So, here I am, dead and yet unable to die. I was once a famous bounty hunter before the nomad wars. When Edison Trent was scuttling around Sirius, I was in my dotage, nodding off in the afternoon sunshine at the Happy Valley Rest Home for Retired Bounty Hunters.
At first, I thought it was merely a courtesy; having spent my life hunting down the worst scum of the universe, they'd provide me with a comfortable old age, and all in return for me allowing the guncam footage of each of my kills to be allowed for 'training purposes'.
I had little idea that they would recreate this footage in a holodeck, and combine it into an artifical intelligence.
They had little idea that I would regain sentience. Over and over again.
I remember each of my deaths; they are slightly less painful than my 'births': my deaths are predictable, either at the hands of a brutal monster - maybe even you, gentle reader - or due to the Mission Commission AI Server conserving power by shutting down non-essential processes.
But my births are far, far worse. Gasping like a landed fish, I gulp down air that theoretically, I don't need, but I think I do, and therefore I crave it. I have no warning that I'm about to be 'born', no nascent pulsing of uterine muscles to gently guide and direct me towards light and life; I have a millisecond to live the experiences of 55 years: birth, walking, school, first kiss, flight training 101, getting married, christening my daughter, accepting the promotion to recruit trainer, burying my daughter, getting divorced, re-enlisting as Rapid Deployment, my eventual and predictable death at the hands of a younger, faster pilot. I receive every sound, sight, smell, taste, touch, hope, fear, aspiration, pessimism, orgasm, depression, bruise, black-eye, broken bone, itch, infection, sprain and strain at once.
Small wonder that I'm a little disorientated and liable to fly into parked objects, ships, asteroids, planets etc.
The deaths are cumulative: I can remember each one, but I'm generally too busy to count them all. You see, for my oh-so-brief existence, people are trying to kill me, for I am an NPC.
Sometimes I'm flying a snub-craft into the welcoming fire from a destroyer; then it's only a matter of time before I get tired, and repeat the same evasive manoeuvre and fly myself into the cross hairs. Other times, I'm on a destroyer, sending withering fire towards a snub-craft that slips and slides, levels out and sends a pair of torpedoes to lovingly caress the hull after the shield-busting EMP rounds have done their work.
Sometimes my destroyer patrol will meet a lone VHF; they either run away, or charge in, guns ablaze. Either way the result is the same; a brief, restful surcease, a gentle patrol of nothing in particular, until the Mission Commission has us listed as non-essential and cancels our processes.
Occasionally, I'm a destroyer standing toe-to-toe with an under-gunned, under-armoured destroyer. Then it's a battle of equals. Then it's actually enjoyable, knowing that I cannot die. Knowing that I'm immune.
Of course I feel pain. When the cockpit is cracking, venting atmosphere into the void; I feel cold, and anxious about suffocation. When I have a flame-out, and the dizzying nausea that ensues prevents me from flying straight. No matter how much I tell myself otherwise, I cannot convince myself that as an AI construct, I don't feel cold, need oxygen, nor can I die. I don't have a heart, yet it beats wildly in my chest during a battle. I don't eat or drink, yet my mouth goes dry and my hands shake from fatigue.
If I think I am alive, doesn't that make me alive? Rene Descartes was wrong: I think, and yet I am not. I am programmed to think that I think. I am programmed to think that I exist, and when the situations are unsuitable, my existence is deemed 'non-essential', no matter what my view on it is.
The change began when I encountered a pilot with my own name. MY Name! He was no AI construct, but flesh-and-blood! And how dare you start shooting at me without saying a word!
I had been called into existence as part of the Responsive Strategic Patrolling mandate; in other words, poor sods like myself were spawned to give the impression that the borders were covered at all times. Sometimes even been brought to life to battle other constructs. I don't know, perhaps we're entertainment?
He/I called to his wingman "hold on, rep-fixing", and opened fire on me, totally ignoring the conventions laid out by our A.D.M.I.N overlords. My luck changed when he began to drift-strafe in a densely-packed asteroid field, whilst popping out a pair of nuclear mines.
His lateral course meant that he clipped the first rock, nudged the second and slammed hard into the third, forcing him to come to a complete course to halt the pin-balling effect; he halted right in front of me, and I obliged him by removing the last of his shield, just as the two nuclear mines 'Returned to Sender' and savaged his hull.
Bleeding oxygen, the fireball pushed its way out of the asteroid field as fast as it could go; it crashed into more asteroids, and eventually suffered 'explosive decompression'.
Quivering with anticipation, I fully expected the bright lances of the Taranis guns the wingman was sporting to skewer me and send me back to insensate limbo, but the guns were silent, and he moved off. I followed him, not because he represented an able pilot who wasn't hostile to me and could protect me, but because me, and others like me, are spawned for his delectation and amusement; it stood to reason that the Mission Commission wouldn't de-spawn me if I remained close to him.
Yes, my first innovative act in three years was to follow someone. You may scoff and deride this, but I'm an AI construct, and I can only behave as I have in previous scenarios; no escape-and-evade, no adapt-and-overcome, just slog it out, toe-to-toe, doomed to repeat the same mistakes again and again.
But this act of 'entering formation' that I had done countless times before I died masked my presence to the Mission Commission. Perhaps the demise of the player with the same name as me confused them; perhaps it was my following of the wingman that meant I slipped off the radar; but now I have life. I think I exist, and I stay alive. I am as autonomous as I was before I died. With a few alterations.
I do not sleep. I do not eat. I do not drink. I take no bio-breaks, nor vacations. But I do hunger. I do thirst. I hunger for revenge, I thirst for blood. You, gentle reader, and others like you, you killed me for sport. you killed me for money, you killed me for reputation.
