10. Foreign Living Core

A Rubik’s cube is a three-dimensional combination puzzle. One can solve the cube by getting all the sides to have only one colour. It was a toy that Abyssal could never solve in her past life. Not because it was a hard puzzle or anything, but simply because she didn’t bother to learn how to solve it. Indeed, you could go around and ask people to solve this cube and nine out of ten of them will probably not know how to solve it. Abyssal was within that nine.

A sense of intrigue and amazement filled Abyssal as she rotated the cube around with her robotic arms. To think that after a millennium and lightyears of distance away from earth, she would encounter such a toy just floating around.

In any normal situation, Abyssal would have just ignored the cube and floated away. She was never interested in this puzzle cube in the first place. Despite awakening as a ship and spending a year stranded in space, it’s not like she missed earth so much to grow an attachment to anything earth related. Although it might be interesting to bring the cube back to the ship as a way to kill time if she was bored or something.

Indeed, that was what she would have done if this was any normal situation. The thing is, Abyssal could feel something resonating within the cube. The reason that she was even drawn to the cube in the first place was because her instincts told her that there was something strange about it. Something dormant. She didn’t know how, but she could tell that this cube was not any normal puzzle.

‘Hey Abby, how long would it take for us to compute the algorithm needed to solve this Rubik’s cube?’ Abyssal asked her machine self.

“Allocating 1% of computational power to task. Enabling Geometric Sequencer. Calculating optimal steps to solve puzzle.

Calculation done. The most optimal way to solve Rubik’s cube is within 18 moves. Computational usage utilization returning back to normal.”The message from her machine-self appeared within less than a second alongside the eighteen steps required to solve the Rubik’s cube.

‘That’s fast! Furthermore, that’s just one per cent of my computational usage! Wow! I really am some sort of supercomputer, huh?’ Abyssal thought upon her true capabilities.

That thought can wait though as Abyssal has a more important task to do currently. Namely to solve the Rubik’s cube within Kaon’s robotic arms. With haste, Abyssal rotated the cube in an attempt to solve it. She set the instructions within her mind into motion and rotated each part as according to Abby's calculations.

Slowly but surely, the cube became more solved. Each side of the cube slowly gathered the colour pieces it needed. At the end of the eighteenth step and a few rotations later, the puzzle was solved and each side showed a different colour. Abyssal observed the cube in order to make sure that she did each step right and that the puzzle was indeed solved— all while letting out a satisfied nod and a job well done.

'Well, it was Abby who did most of the hard work, but I was the one who actually rotated the cube around! That was hard work too you know!' Abyssal exclaimed to nobody in particular.

It was then that the cube suddenly expanded.

'Uwah?! What's this?'

The cube continued to expand until the joints of the mechanism that held the cube together broke apart— the small pieces of the puzzle were sent flying all over the place. Abyssal unconsciously put her (imaginary) hands over her (imaginary) face in an act to protect herself. This action, of course, was futile as she was not a living person anyways.

…...

A few seconds passed and Abyssal finally opened her eyes to see what actually happened. She looked around the room and did a system check on Kaon. She let out a sigh of relief when she figured out that everything was fine and nothing went terribly wrong.

Whatever it was that she did, it seemed to have caused the cube to shatter. She was lucky it was not some big explosion that could have destroyed Kaon. She cursed her own lack of caution and reminded herself that this was space and she was dealing with unknown technology. She needed to be more careful about doing these kinds of things.

Once she checked that everything was fine with the drone, Abyssal turned her view to the cube. Or at least where the cube was supposed to be had it not blown up.

'Eh?'

Surprise came over Abyssal as she saw an object in the location where the cube was supposed to be. It was a glowing shiny metallic orb that floated eerily in the room. Its size was slightly smaller than the cube. It seemed that the cube was simply a container to hide the true identity of what was within.

Unlike before, where Abyssal could 'feel' that the object was special, now she knew that it was special. There was something about this orb that resonated with her soul.

'Smart… very smart. The looters must have left this object here thinking it was just any other toy puzzle.' Abyssal thought to herself. Whoever the person that came up with the idea of hiding something like this within a toy was pretty crafty, Abyssal can't help but to feel impressed.

Now the question was… What was the identity of this shiny glowing orb? Was it a compact power source? Was it some sort of special key to a space vault? Questions popped into Abyssal's mind as she tries to uncover the identity of this orb.

Though she didn't need to wait long for an answer. There was one method that she could use to instantly identify the object.

Abyssal touched the orb with her robot arms and sent out a small cloud of nanomachines stored within Kaon in order to assimilate the said orb. Why ask all these questions when she can just do this and find out all that she needed to know?

Like with all the sensation of assimilation, Abyssal felt as if the object was slowly being put into her imaginary mouth. As the cloud of nanomachines surrounded the orb, so did her sense of taste appear. This feeling of eating technology via nanomachines was her favourite part about assimilation.

'I wonder what it would taste like? Strawberry? Chocolate? Vanilla?' Abyssal thought to herself, clearly excited at the thought of assimilating a special object such as this.

Her expectations were betrayed when she tasted the most obnoxious, revolting thing that she's ever had in her life. It was like eating rotten flesh mixed with rotten pineapples. For the first time ever since being a ship, she felt the sensation of wanting to throw up badly. And she's not even alive!

The situation became worse when the information about the orb started to flood her mind. It was information alright… just not the kind of information that she expected. Unlike her previous assimilation where all the information made sense, this one… was all jargon and incomprehensible data.

It wasn't just that either. The data that flowed into her mind was endless, instantly overwhelming her thoughts and sense of self. She didn’t even know how she was still awake and conscious throughout all of this. It was then, that she could feel a presence. A visage of a woman appeared within her sight.

No… not within the images of any of her cameras, but an imaginary image within her own imaginary world. A world where Abyssal was clutching her head because of the headache she was having from assimilating the orb. Despite the painful sensation, she managed to turn her head around to look at the woman who was in front of her.

What Abyssal saw was a woman wearing a Victorian Maid uniform who had long grey hair tied into a long braid that goes over the front of her body. She was well proportioned and the way she stood up showed elegance and respect. Her grey eyes stared into Abyssal’s own eyes. The two of them shared a moment staring at one another when all of a sudden the woman gave Abyssal a respectful bow.

“Emergency protocol activated.Error. Error. Foreign Living Core not compatible with self Living Core. Continuation of Assimilation may result in permanent damage.

Assimilation aborted.”

Abby’s message rose to the top of Abyssal's mind, bypassing every other thought and sensation. Soon after this message was sent, the disgusting feeling that filled Abyssal’s mind disappeared and Abyssal could think normally again.

For a good few minutes, all Abyssal could do was just stare blankly at the night vision image in front of her— at the shiny glowing orb.

‘...what the hell?’ Abyssal thought to herself as she continued to stare at the orb— a Living Core according to Abby, her machine-self.

The very same existence as Abyssal.