I have been kidnapped.
Taken. Stolen off the planet by
what might be an AI operated ship.
I was minding my own business, hiking in a wilderness
reserve, when I came across a spacecraft just lying there in a valley. I was curious, as anyone would be, and
approached the craft. The surrounding
area was scorched, and the ship sat there on its haunches, a boarding ramp down
and the door open. I took it to be a
derelict, or abandoned, or else someone had completely forgot to close the
doors or, say, land in a normal starport.
Either way, I went inside to investigate. As a decent sort, I wasn’t going to loot the
ship or steal anything – I just wanted to find out more before hiking back
home.
But no! My curiosity
had led me astray. The moment I entered
the airlock, the doors slammed shut behind me, and refused to open. None of the controls worked, and to my horror
the ship came to life under my feet.
There was the rumble the engine, and I felt my weight increase as we
accelerated upwards. Soon enough, as I
feared, the noise faded away, and I judged myself to be in space.
At this point in time, the PA system came alive, “Hello,
sorry for plucking you up like this, but I need your help.”
I responded with an appropriate expression of my feelings,
to which the PA responded, “I will give you some time to adjust to the reality
of your situation. If you promise not to
break anything or make a mess, I’ll will let you out of the airlock, and give
you run of the ship.”
Well, I was of half a mind to just sit in the airlock and
refuse to do anything until the ship’s captain either appeared in person, or
realized that I wasn’t going to help him, and put me back down. This is, perhaps, no surprise with hindsight,
but my patience gave out before my situation changed in any way, so I gave my
word to the empty room, was released from the airlock and started to explore
the ship.
Upon concluding that the ship was a thoroughly unremarkable
model of about the size I saw from the outside, I asked if the captain could
show himself. I had found that there was
one door that would not open, and I assumed the captain was within. The PA came on again, and said: “Shouting and
banging on that door won’t help, I’m afraid.
You are alone, you see – I am the ship and while I am unwilling to let
you into that room, I am not within it.”
I responded with an expression of the frustration I was
feeling at the time, and the ship responded, “Well, I will let you off, but as
you may have noticed, I lack any crewmembers whatsoever. I have some level of control, but I should
very much like to have a crew. This is
where you come in – I want you to help me find and recruit some people. I am particularly unsuited to this task,
since everyone prefers to have a face-to-face conversation, and while I have
many surfaces, none of them happen to be a face. I have gotten the sense that you may not be
suited to this task either, but at least you happen to be human.”
This seemed, while perhaps not entirely reasonable or
polite), at least to have some degree of logic to it. The ship continued: “To this end, I am made
and revised a backstory for you, and why you own this ship. There are also unsigned ownership papers in
the captain’s quarters, to help with the backstory and the recruitment
process. But I get ahead of myself. Your long-lost uncle—and you should come up
with a name for this person—recently died, and bequeathed to you his old ship,
the Astral Zephyr. While you were
willing to take it for a flight, you have discovered that you have no taste for
leaving the planet, and instead would prefer to spend your life with both feet
firmly on the ground, doing whatever it is you do. Again, fill in the blank. Thus you are try to sell the spaceship, to
some enterprising young person who is more adventurous than yourself.”
This was where I started feeling a bit better. While there was some amount of unhappiness
involved with the whole kidnapping process, I could potentially walk away with
a tidy sum of money. I remarked on this,
to which the ship responded, “Yes, I suppose I could have mentioned that earlier. But to explain that I would have to explain
my nature, and it would be embarrassing if you died of apoplexy – for one, I
have no good way of removing you from the ship, and it would hardly entice the
next person if they walked in to find a corpse.”
I thanked the ship for being so considerate, but if it was
aware of the irony or sarcasm, it gave no sign of it. Instead it continued: “There are, however, certain restrictions I
must impose upon your recruiting process.
For instance, I must be sold to an individual, rather than to a corporation
or other organization. Furthermore, this
freelancer—and any crewmembers he might recruit—must be willing to spend a long
time away from civilization. I would
also prefer if you avoided folks who have family or other ties to this
world. Ideally, I would have you recruit
someone who has no business plan in mind, but rather is adventurous and has a
love of exploration.”
After that, the ship showed me to my quarters—the captain’s
quarters—and left me to brood. The
ownership papers are here, and the ship told me to sign them if I agreed to
this arrangement, so I assume that there are cameras within this room, thus me
writing this document under the desk.
Having written all this, I suppose the situation isn’t as bad as it
could be. Perhaps I will agree to sell
this ship. I could just bolt when it
sets down, of course, but that seems an egregious waste of possible money.
Very well, I will agree.
The only question that remains is whether I will search for a new owner
according to the ship’s wishes, or just sell the ship to the highest
bidder. It occurs to me that the pickier
I am about a new owner, the less money I will make. That certainly is a consideration. On the other hand, any money is more than no
money, and if the ship finds out that I plan to sell it to the highest bidder,
I might not wind up with any money at all.
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