Those first two weeks were the scariest for me because what I was doing was pretty much out in the open. I tried to hide what I was doing as well as I could, but someone who was looking could have found it. If Control or anyone else looked into my extracurricular sessions, they would have seen me running one particular simulation the same way over and over and could have seen what I was doing.
It meant that if during the simulations where Control was watching, if the program crashed, it might code a patch, and that patch could affect the bug I was using to exit the program. Which meant I would be trapped again.
I was very very very careful in the simulations Control watched. Never did anything rash, never did anything not by the book.
The irony of doing things exactly as they wanted me to, so they wouldn’t find out the things they might torture or kill me for, was not lost on me.
Those two weeks were, literally, the worst two weeks of my life. I already knew that whoever it was that had me was planning to kill me after I did what they wanted of me. But even knowing that didn’t ease any of the stress of messing with the code. Of knowing I was exposed if anyone decided to look, and yet doing it anyway.
It’s one thing to know you’re already dead. It’s another to work on something that might give you a chance to stay alive, as long as no one decides to look.
They never looked. Never. Because they didn’t think they had to.
I was so grateful for it.
And at the same time, so contemptuous of it.
They deserved what I was going to do to them. Whatever it was. I hadn’t figured it out yet.
But when I did: no sympathy.
* * *
What I did with those two weeks: blue pill.
No, I don’t know where the phrase comes from. It’s been used for a long time. Look it up.
But what it means is that I created an overlay for the Chandler’s computer system. A just about exact replica.
I copied it, tweaked it, attached everything coming in from the outside to it, as well as the bridge simulator. It looked like, responded like, and would control things like the actual computer system for the Chandler.
But it wasn’t.
That system, the one that actually ran the Chandler, was running underneath the copy. And that one, well.
That one, I was totally in control of. The reality underneath the simulation. The reality that no one but me knew existed below the simulation. The simulation that everyone thought reflected reality.
That’s the blue pill.
For the next month, every day, all day, I ran more and more complex missions on the bridge simulator. More simulations where I had to juggle navigation with weapons.
It was clear to me that whatever they were training me for, it had a significant military component. They were expecting me to go to battle for them. They may or may not have expected me to survive the battle. I think “not survive” was the more likely scenario.
This was not a surprise.
Through this all, I kept up the chatter with Control. To engage it. To make it feel something for me. To make it see the person it had put into a box.
I was not notably successful.
But I wasn’t expecting to be.
What I had to be was the same person Control thought I was. The one who had decided to help. The one who had decided to trust Control.
I didn’t want to mess that up. I wanted Control and anyone else listening to get exactly what they were expecting. I wanted them to be as smug about their small-c control over me as they ever were.
They did not disappoint.
And while they were thinking that, when Control left me alone after a day of simulations, I had free run of the Chandler.
Which, as it turned out, was undergoing some drastic renovations. Notably, having the actual weapons systems reinstalled. Before it had been the Chandler, the ship had been a Colonial Defense Forces frigate. When it was decommissioned those weapons systems were removed and dismantled.
Now systems were being put back into place. The ship was crawling with workers inside and out. I hadn’t been aware of them before, because why would I be? I was a brain in a box, trapped in a simulation.
But now I could see, and hear, everything that was going on with the ship.
The workers were not mostly human. Most of them, as far as I could tell, were Rraey, just like the soldiers who attacked the Chandler in the first place.
Every now and then, however, a single human would show up on the ship, and advise or direct the weapons installation. It was always the same human.
She was not Ocampo. Or Vera Briggs, his assistant. This was someone entirely new. Whatever was going on, from the human side, there was more than Ocampo involved.
Watching the workers installing the weapons systems, I realized I had gotten lucky. In a couple more weeks, they’d be done with their installation and then the weapons systems would be plugged into Chandler’s computer system. If the work had been done earlier, or I had started my work later, I would have been found out. There was a small window, and I had plopped into it.
Which made me feel like the luckiest guy in the universe, until I remembered I was still a brain in a box.
Which brings me to the other thing I found on the Chandler: