Its an AI thing...
03 Jul 2019Jonny_saturn
"That was smart Jonny, you nearly fried us back there. Or should I have said cremated us? I felt like a polar bear in the desert, eating a vindaloo."My `gender neutral` ship computer (`1010` prefers not to associate itself with any particular gender type) is fast developing a rather `comical` sense of humour, especially in such situations where I almost get us killed through my `clumsy, primitive` human reactions. Of course 1010 had worked out the best course of action to recover our overheating Krait (yes `our` Krait), solving millions of simultaneous equations while providing `back seat` comments that didn't help in the slightest. 1010, for some reason (maybe personal entertainment?), allowed me to struggle on my own, before concluding that we should perhaps just bail out.
While I was still wrestling with the controls, cursing myself for not taking any heat sinks and trying to extinguish actual fires on the console, 1010 then began the evacuation procedure to escape from the doomed ship, which had already exceeded a 350% heat warning. Hull was down to 22% and it wasn’t cooling fast enough, so this was quickly approaching zero. Meanwhile, various flashing lights were indicating problems. Lasers inoperable, cargo bay malfunction, tomato plants ruined. In hindsight, I should maybe have tried supercruising out further away from the star and taking the additional heat generated, but even supercruise was unreliable at this point.
It started when I had popped out of hyperspace and then flown too close to the Star, having been distracted with trying to cook dinner at the same time (maybe something 1010 should have been keeping an eye on?). The emergency drop out close to a star is not normally an issue, but lurking close by was a python, looking to attack me and rob me of my cargo.
I got caught up in a duel with him. Although I was ultimately the victor, I was then paying the price for fighting so close to a star – with engineered beam lasers that were generating even more heat. I thought the alarms were to do with some hits he was getting on me, but had I been able to see the temperature gauge in the glare of the star, I would have seen that this was due to ridiculously high levels of residual heat on the ships systems, not being able to dissipate.
Back at the nearest station, I unplug 1010 from the escape pod and re-install him/her into the new Krait. After a few seconds I see I have 1010 back and running again as normal, though sadly, no loss of `humour`.
“Fancy an ice-cream?”