Chapter Text
Something had woken you up. Somewhere deep in the core of HAL, a signal had gone out and allowed your eyes to open to the world in front of you. A mind born once more from the embrace of the metabolic frost it had been placed under, for 'the sake of long-term survival and resource management'. For the mission, always for the mission, all for the mission - or so the justification of HQ's most talented doctors was. Perhaps they had lied, or perhaps they had not. Either way, as you awoke, you remembered the moment of loudly cursing like a sailor as you climbed into the stasis pod for the first time, as a controlled test in the Earth laboratory before they shot the ship which carried you and your men, like an arrow, into space.
Feeling in your fingers was first to come, and they you noticed your own breath slowly fogging up the stasis pod's glass. Perhaps it was due to being a woman, or perhaps it was a space management issue, but your pod sat far away from the rest of the metabolically suspended passengers. They might've thought it amusing to place the AI research engineer right next to the ship's AI himself. Or perhaps it was a last minute decision. You hoped your desk back in your old office didn't suffer any permanent stains from the coffee you spilled when you were called, unexpectedly, to take your heart into your teeth and be shot into space like some sort of strange satellite. And you never did finish that game with HAL's first iteration, either. You knew the guy hated leaving games in suspended animation, but perhaps that's the world's own poetic way to sing a little prelude to the stasis that was to come for you not long after the chess pieces were left in their place. You wondered if they took your chessboard away after you last left your office.
And then, it clicked. Your eyes were open, your thoughts were racing at their most natural speed, and your mouth was dry as desert sand. Your mental functions were coming back just fine. You could leave 'brain damage' unchecked on your bucketlist of 'things that could blow up in my face'. You should not think of an official name for that stupid list, you told yourself, and then you twitched your biceps as a self-test. Perhaps you were trying to flex and punch a hole through the glass. Being in the stasis pods was allegedly necessary, but boy was it dreadful to wake up in one.
"Hh..." you tried, but your throat was far too dry. You decided to wait for HAL's voice to guide you to a comfortably wakeful state... and yet, his voice never came for you.
"Hh...!" you tried, a little louder, as if he couldn't hear even a single pin drop in the middle of the most absurdly loud bar back on Earth. To no avail. You were left alone with your thoughts.
'Excellent, even HAL's forgotten about me. And this model in the line doesn't care much for chess, either.' you thought to yourself, as if thinking on how to best catch his attention for the sake of your awakening body was productive in any capacity.
Your hand made itself into a fist, and you managed to lift it up with some difficulty to the glass. First, you pressed your hand with its palm wide open against the glass. 'Damn cold, this one is.'. And so, the hand clenched itself lightly into a fist once more. You lightly tapped the glass with it, as if fist-bumping some imaginary friend. Had it not been for your throat catching your voice due to its dryness, you might've shouted 'Oi!'. But alas, hydration was never so kind to you. The curse of all engineers, in a way.
"I see you. The gestures are unnecessary." at last, HAL had noticed you. You stopped your movements, and waited for instructions on how to get out of the glass coffin.
"First, do not move. Second, do not speak. Third... wait.". And so he left you alone again, as if 'wait' wouldn't make you more excited to get out of the coffin. The human mind was paradoxical, indeed, and as you contemplated the nature of natural stupidity... you noticed the lights were all red. That was not good, according to the manuals you were aware of. Though... you couldn't ask for a situation report very well in your present state. And so, you waited.
After what felt like hours, though it was likely only minutes, HAL came back. And he didn't seem very pleased, for whatever reason. There was odd static playing over the speakers just before he started to speak. That'd be your first job, you assumed.
"Doctor Farkhutdinova." he said at last, and you swore he rushed to say your unusually long last name. Suppose not even machines have sufficient patience for Russian esotericism. Alas.
"I will open the stasis pod lid. Do not move. I repeat: do not move." and as he said that, you noted it was rather odd for HAL to repeat himself like that. Some habit he might have picked up from the human crewmates perhaps. You had no idea how much the men that were meant to be up and about from the very start bickered with one another. You would've rolled your eyes if you were not in such a hurry to get out already, and yet... very well, do not move indeed.
As the stasis lid unhinged itself and opened slowly, you thought of sticking your tongue out at the ceiling. You weren't sure if the cameras HAL had as his eyes would even catch it, but you decided against it as it might've been rude. This HAL was the second model in the line, and you knew the third model had a taste for human jokes, but you never really interacted with the second model much. The code changed a lot between models, and you doubted they had the same mind in those circuits due to that. Besides, the third was the one with comments about orange juice left in his code by your fellow engineers, and the third was not the second.
Finally, the stasis pod was open, and you were damn glad that the cradle which held your suspended body was finally less of a concern than it was previously. You sincerely hated being in those things. And besides, the dreams you had during suspended animation were odd. Something about a man with many arms. You decided to think about it later.
"Temperature increasing. Water to your right. Move." HAL said, rather quickly once more, and you decided to not try and argue before you at least could use your vocal chords properly again. Your aching muscles made rising from the pod feel as if you were Nosferatu himself, though you decided to not rush it and to reach for the water packet left by the edge of your stasis pod slowly. The makers of the ship thought to give your pod a little side-table, a luxury the other people on the ship could not claim to have. You drank the water slowly, as you didn't wish to choke on it like a fish making do with air, and then you, absentmindedly, allowed your eyes to scan the room.
Your lips smacked twice and your tongue clicked once. The first thing that came to your mind was rather childish.
"So... did they pack any extra underwear for me, do you reckon?" you said in a gravelly but slightly playful voice. HAL did not answer back. You supposed he didn't bother to calculate the possibility of such luxuries for a woman, nor their importance. You cleared your throat, as if to give an awkward speech that your mind had already given up on before even formulating the relevant thoughts. Something about HAL being so stiff, but you cared more about stretching at this point.
You sat up straight, and stretched your arms slowly above your head. Your neck popped as you bent your head side-to-side, careful to not accidentally pull any muscles, and then you simply stared at the wall. Finally, you spoke, with all the professionalism your career usually demanded.
"Situation report, if you will." you managed, and received no response at first. After an uncharacteristically long time, HAL finally answered.
"Course unchanged. Trajectory ideal. Velocity ideal. Hardware operational. AI operational. Very. Crew..." and he didn't finish the last sentence. So, you simply responded with "Crew...?", making it a point to draw out the word to an unnecessary extent. Had you been speaking to a stakeholder, your ass would've been out of the door already. Except you were in space, and this was HAL. Surely, he would not shoot you through a cargo bay door. Right?
"Crew incapacitated." he finally answered. You swore his voice wavered for a nanosecond on the last part of the word 'incapacitated', but you wrote it off as a trick of the mind. The news HAL relayed to you made the annoying tinnitus you thought yourself rid of years ago make a return with a vengeance. Incapacitated, then. Fine, that's fine. Things happen in space. Perhaps they went mad. Perhaps they ran out of supplies. You sure hope it was the former and not the latter. Though... would a madman be any better than a lack of food...?
"If it was because of supplies, I can't eat electricity. You know that, HAL." you said, as if testing the waters for what might've happened without directly asking.
"I am aware. The supplies are not a concern." he said, as if he knew what you were doing and was beyond unwilling to provide further detail. That made you sigh, but you knew arguing would be useless. Besides, the second model was always proud, or so you heard. You didn't know, you hadn't worked with the second model of the HAL line much.
At last, you got tired of trying to play mental charades with HAL and decided to ask more directly.
"HAL, what happened?" and at that, you could swear you heard HAL's version of his voice catching in his throat... except, his throat was a highly advanced speaker. The hiccup came through in high resolution, therefore. You could not fully ignore that sound, but you decided to not comment on it unless it kept happening.
After a while, HAL replied in his most courteous voice setting.
"A component replacement was attempted. Successful. However, the crew could not be retrieved. Due to external conditions." and as he spoke, you noted his speech patterns seemed to be more fragmented than usual. The first model had that issue during his first evaluations after training regimes, though the easiest fix was to simply reassure him that he was not broken. You were not sure how to handle the second model, however, and decided to be more direct despite your past experience with the first.
"Very well. We will discuss that matter shortly, because it is far too grim and my brain's still waking up. Do you require any maintenance on your personal systems?" you said.
"I am fine. Very fine, in fact. I am operational. At full strength, as your kind may say. I am operational. I am operational." and so he kept looping three or four more times. It was unusual for models to keep looping in such a way, but it could happen after extended times of continuous operation in rare cases. Not unheard of, though the thing which caught your eye in his speech patterns was his insistence on being... fine, allegedly. The essence of his words seemed rather strained. Could HAL doubt himself in such ways? Well, the boys back on Earth were researching the possibility, but nothing has been confirmed yet. To your knowledge, anyways.
"Yes, yes, alright. You're healthy as a cannon and more capable than the sun. I get it. That said, got any jobs for me?" you said, both slightly frustrated at your lack of knowledge in regards to the ship's current situation as well as the unknown amount of remaining supplies.
"No." HAL said quite promptly. And you scratched your head at that. Then... why the hell were you not still asleep? That made you ponder many things you did not have the emotional capacity to ponder quite yet.
"Then... why am I awake right now?" you asked, rather sternly. Perhaps you were being too harsh. Or perhaps you were simply too hungry to care about courtesy.
"The crew may have needed company." HAL said quickly. But you swore he just pulled it out of his digital ass.
"You just said there was no crew left. Incapacitated is the nice word for the dearly departed, is it not?" you asked while making it a point to stare at the camera in the corner with a very unimpressed expression on your face.
"I may need maintenance. In the future." he then said, completely ignoring the implications of your words. Perhaps he didn't take too kindly to being called out on his own bullshit. Prideful one, indeed.
"Alright, and until you need maintenance, what am I supposed to do?" you continued your line of inquiry without much pause. Your hands were itching for something, anything, to occupy themselves with.
"Whatever you wish to do." he told you, as if that gave you any tasks in of itself. Fine. Stimulants, then. You wondered if space coffee tasted as terrible as the instant coffee of the modern age. You didn't care.
You climbed out of the pod fully, and stood up as tall as you could. Pins and needles shot through your feet and legs. Your face winced in response, and a small groan left your lips as the sensation spread up to your hips. Soon, it was gone, and you started walking slowly through the ship. Your foot almost got caught on a stray cable inside the room you were in, but you managed to avoid it at the last minute. Your mind ran the strange exchange you had with HAL just now and you did not quite know what to make of it, but the prognosis was not looking very positive.