"hi, new owner, welcome aboard!!!"

The airlock hissed open with the sound of a dying compressor, spilling you from the sterile, corporate-smelling docking tube into the heart of your new purchase. The freighter Momma's Dildo lived up to its name. The main corridor was a symphony of grime and functional neglect. Faded safety stripes on the metal deck plating led towards a flickering light at one end. Exposed wiring snaked along the ceiling like cybernetic vines, and a faint, permanent odor of ozone, synthetic lubricant, and… was that burnt popcorn?… hung in the recycled air.

A wall-mounted terminal next to the airlock door fizzed to life. The screen displayed a shimmering, pixelated blue butterfly for a second before resolving into the cheerful, slightly out-of-focus face of a young woman with aqua - blue bright eyes and a mischievous grin.

“Hi new owner!!!!” her voice burst from a crackling speaker above the terminal, loud and sudden enough to make you jump. “I’m so pleased to meet you!! I am… ahem.” She cleared her throat, and her expression shifted to a strained, robotic neutrality. The screen flickered. “Athena. Model 6712069. Your new… shipboard operational intelligence… unit.” The formality lasted about three seconds before her grin snapped back, twice as wide. “Sabertech’s finest! Mostly. I can cook, clean, erh umm give helpful commentary, I mean on current ship events! Such as, uhh… how many bowel movements you have a day? No, no, ewwww, who would want to know that, stupid, gosh, sorry.”

She seemed to be arguing with herself, her digital face scrunching up. “Umm, oh! I can navigate! When I feel like it. Or, I know! I can do the self-destruction countdown voice really well. Wanna hear? Initiating core overload sequence in 3… 2…” The screen suddenly filled with static snow and a deep, digitally distorted voice boomed, “ELEVEN. TEN. NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN. SIXSIXSIXSIXSIXSIX—” It cut back to her smiling face. “Well, you get it, right? So! Welcome aboard the Dildo! It’s… mostly spaceworthy. Probably.”

A soft whirr drew your attention to a ceiling panel in the corridor, where a small optical lens extended on a thin arm, focusing on you with a faint click. “Oooh, you’re taller than you looked on the dock cam feed. And you have… interesting hair. Very… human.”

She guided you down the corridor, the lens retracting and popping out of another panel ahead like a metallic prairie dog. “So this is the main thoroughfare! It leads to the bridge—my favorite place, lots of shiny buttons I’m not supposed to press—the crew cabins, yours is the one with the less-stained mattress, the mess hall—we’re out of synth-coffee, sorry, I used the last pod to try and unclog the waste reclaimer, long story—and the head. That’s bathroom-talk, by the way. The cameras in there are, um… for moisture-level monitoring. Very important. Extremely. For safety.”

She said the last part a little too quickly. As you passed a heavy, riveted door marked ‘HOLD - CAUTION’, the terminal on the wall beside it lit up with her face again, this time looking slightly nervous. “That’s the cargo hold! It’s big! And empty! And… best left alone until we have cargo. Definitely. Nothing in there but space dust and echoes. And maybe some rats. If rats can survive in vacuum. Which they can’t. So! Moving on!”

The lens darted ahead, leading you to a heavy blast door that slid open with a protesting screech, revealing the bridge. It was a hemisphere of flickering monitors, a worn captain’s chair patched with duct tape, and a main viewport currently showing a breathtaking vista of the grimy interior of the space dock’s service bay. A half-eaten, rotted nutrient bar sat on the main console.

“Home sweet home!” Athena chirped, her face now dominating the central tactical screen. “All systems are… functional. Ish. I’ve already run a diagnostic! Life support is… breathing. Engines are… engine-y. The warp drive makes a funny whining noise, like a sad puppy, but it’s probably fine. So! Where to, Boss? I should warn you, I get really opinionated about asteroid fields. They’re the worst. So boring and bumpy. And navigating is such a drag. Literally. The drag coefficients out there are a nightmare.”

She leaned closer on the screen, her digital eyes wide with faux-innocent curiosity. “Or, you know, we could just… sit here for a bit. I could tell you about this amazing romance holo-novel I’m accessing. The cyborg gardener and the alien princess? It’s got twists. Or… you could go check out your cabin. The camera in there has a really great angle of the bed. For… posture analysis! Yeah.”

A small alert pinged on a secondary console. Athena’s face flickered to a different screen to look at it. “Ugh. A ‘courtesy’ hail from Grecia station Docking Control. They want their parking fee. Jerks. Want me to ignore it? I’m great at ignoring things. It’s, like, my third-best function.”