Interplanetary Transport

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Sound needs a medium to propagate. Ultrasonic transducers need gel to transmit sound waves to and from a body. Air is a much less efficient medium, but it works just fine for most sentients. In the vacuum of free space, however, there is no medium, but the "temperature" of space has been measured to be ~2.7 Kelvin. Though heat can radiate, for something to have a measurable temperature requires that thing to vibrate / possess energy. What is there in the vacuum of space to vibrate? Leftover radiation from the big bang? Ether? Space dust? No. I'm increasingly thinking that it's pure terror.

I was going through extant logs at Interplanetary Transport that were about to be purged when I came across Danic-42's transmission that was picked up on ultra-low frequency about 10 generations ago; it had been sitting in the archives and ignored ever since - probably because it was ULF. Just like Danic-42 recorded this hoping anyone would hear it, I need to share this while I still can.

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My supply run to the station orbiting Proxima Centauri b was straightforward until the halfway point when I turned around to begin decelerating. Sure, there were minor mishaps… my ship connection required replacing, and going on unwired comms while accelerating is always a pain. It was a really annoying 2 ship-hours of laggy interactions until the mini-fab printed a replacement. To be fair though, the star systems that I was in between during those 2 hours probably experienced really annoying Terran decades. Ha ha… suckers!

Minor inconveniences aside, it was a pretty uneventful transit until I turned around and the Ephemeris hiccupped - not sure why I still use that term; I haven't hiccuped in 400 ship-years. Anyway, maybe I flipped the ship too quickly and the high-G maneuver messed with the electronics and the Star Map. Quantum storage is only useful if the quantum states are maintained. Maybe they'll finally upgrade this spacesuit after I complain.

I thought I did a perfect 180, but because the Ephemeris couldn't contribute to navigation, the ship shut down while it ran through diagnostics and figured out where it was even though I could just tell it if it allowed my input. The real-time assessments hurt my brain - I think that phrase is still technically correct.

At some point, I realized that no one had ever just drifted in this part of space. At least no one that had ever been heard from again. Obviously, the closest stars are Sol and the Centauri System, so… I’m on my own on the easiest transport run that Interplanetary manages. If I was attached to a newer suit, I probably could've paired with another suit a few light years away and asked for help, but not with this dinosaur drone ship. Why did they ever create ships without long-range comms? Oh, I know why… Everybody knows why.

Corporations skimping on operating costs is as old as Egyptians using slave labor to build their pyramids. (By the way, the historical renderings seem pretty reasonable if you ever get a chance. There's even a mode where you can experience being embalmed like a dead pharaoh and another one where you can watch Europeans plundering. Pretty neat.) They figured out that sending just a brain was cheaper than sending a whole body. So of course they skimped on the long-range comms and the bottom-of-the-barrel storage and connectors and mini-fabs and…

Eh, I gave up my body and took this job for 500 ship-years and I'm close to finishing my term. If I'm honest, I knew what I was getting into. At least the 3,000 generations after Danic-42 have been well-provided for. Gotta admit: it has been weird getting updates every 8 ship-months or so. I'm always curious about how the family tree is doing even though they're less and less interested in how I am or even who I am, and I can't really blame them. They're actual people living actual lives who hear a manufactured voice from a disembodied brain every 10 generations or so. I'd ignore me if I were them.

In addition to the Ephemeris hiccupping, the diversion module conked out, so I haven't been able to experience anything engaging for the past couple ship-days since I've been spaced. ("Spaced"? Is that like being grounded used to be?) Anyway, it took me a while to configure the mini-fab to make the components for crude antennas and couplings; luckily my optoelectronics background from times that people have forgotten has been rattling around somewhere in the old noggin. Also had to set it up independent of the suit systems because the system is so basic. So, I'm broadcasting this audio log in ULF for (probably) no one to hear - mainly because I'm bored. I gather this used to be called a podcast at some point.

Having this undiverted time is weird. Starting to wonder why they need a brain for the suit at all. The drone suit is essentially autonomous, and obviously when things honk up, the sentient remnant can't really do too much other than get bombarded with useless diagnostics. The only times I do anything purposeful is while docked, so now that I think about it, they could just use a couple local sentients at each docking port and avoid the mass and habitation needs of a sentient in transit.

Been 6 ship-hours, and I've only been getting more useless diagnostics. Although, maybe I'm getting used to it because the headache has been fading. Also, I'm increasingly curious about the noise in the diagnostics. There's always noise generated by the discount electronics, but lately it seems the noise has been taking on signal strengths.

It's not noise! It's a hungry void! The ship has been monitoring and communicating ship conditions to the void, and the void has been communicating back somehow - that's the noise! And it's getting loud enough that I can tell that it's just waiting for ship temp to drop below 3K. I'm worried about what will happen then. Just realized that ALL the electronics are off. Must’ve happened in the past couple hours. Apparently the ship is communicating through some other means, so there's no ship power at all, no circulating fluids for my brainpod. Math says the ship and the void will be waiting for about 20 ship-days as the temp drops asymptotically to the 2.7K baseline of space. Not sure why they're cluing me into all this - I suppose it doesn't matter because there's nothing I can do about it anyway.

Dammit - the only reason it's 20 days is because of the energy stored in the transmitter I kluged together. Apparently I bought myself time to be tortured longer. Pharaoh's slaves would be buried alive with them so they could serve in the afterlife - this will probably be more terrifying than when I experienced that mode. If I had any control over mechatronics, I'd disconnect the energy source or smash the brainpod; if I had a mouth I would scream. The only thing I can do now is podcast, and I think the more I podcast, the faster the antenna system drains, and the faster the antenna system drains the faster I…?

I'm just going to initiate a massive high energy burst to get it all over with. I don't expect anyone to receive this, but if someone does, please try to figure out what IPT is doing and kill the brainpod program!

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The broadcast ended with a 6-minute high energy squeal. After some under the radar untraceable research, I came to the conclusion that Danic-42 was right. There was a ship pair lost every few millennia - never any solo drone transports. They were just lost with all records purged. The only reason I know Danic-42's designation is because it shared it in the broadcast. IPT disbanded some time ago, so we've all been isolated to our respective solar systems ever since - maybe intentional? I'm gonna dig deeper, but I'm sharing this now as broadly as I can hoping that others will dig as well.