Part 1 of “Mission” introduced us to Ruby, a professional bunny girl dancer who, much to her surprise, has been sent on a mission to a far-off world. In this second part of the six-part series, Ruby continues her journey to that far-off world and her AI assistant prepares to help her.
Mission – Part 2: Descent
An original story by Scarlettt
The bass drone from the vibration of the locational gyros rose to a crescendo. The whole ship shook and Ruby saw flashes of light and heard loud popping sounds. Then… the vibrations slowly died down to nothing. Ruby knew that the ‘jump’ had been made, and they were ‘there’, untold hundreds of light years away.
She suddenly felt intensely lonely. She’d made many off-world trips before of course, to gigs in exotic far-off places, but every time she’d traveled with the girls, and they normally spent the trip occupied in other things. Oh, how she longed for her special girls to be with her now, Gemma and Jade’s smooth bodies pressed against her own, but they were now so far away from her that it was possible to imagine.
Ruby felt the slight judder as the lifting vehicle detached from the Entanglement Drive and then slight movement as the descent to the surface was started. Ruby’s vision blurred and she heard a series of clicks and hisses. She knew these sensations. The mediator-AI was booting up in her neural implant and it was re-calibrating its connections. She remembered this from when Shelley, her usual onboard AI running on her neural implant, had updated herself and was re-starting.
She felt another big pang of loneliness. The HB-Infinite would have de-activated Shelley to allow the mediator-AI to run. Shelley was her constant friend, her confidant, her beloved dance tutor, always whispering advice in Ruby’s ear. She missed her enormously at that moment.
“Come on,” Ruby thought to herself. “I am a grown woman now. Nearly 120. I can deal with this….”.
Then something new happened. Ruby’s jaw and tongue moved and she involuntarily made some unfamiliar sounds. Of course, Ruby thought… the colonists may speak a different language, or at least have a different accent, and the mediator-AI was preparing to intercept Ruby’s speech.
Ruby’s vision cleared and she could see the figures of three people. The mediator-AI wanted her to choose an internal avatar for itself. There was a muscular, chisel-jawed hare, a petite blond girl and an older woman with her black hair up in a bun. Certainly not the hare, thought Ruby. After all, she felt that this was too serious a situation for a male to be involved. Of the two females, she chose the older woman, who somehow reminded her of the HB-Infinite.
“Hi Ruby,” said the mediator-AI in her ear. “I’m Melanie. Yes, I will be intercepting your speech to give you an accent more like the locals, and also to.. make your tone sound just a little more assertive. Don’t worry, I will handle everything.”.
The lifting vehicle was rocking slightly as it entered the atmosphere of the colonist’s planet.
“The locals will be aware of our arrival, “ explained Melanie. “We just do not expect they will actually make any special reaction to it.”
Ruby heard the lifting vehicle’s vertical flight engines fire up.
“I could not locate a suitable runway, “ said the lifting vehicle. “We will use vertical take off and landing, with the assistance of tractor beams from the Entanglement Drive if need be”. The lifting vehicle did not project an avatar, but Ruby matched the voice in her imagination with a girl-pilot in one of those old-fashioned air-liner uniforms, all sexy quiet confidence.
There was a slight bump as the lifting vehicle touched down.
“We are near some type of beach resort,” Melanie said. “Let’s go and make contact…”.
