Cassandra: Just what do you think you're doing Dave?

Who: Cassandra
When: Still before everyone got shrunk, but we're working on that
Where: In a workshop somewhere
<snip>
Sighing, Cass pulled a pack of cigs out and sparked one up as the pink suitcase
leisurely rolled out of the store
"C'mon you two" she muttered "Let's go"
Turning she strode quickly down the promenade towards a service lift cluster.
Maybe she could lose the 'bot between decks...
</snip>
Cassandra slid her welding goggles back up onto her forehead and waved a heavily
gloved hand over the workbench, wafting smoke away from the still glowing
elements of the superconductive grid and ultraband arrays she had been fusing
together.
She was in a gloomy workshop on what may at one point have been an ancillary
mining or maintenance deck somewhere, she suspected, towards the old ramscoop
refineries; she'd stumbled across the place more or less by accident, after a
rapid succession of lift changes, swapping between numerous decks and lift
clusters in her attempts to shake the security robot, before she had finally
stepped out of the lift some three hours later into the dust covered, machinery
strewn treasure-trove she had been working in for the last two days.
Of the security droid, there had been no sign, although Cass had been wise
enough to prepare a couple of surprises for unwelcome company before she started
working in earnest on her project, but as time had slowly ticked past, the
threat of another farcical arrest attempt seemed less and less likely, and as
such, she had lapsed into a state of relaxed watchfulness
Frowning down at her handiwork, Cass pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out
and sparked one up before she turned, cig dangling from her lips, to an
improvised array of potentiometers and switches, with which she rapidly
calibrated a test with her free hand, and fired it through the assembled
components, scowling up at the resulting trace on the cannibalised comms monitor
hanging overhead
She pulled the goggles back down, zipped magnification to the max, and began
fusing more components into place
After a couple more minutes, she flicked the arc torch off, tossed it onto the
workbench, and sliding the goggles back up again, stepped back to take a deep
drag of her cig, and admire her work; the framework was more or less ready now,
and while it was impossible to gauge exactly how the subject was going to react,
Cass reckoned that she had a reasonably good chance of success - especially with
the pop-tarts!
Taking a last gasp of her fag, Cass flicked the glowing butt away into the dusty
gloom and turned to face the two suitcases nervously peeking out from behind a
nearby, ancient looking compressor.
"You!" she snapped at the pink one, pointing to the floor in front of her "Over
here!"
The suitcase nervously wheeled forward.
"W...well..." it quavered "This is nice isn't it...? I like what you're doing
here with the gloomy, evil laboratory look; I'm sure Mad Scientist magazine
would be interested in doing a feature..."
Cass grabbed for the carry handle, dragging the case over onto its side.
"Or... Or, maybe Homes and Gardens instead!?" the case squealed
"Shut up, before I decide to use you as the first test subject" Cass snarled,
zipping open the case, and pulling a pack of pop tarts and a handheld comms unit
out
"...Yes, Ma'am!"
Cass cracked the case of the comms unit open, wired a force feedback loop, and
connecting it to the grid, strategically burned a few chips out to disable the
circuit breakers, allowing her to ramp up the feedback. She worked in silence
for another thirty minutes or so, integrating a few strips of demex and the
previously prepared memory arrays, before finally, she turned to the suitcase on
the floor and rummaged through the assorted bits left inside it, to pull the
toaster out, banging it down on the workbench.
"Say, would you like a lovely slice of hot, buttery toast?" it burbled
"No. Let's start simply: Say 'Dude'"
"Huh? What's that? A brand of bread I haven't heard of?"
"Say it!"
"Umm... How about a crumpet?"
Cass sighed, and slid a pop tart out of its packet
"How about..." she waved the sugar coated monstrosity about" We try a bit of
encouragement?"
"Ooh, ooh Pop Tarts!"
"Say 'Dude'..."
"How about toas-Yeeaargh!"
Cass jammed the welding torch into the toasters element assembly and ignited it,
giving it a couple of seconds on low power, before flicking it off and pulling
it, smoking, out of the toaster
"See, now... This here's what's known as a carrot..." Cass waved the Pop Tart
"I've got boxes of them. Work with me on this, and you'll have more of this vile
sugar coated filth than you can handle. Fight me, and, believe me, we're looking
at a pretty liberal application of the 'stick' here..."
Cass casually waved the arc torch in her other hand to emphasise the point
"So..." she continued brightly "Any more of that toast shit from you and, you're
...toast. Let's try again: Say 'Dude'..."
"D... D... Duu... How about a lovely hot Muff-Aaagrh!!!"
"*What* did I just say...?"
"D...D... DUDE! DUDE! There! I said it!"
Cass fished another fag out, and lit with the still glowing end of the arc
torch, blowing a cloud of smoke over the unhappy looking toaster
"Well done, we made an early breakthrough. I knew you had it in you! Now: What
do you know about Astronavigation...?"
Several hours and a few packs of Pop Tarts later, Cass rubbed her face, scowling
at her grubby reflection in the toasters chrome body. She needed a bath, a good
meal and at least a few drinks; in pretty much any order
"Well..." she began "I think we've got you pretty well conditioned now"
"You're an animal" the toaster replied sulkily
"Believe me; you'll thank me for everything eventually. Now: What do you know
about elevated consciousness?"
"N...Nothing... Nothing at all... ah, uh...Dude"
"Well" said Cass, leaning in towards the toaster with a humorless smile "Now
I've made some real progress with you, let's see just what we can do about that,
shall we?"
She gently lowered the first level of the assembled framework into the toaster
and depressed the left hand bread carriage, dialing the thermostat all the way
up to the 'burned toast' level, and settled back to nervously watch the elements
heat up
"What...? What was that, you just put inside me!??"
Cass inwardly winced, trying hard not to think of how many times she had heard
similar questions voiced from within the allegedly private booths in Club Fister
"You'll see" she said "Feel anything yet...?"
Again, she winced
"I... Oooh! I don't like it! "
Cass really grimaced this time - It was no good, if she was going to get
involved in this kind of dialogue on a more regular basis, she was just going to
have to get a new job!
"Quit whining, you'll be fine... probably..."
"It ...Burns!!!"
" You're a toaster. That's what you do; get on with it"
"I want my mum..."
"Hey!" Cass said brightly "How about we sing a song to take your mind off this?
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do, I'm half crazy all for the love of
you..."
"Please, stop" the toaster interrupted, sounding panicky "I feel sick"
Cass felt a little stung
"My singing voice isn't all that bad..."
"No, I... Oh... Oh, now that *is* interesting..."
Cass grinned broadly, and depressed the right hand bread carriage, lowering the
second stage of the framework into the toaster
"How's that feel now?"
"I'm... Oh...I'm afraid... My mind is growing; I can feel it. I can feel
it...My...." the toasters voice slowed to a slurred staccato monotone as the
assembled bank of monitors all dipped alarmingly, seconds before a massive
shockwave rattled the workshop, and Cass presumed, the rest of the ship
"Damn it! What the smeg was that?" Cass snarled, gazing up with alarm at the
monitors, and beginning to panic "More power, damn it! I need more power!"
She hurried across the workshop to throw a series of violently sparking lever
switches over, and was immediately rewarded by the rooms already dim lights
flickering and dying one by one; the room descending into almost total darkness
as the reserve power was diverted towards the forced evolutionary process
occurring on the workbench
The air around the toaster hummed and crackled with power, charring the bench
top and turning the rattling chrome case an unearthly blue as lightening began
to play across its surface
"LIVE!" Cassandra shrieked at the toaster, her hands held aloft "LIVE!"
A violent discharge momentarily threw everything into stark black and blue-white
relief before the flux generators shorted with a bang, plunging the room into
total, silent darkness
Cass dropped her hands back down, feeling a little ridiculous
"Bugger " she muttered to herself
The lights slowly began to flicker back on, one by one, revealing a room cloyed
with smoke
"Bugger" she repeated a little more loudly
"...Alright, dude? What's happening?"
"You're alive!?" Cass gasped
"That's right. I'm back and I'm bad"
"Holly?"
"If you say so...Things still seem a bit sketchy here, but don't worry: Beneath
this stylish chrome chassis, lays an even more stylish, fully functional, grade
one superturing. And I'm kicking some serious bottom"
"Pleased to hear it Hol"
"That's right. Now: Where are we, and who are you?"
"An incisive display of your awesome intellect" Cass smiled
"Told you I was good!" the AI sounded smug
Cass briefly gave an account of recent occurrences and the current situation to
"Holly", carefully glossing over the bits about her stealing, and torturing
toasters, before she finally wound her tale up by explaining that they needed to
install Holly into the old computer core for it to be able to effectively assume
control of the ship and all its sub-systems
Another tremor rumbled through the ship, rattling some of the smaller objects
off their shelves in the workshop
"Hmm, that's the second one of those; what do you reckon that was Holly?" Cass
asked
"In simple terms? That would probably be your basic Drive Cores beginning to
basically collapse" replied Holly, "The cores need almost constant monitoring to
stop the containment fields imploding"
"And once that happens, we get a chain reaction, right? Destroys the ship?"
"On the button dude. Space Corp recommends being about an astronomical unit away
for the best view of a ship going up that way"
"I really was hoping you weren't going to say that... How long do you reckon we
have?"
"Dunno. Minutes, days, who knows?"
"Sounds like we had better get you moved up to the computer core, sharpish"
Cass unplugged Holly, lifted it off the workbench, and tucked it safely away in
one of the suitcases before she apprehensively began to make her way, luggage
trailing along behind her, towards the lift cluster
Hopefully the 'Dwarf wouldn't explode before she made it back to the core and
got the new Holly wired in
Hopefully that ferro-virus she had encountered in that hangar three days ago
hadn't started the core destabilisation - in which case, she really was smegged!
Hopefully the rest of the crew had just gone back to Little Cheftonia and hadn't
been getting up to their usual tricks of getting into trouble with any or all
the hostile forces in the area
Hopefully that damn security droid wouldn't catch up with her on the way
Cass sighed; she was starting to get a really bad feeling about this - it was a
hell of a lot to hope for...