The crackling wail of the siren woke him with a start. He was in an unfamiliar place, a small room with a bed and a door, all steel walls, and a single light that looked much like a florescent tube. The bulb flickered while attempting to release a miniscule amount of light. There were a few panels that looked like screens, but they seemed to have no power to them.
He swung his feet off the bed and sat up. The room span, but he managed to stay upright. How long had he been here? He could not remember. He could not remember arriving, or even just the previous day. He has no idea where, or even when he was. He did, however, know he would starve off he did not get out of this room. That was his prerogative now, food.
He looked round the room itself, scanning the sleek, albeit old, furnishings to see if there was anything that could help him. All he could find were some bed sheets, a digital picture frame, two aluminum wrapped bars of some sort of snack, a small combat knife, and a pair of glasses. Surprisingly, these objects seemed to be far newer than the rest of the room. It was like they had been put here by some absent puppet master, left for him to find.
He looked at the picture frame. It was a sheet of glass with its own power core inside it. The picture frame itself had thirty pictures, of a man and a woman. Both were similar beyond belief, he assumed they must have been twins. The photos showed them growing up, still thick as thieves, eventually growing into adults with different professions, but no more distance between them. Oddly, at the photo he had to assume was the twentieth by the number at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, the pictures of the twins stopped. The only thing the man could see was a black screen, and his face. Despite not remembering anything of worth, he recognised that face. It was a face he had seen often, the face of the man in the photos.
He stopped. Putting the picture frame down he had to process what he saw. Were those pictures him? He seemed so close to the woman, if so how could he not remember her? If the photo was him, then who were they? Who was he? Why could he not remember?
The more he racked his brain, the more he realised he did not know anything about himself. He had to get out. He had to find out if there was more to this situation than a stainless steel room with soft carpeted floors. He had to find out who he was.
He put the photo frame down and looked around again. That thing would bring him no more answers, only questions. It was time to find a way out. Looking around the room, he assumed there were only two entrances, and exits to the room; the door, and a vent in the ceiling.
He frowned. He reckoned he could reach the vent if he jumped off the bed, but he had no idea where to go from there. If he did jump into the vent, like he planned, he might lose his way and starve. It was risky, but he would starve if he did not leave the room anyway, so he decided to risk it.
Hopping onto the bed, he lined himself up to the grate that covered the vent and leapt. He soared through the air and missed the grate by around twenty centimetres. Crashing into the ground, a 1 popped into vision before quickly disappearing. What was that? He thought to himself. Brushing himself off, he stood up again. As the only damage he had taken was a slightly bruised arse and some damage to his pride, he tried again.
This time he caught the grate, but could not pull it off, and promptly fell on his arse again. He cried out in frustration, then stood up and tried again. This time he overshot, slamming head first into the grate. A 2 appeared in his vision, before fading away like the 1 had, then he sat up. He grumbled and rubbed his head then looked up at the grate once more. It creaked and swung open, letting a large amount of dust and a small box fall into the room.
Rolling out of the way, he looked at the box. Judging by the layers of dust, this container had not seen the light of day in a very, very long time. He wondered what it was full of, but he realised that the box just contained a thirty centimetre long metal lock box, with a pin pad on its door. Frowning, he tried to enter the first six digit number he thought of, but all that popped up was a blue ERROR notice, stating that he had used up one of his six daily attempts at the code. He sighed and thought about attempting to enter the code six times a day, starting at 000001, but quickly realised that if he did that every day and the answer was 999999 then it would likely take him centuries to find the correct code. In the end he just moved the box into the corner of the room and began on thinking of a way to get into the vent.
He lay back on the ground and stared up at the vent, trying to analyse every corner to see if he could attach the bed sheet to anything. There were three places he could attach the sheet to, but none of them looked like they would be able to take his weight alone. There were two tubes that stretched across the top of the vent system, and a hook that seemed to hold the ventilation shaft’s grate in place. The longer he looked at it, the less likely he thought that climbing up with the bed sheet was going to be. Good thing I didn't cut it up he thought.
The best, and perhaps only option seemed to be that he would have to try and jump for the hole and then pull himself up into the shaft. It was ambitious, especially as he did not think much of his muscles, but he was running out of ideas. He rubbed his hands together like a weightlifter stepping up to his weights, then sprung from his bed towards the grate. His hands made contact with the ledge and he whooped with joy, but his elation was short-lived. Mere moments after he gripped hold of the hole, his body weight passed a tipping point and he slipped out, crashing into the door. Another 2 popped into view, and he began to get slightly dizzy.
Staring at the door, on his arse for the fifth time that day, a slow sense of realisation crept over him. Did I check the door? He thought, slowly getting up from his prone state. He walked over to the door and a little panel by the side of it lit up.
UNLOCK DOOR? YES/NO
He swore. He was not sure what language he was swearing in, but he knew it meant something crude about the door's mother. Hitting the yes button on the display, he heard a series of bolts slide back into place loudly, before the sound of a hydraulic pump went off and the door slid open. He swore at the door again. This was turning out not to be his day, whatever day it actually was.
He stepped into the hallway and the door hissed shut behind him. The dim light flickered weakly, barely illuminating the path in front. Turning round he looked at the door he came out of, feeling rather foolish for not realising the door was open. The face of the door he had come out of was covered in scratches and smeared in grime, but he could see two words printed on the left side of the door at eye height; Captain Robert. He wondered if that was his name. In the end, he decided that if it was not it would be. Robert. He liked the sound of it, it flowed off his tongue well and he had nothing else he could call himself by.
“Hello Robert,” he said to no one in particular. “I like the sound of that”.
He looked at the hallway in front of him. Either direction he could see no more than about fifteen feet in front of him, and he had no idea which direction he had to go. Was he in some sort of mining complex, or maybe an underground bunker? There was no way of knowing, until he got to some sort of nexus or control point, what kind of place he was in. He shivered. Out in the hallway was much colder than the room he had been in, even the steel floors were slightly too cold to bear. He moved back into the room, the cabin, and began looking at the four screens he could see. Each one was tethered to a specific wall, but only the door screen still had power.
The screens were all uniform, with a thin glass panel that took up the majority of the panels themselves. On the sides they had two thin steel sections that looked like a frame, the left side firmly embedded into the wall, while the right had an ejectable glass tube embedded into it. The tube was empty in most of the panels, but in the door it was half full of some sort of blue fluid. Robert looked at each tube and then took the single semi-full tube out of the panel near the door. He watched the panel flick off immediately and looked at the tube in his hands. No longer was it glowing blue, instead it was a completely inert turquoise liquid. He walked over to the next wall and replaced the tube in the panel there. Immediately the tube began glowing again and the panel flickered into life.
ANASTAR CLOTHING AND STORAGE UNITOPEN? YES/NO
The message popped up on the screen, and Robert immediately hit yes. Smoothly, an almost completely invisible panel in the wall pushed out and moved to the side, revealing several sets of jumpsuits and a large box. Robert immediately grabbed one of the black and blue suits and put it on. It fit well, like it was made for him. Next he looked in the box, inside were more of the snack bars and two sets of sturdy boots. He put on a set of boots, tying them tight before closing the alcove and taking out the blue tube. Moving on to the next screen he inserted the tube and watch the panel light up.
ANASTAR SECONDARY STORAGE AND ENTERTAINMENT UNITOPEN? YES/NO
He pressed the screen and watched as the next panel slid open. This time, rather than clothing there was another, larger screen, a camera, and a chest containing various personal items. There were books, a pouch, a leather jacket, and an odd glove with a metallic ring round the palm and a slot that looked like it would fit a blue tube in the back.
He put on the jacket and the glove, they seemed like they suited the ensemble he was putting together, and then grabbed the sunglasses but after a moment he put them back down. That’s a little bit too much, he thought to himself. Attaching the pouch to his hip, he filled it with the ten sets of snacks that he had found, and then closed the storage unit. The big screen had no slot for a blue tube, so the only thing that he could do for now was leave it alone. Moving on to the next panel he inserted the blue tube once more.
HELIOLAB ARMS LOCKER
OPEN? YES/NO
Robert opened the door once more and looked inside, but the majority of the locker was completely empty. The only thing that was left inside was a single baton and one more tube filled with the blue fluid. Somehow he knew that the tube went into the baton and allowed it to act as either a light source, a flare or a stun baton. He kept the baton in its short form, just so he did not accidentally stun himself, then put in the full battery. It would use far more power if he intended to have it on all the time, and going into the dark without a light seemed far more foolish than he had been opening the door.
He was prepared. He was ready to go into the darkness and find out where the hell he was. Retrieving the half filled blue battery from the now closed arms locker, he moved to open the door. He could not keep the battery once it was in the door, so he would have to make do with the full one. He would be able to get back into this room as long as the battery lasted, but he had no idea how long the power in the tube would actually last.
He moved back into the hallway and turned the baton on. The fluorescent blue light began spreading out, letting him see around ten metres in front of him rather than the two that the low light levels had gifted with him beforehand. He could see the grim, rusted walls with more detail, and saw the deep rivulets through the walls. He wondered what had caused such deep scratches in such thick metal, but the amount of rust that had built up over them made Robert think that whatever had done this would be long dead.
The more he looked around, the more Robert wondered how long he had actually been asleep, and where he actually was. Each step he took echoed down the hallway, the sound travelling back and forth, making Robert feel like there was something following him. Every so often he would look behind him, but there was nothing there, just the hallway stretching far beyond his eyes could see. He still could not shake the feeling that he was being followed. He did not know whether there was something actually following him or whether it was just his echoes and the cloying darkness making him feel uncomfortable, but it was hard to tell either way.
Every ten metres there was an open door, built very similarly to the one Robert had originally come out of, but each room had been forced open by whatever had scratched up the hallway outside his own. They had been ransacked, or at least attacked enough that the was nothing left of worth inside any of the storage lockers. Robert could not even see the nameplates on the doors because of the animal damage and the rust. He hoped the beast was long since gone, else he might have some trouble.
The further he walked, the more desolate the hall became. The rust did not worsen, but the ambient light did. Even the gravity field of the area seemed to weaken considerably. His footsteps made less sound because there were less steps being made. His strides extended until he was floating for two or three seconds with each bounce, but that seemed to be the upper limit. He moved along as quickly as he was able, but he was beginning to think that there was nothing else for him to find in the hundreds of living quarters that he had passed. He gripped the baton tighter, then smiled as the hall began to lighten up. Perhaps there was something else for him to find after all.
Quickening his pace once more, he sprung towards the doorway it was coming from. A smile was beginning to form on his face, but that froze as he turned and looked at the room he had been confronted with. In front of him was a small rocky plateau that stopped abruptly, quickly disappearing into endless void. To his right, he could see asteroid after asteroid, and to his left, surrounded by the countless stars that littered the cosmos, was a whirling blue spiral. There was no way to know how large or how far away it was, all he knew was that there was a faintly flickering shield separating him from open space.
He swallowed the saliva that had been building up in his mouth and moved back into the hallway. Trying to calm his breathing down, he used the baton light to properly look at the screen to close the door. The tube in it was broken in half, but the screen was still intact so Robert pulled the glass shards out of the panel and then ejected his mostly full tube from his baton. He pushed the tube into the panel and the doorway panel lit up in a deep red.
WARNING: HULL BREACH DETECTED, SUGGESTED METHOD - SEAL DOORWAY AND CUT OFF DEPRESSURISED AREA.ENACT CONTAINMENT METHODS? YES/NO
Without a second thought, Robert hit the yes on the screen and watched as the doorway hissed shut. Other than the normal closing sound there was the sound of something shunting and locking place before the screen returned to its usual soft blue light. The panel simply said DOOR SEALED DUE TO HULL BREACH, so Robert had no idea how he was going to fix the breach if it came to that, but for now all he could do was leave it be, and continue his hunt for some sort of control centre or a power supply room.
He pulled the tube out and fumbled with it until it slid back inside his baton. The baton did not immediately ignite, instead he had to press the bottom in and the light functionality so for the first time, Robert was plunged into darkness inside the strange place he had woken in. There was something truly unsettling about being alone in complete darkness, especially as he knew he had been mere nanometres away from the endless void of space, that blue spiral, and death. The only thing he could actually do was turn back and try and find a place that actually had energy.
Returning the way he walked, he slowly moved back towards his room. The hallway still echoed, but Robert was beginning to get used to the sounds. At this point he was not sure what he was more terrified by, the idea that he was alone, or that he was not. Still he kept moving, step after step, back into the standard gravity area, back into the lit area, then finally back outside his own room. He kept going, the light was dim, but he reached a door. Like everything else in the ship, it was running on minimal power, but unlike the rest of the doors, it was actually powered by something. Robert hoped that there would be something he could salvage beyond the door, or at least something that would tell him where he actually was.
He hit the open button on the barely working panel and watched as the door hissed open, revealing a wide open room. In the centre of the room there was a raised area, like a table, and three seats next to it. The room dropped down a stage, where there were eight large glass panels with seats next to them, all facing the huge screen that dominated the room. Through the screen, all Robert could actually see was the blue spiral. He could not even see the other asteroids that surrounded the area. It dominated the skyline, and made him feel humble. He was so tiny in the grand scheme of things. Shaking himself out of his existential stupor, Robert walked over to a nearby panel and watched as it booted into life.
NOSTROMO COMMAND DECK//WARNING HEAVY DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO HULL////WARNING LIFE SUPPORT FAILING////WARNING ENGINE FAILURE////WARNING POWER CORE CRITICALLY LOW//ENACT RAVAGE PROTOCOL? YES/NO
Robert stared as the various warning symbols flashed on the barely flickering screen. So it’s a ship, he thought absentmindedly as he pressed the yes button. There was very little else he could actually do, so even if this ravage procedure did sound distressing, he was lacking in other options.
After a minute, something in the ship kicked into life, and there was a screeching, crunching sound. The longer the sound went on, the brighter the lights became. Whatever the procedure was doing, it was returning power to the command deck, and to life support on the ship in general. He looked around the ship and wondered what the hell had gone on, and what had happened to him for him to wake up so late in the ship’s life.
As the centre table flickered into life, Robert moved over. This was likely the command area, so would probably have control over the majority of the ship’s systems and could show the diagnostics for the area. He sat down in the middle chair and felt comfortable, like he belonged there. Touching the table, it lit up and presented him with more text on a holographic screen.
NOSTROMO COMMAND DECK
//WARNING HEAVY DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO HULL////WARNING ENGINE FAILURE////POWER CORE (RAVAGE PROTOCOL) RECHARGING: 1%//WELCOME TO THE NOSTROMO COMMAND DECK CONTROL CENTREENACT BOOT PROCEDURE? YES/NO
A keyboard sprung up on the small panel in front of Robert, and without a second thought he immediately hit the enter key. A string of text popped into his view, and then devolved into forty or fifty loading bars. As each loading bar completed, it would disappear until finally all that was left floating over the control centre was a circle with an arrow passing through it in the shape of an N. It span twice before splitting into a screen showing the Nostromo in full.
The vessel was far bigger than Robert could believe. Spanning at around two kilometres in length, the ship held more than enough room to house hundreds of people. Each layer of information loaded in and more information about the state of the ship loaded in. From the map in the ship, Robert could see that the ship was not in a good way. It seemed like the ship itself was split into five parts, only held together by a series of cables originating in the section that held the core power room.
The disconnected sections of the ship could be split into five parts according to the map. Robert was in the head of the ship, the command centre. The second section was that of the armoury, and the control centre for the weapon banks. The third section held engineering and the power core, it was the heart of the ship that connected the first two sections of the ship to the rear. The fourth part of the ship was the one that contained the medical bay and the data banks of the ship. Finally there was the bottom part of the rear of the ship, which held the hold and the botanical gardens.
As Robert looked over the map of the ship, a few more parts of the user interface popped up, including a screen that held the scanning data from the previous time the ship had actually been running. The last date was 4782.131, which meant nothing to him, but did mean that if he found the current date he would be able to work out how long he had been on the ship. Unfortunately because the main data banks on the ship were in a disconnected part of the ship, he could not see any of the data. Whenever he tried he simply got a message saying //ERROR: DATA BANK CONNECTION FAILURE// so eventually he just left it alone.
There was very little Robert could do, but he poked around and tried to find anything that he could put to use to try and get himself out of the hell hole he was in. It was unlikely he would escape, but he had to try. His stomach rumbled and he pulled one of the food bars out of his bag. He knew he would only be able to survive for nine more meals if he did not find some more food soon, but he was so hungry he could not help but take a bite of the brown slab in front of him.
He moaned in pleasure as the food passed over his tongue. He knew it was just a simple packet of all the required nutrients for a person, but it actually tasted so good. The sensation of food in his stomach for the first time since he woke up only helped point out that he was sorely lacking on food. He needed to find a way to get more food quickly. As he mulled over food, a box popped up on the screen.
NOSTROMO CONTROL CENTRE
ANALYSING USER. USER RECOGNISED AS T1307, ROBERT ALHOMONLY CURRENT LIVING MEMBER OF CREWREASSIGNING DESIGNATION: CAPTAIN... PROTOCOLS 100% LOADED
[[Hello Captain]]
Robert stared at the computer screen. Was that his name? Robert Alhom? What did the T1307 mean? He could not help but sit and wonder about what the screen had just shown him, but as he did, the screen changed and warped into a face.
[[I believe that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, Captain]]
Robert looked at the screen again. The screen was talking to him. He rubbed his eyes. “Are you talking to me?” There was a crackle as the intercom system crackled into life.
[[Yes, Captain. I am talking to you]] The voice was synthesised, but it helped Robert relax. He actually had someone else to talk to. [[My name is AIDAN, the Artificially Intelligent Directory And Navigator, however as I do not have any connections to the data banks in sector four of the ship, and the ship is in no viable state to fly, I am only operating at 20% optimal capabilities]]
“Well, nice to meet you Aidan. What can you tell me about how I can get the ship running again? I need to survive, and the only way I will is if I can get the ship to begin producing food and water again. As it stand I don’t have enough food to survive more than a couple of weeks and I have absolutely no water”. Robert watched the floating head as he talked. It was odd, but he felt he could trust Aidan. He did not know if it was his memories coming back, or simply his natural need to have a companion that made him feel that way, but either way he was happy that he had someone who could help him.
The screen flickered and //SCANNING// popped up in place of Aidan’s face. After around thirty seconds the AI appeared in front of Robert once more. [[Captain, I have tried scanning the ship, however the majority of sensors are down. The majority of protocols in general are down, but the sensors outside of this room are currently just out of power. Once the Ravage Protocol restores enough power to the core, I will be able to scan at least the section of the ship we are in. However I did manage to scan this room, including you and should probably tell you that your body seems to have some sort of infection of nanobots]]
“Is it bad?” Robert had no memories, but he knew that he had no way of dealing with waking up and then dying again immediately. He had only just come back to the land of the living.
[[There does not seem to be anything to worry about Captain, if anything it will likely do you more damage in its current form than if you charged up the machines. Like everything else in the ship it, the machines seem to be almost completely out of power. Fortunately you have a recharge glove on your arm, so when the Ravage Protocol has finished making enough power to run this section I can start producing Visvitae fuel cells and you can recharge the nanobots in your system. It should only take a few more minutes but then we can see what oddity you’ve been infected with. If only I had a connection to the data banks I could find out what it was]]
“Is the fact I am injected with nanobots normal? Was it a norm within the people who crewed this ship before the Nostromo landed here?”
[[If only I had the data banks active. I would be able to find out so much more than I currently can remember. It’s like some part of me has been cut out. I can’t even remember why the ship is in such a bad state at the moment. Or even what year it is. It’s infuriating]] The image crackled, the face of the man that Robert assumed was Aidan warped into an expression of rage. [[I WANT MY MEMORIES BACK!]] the synthetic voice screamed. The face quickly morphed back into it’s calmer original shape and sighed. [[I apologise, my emotion code seems to require debugging as it is a little overactive after the amount of disuse I have experienced. Excuse me for a moment]]
The Nostromo symbol flashed in Robert’s view and then a //DEBUGGING// sign popped up on the screen. Robert sat by the screen, waiting for something to happen, but after around a minute, he decided to see if he could do something else. He looked at the panel that he had been typing on and saw there was a menu button in the corner. He pressed it and began flicking through the menus that popped up. Most left him with error panels, but the map of the ship and the transmission logs were still intact. He also saw that there was a ship wide scanner that had activated since the beginning of the conversation he had with Aidan. It was only on twenty percent, but it would soon be complete.
As the scan reached 40% the hologram shifted from the flashing debugging sign, back into Aidan’s face. Aidan flicked around and then smiled at Robert. [[Sorry about that, I would have done it in the background, like the scan you seem to have found, but I wanted it done quickly. Either way, the Ravage Protocol has reached 3% which means it has a small amount of excess power to turn into two Visvitae fuel cells. One should be arriving... now]]
As Aidan said that, a tube popped out from a panel beside Robert’s control screen. Taking a deep breath, he slammed it straight into the slot on his hand. It began glowing and draining. Within seconds, the entire vial had drained into Robert and his vision began swimming. His head swung backwards and his body began slipping off his chair and onto the floor. The world was spinning and everything was echoing.
[[Robert! ... Robert ... robert ... Are you okay? ... okay ... ‘kay ... The scan finished ... finished ... ‘ished ... It seems that there ... there ... is another life form here ... here ...]] He could not focus, his mind swam and his vision went black. All he saw before his vision faded to darkness was another loading bar.
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