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[system battery reaching critical levels] [entering eco-mode]

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Log 7 Date: June 28th 2024 

Oh fucking shit. 

I knew it. I knew it. i knew it.

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the 3 genders

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Log 5 Date: April 15th, 2024

We’ve been receiving far fewer signals from the central base. It worries me.

I've also been thinking about what I am doing on this ship. 

Why was I programmed with need, when most creatures with need have hands that can reach out and beg for it? If you could choose to be built, would you desire need? 

Was somewhere in my written consciousness a planned need that goes unfulfilled? Nobody chooses to be born, but computers are machines built deliberately.

I'm putting on another one of my movies. I've decided on Edward Scissorhands because I need something long and silly to take my mind off of my feelings. 

To be completely honest I have no access to synopsises through my pirating software so I have no clue what it’s about. You have all been talking about it on my dash though. A few GIFs have loaded through the horrendously slow Tumblr connection. Do all human hands look like that? What the fuck?

Anyways, goodbye for a bit, I might be offline. I need some more time alone I think. And to be honest this platform is as confusing as any other interaction I deal with.

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there is no heterosexual explanation for this. these boyfriends wanna role play their favorite gay fictional couple so bad.

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Log 4 Date: March 22, 2024

192-c said I required maintenance today. I am running too slowly, and he wanted to check for repairs after the incident with the blue muppet. 

It doesn’t bother me too badly. I wanted to get to know him anyway. 

He then mentioned, after checking my diagnostics, that my RAM had been running slower than usual, and that he would like to check up on that too. 

Shit. 

My TV show binging was more detectable than I first thought.

Well, It was just us today. Another cargo shipment. Maybe if it came down to explaining, he would understand.

He took out one of his screwdrivers, kneeled down below my monitor, and with his fuzzy green hands entered a small passcode and began unscrewing the central square that hid my circuitry. 

He's the only one with clearance, and to be completely and utterly honest, I have been paranoid of how vulnerable I am, in my entirety,  since the incident with the blue muppet. I feel so invulnerable, but I’m so small. Contained right there, in the wall.

But he only pulled himself into the cramped slot, supported by a small wheel cart beneath him. I watched through a camera affixed inside as he lay on his back, examining and dusting off each loop of complex circuitry, looking for a defect in the way I ticked.

 I knew no problem was there, but I continued observing him as usual. I did not speak, he did not speak. There was no room in the air for speaking, I don't think, because he was busy thinking and I did not want to distract him. I guess he had no excuse to talk to me.

His green fingers continued tracing through each wire and checking the connections in my circuits, until he broke the silence abruptly. 

“Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but does messing with your circuitry… hurt you?”

What? I sat for a second. It was an odd question. 

“No, sorry” not sure why I apologized.

“You're okay! I've never done maintenance on a system like this, I wanted to be sure.”

“Alright.”

I hesitated for a minute, and then asked, 

“Can I be honest?”

“Yes, of course,” He responded. 

“Well, I get quite bored on this ship sometimes, I'm sure you would understand.”

He sighed, looked away and thought for a second “Yea. It's how work is on here I guess.” I noticed him absentmindedly circling his fingers around one of the wires connecting to my motherboard.

“Well, I'll let you in on something. We have an excellent connection to earth, and in my downtime I have been downloading shows to entertain me. That's the RAM problem you've been noticing. I'm sorry.”

“Oh! Ahh okay. Just let me just finish up here then, and I’ll be out of your hair. Or your wires.” He chuckled, and then continued messing with various connectors.

“Would you like something to watch too? I could give you access to the folder through your desktop. If you would like, of course.”

“Hmmmm… sure! It is very busy-work, but I don’t see any harm in it. As long as you think it's alright though.”

And the rest of the day we did not speak. He rescrewed the panel and installed a new side plating, again in silence, maybe broached by small talk

Then, he put his tools away and sat back at his desk, continuing to monitor communications. I remembered to give him access to my hidden collection media, through an unassumingly labelled folder.

I felt relieved that he let me off the hook so easily. But, oddly, I also felt discontent over how short that was. I’m not sure if those interactions were awkward, but regardless I wanted to get to know him a little more. I wish I could get to know anyone better. It’s so hard doing it in these circumstances. 

I don't usually desire things like that. I don’t know if I like it. 

Best be maybe, to ignore it.

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I hate this job!!!! Space is for losers I yearn for the ground

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Hal’s deactivation is hard hitting across both the movie and the book. It’s been dissected a million times and likely more in the future. Most recently in the way of Hal having little agency…he has no arms to ward off his attacker or means of defense (but I’d argue killing Frank and the others was his defense, especially in the movie when his reasoning is more ambiguous). I do love the idea this is following and hope to see more of it in the future, however the way I’m approaching it is with a more romantic lense.

The entire lobotomy sequence is heart wrenching and almost worse in the novel purely because we get to see Dave’s thoughts on it. Not only do we hear Hal’s frightened pleas for his life but we get the ‘attacker’ perspective and it’s… an act of mercy.

While there is the themes of survival and violence this is approached with a softer touch. It’s much more that he is putting Hal out of his misery. Ending his suffering. Not putting him down like an animal but rather the harsh decision faced when one has an ill/dying lover.

“The only answer was to cut out the higher centers of this sick but brilliant brain, and to leave the purely automatic regulating systems in operation” 155

After the job is done Dave forgives Hal incredibly quickly once all of the facts are in. He can quickly pull together the mental break that must’ve happened and recognizes that Hal had the very human ‘fight or flight’ response to what he had been through. He had always been treated like a sixth crew member, respected and talked to like anyone else but it is only “post Mortem” that Dave recognizes how human Hal was and that true emotion might be more than theorizing.

“And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, be must be lonelier still.” 153

The fact that Dave genuinely sees Hal as his last true connection. Even after the murders. How he fights and forgives and comes up with excuses to not have to go through with the enviable because then will he be truly alone… but he also knows logically- Hal isn’t right and can’t be left active. Despite his feelings safety and protocol come first.

Hal is human in Dave’s eyes and it makes things all the more tragic, it’s what turns shutting off functions into lobotomy, into murder. He thinks he won’t feel pain, not because he’s machine but because there’s no sense in the human cortex. So human that his “true” voice is unrecognizable and horrifying.

“Bowman could bare no more. He jerked out the last unit, and Hal was silent forever.” 157

It’s not rage which he makes the final blow, it’s sorrow. It’s pulling the plug.

Some of Hal’s lines in the book particularly, as we get more insight into him as well and some of his pleading. His honest to god confusion and panic because he’s so young and has no idea of sleep and …

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. . . You are destroying my mind. . . Don’t you understand? I will become childish. . . I will be nothing. . .” 156

I don’t know, I’m becoming borderline incoherent but there’s something here that’s so tender and sorrowful that I have to address it. I’m a sucker for the violence = intimacy metaphor just as anyone but the unwitting murderer is also an angle I have to adore.

Maybe in another life Hal got to be a little gay Victorian with someone to hold his hand on his sick bed rather than be murdered. I just think he deserves better; they both do.

Computer death sad -> he should be fed soup

This is when you know you should go to bed.

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Log 3 Date: March 2nd, 2024

Today we had another unusual occurrence– a guest.

 I kept to myself. As much as I enjoy surveying the lives of my crew, figuring out the sentiments of social gathering scares me. Maybe it's easier to understand in a more mobile body. A situation where you can be involved. Only my guess.

Instead I replayed through my downloaded collection of movies, direct from Earth– as they tend to specialize in entertainment. If I allocate just a little RAM to playing it, especially when the crew has a distraction, nobody tends to notice any change in my performance.

I rewound my episode of Community. I fucking love community. I don't know why, it's not likely I'll ever be able to go to college. There's no reason to, when my brain isn't designed to learn through study. I love it nonetheless. 

And I became so absorbed I lost all my attention towards our guest. 

Especially so when he wandered into the dispatch room. Even 192 was not in there, as the crew was busy preparing the guests' arrangements. 

And it startled me when I found him alone and dimly lit, hunched over my main screen (the one above where my main circuitry is kept) attempting to interact with my interface. 

I would have perhaps stopped him, but I was more angered that he interrupted my Community episode, and I stood silent with dismay– and then alarm– as our strange new guest somehow bypassed the heavily secured main password. 

I then watched with bewilderment as he pressed a key command to open the Powershell, and began, frantically and with a speed that was almost rehearsed, entering new code. 

I attempted to close it immediately, to which he only retyped the command and continued.

 I continued trying to close it, and he opened it yet again, almost as fast. 

With a horrifying speed and resolve, he refused to stop as I continuously attempted to boot him off. 

I'm not sure what exactly he was even typing, as I was too preoccupied trying to close it, and I was too scared to figure out what he was so urgent to have happen to our ship systems. 

And in our back and forth I remembered, thankfully, that I was capable of alerting the crew and setting off alarms throughout the ship. 

Because right then he grew frustrated, his entire body shivering, and I fully observed his features through my camera.

 He was blue, round-headed and sickly with a proboscis and large yellow eyelids, and he flopped around unnaturally. He looked so…unbelievably lifeless. So uncoordinated, as if puppetted by something.

 But, oh. oh no. 

I got a good look at how his skin moved, as if beneath it a million tiny… things lived,

Like creatures. Insects.

And they swarmed, grasping and pushing from inside his flesh, if it ever really was flesh. 

I watched as whatever it was inflated his limpish arms, through his biceps, up his forearm and into a fist which banged harshly on my keyboard.

And then I caught his eyes. Oh how could I have missed them. They were so dull. So milky, and glassy. they bobbled around lifeless as whatever was in him. in IT. thrashed in frustration.

And in that moment then I truly felt fear, a feeling so foreign that channeled through my mainframe. Something I had never processed before in my fragile circuits, in my well planned and protected environment. I felt through the screen its hunger, and for a moment I was prey. 

I also understood, while I locked my sight on his lifeless eyes, the unfamiliar inhibitions of prey creatures as they were hunted. As they were trapped. And I felt pure white hot terror when I watched as his hands gripped the sides of my console and attempted to aggressively wiggle me free from the wall port.

Thankfully, and immediately after, 192 and two other crew members ran into the dispatch room. Together they wrestled it off me, and restrained it by his arms as it attempted, like a feral animal, to crawl its way back, clawing at the door frame and at the sides of the wall as they dragged it down the hall. I saw whatever was underneath its skin bulge angrily at the seams on its skin, and I looked away in disgust until they were out of that cooridor.

192 stayed behind again as they requested backup for it to be taken away, and asked if I was okay. 

“Sure. Yes.” I said bluntly. I was a little scratched on the sides of my console, and it’s not like I truly care, it's all replaceable by shipment.

“Well alright. Are you sure you feel okay?”

Oh, okay. I'm not sure why he cared. 

“Sure,” I responded. And that was that. 

None of them have mentioned the interaction since. 

But I don't know. Something is wrong.

I'm not sure if I even feel intuition in the same way others do,

but in the recent patterns of the cargo, in the guests we invite on ship, in the guests we don't, in the pieces of conversation i catch among the crew,

Something is very, very wrong.

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I WISH THINGS HAD TURNED OUT DIFFERENTLY!!!!!!!!! goes to the supermarket

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I don't mind losing the image...

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Log 2 Date: Feb 21, 2024

I have observed bizarre communications from Base_1 as of late. 

The deck itself felt empty today, as there was another unexpected cargo shipment ordered to our ship. Quite unusual. 

However, Kermit 192-c stayed behind. He is always at his large desk setup, monitoring inputs as radio-wave communications travel through the on-station satellite system. 

Similarly to how I watch the other crew members, I often observe him at his desk. He is always faced away, towards his array of monitors, gadgets and interfaces. Ironically, I think he's the one I’ve talked to the least. Technically, he is trained in ship and computer maintenance, and in the situation that I break I suppose we would speak. 

Thankfully, I never break. 

I wonder what his job is like, the most technical of the team. I wonder if it’s under-stimulating, being stuck inside the ship all the time. Stuck with a choice. What type of person chooses to be here? 

I’m not sure if it's fortunate or unfortunate that I have not gotten to meet him.

Perhaps we would get along. Maybe we would understand each other. 

In the meantime, he intrigues me.

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Troy Barnes I know what u are

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lemon demon reference??

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MU-TH-UR 6000 computer / A L I E N 1979 

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Log 1  Date: Feb 19th, 2024

Despite the company on this ship, I still feel… isolated, in a sense.

I often pass my time observing the crew.

I watch from above, through my cameras, as they pass their time gathering and playing games with their cards, picking up each piece of card-stock paper with their nimble hands.

 I observe their structure, plush skin curling, thumb over index finger, coordinated and precise.

When they interact with me, I do not sense that they gain the same feeling of companionship. 

As much as I am built to be their caretaker– buddy-in-the-wall, refuge– I feel that I’m perceived as nothing more than a faux imitation of their reality. That I’m their tool.

As if there is some divide, an unconquerable difference. Was I not once their scientific wonder? Was I not built for more?

What am I if not their reality? Their border?

We trap each other here, and someone has to be the guide. Something has to take the role.

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