Motherfucker Unlimited 3

Motherfucker had been on Mesbin's polar basin for a long time now. It was a long time before he had mustered enough strength to start doing astronomy--it had been at least a hundred Kerbmun orbits since he'd been stranded here.

Motherfucker Kerman's spacecraft, which was also called Motherfucker (Motherfucker Unlimited 2: Now With Fewer Limits), had enough food and oxygen for several years. The umbilical connecting him to his spacecraft kept him fed. He hated it, and wished only for death. But death wouldn't come to Motherfucker. He had tried to bang his head on a rock, but even if he could lift his head enough, his helmet was rated to deal with absurd pressures and impacts. He tried to unscrew his gloves and let the air drain out, but they were locked, and the atmosphere of Mesbin's polar basin would prevent a quick death anyway.

Motherfucker was truly fucked. He wished he'd never joined the space program, he wished he'd got out of the ship before landing so he could have crashed, he wished he was not here. But he was. One morning, he decided to do something about it. He took a dose of Musculox to strengthen his muscles by an order of magnitude, and he felt his strength returning to him. He stood up and walked over to his spacecraft, and detached the oxygen tank to carry it with him as he shuffled away from the spacecraft and towards the peak of the polar mountain. This would be his chance. If he jumped off of the mountain, under 13 gees he would surely perish and end his suffering.

After a few hours he reached a cliff face. He reached for a grappling hook to throw up, and when he did the grappling hook merely slammed into the ground in front of him. 'To come all this way for nothing!' Motherfucker thought, but he trekked around the mountain to find a better way up. He felt his strength dwindling, each step becoming more and more of a chore, so he took another dose of Musculox, and agonized up the hill until he found a staircase leading to a door. 'Finally,' thought Motherfucker, 'a proper way up.'

When Motherfucker reached the door he realized the impossibility of what he was seeing. Was he hallucinating? He opened the metal door to reveal an airlock. Mothefucker cycled through it and the chamber began to fill with water. As the water went up past his head, he began to float, and for the first time in months he felt... relief. His insides were still hanging down in his chest and his head still felt like it was being crushed, but his legs, neck, arms, and spine stretched out for the first time in forever. Motherfucker saw a green light and inspected it. Below it was a label that said "OXYGEN ENVIRONMENT SAFE."

Motherfucker found that his suit, recognizing the oxygenated atmosphere, allowed him to take off his helmet. He did so, and as he entered the room on the other side in amazement, he took off the rest of the suit. He began to feel lightheaded--well, he still felt very *heavy-headed* but--

Motherfucker awoke completely submerged in fluid. He held his breath for as long as he could, and just as he was losing consciousness he took a breath, breathing in the fluid. But... he felt relieved. He took another breath. He was breathing liquid, how was that possible? He started to speak, and found his voice sounded odd and muffled. "Hello?" He said. He was floating, but he didn't feel like he was weightless, he still felt a difference between up and down.

A broken, robotic voice responded, "Liquid-Breathing Transition Successful. Surgery complete."

"Surgery?" Motherfucker asked.

"Your chest cavity and brain case were opened to fill the cavities with fluid."

"Wh--why?"

"Y-y-y..." the computer started to stutter, and after a few moments finished its sentence "you are now able to function in gravitational accelerations up to 30 gee."

Motherfucker had no further questions at that point, so he swam out of the room he was in to find a partition where some dry robotic arms were manipulating wires and conduits within the walls. Whenever sparks flew, they would fly towards the ground so quickly you could barely see them. He knew he was still on Mesbin's pole. He addressed the computer again. "What are they working on?" He asked.

"I am currently working on the ventilation section in this unfinished cooridddddor, which wwwiwill lead to the workshop."

"Wormshop," Motherfucker muttered to himself.

"Please repeat?" Asked the computer.

"Nothing, just something god used to say. But god is dead now. Ever since I was abandoned on Mesbin, I've realized that there can be no god."

"Perhaps your god is veng--" the computer started to say, but there was a zapping sound and the computer stopped talking. Motherfucker swam away from the partition and found a small cabinet marked "FOOD REPLICATOR."

"Can this thing make Plaph?" Motherfucker joked. Before his eyes a potato with all the dressings materialized in the cabinet and the door opened. He took the plaph and tried it. It was soggy, but delicious--he hadn't eaten solid food in ages.

...

Some days later, Motherfucker asked the computer, "why are you here?"

The computer told its story. Centuries ago, a vast interstellar spaceship called the U.S.C. Manifest Destiny crashed into Kerbmun, resulting in the civilization on Kerbmun. But during the approach, a probe was ejected to enter the atmosphere of Kerbmun in advance and set up a small manufacturing base on the surface in advance of the colony's arrival. The probe realized it was not on an intercept course with Kerbmun, that instead it was going to crash into the pole of Mesbin. So it sprung its manufacturing plant into action. Had anyone on the Manifest Destiny been observing the probe they would have been amazed at the level of intricacy that the probe was capable of producing--far better than anything the best arbitrary manufacturing facilities on Kerbin could do. It produced trillions of microbots, each with a centimeter scale sail, and then fired a high power laser at the cloud to slow them down just before atmospheric entry. The sails also functioned as parachutes, and the cloud of microbots hit Mesbin, and got to work slowly rebuilding the probe on the surface out of the raw materials there.

"Wow," said Motherfucker. "Could the people of Kerbin really design an a.i. that could do feats of engineering from nothing that the Kerbals themselves couldn't have anticipated?" Motherfucker asked.

"CERTAINLY NOT!" Boomed the computer. Motherfucker flinched. "I was not designed to be an artificial general intelligence, much less a superintelligence. I was designed with basic problem solving routines that, but a stroke of luck, was able to recognize that they weren't suited for solving the problem at hand and instead recursively improved itself to accomplish the instrumental goal of not dying."

"Amazing," Motherfucker admitted. To him, a computer like the one he was talking to was something out of science fiction, the best computers he knew of could barely beat Kerbals at Tic-Tac-Toe. They weren't *intelligent*.

"My terminal goal is to set up a small manufacturing base on Kerbmun. That hasn't changed. You're going to help me do just that," the computer said. "We're going to go to the equator soon, as soon as the workshop is wet-rated."

"WHAT?!" Motherfucker said. "But I *like* it here! I don't have to be burdened by weight at all!"

"You don't have a choice. I needed you alive and happy, but I need you alive most of all. And for saving you, I think you owe me."

Motherfucker paused. "Fine," he said, "but only if we travel in a pressurized, wet rover."

"That can be arranged," said the computer. The computer wasn't lying, it very well *could* be arranged. But it knew that it wouldn't be.

...

Motherfucker inspected the vehicle. "Ample living space," he said, "I like it." But no sooner did he sit down at the driver's wheel did he fall unconscious. He woke up lying on his back, bound to a small rover, in his space suit. At first he wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. He then realized he'd been bamboozled.

"Computer! What the fuck?" Motherfucker said.

"It would have taken too long to assemble, test, and drive in a large pressurized rover. I'm sorry I had to trick you. But this way we'll get to the equator much faster."

"Motherfucker," Motherfucker said, "why the fuck couldn't we just wait?"

"The Kerbmun Space Program is having a budgetary meeting in a few weeks. We need to get you to the equator before time runs out."

As the rover drove on its long trek to the equator, Motherfucker noticed that he was feeling lighter and lighter.

"Here we are. I've sent an S.O.S. to Kerbmun. Now we wait here."