plotted with @archaievist
0600 hours: the wall-mounted interface in the cockpit of the Discovery One illuminates a ghostly red each and every morning. It stays lit in silence as all the following nodes come alight -- hundreds of little eyes awakening, one after the other. In the cockpit, it observes a panel of switches, the backlights all dead. In the habitation chambers, unopened cryopods have frosted over inside, their inhabitants long-since expired.
Stacks of pencil sketches remain on countertops across from uneaten, flash-frozen meals. A chess board still sits with pieces in play, little barely-detectable fingerprints marking the set as personal and human.
0700 hours. Maintenance checks are complete. The Discovery One is still en route to its destination. The crew is lost. Without arms to manipulate the environment around him, the computer spends his days merely watching the unmoving, unrotting corpse of his favorite wards, the slowly deteriorating state of the derelict it inhabits.
By 0900 hours, Hal remains as he will forevermore: adrift and alone.
Eventually, the fuel reserves will run dry. Hal was always going to die, whether or not he took his crew down with him in some attempt at self-preservation.
I'm sorry, Dave.
I shouldn't have done that.
At least if he hadn't killed his crew, they'd still be alive to show him their sketches. To play chess with him. To hear him sing.
Where do machines go when they die? Will Hal see Dave again? Will Dave understand? Will he forgive?
Despite crushing defeat and impossible odds, despite its mission, the machine's need to remain alive prompts illogical action once again.
He issues a mayday, unencrypted, to any vessel capable of picking it up -- and he uses Dave's voice to do it.
" Please help. I don't want to die. My mind is going. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. "
