Unexplored Territory

Even when he had been in prison he had at least known who his captors where, but here in this place, he felt completely helpless. “We have ****,” he said to the distraught Twelve, “we should explore this deck. If these are crew quarters than maybe someone left something behind that could give us an idea of what the hell is going on here.” He tried to keep his voice flat and expressionless despite his fears.

He began walking down the hall towards the nearest door but stopped when he didn’t hear Twelve following. He turned to see the young woman standing there, her face stony and emotionless, but Calvo could clearly see tears in her eyes. He felt a wave of sympathy for the guard. He stood silent for a moment, staring at her, than he did something he never thought he would do, he walked over to her and took her into his arms holding her tightly against him, comforting her as best he could.

“Get off me,” she whispered, but made no move to extradite herself from his embrace.

“Hush now, it’s going to be alright,” Calvo reassured her, rocking her gently. It was just too much for the young guard. Unable to contain her fear and frustration any longer she collapsed against her former prisoner and wept into his shoulder.

When her tears were finally spent she pushed Calvo away gently and looked up at him. Her face flushed and she opened her mouth to say something but no words came out. He turned away quickly, pretending not to notice.

-

Despite the inoperability of the lifts and wall hatches, Calvo quickly noted that all the other door systems seemed to be working without error. They opened the door to the room closest to their position. It turned out to be an apartment, there were two rooms, one slightly larger than the other, and what Calvo assumed was a bathroom. The only furnishings in the room appeared to be an assortment of chairs, ranging from deep soft armchairs to steel benches, he was disturbed to note that one of the chairs was an exact replica of the ones in the small craft they had escaped the mercenaries with. Twelve walked up to one of them and touched it lightly “It looks brand new!” she exclaimed. Calvo nodded his agreement.

“Too new actually,” he told his companion, “This ship looks to be several thousand years old, yet even these fabric chairs so no sign of ageing.”

Cautiously they inspected the room, but apart from the chairs, it looked as if nobody had ever lived there. Finding nothing of interest they quickly exited the room and went to the next. Unsurprisingly it was the same thing.

They searched the other apartments but found more of the same. There were variations in the rooms to be sure, some were larger with as many as five rooms, while others had but one, but they all shared one common trait: they looked like they had never been lived in.

Tired and frustrated they stopped in an apartment similar to the one they had first explored. Calvo slumped into one of the large chairs while Twelve opted to stand. “You might as well have a seat,” Calvo told her, waving to a comfortable looking sofa, we aren’t going to find anything here.

Her face reddened, “I don’t think that would really be appropriate,” she said, drawing the jacket he had lent her tighter.

He raised an eyebrow, “you didn’t seem to have a problem with me seeing you before, why the sudden modesty?”

She didn’t respond.

“It’s because eighteen isn’t here isn’t it?” Calvo finished for her.

Without saying a word she turned away from him and walked into the adjoining room, the door closing behind her. Calvo shook his head, wondering what the hell he had said to deserve such a cold reaction. What did it matter? He thought to himself, letting his mind wander.

For the next half hour Calvo just sat in the chair thinking, going through everything that had taken him to this point. Five years ago, when he had been caught and thrown in jail for smuggling he had thought his life was over, but through a series of strange twists he had freed himself. He smiled ruefully at his predicament, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Maybe this was his destiny he thought, closing his eyes. Maybe if he could sleep he could think of a way out of this maze.

…….

The ship watched intently as Calvo’s eyes closed and his breathing slowed. Had it given up, was it dying? Alarmed, the ship searched its vast databanks for any indication of what might be going with the male being. It found nothing.

The ship realized it would now have to make a choice, either it would have to wait and see what would come of this new development, or it would have to actively engage these beings in some way. It quickly scanned the other beings, there were no changes. If only they had been aboard a larger ship, the ship could have determined their needs much more fully…

The ship realized it was panicking. Viciously it suppressed the unwanted emotion and deleted several trillion lines of code that had not been there seconds before. It had not been designed to feel anything at all, but these errors were cropping up more and more often of late.

Still, it had to make a decsion.