Chapter Thirty-Five (1/2)
The Imp was lost. It wasn't sure where it was at and that was bad enough, but there was one small thing that was even worse.
It couldn't remember what it was supposed to do or who it was.
It knew it had engines. That was neat. The 'engines' made it spin and bobble and hop around. It had thick skin and a really neat spinner. Compressed plasma wrapped in ions created by a subkiloton nuclear blast made it tumble over and over. It had some sparkly lights, particle beam cannons with shattered and damaged lenses. It had shields, some good for keeping debris from dinging its thick skin, the others for...
It didn't know what. They were sparkly though.
It thumped the cylinder that compressed the nuclear blast, feeling the cylinder's shocks take the recoil and send the Imp spinning.
WHEEEEEEEI
It could think. It knew that. It knew it was an Imp.
But it didn't know what an Imp was.
Its scanners were neat. Mass. Gravity. Light. Some other stuff that the Imp wasn't sure about. It had little things that worked on it, attaching things to each other. Each new thing brought a newer thing.
It thought that the fact it had a big hole in the middle made it look kind of dapper. When the little things tried to find metal to cover the hole up the Imp ordered them not to. They were sulky about it, but complied, just replacing skin over the damaged inside of the hole.
It did yell at one for spraying sparks across the [email protected] Int377igenc3 H0uz1ng and startling it.
Once in a while electron flows scrambled and garbled, resulting in strange computational arrays.
The Imp, tumbling end over end through space, liked to spray the resulting computational strings out into space with a weird thing that made crackling noises and could hear the noises the nearby star made.
1000100012300018340000 00001201020301023012050060062020
WHEEEE!
The little things connected a fried and carbonized database, which tried to load programs to the Imp. The programs were garbled, damaged, missing huge chunks of data. Trying to run them kept repeating the same thing every time over and over.
UNEXPECTED END OF FILE! UNEXPECTED END OF FILE! UNEXPECTED END OF FILE!
The imp liked the sound of that. It kept repeating it, throwing it out from itself an a controlled burst of particles. It made it flip end over end to do it, but that was fun.
The Imp saw a cloud, dispersed atoms of methane, oxygen, hydrogen, ammonia, and eagerly watched it get close. The star was shrinking away behind it, but the Imp had already gotten bored with the star. It didn't do anything but shine brightly and stream electrons from it.
UNEXTEPECD ND OFFILE! UNEPTECTEND OFILE! UNEXPECTED END OF FILE! CRC ERROR!
The Imp sang its little song as it plunged into the cloud. The particles and atoms flared on its shield and the Imp watched the patterns, ooohing and aaahing at the random bursts of color on its shield.
It fired its plasma thingy, watching the energy squirt from the gapped line down the side of the barrel. Most of the energy went out the side, with a little at an angle from the oddly curved hollow tube. It made the Imp spin as the plasma vented against shards of ice no bigger than some of the Imps smallest machines.
WHEEEEEE! UNESPECTUYD END OF FILE! WHEEEEE!
It heard something bellow something. Something about stuff and enough and a number, but the Imp couldn't really figure it out.
So it quit caring, whirling and tumbling through the cloud of atoms. It could no longer see that sun, obscured by the cloud of elements, but the Imp didn't care. That sun was boring.
One of the little machines that had helped fix it kept trying to upload files to it, which was really starting to annoy the Imp. The Imp was enjoying spinning and tumbling through the hazy cloud and the stuffy machine kept trying to get the Imp to pay attention to something about that boring statement about stuff and a number.
Skin cracked and itchy. You smarter than other goonygoogoos. Go check. Maybe after can read your stuff
The computational lobe repair widget harumphed and moved out to the Imp's surface, scanning to see what the Imp was complaining about. The Widget knew the Imp was in bad shape, the big hole through the center of it bad enough, but memory banks were shattered, computer lobes hooked up in the wrong order, all the weapons but a single thermonuclear plasma cannon were gone and the cannon had a crack and...
The Imp 'accidentally' brushed the machine off of it and ignored it ordering the Imp to come back 'right this nanosecond' and pick it back up.
SOrrY. Tractor beaM i5 0ffl1ne!
IT IS NOT! I CAN SEE IT!
What? Y0ure [email protected] up 1'm g0ing 1nto a tunn3l
YOU LOUSY LITTLE PUNK THERE'S NO TUNNELS IN SPAAAAAAaaaacccceeee
The Imp ignored it as it continued to tumble and spin through space. It giggled to itself, replaying the startled squawk of radio transmission when the stuffy Widget had been swept off the Imp's skin by the passing comet.
Eventually it tumbled out of the cloud and into a vast emptiness.
OOOoooooohhhhh
The Imp stared at the revealed lights. It wondered what they were and the memory banks tossed back '$tella4 [email protected]” and went back to showing him how tachyons danced in a perfect vacuum when an electron shattered.
The Imp liked that show. He had named all the tachyons.
One of the repair bots made a connection and suddenly the Imp could hear the points of light. They sang in the visible light, X-Ray, and other bandwidths. The Imp was surrounded by music and it fired it's Plasma Spin-o-Matic. It triggered its engine and it suddenly began hiccuping around space, the hiccups tickling the Imp and making it laugh.
Using the engine was tiring after a bit so the Imp turned it off.
The Imp slowly collected space dust on it as it tumbled and twirled through the vast gulf between stars, laughing and giggling to itself and listening to the music that filled the void.