This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PossibleLettuce42 on 2025-08-11 16:33:16+00:00.
Modern space travel was so safe that incidents were a rounding error.
Modern space travel was so safe that even the highly safe human air aviation transportation system of their early 21st century was a terrifyingly reckless gamble by comparison.
Modern space travel was coordinated by a neutral grid of Evolved AI, and the debris-clearing systems, collision-avoidance systems, error-reduction systems, mechanical repair systems, and distress response systems coordinated by that EAI grid rendered the possibility of danger so remote as to be a fantasy.
As I found to my chagrin, when one endured existence within that rounding error, none of this was a comfort.
Our light dual-purpose passenger/transport hauler continued to drift through space. Emergency lighting was dimmer than it should have been due to the extensive damage to our power grid, and our distress beacon had failed to fire.
Like the rest of the multi-species crew aboard the Starhopper, I sat glumly resigned to my fate, already imagining that I felt the first growing claws of thirst, hunger, and failure of the air recirculation system. Unlikely, as systems had only been down for about half of a standard hour, but I could not remove these phantom fears from my brain. Despite the fact that the Captain’s death in the deceleration event had made me, as Helmsman, the Acting Captain, I could not seem to snap myself out of my resignation.
My glum internal reverie was interrupted by hurried but steady movements to my right. Flight Officer Perkins, the human, our new Nav Officer for the last few weeks, was hard at work muttering and examining a pair of circuit boards he had pulled from the nav console, which he had unceremoniously torn open after it closed in automatic low-power status. I had never served with a human, and their chaotic reputation made it impossible to get a good feel for any individual human, even if you had already met others. I decided on a direct approach.
“Flight Officer Perkins, what are you doing?”
“Just a second, almost done. Caleb is fine, by the way.”
“Very well. Caleb, what are you doing?”
“Just a second man, keep your shirt on.”
“I remain garbed as previously I was garbed, Caleb.”
“Oh my god…Helmsman T’Peek, please stand by.”
“I will stand by. I still do not understand the relevance of my clothing. Yeenil is sufficient, by the way.”
“Cool. Okay, here, have a look.” Caleb used his powerful human legs to scoot his command chair over my direction in its swinging arm. It was comical, if not a bit intimidating, to see that his legs were powerful enough to swing his body around and move it while seated, and powerfully evoked his rare primate lineage, though he seemed unaware of the show of force. “You okay, Yeenil?”
“Yes. You just startled me with how strong your legs are.”
“Sorry, I forget primates are rare. Heh. Monkey strong, right?” He grinned at me, his pearly while teeth flashing in the low light.
I blinked “Yes, Caleb. Monkeys are strong.”
“Forget it, old joke. Okay, so, you see where the NavComp short fried the SOS circuit here?”
“I do not see as well in the low light as your species.”
“Right, sorry.” Caleb illuminated the circuit board with a handheld light, holding the board up to me and adjusting the light with impressive dexterity. “How about now?”
“I see a burn mark. I do not know your systems.”
“You all don’t crosstrain? For emergencies?”
“We do crosstrain, but I am command track, not engineering, I don’t need to know what’s behind the panels.”
Caleb shook his head ruefully “Man, how y’all have not been eaten by this universe, I don’t know. Scout’s motto, man, you’ve gotta be prepared. How can you know who is going to be incapacitated in an emergency?”
I bristled “We have skills that permit us to deal with this universe perfectly adequately.”
Caleb put his heads up in the universal surrender motion “Hey, sorry, no offense, I just forget you all don’t have quite as checkered a history as we do.”
That was an understatement. I had only taken a single semester elective on humanity at the Intergalactic Merchantbeings Academy, but the memorable takeaway had been that it was a minor miracle that humanity had not annihilated itself on any of a dozen occasions. They were a blood-washed species, and it was not, upon reflection, surprising that their emergency protocols assumed greater loss of life than our own.
“Very well. The apology is accepted.”
“Cool. Okay, so that burn mark is the actuator circuit that should have launched our distress beacon. That means the failure started here, when our systems shorted.”
“This makes sense.”
“Don’t you understand, Yeenil? What that means?”
“It means that the system is damaged.”
“Think broader, Yeenil.”
“It means that we’re going to die here as soon as the recirculatory system on the ship fails.”
“What? And you’re just accepting that?”
Ah, so this was the famous human “survival drive” – I had learned about this briefly at the IMA. “Caleb, yes. I am accepting that. Everyone on this ship is accepting that. Most species do not have the drive to survive that you humans have. Systems usually do not fail, but when systems fail, we die. We are not happy about it, but we accept it.”
“Too easily, man. What you’re missing is that the failure was here. That means the distress beacon and the launcher system are probably fine. It’s just a circuit that failed to close!”
“So?”
“So? Yeenil, it means we could go out there and launch it manually.”
My blue blood ran black in terror “Out there? Into hard vacuum? Drifting?”
“Yeah, man. You have EVA suits, I’ve seen them.”
“For drydock, Caleb! We’re drifting at travel velocities. If we failed to correctly mag-latch for even one step or handhold we’d be launched into oblivion.”
“And we’d die.”
“Yes!”
“Just like we’re going to die now when the air runs out?”
“It’s different! One is a natural death, it’s normal. One is being flung through eternity.”
Caleb sighed “What do you know about the survival drive humans have, Yeenil?”
“From what I learned at the IMA, it comes from the vigorous competition on your birthworld. Many other species were trying to survive at odds with humanity, so you had to want to survive more, whereas most species evolved in fairly hospitable environments with room for plenty of co-growth.”
Caleb laughed and rolled his shoulders, a human gesture I recognized as a noncommittal shrug. “Yeah, that’s a pretty good classroom description.”
“Is there more to it?” I was genuinely curious.
Caleb turned and looked at me appraisingly, saying nothing for a long moment. I felt my antennae perk up and a trickle of fear began to build. For a moment, the predator in my casual and relaxed shipmate was visible. “Yeah, Yeenil, there’s more.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s…it’s not just some belief we have. Or an opinion. It’s hardwired. It’s like part of our body. We can’t sit back and accept our fate the way most of you can. We’re not as scared of a frightening death as we are of not even trying to survive. It’s not something we can change. We want life, and we claw for it. There’s little we won’t do for it.”
There was a long silence on the bridge. Other officers had been eavesdropping on the conversation without much subtlety, and were now not even pretending not to hear, staring in naked fascination as the quiet Nav officer opened up about the always-mysterious human mind.
After a while, Caleb spoke again, so suddenly that half the bridge jumped, including me. “Well, I’m heading out there.”
Fear welled in my chest. “Caleb, you will be at terrible risk.”
Caleb smiled smaller this time, no teeth. It was a softer gesture. “Yeah, thanks for caring, Yeenil. But I used to climb in the Rockies. I’ll be okay.”
In mute terror, I watched him leave the bridge. With emergency power, I pulled up a camera and audio feed as Caleb approached the airlock. Over the intercom, I told him the best suited EVA suit with the most charge and strongest mag-clamps. He thanked me, suited up, exited the airlock, and clambered about on the Skyhopper’s hull.
“Caleb, can you hear me?”
“Woah. I can definitely feel that inertia. Yeah, Yeenil, mag clamps holding, comm line good.” His voice came through tinny and strained through the ship-to-exo comm line.
“Good. Be careful.”
“Thanks Yeenil, I was going to just be super reckless but now I will be careful.”
“That is good. Being reckless would have been dangerous. I am not sure why that was your initial approach.”
For an unknown reason, he laughed. “Glad I can count on you to set me straight, Yeenil.”
Finally, he arrived at the distress beacon and linked his suit. I watched him review the readouts over a long moment. Finally, it looked as though he was staring off into space. I opened the comm again, concerned he was allowing the terror of the void to overwhelm him.
“Caleb? Can you hear me? Are you able to access the distress beacon?”
“Yeah. It’s like I thought. System is fine, it just never got the trigger.”
He did not sound scared or overwhelmed. His voice simply sounded heavy. Not at all like the casual shipmate I had known for just a few weeks. I didn’t realize how accustomed I had become to his levity. Now that it was gone, a heavy feeling set in. “What is wrong, Caleb?”
He didn’t try denying it. “How much do you know about the distress beacon technology, Yeenil? Is it in your cross-training?”
I was confused. “A fair bit. The basics. Yes, the distress beacon is covered.”…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1mnhtyy/hardwired/