4. Living Core

'I'm boooooreeeedddddd.' Abyssal yelled out internally.

Indeed, it was boring for the spaceship. She has been stuck in space for almost a year with nothing to do other than look at a black screen with an occasional twinkle or an image with a green filter. There was literally nothing else to do. She had already read every single book within the Captain's quarters. Even studied the star maps from pixel to pixel.

Multiple times.

She had looked at every single nook and cranny of her spaceship. She also took the time to investigate every single one of her system and functions. Abyssal even went as far as trying to break the door to her engine room- risking damaging her only working drone- to see if she could at least solve her reactor problem.

She banged and pulled on the door with her metallic robot arms, but it was no use. The drone she had simply lacked the strength to open the bulkhead. Maybe if she had two drones she would have been able to open the door to the engine room, but alas the other drone was out of commission until she could find a new chip or core for it.

It wasn't all bad news though. During the past year, Abyssal had gotten pretty good at using the drone and more or less mastered her machine side. She figured out that she could self diagnose her systems and even run parallel tasks to compute complex algorithms and such. She also noticed an ability within herself to split her consciousness into many parts in order to multi-task.

She was rather proud of herself. Whatever she really is, she seemed to be one hell of an advanced sentient being. And as such, the (bored) Self Aware Ship ran a full diagnosis on herself and listed every single functioning system that was connected to her.

List of inventory and systems:-Small 2 Passenger Corvette(Fighter size)-Mini Nuclear Reactor(uranium rods have been spent, on decay energy, very low energy output)(15MJ/s)-Lancetech Antique Thrusters Mk1(Unable to use)-Lancetech Omni Camera(350° view)-Old and Cheap (Lancetech) Night-Vision Cameras x 3-Lancetech All-purpose drone x2(Night-vision equipped)(Drone 2 unusable)-Robotic Old Text to Speech Modulator(Female)-Old Radar. (Damaged, limited range)-Standard Life Support system for 2 humans-Directional Propulsion System(Damaged, limited manoeuvrability)

Abyssal let out a sigh as she saw the full inventory of the ship's systems. This ship was the literal definition of obsolete and damaged. And these were only the working parts of her system. There were numerous other systems, such as the backup generator, the energy storage tank, and the weapons systems, all of them were no longer functional.

'I can see why Kapitan died. She was in a really bad situation. I wondered what happened to cause all these damages to the system? Was she being shot at?' Abyssal wondered, but decided not to delve too deep into the matter.

There really was no way to fix her situation. Well, there was one, but it would require her to actually fix the energy storage tank, which would allow her to store excess energy for burst usage. She would also need to fix her directional propulsion system, a system that allowed her to slow down and/or steer the ship around. It wasn’t damaged to the point where she couldn’t steer. The current system will do just fine. As long as she wasn’t navigating a dense asteroid field or something.

The only problem with that solution was that the energy storage tank was located within the engine room. A room that she can't open with the single drone under her control. If she could just fix that component, she could theoretically be able to start moving around. It's not like she wasn't moving, it was just that she was moving too slow. At the rate she was going, she would probably die from boredom.

Space is vast. Very very vast. Two kilometres per second might sound fast on earth, but in space, that’s basically snail speed. As a reference, at the speed that she is going, it will take her about four and a half years to get from the Earth to Mars! (assuming the average distance of 291.85 million kilometres). That was not acceptable for Abyssal who was about to die from boredom.

‘If I could only get into the engine room somehow…’ Abyssal thought to herself.

Maybe if she had nanotechnology, she might be able to enter the engine room— like those small nanobots that consume and self replicate. Of course, life wouldn’t be that simple. No way such a convenient thing would be available to her out of nowhere.

Abyssal let out an internal sigh and brought out her current energy usage. She needed to see if there was a way to activate her thrusters with the meagre power that she has.

Current Energy Usage: Lancetech Omni Camera(350° view), low energy mode = 6 MJ/sLiving Core = ???????? Energy usageLancetech All-Purpose Drone x 1(Night vision equipped) = 4 MJ/s

Total usage = 10/15 MJ/s

‘Hmm? Living Core? Was this here before?’’ Abyssal found something strange within the report.

Could the… Living Core refer to herself? She was basically the closest to a living thing within this hunk of metal after all. Curious about the matter, she dug into her machine-self in order to find more information about this ‘Living Core’. It wasn’t long before a notification message popped within her consciousness.

Living Core Summary:Name: S.A.S. Abyssal.Consciousness: ActiveCurrent Setting: Emotion > LogicComputational usage at 0.7% (Power Insufficient)Assimilation/Control of Ship: 74%(Progress halted)

‘Woah, woah, woah! What the hell is this? Why have I not seen this before? Assimilation? And what is this about power usage?’

Abyssal asked herself plenty of questions but to no avail, none of this made any sense to her. She could tell that it was herself, but nothing more.

‘Also what the hell? I’m only at 0.7% computational usage? Does this mean I can be a lot smarter if given the energy to do so?’

“Negative. Computational usage represents the total percentage of logic usage within Abyssal. Not the indication of intelligence.”

‘Shut up, machine me. I don’t remember asking you that question! I already know that! You and I are the same thing! If you are going to answer me then answer me about Assimilation!’

“Assimilation. The percentage of the system currently under control of Living Core’s Nanomachines. Nanomachines are required to repair and control the system of the ship from the Living Core.”

‘Woah, woah, woah! What the hell!? I do have Nanomachines!’

Abyssal could not believe herself. The mention of the word nanomachines made her hopeful. This was potentially something that could change everything about her current situation. There was only one problem though, the fact that the assimilation was halted at 74%. She asked herself why has the assimilation stopped?

“Halt is due to insufficient Nanomachines. Materials needed to form more Nanomachines from Living Core.”

‘Heeeh…. What kind of materials do I need to create more.’ She asked her machine self.

“Virtually any type of metal or alloy.”

‘...’

Abyssal had a hard time deciding that day whether she was lucky or not. Lucky as she found a solution to her problem. Unlucky as she found the solution to her problem one year later than she should have. Or perhaps… she was simply dumb?