Currently, we – Claudius One and its entire crew of nearly 500 – are hovering back and forth on a small patch of space just outside of the Earth’s gravitational pull while waiting for a fresh supply of orders and a new Captain. Claudius One is Earth’s first Space Cruiser to have successfully explored space equipped with the first sentient AI-model called iClaud. Sometimes just referred to as Claud when it suits the moment or speaker. Currently, its subsidiary programmes that run the auto pilot are making the ship pace around nervously causing some of its crewmembers to experience mild cases of motion sickness. Claud is bored.
This semi-stationary position – with no apparent form of decent leadership, a lack of orders and direction, and all classes on hold till further notice – is giving me ample time to record some of the finest stories of my, and our, history into my personal Black Box Chronicles. Should this ship ever meet the same fate of those who went before it, my Black Box Chronicles will be saved but impossible to access without the proper knowledge, codes and eye scans. Needless to say, that the future will be safe from history.
Claudius One was preceded by some five or six iGen spacecraft that also had AI-models installed on their computers. These different versions, although constantly improved, were far removed from being self-conscious, independently operating, and thinking programmes. The shuttles themselves were state of the art design in those days and, together with some 200 crewmembers, they were hurled into space many a moon ago under a loud cheer and a bon voyage. They never returned.
Space Shuttles carrying some 200 odd people that were constantly disappearing into space was fuel on the already burning forest fires of conspiracy theorists – of which, as you will understand, the Flat Spacers were the most harmless. Amongst the more plausible explanations we find one ludicrous but probable idea that considers them having been chucked directly towards the mouths of the damnable Space Eaters. Those devouring spots of creepy blackness I mentioned before, were then known as black holes, but as much feared then as they are now. Evidence to debunk this or any other of their theories have not been and cannot yet be given. Until proven otherwise, everything on board is either dead or alive. Or both.
Some people, mostly descendants of relatives of those on board the vessels, keep clinging onto the silly hope that the ships are still intact and the crew (or descendants of) are somehow still alive and surviving out there. Maybe the many men and women are even leading happy and fulfilling lives in subspace where beer fountains and giant dwarves can be found singing pirate songs by the fireplace while wearing a sieve on their heads. Theoretically not impossible, just highly improbable, or vice versa when you are a Flat Spacer.
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