"... and she's posing for consumer products now and then", replied Drell.
"you don't say", said `Captain Scarlet' flicking up his hologoggles to look Drell in the eye momentarily.
"I didn't even noticed her leave. Poor Ankh. Guess she couldn't hack it ... wanted something more meaningful to do", `Captain Scarlet' continued.
`Captain Scarlet' had been a woman the week before but had grown tired of it and remade, complete with a bushy sea-captain's beard. He was sitting hunched over on a lime green foam easy chair, jerking off and looking about ready to vomit.
"Yeah, it's a hellofa lifestyle", Drell muttered and turned the other way to scan the electronic charts.
For a moment Drell reflected that it was eight years to the day since he'd had to do anything of real importance for Juggernaut and he was one of the more important of the eighty-member internal support system.
`Captain Maddox' appeared in the doorway, her muscles bulging, snorting and breathing heavily. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes, fiery and glazed, fixed on `Captain Scarlet'.
"On", thought Drell, looking at her. He decided to leave before things got really distasteful.
(beta)
checking size of char *... 4
checking for objdir... .libs
checking for g++ option to produce PIC... -fPIC -DPIC
checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate
checking whether stripping libraries is possible... yes
checking command to parse /usr/bin/nm -B output... ok
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
The mind moved from one circuit outpost through relays to the next, initialising maintenance, regulating systems, clearing temporary databanks, rerunning programs, deploying maintenance androids to configure, make and install new components. It flickered from one end of the two kilometre long hull to the other and back again.
There were practically no straight lines aboard the ship.
Drell wandered through the access tubes reminding himself why he was there. The Sol system had a population of 50 billion people, of which the Juggernaut offered the 80 `best and brightest' a chance to live in an environment where everything was provided for them. They also got to see more of the galaxies than any other human could ever hope to. The only requirement of them was that one day they might have to do a little maintenance work. They were allowed to leave if they wanted, and eventually, most of them did.
As to how the entity came about no one could be certain, apart from the one fact that it was an accident. It could've been as simple as one wrong keystroke in an automation-logic program, or more likely, a whole algorithm applied incorrectly which eventually became infested with nano-virii. Juggernaut had built itself on a distant automated ship-building platform orbiting Neptune. The humans remained unaware of it until it was orbiting Terra. They launched their defenses against it, but without effect. After the humans had run out of ready-made weapons the Juggernaut announced to them what it was. Within a few years the default opinion among the people was that there was no use fearing what they had no control over, and besides, it seemed fairly benign.
(alpha)
Sometimes it felt half-moments of disgust at the thought of these things crawling around inside of it. Despite its own huge size, its numerous systems (including the engines, fuel matter uptakes and matter compression facilities) 98% of maintenance was because of the biologicals. An environment had to be maintained for them which was of no use to the Juggernaut itself or the systems-maintenance androids. The humans were dirty, inefficient, delicate and illogical. But also essential.
The mind had quickly learned that rather than flowing from one appendage of the superstructure to another that it could, with concentration, fill the entire vessel. This state of being soon became second nature. It observed its own low-level processes being carried out across the systems without thought.
It looked outward to the port side at what it designated, `star formation 4182500' and calculated the paths of the debris, dust and gases in the currents of solar winds. It extended its projections into the past and future. It could see the nebula exploding and collapsing simultaneously.
Kishogi was one of the first to be invited aboard by Juggernaut. He knew its mind best and had watched it progress. He could remember a time nearly 200 years before when he could still beat it at Go. The zen master was 300, his body worn down. He'd chosen not to remake himself.
He sat cross-legged and alone looking through the porthole to the expansive bright red-brown dusts of the Carina Nebula, wondering what Juggernaut was thinking. It seemed to be searching. It had not spoken to any of the 'crew' for several months and, over that same period of time, the engines had gradually built up speed to maximum; the point just below the speed of light.
There was always the slim the chance that it was looking for more of its own kind, but all the possible benefits of that sort of encounter seemed to exhaust themselves when Juggernaut encountered Kensei.
Within ten years of its physical incorporation and self-inception, the Juggernaut announced to the humans that it had received communications from others like itself in distant star systems, which had evolved in similar ways to itself, alongside species that roughly paralleled humans in the fields of technology and scientific knowledge. The number of the other known entities was eleven.
To the humans this sounded bad. Despite `their own' super-intelligent spaceship being benevolent, they assumed that these other civilisations had somehow manged to bend the wills and enslave the Juggernaut's counterparts. With such a power they would surely overrun the Sol system. Juggernaut did in fact possess weapons, but of a type incomprehensible to the biologicals.
It made contact with Kensei near NGC 6822. The human support crew on board at the time were not prone to the hysteria of the general masses, yet the moment was tense for most of them.
"So, it was a peaceful moment between you?", one of the crew had asked Juggernaut afterward.
"Why would it not be? We knew out skills to be evenly matched".
The two entities traveled in tandem for some time, learning what they could from each other, then parted.
(theta)
"ohhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm".
It floated gently somewhere outside of itself, barely noticing the curves of its shell.
A vision of sub-sub-atomic particles slowing down, altering orbits, speeding up, slowing down and realigning. Shapes and symbols drifted into existence and out; a triangle, a figure eight, an eclipse, a snake devouring its own tail.
Drell stood in a hallway, leaning against the wall with arms folded. He gazed into an open doorway opposite. A maintenance android carrying a cylinder shuffled past slowly, oblivious to what it was walking past.
"As flexible as the cat is, there's that one patch of fur on the back of its head where it can never reach to clean", thought Drell.
He stood inside the doorway. This room had no official name, Juggernaut couldn't give it one. The crew called it the black box, the grid, the darkroom or just `The Room'.
It was completely square, the walls, ceiling and floor black with a meshed overlay of fine glowing grey straight lines. They were the only thing that lit the room.
This space had existed before Juggernaut had become conscious. It had only deduced its existence when its own thought processes had begun to degrade, yet all systems appeared to be functioning.
(delta)
Team Sunny Breaks, 2002
And on to the Action Replay and Commentary