[Entry 006]
“Reducing engine thrust to 10% . . . 8% . . . 5% . . . Holding.”
“Hi again, we are less than 18 hours from attempting station keeping at L1 around Greznar and its sun. This should be the best spot for making use of our solar panel arrays. Today we ran a few maneuvers to make sure my thruster repairs are holding up.”
“Main engines now in cool down, 0% thrust, all station keeping thrusters have nominal performance. Time to L1 deceleration 15 hours 50 minutes 23 seconds.”
“The Goliath is massive compared to my small research vessel in the docking bay, but the control systems are surprisingly intuitive. That, or the ship’s AI is just doing all the work and fixing my mistakes faster than I know I’ve made them.”
“But here we arrrreeeee sitting in a tin can!”
“Ah, right, meet my new pal Pax. I got him up and running just in time to start our deceleration maneuvers. We took some liberties with his language model while we were hurtling towards Greznar. I have left a series of way-points in our wake, like little breadcrumbs, with a few tunes from the library. Now we just need to wait for our friends to catch up with us.”
“Life support alert: Insufficient O2 for 6 month journey, recommend atmos scoop within 4 months of arrival at Greznar-Sun L1.”
“Ideally, we won’t need to wait that long buddy.”
“Additional recommendation, ABBA album playlist during deceleration maneuver.”
“I like the way you think already Pax.”
“Excellent, Pax has many playlists to share.”
“Will I get any input?”
“Affirmative, your favorite playlists are also in the mix.”
“Perfect, well, I must sleep. Please keep a sensor on everything while I do – and do me a favor, do not wake me up with heavy metal like you did today, okay?”
“No metal will be played. How about Vivaldi?”
“Now we’re talking, yes please. I’ll check in once I’m fully awake.”
“Yes Captain Vega.”
“You don’t need to call me captain, just Vega will do.”
“Affirmative Vega.”
“… huh.. I guess I really did program an AI that always has the last word.”
“Affirmative.”
Project Icarus 