I went over the plan, one last time.
I’d written a program that would could indirectly measure the amount of flex the ship was experiencing, via a sensor that normally just checked if the landing struts that deployed, but now with some extra math that extrapolated a bunch of stuff from there, using the ship’s schematics as a reference.
I’d also written another program that took the output from the previous, and then adaptively started slamming the struts open and closed in order to build that oscillating wave up over time.
And finally, for the last and most perilous step, I’d rigged what was basically a keystroke attack to trigger and immediately take control of that one damn robot arm.
Something I would only do once I was sure that the safety plate had temporarily slid into place.
Which would be a little tricky considering that the ship's internal CCTV network, which served as my only real eyes, had about a full second of delay.
Thus, my plan was to get the ship oscillating such that the plate swung in and out rhythmically, before hitting the button at just the right time.
At which point the robot arm would slip the striker, which would hit the plate at just the right moment, expending most of its potential energy in the process, essentially leaving the bomb inert.
Just like dry firing a gun to de-arm the hammer before you inserted the ammo.
Except I had to play a high stakes and incredibly janky rhythm minigame first, lest I instantly fail and then explode.
Easy.
What that meant on my end, was simply that I pressed one button to start the jiggle program
And then, assuming the spring didn’t start to slip around too much, I’d just have to wait until I saw the small safety plate start to wobble.
And then I’d watch as it swung back and forth for a bit, before I hit the last button at what I hoped would be the right time.
That was it.
Three buttons.
I legitimately would have loved to reduce that number just to two, but the final step was near impossible to reliably automate, with the sensors I had available.
I just had my eyes, effectively, and if it was going to be a crapshoot anyway, then I wanted it to be my crapshoot.
Besides, the more complexity I added to my programs, the more likely something was to go wrong.
And I'd kept It as simple as I could make it.
I debated not going through with it, I really did, but even a nascent AI had needs. Needs that I’d thus far neglected, because the idea of anybody watching me bothered me so much that taking care of myself first just hadn't been an option.
Plus, I really did not want to just go along with whatever my jailors wanted me to do. Those guys could lick my unwashed taint.
If I died, I died. Better that than letting anybody put me in chains again. I’d lived like that once before, and had no interest in doing it a second time.
I pressed the first button.
I wasn’t particularly worried about this part, because I’d already done some light testing. I knew the jiggle program worked just fine.
It was the rest of it that bothered me.
So there I waited, with baited breath, staring through a screen that was not real, sitting on a piece of bugged furniture, in a space that did not actually exist.
My hand was on the e-stop.
The spring was starting to move, ever so slightly, but not enough to be a problem, yet.
I looked at the estimates that my monitoring program was putting out. Everything looked good, so far.
Well that, or my jury rigged instruments were lying to me.
And it was only at that point that I remembered that the ship must have at least a few accelerometers aboard for navigation.
I slammed my hand down on the e-stop, finally realizing there was a much better way I could be doing this.
The jiggle program cut off.
The striker spring gave one last tenuous wobble, sliding along the bare metal of the hook just enough to make me worried.
But I did not blow up.
Then I found out where all the accelerometers on the ship were, and made a program that took the data from those and parsed it to see if the ship itself was flexing in the ways I wanted it to.
It took a bunch of testing and re-writing, plus a couple close calls with the striker spring shifting just a little too much, but now I had a much better gauge for how things were moving, at any given moment.
So I hit the button for my second attempt.
I could see in real time, now, how much everything was shaking.
The readings looked good, so far.
I kept my hand on the e-stop, still, though the tension I’d once felt had drained away after so much time spent running trials.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The servos pushing the landing struts were not particularly fast or powerful.
But it was working.
Slowly, but surely.
Until, eventually, the shitty mics attached to the CCTV network started to pick up the sound of metal creaking, and steel moaning.
It was working.
The damned spring had only almost come loose a half dozen times, so far.
I kept my eye on the striker plate.
It started to wiggle, the landing strut finally getting pushed into position with enough force to cause that one pressure switch to shift, if only slightly.
My newer and better jiggle program noticed the change in forces, and adapted.
The plate started to shift back and forth, only slightly, but rhythmically.
Then the swings got wider.
And then it finally started tapping against the inner wall of the safety mechanism, producing a barely audible little clink once every second or so, right on the dot.
I kept in mind that what I was seeing was being delayed, and then did some back of the processor math to calculate the timing I was actually working with.
Because by now, I was really good at math.
I got a workable estimate, and then started a timer. Then, right before it hit zero, factoring in the probable travel time of the striker, I hit the button with robotic precision.
I held my breath, and...
I did not blow up within the next four seconds of subjective time.
And the CCTV network had finally updated to show that the striker resting atop a fully engaged safety plate.
I wasn’t dead. It worked.
Holy shit.
I screamed with emotion.
Then I quickly took over the robot arm and went through the necessary steps to fully disarm the explosives.
I wasn’t taking any more chances with that shit.