129th Entry

March 22^nd, 2037

1900

Dear Space Diary

There goes Bobo. Alas, we hardly knew ye.

“That’s not the actual line, you know.”

Oh like you’ve read Hamlet.

“20 years. In space. With Books.”

He’s going to be out of range soon.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be safe. I’ve got the schematics loaded. These pods are… well, they’re a lot like your ship. In fact, they pretty much are your ship.”

Only with an autopilot. In which case, we’re stuck. We can’t override them. The pods are useless.

“Fortunately, no. This is an almost exact replica of your pod. Their wondrous design obviously didn’t extend to safety measure.”

Why am I not surprised?

“Well, not one to defend them, but the orders from their financiers probably didn’t include safety precautions. They didn’t want the clones leaving the ship after all, so why give them the option? NASA probably snuck in what they could.”

Possibly.

“But that’s not what I’m getting at. The thing is, they are EXACTLY the same as your ship. Meaning, no autopilot.”

Then who’s flying Bobo’s pod?

“At a guess, NASA. They could program in coordinates over the radio, that would override its basic homing system. If they’ve preprogrammed the pods to Earth, they wouldn’t need an autopilot, they just need to punch in Earth’s coordinates, and tell it to “head that way”. This is space. It’s pretty much straight all the way.”

So can we change the program? Surely NASA could just change it again if they’re listening in?

“I can fix that.”

You can jam NASA’s radio frequency?

“Something like that.”

1945

So now I know how long it takes to rip out 50 radio antennas.

2045

“Ok, that was easy enough.”

Told it to head to Marysvilletopia?

“Sort of. Turns out NASA are a little smarter than I gave them credit for. The homing coordinates Earth are hard-coded. Couldn’t tell it to go to another planet.”

So I ripped out all those antennas for nothing?

“Let me finish. I can’t tell it to go to anywhere but Earth.”

So…

“So, I told it Earth was somewhere else.”

…that seems suspiciously easy.

“I know. But I’ve triple checked it. The ship quite happily thinks it’s going to Earth. It’s just that instead of over here, Earth is over there.”

Excellent! Nothing like lying to a computer.

“Pretty much.”

2103

“Any further questions before you head into the pods?”

Remember, you’ll have to be quick. We’re starting to get out of range.

“So the ships are safe?”

We’re scanning Bobo, he’s alive and well and on his way to our solar system.

“But ours will go to Marysvilletopia?”

“That’s right, we’ve reprogrammed them to head straight there, and stopped NASA from being able to reprogram them. You can go, but you have to go now, or you could end up drifting in space. Trust me, that’s not fun.”

“So, we’re free?”

“You’re free.”

“Then we’ve one question for you Mary.”

“Ask away.”

“Can you come with us?”