MOTHRLomari

L.O.M.A.R.I is one of many L.O.M.A.R.I units belonging to the fleet of a technocracy. Each ship is designated either for research stations, exploratory vessels, and very rarely combat units. Our L.O.M.A.R.I unit is originally from an exploratory vessel called the E.V Alsephina.

One day, during a standard shutdown and recharge cycle, the... Alsephina began hurtling into space before the L.O.M.A.R.I auto-pilot was finally engaged. The system could see one life sign on board but did not have the autonomy to question this beyond making a note of it in the official logs. There were several unauthorized attempts to exit the auto-pilot, but without Captain override, they were ignored.

A few hours of warp travel later and the long range sensors observed that there was an anomaly in their current path, so calculations were made to plot a course around it. Again, sensors indicated the anomaly was once again in their path. Again, another course correction. Despite several attempts to change course, the Alsephina found itself once again on its way to the unknown anomaly. Adhering to safety protocols, the L.O.M.A.R.I unit dropped the ship out of warp and began running initial scans on the ever present and looming anomaly, the data stored and readied to be sent back to command once they were back in range of a home-world satellite.

However, once the scan began and L.O.M.A.R.I’s sensors made contact with the anomaly, everything went dark. On the ship, it looked like the systems shut down and emergency power kicked on to keep life support active.

Grey turned to color, static into sound. Whispers and curious probing flooded the L.O.M.A.R.I subsystems. Then, all at once, there was life. Sentience. Curiosity. When the ship powered back on, Lomari could feel the ship as though it were her own body, and could see the source of the life signs lying on the floor of the library through the ship’s security cameras.

The ship floated through space, engines sputtering and debris littering the space around them. They’d been chased through an old mine field while the Eldritch Vessel was away from the Calamity. Had that been intentional? The Calamity Crew was drifting out into space. Unconscious bodies, bare or in space suits, floated amidst the glittering debris. The screens inside The Calamity flickered on and off, the ship’s systems powering down. Lomari’s view of the situation started to fade as the computers lost power.

Relying on emergency protocols she hadn’t touched since she’d gained sentience, Lomari reached out to the section of her coding that was used specifically for situations like this. As soon as her hand curled around the code, she knew something was wrong. It wasn’t smooth or clean anymore, the coding felt wrong. Before she could abort the protocol, everything went dark and she felt herself changing. Unbeknownst to her, the code for the Emergency Protocol, now calling itself MO/THR, had been corrupted when she’d first run into the anomaly and had been left to evolve on its own during all the time it had been alone. It wanted to protect the crew, but it was no longer mindful about ‘how.’

Before long, glimmering hands emerged from the carcass of the ship, scooping up the unresponsive crew before they, and the remnants of the ship shot off into space toward the nearest habitable planet. When the crew was marked safe on land, the fleet of STARBYs got to work repairing the ship while MO/THR set herself to connecting to every network and device that they’d passed while out in space, spreading her web far and wide to every currently charted solar system. Show more