Once the cover came off the inside of the console wasn’t remotely similar to what was in the simulator. Not that they were terribly surprised, though they were disappointed. They liked to be ready, schematics in hand, to make sure that every screw, wire, and component was in place.

So this thing is useless, they thought, and threw the schematic out of their visor with an aggressive flick of their corneas.

Well, it can’t be THAT different, they thought. So they dove in cautiously, slowly rocking, never pulling, never torquing the heads off of screws. Painstaking. Painful to watch to an outsider.

Absolute magic to them.

They looked vaguely like a porcupine with screws and connectors and safety catches and primitive, rusty screwdrivers (not rusty – patina) sticking up in all directions tethered magnetically to their encounter suit.

It was cold what with there not being any climate control in this colander of a wreckage but brow slipped from their forehead onto the tip of their nose. This kind of mechanical work, blind, on potentially priceless, once in a lifetime antiquities was high stakes business to them.

This all came to a head when they were a set of heat sinks away from finally locating the mouth of the river. There was a faint glow coming from under a small sheet of some dull-looking metal that wouldn’t budge. It was scored and crusty from some sort of fire, presumably. A blown component?

Scrape, scrape, scrape with a plastic tool. Scrape, scrape, scrape away the scoring. They hadn’t brought any kind of solvents with them because they’d be useless out here without any kind of gravity. Blobs of cleaner would just bump off and disappear into the stars.

Scrape, scrape, slight twist. Scrape, slight twist.

Twist, twist, twist.

C’mon on, for failsafes!

Crack.

Crack? Like, a breaking free kind of crack? Or the crack of an ancient motherboard that was made of who knows what composite material that wasn’t designed to last a thousand years in the unforgiving desolation of far outer space.

Slip the tool under the opposite corner. Slight crack.

Slip the tool under another corner.

Pop. The piece slowly rose up and they caught it on a free space on their wrist.

Finally a shallow exhale. How long have I been holding that in? Probably from the first crack.

A slight glow. The first tiny sign of life on this ship. Like the moment before a flame leaps to life.

There it was.

Not what they were expecting.

The board with the chips. That was there. But it didn’t look remotely stock. There were mismatched screws in the bay. An ancient warranty voided by peeling back stickers that hid test points and fasteners. Wires. Actual physical wires. Glued somehow with metal from point to point, leg to logic circuit to inscrutably small integrated chips that would presumably be impossible to replace if they no longer worked.

Kind of a mess, to be honest. Upgrades of all sorts smooshed into a space far too small for them. Never designed for it, after all.

What the hell is all this?

They spent another fifteen minutes or so working to free the assembly from its metal prison so that they could cleanly pull it out, errants wires and modifications painstaking photographed from every angle as they rotated around catching every possible angle.

The model showed up behind their corneas. They blinked to save it and clear their eyes.

Back to the ship. The oxygen warning on their suit seems to be coming on early, particularly considering the fact that they had spent minutes at a time not really breathing. But they entered a trance and the hour had raced by unnoticed.

Is there a hum in my bones?