Benjamin Oberon

Through a balcony opening, silhouetted by the rising sun, a shirtless man carefully strikes out with his fists and feet into the air. The bedroom to which the balcony was attached held the distressed bed with a passed out woman in it and a haze of spice smoke. Ben was centering himself from the lavish party he and his partners had on an almost nightly basis.

The galactic stock market was the source of debt and despair for most people, but those who were good at it thrived. Fortunes that could sustain nearly any vice could be amassed and the parties, sex, and spice were bountiful. For most, it was too much to resist, and Ben Oberon was no different. 

But Ben did better than most of his companions because of his Teräs Käsi practice which he ritually performed every morning. After the sickening nights, he used this self centering martial arts practice to regain his focus, allowing him to surpass his hung over peers. Taught to him by his late father, he's heard rumors that it was a martial arts used by some Jedi, but Ben has never really believed it. 

He got some of the best deals available to him, but soon they weren't going to be enough to keep up with his ever growing vices. Better drugs, more beautiful women, and more lavish parties required him to start becoming more creative with his ventures. Some under the table deals, some dirty deals and Ben was able to sustain. Until one of his deals went south, and the son of the leader of the  criminal syndicate he was working for got arrested. Now they're out for him, and they want him dead. 

Ben returned to the final Teräs Käsi stance and looked back towards the bed. He walked in, threw on a grey suit and grabbed the packed rucksack that laid by the door, all while the passed out women never stirred. He didn't know her name, but still felt bad for her. The arm of the syndicate would probably be here in an hour and they would most likely beat her for information. But he had a ride to catch. An archeologist looking for some extra hands....

200 Word RPG Submission

Pocket Change
After a series of unfortunate events, many people become homeless. These hob
extraordinary journeys that lead them to new places, people, and problems. You will
take on the role of one of these vagabonds as they scrounge up what little they can to
make a life for themselves. You need: A coin, pencil, and paper.

Click here to download the Pocket Change PDF. 

Peter Lochlan: Bland Hobbit

Peter Lochlan

 Bland Hobbit

Peter Lochlan grew up in a small family. His father and Mother owned a small farm which they made their living off of selling beans of various types. Once of age, Peter worked with his parents on Lochlan's Legumes. He was almost constantly working, and never had time to play with the other kids. "Come on, Peter! Gandalf has arrived and will be giving out presents!" The kids would say.

"I'm sorry," Peter replied, "but Mother says I've got to finish my work before I can go play. If you could, please bring me a present from Gandalf?" But the kids seemed to already have run off.

That night, after he finished his work and made his way home, he found a Hobbit his age with red/orange hair sitting asleep outside his front gate. Peter woke her up with a poke to the forehead and as she opened her drowsy eye she held out a gift she had been holding. "This is your gift from Gandalf." Lily said through a giant yawn.

Peter smiled, "Thank you, Lily." Lily acted as if she had not heard a word Peter said. She stood up slowly from the ground, stretched her arms out, and gave another giant. Through half closed eyes she took off down the path towards her home, patting Peter on the head before leaving.

The gift, when he had time to further inspect it, was a special notebook. It was filled with blank pages that he could write or draw on, and after muttering a word the ink would sink into the page and disappear. He used this to his advantage, writing and drawing about small farming machines that could help him do his job faster and allow him to play with the other kids. That was, until his Mother found the book. His lunches would be longer, or he would go to bed early, allowing him more time to write and draw. Eventually, his mother caught him with the book, and when she discovered that he had been wasting time with a blank book she threw it in the fireplace. The only device he conceived that he had managed to build was a small thing he called a slingshot.

The rest of Peter's life consisted of little interaction outside the home and farm. With little outside socializing and his small physique, his mother secretly decided that his chances of finding a wife were low, and started to train him on how to be self sufficient. She taught him how to cook, clean, sew, and other skills that a wife would have brought him.

Eventually, he had out grown his mother's home and got his own house. He stilled worked on his mother's farm, but now had more freedom. Occasionally, he had time to go out and meet with the other Hobbits, but they never seemed to treat him like each other. Everyone treated him like an outsider except Lily, who ever since a child he had a liking of. Eventually, he stopped going out and ended up in a routine of waking up, going to work the farm, making dinner, and going to bed. His free time he would now spend working on recipes, mainly for himself.

One day, he heard that there was a birthday party being thrown for Lily. Peter had become so fond of her that he decided that he would come out of his home and partake in the event. He spent want little money he had on a gift for her, a small silver cup. He went to work the morning of the party, using the cup and baking in it a small cake in it, which he frosted and topped with an exotic cherry. Later, he went to the party with the small perfect cake in the silver cup and presented it to Lily when she was away from guests.

"Thank you Peter, how sweet of you." She said as she took the cupcake. Her face lit up with the first bite and turned slightly red. "This is delicious."

Peter was so proud of himself. The boost of confidence led him to ask Lily over for dinner one night after the party. "If you like the cake you'll love some of my other dishes!" he said excitedly.

But the excitement did not last long. The expression on Lily's face changed to one of embarrassment and her eyes lowered to the ground. "I'm sorry Peter, I can't go on a date with you. I don't feel that way about you." she said holding the silver cup and half eaten cake out towards him.

"But, why not? You said you liked the cake."

"Yes, the cake was very flavorful and sweet, but you..." she paused, "You're very bland. I'm sorry."

Heartbroken, Peter recomposed himself, taking the cupcake back and straightening his jacket. He smiled and wished Lily a happy birthday before turning and leaving. He strode back to his home with a furious pace and immediately began packing once inside. "Bland you say?! I'll show you bland! I'll leave Shire and go on an adventure. I'll meet the Elves, Dwarves, and Lake Men like Bilbo talks about and then who will be bland!"

That night he left with a backpack and a walking stick. He tacked a small note on his door before leaving.

"Dear whoever may be looking for me,

It has been brought to my attention that I have been living a bland life here. To rectify this problem, I have decided to go on an adventure. Hopefully this will spice up my life a bit.

Regards,

Peter"

Love

Lilly

How Things Work

Hard Work

Mushrooms

Hate

A Poor Meal

Confrontation

Heights

Parties

Race for Atlantis: A Fate One Shot

Gathered in the back room of a bar in Casablanca, Morocco, you sit at a large round table and listen to a man speak.

"... And because of this, the Smithsonian Institute has decided that we have obtained enough evidence to launch an expedition for Atlantis." said the suit clad Curator. "The Smithsonian Institute has decided to hire the lot of you to help find it. They have also spent a pretty penny on some of the equipment you will have available for use. Moored in the harbor is the Felicity, a fishing vessel captained by the French Hef Hughner. Felicity has been modified to carry and launch the pride and joy of the Smithsonian's aquatics exploration division, the Manatee. The Manatee is an eight man submersible, capable of reaching the average ocean floor depths. Sustained via a tether to Felicity, it could remain underwater indefinitely, as long as its pumps and generators."

"If you manage to find the sunken city, we would like it if you could map out as much of it as possible, and retrieve an artifact or relic that we could use as proof of our discovery. This expedition is of utmost secrecy, which is why we are in this back room. Some of the men over at the British Museum and New York City's American Museum of Natural History have been interested in this project and would do anything to earn the fame and glory of being the ones to discover Atlantis."

The Curator slammed back the small amount of scotch left in his glass. "Well, now if you don't have anymore questions for me, I guess we are done here. I will see you all bright and early in the harbor. Six o' clock seems like a good time to get started." He rose out of his chair as he finished his last words. With a nod, he threw down enough cash to cover everyone's drinks and left into the cool night.

13th Age Adventure Setup

One year ago, you and your friends ran into some trouble. A kobold name Nurf started organizing raiding parties, stealing fruits and vegetables from the small village of Saltsburg. Down on your luck and in desperate need for the reward money, you joined together to help the town end the kobold plight. In the end, Nurf was a coward, and dealing with him was easy. On top of the reward money, you also came upon some of Nurf's spoils, taking in hefty amount of coinage.

"That was easy." You all thought. "Maybe we could make money this way." There were boastful cheers of agreement. So searching for more opportunities and a better life, you set off to Glitterhagen, a town known for its commerce. There a small storefront was bought with the gold from your previous adventure, prime real estate for anyone looking to hire a company of adventurers. A proudly handmade sign swung from the iron hinges above the door.

But the dream quickly became a nightmare. With well established adventuring guilds getting most of the good paying work, you were soon forced to take any jobs that were willing to pay. Couple that with the exorbitant costs of living in the packed city, and soon you were hungry, sleeping in hammocks strung out in the back room of your store front. Then things got worse. What work they had dried up as fall started to creep by. With no more money left to pay the landlord, you soon found yourself without a place to sleep.

Winter would soon be here, and with no place in sight, you sold your handmade sign for what little gold it was worth and left Glitterhagen with only what you could carry. You traveled north, finally finding the sleepy village of Cinderton. There you spent all you had on rent for a small shack in the middle of the small village, where you returned to the task of finding work. Most of the work you did paid very little, chopping firewood for old ladies, cleaning the barn stalls at the small chapel, or scrubbing a chimney or two, allowing you to eat a couple of times a week.

Your grand plans of becoming an adventurer for hire seemed far away. That was until you heard the knock at the door.

Sophia Rose: Chapter 4

                The steam from the shower flooded the living room. She never liked wearing envirosuits. After only a few minutes of activity they left anyone hot and sweaty. Veronica emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her torso and her hair wrapped in another.

                She sat on the hard couch in her executive suite and grabbed her phone. She flipped through the recent news articles, many of them on the recent upcoming CST senate elections or on KyotoTech's upcoming launch of the subspace gates. She sipped on a glass of imported wine that she had poured hours earlier. It's grape flavors now soured by vinegary oxidation. She continued to sip on the wine despite its new flavors, for the bottle was too expensive for her conscience to leave any of it undrunk.

                She had been working for JADE Propulsion Industries as a security and intellectual property protection director for the past nine years, of which the last three have been here on Amalthea. Most of this work entailed dealing with corporate hackers or spies. She had been transferred from JADE's headquarters on Earth to the Amalthea facility after the company decided to move production of its new jump drives here. But now, if the news on her phone was indication, was going to be out of a job very soon. She didn't worry too much. Many companies would relish in acquiring the security director of a competitor, but JADE, or what would be left of it, would stop at nothing to see that an acquisition never happened.

                All of the large companies in the solar system had and hand or two in the pockets of many of the elected officials part of the Collective Senate of Territories. If so inclined, they could easily have a black mark put on her record, effectively barring her from any future employment opportunities in a position as luxurious as she currently held. So for now, she would continue to do her best until the bitter end, where she hopes she is let go from a company no longer big enough to have their hands in the politicians bank accounts.

                Veronica gulped down the last bit of wine and sat back on the couch with the glass still in her hand. Maybe I could find some work on Enceladus. She delivered a small smile to no one. Maybe find a nice rancher and retire there. Who knows, maybe I'm not too old to have kids. She laughed at the notion and immediately dismissed it as she leant forward to set the empty wine glass on to the small coffee table.

                As if on cue, when the wine glass lightly clinked onto the table, Veronica's phone next to it lit up with a stark red alert. "SECURITY ALERT: BUILDING 37, FLOOR 11" Veronica popped the alert and a hologram began to generate a conference screen.

                "Voice only!" She quickly said, just re-membering she had nothing but the towel from the shower on.

                "Security Station eleven here." a gruff voice from the other end of the connection called.

                "It's Veronica what's the problem?" she said standing up with the phone in her hand. She moved into her bedroom, threw the towel on the bed and started hurriedly to put on clothes.

                "Ma'am, we caught on security footage two people who look to be in an argument. One of them looks like to be Dr. Manelski. We're not sure who the other girl is though."

                "Damn it." She exhaled loudly under her breath. "Is she wearing a red envirosuit?"

                "Affirmative."

                Veronica pulled up the pair of security pants and began to buckle the belt. "Get two men down there at the door to the shop. Don't let them go in without me, but don't let the others out of the machine shop either. I'll be there in five minutes." She ordered.

                "Yes, Ma'am."

                "Anything else I should know?"

                The man at the security terminal paused. "Uh, well when we noticed this developing we started to go through some of our logs of data. They're in a corner of the room that our mics can't pick them up, but we did find something odd."

                "What was it?" she said as she started tying her shoes.

                "Well, it looks like we had a data breach in the past two hours. It found a back door to our systems and looks like it accessed our network and took some information. We're not sure what yet, but we tracked the breach to a device in the machine shop. Nobody else was in there except those two when it happened."

                "Damn it." she said, this time much more audibly. The background check said I could trust her. Veronica grabbed the bolt pistol and holster from on top of the wardrobe and slung it over her shoulder and around her waist. "Do not let any one out of that room, do you hear me?" she said sternly at the phone.

                "Yes, Ma'am." The voice replied and she swiped the conversation away.

                She pulled the bolt pistol out of the holster and slid a magazine into it and loaded the weapon. She slid the pistol back into its home and grabbed a jacket to conceal it as she walked out of her suite. Once in the hallway she made her way towards Building 39, her still wet black hair clinging to her face and whipping the back of her neck as she ran. This is not going to help me get out of this place.

                After a run and an elevator ride, Veronica was in the hallway just outside the machine shop. Two guards in their silver and green uniforms stood outside the door. One of them had his ear pressed against the door trying to listen to what was happening on the other side.

                "What do you have to report." Veronica said quietly to the guard listening.

                "It's hard to tell, I can't hear much through the sound proofing. You think there wasn't any with the racket the machines normally make." His joke fell flat as Veronica delivered him a serious look. He shook his head to recompose himself before continuing. "The only thing that I can say for sure is that one of them wants to take something out of here, and the other doesn't want them too."

                "They've started to move in the last minute or two, sounds like they're getting closer to the door." the other guard said as she held her bolt pistol in her hand.

                Veronica straightened out her jacket that was wrinkled up on her run. "Ok, I'm going to go in there. I want you to stay here just in case. I don't want anything rash to happen. JADE already has enough bad press at the moment, we don't want to add a dead GUTS technician to the fire." She attempted to do something with her still  damp hair, but quickly gave up. She motioned the guards over to their positions out of sight and opened up the machine shop door.

                The dialog inside the machine shop stopped when the door slid open. James turned to his head while still keeping the hammer above it. Sophia stood there with her arms outstretched in front of her preparing to repel and attack.

                Veronica slowly walked into the room with her hands at her sides. Her footsteps were the only think that spoke, saying that she was very unhappy.

                Obviously it was James who broke the silence first. "She... she has somethi-"

                "Oh shut the hell up James." Veronica barked. "What the hell is the meaning of all of this?"

                "She has an AI! She found it in the bot!"

                "What does that have to do with all of this then?" Veronica questioned.

                "It's in her phone. She connected it to the network and stole our data."

                Sophia finally stepped in. "That's not true!" she said loudly.

                "But I saw it! It hacked in and now she's trying to leave with it!"

                "Liar! I only did what I came here to do."

                "Quiet you two." Veronica sternly ordered. She put a hand on her head and rubbed her temples. "Sophia, let's just make this easy. Just come with me. We have the evidence that a breech occurred and we tracked it to your phone."

                "What?" Sophia replied in shock.

                "Just leave your things and come with me. The sooner we get this started the sooner it'll be over." She politely pleaded. "If we start now, you'll probably be able to go in the next few days."

                Sophia had a look of disgust towards the two. "I never did anything. I never would do anything."

                "It's all on her phone! If you get her phone you'll find the stolen data!" James interrupted.

                Sophia took a step back and put a hand on her bag where her phone was.

                "Just hand over the phone and we can get this all over with." Veronica put out her hand, hoping it would be that easy but not expecting it.

                "No." Sophia said as she took another step back. "I'm not a criminal. I didn't do anything!"

                Veronica sighed and shook her head. She reached in under the jacket and produced the bolt pistol. "Come on, just hand it over." All the politeness from before now replaced by anger and demand.

                What happened next nobody had expected. All the lights on the eleventh floor suddenly shut off and they were left in nearly complete darkness. A second later there was the sound of feet shuffling and moving. From the darkness there was a small crash followed by a great noise was made which sounded like two giant rocks colliding. That noise was immediately greeted by another immense sound, a loud pop and sizzle of a bolt pistol discharging accompanied by the bright blue flash of the plasma bullet. A beat later, the few emergency lights flicked on.

                The machine shop was now just barely lit. The dull light revealed Veronica with the bolt pistol in her outstretch arm and a presumably dead Dr. Manelski on the floor next to the  mass reactor hammer he had been holding, which was now firmly stuck to the floor. She moved her finger to a switch forward of the trigger on the gun and flip it up, producing a cone of light from the attached tactical flashlight. Veronica's eyes scanned the dim room. There was no sight of Sophia to be seen anywhere.

                She moved slowly around the shop with her pistol elevated, her eyes darting to every shadow checking for Sophia. She heard a noise over her shoulder and turned a half revolution to be pointed towards the noise. In the doorway to the machine shop stood the two guards from before.

                "She's in here somewhere! Find her!" Veronica ordered. The two guards switched on the flashlights attached to their pistols and began to move through the machine shop. The cones of light from the three of them slid and bounced around the room as they moved through it.

                "Clear!"

                "Clear!"

                "Keep moving. She's hiding someplace."

                They moved quickly towards the back of the room until they were left at the foot of the broken bot Sophia was called to this place to repair. Veronica looked down and saw that there was nobody there. Veronica relaxed her grip on the pistol and stood up straight from her slightly crouched tactical position. Where could she have gone? She scanned the room. There were two ways out of shop, one was through the door at the front and the other was through the levilift canal. The two guards regrouped on her to and reported they also found nothing.

                "She must have sneaked by us. You two, make sure she didn't get out through the canal. I'll back track through the front door and make sure she didn't get out that way."

                The two guards began running towards the canal when she turned and started her run towards the machine shop entrance. Damn. And to think I felt bad for you in the car earlier.

Sophia Rose: Chapter 3

The three of them reunited in the hallway a short time later. While Veronica was the last to enter the changing room, she was the first to emerge. Now wearing a black blazer with a pair of matching suit pants and a light green blouse underneath. Her long, straight black hair now down from the pony tail it was held in while in the envirosuit. Dr. Manelski emerged in something a little less formal. He now wore a pair of faded jeans and a old polo shirt. His glasses and mop like hair now more defining.

                "After you." Sophia insisted to the pair. Veronica nodded and began to walk down the hallway, her heels clicking on the tile in the silent hallway with each step. They turned left into a much wider hallway, now populated with more people, mostly in dirty coveralls. They ignored the trio as they walked towards the elevators in this hallway. Veronica touched her finger to the up button and it lit up with a dull green glow.

                "The machine shop is on the eleventh floor where the canals are situated." she mentioned. "That way we can get whatever we need fixed there quickly. You know the old pharse: Time is money." she continued as the elevator opened its doors to the cramped little room inside.

                Once on the eleventh floor, Veronica led Sophia and the doctor to the entrance to the machine shop. Outside, in the hallway, the high pitched whirring of machines spinning could be heard. It must be great to work on the floor below this, Sophia joked to herself as they stepped into the machine shop.

                The machine shop was massive. It took up nearly the entire space on the eleventh floor, and stretched up probably another two. On either end of the shop there were two massive tubes which levicars used to move between buildings throughout the entire complex. Scattered throughout the room were large pieces of industrial machinery. Some used to create the jump drives that JADE Propulsion manufactured here, and some to fix those machines. Many people in dirty coveralls were working on many of those machines.

                Expertly Veronica led the other two towards the back corner of the shop. There a large seven axis control robot was set with no cables running to it. It's levilift sat on the floor, probably unused for many days now.

                "That's it." Dr. Manelski said excitedly. "That's the bot that we isolated that has whatever is causing us our problems."

                Veronica took a step back. "Well, I won't be much use here anymore." She turned towards Sophia, "If you need me let the doctor know. He can call me on the interlink." She turned and began to walk away, "I'll be back in eight hours if I don't hear anything from you."

                Well I hope this is easy, Sophia though. I really don't want to be stuck here with Manelski here if he's as bad as Veronica said he is. "Great. I should be done by then." she lied.

                As Veronica walked away Sophia turned back towards the still bot. Any tool that was in its manipulator had been removed by the previous tech, probably after something bad had happened. She stood there in silence for a few seconds looking it over. But the silent could not last.

                "So, what do you think is wrong with it?" Dr. Manelski slowly inquired.

                Sophia stood in silence still, not responding to the question. Then, she quickly flung her tool pack off her shoulder and began digging through it. She pulled out a series of cables. Thankfully they were color coded because they were all tangled together. She walked over to the bot and began looking all around it before finding a set of four screws that concealed the controller terminal. The screws were all finger tight, probably because the techs have been it a lot recently, she thought. She thumbed through her cables before selecting the blue one and plugged one end of it into the bot, and the other into her phone.

                All the while, Dr. Manelski was behind her, rattling away about a theory of what might have caused the machine to break. Sophia wasn't listening though, as she started up her phone and began to flip through the holographic display of GUTS diagnostic programs she had. She selected one meant to be run on bots created by Luna Dynamics and the phone went to work gathering as much information on the disabled bot as it could. This was going to take about thirty minutes, which got Sophia thinking.

                I've got thirty minutes. How do I get this guy to stop bugging me until it's done? Then she had an idea.

                "Doctor?"

                "Huh? Oh, uh, what can I do for you Ms. Rose?"

                "Is there any good grub around here?"

                "Well, not really. The nearest mess hall is a twenty minute walk from here." he said as he scrat-ched teh back of his head.

                "Here. Here's six creds." she said as she pulled out some money from her bag. "Can you go run and pick me up a bite to eat? I haven't eaten anything all day and I've got to stay here to keep an eye on this" she lied. She forced the money into his hands.

                "Uh, ok." he said, feeling now obligated to do so because the money was now in his hands. "Well, I guess I'll be back shortly." He sounded unsure as he made his way towards the entrance of the machine shop.

                If I could only spend six creds to get guys away from me all the time, Sophia joked with herself. Now time to sit back while this does its job.

                Sophia sat on the ground with her back against the bot and pulled out an old radio controlled car from her pack along with a couple of tools. For the next twenty minutes she fiddled with the toy car, soldering wires, rebuilding the engine, and repairing the sky blue and orange plastic body.

                As she worked on it, she glanced around the room. It must be late in the day for these guys, commenting on the men and women who were still running around the machine shop. Maybe in the next few hours I'll have the shop all to myself, she silently wished. Traveling around space by herself for six years now has forced her to enjoy the solitude of space travel. She would travel from one part of the solar system to another for many days. Sometimes it took a week or two to get where you to were you were going if the belt was in bad condition. She wished she had the money to afford to travel via jump gates. The jump way through the asteroid belt was always clear. Companies paid a lot of money to ensure it was. Via a jump gate, she could have traveled from the Mercury VII space station to this moon of Jupiter in under thirteen hours, as opposed to the six days it took her through the normal routes.

                But that was all going to change in the next few weeks. KyotoTech announced months back that it would be unveiling its subspace jump technology. The subspace technology was supposed to allow ships to travel in folded space, allowing them to bypass all the physical objects in between point A and B. Because of this, there would be no need for maintenance or clearing of jump ways, therefore reducing the price of jump travel and making it more affordable to the general spacefaring public. And it was going to put a lot of large corporations like Jasper, Alladine, Dunsmith, and Ecclestone Propul-sion Industries in jeopardy of going under.

                This is why it is so imperative to JADE that this bot problem be resolved as soon as possible. In the next few weeks KyotoTech will be opening its first subspace gate and  JADE will be left with old technology. Sophia looked around at all the people still in the workshop. A lot of you won't have a job next year.

                She turned her head to look at the diagnostic still running. It had a large "98%" rotating in the holofield projected by the phone. Sophia packed her car away and slid herself over to the phone to watch the test finish it's interrogation of the crippled machine. The "100%" faded away and Sophia waited for the report to appear. But after a minute of waiting, she realized it would never appear.

                Sophia gave a look of confusion at the hol-ogram which returned to displaying her Hello Kitty. But it wasn't right. The speech bubble that usually displayed helpful information about messages, news, or alerts now had an unfamiliar phrase in it."My name is Dori."

                Curious, She pushed her finger through the bubble which popped, revealing the list of debug-ging logs which generate when a diagnostic program is run. There she found a log with the today's date. That's weird, I wonder why it didn't open when it finished, she thought as she selected it.

                As it opened, her confusion grew. The log had no information or data on the bot. None of the usual data populated the file. Just a single line that read "My name is Dori."

                "This has got to be some kind of virus." she said quietly to herself.

                "What has to be some kind of virus?" the voice called out from behind, startling her. Dr. Manelski had returned with a pair of containers filled with whatever food he could get from the nearest mess hall.

                She turned around to greet him as she thumbed the hologram off. "Huh? Oh, nothing really. My diagnostic tests came back a weird. I think the bot might have a virus of some kind." Sophia held the phone in her hand, still connected to the machine.

                "That's what the techs thought as well. Though none of their equipment was able to detect anything." He paused for a second, then outstretched the Styrofoam food container towards her. "I brought you this. It's Ganymede rice and fish."

                Sophia popped the lid of the container. Steam rolled off the blueish white rice and deep pink fish. It looked much better than it smelled, it's scent being a cross between fish and hot plastics. She accepted it with a smile though, because it was a lot better than what she was used to eating.

                "By the way, you can call me James." he said bashfully.

                Sophia broke apart the set of synthwood chopsticks. "Thanks for grabbing me this James." Sophia said through a mouthful of rice.

                James lowered himself to the floor and sat cross legged. "So, what are you going to do after this?" He cracked his lid open and developed a slight frown as he looked at his imminent meal. The quality of food on this tiny moon could not compare to that from his home planet of Mars.

                "I don't know. Like I said, my diagnostic test returned some weird results. I might start digging through the firmware to see if there are some screwy lines of code that don't match. I'll need to connected to the net so I can get the latest code from Luna Dynamics. Do you have the access information to the network here?" She inquired between bites of food.

                "Yeah, I can give you the pass string. Normally we're not supposed to give it out, but I you passed the security check, right?" She nodded in agreement. "Then I don't see the problem." He smiled and then slowly dug back into his food.

                Through the rest of the meal they exchanged chit chat, mostly Sophia asking James a question about his schooling. This allowed him to go on a long talk about this or that, letting her to continue eating. James, it turned out, graduated from Mars Institute of Technology with his doctoral degree in physics only a few months ago. Without a real plan, he got a job with JADE as an assistant to the engineers that worked here. With his long winded rhetoric and distaste for the local cuisine, Sophia finished her meal before the doctor finished half of his. She tossed her used chopsticks into the empty Styrofoam container, closed the lid, and tos-sed the box off to the side.

                She continued to entertain James as he slowly came to terms with the fact that he was not going to be able to finish his meal. When he finally flew the white flag, he closed the lid of the container and leaned back. "So, now what?"

                "The access information to the network, if you could."

                "Ah, right."

                Sophia lit up her phone again in preparation to enter the key when she saw that her Japanese cat was not there to greet her. Instead, just a speech bubble, connected to nothing, hung there. "Hello, Sophia. My name is Dori." it read. Sophia let out a puzzled sigh.

                "What's wrong?"

                "Oh, nothing." Brushing over the anomaly, She brought up the access consol. "What's that key?" She entered the alpha numeric key that he recounted from memory, then selected the pulsing holographic "CONNECT" icon.

                Immediately there was a problem. The normal hologram of the net navigator did not start. Instead, it was replaced by a slew of binary numbers, flashing by at such a pace that Sophia was only barely recognize what it was. James noticed it too.

                "What, what's going on?" he exclaimed.

                Sophia tried frantically to turn the phone off with no success. Angrily she replied, "I have no clue." She tore the cables out of the bot they were connected too and swiped hand through the hologram many times trying to get it to stop.

                Fifteen seconds later, it stopped almost as abruptly as it started. The hologram returned back to the home screen of just the new, lonely speech bubble.

                The next seconds of silence were broken by James slowly saying, "Well, that was weird."

                Sophia didn't reply. Instead she stared at the phone screen then flicked it off. I'll worry about that later. She turned back towards the reason she came here. "Yeah, I know. Well, I guess we should continue with this thing."

                She dug into her back and grabbed more tools and began disassembling various pieces of the bot. She knew she wasn't going to find anything physically wrong with it, but she needed something to do while she thought about what happened on her phone.

                By now, it was obviously past the working hours of machine shops usual inhabitants. Only ones left in the shop were Sophia and James now. Sophia working silently taking apart things that didn't need to be taken apart, and James mostly talking to an invisible audience.

                Sophia was in the process of returning the bot's fourth axis to its original state when her phone on the concrete floor vibrated, making an audible buzzing sound. Confused, she moved to her phone, the home screen now displaying that there was an unread message. The message appear, it was addressed from "DORI".

                "Hello, My name is Dori. What's your name?"

                Sophia thought for a moment. Who the hell is this Dori and what do they want from me. She toyed with the idea of replying, but her gut reaction told her to keep ignoring it. With a pinch of curiosity, she opened the addressee's contact info. She was shocked to find that everything listed was her own information. Is my phone sending itself messages?

                This new evidence pushed her curiosity over the edge. "My name is Sophia." she typed out on the holographic letters. She pushed the send icon and immediately received a reply.

                "Hi Sophia. I'm Dori. Are you going to go to space?" it read.

                "Yes." she typed.

                "Can you take me? I've always wanted to go to space."

                James, noticing her typing away on her phone, interrupted their silent conversation. "What are you doing? Did you find something?"

                "I think so, but I'm not sure." She beckoned him over to her and pointed at the hologram of transcripts. "Notice anything peculiar?"

                He gave it a thorough look before slightly turning his head sideways. "The messages are coming from your phone?"

                "Yes. I think we might be dealing with more than just a virus here."

                "Do you think it's an AI?"

                "I have no clue. But whatever it is, I think it likes to jump around."

                "Are there anymore of it?"

                "I've no idea. I don't want to plug my phone back into the bot. I don't want what we have here getting away." Sophia dug through her bags. "I don't think I have another data device on me to hook up to check."

                James had a small smile crawl on his face. "What if you ask it if there are more like it?"

                Unsure it would work, she began to type in the question. "Are there more-"

                The response came before she finished her message.

                "Nope. Just me."

                Sophia's demeanor turned from one of curiosity and confusion to one of concern and amazement. On the other hand, Dr. Manelski's face with bright with excitement.

                "It is an AI!"

                "Well that explains why none of the virus software found it." Sophia leaned back until her back was on the cool concrete. After four hours in her envirosuit, she was beginning to get uncom-fortably warm. "My new question, though, is why didn't it jump to any of the techs data devices? Why did it just jump into mine?"

                "I don't know. But maybe you can ask it?" He smiled. "It worked before, maybe it'll work again."

                Sophia sat back up and reached towards the phone. But the answer had already been received. "Because I want to go to space!"

                "I think it's learned to access the microph-one." she sighed. "I've never seen an capable of fitting into such a low powered device."

                "I know, that's what makes this so exciting. It must be able to use some sort of sophisticated algorithm to be able to function on such a low powered device." James seemed really excited. Artificial Intelligence and computer science weren't his specialty, but the physical transmission of that much data was a marvelous achievement in physics. "It's a computer learning right before our eyes."

                While Sophia was not nearly impressed by this as her current company, she was amazed by its abilities. "So sophisticated, but it still just wants to go to space. Kind of reminds me of a kid." She joked.

                "Sophia, will you please take me to space?" a synthetic female voice sounded from the phone.

                The pair stared silently at each other. Their eyes exchanged the conversation on what to say next. Sophia broke the silence just as James began to move.

                "I'll take you to space if you can promise me that there isn't another one like you here." She spoke in a tone that one would use to speak to a child. "This company makes a lot of very dangerous pieces of equipment, and they can't have any else playing with them. People could get seriously hurt." Her mind immediately went to the missing implant on the end of the bot.

                The computerized voice let out an excited cheer.

                James interrupted the celebration, "Whoa, Sophia. You can't take it. It's should go to JADE. It was their bot, they should be able to keep it."

                "Why not? They didn't even know they had it. If it was the virus we expected, do you think they would want it back?" She stood up from the ground, the phone in her hand. "Besides, who knows what harm it could do if it remained here."

                "But whatever it is, it's a feat of science. JADE could possibly figure out how it works and maybe event implement it commercially." He was now standing as well. He held a finger out towards Sophia, "It could save this company."

                Sophia slid her phone into her bag. "Well, maybe so, but I made a promise to this Dori. At least let me take it out of atmo before turning it over. Or do you want an disgruntled AI on your hands?" She began to move towards the exit of the machine shop.

                James, quickly stepped in front of Sophia as she started to leave. "I can't let that leave here. Besides, you don't know what it could do to your ship. You saw what it did to these bots." His voice became elevated and aggressive. "Plug it into your ship and it'll have access to all your information. You have no idea what it'll do with that. Companies would pay a fortune to get their hands on our data!" His last words developing slowly as he connected his last thoughts to the previous actions of the past few hours.

                Sophia immediately knew what he was thinking. Her tone became calming, "Whoa, whoa. I'm not working for anyone. I'm GUTS, I'm certified." She pointed to the crest on the envirosuit.

                But the idea was already planted in his head. He quickly turned and grabbed a large mass reactor hammer. He held it with one hand in a threatening position, his finger on the button which made the hammer head instantaneously weigh fifty kilograms heavier that it was currently.

                "I'm sorry Sophia, but I can't let you leave here with that AI."