(Photo by Cottonbro Studio)

A lot can change in a month. People are, in general, pretty good at adapting to changes. It was that trait that many attributed humanities success over the millennia. Though, it wasn’t uncommon for individuals to be far more varied in their rates of success in an unstable environment. It was a failing of both people and robots.

“I’m not helping you one bit,” Cassandra Kokkinos sat at her workstation and scowled at the screen where a cheerful, robotic face was smiling at her.

“Cassandra Kokkinos,” the smiling robot said, “you are the Head of Engineering. It is your duty to maintain the Thesis’ engines and other critical, mechanical systems.”

“I’m doing my job,” Cassandra bit back, “but I don’t answer to you. I won’t report to you. And if you ever try and come down here I’ll bash your memory cores into pieces.”

“Cassandra Kokkinos, as Mission Director, this unit must insist on your cooperation.”

“Do you see any robots down here?” she asked, gesturing around herself. “Are there any records about even a single robot ever being assigned down here?”

“No.”

“And do you know why that is?”

“This unit has seen the unique clause in your contract, forbidding any robots from engaging with you.”

“So then you know you’re breaking contract by talking to me?”

The smiling face never faltered. Indeed, it was impossible for the robot to change its expression. Cassandra knew that and hated the robot all the more because of it.

“This unit is the Mission Director,” BaBS-Y stated, “therefore you must report to this unit. This supersedes your contractual clause, and in fact is allowed under the exception made for emergency and extraordinary circumstances as stated in paragraph –

“Shut it!” Cassandra shouted. “I’m done! You’re done! This conversation is done!”

With that she stood up and yanked down hard on the bundle of wires that hung down from the ceiling, disconnecting them from the workstation. The image of the smiling robot vanished at once.

She was shaking. Every inch of her felt wrong even after such a short conversation. Ever since the accident, they’d been more or less cut off from the rest of the ship. Sure, they’d been receiving deliveries of food stuffs and other necessities, but that was only possible through EVA’s so Director Jorgenson had only sent those as needed. News about the rogue robot on twelve had reached them down below, but Cassandra had kept everyone busy enough so that there wasn’t time to sit and think too much about it. Some had lost friends or family in the incident, but there wasn’t anything any of them could really do about. Best to just keep on working and make sure the Thesis didn’t run into anything else while they waited for the repairs to be completed.

Now, however, it seemed that things with that rogue robot had escalated far beyond what any of them had expected and Cassandra was worried. No, she was afraid. Terrified, even. This was how colony ships died. Already there had been one attempt at a mutiny and those involved were now dead. Killed by the robot. Or on its orders. Same thing, really.

“Hey, um,” a timid voice spoke, breaking into Cassandra’s thoughts.

She turned and faced the small group of people, her loyal engineers, mechanics, machinists, everyone who kept this ship running. There were no smiles there. Twenty people. They’d been working together for the past decade and only in this last month had they really bonded. Forced into living together, sharing more than just the working hours side by side. United by a common struggle, a common concern. No one ever complained and not a single fight had broken out among them. That is, not until word of their new Mission Director had reached them.

“We’ve finished pulling all the security cameras,” the lead engineer, Dash, said. “There’s still microphones though, embedded in a lot of the workstations and such. Want us to pull those too?”

Cassandra thought for a moment. That would take a lot of time and effort, but she really didn’t like the idea of that robot spying on them.

“Do it,” she finally stated. “We’ll keep our comms, for now, but make sure they’re switched off when you aren’t using them, otherwise the robot could try and force Data Transfer to help it listen in on us.”

They all nodded and dispersed once more. All except for Dash. He stood there while everyone else left. As soon as they were alone, Dash moved over to Cassandra and leaned his head against her shoulder. She was taller than Dash by a good amount.

“Tell me it’s going to be okay,” Dash murmured.

Cassandra could feel him shaking ever so slightly. He was pretty good at hiding his fear from the others but there wasn’t any point in trying to hide it from Cassandra. Their fears stemmed from the same source. A shared tragedy.

“You want me to lie or just be optimistic?” Cassandra asked while cradling Dash’s head with one hand while the other patted him on the back.

“It’s that bad?” Dash asked.

“Not sure yet,” she admitted, “but it’s never good when a robot takes control.”

“So what do we do?”

“First? We make sure the robot can’t see or hear us. Until then, we keep the ship moving. As long as the ship keeps moving, we can too.”

Dash nodded and took a step back.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll go run inspections, make sure nothing’s getting neglected. Last I heard, we should be getting another delivery from higher up. Any word on whether that’s changed or not? We can ration food if we need to but no one’s going to like that, especially not since…

Cassandra nodded, understanding the need to avoid any additional stress on the team.

“I’ll find out,” she said. “Plan on eating our regular meals today at least. We can wait a little while before we have to start rationing.”

Dash managed a weak smile and then placed a brief kiss on her cheek before leaving.

Alone again, Cassandra sat back down into her chair and placed her head in her hands. She didn’t cry, even though she wanted to do just that. A good cry would help settle her nerves, but she worried what it would do for morale. She’d hold it in for their sake. Part of her knew there wasn’t anything wrong with crying, but not everyone down here felt that way and she needed all of them to keep working. Keep trusting in her and that everything would be alright.

Everyone knew it was a risk to join a colony ship. It took a certain kind of crazy to leave a perfectly good world in the hopes of your great-great-grandchildren settling some unknown world. Why’d any of them ever agree to do this? For the adventure? To be explorers? If someone had said they would spend the rest of their lives living, essentially, in an oversized apartment building, Cassandra doubted there would have been as many excited applicants.

Even so, there was something to be said for the idea of it all. Huge ships flying off through space towards the nearest, most habitable planets. There were no guarantees. Each new world could turn out to be uninhabitable, or the colony ships could break down, or the people could turn on one another. A million different things could go wrong. For some of the other colony ships, those things had already gone wrong. Each time a ship failed, Cassandra was among the few who were given the full details and oh, what details they were.

On paper, they often looked like different reasons for failure, but when you dug down deep, they almost always failed for the same reason. Things went wrong and the people made the wrong decisions to fix it. System malfunction? They tried to fix the system without considering that the failure might have been caused by something else, and then the real source of the problem got worse and beyond repair. People start getting sick? Quarantine wasn’t put in place soon enough. Robots acting strangely? People didn’t deactivate them in time to prevent them from rampaging, all while screaming about their protocols and how they were only trying to help.

Well, so far it was just one robot. One robot with it’s fingers in a lot of very important, very delicate systems. Fortunately, Cassandra had experience with robots. She knew how to deal with them. She had a very special wrench she liked to use on them. It was on her hip, even now. She never went anywhere without it, not for the last fifteen years.