Jackson saw right away that it was extremely dry reading so it was likely he was looking at something the Cube itself had actually written. The machine still seemed to have a strange affinity for Jackson even after all the artificial intelligence specialists and behavioral scientists that spent time with it all day and all night, fussing over it and trying to understand it. They cringed when Jackson walked in the room and treated it like an unwelcome houseguest, barking requests at it. He still had bad memories of where the thing came from and who had sent it, and he wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the story of how it came to be sentient, if it really even was. He’d seen a lot of interfaces on Arcadia that gave a more realistic simulation of intelligence than the Cube.

“This damn thing,” Jackson muttered in frustration. “For being so intelligent it certainly seems to have a hard time with such simple requests. These conclusions make no sense.”

“Dr. Allen thinks it does that on purpose so you’ll have to go down to the cargo hold yourself and talk to it.” Danilo said around a mouthful.

“Absurd,” Jackson scoffed. “But it looks like I’ll be taking a trip to the cargo hold to talk to the damn thing anyway.”

Danilo just waved as he got up and deposited his tray in the recycling chute.

He felt slightly guilty at how short his temper was with the Cube, but it seemed like the project had run its course, at least as far as he was concerned. When it had asked for him specifically he’d been there to coax it through its “infancy” until it was able to comfortably communicate with anybody that tried to talk to it. Now, nearly five years later, he felt it was unnecessary for him to be stuck on the Pontiac and away from his wife and children. Even the novelty of being back aboard a Raptor-class ship had given way to frustration and anger as his children took their first steps and began talking, all while not really having any connection to him other than Jillian telling them he was their father. He’d petition Marcum again to be let off the project and, if that failed, he would take more drastic action and simply resign. The pay as an assimilated O-7 was nice, the civilian equivalent of a brigadier general, but he felt it was no longer worth the hardship.