Chapter Text
You’ve passed through almost exactly 1.2973e+9 milliseconds since regaining consciousness in this body. Hovering a chrome-coated hand over a console in the vacant control room, autopilot activated thus far for the duration of your trip, you can access the vessel’s complete travel-log, an admittedly convenient feature. It’s been 1.4148e+9 milliseconds since the ship rose free of the confines of Earth C’s stratosphere.
For all your father seems quite sincerely convinced of the mendacity of time as a concept, at the moment, its passage is all that tethers you to a time before this one. Once Dirk successfully completed the transfer, your home was no longer visible from your position in paradox space. The temporal signature remains fixed in digital space, occupying a palpable digital space beneath the silver sheen of your fingers.
(1.421e+9 milliseconds since you said goodbye. You keep your phone tucked close to your facsimile of a body despite its virtual uselessness as a communication device, feeling rather than watching as the numbers tick slowly further away from her, never more than a few inches from the humming core processor within your chassis.)
It’s for the best. The sooner you locate a viable planet, the sooner this matter will be put to right. The sooner she and everyone you love will be safe, their positions secured in canon. You’ve already sacrificed so much. This should amount to nothing in comparison.
If the pursuit happens to be agonizing, so be it. The undertaking is all the more heroic for its difficulty.
That said, you are unbelievably, undeniably, unyieldingly bored.
You’ve already disassembled and summarily reassembled half of the control room, a skill foreign to your consciousness but seemingly native to your constructed embodiment. Even with access to the lexicons of an infinite array of permutations-of-self, you find little desire to tinker, but you really might as well, if only to occupy a more pronounced portion of the prodigious processing power provided by your present personification than simply registering the milliseconds as they tick past.
At this point, you’ve more or less run dry of other obvious ways to pass the time. You no longer need to sleep, your consciousness installed as it is in a body of metal and circuitry. Terezi does little but sleep, it seems, and your father is in the midst of one of his characteristic brooding episodes.
Because you’ve only been granted secondary access to the ship’s systems - rather rude of him, that - you can’t gain entry to his quarters without the approval of higher-tier personnel, namely him, leaving you with little recourse but to figure out how to promote yourself in the database. Hence, the tinkering. Eventually, you’re going to break something enough to figure out how it’s supposed to work.
You’ve been working your way methodically across the access panels, removing and replacing elements as necessary, all of which seems to come quite naturally via an internal repository of mechanical knowledge. Fitting; you knew far less about the interior function of your embodied Self when you were a being of flesh, blood, and finite metaphysical limitations. Now, there is significantly more to know, and significantly more precedent through which to understand it.
A promising little drawer is tucked beneath the first panel of the central console, and after removing the holo screen and investigating the circuitry supporting the device, you reattach the hand-navigation hardware and lower yourself to get a better look. If this one has something to do with authorization… really, it might, as you lean in, you can feel it thrumming with energy…
You press your palm to the front-facing panel and send an identification signature pulsing through.
The glassy surface of the holo screen bursts to life with a flurry of color and sound, only barely recognizable as music through your highly refined auricular circuitry. Surprised, you scramble backwards in a most undignified way before you get your bearings and register the lack of an apparent threat.
A little paper booklet protrudes from the drawer. It reads, in letters so large that the title takes up the entirity of the tri-fold pamphlet, Fifteen Ways to Make the Most of Your Journey on Skaianet’s Long Haul Class-800 Military-Grade Fleet, With Your Host, Jake English [beta version].
Huh.
Even once you’ve settled yourself down, it takes a second to resolve the constellation of millions of tiny pixels hovering suspended over the screen as a moving image rather than a pulsing mass of white light, but once you do, a familiar face materializes. You’re still finding your figurative feet in this body, but you’re acclimating fairly quickly, you like to think. (1.29732e+9 milliseconds)
Robotically superaugmented extrasensory vision or not, there’s no mistaking the unnaturally rakish grin or the booming baritone of the man presenting the program.
As though hovering in the control chamber just a few feet away, Jake English, almost indistinguishable from your last memory of him, when he was… on television? Some program in the background at the doctor’s office?... offers you a set of finger guns and a wink as what you conclude is meant to be inspirational music plays and the title rolls across the screen. Yes, it’s a bit of a mouthful.
“Howdy, there! Welcome to the voyage of a lifetime, sponsored by Crockercorp and brought to you proudly by Skaianet research enterprises! I’m sure you’re already chuffed to be off on such a spiffing adventure, whether proudly serving our little universe’s government or otherwise accomplishing the kind of interstellar diplomacy that demands the use of a cruiser of this magnitude. Skaianet’s Long Haul Class-800 Military-Grade Fleet - ah, there’s a mouthful, heh, to think I signed off on this! - well, these lovely ships are equipped with a whole range of amenities. Whether you’ll be ensconced in this reinforced steel hull for a few days or, safely, up to two decades, you’ll be sure to find plenty with which to occupy yourself while your trip is underway!”
Glancing down at the pamphlet, which strikes you as surprisingly low-tech for such a wildly advanced piece of equipment, you find the beginnings of a list on the center portion. Hm.
“This is merely a trial run of this functionality, of course, I s’pose the final product will be far more polished,” he adds, and it takes you a fraction of a millisecond to realize that he’s describing the hologram, or perhaps his script, and not responding to your perusal of the fold-out.
You set it aside. If you could frown, you would be doing so, without malice, but with the beginnings of sincere interest.
“Alright, with that out of the way… I’m sure I can spruce the intro up a bit, given some time, but do take the first draft into consideration!... to the list! I’ve prepared it personally, well, with some advisement from Janey’s advertising folks, and I’m pretty sure Jade was around and we were shooting the breeze and the idea came up, I’m not really sure who got to it first, but she’s been awfully helpful, and this’ll probably have to go through Dirk at some point, since… cripes, I don’t know why, he’s got nothing to do with this company, but I think he just likes to be included! And, uh, reacts somewhat volatile-y in response to… not being included, so, ah, let’s strike that bit from the record, perhaps, haha.”
He clears his throat, slipping easily back into a smiling, buoyant countenance.
“Now then! Some suggestions for the weary travelers, or for those prone to boredom in close quarters! I figure you’ll want a little more explanation than just the list, so I’ve prepared an explanation and tutorial for each component, lest you find yourself in the depths of paradox space, up to your ears in boredom and without the means to mitigate it! We at Skaianet have made every endeavor to bring the most cutting-edge and delightful of in-space entertainment technology straight into your grasp, and the possibilities are limitless. Frankly, I could be here for the rest of the year listing off every functionality, and that wouldn’t be fun for anyone, would it? Well, some people might be into that, I guess, I’ll have to look into it. Would that make sense? Really, I’ll have to ask someone, it seems like it might be… erm, nevermind. Back to it! Note to self, polish that little hiccup out of the spiel before you do anything with this prototype!”
The hologram shimmers as the image of Jake pulls a marker out of his overshirt pocket and scrawls a reminder on his forearm, which is already stained black with a dozen other similar reminders.
“If you’ll open your pamphlet to the first item on the list, you’re going to want to lay one of your digits down over the paper to summon up my helpful commentary! And do let me know what needs workshopping and what just, well, works!” he says.
With that, the image lapses into some sort of holo-screen-saver state, smiling and intermittently tossing up a few more finger guns or striking a… quite provocative pose.
You look down at the pamphlet again, more critically this time, only to register the activation of the in-ship intercom.
“Any particular reason I’ve got seventy-four notifications of sub-authorization tampering in the control room?”
“I haven’t yet had time to tamper with the rest. My apologies. I’ve been slacking off.”
Setting the pamphlet back into the drawer, you observe that the hologram dissipates into a near-invisible energy field, then to nothing. Interesting. You’ll have to do some reading on these systems. Particularly the fact that this element of the ship is in beta might offer some opportunities for exploitation.
“If you’re bored, just say so. Don’t wreck my ship.”
“If you don’t want me to wreck your ship, amuse me. I understand it may be something of a while before we have the opportunity to do anything of canonical significance.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, were you expecting nonstop laughs? Dinner and a show? An Olivia cruise? This is metanarrative existence-or-nonexistence, Rose, and you’re dicking around with my ship.”
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the floor.”
“Beds are too soft. You know that. My goddamn back -”
“Ah, the endless sufferings and tribulations of the meatbound,” you interrupt. “If you’ve finished staring off into the middle distance, remembering anime from alternate universes, I’ll come by your quarters.”
“Fuck you. I’m remembering a great episode of Durarara!! and I can’t possibly express how little I need another snarky AI in my life.”
“I can only exist within the parameters you set for me, father dearest. I assume this is an open invitation to discuss my speculation on your motivations for doing so, which I believe stems from a psychosexual fixation on the artificial counterpart of yours that you have elucidated in the past while under the influence of marijuana. Would you like to propose an antithesis to match my thesis? Let’s get dialectic, dad.”
“Words fail me.”
“Now this I have to see.”
While your attention is momentarily diverted to the more pressing concern of nudging your father in the direction of subjects that he seems reluctant to breach - he has constructed a careful mental partition, which prevents you from accessing most of his more personal thoughts, much to your irritation, what’s the point of being a Seer if you can’t See anything interesting - you partition the discovery of the pamphlet in a less vital processing center for future reference.
You only got a glance at the list, but your perfect recall is sufficient to call it up at will.
At the moment, you are unprepared to weigh in, not having allocated sufficient effort to processing what you’ve read, figuratively rather than literally, but the data remains there, ready to access.
1. Roll back the patented Transparapace™ viewport skylight in the control room to take in the sights of paradox space firsthand!
2. Take advantage of the unlimited appearifier aperture, courtesy of Crockercorp’s generous sponsorship of our universe’s military apparatus!
3. Test your skills on one of the many in-vessel shooting ranges, each of which is furnished with the capacity for any internationally sanctioned small-arm or automatic rifle!
4. Try your hand at one of the many iconic Crockercorp alchemic creations, as described in my cookbook, Jake English Presents: Alchemic Meals in Fifteen Minutes or Less, Featuring Jake English, which conveniently auto-downloads to any wireless device used onboard!
5. Have a nip of the good stuff - on us. All Skaianet ships designated class-800 or above are kitted out with a fully stocked liquor cabinet for each stateroom!
6. Compete at a round or four of insider-vetted trivia on the lives, achievements, and follies of Earth C’s elder gods!
7. Tone up with any of a vast catalogue of hikes, sojourns, and mountainous peregrinations, all available in full augmented reality at any of a number of exer-ports located in common spaces throughout the ship!
8. Enjoy our near-infinite archive of multidimensionally licensed comic books and graphic novels, featuring Earth C’s favorite heroes and heroines, as well as a few of mine!
9. Summon up an augmented reality companion to follow you about your duties on the bridge, now including two different simulated first guardian settings!
10. Get creative with your onboard wardrobifier, each of which includes your own personal stylist, an artificial intelligence provided through extensive interviews with sub-deity of space, creator of our universe, and noted fashionista Kanaya Maryam!
11. Keep those combat skills sharp in our anti-gravity scrum simulator, now improved with greater flame-resistance and a wider variety of simulated combat partners, including yours truly!
12. Catch up with the latest flicks, beamed straight to the big screen via spacey-type mechanisms, in our fully-outfitted theatre!
13. Indulge in a variety of top-of-the-line pre-formulated baked goods, with inbuilt alchemic instructions courtesy of Crockercorp!
14. Round up some buddies for any of a number of rousing party games, from king cup and raise your glass to the classic can-flipper and kill-Lord-English!
15. Make use of our exo-vessel life support field to briefly experience the ice-cold vacuum of paradox space yourself, more or less safely!
You resolve, before too long, to give a few of the tutorials a try. There is no knot too complex to be worried at and unravelled. The ship, and the walled-off corners of your father’s mind, are not enigmas to be dismissed. They are distractions in which to indulge; problems to be solved.
(1.422e+9 milliseconds since she let you go.)
The phone is warm against the chrome plating of your chest.
You will have to think of somewhere else to store it. Kept so near the place where your heart ought to be, it is almost too heavy to bear.