the rock planets must be Earth. Otherwise, I need to develop interstellar travel. Most importantly, do I even want to go back home?
…Yes, my family is there. They…are doing their damnedest and I am not leaving them. Granted, I may not be able to return in their lifetime, but I must return. However, I won't return empty handed. This ship is a treasure trove with incredible potential for growth and development if Linh presents it correctly. So
I straighten my back, "Linh, we are going to build an empire, an empire in my name and bring all its might and wealth back to my home."