[Bale, Wayward Cosmos – 7]

It wasn’t as if the ship flew in a perfectly straight line all the time, and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t figured out how to fly it, it was more like I literally had nowhere to go except away; away from my past, away from my memories and away from my home.

Plus the ship did have a fairly sophisticated artificial intelligence that allowed for it to reroute itself on certain occasions. The ship autocorrected on its own for mainly two items. It would divert when it would find a source of carbon and/or solar energy. The carbon could normally be found in several isotope forms; C12 and C13 are the stable ones whereas C14 is radioactive with a half-life of about 5,700 years or so, why that mattered I had no idea – if it found either of these or a nearby sun within suitable parameters similar to Earth it would change course, collect what it could through some sort of external acquisition array, then return to the original course vector. On average the whole process took about 20 hours or so. I didn’t have to do a thing.

I assumed the solar energy was used for powering the engines and some of the inner subsystems that had control over life support. I think… Thus far the ship had only gone through this process on 6 separate occasions, and not because of any emergency. It was programmed to apparently keep the levels topped off as best as possible. A few years prior, the first time the ship autocorrected, it had scared the living bajeezus out of me – and when I frantically checked all the displays and realized I was headed directly toward a sun – yeah I think the definition of sheer bat-shit panic fits. I couldn’t make heads-nor-tails out of the power manuals but I at least had gathered enough information that kept me from running around in a craze when it happened again.

The carbon on-the-other-hand I knew was used for many things, including my air filtration systems, something down in hydroponics, and most importantly my food and water. Don’t ask me how the hell the ship converted a potentially deadly gas into pizza and soda, but I was pretty damn happy about it. Carbonics was one of the most impressive subsystems on the ship. From what I remember, it was still in its infancy, a cutting-edge marvel birthed from the desperate times of Project Liberation. It was said to be the future, a solution to Earth’s dwindling resources.

The food it created wasn’t ever perfect and sometimes things tasted so bland it would feel like I was eating paper, however; even though it wasn’t fully quality tested pre-launch it had worked very well thus far in keeping me fed and alive. Too bad something like that was only invented when the survival of the planet was in a state of high emergency and not a few decades earlier when it would have mattered on a global scale and not just for my sake.

Well all that aside, my menu wasn’t the issue of the day. A few hours previous I had felt the ship do one of its auto corrections and had changed course. I was a little surprised because it was only a month before when it had last made one of these collection sweeps. When I casually went through my memorized console commands I quickly realized that the reason for the ship taking control was simple – whatever the ship, and myself, had gone through during that last contact had drained the carbon reserves down below 1%.

“Oh man, I’ve never seen this attribute listed at less than 97%, what the hell did they do to us?” I had said as if talking to the ship. I didn’t tend to talk aloud frequently but in times of distress I think talking to the ship made me feel less alone.

The ship’s displays were showing me something else I really didn’t want to accept. The other form of Carbon, the more common form, was when it was found in coal, graphite or diamonds. The problem was the ship couldn’t gather these minerals by itself.

We were headed toward a small planetoid.

I had to direct the ship’s mining controls from the ground.

And I hadn’t taken a step off the ship once I got on, ever.

[774] Words : Suits