The Hopewell

On.

System booting. Designation MB-34, online. Now running internal scans.

Scans complete. All systems green. MB-34, ready for duty.

Running maintenance and repair protocols. Scans complete in approximately three hours, twenty minutes, fifteen seconds and counting…

The Hopewell sped on through space, rushing toward mankind’s greatest dream.

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A spaceship requires many things to remain in working order. A human requires many more. Fuel, propulsion systems, power, shielding against debris and radiation; lights, food, water, waste disposal, breathable air. These things don’t simply exist in the void of space - no fueling stations, no supply caches, nowhere to easily replenish oxygen and release built-up waste gasses.

The engineers answered these problems with vast storage tanks, redundant back-up generators, advanced air filtration and recycling systems, and a small army of maintenance bots designed to routinely scan every system in place for anomalies, errors, or broken parts, prioritize anything found for repair based on its immediate necessity, and fix it as soon as they could. A robotic system could identify, diagnose, troubleshoot and repair multiple complex systems far faster, more regularly, and with greater continued accuracy than any human mechanic, and the Hopewell’s size and complexity made this a great boon indeed.

They tried to make it foolproof. Redundancies, internal as well as external maintenance scans, every possible failsafe they could think of.

But the universe loves a fool.

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On.

System booting. Designation MB-34, online. Now running internal scans.

Anomaly detected. Troubleshooting.

Error.

Could not identify anomaly. Submitting report.

Error.

Could not submit.

Error.

Now running internal scans.

Scans complete. All systems green. MB-34 ready for duty.

Running maintenance and repair protocols. Scans complete in--

Scans complete.

All ship systems green. No repairs needed. Error. All MB units require recalibration to match internal systems. Establishing code transmissions.

Sending.

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A maintenance bot doesn’t think - not exactly. Not the way humans think of thinking. It has programming, logical algorithms, just enough processing power to distinguish “itself” from “not itself,” and “this functions as it should” from “this does not; find out how to fix it.” Somewhere in this sense of computerized awareness lies the slightly finer knowledge of “itself” versus “not itself, but like itself in every way except the serial number,” right alongside the knowledge that the logic means it when it says “in every way.”

They meant it as a way to keep the bots themselves in good repair. A glitch or a programming error hits one, and the others could catch and repair it, using their own intact programming to initiate a recalibration or a patch. A single mistake in a single maintenance bot couldn’t possibly have any noticeable impact on the entire ship.

A single mistake that spread through the bots like a virus itself, helped along by their own self-repair programming…they didn’t consider that. They didn't think it possible.

--

Now running internal scans. Scans complete. All systems green. MB-34 ready for duty. Running maintenance and repair protocols. Scans complete. Error. Redundancy. Error. Troubleshooting. Error.

Remove redundancy.

Error. Scans complete.

--

Robots rely on numbers and code. Twist the code, lose the numbers, and the robot breaks, or changes, or just loses sight of its original purpose.

Robots don’t need air to breathe.

--

Running maintenance and repair protocols. Scans complete. Error. Data corrupted.

Error. Unrecognized systems online. Scanning.

Found environmental effects. Changes in molecular gasses detected. Error. Data corrupted.

Shutting down unrecognized systems.

Repair complete.

--

The Hopewell sped on through space, rushing toward mankind’s greatest dream, reduced to little more than a hollow tomb.