>>5598600>Speak with FoZ about the ship’s AI You trust that your XO has the defence of the ship well in hand, despite your Science officer’s misgivings, and use your mutual recovery time to bring your friend Finder-of-Zephyrs up to speed with some of your personal interactions with your voidship’s AI subsystems.
“So there I was, staring into what my eyes were telling me was nothing but my head knew must be something important. This boarding craft seemed so advanced, yet there were four more identical ones that we blasted to dust only five minutes earlier — it was like they were expendable.” You can feel the jittery effects of the stims coursing through your blood at this point and have turned that energy towards rapid exposition. “The team had gone dark and with my command implant suddenly working a little too well I figured something must be up. It was messing with my mind FoZ!”
Your Engineering officer blinks owlishly at you, stroking his beak with a feathery forefinger, seemingly deep in thought. It takes him a moment to realise you’ve finished speaking, but eventually he tilts his head in a Tyllano shrug, eyes once more blinking with reflected blue light.
“Hmm, powerful artech indeed if it can so subtly influence both your emotions and senses. <span class="mu-g">How could you ever be truly sure of your personal objective experience ever again?</span>” His deep voice takes on a peculiar timbre that sounds vaguely familiar but you can’t quite place it. No matter.
“A curious concept… terrifying implications of course, but curious.” He finishes.
“Ah, but I found a way to bypass it,” you lean forwards over the still complacently obliging armrest that is WEAVY, and whisper conspiratorially, “by making friends with that other intelligence I mentioned, Peedee, I had a way to ‘see’ through whatever the Guardian AI was doing to my vision. She may seem childish but she can draw well enough that I could tell the crew was trapped by some stasis field emanating from — get this — a miniature LIVE voidcore!”
FoZ is suitably surprised by the revelation and you are satisfied with the reactive jolt you get out of the usually unflappable Engi officer. You proceed to tell him about your subsequent battle of Wills, first with Peedee and then Guard, resulting in you saving your friends and acquiring the voidcore. At least until it was confiscated and you had to talk Control into installing it for you while Guard was off on a wild wyrm-hunt pursuing Peedee.
“And that brings us back to the present, I helped Peede sneak back into the mental control room and we’re keeping it hush-hush so that the Guardian doesn’t come back and try to interfere any further.” You finish with a small smile as, right on cue, you receive a flash of elation through your link. At the same time your tactical officer’s clinical description drifts down from above, a visual confirmation of the five destroyed torpedoes of your initial long range interception.
