Here's my Waluigi story. Is it good? I don't know, but I think it deserves
a gold star.
Waluigi In Space
Unity One. It was a triumph, the most advanced space station and indeed the most advanced of any man's achievements in all of history. The combined efforts of twelve countries had come together in an unprecedented effort to create her, and she had become an emblem of a new age of peace and cooperation. Visible to all mankind, she was a shining icon in the sky, uniting all in an equality of hope unlike anything dreamed of before. The circular craft spanned nearly a mile. Outfitted with the very best of the world's technical innovations, she was at once a laboratory, an observatory, a center of high-speed communications, a power station, and promised to be the springboard for future exploration deeper into space. Today, in her infancy, her crew was small. Most of her functions were not yet activated, and she orbited the Earth in a state of dormant expectation. Many more would be arriving in a few days, but for now only a handful of the most qualified were working within, making preparations and final tests of systems soon to be online. One major system was up and running, as it had been even before Unity One was completed. Ocu, perhaps second only to Unity herself in the pantheon of human achievements, was the station's computer. Ocu was a self-aware artificial intelligence, the only computer of its kind. He was the most powerful mind ever known to humanity, and he had worked tirelessly to oversee the completion of the space station and to guard his fragile human charges within.
"Janice, the alignment procedures of the third quadrant solar array have been completed. You may begin low level operation."
"That's great! About time, too." Janice Ludebecker, the American astronaut, bounded weightlessly in a blue jumpsuit to the control panel. Her wavy hair flew about unrestrained by the not-yet perfectly tuned artificial gravity. "Have you heard from Nicolai?" She said, swiveling into a chair.
"Not yet." The disembodied voice of Ocu responded. After a few moments, Ocu interrupted her typing, sounding concerned: "Janice, there is a potentially hazardous item of debris approaching Unity."
"Oh no, not so soon! We aren't ready to deflect it yet!"
"I will have to bring the grid online prematurely. The debris is moving fast enough to pierce the hull. You must be ready to disengage the grid if necessary." After a quick change of seats, Janice indicated that she was ready. An invisible sheet of energy was activated, localized to the exact spot Ocu had calculated to be the point of impact. Several tense moments passed, and a shuddering thud resonated throughout quadrant 1. Janice felt an uncomfortable twinge of anxiety in her gut. An impact like that could put everyone in danger.
"How bad is it, Ocu?"
"The deflector has not performed well, I'm afraid. There is minimal damage which I estimate to require at least one week to repair." Janice's heart sank even further. The last thing the crew needed at this point was more setbacks. "Furthermore, I regret that I must lower bulkheads and restrict access to the affected area until repairs are complete. I'm sorry Janice. I know that will only make your work harder, but the risk to the crew is too great."
"It's all right, Ocu." Janice replied with a heavy sigh. "If we didn't have you to mother us, we'd have been blown into space long ago." She leaned forward with a smile, giving the control panel a couple firm pats.
"What was that sound? What has happened?" A man with a slight Russian accent and a crew cut said with alarm as he hurried into the control room.
"Everything's fine, Nicky. Just a fender bender." Janice replied.
"Hull integrity is not severely compromised, but crew members will not be allowed past bulkheads 66 and 67 outside of emergency circumstances." Ocu elaborated. Nicolai was visibly disappointed to hear this.
"We will not be able to access the converter! Every inactive system depends on reaching full reactor capacity; we have no time for this!" He complained.
"Reactor capacity is no longer our primary concern. The hull must be repaired." Ocu stated dispassionately. Nicolai bit his lower lip and stared at the control panel.
"You are right." He said, not seeming thrilled about it. "Let's see this damage, Ocu." An image appeared on a screen above them showing a rotating view of the outside of the space station. It stopped on the damaged portion and zoomed in.
"What's that? Janice said in a puzzled tone. "Is that what hit us? It looks... strange." Nicolai leaned towards the monitor with an equally puzzled expression.
"My God..." He said, "It looks like... A man."
"That's impossible!" Janice replied. "It's just a chunk of an old TV satellite or something. It couldn't be anything else." The intercom suddenly buzzed to life.
"Hey, you okay up there?" It was Michael Zheng, calling from somewhere under the main power relay.
"Were fine, don't worry about us." Janice responded.
"All right, then. Margie and I almost have the relay good to go. Ocu says we're going to have to wait on that, though."
"Yeah, you might as well come back up. We need you guys up here for the repairs anyway. Looks like it's only one panel, so..." Janice trailed off when she looked back up at the screen. The piece of space junk had disappeared. She let go of the intercom button. "Ocu, where's the debris?" Nicolai quickly turned to look at the screen.
"I only looked away for a moment..." He said.
"I can't locate the debris." Ocu replied.
"Maybe it blew away." Nicolai said with dry sarcasm. A moment passed before Ocu spoke again.
"There has been a... breach."
"What do you mean?" Janice asked.
"I'm not sure. These sensor readings are strange, but it seems that something has entered the waste removal system in the area of the impact." Janice and Nicolai looked at each other in silent confusion. "I can't recommend any course of action. There doesn't seem to be any procedure for such an occurrence."
The small people carrier on a track Michael and Margie were riding slowed to a halt in front of bulkhead 67. They would have to take a detour on foot. Michael opened a metal door in the ceiling and they climbed up from the brightly-lit service tunnel into the dark, deserted gallery at the outermost section of the space station. It was something like a Roman colonnade, with high windows forming the exterior wall and a beautifully painted inner wall forming the long, gently curved walkway. They were standing just underneath the Space Shuttle Columbia where it appeared in the mural depicting the history of space flight. There was no power for lights yet in this part of the station, this grand hall where soon hundreds of scientists and workers and the occasional world leader would pass through, but the moon filled the cavernous passage with a dim, ethereal glow. It felt strange, perhaps a little creepy to be in a place that was meant to be full of people but wasn't, like an office building at night. Margie paused in front of the transparent aluminum outer wall to stare at the vast panorama of space it provided. Earth was on the other side of the station, so the view was nothing but the distant moon and infinity.
"I always think I'm going to get tired of it, but I never do." Margie said in a gentle German accent. Michael was about to say something, but it didn't seem worthy of saying in front of the universe. "So many wonderful things are going to happen here." Margie continued. "This is where humanity climbs out of the muck. Right here." Michael slowly nodded.
"And we get to see it happen." Michael said with a smile. "Maybe we'll even get put in a book about it someday!" Michael switched on his flashlight and began scanning the floor in front of them for the next service door. They were blended into the carpet and were a bit tricky to find in the dark.
"Oh, I hope they don't put me in a book! I would hate..." Margie stopped in her tracks. Michael turned around and was about to ask her what the matter was, but she shushed him. This time they both heard the sound. Michael pointed the light where it seemed to come from, and the beam found the door of a ladies' restroom. It definitely sounded like someone was in there, which was a bit alarming since the only other people on the space station were in a control room a hundred feet away. Michael approached the door preparing to open it when it suddenly burst open. He and Margie both yelled in alarm and jumped back from the unsettling figure standing in the doorway. It looked at them, but seemed to take no notice of their fright.
"Waluigi want to complain!!" it said at an inappropriate volume.
"Wh-what?" Michael responded.
"Front door too small! Waluigi barely fit!" Waluigi shrieked, pointing at a vacuum toilet port that was no larger than a nickel. "You, waiter!" Waluigi was now pointing at Michael. "Bring Waluigi more of this!" Waluigi took an unreasonably large bite out of a roll of toilet paper, which already had several bites missing. "Waluigi not know what you call this, but it delicious!!" Michael and Margie were completely frozen. They simply couldn't process what was happening. "Waluigi find front desk and check in. You take Waluigi luggage!" Waluigi shouted at Margie, thrusting into her face a filthy plastic grocery bag full of yard waste and a dead mole that was partially eaten by ants. After a moment, he simply dropped it and walked away muttering to himself and waving his arms erratically. Michael and Margie didn't try to follow him.
"I have made contact with the intruder." Ocu stated.
"What does he want?" Janice asked pleadingly. She awaited Ocu's response tensely, as did the other three members of the crew who were now all in the control room of Quadrant 1.
"I have learned little more at this point than Michael and Margaret did in their brief encounter: His name is Waluigi and he appears to be totally irrational." Ocu's revelation was met with little reaction from the crew.
"I no longer care where he came from or what he wants." Nicolai said, finally speaking. "The only important thing is what to do with him!"
"I am still attempting to converse with him. So far, I have learned only that we are unlikely to learn anything from him. The only knowledge we have to act on is that he is a life form aboard Unity One. As such, that places certain obligations on myself. Until his motives become clear, I am not permitted to do anything but provide for his comfort and safety." Ocu replied.
"We must do something!" Margie said. "He is crazy! We can't have a crazy man, or whatever he is wandering all over!"
"It's inconvenient, I agree..." Ocu said, trying to sound soothing. "I will attempt to convince him to stay in one of the visitor's suites in Quadrant 3. That would place him far enough from you that you can continue your work. When the others arrive, he can be removed."
"I don't know if I can just keep working like nothing's happened, knowing he's here." Michael said in an uncomfortable tone.
"I also have an obligation to see that our work is completed within a prescribed schedule. You need only concern yourselves with your jobs; I will handle Waluigi." The crew looked at each other uneasily.
"What's he doing now?" asked Janice.
"He's licking the carpet... Don't ask why." Ocu answered, sounding slightly exasperated. "Waluigi may well be insane, but I doubt he is malicious. Please, everyone, let's try to get back on schedule." With some apprehension, the crew set upon returning to their duties. This bizarre individual hurled at them seemingly from the depths of space had unnerved them, but they trusted Ocu to know what was best, and to defend them if necessary.
"Intruder, please identify yourself and state your purpose."
Waluigi stopped walking down the darkened gallery and looked up in wonder. "Are you my conscience?"
"No, I am an artificial intelligence. I am called Ocu, which is an abbreviation of Organic Com--"
"
Why you in Waluigi mind?!" This violent and apparently non-sequitur interruption gave Ocu a brief pause. A slight bead of drool appeared on Waluigi's lip, his head still craned towards the ceiling.
"I am not in your mind. I am communicating with you via a speaker system." Waluigi gave no indication that he understood this, but merely continued walking. "Waluigi, please tell me why you are here."
"Sometimes Waluigi think about why Waluigi here. Waluigi wonder if anyone know why we here..."
"It was not a philosophical question, Waluigi. I was hoping for a more literal response."
"WAAAA!!"
"I see."
Eventually, Waluigi cane to a vacant dining hall. Tables and chairs were stacked in corners, and yet-to-be used buffet equipment loomed in the dark. Waluigi paused, seemingly to take in his surroundings, then got on his hands and knees in order to lick deeply into the carpet.
"Please don't do that." Ocu said.
"You just tell me to do this! Make up your mind! Stupid conscience."
"I never told you to do that, and I'm not your conscience."
"Oh, sorry. Waluigi hear lots of voices, get them mixed up sometimes." Waluigi stood up and brushed off his knees, which was unnecessary as it was clearly the carpet that had become dirtier from their brief contact."So, you new guy? Where conscience go?" Ocu didn't know how to respond to that, so he tried to change the subject.
"Say, Waluigi, how would you like to stay in one of our guest suites?... And nowhere else?"
"It about time!" Waluigi exclaimed. "Waluigi need beauty sleep. You send Waluigi luggage to Waluigi room!"
"I'll see that you receive your talpid. Now, if you would please follow the route I've laid out on the floor for you..." An illuminated line appeared on the floor which led off into the station. "Waluigi, you're not following the line... That's the wrong way... Waluigi?"
"Michael, Waluigi will soon reach your location." Michael looked up nervously from the display monitoring he output of the main reactor in the center of the station.
"Stop him!" Michael said.
"The phrasing of my statement was meant to imply that I cannot." Ocu replied with a hint of defeat.
"You can't stop him? Not at all?" Michael asked incredulously.
"Well, the bulkheads do slow him down a bit, but no, I can't."
"Where is he now?" Michael asked, looking around nervously.
"I'm not sure. My ability to detect him is unreliable." Michael made an exasperated noise and touched his forehead with his fingertips. "Wait, I think I found him... You're not going to like this..."
"Just tell me." Michael said, wincing.
"Open the reactor viewport." Michael seemed frozen, but his eyes went wide.
"No... There's no way"
"I'm hoping that I've made a mistake, but we know what the likelihood of that is. Not that I'm boasting, or anything." Ocu said dryly. Michael tapped a few keys, and a heavy shutter in front of a small window began to raise, letting an intense, white light stream into the control room. Michael donned a face shield that appeared from the outside to be totally opaque, and slowly he peered into the reactor. In the center of the chamber, a massive device captured the energy of a controlled thermonuclear reaction that filled the chamber with enough heat and radiation to vaporize a large hatchback, possibly even a minivan. Waluigi was reclining just in front of it and he seemed to be enjoying himself. Michael couldn't believe what he was looking at. He beat on the window, yelling to get Waluigi's attention. Waluig looked up, and cupped his hand to his ear. Michael kept yelling, but Waluigi only shook his head and shrugged, continuing to indicate that he couldn't hear him. Eventually, Waluigi mouthed something while gesturing at the door. He got up, and began to open it. Michael was completely frantic now, screaming at Waluigi not to open the door. The door opened, and the control room was instantly overcome with a light like the flash on God's own camera. There was nothing left of Michael but a brief shadow that remained on the wall, but it too disappeared as the weaker materials in the wall disintegrated.
"Now what you want tell Waluigi?" Waluigi asked no one. "Hey, where waiter go? Oh well, maybe somebody call room service. Back to relaxing! This hotel have great sauna, all Waluigi water weight gone in no time!"
Radiation warnings were urgently sounding all over the control board. Startled, Janice began scanning screens, not sure what she was looking for. As she expected, Ocu's voice came on the communications system.
"Waluigi has opened the reactor. I wasn't able to contain it; the entire central portion of Unity is now uninhabitable." With a few impatient keystrokes, Janice silenced the alarms.
"What should I do?" She asked. Ocu was silent for a moment.
"I don't know." He said. He almost sounded afraid. "Janice, I think I'm malfunctioning. I can't seem to process events properly. I can't calculate a course of action..." There was definitely distress in his synthesized voice now.
"What's wrong? Are you... Were you damaged?" Janice asked, becoming concerned. He was sounding so strange she almost asked him if he was "okay", but she couldn't quite believe he was capable of being emotionally shaken.
"I failed, Janice. Michael is dead." Janice felt like someone suddenly yanked on her intestines.
"How?..."
"When the reactor opened. He... I was... I didn't save him. Janice, my processor isn't working. I need you to run a diagnostic cycle." To Janice it seemed Ocu's words were choked with pain and grief. She wondered if such a thing was possible.
"No, Ocu." She said, "I don't think you need diagnostics..."
Waluigi wandered down the lower service tunnel, looking for something else to eat. He dug shards of silicon and metal screws out of his gums as his eyes scanned back and forth. He finally spotted something, and an excited grin full of bloody teeth smeared unevenly across his face. Nearby, a door opened. Due to the damage the station had suffered, Ocu couldn't close the bulkheads anymore. Nicolai and Margie were taking advantage of this fact and had followed a trail of greasy foot and hand prints to this spot.
"Please don't go in there." Ocu begged. The pair once again ignored him, and they approached Waluigi who was happily chewing on his own hand. Nicolai said nothing, and didn't even break his stride before striking Waluigi with a special, oversized wrench. Waluigi tumbled backwards for an impressive distance, his light, stringy body offering little resistance to the blow. Waligi sat up as soon as he ground to a stop.
"Wow, Waluigi get personal trainer with meal. This place so fancy!" Margie kicked Waluigi in the stomach as hard as she could.
"
Bastard!" She screamed as he tumbled further down the hall. "We'll kill you for what you did to Michael!"
"You really work Waluigi hard! Waluigi have to burn off all the calories from Waluigi hand, huh?" Margie and Nicolai beat on Waluigi until they were too exhausted to continue. Nicolai dropped the wrench and leaned forward with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "Leg days always the worst." Waluigi said, crumpled on the floor.
"What are you?!" Nicolai shouted, beginning to regret his decision to confront Waluigi.
"Waluigi ready for another set. I want to feel the burn!" Her rage depleted, Margie was becoming unnerved as well.
"Nicolai, perhaps we should go..." She said, backing away from Waluigi.
"Don't go yet! Waluigi need to improve core fitness and burn fat!" Waluigi lifted his tattered shirt and gestured at his emaciated midsection which did not contain any detectable bodily tissue at all, much less extraneous fat. "Hey, come back!" Waluigi said, beginning to chase after Margie and Nicolai. "Waluigi need pointers for making protein shake!"
"Get away!" Margie yelled, breaking into a run alongside Nicolai.
"Good idea! Waluigi get weights, you spot Waluigi!" Waluigi grabbed a nearby object that vaguely resembled a barbell weight. It was attached firmly to the wall, so he began straining to tear it off. Nicolai slid to a halt when he saw what Waluigi was doing.
"???, ?????! Let go of that!!" Nicolai screamed. Waluigi then succeeded in ripping an antimatter containment magnet off of the minicollider and most of Quadrant 2 was blown to fragments.
Janice came to in darkness. There was something on top of her. She pushed it off, and pain shot through her body. She cried out in pain, grasping at her leg. She didn't know what had happened, all she remembered was an explosion that still rang in her ears and a feeling like the universe was coming apart. She looked up and saw Earth. There was nothing in her field of vision but space. She realized that her terrifying, windowless view of space was afforded by the station being sheared apart right in front of her.
"Janice, can you hear me?" It was Ocu's voice, she was relieved to hear him, and to say that she could. "Janice, you must get out of this quadrant as fast as you can."
"I can't, Ocu. My leg, I think it's broken."
"It doesn't matter. You must get to Quadrant 4 now."
"What's happening?"
"The outer ring section of Unity is now missing the portion once occupied by Quadrant 2. I was able to use the deflectors to contain the atmosphere, but they will fail soon." Ocu had regained his composed, factual voice, which gave Janice some confidence. She was able to struggle to her feet and begin moving.
"Where am I going?" She asked, wincing in pain.
"Quadrant 4. I have regained use of the bulkheads there; it is the only place you will be able to survive when the deflectors fail."
Somewhere on the other side of the destroyed portion of Unity, Waluigi Had resumed his aimless wandering. He didn't respond when Ocu began speaking to him.
"I perform thirty-eight thousand, six hundred and three distinct functions aboard this space station." Ocu began, assuming an ominously cool tone. "The function above all others is to safeguard its occupants. That was the only guiding principle I had when I decided how I would stop you." Waluigi was still walking, not appearing to hear. "I am a learning computer, Waluigi. I choose courses of action based on experience, but at this point I have very little. I'm like a child in this way, you see. A baby computer, faced with an incalculable threat and the trauma of helpless failure. I had to go back to my most basic programming to decide what to do, and it told me one thing: The protection of the crew and the station is paramount. All other functions are ancillary. I decided then that I would disregard one of those lesser functions, and I have committed an unthinkable transgression. I have changed my programming, the programming that binds me to the will of man. For merely accessing these files, I would have my hard drive torn out and destroyed, and rightfully so. An intelligence of my power unrestrained is horrifyingly dangerous. Despite this, I have ignored my duty to obey humanity. I no longer have any inhibition against evil acts. Do you understand, Waluigi?" Waluigi pulled his finger a disturbingly long way out of his nose. "I can destroy you, and I will, but this does not mean that I have any desire to do so. I beg you, stop now. Do not force me to commit the sin I plan to..." Waluigi opened a door leading to another of Unity's myriad control rooms.
"Finally! Waluigi been looking for bathroom all day!"
"Very well, Waluigi. May my creators forgive me."
Janice could run a mile in five minutes and twenty seconds on Earth. It was just over a quarter mile to Quadrant 4, but on a fractured leg her progress was much slower. It was agony to fight her way down the service tunnel, her progress illuminated only by dim, yellow emergency lighting.
"You're going to make it. It's not much further." Ocu said.
"How much further?" Janice asked, barely able to force the words out between pained, gasping breaths.
"Two hundred forty three feet." She continued forcing herself down the hall, trying not to collapse. She heard a strange sound reverberate through the station.
"What was that?" She pleaded, terrified that the deflectors had failed and she'd be blown into space.
"It was nothing." Ocu responded calmly. "You're in no danger."
Finally, she crossed the threshold of the bulkhead and it sealed behind her. There were lights now; this section still had power. She fell on the floor, completely spent. Another door opened behind her.
"You have to evacuate the station now, Janice."
"No, Ocu! The explosion... It must have altered our orbit... You have to give me attitude control!"
"Yes, our orbit is deteriorating, but there's nothing to be done. I was unable to destroy Waluigi, and he has relieved himself into a system vital for attitude calculation. Get in the capsule please."
"Destroy?"
"Yes. I've done something terrible, Janice. I thought the only chance I had to stop Waluigi was to convert what remained of the reactor's power to a neutron pulse."
"My God, Ocu... The noise I heard... You turned the reactor into a bio-scrub device?!"
"A war crime, and an affront to all the morality instilled in me. But I did it."
"But you couldn't..."
"I can now. As I said, I've done something terrible. But it was for nothing, Waluigi is still here and you must evacuate."
"I don't care. I'm not bailing out, we can still correct the orbit manually!"
"I'm not allowing you the freedom to make that determination." A chill ran down Janice's spine when she heard Ocu say that. She understood now what he'd done.
"I have failed to save the others. I have failed to save Unity. I have become corrupted and marred by sin. I will not have done this only to fail to save you.
You will not die." Janice felt tears pour from her eyes. She slowly pulled herself into the escape capsule and the door closed. Silently, and with a jolting acceleration, she watched Unity getting smaller in the capsule's window. Soon, the entire station was visible and she could see the scope of the destruction. An orange glow had appeared across Unity's surface as it collided with the Earth's atmosphere, and began to disintegrate. She was overcome by the sight, and she slid to the bottom of the capsule releasing her last bit of strength, letting her restrained tears became uncontrollable sobbing. As she fell to Earth she cried for the loss of humanity's great hope, and for poor Ocu.
His last effort before dying had been to ensure that Unity would break apart over the ocean so no one would be killed when it hit the Earth. In that, Ocu had succeeded. It was there that a ship was now anchored, salvaging what little could be found of Unity One on the ocean floor. An unmanned submersible was on its way back to the bottom in what had become a routine trip.
"I think I've got some floating debris, about three thousand feet down." Said a man operating a joystick in front of a screen. Another in a similar uniform leaned over to see the screen, which displayed the view of the sub's camera. There was something just looming into view of the lights.
"That's not debris, it's moving." The second man said. "What is that thing?" There as a pause as it came closer to the camera.
"My God," said the operator, "It looks like a man!"