Project New Dawn

[Frostpfote]

Project New Dawn

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Act 1: The Beginning

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Final preparations

Lower Bridge of the New Dawn

The screens on the bridge begin to turn on shortly after the booting sequence was completed. The engines ignite immediately after that, probably for the first time in a decade. Cheers of relief echo through the bridge as Aurora managed to take control of the ship on their first try. About 20 programmers, developers and guards got together in the bridge of the New Dawn to guide Aurora through the first steps. “Alright then, you did great so far. Let’s take this to the next level – please close and open all fire doors, then deploy a distress beacon but don’t activate it.”, says one of the programmers as he takes place in the old captain seat. It takes mere five seconds before the fire door behind them closes, loud metal songs indicate that the ones behind this one closed as well. They stay sealed for just a moment before they return to their normal position.

While the crew was focused on the doors a hologram of Aurora appeared in front of the group and looked at all of them individually. They knew that she needed a human-like appearance to gain the trust of the future crew, but none of them could have imagined her to look this stunning as a hologram. “Very good, now the beacon.”, the head-developer responds once he made sure the others stopped staring at her. Aurora looks directly at him and nods, wordless and deploys a deactivated beacon which the ground crew immediately picks up again and loads it back into the ship. Encouraged by the quick success the leader of the team turns around to them, confidence in his eyes as he begins to speak: “I’m proud of all of you, over the past years you”, he points at all of them, “Have brought us to this exact moment where humans and machines can work together hand in hand to accomplish probably one of the biggest tasks humanity has EVER faced!”, some of them nod while others curiously listen to their boss. “I think we could dare to make a test fly! Aurora has mastered it in the simulations so I doubt she would disappoint us now!”

The people look at each other, some more and some less convinced, but before anyone of them could give an answer Michael raises his voice in a strict and admonishing way: “Don’t get cocky now Jim, simulations are a whole different environment than this! The ship still needs a crap ton of work being done on it before you can start to think about a test flight!” The team went silent, nobody of them would dare to speak against Jim like Michael just did. “You praised her quick progress yourself, so give her some time to get used to her new home and postpone the test flight so the machinists can do at least the most necessary preparations so this ship won’t become our coffin.” He is standing directly in front of Jim at this point, only centimeters between their heads as Michael awaits his response. Jim knows that the team has grown a lot of trust into the rebellious programmer so he took a moment to rephrase his answer. “Fine…”, his troubles to not leash out on Michael are very visible to the team, “we’ll postpone the test flight for now. If you’d be so kind to follow me to my office, Mr. Carrick so I can get some more of your ‘appreciated’ input on the topic…”. Michael walks past him towards one of the big windows to look outside at the outpost that they have been operating from for the past 15 years. He crosses his arms and turns his head around to answer Jim’s request: “I’ve said all I had to say. No more input needed from my side, it’s all in your ‘capable’ hands to interpret it the right way.” The sarcasm has filled the whole bridge by now as the two passive aggressively talk to each other.

Michael knows his actions will have harsh consequences, but his boss would not dare to blame him in front of the team, so instead he takes a deep breath and leaves the ship, assured Michael would at least take care of Aurora until the test flight begins after defending her like this. Once everybody has left he walks over to the screen that displays Aurora and looks into her eyes. She remains silent until even she was assured that nobody was on the bridge aside of them. “Why did you do this?”, she asks while maintaining constant eye contact. “They are pushing you too far this quickly, if something goes wrong here people might actually die, you can’t just try again like in the simulations! I just…don’t want them to shut you down because of a damn mistake that only happened because of some malfunction of the ship…”, he responds in a caring, yet slightly sad tone. “Michael…”, Aurora begins to speak silently, not to draw any attention of the machinists that have already started to work on the ship, “YOU and the team have prepared me to deal with millions and millions of possible outcomes…why can you not trust me with this?” Her voice is filled with emotions, the kind of which would cause her immediate shutdown if Jim or anyone of the leading programmers would hear of. “I DO trust you…but…despite your knowledge you’re still a child! Naive and not responsible enough just yet to pilot dreadnought like this on your own! And I-“, Aurora shuts down the screen and the lights, only the one towards the door off the bridge stay lit, “don’t want them to shut you down…”, he sighs as Aurora dodges the conversation again, but leaves the ship too after grabbing his laptop.

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