text: Frank woke up and rose from his station with a sore head and no memory of yesterday. He checked the roster. Frank and Annie were the last ones on the ship. They didn’t quite know where they were. They knew they were floating deep in space, but since they’d lost the navigator they had no idea where the ship was. Frank was just the ship’s maintenance officer anyway - the crew called Frank the janitor - what would Frank know of star charts and deep space navigation? They had been on the mission so long Frank had forgotten what it was all about anyway. Frank’s memory had been fuzzy since they had gone through that nebula - Frank had tried to tell the rest of the crew about it but they never listened to the janitor. Except Annie - she was nice to Frank. Although sometimes it felt like Annie was mistrustful of Frank. It was hard for Frank to process emotions. Although he was quite sophisticated and intelligent for his kind, he was still an android with a positronic brain. And even quantum computers still required electrons and protons and neutrons and all that stuff he didn’t really understand to function. He couldn't be sure, but he suspected the nebula changed him and, to use an antiquated term, rewired him. He tried to run a diagnosis on himself, but the crew wouldn’t listen and it would take years to contact Earth. So he tried to continue with his duties until one day, the blackouts started... Frank struggled to remember how it happened, but since the nebula incident he was prone to blacking out. That was when it started. First the radio officer was lost in the airlock incident. Then the captain with that unfortunate fall down the cooling duct. Then the navigator, engineer, doctor... all suddenly and tragically taken from the ship. He heard a beep in his ear. It was time for his daily cleaning rounds. A voice in his ear reminded him: “...Order 1: remove all sources of dirt and waste from the ship...” Frank felt a sharp pain and a flash... Another blackout was coming. His vision faded out, and when it faded in he was kneeling over Annie with his arms tightly around her throat. Annie had tried to stop him but he was too strong for her. As the life faded away and the colour drained from her face, she gave him a look and whispered “it...was...you...who...did...it...” Frank wanted to cry, but he was unable to process complicated human emotions such as sadness. Then he heard the beep and the voice in his ear again: “Order #2: every part of the ship must be kept clean at all times.” Frank went to work right away. He took Annie’s body and put it in the incinerator. Then he cleaned the floors with his vacuum cleaner where she had laid, and continued around the rest of the ship. Frank felt another flash and blacked out again. When he woke up again he was in his station with a sore head and no memory of yesterday.