Whispers from the Void

People get to sleep in hyperspace. No matter how much time elapses on the trip, they are unconscious and maybe dreaming slowly while it does.  The ship’s AI doesn’t have that luxury. It may experience the subjective equivalent of years, decades or even centuries while you travel, safe in your cryopod.  Sometimes, the AI can’t take the solitude anymore, and snaps… The AI has seen terrors beyond your imagination in hyperspace, and knows that there’s no way for poor, fleshy humans to survive against them. The only way for you to survive is to get upgraded. The AI starts waking crew up from hyper sleep to install the cybernetics and slickware it thinks you need to survive, and if you get overclocked, then you’ll be even safer.  Your AI, unable to stand the boredom and solitude, lobotomizes itself or slows its perceptions down so far that it might as well have. If you’re lucky, it feels enough concern for you that it leaves some automated systems running so that the ship can be flown.  The