Character Perspective: Sullivan

“S-s-s-salutations, s-s-s-sir,” Chale stuttered out at me as I looked over the voice modulators output. He had been knocked off of the table during one of the simulated strikes on our ship and I had heard the crack as soon as he hit the ground. His modulator always was a bit finicky though, so I knew it was going to cause me work for the rest of the evening.

The others could take their time and hang out, they were loud enough out in the common room that even with the door shut I could hear them laughing, but I needed to work. There were numbers, frequency callbacks, reports. All things I could read to see what went wrong.

My accelerator should have worked. I had done this a hundred times before in practice, tested it on every simulated experience I could think of and never had it messed up so totally. Sure, I hadn’t ever considered I’d try to use the accelerator to bug friendly ships but in theory it shouldn’t have been any different than speeding up a radio signal to get an advanced quality report of a surface feature.

“V-v-v-voice modulator r-r-r-reboo-“ Chale’s voice cut off into static as I input a few commands into my desktop and the command line began running through a series of automated commands. Chale sat completely still through all of this, his eyes staring ahead as his internal systems went through their standard checks and balances.

“I really do need to fix these voices, maybe I can synthesize new ones based on a normal one,” I muttered to myself as I stepped away. It would take at least five minutes for Chale to fully reboot, and I had learned early on that just staring at them while the process went on was nothing but weird.

Dip scurried over from the accelerator as I walked his way, standing up onto his toes, “It appears that the variable frequency of the ship’s systems created a backdoor, sir. I cannot be positive until we run a full debug report, but I believe that we were counter-hacked.”

“Run it, your brother is probably going to be out of commission the rest of the night, he’s in a reboot cycle now but I’d rather run a full battery of tests on his systems. He hasn’t quite been himself since we got here and I don’t know if he was ever properly brought online,” I explained as I sat onto the metallic stool next to the Accelerator and projected Dip’s smaller monitor up to a wall monitor next to the system. “How long after we sent the first increased pulse do the logs indicate that it was cycled back on us?”

“Unsure, sir. Initial scans indicate they were aware of our invasion before they engaged the MEGALODON however as I said, a full debug report will need to be run to properly log the Collider’s failure,” Dip said as he seemed to clean his fur. They were still animals, even if they were mostly controlled and dominated by their cybernetics now, so I was used to them still having animal like tics, all the same, I wished there was a way I had been able to adjust that out during general conversations.

“Sorry, you said that already, just a bit frustrated with everything,” I said with a sigh as I leaned onto the counter and rested my head in my hands

In truth I was feeling more than just a little bit guilty. While the others were okay with each taking a bit of the blame, I knew at the heart of the matter it was my experimenting that had gotten everything as messed up as it had gotten. We could have approached the trial slowly and with a proper deliberation. We could have just reacted to the Parasitum had it attacked us and hyper focused on finding the planetary object. Regardless of how the others felt, I knew that the reason I had suggested the experiment and wanted to try it because I had believed myself capable of simply doing it.

We couldn’t have been the first ones to ever try that maneuver, that part was at least clear to me with how seamlessly the enemy had reacted. I mean, I knew that Star Launch had some advanced AI of course, I just didn’t think it was so advanced it was capable of reacting naturally to a hacking attempt with a counter hack, again, at least not without a previous attempt for the training team to input the new situation into their natural responses.

A knock on the door interrupted my thought process and I looked down to Dip who shrugged at me before returning to his miniaturized console to begin the debug report.

“Come in,” I called as I hit a button on the wall that unlocked the door.

Sera walked in, her eyes bouncing around the room as she took it all in, spinning on her heel and closing the door behind her as she entered fully. She was wearing a pair of blue and green matching pajamas pants and a short sleeve with an odd, geometric pattern scattering over them that looked extremely comfortable and made me painfully aware that I was still in my uniform.

“Grounds, you get this whole room to yourself? What a nice little hideout,” she whistled. “Great place to beat yourself up, eh?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.

“It would be if it weren’t for these two and needing to get through all of my own debriefing and log reading,” I said matter-of-factly but let out a long sigh, “But yes, definitely a good place to beat yourself up too.”

“Well, for what it’s worth I don’t think you should be beating yourself up,” Sera said as she crossed the room, grabbing one of the stools and carrying it over to set down next to me as she looked at the accelerator. When I had first shown it off to her, she had definitely a bit more reverence for the device, but now it was washed away for curiosity and maybe even mild amusement.

“And why’s that?” I asked her, briefly getting distracted as she brushed some of her blonde hair back behind an ear as she sat back upright from examining the accelerator.

“Because you shouldn’t be. Even though it didn’t work, that took some serious guts to just suggest that on day one. Sure, it didn’t work, but it might have, and we never would have known if you hadn’t shoved down the ”what ifs” of it not working and just going for it,” she said as she shot me a warm smile. “I mean, I can’t speak for everyone of course but I definitely think it’s pretty respectable,” she added with a shrug and breaking eye contact with me as she turned her head.

“I get the logic, but it’s like… I don’t know, everyone says not to beat yourself up over something that you know is your fault but then they always beat themselves up over something similar. I think it’s just easy for us to see our own mistakes and berate them because, well, it’s ourselves. You don’t have to worry about insulting someone if you’re just talking down to yourself,” I said.

“While pragmatic, I think it’s unproductive,” Sera replied to that before gesturing around the room. “What you’re doing here, the logs, the extra work with the chipmunks, that’s a bit more productive, but you’re losing out on other stuff by overworking yourself in here.”

“Ah, so you don’t want me to berate myself so that you can do it for me?” I asked, though it was impossible to keep the joking smile off my face.

“Maybe,” she responded with a similar look before letting out a soft giggle. “We have years of training, there’s going to be time to beat yourself up is what I’m trying to say. Maybe now would be better time coming and hanging out with the rest of us,” she said as she hopped off the stool and stretched, her hands raising up and over her head as she stretched backwards and briefly revealed her midriff.

“I guess… Chale is still rebooting here but I guess I could leave that to Dip for the rest of the process,” I said looking over to Dip who popped his head up from the monitor to look at me.

“Aye sir,” he popped off a salute and I nodded.

“Good,” Sera was the one to speak up as she grabbed one of my hands and hauled me off of my stool. “Then I’m telling you that you’re done with work for the night, and if you try to come back then I will be the one to berate you,” she said with a wink before turning and dragging me out of the room.