In The Walls

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. So when the hoarse, high pitched noise blared through the helmet of my suit, I jumped back so fast I dropped my wrench. The repairs on the outside of the spaceship were going well, we were on track to reach Alpha-6340 in just a few weeks, and my oxygen tanks had plenty of battery left. Why would an alarm be going off?

I fumbled my way back to the spaceship door, one hand clutching the side of my helmet as I resisted the urge to throw my helmet off before I was safely inside the spaceship. The alarm that sounded was like none I’d ever heard before. I was used to the long, blaring, ambulance-siren that played if there was an external issue with the spaceship. I was used to the short, brief chirps of the alarm that woke me up in the morning to check the cryogenic storage chambers and make sure STAC’s course had been planned out correctly. But this one sounded almost like… like a scream.

I stumbled through the airlock, and wrenched my helmet off of my head. Though it was no longer coming from speakers directly next to my ears, I could still hear the pained wailing through the speakers in the hallway. I took a few deep breaths, trying to steady my heart rate. You can’t troubleshoot if you’re panicking, that’s a lesson I knew well.

“STAC!” I called to the AI that had been my only companion for the past 3 years, “Run a diagnostic! What the hell is that noise?”

“CATASTROPHIC ERROR!” STAC screamed, at least as good as an AI with an artificial language bank could scream. Its voice was no longer the smooth, slightly metallic sound I had grown used to hearing. It was as hoarse and high pitched as the alarm ringing through the speakers, a noise right out of the deepest pits of hell.

“What does catastrophic error mean?!” I shouted at STAC, “What is going on?!”

“RESOLVE ERROR!” It screamed back, “RESOLVE ERROR IMMEDIATELY! CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IMMINENT!”

The screaming got louder, sharper. A surprisingly human voice rang out through the speakers, “God, Eric, It’s killing me! It’s killing me! Please help-” A loud burst of static cut the voice short, and I doubled over, clutching my ears and praying for it to be over.

Just when I thought my eardrums would burst, all went shockingly quiet. I looked up at the speakers with trepidation. What the hell was that? How did STAC know my name? It was programmed to call me ‘Sir’, I had never even entered my name. Was the ship still intact? But the most important question of all was why did it stop?

“STAC?” I asked quietly, briefly forgetting the training that had rammed the idea in my mind that the Space Travel Automatic Console was not a human and should not be treated as one, “STAC, buddy? You okay? You still there?”

“Error resolved.” It intoned with all the reverence of a monk. Since when had its tone been so… respectful? And slow? Usually it spoke as though it had not a care in the world, or perhaps I was simply assigning too much meaning to the vocal synthesizer.

“Uh, you sure about that? That sounded really intense. Is the ship intact?”

“Error resolved.”

“But, what the hell was the error? How did it just resolve?”

“Error. Resolved.” It said slowly, and if I let myself think so, it sounded almost angry with my questioning.

“Alright, alright. I’m just gonna check your hardware then, make sure you’re all good.” I walked towards the AI control room off the side of the main airlock hallway, only for the door to slam closed inches away from my face.

“Error resolved, Eric. No further action needed.”

What? How did it still know my name? STAC shouldn’t even be able to control the doors, it only had direct control over the ship’s piloting system and the life support systems for all the passengers in cryogenic storage. I felt as though a million angry eyes were watching me, judging me to make sure I didn’t interfere.

“Alright, fine, cool. I’ll just go… reroute the ship.”

I quickly strode into the cockpit, letting the automatic doors slam shut behind me. The ship’s route was the same way I left it this morning, a few tickmarks closer to the planet we were meant to colonize, but nothing else notable had changed. Still, I pretended to fiddle with buttons and move levers, waiting. For what I was waiting for, I wasn’t sure, but I had to make sure whatever STAC was doing was directed away from me so I could check his internal drives for errors.

It took 29 hours of me pretending to work (and struggling to keep myself awake after the first 18), until the feeling of being watched finally receded, leaving only the sensation of hairs on the back of my neck standing on end as the only reminder of the predicament I had found myself in. I didn’t know how long I had, but I had to get to that control room quickly before I was noticed.

The cryogenic sleeping chamber was easily accessed through a maintenance door off the side of the cockpit, so that if an emergency flashed on the big screen I could run in and fix it immediately. The AI control room was on the other side of the wall, separated by a small air vent that had its screws come loose a long time ago. If I was quick, I could slide through the vent and check the controls without possibly altering STAC that I was doing anything out of the ordinary.

I walked as normally as I could, trying not to rush and make STAC think I was doing anything different from the hourly check of the cryogenic chambers I had done 29 times now. I glanced at some screens, checking each one’s temperature. Each one had creeped a bit higher than was normal, -34 Celsius instead of the -40 it usually was, but whether that was just normal fluctuations or STAC’s doing I wasn’t sure. Either way, I pretended not to notice the increased temperatures at risk of STAC noticing me again.

I walked along the walls, checking each chamber briefly until I reached the air vent. I stole a quick glance over my shoulder, as if I could somehow see STAC if he was creeping up behind me, before throwing the vent cover aside and quickly sliding into the AI control room.

A low red light blinked on the ceiling, illuminating the circuits and wires that made up STAC’s brain. I could almost feel at ease in the soft humming of electricity, but I felt the prickling begin on the back of my neck once again. I didn’t have much time before STAC took action against me. I threw open a random cabinet, trying to check the wires inside.

There weren't any wires for me to check. The internal components of STAC had been forcefully dislodged. Wires were hanging out of ports. Hard drives were half-melted. Motherboards were sparking, fans were smoking. STAC wouldn’t be able to function under these conditions, it was irreparably broken.

Whatever had control of the ship now, it sure as hell wasn’t STAC.

But if it wasn’t STAC then…

What was it?