>>5560954>>5560311>>5560501"The ship contacted you?" Eyes-of-Night asks incredulously, while continuing to fuss around you with her medscanner and auto-injectors, "I still can't get a signal through to the crew through all this noise. It sounds less like a dead channel and more like a smorgasbord of crickets on a hot summer's day." She says with relish.
You shudder at the thought, having made the mistake of sampling Tyllano cuisine once before.
"Now that I think about it, I only have your say so that our friends are even in there in the first place. You've been acting quite strange, Dallas… are you sure that implant hasn't scrambled your brain?" She consults the holo-display once more, her downy feathers creasing in what passes as a frown for her species. “I’m going to run some tests.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” you reply exasperatedly, trying to puzzle out a solution quickly so that you can help your crew, “The command implant has some weird connection to the ship’s AI… AIs plural? It’s like a little hyperactive kid one minute and an oppressive firewall the next.”
“Mhmm, sounds like someone I know.” Eon murmurs, sticking you with another auto-injector while you’re distracted.
“Ow, stop that! That's an order!” You snap, suddenly stern.
“Case in point.” She tilts her head at an unnatural angle within her domed helmet, a Tyllano eye roll equivalent.
“Either way,” you continue as if uninterrupted, “it can push its ‘emotions’ directly into my mind or apparently even pull parts of my senses and memory out! Half of it is actively stopping me from reaching my potentially dead or dying crew, and the other is asking me for favours. That’s why I’m acting weird, the ship is censoring anything I see or hear regarding this boarding craft and trying to get further out of wherever its fried circuits live and into more prime real estate - me!!” You finish your rant panting slightly, almost at your wits end with the accumulating mental fatigue. Belatedly you realise how unhinged you must sound, definitely not the stern and calm demeanour of Captain Annon that you usually affect while on duty.
“The ship’s AI is a machine, Sir, and a broken one at that.” Your Science officer states slowly and calmly, as if to a terminally ill patient, “It has no ‘emotions’, there has never been any reported cases of memory loss or sensory… censorship? in any of the ship’s medical logs, and I should know - I’ve read them all. You’re simply suffering from stress and the side effects of misused repair nanites, completely understandable under the circumstances but it must be treated.”
“It’s not stre- HEY! I ordered you not to- That’d better not be a sedative!” You attempt to back away from the overzealous medic, back you are still pressed up against the entrance to the boarding craft, a chill runs down your spine.
