10/7/2340
“Good morning, Abby. This is our 1001st day together. I hope you slept well.”
If Abby strained she could tell the female voice was artificial, but after all this time she didn't see the point.
“Did you get a signal through?”
“No. We're out of range of the Puck.”
“We're in the damn Puck.”
“We've been over that, Abby.”
1/7/38
“It is not a question of if this starship will explode, only a matter of when,” the ship's physicist said.
“I can't accept that, Ms. Hrin,” the commander said. Being the least talented of the three, he was naturally in charge.
“That is your privilege, but I assure you your 'acceptance' is irrelevant.”
“Can you talk sense into her, Abby?” he put his pad down and tried to rub the math out of his eyes.
“Wish I could, sir,” the ship's builder wasn't happy with what she was reading, but didn't have the luxury to deny the science. “The numbers show a steady rise in ...”
“You have one job, Ms. Okeke, and it's not ship's calculator. Fix whatever it is or find me someone who can.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“It'd mean going into Diyu.”
“Diyu?”
“A name for one of the more unpleasant afterlives in human culture. In this context it refers to the 15% of a starship that is both occupied with equipment and rendered lethally radioactive by the nth ray drive.”
“We have rad suits.”
“They are inadequate,” Hrin stated.
“And Diyu is completely sealed off. We'd need to be in shipyard to get in there without killing ourselves. Even then it's tricky.”
“You're telling me that there's almost a quarter of this ship that we can't fix. That makes no sense.”
“I find it interesting that after two years in command you are just becoming aware of this. And that you find that 15% is 'close' to a quarter.”
“We have robots in there.” Abby broke in before Hrin could talk her way into the brig. “Sealed in. They can handle 99.99% of all repairs.”
“Fix it, then.”
“This falls into the other .01%.”
10/7/40
“The next relay point is only two hours away, Abby.”
“Are you picking up any actionable items?”
“Nothing serious. Two blockages and a cascade event.”
“Overlay, Lisa.”
A 2D map of the area superimposed itself on Abby's view screen. It would be easy to think of it as a maze, but a real maze had a way out; Abby didn't need 1,001 days to know there was none.
The relay glowed like a beacon to the west. The blockages were two black stains on the map southwest and north of her. The cascade a waterfall even further north. Abby was the stick figure always in the middle.
“Fixing all three will double our time, Abby.”
Abby started walking towards the north stain.
1/8/38
“I thought you said Diyu was sealed?”
He didn't look like he'd gotten much sleep last night. None of them did; he just looked like he'd supplemented his insomnia with alcohol.
“Hrin thinks we can override the teleport.”
“Theoretically. And only one person.”
“Me.”
“Thanks for volunteering, Abby.”
“There's just one thing you're gonna have to sign off on, sir.”
“Anything.”
“I'm going to need the LiSA.”
“The botanist? I believe Ms. Vance's given name is Lois.”
“I'm talking about that Life Support Automaton on command deck.”
“The 'in case of emergency, break glass' robot?”
Abby nodded.
“Do you have any idea how much that thing costs?”
“Less than our lives.”
“Is it absolutely necessary?
“Ms. Okeke will need at least an hour to effect repairs. The best radiation suit in ship's stores will fail long before then. A LiSA, worn in crash suit mode has been known to keep its occupant alive up to three years under conditions similar to those found in Diyu.
“If this works I'll put it back where I found it, good as new. If it doesn't work we will all be dead.”
“Do what you gotta do, Abby.”
10/7/40
CRACK
When the lever failed, Abby started punching the boulder.
“Let the service bots take care of that, Abby.”
CRACK
“They'll ignore it. Like all the others.”
“Then it can't be that important, can it?”
“Little things add up.” CRACK “Over time.”
“You should be more concerned about getting out of here. You can do more out there than trapped here.”
CRACK
“How many relays have me and you tracked down now?”
“37. But that's ...”
CRACK
“How many rescues?”
“Obviously we …”
CRACK
“Lisa! … I need to vent. Just leave me be while I blow off steam beating on something I won't feel guilty breaking.”
CRACK
1/8/38
“How do I activate it?”
“Voice prompts have been input.” Hrin took a step back from the pedestal.
“LiSA, this is Abigail Okeke ship's builder on the starship Puck. Initiate crash suit protocol.”
The crystal spike embedded in the robot's head glowed green as it started to move. It lurched off the pedestal but glided to Abby like a snake who'd gone straight from hibernation to hunt.
The front of its great metal and glass head slid up while the main chassis split down the middle and peeled to either side revealing a woman-sized cavity within. It came up behind Abby and docked its empty limbs and torso with hers, pushing itself onto and over her like a magic suit of armor girding its knight. The head lowered and the rent down the front fused shut around Abby.
When it was done it had swallowed her completely leaving only a woman-shaped robot.
“Ms. Okeke?” Hrin asked.
“I'm ok. Just a little weirded out. I'm wearing a frickin' robot, Hrin.”
“Hello, Abigail,” a voice said close to her ear. “I'm Lisa. I apologize for the question, but why did you engage this mode? I don't detect any emergency.”
“I'll explain on the way.”
“Why's everybody flying?” The commander said.
There were no observation points directly into Diyu so he, Hrin, and a handful of other experts were watching the CCTV feed on the command deck.
The room they were watching looked like a featureless white void that stretched on for hundreds of meters. A closer look showed the surface was covered in an elaborate pattern, the same white as the rest of the room, almost invisible to the lazy eye.
Two meter-tall robots hovered several centimeters above the ground carrying the armored Abby with their robot arms as she worked probes into the delicate pattern.
“The surface of Diyu, floors, walls, and ceiling, is one huge nth ray circuit.” Hrin explained. “Ms. Okeke cannot set foot in there or she will inflict further damage.”
“Her robot can't fly?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps you should take that up with the manufacturer, sir.”
The commander ignored the physicist and pushed a button on his console. “What's your status, Abby?”
“The robot hands are slowing me down. Give me a couple more minutes and I'll be done with the delicate stuff. The service bots will be able to take it from there.”
“Hrin's got teleport control slaved to her station; say the word and you're out of there.”
“Got it.”
Five sets of eyes stared at the screen as the robot bound woman finished her work. While none of them had Abby's expertise, four of them at least had some idea of what she was working on. Only the commander was surprised when she said she was done and ready to port out.
Ship's teleporters were never meant to handle living organisms, but they could be tricked if the person operating them was savvy and reckless enough. Hrin was both those things.
Abby couldn't feel the ship's sensors focusing in on her, mapping out every atom of her body, the motion of each quark, but the LiSA could. A holographic progress report filled the space between Abby's face and LiSA's visor.
Abby saw the problem before Hrin, but it was already too late.
1/10/38
“Attention, all crew,” the commander's voice said over the ship's PA system. “Two days ago, at a little after four PM, ship's builder Okeke volunteered to perform emergency repairs in a heavily irradiated part of the ship. Upon effecting those repairs builder Okeke was lost when ship's teleport failed to stabilize. After two days of exhaustive search including ship's sensors and robots I am forced to conclude that she is dead, her body lost in a teleporter malfunction. We owe our lives to Abby's sacrifice. A wake will be held in the cafeteria tonight.”
1/8/38
Abby was wracked with pain as she flickered in-between states of existence. When her body finally decided where it was going to be she was falling. The robot voice whispered impossible things in her ear, but she was too focused on the rapidly approaching ground to pay it much attention.
The landing was anticlimactic. Abby had gotten worse jolts falling out of bed then she had tumbling out of the white sky. She lay in the valley between two white cliffs.
“Where am I, Hrin?”
“Communication is offline, Abby,” the robot voice said. “Didn't you hear me tell you what happened?”
“What? … No.”
“There was a critical teleport failure. The system automatically tried to salvage you, by shunting as much of your mass as it could.”
“What are you talking about, robot? I've got all my parts.”
“Yes, but they're only 40 microns tall.”
10/7/40
The relay was where Lisa said it would be. At this scale the Diyu's circuits would have been an impenetrable maze if Abby didn't have the robot to guide her.
There wasn't much that Abby's tools could do at this size. After nearly three years she'd tried everything she could think of with no luck. Lisa didn't have the power to punch a comm signal through the radiation. And it wasn't like there were any five-micron computer interfaces on the floor of a part of the ship no human was ever supposed to go. From time to time she'd see the giant service bots flying over head like the last storm clouds of the apocalypse, but she was too small for them to bother with.
That left 63 relays spread out over hundreds of meters of floor space. Thousands of miles to Abby. She could interfere with power to some noncritical systems. Make a light flash on and off in code. It hadn't worked yet, but Abby knew it was just a matter of time before Hrin saw one of her messages and translated her call for help.
Hrin was the smartest person Abby had ever met; she'd know what to do.
She had to.
“I hate to bother you, commander, but I think you should see this,” the navigator said.
“What?”
“Remember that glitch we had at the comms board a couple weeks back? And the security station a month ago? And the ones before them?”
“The intermittent flashing light? The one that always turns out to be a glitch?”
“Yes, sir. I'm seeing it on helm.”
“What does your diagnostics say?”
“It's a glitch.”
“Then why are we talking about it?”
“The thing is, sir. And I know this is going to sound weird, but I think it's not just a random pattern.”
“What else could it be, Ms. Park?”
“Communication.”
“Are there any signs of anyone in sensor range?”
“No, sir.”
“Then it can't be that.”
“Still, I'd like Ms. Hrin to see this if you don't mind.”
“No. Hrin's in the brig for a very good reason; she's not getting any field trips.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We've been in deep space a very long time now, Ms. Park. Systems develop quirks. All we have to do is get through the next six months, visit the shipyard, and get the glitches ironed out. Till then we just have to ignore the gremlins.”