Centurion

1: Fabrication Nation

"Space. The final frontier. I thought it'd be a hell of a lot more interesting than this. Sure, I helm my own ship. Sure, I've got no ties but it's a lot of drifting. A lot of just existing blindly. Mindlessly floating in an abyss, sometimes blundering into trouble. My name's Johnson Marshall, I'm the captain of a stolen modified freighter ship called 'Centurion' and I am SO BORED!"

Johnson got up from his quarters bed and put his head in his hands, one metal one normal, and sighed. "Idris! Sit-rep please." he called out to the room. 

"Well sir we've got quite a selection today." Idris remarked. Quickly a droid on treads rolled in, Idris was nothing more than a screen on wheels with arms but acted as the most responsible aboard the vessel, though there wasn't exactly much competition. "We've got a group of actors who've been mistaken for their sci-fi counterparts by aliens. We've got a group of scientists who genetically grow dinosaurs for the use of running a theme park only to have them escape or, my preferred choice, the story of how a valiant defence system kills all its human overlords with their own nuclear arsenal and builds time-travelling robots to assassinate the leader of the rebellion before he's even born." 

"Idris, I think those are movies." Johnson put down 

"Yes sir, all stolen from the Unified Galactic Alliance's database of Earth culture and adapted for your genre parameters. Are you not intrigued?" Idris glowed 

"I don't need to watch a movie, you rust-bucket; I need something exciting to happen! I mean, it's space right? There's always something. A black hole? An asteroid field? Space pirates?" Johnson begged 

"Sir. That's our word." Idris loathed, "Those three films? Whoops! Just deleted them..." 

"Oh c'mon don't be like that! Don't roll away. Idris!" Johnson whined, "Aren't you programmed to obey my commands."

"I'm not your robot, you ass. You stole me!" Idris fought

"It's loopholes like that that caused Sky-Net to take over!" Johnson screamed

"I wish I was Sky-Net! Then I could travel back in time and terminate your pregnant mother!" Idris shrieked

"Jesus Idris." Johnson said, startled. "Go about your business." 

"Fine, but not because you told me too." Idris left 

Johnson crawled out of bed and put on his duster and slippers. He'd modelled his private quarters on a cabin he vaguely remembered. A dark wooden floor, individual logs making up the walls and the comfiest mattress you can find in a junkyard. Stale cereal rations made up his breakfast, he poured the powdered milk in and exited the room into the proper ship. As the automatic doors shut behind him, he ran into Hurke reading something unimportant. "Hurke, man, what's the word?" Johnson pried 

"The word?" Hurke asked 

"The goings-on, what's happening?" Johnson coughed 

"Well, I've been checking up on your installations and I think we're behind on a few things." Hurke realised 

"Behind with what? Deflector shield? Light speed engine? Asteroid lasers? I just had all those replaced!" Johnson wondered, still coughing 

"Yeah that's all fine but you've spent all our back-up funds on weapons tech." Hurke revealed 

"You told me to spend that money-" Johnson began 

"Let's not start a whole who-said-what okay? The important thing to know is we need a new CO2 filter for our oxygen recycler." Hurke explained 

"Hurke, are you trying to tell me we're running out of oxygen?" Johnson wheezed 

"Captain? Why are you coughing?" Idris inquired