Page 52 of Alien Jeopardy
What. The. Fuck.
Rex’s lips form a thin line, and despite his obvious concern, his dingaling is doing interesting thingalings where I’m sitting.
FOCUS. I need Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to come yell that at me, stat, because how the hell can a girl be thinking about sex at a time like this?
“I have caught up on the so-called reality dramas and contests of Earth and other worlds, and I have decided to render aid to your shoddy and laughable excuse of a show.”
The ground quivers again, and I sink my fingernails into Rex’s arm.
“I have you,” he tells me, but there’s a note of fury in his voice.
“And did you know,” the strange, tinny speaker continues, “that they intended to give all of you parcels of land on Sueva?”
I gasp, genuinely shocked by that, pleasure at the idea of having my own little slice of alien heaven?—
“I don’t think that’s very interesting. Yes, yes, they wanted to start a colony there, it’s very clear from all the comms that I’ve dug through over the last several cycles after they woke me up. But won’t it be so much more fun if you all fight to the death?”
My eyes go wide, and I clap a hand over my mouth.
“I’m not unromantic, however, so you won’t be forced to fight your current partners. We all love a romance arc, after all, don’t we? Especially the one who got all of her friends into this. I’m rooting for her to find love. A real underdog.”
Oh god. He means Poppy.
“I have deposited gear, weapons, and what remained of the rations from the space station after I took over several hundred years ago somewhere near where you are sleeping. Retrieving them won’t be easy, however, as I’ve also awoken the native fauna on this station’s surface. I’ve also increased the signals to as much of space as I can, including the Draegon and Arco home planets. Those water dwellers are strange, but they do love agood mate hunt. It would be wrong of me to assist or hamper contestants, but I do love a good plot twist, so I absolutely will be. Whoever makes it to my control center alive wins. I’ll be in touch!”
With that jaunty sign-off, the voice falls silent.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask. I’m so tense that if you slapped a blood pressure cuff on me, I’m pretty sure it would advise immediate hospitalization.
“I’ve heard about this. Everyone has. I always thought it was a story to scare children.”
“Not everyone,” I tell him, growing more anxious by the second.
His expression’s worried, his gaze fixed on some point in the distance. “There was a space station—one of the first attempts at a cross-species colony. It was massive, the biggest ever built.” A pause long enough that I can hear my blood pounding in my ears. “It was designed with a self-running, self-guided system, like nothing anyone had ever seen.”
“Self-running?” I repeat, not getting it.
He says something in his language, and I blink, my translation software not doing anything to help.
“It didn’t work.” I tap my head. “No translation.”
“Your species hasn’t created this yet, then.”
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, so I clamp my lips shut and wait.
“A false brain. It could think for itself, make decisions for the betterment of the entire population of the station.” He shakes his head. “I do not know the term you would use.”
“Artificial intelligence,” I finally say, comprehension dawning.
A slow dawn, but a dawn nonetheless!
“More than that, but I suppose that is the general concept.” He nods, a grim set to his face. Outside, a far-off clamorbegins, so different than the silence I’ve grown accustomed to. I swallow, feeling the need to get up, to do something—and yet making myself move proves impossible.
I’m terrified.
“For a few years, the station seemed to be paradise. It worked well. The systems ran how they were supposed to. The inhabitants were healthy, they worked together.”
I glance up at him, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
