"Has it come to this?" The blue pane of light replied with the same scrolling words; "Core data corrupted. Reactor fault. Press any key to terminate installation. Automatic termination in 1:20:56." I had an hour left. An hour before the reactor on the ship could no longer hold together, and would tear itself apart. All the alarms had stopped, the ship's computer assumed that there would be no more humans to hear them, and it would be correct. I am no longer human, I am simply the product of what remains of a once human life. A shell with the newly condensed lifespan of an hour at best. My body no longer mattered, it was numb, reduced to a twisted husk glaring at the similarly numb surface of the computer screen. 1:15:30 now. I had spent five minutes staring at a screen. Maybe I could override the main computer and steer the ship towards a neighboring planet? I got up from the chair and made my way to the bridge. The areas where the escape shuttles sat were replaced with heavy unmoving bulkheads, and beyond that was the vacuum of space. No way out there. Getting to the bridge was simple as all of the security personnel had been evacuated on the last shuttle. They had not taken me with them, even though I was technically not a prisoner. (the real prisoners were probably still in the brig, unaware of their impending doom.) I was considered a political prisoner but I was still too dangerous to be taken off of the malfunctioning ship. Because of my relative freedom, I felt I had an advantage over those that were locked in the belly of the ship, but at the same time they were unaware of their deaths in an hour, which could be an advantage in itself. I opened the usually locked bridge with relative ease, there was no longer anyone guarding the doors, and the encryption codes had been removed for use on other vessels. Upon entering, the flight computer began to activate it's manual controls, and a yoke sprang up from the console nearest the captain's chair. I laughed at the sight, a tiny yoke to control a brig? I sat down in the chair and immediately became flooded with information; heading, speed, fuel consumption ("IMMEDIATE INSPECTION".) and the overall status of the ship, including the time until the reactor exploded. A small line in front of my face showed the position of the ship in space. With a light touch on the yoke, the line moved slightly to the right and text blocked my vision and speech filled my ears.
"Automatic course correction enabled. Manual control dictates disabling the automatic course correction. Authorize?" I sat in the chair for a few moments before realizing that I needed to respond.
"Oh!" I started. "Um, authorize?" Upon speaking, another entire panel opened in front of me which contained hundreds of foreign navigational instruments that I had never seen before. The line showing the position of the ship was replaced with gauges which appeared to link to all of the engines aboard the ship. This was going to be harder than I thought.
