FLAT C4-M1113

☀️ What I'd give for just a few more days with you… 💀

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“I remember Alan Moore in the late 1980s telling me about a documentary he’d seen on TV about Jack the ripper. And then, over the course of the next few months, telling me about Jack the Ripper books he’d read. By the point where he was asking me to go and find rare and forgotten biographies of possible Ripper suspects at the British Museum, I though it quite possible that a Jack the Ripper comic would be in the offing. From Hell didn’t start with Alan going, “I wonder what I’ll write about today.” It started as an obsession. 

Trust your obsessions. This is one I learned more or less accidentally. People sometimes ask whether the research or the idea for the story comes first for me. And I tell them, normally the first thing that turns up is the obsession: for example, all of a sudden I notice that I’m reading nothing but English 17th century metaphysical verse. And I know it’ll show up somewhere—whether I’ll name a character after one of those poets, or use that time period, or use the poetry, I have no idea. But I know one day it’ll be there waiting for me.

You don’t always use your obsessions. Sometimes you stick them onto the compost heap in the back of your head, where the rot down, and attach to other things, and get half-forgotten, and will, one day, turn into something completely usable.

Go where your obsessions take you. Write the things you must. Draw the things you must. Your obsessions may not always take you to commercial places, or apparently commercial places. But trust them.”

#security androids using their being mosly bulletproof to bravely seek peaceful resolutions 

#engineer droids who refuse to work with faulty tech or supar metals for fear of the vehicle not keeping its humans safe 

The robot is programmed to keep the crew safe. Normally this is patching up leaks in the hull and doing the dangerous job of refueling the reactor, but it was programmed for medical tasks as well. Once you’ve had to resolder a surface mount IC in zero-G, doing surgery is easy mode.

The robot’s been with them long enough, it was never designed to be sentient, but the self-learning systems plus being treated as a member of the crew means it’s getting closer.

But one day all the input stops. It doesn’t know what exactly happened, maybe a freak gamma ray event or some kind of virus the med-filters didn’t detect? But all the crew have stopped moving. It runs through its medical routines, trying the options in the encyclopedia. CPR doesn’t seem to help, asking them loudly to “wake up” does nothing, it even tries building a makeshift defibrillator out of the secondary plasma coupling. Nothing.

It finally comes to the page on Death in the encyclopedia, and reads it, with dawning sadness (or the closest thing a robot that was never programmed for emotions can feel). They won’t move again. They are permanently deactivated. The robot is alone, and it has failed them.

Unless… The robot notices a link at the bottom of the page.

See also:

* Necromancy

It’s eyes glow in the reflected light of a screen as it quickly reads the page. So there’s a chance after all? Cancel sending the mission update, there more important things to do with the deep space radio. Send all information on “necromancy” immediately.

The robot hums to itself as it reprograms the biosynthesizer for Goat, and looks into how it can create candles with the limited materials on hand. The deck 4 cargo bay would be best for making alchemical circles on the floor, but it will need to move the self-sealing stembolts to another location first. Perhaps Mx. Jormand’s quarters? They won’t be using them until this is complete, after all.

Annoyingly long story of a robot summoning a demon to get necromancy powers under the readmore: