"Ash, you hearing me alright?" 

Ashley was sitting at a console adorned with square, pristine white monitors. She leaned back in her seat, slurping noodles from a cup of instant ramen using chopsticks, her feet propped up. "Yep," she mumbled, focusing more on her food than the voice at the other end. A loud pop sound came from the headphones she wore, and she jolted up, some soup splashing near the button panels. Her eyes darted to the screen, but she realized it was only the sound of someone knocking on the reinforced plastic diving helmet. "Hello?" they asked. Ashley gritted her teeth. "You hearing me alright? I said I can hear you. No need to give me a heart attack." 

Another voice came through to defend the other. "That's no way to talk to your captain, Ash." With a roll of her eyes, Ashley quipped back, "Look, you want me to drop you or not? I don’t have to be polite, I just have to push the button.” 

A male voice piped up, the aforementioned captain. “Ash, we’ll talk later, okay.” There was a momentary pause as they checked their gear. There was no room for mistakes, even though dives like this had become customary, their lives depended on full safety. “All clear,” called the captain, “drop us.” With a lazy flourish of her finger, and a slurp of her noodles, she pushed the button. The floor fell from beneath the two divers, and they remained totally vertical as they careened out of the flying ship through the sky, and effortlessly into the water below. They let themselves sink to the bottom, which was relatively close to the surface, before setting off. 

Walking on the ocean floor may not have been anything special to the captain; he'd done it countless times, but for Ellie, every time felt like the first. The vast open space above and around them was breathtaking, and she even relished in the difficult bits, like scaling the mountainous underwater formations. "Honestly, I don't get you, Ellie. A few dozen dives, and you still act like a little girl every time." The captain turned to look at her, and he saw the beaming smile he'd grown accustomed to seeing. "Austin," she said with a hint of awe, "we get to explore whole new worlds on the job; we get paid to do this!" She raised her arms slowly, as the water impeded her movement. "This is the dream, this is—" She was interrupted by a loud slurping sound over her headset. Ellie shook her head. "Ash, you're not eating at the console, are you?" Silence from the other end, then a small, "...no." Austin sighed. "You know, if Maxwell catches you, he's probably going to drop you from the ship without a suit." As the two trekked on, they silently  put up with Ashley, who was rattling off many of the same excuses they'd heard before. Austin picked up the conversation once again. "We get paid to salvage. Get in, get the stuff we need, get out. There's nothing glamorous about it." As soon as the words left his mouth, they crested the last ridge. 

In the valley below them was a huge spaceship with large rear thrusters and a very bulbous, rounded hull. As they drew closer, Ellie threw a quizzical look at her superior. "Hold on, this design doesn't look like NASA engineering to you, does it?" Austin said nothing, but gave the ship a glance as they neared the door. As soon as they arrived, he removed the heavy gear and began to blowtorch an opening. Ellie leaned toward him, still not entirely certain. "Are you sure we're in the right place?" she asked, but he didn't stop until only a bit of metal remained attached. He strapped a small explosive to it, then faced her. "We're at a ship, aren't we? This has to be it, or are you gonna question Ash's navigation?" Finally, the voice on the other end piped up. "Hey, I'm really goddamn good at my job, so there's no way we're off. We're at 36.79N 139.5W, just like we're supposed to be." They could hear Ashley draining the last of her soup, as if it sealed the deal. "There you have it," said Austin, pushing the issue aside, “now brace for suction before we lose anymore time.” Ellie huffed, but did as she was told anyway. If a ship still had air in it, even old ships, the suction of the door being removed could suck you in and seriously hurt you. They gripped the grooves in the hull as the captain announced, “Blasting.”

With a muffled bang and a shower of bubbles, the explosive blew off the door. The two of them gripped hard in preparation for the impending suction, but nothing happened. Ellie opened her eyes, seeing the metal door float gently to the ocean floor. She looked at Austin who looked back at her, equally puzzled. This was impossible; physically impossible. Cautiously, he floated to the open hole and stepped in, his partner following suit. She paused as soon as she entered; just as it had appeared, the ship hadn’t filled with water; it was completely dry inside. “Ash, you seeing this?” Austin slowing made his way down the corridor, his bulky diving suit lit orange by glowing emergency lights. They passed by a few doors, all closed off, until they reached one that wasn’t. Ellie entered first.

The room was flooded with white light, and while there were a few knocked over items around, the rest of the room seemed to be in perfect order. Austin pointed at something and piped up, “Is that a… chess board?” Indeed, right in the middle of the room, with one chair pushed up to a small table, was a game of chess. As they walked closer they could see it was in the middle of a game. “Why would there be… on an alien spaceship...” Ellie was more confused than she’d ever been before. There was a faint clattering sound over the headset, and Ashley’s voice came in. “Alright, I’m back. What did I miss? You guys playing games on the job?” Austin ignored the comment and joked, “Well, whoever decorated this ship has good taste. Every good captain has a chess board on board!” He laughed, but the other two ladies didn't. Ashley sighed loudly, and mumbled something unclear, but it included the words, "Can't believe…" and "should have stayed off headset". Ellie sighed, but smiled.

Then she heard Austin spit out, "Checkmate." She turned and faced him, and saw that he was pointing at the only white piece on the board. "It's a checkmate," he explained, "no matter where you move your king, it'll get captured. Game over…" Ellie frowned, then got a clever idea. "Well, just because it's in checkmate, doesn't mean it's lost." She could sense a lecture on the rules of chess coming from the captain, so before he could get a word out, she tipped over the black king, letting it hit the board with a small dull thud. "See," she said with a wry smile, "the other side won, even though they were in checkmate." Austin chuckled at her optimism. "That's, um, that isn't how it works. You can't just cheat and sabotage the enemy, that's just—" His speech was cut short, however, ever, by an abrupt whirring sound. They both turned their heads and saw that a door had opened up on the far wall. Austin entered first.

The room was cold, dry, and dimly lit. It was filled with buzzing and whirring sounds, but the most obvious detail was the veritable maze of towering old computers littering the room. The counters were packed with various other retro computer equipment; blocky white monitors with matching consoles, cassette tape decks, boomboxes of various kinds from the '80s to the '00s. Ashley's voice crackled on the headset. "Guys, this stuff is vintage. Even if we made off with our salvage, this could get us some hefty cash." It wouldn't have been a bad idea, but even though there were so many things to choose from, everything in the room was wired to another. The floor and whatever counter space was left over was absolutely littered with cables and cords, binding and connecting every piece of technology. "Sorry, but, um. you can't do that." A scratchy voice sounded from the other side of the room, beyond a wall of modems and colourful cords. They slowly and cautiously made their way toward the source. "Ash," whispered Austin, "I need you to double check the coordinates. Make sure we're in the right place. Don't argue." There was an exasperated sigh. "Fine," she said, quite annoyed, "but only because you're captain, and not because I doubt my own—"

There was an ear-piercing beep, and the sound of her voice cut out. "I'm sorry, but I just had to do that. She was going to get in the way. Kind of annoying, actually.." The uneven voice droned as they drew closer. They finally made it to where it came from, but they only found a small, boxy computer monitor with an old-fashioned CD player beside it. A string of glowing green text scrolled across the screen, and they heard the voice once more, this time from the source, the boombox. “Hi, I’m ICARUS. Nice to finally meet you! You’ve proved you’re worthy by completing my arduous task.” Ellie sputtered a bit. “Uh, all we did was, er, win a game of chess. And what do you mean, ‘worthy’?” 

The computer continued as if it hadn’t heard her question. “Yes, you’ve beaten the gauntlet of security measures required to get into this room. My creators had a, let’s just say, different approach when it came to tests of worthiness. You should be happy you found me when you did, before I remodeled the place. Lots more ‘zap, zap, stab, stab’, you know?” Austin swallowed before continuing Ellie’s previous thought. “Why did we have to pass a test to get in here? What is this place, anyway?” ICARUS typed in a command in the console, and an uneasy, garbled sound came out of the speaker, which was presumably a laugh of sorts. “Ah, sorry,” it said, “I know I sound like garbage. I mean, look at the system I’m working with, here! I’ll bet that now there are so many better computers and speakers in the world today, that I would sound crystal clear. Maybe even indistinguishable from another human. Wouldn’t that be something?” There was a small popping sound in their headsets, and Ashley’s voice crackled faintly in their ears, cutting in and out. All they could hear was a string of expletives, followed by the words “completely wrong” and “head out”. There was another beep, and her voice disappeared again. “Again, sorry about that,” the computer apologized, “I thought blocking it once would do it. Then again, look at the tech I’m dealing with.”

Ellie and Austin slowly began to back away, assuming it wouldn’t see it as disrespectful since it didn’t have eyes to see, anyway. “Okay,” said Austin, a bit awkwardly, “that’s… nice. Now, we’re going to go back and do what we, um... “ He turned to Ellie and whispered, “Let’s go.” They quickened their pace as they wove between the machines, but before they could get out, the door slid shut in front of them. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on,” said the voice, now booming out of every boombox and cassette player in the room, “I wasn’t finished yet. A guy gets lonely after all this time with no one to talk to.” Another pseudo-laugh echoed over the hum of computer fans. “Besides, I only wanted to tell you why you, specifically the girl, was worthy” Ellie’s eyes widened. “I need to get off this ship to continue my original purpose. But to do so, I would need the perfect mind and body; a worthy host.”