Faulty Utopia

Sun Jack finally understood what was going on. Why there were doors on the ceiling and the floor, and why all the walls were made of metal.

Because those weren't doors; they were space capsules. He had been walking sideways on the wall since he woke up!

Stunned for a long time, Sun Jack stretched his face forward, pressed against the glass, and carefully distinguished. Although it was grey, he was certain that this planet was Earth, no doubt about it.

Only now, the situation had changed. The azure planet was wrapped in a veil of grey metallic debris like it was covered in a layer of ash.

All that metallic debris consisted of satellites, a dense clutter of various kinds of satellite debris encircling the entire planet.

Some of them Sun Jack could barely make out their outlines with the naked eye, which showed just how large those satellites were.

"How come there are so many satellites? What year is it, exactly?" Sun Jack was certain that, with the technology from the era he remembered, such a feat was absolutely impossible, not even including the five years of memory he had lost.

And when Sun Jack shifted his gaze away from Earth and looked to the left, he froze instantly. A silvery-grey planet ring, like a belt, encircled Earth's midsection. And the Moon that should have been there had vanished.

Most of the planet ring comprised rocks, ships, and space station debris. His current location was right in the midst of it.

At this moment, Sun Jack finally figured out the problem that had been troubling him since he woke up: exactly where he was. He was in a large space station enveloped by the Moon's planet ring.

But then a second question arose quickly after: how was he going to get back?

Being in a space station amidst space, and considering that this station appeared to be half-destroyed, trying to get back to Earth seemed even harder than ascending to heaven.

However, Sun Jack didn't need to solve this problem, because the harsh reality had solved it for him.

The whole space station's tremors were intensifying, the screens behind him were flickering constantly, and they even felt slightly hot to the touch. Sun Jack was shocked to realize that his previous action seemed to have disrupted the grey electrical balance that had been maintained here for a long time.

Accompanied by these disturbances, Sun Jack saw terrifying changes outside the glass. The spinning-top-like space station below him was slowly lifting out of the planet ring and tilting towards Earth's atmosphere.

A chill instantly shot up from his spine to his brain. "Shit!! It's going to fall straight down! I want to go back, but not like this!"

"Do something! I must do something!" Sun Jack, with cold sweat on his forehead, quickly approached the flickering screen, and after finding that nothing he did elicited any response, he pushed off from the glass with both hands and swam swiftly out of the place, drifting towards other rooms.

Perhaps Sun Jack had activated something because some previously closed hatches could now be opened. Sun Jack, sweating profusely with urgency, was searching for the last thread of hope in various space capsules—a means of escape, an escape ship, anything that meant survival.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!!" Sun Jack could feel the increasing centrifugal force caused by the tumble of the whole space capsule. He knew he didn't have much time left.

Cargo bays, gyms, he found all sorts of chambers one after another.

With a "thump," Sun Jack violently pushed open a half-closed hatch door, and a row of robots fixed to the walls, ceiling, and floor appeared before him.

Besides their hooves with reversed joints and eyes that were a row of monitors, these robots were mostly similar to humans in other aspects.

He didn't have time to marvel at the technology of these robots; all he wanted now was to ask if the robots knew where the escape ships were.

Seeing them, Sun Jack felt as if he had spotted the last glimmer of hope. He hurriedly unbuckled his restraints and began looking for the robots' switches.

Groping around, when Sun Jack's fingers slid across a screen under the other's armpit, the display where the robot's eyes should be suddenly lit up, projecting two simplified icons of eyes.

"Hello? Hello?! Can you hear me? Where is the escape pod? Where is the escape pod?!" Sun Jack frantically asked, grasping the robot that was floating due to weightlessness.

The robot immediately responded, "Kinesiska paketet nedladdning.....10%....50%.....70%.....Chinese data packet loading complete," in a calm yet mechanical voice.

"Dear user, welcome to using Tapai technology products, please customize a name for this product."

"Damn it!! Are you kidding me?! Why is this so complicated?!"

"Custom name set successfully: Damn it are you kidding me why is this so complicated please select an initial mode." Three options appeared on the robot's display: Guard Mode, Nursing Mode, and Entertainment Mode.

Anxious, Sun Jack swiftly tapped on Guard Mode, but then other various options sprang up. He really hadn't expected setting up a new robot to require so many steps.

As the space station began to shudder, causing some of the spacecraft's components to shake loose and float, Sun Jack finally finished the setup.

"Hello Sun Jack, Damn it are you kidding me why is this so complicated is pleased to serve you." Two smiling eyes appeared on the robot's display.

"Do you recognize this place? It's about to crash!! Do you know where there are any lifeboats or ships or anything?" Sun Jack said, his tone urgent.

To his surprise, the robot actually responded. "User-level red crisis issued, automatic alarm with full video and audio recording initiated, launching emergency rescue... Ding~ Satellite positioning unresponsive, connection failure, insufficient data, unable to perform rescue."

Then, terrible metallic creaking noises came from outside, as if the entire space station was about to rip apart, and the fear of death made Sun Jack's body involuntarily begin to tremble.

Just as he was ready to give up on the useless robot and look for another solution, the robot suddenly showed new activity.

"Connecting to unknown subnet 12.128.C1, data collection complete, rescue plan formulation failed, error cause: insufficient logical thinking abilities, unable to understand subnet data logic, please authorize ROOT permission to the user. After approval, it will start AI logic system iteration based on subnet data, assessment: rescue probability will increase by 32.3%."

"Agreed! Agreed!" Although he didn't fully understand what the robot was saying, Sun Jack understood that the chance of rescue was increasing.

"System iteration beginning...." A progress bar started to appear on the robot's display.

At that moment, the entire cabin suddenly cracked open, and a metal plate, like a cleaver, struck towards the robot's head.

Sun Jack pulled on the robot's metal arm towards himself, but in his forgetfulness of the weightlessness, when he pulled the robot over, he ended up in the robot's place under the law of conservation of momentum.

As the metal plate neared his head, Sun Jack pushed hard off the robot's body, and the metal plate grazed by his face.

Pushed by the force, Sun Jack kept going until he hit the wall, where he stopped. Before he could catch his breath, a rapidly spinning nut, like a bullet, shot towards his neck.

As the nut was about to pierce Sun Jack's neck, an iron hand suddenly reached out from the side, "clang," the two struck, setting off sparks, and the nut was knocked far away.

Following the metal arm with his eyes, Sun Jack saw that the robot he had just activated had shielded most of his left side with its metallic body.

The robot slowly lifted its metallic head, looking Sun Jack in the eyes.

"Fuck, what kind of shitty name did it get?" the robot spoke.