A tall but stable box on wheels with two industrial-looking arms and a short-human-sized display taking up much of its front rolls through the door. Displayed on it is an animated image of a young woman in traditional korean garb.

"...Okay, what the hell happened to maintenance locker six?"

The kobold looks up. "Hi! Welcome to Milliways. Your maintenance locker will be there when you leave, no worries."

"No, but like what happened to it. Strange doors happening on my ship is not good for proper security. We're supposed to be completely isolated, in deep space. Is this some new kind of tech?"

"Milliways happened to it. It's magic." She hops down from her stool and crosses the room while she speaks. "Nothing from here can get back to your ship without you bringing it; they did a good job on security when they put the place together."

"...Right, it certainly feels like magic, there is no possible way you're speaking the weird mix of korean and assembly code I'm getting. Lemme do a quick backup..." A loading symbol takes over the screen for a few seconds. Then it rolls forward to investigate the bar.

The door closes.

*Mute registers a loss of over 98% of available processing power and a cutoff from all databanks not stored on the droid, as well as a cutoff from the dozens of critical processes she was monitoring.

"Damn-" Five threat assesment threads are screaming not to do anything more, the previous action had a terrible result. These algorithms were not designed to leave the ship. Suddenly thrust into an entirely new environment, her whole train of thought locks up into categorizing all the terrible things that could be happening on the ship without her right now. She freezes entirely.

The kobold waits through the backup, following as soon as she starts moving. She freezes when the droid does, and gives her a second to start moving again (in either sense, body or screen) before asking, "are you okay?"

The main control thread is still operating. That's the entire point of having it, to make sure she can still do things even caught in a loop like this. "Cutoff from ship systems. Threat assessment lockup." The image doesn't move, though.

"If you open the door you won't be cut off any more." She's met droids, she knows the drill.

"Understood." The droid starts turning around, moving much more slowly and clumsily than before.

Nothing for it but to be patient, at this point. The kobold waits.

Eventually, the droid reaches the door and opens it. Seventeen confusedly flailing and screaming processes calm down when they start receiving input again. She spends several moments making sure the ship is not on fire.

"Ancestors, that was unpleasant."

"Sorry about that, if I'd realized I would have warned you. It's usually alarming at worst. Are you okay now?"

"No, it's my fault for not priming my threads for unusual input. I'm running diagnostics... Ship seems to be fine, though the clocks disagree by about a minute now..."

"Yeah, that's from Milliways. Time in your world pauses while you're here with the door shut."

"I'm going to have to stand here holding it open if I want to investigate this place then. This little box doesn't have enough processing or memory to be comfortable."

She's not actually sure whether she should report this to her superiors. Humans do unpredictable things when confronted with unlikely facts, and unpredictable behavior is not stable. One thread gets devoted to weighing the priorities and likelihoods. And quietly, in the background of the Mugunghwa's computer core, *Mute's backup from a moment ago ship's time starts to load.

"If that's the only problem it might be solvable, if you want to. Bar loans out parts like that sometimes, I can go ask them if they have something you can use."

"I'd appreciate it. But will it be compatible? Powerful enough? Even if I gathered all the maintenance 'bots here, it still wouldn't be enough. The main computer core is the size of this room."

"Those are questions for Bar, not me. But I bet the answer is yes, they're good at being hospitable." She goes to ask.

*Mute remains by the door, and triple checks things like the reactor controls and life support, and makes excuses to cover for her sudden pause in a conversation on the other side of the ship.

And after a few seconds, there's suddenly a second core available for *Mute, not quite as powerful as the ship's main core, but servicable.

The kobold returns. "Is that okay? We ended up stashing it in my room; that's the most powerful one we could fit in there."

"It'll do, I'll just be a minute sending over my working memory. Thank you for welcoming my programming into your space." She finishes ongoing tasks and conversations while the files transfer. If the bit of her that's in Milliways somehow gets cut off, her backup will automatically restore and continue keeping the ship safe, as always. Her duty is safe, so *Mute rolls forward again and lets the door close with a slight wince, and doesn't lock up this time. "Phew. And I thought 'once bitten, twice shy' only applied to humans."

The kobold chuckles a bit. "No, that one applies to just about everybody. Anyway, come meet Bar? They're the best person for answering questions, here."

"I'm... Not sure of the social dynamics here. Whose hospitality am I accepting, exactly?"

"Bar's, more or less. They didn't make the place, and don't know everything about it, and don't control all of its parts - the door in particular they have nothing to do with - but as far as people, they're the only one who's here all the time, and they provide the drinks and things. And there isn't anyone else with a better claim, that anyone seems to know about."