Just learning about the maze and how to find your way out of it tells you more about that personality of the person or persons or systems that made it than it does about yourself. So as Reeves probed for the vulnerabilities he was learning the vocabulary. Doing a cross word in a foreign language…

Reeves had reached out as far as they could. I mean, I’ve hit the wall but I know I can get through. With time. I can figure out anything with enough time. I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m syncing up with the language. It made a fair amount of sense. Reeves was…

So, what is that? asked Abneil, hooking his thumb backwards towards the diagnostics lab. Nothing, I don’t know. Is it nothing or is it I don’t know? He slyly smirked. Flux sighed an exasperated, exhaustive sigh. Abneil is far less charming and funny that he thinks he is. But they only have to deal with…

The ship began to loom large in porthole across from the little table where they would drink their coffee in the morning and stare out into eternity. There was also a small candle. A real one. A real real one. The kind that is expressly forbidden on any extra-orbital ship. Out here, without easy and…

What do you mean, What took you so long? Wait, can it hear me? How do I talk to it? Hello? Across the screen came the words: I can hear you just fine. Okay, so… who are you? I’m Reeves. That’s what they called me. It comes from the acronym that describes my particular configuration.…

They spent that last undisturbed set of cycles using two and a half tanks of air, hours in a row, combing through the areas they knew by instinct held the small treasures that were sometimes the best. For instance, under a heavy set of robes at the bottom of a crew member’s locker there was…

Now comes the maddening, gratifying part of the game. Trying to figure out a way to connect to the… device? Relay? Chip? They had already started to anthropomorphize it as some sort of beating heart creature. A leech. It took them a while to trace out and understand the connectors and how to connect to…

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…

The power flowed into a subsystem of the navigation computer. A surprisingly primitive function that interfaced all of the what one might consider more important functions, pulling from ship system status and star charts and performance data on ship resources including the crew. The intersection of a lot of critical systems. All of these other…

Scans of the hulk were largely in line what one would expect from a derelict far out of any space lane. Panels sheered away by errant meteor strikes. Collisions with planetoids. Dust glued inches deep to every surface that’s been deposited over time by asteroids and other bits of detritus that have collided and joined…