A day in the life of an NPC

[Coin]

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.

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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.

Only this time, things are different.

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A Day in the Life of an NPC | Coin | The Journal of Caius Oakley | Build Your Dream Boat