A Sentient Spaceship. 3.1k (standard:science fiction, 3084 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 19 2020	Views/Reads: 1212/918	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A spaceship is on a very long flight, its human component sleeping while robots run the vessel. Something goes wrong. The ship flies on, lost. Finally, another error wakes the captain.

Medical Technician Lennie watched as a laborer trundled in his next
patient.  It was a supervisor from the ship's storage section, level 
22.  As the laborer retreated, leaving the other robot rocking back and 
forth on its own treads, the patient stumbled several times on its way 
to Lennie's work bench. 

"Wait outside, please," he said to the first robot, a heavy-lifter
model. "I might need you." 

He thought he knew the problem, seeing smears of grease easing through
loosening seals.  A complete checkup was in order.  Lennie was a 
repairman, himself designated a male -- the equivalent of a robotic 
surgeon. 

Across the room, assistants Lester and Luke were similarly occupied. 
They'd been working on the same patients for the length of the "Trip", 
over 500 Earth years.  Each year, or so it seemed, repairs were 
becoming more extensive as the ship's equipment wore out from use. 

The ship contained four classes of robots.  At the bottom were simple
laborers, with a ROM (Read Only Memory) containing cleaning and simple 
equipment repair instructions -- but little RAM (Random Access Memory), 
and were not capable of making decisions on their own.  If a task 
required free thought, they'd call for a supervisor. 

The laborers and supervisors were of various shapes according to their
functions. Supervisors were also workers but with much more RAM and 
able to make decisions for their own tasks as well as for the laborers. 
 They were capable of independent thought such as holding conversations 
and passing on orders -- even idle rumors. 

First, Lennie thought, he'd work on the patient's stability, to get that
out of the way.  Unscrewing and taking off an inspection plate on the 
supervisor's right side, he inserted a finger.  A probe spiraled from 
his digit, thinning as it extended into mono-molecular thickness, then 
even thinner into a sub-molecular thread. 

Since both a camera and a grasping tool were installed into the tip, he
maneuvered it around a bank of tri-molecular centrifuges, finding 
several wobbling in place and destabilizing the effect of others. 

Their bases appeared worn.  Excess bands of torn off free electrons vied
for space, influencing the paths of the "honest" ones.  Lennie 
maneuvered an extending vacuum tube to suck the extra bands of 
particles into his finger, then replaced them, one by one, into their 
proper places within faulty molecular constructs. 

When finished, he looked for and sucked up a few others that had escaped
orbit altogether.  A robotic cavity always accumulated a few free 
electrons, even entire atoms that had to be cleaned out periodically 
before they gummed up the works.  He then pulled his finger together 
and extracted it to dump the accumulated trash into a magnetic 
container. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in replacing rubber and plastic
seals, as well as cleaning and scraping cavities on his patient. 

A half-dozen foot-treads also needed replacement.  A quick brain-scan of
Read Only and Random Access memory checked out.  There were no errors 
in the supervisor's limited cognitive ability. 

"Walk around the room, Supervisor112-22," he ordered, "as fast as
possible.  Try to keep 15 centimeters from obstructions." 

"How many repetitions, sir?" 

"I'll tell you when to stop." 

He watched as it ran ten times around the large space, pleased to see it
decided on its own to avoid Lester and Luke's work areas.  There was no 
wobbling. 

"You can leave, Supervisor112-22.  Take the laborer with you. 

Laborers recharged at specific charging stations, while supervisors and


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