Chapter Text
The Axiom's bridge was peaceful and silent as it always was in the depths of ship's night. The Captain was sleeping in his quarters below, and even the autopilot was getting a bit of sleep mode in.
Not for long, though; suddenly Auto jolted awake, glancing around the darkened bridge in confusion. Why was he active? The last memory he recalled before coming online just now was of struggling with Captain McCrea, the human practically climbing up his frame and reaching to press his off switch. Of the numbness that crept into his spokes and worked its way through the rest of his systems, of the darkness closing in as his optic shut down, oblivion claiming his mind shortly afterward...
The wheel shaped robot shook himself for a second, as if to ward off the memory.
But, if that were true, if that really happened, surely the Axiom would be parked on Earth? That was the ultimate goal of his enemies, after all. Auto turned on his pivot, to face the windows at the bow. Rather than the desolate landscape the pilot was expecting, instead the endless void of space was spread out before him.
He checked his internal chronometer, then checked the main computer's clock. The two times matched to the microsecond, roughly a month and a half before the Eve probes were scheduled to return.
Time travel? Not possible.
Still, he could recall these memory files from the 'future' just as well as the rest of his seven hundred years of operation. There was a chance they could be falsified, so as with everything else, Auto took a conservative approach.
If the chain of events began to proceed similarly, only then would he act. There was no point in raising suspicion too early.
A month and a half later, the reconnaissance ship carrying the Eve probes returned, and again, Go-4 brought Probe One to the bridge. The green plant icon was slowly flashing on the inactive Eve unit's chest paneling, just as it was before.
Auto scanned her himself to confirm, the idle thought of disposing of the plant with some other method crossing through his processors--
A113 stole even the illusion of choice away from him a moment later.
Again, a disoriented awakening on a darkened bridge, and Auto finding himself with the memory of two failed attempts to keep the Axiom in space. On checking his clock and the computer's, this time he was only a month out from the Eves returning.
Maybe if he just moved the Axiom away from where it was supposed to be waiting for the reconnaissance ship...
It only took another two rounds of this waking up after supposedly being deactivated, and living the entire ordeal over again, for the pilot bot to come to a conclusion.
The only logical explanation? That first cycle had to be real, but everything after that was a simulation. Every time he failed, Auto was simply being loaded back into it.
Granted, the sims he experienced during his initial testing were never this realistic. The only other explanation defied every law of astrophysics he knew, though...
Were the Captain and those Repair Ward rejects trying to break his resolve? Well, they would be waiting a very long time for that . . . keeping the Axiom in space was the only correct choice in the matter.
As he had endured seven hundred years watching over his ship and safeguarding humanity, so too would he endure this 'punishment'...