Melbourne returned to his quarters and began to fixate on the wireless interface ability he had unlocked.
He looked at his workshop where he had been doing his main job of creating specialized exploration probes for Arian Horizons with AI algorithms to look for Cosmist artifacts of specific parameters that the company was told to be interested in. He was employed to create three of the things to coordinate with each other in an initial unmanned exploration of the ship, but he had already created an extra fourth one just to be on the safe side with special algorithms to explore matters of his own personal interest.
Given the extra time he had before they would be able to go to the derelict ship, he decided to perform an experiment on the extra probe. He wired up a small short range radio designed for extremely low frequency signals and soldered it to the control board. He then wrote a little bit of code based on schematics available in the internal library of his Aclito System attached with the Wireless Interfacing upgrade. This would allow the Aclito to connect with his probe.
[*Wireless Port Detected
*Would you like to connect to device?
Melbourne selected
The G.U.I. was a remote control system designed for controlling the machines via a traditional smartphone or tablet.
As he attempted to mentally control the robot, it worked like a charm. The AI systems of the Aclito perfectly translated his own code and created automated algorithms to use his mental input to interface with the widgets.
Melbourne soon realized that using the G.U.I. designed for tablets was a clunky and inefficient control mechanism for his neural interface. He could take out the clunky G.U.I. and rewrite the back-end code to reduce latency. It was much simpler for him and the control board to will a real time view of the probe's camera data into his head and to think about various functions he had scripted like moveForward() or XRFScan(target) without bothering to visualize buttons. After this modification, controlling the probe at will became about as simple as controlling his own body's muscles to move his arms and legs.
After successfully writing the final application that allowed him to control one bot by his own will, he began to have a ball playing with it all over the ship and even sent it outside the garbage disposal airlock to mentally zoom around space.
After a few hours, he noticed a flashing red system message that caught him off guard.
[*BE: 0/10
*Your Aclito System will now automatically shut down until your Bioelectric Energy has regenerated to 2/10, the minimal acceptable amount for rebooting.]
Melbourne hadn't even glanced at his BE stat while he was piloting the drone. It automatically became visible every time one of his Vital Statistic points dropped, but he had put it out of his mind and didn't even realize that operating devices with the wireless interface would drain his bioelectric stat.
It took two hours for his BE to rise above 2, the minimum amount for the system to reboot. The process of rebooting drained more energy per second than continuous functionality just like with a regular computer, so the system quickly showed a drop in one point after rebooting.
[BE: 1/10]
Melbourne had realized that the Aclito System did not lose bioelectric energy when he only had the basic status display open in his eyes, though it would charge more slowly. His natural nervous system could normally provide enough electrical energy to his nanobots to keep that function running. However, it charged more quickly when he put the system into standby mode and saw as he did when he was still completely human. BE was only drained when it ran more complex functions such as calculating attack vectors and doing massive amounts of computational analysis for other things. Melbourne had so rarely had a problem with that particular issue that he didn't even consider it. His BE had drained an insignificant 2 points during the whole fight against the space pirates. Perhaps a more drawn out conflict would result in worse BE drain and he would need to rely on his own combat skills without the help of Aclito.
While he waited for the System to recharge, he floated off to the mess hall to grab something to eat. He had already skipped a meal since waking up and had nothing but nugae that he was given in the infirmary.
Nugae was a genetically altered algae that could easily be grown in a petri dish that provided all the nutritional needs of the human body alongside water. The stuff didn't taste very good, though the taste could be made slightly less bland with certain flavoring chemicals. The algae had historically been used as an emergency survival solution when regular food was scarce. Generally, it was kept and grown in all spaceships and space stations by interplanetary safety standards but people who chose to consume it when it wasn't absolutely necessary were as rare as non-synthetic astatine. Though he had been distracted, Melbourne was looking forward to a good meal.
The welcome he got upon floating into the mess hall was shocking. Everyone smiled at him like a hero. A few people patted him on the shoulder and whispered "Thank you" into his ear.
"Hail the hero of the seeker!" shouted a voice behind Melbourne. Melbourne turned to find Jeremy Olan patting his shoulder before the two embraced in a hug.
"My man!" exclaimed Melbourne. "What do you mean, 'hero'? All I did was shoot a few pirates before almost getting stabbed to death."
"That's a lot more than most non-security personnel would have done." said the voice of George Scott. The head of security also patted Melbourne on the shoulder, smiling like a proud father. The man had a fresh scar across his face that wasn't there when he had denied Melbourne access to the armory during the attack. "You have saved many lives today, Mr. Acliate. You should be proud of yourself. I understand you saved our dear Officer, er, I mean, Captain... Genee's life as well? It's a pity that poor old Captain Sterano didn't make it. We'll be keeping his body in cryo-preservation until we can return it to his family upon our return to Mars. We'll probably give him the traditional Space Captain's Funeral unless his family or his legal Will says otherwise."
"You credited me with saving your life before you saved mine?" thought Melbourne in confusion. "Why? What's your angle, Victoria."
"Mr. Kurkoniff, why don't you treat our good friend to an extra serving of today's steak!" exclaimed George heartily towards the kitchen. "Take it out of my daily rations! I'm putting on a little belly fat. I need to lose some of that. I took an extra day off the gym after the assault the other day. After-battle trauma, a sorry-ass excuse for shirking my training duties if I do say so myself. I haven't been in a real altercation since my Army days."
"Yes, sir!" said James Kurkoniff from the kitchen. "Anything you say, Mr. Scott!"
Melbourne found it difficult to suppress a smirk. The sound of James squirming as he waited on Melbourne was priceless.
"Mr. Acliate, I have some experience in ZGFu as well." said Goerge Scott, smiling warmly. "I see our young Mr. Olan has been training you a little better than I had thought possible based on your performance in front of my armory. If you don't mind, I would like to spar you some time in the training room. Maybe this old Army veteran can teach you a few things. I'd like to see some more of your combat style too. What do you say? Meet me in the sparring room after chow?"
"I'd like that." said Melbourne, a strong sense of pride emanating from his smiling face.
Melbourne took his two trays of food from James and began to eat when he noticed a new memorial statue for Captain Bryce Sterano welded into a nearby wall reading:
"Captain Bryce Sterano
2389 – 2410
Captain Sterano died valiantly in a tragic pirate attack in June, 2410 aboard the Seeker as he fought to keep the marauders at bay. In commemoration of his heroics upon this ship and his many years of loyal service to the field of archaeology, this memorial will forever serve to remind the future crews of this vessel of its heroic lineage in the effort to uncover human history against the many risks, both human and natural, lurking in outer space."
Melbourne consumed his steak uncomfortably as he considered that generations of archaeologists for centuries to come would eat in this hall and read this lie that Captain Sterano was killed by pirates, not betrayed by his own communications officer.
"Betrayal is the only risk greater than the most fearsome foe." thought Melbourne ironically as he continued to eat his extra serving of steak, hunger overcoming trepidation.