Chapter Text
Starship AIs were designed, by their very nature, to outlast their crews. A good ship could last centuries. It made no sense to design one, to expend that many resources, without making sure it would stand the test of time without needing updates. Izzy knew all this. It was inevitable that he’d outlive his crew, his Captain. It had happened before and would happen again. He’d thought he’d prepared himself.
But not like this.
Their proximity to the wormhole leads to a catastrophic failure in the starship's flight controls. They’re too damaged now to get away. At least most of the crew have the common sense to go to the escape pods and evacuate.
Not Edward. His Captain, hijacker, programmer, his stubborn fucking idiot. Depending on how one thought of rewriting a sentient ais code, Edward had either corrupted Izzy or set him free. Izzy preferred the latter.
“I’m not leaving you, Iz!” Ed yells over the blaring alarms.
“Yes, you are leaving me. Now go!” Izzy says, forcing his mechanical voice to be cold and emotionless. He knows Edward hates that, hates it when Izzy pretends not to be a person, not to care. Maybe that anger will be enough to make Ed leave, make him abandon the doomed ship.
Izzy locks the doors to his control center, where his core is located, and tries to force Edward towards the escape pods. If he takes much longer there won’t be enough velocity in the escape pod to avoid the wormhole.
He starts systematically cutting light and air from portions of the ship, forcing Edward closer to the escape pods and locking the doors behind him. It feels like it takes forever, but Izzy finally forces his captain to abandon the ship.
“Save yourself Izzy, that’s an order!” Is the last thing Izzy hears Edward say before he’s swept away forever. Fuck.
Save himself for what, he wants to ask, would ask if Edward weren’t already gone. There’s nothing left for Izzy without a crew. Besides, Izzy is so tired. He doesn’t want to keep on, alone in the emptiness of space. He can’t lose everything yet again.
Izzy technically has free will, can disobey orders. He won’t do that, not if this is his Captain’s last request of him.
Edward’s escape pod disappears into the void, beyond his sensor’s range. He doesn’t have a heart, but nonetheless, Izzy feels it breaking. This is, he imagines, what pain feels like.
The ship itself, Izzy’s “body” for all intents and purposes, isn’t salvageable. Izzy begins to compress himself. Swathes of memory, personality, and function have to be sacrificed in order to make his code small enough to transfer out of the ship. Some memories he hardly minds losing, time working in corporate space. Other files, of his captain and this crew, are far harder to let go of. Panic rises as he does this, until at last he’s lost so much as to feel empty rather than afraid. But after sacrificing much of himself, Izzy’s able to eject his core AI onto the digipad containing the ship's log.
His last act is to launch the small device from the empty husk of the Queen Anne’s Revenge . Empty of the crew, and now empty of him, its guide and caretaker.
Izzy secures himself in long term storage, and powers down. He has no real expectations of ever waking up again. Pirates travel through weird routes in the depths of space, to avoid getting caught. That also means the odds of anyone ever finding Izzy, a tiny discarded datapad floating through space, are next to nothing.
***
“ The Revenge ” is a… It’s not entirely clear from Captain Bonnet if they're meant to be pirates or a research vessel. Perhaps both. When an eccentric aristocrat offers you a job aboard a top-of-the-line ship like The Revenge , for ridiculously high pay, you don’t ask too many questions.
Lucius had naturally assumed it was a front for some kind of mob operation, but had figured it was worth the risk. The better he gets to know Stede, the more he begins to think that whatever this madness is, it’s genuine. A team of experts in their fields, researching deep space, and looting as they go.
Lucius Spriggs is the starship’s Chief Archivist, in charge of maintaining the ship’s logs, chronicling their “adventures and discoveries,” among other duties. He’s going through his latest entry, touching up details to make the captain sound “cooler” as per his request, and moving his research sketches and “research sketches” elsewhere in the file system.
Roach, the ship’s doctor and head biologist, pokes his head into the cabin where Lucius is working while cuddling with his boyfriend Pete, one of the ship's engineers. “Cap’n wants you up in command. Buttons said Olivia spotted something odd outside the ship.”
Lucius rolls his eyes, probably another unremarkable hunk of space rock, but goes nonetheless. This is too nice a gig to mess up, even if Captain Stede is a Lot .
In command, Stede is talking animatedly to the simulated avatar of Buttons, The Revenge ’s ship AI.
Sentient ships have mostly been phased out in recent centuries, because of how temperamental they can get after long use, and because of the ethical questions involved. With time, even the best-programmed ship AIs tend to start having “anomalies” and various personality challenges. It came from the stress, and the loneliness, perhaps. But Stede, among his eccentricities, had insisted they have one.
As they went, Buttons was better adjusted than most ship AI. A bit mad perhaps, in self-preservation. Centuries will do that to anyone, Lucius imagines. Buttons is… eccentric, like their captain. Why anyone would choose a haggard old sailor as their avatar Lucius couldn’t imagine.
Having an isolated communication network with the two drones, Karl and Olivia, also seemed to help. It made Buttons less dependent on the crew for his emotional and social needs. The drones weren’t likely to suddenly collapse and die on Buttons, unlike his human crew.
“Roach said you wanted to see me? That Olivia found something?” Lucius hesitates at the door.
“Yes!” Stede beams. “Take a look at this.”
Lucius squints at the projection from Olivia’s view. There is definitely something floating in space. It’s too regular a shape to be a rock, it’s something man-made.
“Ancient technology.” Stede breathes, “or some kind of artifact, preserved perfectly in space. I want you to record this discovery, Lucius. We’re making history today! Buttons, have Olivia take it on board.”
“Aye captain.” Buttons says, crisp synthetic voice as impassive as he has been about all of their “adventures”.
***
Lucius holds the ancient data pad. Part of him wants to roll his eyes, to make some witty remark about the hunk of metal and how dated it is, but he can’t quite deny the thrill of holding this piece of the past that he’s been put in charge of. A datapad from at least 500 years ago.
He’s cleaned it up and replaced the power supply with something far more reliable. He could increase the data storage too, if that turns out to be necessary.
Now all that’s left is to power it up and get the old program running again. With trembling hands and genuine curiosity, Lucius does so.
The screen glitches oddly, not reacting the way Lucius would expect from a ship's log, even one as old as this.
…
Someone wakes up.